Cornell Chronicle [2016-07-29]
When some of the world’s best golfers tee off next month in the 72-hole Olympic competition, they will be navigating fairways and greens imagined and designed by a pair of Cornellians. …
Gil Hanse, MLA ’89, bested a field of 29 of the world’s top golf architects four years ago and won the job of turning an abandoned sand mine in the Barra da Tijuca neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro into a golf course that could challenge the best players in the game, then be used as a municipal course for a city and nation just being introduced to the sport.
“It’s very humbling and an incredible honor,” Hanse told reporters shortly after winning the competition four years ago.
Hanse – an award-winning course architect who founded Hanse Golf Course Design in Malvern, Pennsylvania, in 1993 – enlisted the help of fellow Cornellian Frank Rossi, Ph.D. ’91, to come up with a grassing plan in keeping with his philosophy of tailoring the golf course to the site, and not the other way around.
“He’s the best – he’s so passionate,” Hanse said of Rossi, who is an associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ School of Integrative Plant Science. “He was out there doing a lot of research for us. My partner, Jim Wagner, and I talked with him about what sort of characteristics we want the grass to have from a playability standpoint.”