Savannah Harbor: A Bob Cupp masterpiece

Architect Bob Cupp was a prolific artist. Shortly after completing Savannah Harbor, he painted this watercolor of No. 6..

Bob Cupp was presented with a 130-acre blank canvas when he was hired in 1998 to design the new Club at Savannah Harbor’s golf course. That suited him perfectly.

Cupp was known in the golf community as a renaissance man. Not only did he create an impressive portfolio of noteworthy golf courses, but he was also an accomplished painter, novelist, woodworker, model railroader, and musician.

“He was an artist,” says Lynn Childress, the Director of Grounds at Savannah Harbor, who as the layout’s first superintendent worked closely with Cupp when the course opened in 2000. “He wasn’t a diagram person; he drew a picture. Then the construction crew worked off of that.”

Cupp looked forward to a career as a graphic designer when he graduated from the University of Miami in 1961. But first he served in the Army and made time during his hitch to become a scratch golfer and earn a Masters degree in fine arts from the University of Alaska. After his discharge, he returned to Florida for a job in advertising, which – in typical unconventional Cupp fashion – led to a job as golf shop manager at a local daily fee course, where he also assisted in a renovation project. Bitten by the course design bug, Cupp enrolled at Broward Community College and in 1968 completed an associate’s degree in turf management.

He honed his craft by designing and building a handful of courses in south Florida. In 1972, Cupp was introduced to Jack Nicklaus, who was in the process of starting a golf course architecture business. A job offer soon followed, and Cupp became a senior designer with the fledgling Nicklaus Design company.

During the next 12 years, his indelible fingerprint appeared on dozens of Nicklaus projects, including Shoal Creek (AL), which has hosted two PGA Championships, a U.S. Women’s Open, and a U.S. Amateur; Desert Highlands (AZ); Castle Pines (CO), Loxahatchee (FL); Valhalla (KY), venue for the 2008 Ryder Cup and three PGA Championships – with a fourth slated for 2024; and Glen Abbey in Ontario, which has hosted 30 Canadian Opens. Tiger Woods and Lee Trevino made golf history at Glen Abbey, as the only two players to win the “Triple Crown” comprising victories in the U.S. Open, Canadian Open and British Open Championship in the same year (Trevino in 1971 and Woods in 2000).

Cupp struck out on his own in 1985. A few years later, he moved his eponymous design firm to Atlanta from Miami. He served as president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects from 2012-13, and was inducted into the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame in 2014.

Among Cupp’s solo design efforts are two courses at Reynolds Lake Oconee (GA), the Landing and the Preserve; Crosswater (OR); and the Pumpkin Ridge courses (Ghost Creek and Witch Hollow) in Oregon, where Woods in 1996 won his third consecutive U.S. Amateur Championship, and the upstart LIV Golf Tour made its U.S. debut last week.

Cupp had noteworthy collaborations with Jerry Pate, who gained fame in 1982 by winning the first Players contested on Pete Dye’s innovative TPC Stadium Course, then kicking off the awards ceremony by tossing Dye and PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman into the lake alongside the 18th green. Pate dove in after them.

Among the Cupp-Pate projects are Indianwood’s notoriously difficult New Course in Michigan and Old Waverly in Mississippi, which hosted the 1999 U.S. Women’s Open. Cupp worked with Tom Kite to create Liberty National (NJ), venue for the 2017 President’s Cup, as well as four PGA Tour events, and with Greg Norman on Savannah Quarters. (Liberty National, with stunning views of Manhattan and Lady Liberty, cost a whopping $250 million, including the golf course, clubhouse, guest villas and other amenities. Hence the reported $450,000 initiation fee and $25,000 monthly dues for members.)

Cupp was not a fan of defining fairways with straight lines, instead preferring wavy edges. That look was a feature of Savannah Harbor and Liberty National when they opened.

“We’re so far away from Bob Cupp’s lines it’s not funny,” says Childress, noting that the PGA Tour’s setup team eliminated the architect’s “squiggly” look for the PGA Champions Tour Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf event that ran at Savannah Harbor from 2003 to 2013.

Cupp’s Liberty National design was similarly altered after players complained about the quirky sightlines during the 2009 Northern Trust, which didn’t return there again until 2013. “You hit a 300-yard drive and it ends up in a squiggle (of rough); players don’t like that,” says Childress. “They’ve changed that course to where (Cupp’s) grass lines are gone.”

Childress believes design elements such as blind holes and wavy sight lines add character to a golf course. He intends to gradually reintroduce Cupp’s original fairway lines to a handful of appropriate holes at Savannah Harbor. “I’m trying to get them back,” he says.

During 25 years as a golf journalist when Cupp was active, this writer never had the pleasure of meeting him. But Ron Whitten, the respected, longtime architecture editor at Golf Digest, knew him well, and the tribute he wrote when Cupp died in 2016, at age 76, is a must read for Savannah Harbor members. Here’s a snippet, describing their last visit together:

We talked of his early years, how he studied art at the University of Miami with the intention of being a commercial artist, and after graduation joined the U.S. Army, stationed in Fort Richardson, Alaska, where he played golf several times with Claude Harmon’s son, P.F.C. Butch Harmon. Bob and Butch ran into one another again 30 years later, at Pumpkin Ridge in Oregon, when Bob’s 36-hole complex was hosting the U.S. Amateur. Butch was there helping his latest pupil, Tiger Woods, who would win his third straight title that week and then turn pro. Bob said he and Butch had dinner during the event, each agreeing the other had turned out far better than expected.”

Another Cupp rendering of Savannah Harbor, the green at No. 5.