The common Qualites of the Past and Present

[T_MacWood]

Jeff
I don't think I would dismiss LArch so quickly as a major influence. Afterall Trent Jones studied Landscape Arch and he was a major influence on George Fazio, and directly and indirectly on young Tommy. Nicklaus has been surrounded by LArchs his entire design career. And it might be a coencidence, but Dye's approach seemed to shift dramatically when brought on numerous LArch proteges.

I disagree with your example of sameness. I think your example shows a sensativity to location. Tillinghast SFGC is nothing like his eastern work, nor his Thomas's, and there are subtle differences, and sometimes not so subtle differences, between MacKenzies British, Irish, So.American, Australian, Midwest, East and West coast work. They show variety within their own portfolio.

I'll grant you there are some very interesting individuals working today, but how many golf architects are there worldwide? But even you skim off those indiviuals, I wonder how they compare with the past.

Is the modern trend of designing to be admired immediately a positive development, does it lead to more artificiality?

[Mike_Cirba]

Tom Paul,

Fox Hill is quite a bit of Tillie.  The club started with a nine-holer by John Reid, which was revamped and a new nine added by Tillie a few years later.  

Fox Hill and Wyoming Valley...sounds like a wonderfully quirky 36-hole day to plan for next summer.  

[jglenn]

Tom MacWood,

I'm more than willing to agree that Landscape Architecture plays a major role in golf course architecture.  (haven't we had this debate last year anyway?...)

However, I completely disagree with the assertion that this role contributes to "the Look".  By that, I mean flowers and mounds and waterfalls and everything shaped into a flowering, flowing, photogenic gardens of greenery.

Quite the contrary, in fact...

[T_MacWood]

Jeremy
I'm not sure I have ever mentioned flowers and waterfalls as being a consequence of LArch. The soft flowing grading, the increased use of articial water hazards and a general Picturesque view of what is natural and the ability to creat that view are the results of LArch. You very rarely see the savage or ugly side of nature in modern work.

[Rob_Waldron]

Tom Doak

I agree that there are still outstanding sites for golf courses available. However, when comparing golf course development fifty years ago to present you must agree that the cost of land in concert with costly permit and approval processes can make a good site cost prohibitive.  I am sure you will agree that in general larger sites are required due to environmental restrictions and buffer requirements.

By the way, I really enjoyed the new ACCC!

Tom Paul
Mike C.
Tom Mac

I am very familiar with the history of Tattersall. The local Township would not permit the housing sites along the ridges of the mountains which would be standard practice. Therefore the golf course had to be routed on the mountains with the residential lots in the valleys. They insisted on maintaining the the basic look of the mountains.

My point about Tattersall is that Rees was pushed into a corner. Either he designed a course on top of the mountains or there would be no course at all. This may not be great architecture however it certainly is creative architecture. Given the lack of public access courses in the area Tattersall provides a good alternative.  Personally, I prefer Bobby Weed's Glen Mills in Delaware County.

Tom Doak's point about developer's being different today is very true. In many cases they have limited sites available and they are bound and determined to get something (including $$$) out of them.  Remember their objectives are primarily financially driven.

[Mike_Cirba]

Rob Waldron,

Thanks for your additional thoughts on Tattersall.  I hope I didn't misinterpret you too badly, and appreciate your clarifications.

I prefer Glen Mills, as well, although that property was also anything but ideal.  The back nine seems squeezed between a steep ridge and environmental areas, but I really enjoy the front nine and think Bobby Weed did a nice job.

I agree with your general point that I'd much rather see a golf course built than none at all.  However, I'd also prefer to see many more of the new courses be affordable places that support the growth of the game as opposed to the latest $100 CCFAD proclaiming greatness.  

That's another reason I prefer Glen Mills.  

[TEPaul]

Rob:

Sorry, I thought you said or implied that Tattersal is great architecture. I looked back at your previous post and you didn't say that, only that golfers were enjoying it. Of course that's a good thing, and I couldn't agree with you more that I'm very happy that Rees (Keith Evans) built the course despite the hoops they had to jump through. Again, I would rather see even a really bad golf course than 150 houses in its place.

