Architect or Topography

[Mark_Rowlinson]

My wife and I travelled by TGV from Paris to La Rochelle the other day.  It was probably the most boring train journey of my life (and that even includes Chicago to Sarnia [Ontario]).  I could not but help reflect on what a Colt or Mackenzie, Doak or Coore/Crenshaw might be called on to produce, were they to have been given a patch of such land and a budget which would be difficult to refuse.  

Does their best work on unpromissing land show greater skill than what they do on a fecund site?
Is their genius to reveal the full potential of a fecund site and to refuse the contract for a dull site?

Let's extend this to another terrain.  That part of France through which we passed was flat pastureland and cereal crops. I am about to spend a few days in Israel.  I have never been there before.  I have little idea of what to expect.

If you were a golf architect and you were approached by a potential client in Israel, what would your reaction be?  There are a few courses in the Middle East.  Would you feel able to give of your best in such an environment, and what would you be able to contribute to the further establishment of golf in such an environment.

Don't worry, I'm there on musical grounds and won't be able to read your responses until after I return, so say what you will.

[Jeff_Mingay]

"The test of a good golf architect is the power of converting bad inland material into a good course, and not the power of fashioning excellent seaside material into a mediocre one." - Alister Mackenzie

I've always like this quote.

[Andy_Lipschultz]

If you were a golf architect and you were approached by a potential client in Israel, what would your reaction be?  

Will it be private and if so, will Jews be allowed in?

[Mark_Rowlinson]

I'm afraid there is no completely blank page for an architect. Of course, political, ethnic, religious and moral issues are a matter of great significance.  However, this is not a political. ethnic, religious or moral question.  I am asking a question about how an architect evaluates a potential enquiry, how they subsequently marry their architecural aspirations with the situation in which they find themselves, and at what point they say no - I can build a golf course here, but I couldn't put my name to it.  Israel is chosen only as difficult climate, and a place with which I am shortly to be acquainted for the first time.

[Neal_Meagher]

To follow-up somewhat on Jeff Mingay's thoughts, there do seem to be some on this discussion group who believe that most architects can easily take on or pass on a project merely due to the specific characteristics of the site in question.

The reality is that the real skill inherent in designing a golf course is deployable onto many different types of sites.  Yes, it is always wonderful to have the option of taking on a project based on site conditions, or to decline it.  Yet I would say that for the overwhelming majority of those practioners who yearn to make an actual living designing golf courses that nearly any site presents both opportunities and constraints to bringing forth its best qualities.

So, would a Colt and Allison or any modern day designer not desire to attempt to bring out the absolute best in those featureless fields Mr. Rowlinson refers to?  I don't think so.  In fact, having worked on bean fields myself, I can say that those are the exact kinds of golf courses that make one think, stretch and lose sleep at night thinking up what to do to infuse interest and excitement.

Any well-rounded designer, upon their deathbed, would want to say that he had had a hand in both; there are certainly magical qualities to a site that absolutely bespeaks the game of golf and is only wanting to have some seed spread out followed a few weeks later by a mower or two.  It is the challenge of meeting what the ground in front of you presents that makes the business of designing golf courses so profound, confounding and ultimately................single malt inducing.

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