The Pleasure Of His Company

By Ron Whitten
Photo By AP June 2008

The best restaurant in Montclair, N.J., says Rees Jones, is La Couronne, just down the street from his office, under the commuter tracks, then to the right. Turns out it's clear across town, but when you were born, raised and still live in an idyllic bedroom community in the Garden State, and it takes an hour to go a dozen miles into New York City, I suppose across town seems just down the street. I join Rees and his wife, Susan, at a corner table in the front and congratulate them on 40 years of marriage. Their anniversary fell on Easter Sunday this year.

Rees realizes he forgot the wine. Local ordinance requires that diners bring their bottle and present it to the maitre d', so Rees schleps to a nearby liquor store in a light rain, returns with a merlot and hands it to the waitress, who pulls the cork and pours while glancing at the top of his head. Rees still has on a tattered golf hat. He quickly removes it, revealing -- and I say this as a friend -- the worst comb-over in golf. That's Rees Jones: one of the most successful golf architects in the history of the game, but a regular guy who wears a golf cap in the best restaurant in town.

Over dinner, Susan tells me how Rees gave her static about some of her recent purchases until she played her trump card: a stack of dues statements from club memberships. She's a cheap date compared to that.

"How many clubs do you belong to?" I ask.

"I have no idea," he says with a laugh. "Somewhere around 50 [see chart]. Most of them are honorary memberships from courses I designed -- Atlantic, Nantucket, RedStick, The Bridge; Bellerive, now that I've remodeled it. I played in an Old Chatham member-guest a few years back; didn't realize I was the member. But dues, I pay only at Pine Valley, Seminole, National [Golf Links], Maidstone, Montclair and Spyglass Hill."

It takes me a moment to absorb that blue-blooded lineup. Doesn't he realize times are tough for golf-course architects? I mean, I've gotten calls from some of them looking for work. Not a design job -- any kind of work.

But Rees Jones seems recession-proof. He has got plenty of earth churning in North America, doesn't have to beat the bushes in New Guinea, Croatia or Swaziland looking for clients. The money is good these days. His asking price is $1.5 million, up considerably from the $35,000 design fee he earned in 1980 for Gator Hole, a Myrtle Beach cutie now sadly gone. (He did it for the parents of Kelly Tilghman of Golf Channel fame.) His first $100,000 fee was for Oyster Reef on Hilton Head Island in 1982, and his first $1 million fee was for Cascata south of Las Vegas some two decades later. Despite the fees he commands, he still flies commercial ("I think my clients appreciate the fact that they're not contributing to a $10,000-an-hour airplane time share") but always first-class. Rees and Susan have a summer house in the Hamptons on Long Island and spend winters in Jupiter, Fla., where he just paid cash for a three-bedroom, block-from-the-ocean townhouse. They have plenty of room when their two daughters -- Alden and Amy, both in their 30s -- come to visit, and they're awaiting a second grandchild.

At 66, Rees Jones seems to love being Rees Jones. Still basking from last fall's Presidents Cup at Royal Montreal, which he remodeled, he's preparing for more attention in 2008 at the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills, the U.S. Amateur at Pinehurst No. 2, the AT&T National at Congressional, the BMW Championship at Bellerive and the Tour Championship at East Lake -- all Rees Jones re-dos. He's especially proud of Torrey Pines, which probably wouldn't be hosting the Open this year if he hadn't transformed it.

We first corresponded in 1975 and first met in 1982, at a meeting of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. He was 40, already a past president of the organization but not yet at the top level of his profession. I was a part-time freelancer, a few years from joining this magazine. He invited me to visit one of his construction sites. I've done so numerous times since then, even offering a few suggestions that he politely took under advisement. Over the years, I've played probably four dozen of his designs, at least 20 of them with Rees.

We've played other courses together, too. Rees filled out the threesome for one of my last rounds with my dad, at then-new Shadow Creek in North Las Vegas, Nev., a Tom Fazio design. Rees was so critical of the architecture -- this green was too big for the shot, that bunker didn't read right -- I finally had to tell him to hush up and enjoy the round. It's much more fun playing with Rees on an old classic like the National, or at one of his new courses, like Redstone outside Houston. But join him on one of his rivals' courses? No thanks.