[BarnyF]

As so many threads on this site do...we are again saddleing modern design with the mistakes of the CCFAD which is now a dead concept that has been killed by our great capitalist society that is the deathknell of most bad ideas.

This thread was supposed to compare the great modern designs with the Classics.  So lets look at the sites and developers in Oregon, Wisconson and Southern Indiana that were created for pure love of the game....Not financial gain...Not for the creation of waterfalls and flower beds...but for the opportunity to provide new venues for those of us who work hard everyday for the chance to walk in the shadows of greatness.  I agree that the combination of a great site, unselfish and generous developer and great architect is rare...but without rarity greatness becomes average...and average is only a goal of the downtrodden and lazy.

With that said would the "Classic Crusaders"
use those overeducated brains of yours and please present an above average argument.

[RJ_Daley]

I'm going to try and take this discussion on a slight detour if you'll bear with me for a few lines.

How about thinking in terms of common qualities as common characteristics of the design process IN THE NEED to MANUFACTURE features (greens pads and surrounds, bunker lips walls and surrounds, and tee boxes).  I'd like to consider the few courses of the golden era that I have experienced by two designers that are predominantly made up of such manufactured features blended across the terrain that existed and think about how the use of heavy machinery techniques of staging and placing feature manufacturing spoils may be different today from the golden era designers.  

For this discussion I would point to three golf courses of the 1920s and 1930 by two archies that I think had very similar design concepts, Raynor and Langford at Country Club of Charleston, Yeaman's Hall (Raynor) and Lawsonia (Langford).  I think a good case can be made that the way that they used the machines of their day in earthmoving large amounts to create features is still greatly different than the manner that spoils are distributed and "blended" into the landscape today.  At CC of C, the spoils are distributed at focused areas of feature shaping at green sites and for mounds backing up flatish bunkers on a very level property.  There isn't much use of spoils and ground distribution to gain much elevation change from tee to green, but the sweeping bunker surrounds mounds are blended and graded to the fairway to promote landing area rolls to specific points in the fairways.  To a greater extent, it seems to me that Yeaman's Hall and more so, Lawsonia are "draped" across more rolling natural sites where elevation changes were already present in the natural setting.  There, the two archies were able to take advantage of natural ridges on diagonals to gain interesting fairway presentations of favored sides to play to in order to gain position through roll outs.  But, also at YH and Lawsonia, like was done at CC of C, the extensive earthmoving to manufacture features was done at localized points throughout the properties for greens pad shaping and sweeping bunker mounding in gull wing and frog eye shapes where the back side of the bunker mounds were graded and swept-blended to fairway positions to promote interesting landing area rollouts.  

All that manufactured feature shaping by the golden age archies is a different feel and look that is very distictive in how the spoils are distributed and placed compared to methods of manufactured feature shaping in the modern era IMHO.  Where the old guys seemed to place the material in more localized positions and used vast amounts for green pads to create high plateaus or butte like structures that were more abrupt and steep walled on 2 or 3 sides, the modern guys seem to blend the green pads much further out and back.  Where a sweeping gull wing carry bunker or diagonal bunker had steep adjacent bakside mounds from the old methods with shorter grades on the backsides positioned to combine with natural ridges and hill sides, the newer method again seems to promote less severity in the elevation of the bunker mounds and longer sweeping grades to blend said features in.  I suspect that the other significant courses by Raynor that I have not seen are similar in that method of big scale earthmoving for feature shaping but also are manufactured in smaller localized areas.  

The modern approach is to gain the spoils material to shape features by digging lakes.  I wonder where Lawsonia or Yeaman's projects obtained the material for their feature shaping which was obviously large quantities.  Perhaps road construction nearby?

I hope this rambling post made sense and wonder if others see the utilization of the large quantity ground moving projects as I perceive them, which has a common theme of manufactured features but in distictly different methods that leads to readily identifiable styles separating the golden era with modern presentations of the golf course?

