Gary Kern has everything. Almost.
The golf course architect has a long and interesting resume. He has built some of the area's best courses. He's assisted. He's been in charge. He's made public tracks notable and private courses amazing.
He's done it all … except almost no one knows. That includes some of the in-the-know people connected with courses Kern designed.
Bob Furkin is the pro at Pomme Creek Golf Course. He arrived long after Kern stomped down the last patch of bent grass at the Pomme Creek course, now a part of the Arnold Parks and Recreation Department. "The only thing I know about Gary is he was in the St. Louis area when the building boom started," he says.
Kern, who was unavailable for this story, pretty much was the building boom. More than any other designer, he shaped golf south of the Arch, including here in Jefferson County, in the 1980s and '90s. He designed Pomme Creek in Arnold, Sugar Creek in High Ridge and the second nine at Union Hills in Pevely.
Beyond Jefferson County, Kern's fingerprints and blueprints are all over the southeast and central Missouri golf map: Aberdeen in west St. Louis County, Quail Creek in south county, Meramec Lakes in St. Clair, Crown Pointe in Farmington, Fourche Valley in Potosi, Bent Creek in Jackson, Wolf Hollow in Labadie, Bear Creek in Wentzville, Eagle Knoll near Columbia and Fox Creek in Edwardsville, Ill. And there are more.
Mike Murphy, a PGA pro from Festus, says Kern built a string of courses that communities from Jackson to Arnold and from Pevely to Wentzville can be proud of.
"I really think that Gary Kern maxed out what he had to work with," Murphy says. "Gary fit those courses to those small-town pocketbooks."
Kern also fit at least one area course to a big pocketbook. The highlight of his resume - and the highlight of the area golf map - is Fox Run Golf Club, a private track in northwest Jefferson County that he built for David Ault
"It's his jewel," says Murphy, who, in addition to a long career as a club pro, also put in seven years in the construction and design end of the business golf.
"It's absolutely as good as any course in the country," Murphy says of Fox Run. "If that had been a (Tom) Fazio or a (Jack) Nicklaus (course), you could've had a major here. That's how good it is."
There are hints of Fox Run in most of the public courses Kern worked on. Furkin says that's enough for most knock-around players.
"It doesn't take much to make us happy," he says. "If you give us something that we can see - if the hole's visible - and it's fair, we're usually OK with it."
Furkin is right: Golfers' likes and dislikes aren't too complicated.
Blind shots top the list of no-nos. "I'm not really a fan of blind shots - you know, where you say, 'Hit it over this hill,' and all you can do is hope that it's going to turn out OK," Furkin says.
Another sore point - uphill par-3 holes.
Yet another - bunkers or water in front of a green.
When Gary Player was setting up Tapawingo, a 27-hole golf operation along the Meramec River in Fenton, he explained that shots that went straight at the green deserved a reward. "He told us, 'I want my grandma to enjoy a round of golf. I want her to be able to bounce a ball onto the green,'" says Murphy, who was the Tapawingo pro when Player was building the course.
One of the area's top amateurs, Buddy Allen of Pevely, complains that some designers try to sneak up on players by "hiding" trouble around bends or over hills. "Some of the hardest courses are the ones where you don't see the trouble and you don't see where you're supposed to hit," he says.
On the other side of the coin: visual appeal, scenery - even water - balance, variety and fairness win the design day for most players. Some courses surround players with a million-miles-from-the-city feel, while others - notably Forest Park - put players in the middle of the park while surrounding them with the sights of the city.
Dylan Saxner, a top junior player from House Springs, says Gateway National on the East Side is a course that successfully juggles golf and scenery. "Not only is the course great, but the views (of the Arch and downtown) are great, too," he says.
Big-name architects working with big-time budgets can indulge in signature design quirks. Murphy says it's not a stretch to say, "Once you see a Nicklaus golf course, you see the same thing over and over."
Area courses typically don't have the room or money for self-indulgence. There's nothing about Pomme Creek, for instance, that would remind you of Quail Creek, nothing at Aberdeen that would make you think of Union Hills, and on and on.
"What's interesting about Gary is he's gone into the small towns of Missouri, and he's taken what's there and worked with it," Murphy says.
Pomme Creek has a couple examples: The course is routed under a train tressel as players go from the first green to the second tee, and, later in the round, Kern uses Rock Creek as the right boundary for a long par-4 hole. (Originally, players hit from elevated tees on the Rock Creek hole, but those tee boxes no longer are part of the set-up.)
Not every effort by Kern - or any other designer - is a gem. Allen has played around the area and across the country. He says missteps by designers are common.
"I'd say every golf course has a couple holes that could be better," he says.
Achieving "better" can be a crapshoot. Money tilts the odds of that crapshoot in the designer's favor.
"This whole thing comes down to what market you're in," Murphy says. "We can give you Walmart, we can give you Sax Fifth Avenue, and we can give you everything in between."
Money is nice - duh, huh? - but it can't fix everything. Murphy says the silk purse-sow's ear rule is golf design's bottom line.
"You can't make Marilyn Monroe out of Phylis Diller. You can't do it," he says.
To his credit, though, Kern has tried.
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