Agustin Piza Surprises with Fantasy Designs at TGL

After watching the first TGL match, you had to wonder what’s next?  Where do you go in difficulty after molten lava? Has Bud Chapman, the man who used to paint fictitious, impossible holes for Golf Digest, come back to life in Agustin Piza, one of the three TGL course designers? 

Pisa, along with Beau Welling and Nicklaus Design have come up with wonderful made-for “Screen Golf” creations. 

As far as Agustin Piza – pronounced like the Augustine in St. Augustine and Piza like the leaning tower – is concerned, creating holes for TGL was the opportunity of a lifetime.  He wasn’t going to give them milquetoast design. And here’s the best part:  the guys at the top – you know – Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Mike McCarley – whoever comprises Team TGL -- had to approve them for use.

One of Pisa’s holes was the first one used at TGL last week and this week: The Plank.

But he went on to show us real imagination in week one with The Flex, which had a green surrounded by molten lava! That’s right. Lava. Still red and boiling.

“I am 110% responsible for that lava in the in The Flex,” he said in an interview for The Golf Show 2.0. “All of a sudden you think volcano! I dreamt, I dreamt of it after I got the call from TGL.”

Some people dream of flight. Some people dream of climbing mountains. PGA Tour players often have golf dreams. So, it should come as no surprise that golf course architects would dream of designs. But volcanos?

So, while Pisa may not have been a household name in golf course design before TGL, the matches are certainly giving him a new kind of visibility. The first two holes in the second match were also his. The Plank and Pick Yer Plunder. 

To get out of the ordinary designs, Piza said he had to get in touch with his inner child and then channel the knowledge he has as a designer.

“One of the first things that I thought is, okay, how can we create something special, something crazy, something completely out of the box, yes, but that also respects the integrity of the game,” he explained.

He said it was easier to design something to jump from an island to an island, but his mind started to work other ways.  

“My question is would I like to play, okay it's over the top, it's crazy, I love it, would I like to play it more than once? Or is it just a wow factor?” he added. “So that's where I draw the line.  If I can get the ball there and then continue on with regular golf so that's where I draw the line at least in in my perspective.”

After coming up with an unusual idea, the next issue is seeing if it will work in the concept of the big screen and if it will scale properly. For instance, they can’t create severely uphill or downhill holes because the screen dimensions will just show a big green wall.

“If there was a hole that we wanted to fall down 100 feet, that's not going to happen in the monitor because when you're standing on the tee box and looking towards ( the fairway or green), the bottom of the eyes or the top of the eyes or that perspective that we have as human beings, that stops in the monitor,” he explained. “If you want a hole you know that's more than six percent grade playing on a hill, you're going to see just a wall of green grass.”

Now the good thing about this new opportunity is that Piza has the personality to handle any notoriety that might come with being a TGL team course hole designer. He also has the education for it. After getting a degree in what he calls vertical architecture, he got a Masters Degree in Golf Course Architecture from Edinburgh University. The bonus of that was he got to order himself a kilt in the university tartan which he says he wears proudly.

After all the designing, the back and forth with the TGL team and getting their approvals, he went to the first match to see how it would all turn out. And he gives the entire experience two volcanic explosions.

“We love the game it,” he insisted. “Nobody is trying to substitute the green grass smell that you know, listen to the birds, smell the the fresh cut grass, wipe the dew off the green, nobody's substituting that. We all love that, but that's why it's on a Monday and a Tuesday,” he concluded.

The three architects who were selected for TGL’s first season have created 30 different golf holes for play. Look for more amazing creations in the weeks to come.