[TEPaul]

RJ:

That's very interesting and I'm sure you're very much onto something there. I don't really know exactly how to go about interpreting or analyzing something like that although I agree it could be most of the reason for basically a different general look between the old and the new.

Good point about the modern technique of making lakes for fill et al! I remember an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal, of all places, about that very thing using Nicklaus's company as the example. The article's point was dredging for lakes has a number of interconnecting benefits. It generates the fill to construct the course, make for drainage effectiveness, future irrigation needs, but it (the lakes) also immediately makes the landscape look pretty to place future houses around and the instant "prettiness" makes the real estate values instantly increase etc, etc! Oh, and of course the last bit! The lakes are also good for golf and it's strategy, or at least that's what Jack told The Wall Street Journal!

With the old work, GeoffShac made a good point not long ago that many of the old guys may have created some bunkering and such in particular areas just to use the spoils, as you call them, right nearby--like a green.

What you said about the old techniques vs the new made me think of something else along those lines. Some of the courses I've seen under construction in the last few years, like for instance Lookaway G.C. (Rees Jones, Pa) had an enormous mountain of topsoil that had been removed from the entire site of the future holes! It was all in one place on the course--not localized to the holes. It was so big it really took me by surprise. I guess all the topsoil was removed partly for reasons to do with future agronomics but probably more likely for reasons of massive whole hole shaping!

I asked Bill Coore about that kind of thing (removing and replacing all the topsoil) and if it was necessary or not. He said not really! And I was wondering about the old days. They obviously never did anything like that. How could they? They didn't have the kind of equipment to do it that generally and if they didn't or couldn't maybe that's another reason they never did shaping so far out and kept it much more confined and localized.

[Jeff_Brauer]

RJ,

I know you are a Langford fan, and the little of his I have seen (i.e. Wakonda, Omaha) are great.  But even for the old guys, he and the MacDonald protoges were different.  The others talked about blending slopes out, much like Jeremy says. Generally, blending out the toe of the slope is what helps make a constructed fill look natural.  Coming down at a 4 to 1, going suddenly to flat ground always looks unnatural.

I agree that the old guys mostly filled out green and tee pads, plus support for bunkers.  I believe where the slopes were steeper, it was to save fill - a broad slope uses more fill than a steep one - and because large mechanized mowers had not been invented, and didn't have to be accomodated.

The fills did come from on site, I'm sure, not some road bank.  At Wakonda, the cuts came out of hillsides, which are now smothered in trees, and pretty well disguised, but seen by a trained eye.  That is pretty typical of most older courses I have seen. As for fairway grading, at places like White Bear Yacht Club, Beverly and Wakonda, I'm sure there is fairway grading, but it is done at long, long slopes to look natural.  The framing concepts and perimeter mounding is certainly a later invention.

TEPaul,

I think Bill meant that if you don't need to grade the fairway, then you don't need to remove the toposoil.  Unless you happen to be building on an old farm where the topsoil is really deep, or in an area of the country where there isn't a lot of difference between the topsoil and subsoil horizons - like Houston - it is typical to strip topsoil anywhere you grade, and put it back later to promote good turf growth.

I am surprized by one big pile, rather than localized piles, though.  Most contractors are sensitive to haul length, especially for topsoil that has to be moved twice. Many try to place strippings on a completed hole, so they only have to move it once.

On the other hand, most archies specify that the topsoil not impede their view during construction.  It's hard to determine if your design looks as intended if all you see from the tee is topsoil piles!

And sometimes, if in all wooded corridors, their is simply no place to put it within the boundaries under those conditions, and if you are grading a lot, you just put it somewhere else until its time to put it back on.

Jeff

[T_MacWood]

Jeff
Where have the theories regarding blending slopes out to make a constructed fill look natural and the 4 to 1 ratio looking unnatural come from? Is that a personal observation or a general industry standard or some other aesthetic source? The reason I ask is becasuse there seems to be plenty of 4 to 1 ratios found in nature.

