Is it the routing & the strategy alone that endure

[Patrick_Mucci]

So many courses have been altered since creation.

So many great golf courses have been substantively altered since their creation, yet, many of them are amongst the greatest in the world.

Is it the routing and the basic strategy of the holes which endures, despite the alteration of the individual features.

Are routing and hole strategy the only meaningful, enduring values in golf course architecture ?

[A_Clay_Man]

No

How about green shapes, contours, kickplates,knolls, moundings etc.?

[Patrick_Mucci]

A Clayman,

If you think green shapes endure, you're greatly mistaken.

This is one of the first features to be lost.

This is why clubs have undertaken burying wire  underneath their green's lines, so that when they are lost, they can be recaptured by charging the line and reestablishing their original configuration.

Mounds, knolls, bumps and contours are lost or at least softened by gang mowers and other forces, such as the installation or repair of irrigation lines.

[Jeff_McDowell]

The routing is probably the most enduring, but even that gets changed. Trees get planted to narrow fairways and stop people from cutting dogles, and holes get lengthened all the time.

[A_Clay_Man]

Pat I was really only thinking of the old course when I initially responded.
 Evolution changes everything. But I believe JN did a real number on a course south of San Jose where he changed everything including the routing and strategy.

But you're talking great courses right? How about Pebble Beach? The new fifth has altered the routing albeit slightly because it is still a par 3 but significantly enough where it matters to me.

[Forrest Richardson]

GPS and GIS data of new courses will greatly preserve what we are building today -- although I would suspect from most regular GCA-er posters that this may not be a welcome reality!

However, fact is that GPS technology for as-builts of golf courses will dramatically change the way -- in 50 years -- people are able to see what we have been building today. Also, of course, anything we want to preserve can be detailed in GIS data and recorded forever.

Yes, though, to the question. The routing is the anatomy of the course. It forms the strategy. All else is flesh. I have quoted Desmond Muirhead previously on this. I will not directly quote him, except to say that he was brilliant in using a beautiful woman as an analogy: It is the bones and soul which forms her beauty -- those things cannot be changed. While, on the other hand, the flesh and exterior is always changing...but it does not overtake the beauty beneath. (Sorry, Desmond, for not getting that accurate, but I believe it's close.)

[Jeff_Mingay]

I agree with Forrest, the authority - author of the only book on the all-important subject of routing golf courses! A good routing over a good piece of ground will endure.

The greatest example I can think of is Stanley Thompson's Highlands Links. So much has gone wrong there over the years, in my opinion - proliferation of trees, sloppy introduction of cart paths, the loss of Thompson's original bunker styling, etc. But the course continues to endure still, because of a brilliant routing over a really neat piece of ground.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Jeff Mingay,

Would you say that all other features are just icing on the cake ?  

That their alteration will have a nominal effect on the greatness of the golf course ?

[Jeff_Mingay]

All I mean is, a good routing over a decent piece of ground will endure, regardless of how awful the bunkers look or how poorly they've been placed, for example. Or how intrusive trees and cart paths may be.

But then, when you have a good routing complimented by equally good putting surfaces, bunkers and other hazards [both in regard to aesthetics and placement], and of course, a good tree plan, you enter the realm of Pine Valley, Cypress Point, The National GL of America, Shinnecock Hills, and those other courses that fall into the category of 'greatness'.

You can fix all of the 'icing on the cake', but it's very difficult to fix a bad routing. Brad Klein said it, 'Routing is destiny.'

Funny, I just had a potential golf course developer tell me that 'routing the course is the easy part'. He just needs someone to 'stamp' his drawing and build the course! Needless to say, I'm slowly peddling backwards, away from that situation.  

[Forrest Richardson]

Jeff -- Those can be very good clients. Just agree and suggest he turn all this "easy" stuff over to you. Then go do your job and he/she will never realize what transpired.