With a family on the way, Bill Bergin’s days as a touring golf professional were all but over in the late 1980s.  He began to look for another way to make his living close to the game, while keeping the door open to return to tournament golf.  When an opportunity to become a teaching pro at Atlanta’s Cherokee Town and Country Club presented itself, he jumped at it.  Little did Bergin know how much that job would impact what he considers his true calling—golf course design.

At Cherokee, Bergin taught all levels of golfers, from beginners to scratch.

“I really enjoyed teaching, and I felt like I was really helping people,” Bergin recalls. “I kept my style fairly simple. This was in an era of teaching before video became popular, and I had to use my eyes. You have to train yourself to improve your internal shutter speed.  The more you teach, the better you can see what is happening.

“Communication was a big key, and I had an easy way of communicating.  I think my students understood what was going on.  Too many teachers get stuck with what’s technically correct in the golf swing and don’t relate to the average player who is not able or committed to practice.  I was willing to go at things a little bit differently to achieve the desired end results.  It was important that my students understood their golf swing from both the physical and the mental side.

Just as Bergin was teaching the game to his students, his students, indirectly at least, taught him.  Bergin always had an interest in golf course design. During his countless hours on the lesson tee and through numerous playing lessons, he began to see how average golfers played the game and became sympathetic with their plight and familiar with the challenges that faced them on the typical modern golf course.

Those observations became important after Bergin began working with noted Atlanta-based course architect Bob Cupp in 1990.  Bergin learned the trade from Cupp, but when he set out on his own, establishing Bergin Golf Designs in 1994, Bergin brought his own ideas into the mix. His goal as a designer was to build courses that would challenge the best players while being fun to play for all golfers.

“Golf is not an easy game,” Bergin said. “I don’t try to unduly make golf courses difficult.  I do seek to challenge the better golfer, but at the same time, you can make a golf course actually more playable for the average player.  Basically, better golfers play the game through the air and everyone else plays the game on the ground.  I design the golf course from the ground up.” 

That Bergin’s philosophy works is proven by the course and slope ratings assigned to his designs.

“Our course ratings, which are based on the scratch player, are generally fairly high,” Bergin said. “However, our slope ratings are much more modest in relation to the course ratings, and slope is based on the average player.  That lets you know for the average player our golf courses are pretty user friendly, yet for the better players they’re challenging.  That’s exactly my goal on every piece of property that I work on.”

Bergin goes about that in a variety of ways:

• Hazard placement. “The first thing we decide is what happens at the approach area of the greens. Where are the hazards positioned?  A good player is more likely to miss a green side to side than short or long.  They have better distance control, but don’t always hit it straight.  The average player deals with everything.  Some older players and women hit the ball reasonably straight but may come up short frequently, and very few people ever knock it over a green.  If you’re right handed, you might hit more balls short and right.  So you don’t necessarily want a lot of bunkers short and right.  That’s capturing those who least need to be captured.”

“One of the key fundamentals of what we do is that our greens typically will have some portion unguarded in the front.  That doesn’t mean the whole thing.  It may be a third, two thirds, maybe half, maybe the whole green. That strategy choice varies depending on shot demands.”

“Regarding forced carries, we try to create situations where the better player can make that choice, while the higher handicapper can play safely away.  Even with a short iron or a pitching wedge, some 15-handicappers may be really challenged by a forced carry, whereas a scratch player rarely is.”

• Green design. “I prefer greens with gradual movement, sometimes in several different directions.  I call it equal opportunity golf—subtle contouring requires a greater understanding of the nuances of an individual putting surface.” Bergin said.  “Today you see too many large multi-tiered greens, which favor the better player who is more apt to control his approach shot; capable of hitting to the proper level, leaving a flatter putt.  Tiered greens present a situation where the average player is punished unduly, resulting in long awkward putting or chipping over ridge lines.  Ours is a simple philosophy—hard par, easy bogey.”

• Out of bounds: “I don’t like out of bounds on golf courses,” Bergin said. “I try to protect players from dealing with that.  I want you to be able to hit it, find it and hit it again.  So many of the older core golf courses only had out of bounds on the occasional perimeter location, while new developments today may have out of bounds on each side of numerous holes.” 

• Length:  Length is important, but not just for length’s sake. “I look to really balance the type of shots that are required as well as to vary club selection,” Bergin said. “I want you using every club in the bag - all 14 of them, something that rarely happens these days”.  On too many courses, low handicappers use nothing but short irons on the par fours, making the course relatively vulnerable to scoring.  Put a few long irons in a player’s hand, and all of a sudden a course can defend itself. 

At Chattanooga Golf and Country Club, our newest renovation, we have a short golf course on a limited piece of property.  In pursuing our goal of improving the course for all players and seeking balanced demands, we chose to leave the shorter holes as is, but lengthened the long ones.  “Adding 30 yards to a 380 yard par four is relatively meaningless, but adding 30 yards to a 430 yard par four will get some attention.  Hitting a long iron to a par four is becoming a lost art and one that we would like to maintain.  That’s going to happen at Chattanooga.  That helps protect the game.”