[TEPaul]

Jeff:

I think you're right about what Bill meant,  particularly since we were walking around on piece of property that really didn't need to have the fairways graded.

And that pile of topsoil I mentioned at Lookaway--you're probably right about that too. I remember now that some of the holes  were already done so the pile of topsoil was for only about six holes. It sure was big though!

[jglenn]

Tom,

4:1 slopes don't look unatural, by definition.  Neither do any other slope ratios.

What looks unatural is when the ratio of a certain slope is dramatically different than the ratio of all the other slopes around it. (It's a bit of an oversimplification, but I don't want to write a thesis here.   )

If it's different, it doesn't blend in.  If it doesn't blend in, it doesn't look natural.

By and large, that's really all there is to it.

And of course, if there aren't any 4:1 slopes around (or any other ratio), and you want to have 4:1 slopes for features on you golf course, then you have to create enough 4:1 slopes to make them all seem natural.  Hence the "Total Shaping" (c) concept of Modern Architecture.

But, since by and large, golf courses are fairly flatish (or softly sloped), and - unlike Micheal Jackson's face - you don't want to re-shape the whole thing, you'd best create features with soft slopes as well.  (Once again, an oversimplification, but I still don't want to write a thesis, although if I keep typing long enough, I'll be well on my way...)
______

As for landscape architecture, the "soft flowing grading, the increased use of articial water hazards and a general Picturesque view of what is natural" is not a result of L.A.  If it was, then everthing Landscape Architects do would be done along those veins.  As you well know, that is hardly the case at all.

Rather, it is a result of a complete misunderstanding of landscape architecture.  And, more importantly - or more influencially - a result of North America's continuing love-affair with the design style of the English Gardens.

[T_MacWood]

Jeremy
What do you think Stanley Thompson would have made of this 4:1 rule, it seems to me his courses have some of the most abrupt features of all the Golden Agers and are among the most aesthetically pleasing.

The only reason I know anything about the Picturesque movement is due to my brief LArch studies -- it seems to me it was major influence on the entire field form Olmsted, Vaux and on. 'Everything' is a pretty strong statement, I would suggest it was extremely influencial. Which is ironic because your profession was born in England and there is little or no evidence they were effected by English Landscape movement. But they were effected by English garden movement of Gertrude Jekyll/William Robinson. And Jekyll, Robinson and your antecedents were not digging artificial ponds. But I don't think you referring to that movement.

[Philippe Binette]

The difference....
    VARIETY, enough said.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom MacWood,

Slope ratios are based on aesthetics, maintenance, how much earth you can spare (broader slopes require more fill) and more and more, walking and wheelchair accessibility.  For a long time, 3:1 was the maximum slope riding mowers could ride.  Generally, 4:1 provides a little room for error, and doesn't look as "pimply".  5 and 6:1 slopes are broader, suitable even for fairway mowers on most turfs. I think there are some that can mow 2:1 steep slopes, but at a pretty slow production rate.

Many Architects have a typical slope they use in building greens, etc.  Maxwell was usually pretty broad, at about 6:1 on the slopes I have measured. Jones was usually 5:1.  Dye varies. Nicklaus went through a period of 1:1 slopes, etc. I tend to fall into the 3-5:1 area, although am experimenting with wider variation within each course for variety, using natural ground to dictate, i.e. steeper slopes look better on steeper ground (usually - ask RJ about Langford slopes) and gentler ones on gentler ground.

To fit a relatively level object (i.e., bunker, green or tee complex) in a slope, we generally have to about double the existing slope, such as from a 10% cross slope to 20% (which is 5:1, 15% to 30%, about 3:1, etc.)  As Jeremy says, the most natural slopes vary considerably, so the theory of blending is that they usually have a transition area where the two different slopes come together, and these are usually at a slope between the two gradients, i.e. from a 30 to a 10 percent slope has an area of 20 % in between somewhere.

Blending the toe of slopes is more natural than carrying out the intended 4:1 slope until it abruptly hits the flatter slopes the fill was built on.  I wish I could describe it better, but I hope that helps.

Jeff