Mimimalist Engineering Marvels

[paul cowley]

...Love Golf Design, with an assist from Forrest Fezlers construction company, is currently building a new course, 'Ricefields', outside Savannah,Ga.
  One of the key land forms will be the 100,000 yds of dirt moved to build dikes that will create  60 acres of flooded ricefields [only the readers here will know that these ricefields are faux].... which will then be used to drape four of the golf holes over.
 These holes will definately reflect a mimimalist appearence on quite a large scale....especially since we intend to only move enough dirt to create the natural effect of ricefields long out of production, and enough new dry land for the golf holes.

...I feel this is minimalist engineering on a fairly large scale...does anyone know of similar minimalist efforts?

[RJ_Daley]

...especially since we intend to only move enough dirt to create the natural effect of ricefields long out of production, and enough new dry land for the golf holes.

I'd be asking Brett Mogg for advice on this one.

I gotta ask though, and I mean no disrespect, what is the goal in the design theme?  I've never been to the orient, and don't know anything more than the stereotypical scenes of rice paddies that one sees in photos and film.  Is that a desirable landscape in an aesthetic sense?  Are flat paddocks bordered by dikes compatible with a golfscape?  Is the target market aging Viet Nam Vets?  I'm  sorry, I guess I just can't visualize it.

[Brent Hutto]

There are areas all along the coast of South Carolina that were once rice fields. Many of them still have the impoundments and sluices. It turns out an abandoned rice plantation makes absolutely top-notch habitat for certain kinds of birds. The ACE Basin Wildlife Preserve between Charleston and Beaufort is a place you can go hiking around that sort of landscape and it is beautiful. Other sites include hunting plantations where the rice fields are kept to provide habitat for game fowl.

It may not be everyone's cup of tea but if you like lowcountry scenery, rice plantations are an integral part and have been for a couple hundred years. I think a golf course that borders on or includes some rice fields is pretty cool.

[Sean_A]

This may sound strange to y'all, but the Japanese Kanji symbol for America means literally "big rice country".  

Ciao

Sean

[moth]

And in Chinese AMERICA is "beautiful country" (mei guo).

Rice fields are beautiful and look great bordering a golf course. Couse they don't always look so good, when being ripped up for the new crop for instance. But when golden yellow they make a great contrast. They look even better if you can get a few buffalo out there as well.

The issue wil be the need to constantly maintain the feilds, pretty easy in a country with millions of rice farmers but maybe a little more difficult in the states?

[TEPaul]

I've got to say that the idea of a course like "Ricefields" with what Paul Cowley reports they'll do there seems really neat to me.

I don't know South Carolina, Georgia etc along the coast all that well except to drive through it about 100 times and to go down to Charleston to look for property and to spend about a day in St. Simon's Island Ga but I got to say there is a style down there along the coast---eg Charleston, Savannah, the old low-country coastal islands that exudes a style and taste that's pretty damned unique in America.

The entire culture down there seems to be one of a real easy interconnection with the entire history of that area. It seems like the people down there are so much more at-one with their land, the birds, beasts, fish, flora and fauna and the history of it all than most of the rest of us in this country. It's impressive to see in those people, and all around them along that coastal area of those states shows it, in my opinion.

And Charleston itself and the tentacles of its plantation history environs that extent out from it---Oh My God, you want to talk some real easy style and great taste--in both historic buildings, historic land use and all that goes with it---that place has it in spades.

Paul Cowley may even be one of those Civil or Revolutionary war reinactors---he's got real taste and style too. If Paul Cowley and the Love Co actually built faux ruins, faux ricefields or faux anything else from that area's history down there my bet is there're ain't no one who could tell it wasn't the real deal.

They may even be forming some kind of golf architecture niche in that way. And that's a very good thing, I think, because it highlights and also honors the fascinating history, and the remarkable early American culture of that beautiful place stretching down the Southeastern coast for a few states.

Even though Paul Cowley may come from something like New York state he seems to me like one of those southern boys who just have that easy interconnected way with their land and all there is and was about it.

Sometimes I really do wonder how in the hell we up here in this great teeming metropolis of the Northeast ever won THE WAR against those Southerners. It just had to have taken about 10 of us on that land to capture or kill one of those southern boys.  

[paul cowley]

...Tom, after 27 years of southern living, I'm still refered to at times as a damn yankee, which I then explain that I don't mind that at all, at least I'm not a dumb yankee, as evidenced by my having known when to move away from up yonder .
 Everything you and Brent have described about the lowcountry is true and I'm quite passionate about preserving the beauty and history of this area [I wish I was as eloquent as others but aw shucks].......I am currently spearheading and have created a conservation community and preserve of 4500 acres to protect 10 miles of black water riversystem and the high and low riverswamp and upland associated with it....my goal is to add another 10,000 acres in the next seven years, while starting a foundation to promote the use of and provide for the education of others about this unique environment.
....but back to golf.
  A lot of times a designer  has to create for what mother nature has left out when it comes to landforms or even just suitable terrain, on which to build a golf course.
 How one goes about this is the challenge as far as good or bad golf design is concerned......at times, to make up for what the site wasn't suppling in its natural state and to create another dimensional 'tie-in', I have employed the use of manmade historical landforms and hardscape structures.....AND this same use provides not only a strategic framework for the golf, but, for some, an element of fun, quirk and maybe a little education about the manmade and natural history of their surroundings...[of course being a hardheaded yankee helps to defend oneself from the slings and arrows of those with smaller minds and other body parts concerning these creations ].

...and Sean, the name might just explain some of their imperialist yearnings from the git go....we sure be lookin like a mighty fine field from o'er yonder  

[Tom_Doak]

Paul:

The opposite extreme is that course PB Dye built down near Savannah where they dredged and filled nine holes across an old rice paddy ... I worked there 21 years ago when they were building the nine holes in the trees, but the more complicated nine didn't happen until years later.  I don't even know the name of it now.

On the other hand, I thought that some of Pete Dye's lowcountry designs in the 1980's were very much a feat of minimalist engineering.  At the TPC at Sawgrass, he dug a moat around the whole golf course and pumped the water table down, so he could save the trees and not place fill on every fairway.  At Old Marsh and Kiawah, he came up with a very complicated drainage system, again so the fairways could stay close to natural grade.

[paul cowley]

Tom ....I did not know that about Pete Dyes work on those courses....very interesting, [hell, he himself might just be the biggest marvel].