A mulligan in golf is the chance to right the wrong of a poorly hit shot. An immediate do-over. You don’t want one, but sometimes it’s necessary.
John Fought took a mulligan recently at Indian Wells Golf Resort, but he had to wait almost two decades for the chance to do so. The Arizona-based course architect, who designed the Players Course there in 2007, recently corrected what he always considered “a wrong” by moving the final two holes from the south side of the Whitewater Wash to the north side, where they now join the other 16 holes.
“They felt completely in another world,” Fought says of those two holes. “But I was told at the time it had to be done that way. They were not bad holes; they were just in a different part of the property. When they called me and said they were thinking about getting rid of those two holes, I was like, ‘Yes! Finally!’”
He ended up doing much more, however. The project included a new irrigation system and greens, and a rerouting of the layout to meld existing holes and a handful of new ones into a contiguous configuration. “There are now 11 holes out there that we basically refurbished but didn’t change too much,” Fought says. “We just made them more modern. But they do play in a different order. The old fifth is now 14. The first hole used to start where the 18th green is now. It was a bit of puzzle, but we were able to do it.” Holes 17 and 18 are brand-new and cap a stellar closing stretch.
