DISREGARDED ARTIST

WE PLAY A DULLER GAME SINCE ARCHITECT JIM ENGH WENT OUT OF STYLE

- DEREK DUNCAN

In the late 1980s, Jim Engh found himself stranded on a country road in Latvia, in a territory still under Soviet control, waiting for a ride that wasn’t coming.

Engh had spent the day in the woods, hiking several hundred acres of property for a potential client interested in building a large golf resort. Now, tired and slightly afraid, he simply wanted to return to the safety of his hotel. These were “cowboy days” in Eastern Europe, says Engh, who at the time oversaw design and construction for an arm of Mark McCormack’s London-based IMG Developments. The fact that he’d been forgotten and left to hitchhike back to Riga led him to believe this exploratory project was likely going nowhere. Before departing, however, Engh returned to the site and quickly “designed” a course, hurriedly marking out the holes.

“I basically did the 54-stakes-in-the-ground thing for them—here’s a tee, here’s the landing area, here’s the green. Repeat,” he says. “I said, ‘Here’s your golf course—go mow it, cut a hole.” He laughs. “Who says I can’t do minimalist?”