New School of Minimalist Design!

[Coral_Ridge]

In the August 2005 Esquire, Tom Doak is mentioned along with his highly touted New Zealand golf course Cape Kidnappers.  It states as follows;

    "Most of the best new golf courses in the world are the result of a new school of minimalist design that began with Sand Hills in remotest Nebraska.  Tom Doak is at the forefront of this minimalist philosophy.  His Pacific Dunes, in Oregon, was ranked one of the top fifty courses in the U.S. the day it opened.  Minimalism is helped along by great pieces of land, and, in our ever-shrinking world, great land can be hard to come by.  Doak's most recent courses redefine the word remote: Getting to Cape Kidnappers requires an eighteen hour flight to Auckland, followed by a puddle jumper and a car ride.  It's not the destination by the journey, right?  In this case, the destination is extraordinary: views of the Pacific from every hole, a 450-foot drop from edge of fairway to ocean, an endless string of peaks, ridges, and gullies untouched by bulldozers.  And when you're done, the rest of New Zealand is yours."

Would someone offer a good and simple GCA definition of Minimalism here?  And is minimalism the most popular form of golf architecture today as the piece above suggests?  Can it be accomplished with a poor site?  If it can, I wonder what are good examples.

Cape Kidnappers Golf Course

[paul cowley]

Jon....for some minimalism is defined as the least worked existing site that combines to create the best golf....with the St Andrews and Sandhills courses probably premiere in this category as it is usually easier to identify the best examples...all the others  in between is where the definition breaks down [as this site has proven on many occasions].

On some courses major amounts of earth have been moved,  but, by being placed in a natural looking way, they are beginning to be considered 'minimalist' by some.

but not for me...I'm of the old school...."less is more".

....more or less  

[cary lichtenstein]

This has been much discussed before. If someone can bring up the old minialism thread, all of your questions will be answered.

[paul cowley]

Jon...don't mind Cary...I for one am willing to glean thru the record with you.

Looking at the recent photos of Cape Kidnappers, I was wondering where it would fit on the minimalist scale? The scenic scale is definately heroic.

maybe Tom can tell....

[Tom_Doak]

Paul:

That cover photo on LINKS (partly cut off above) shows three holes at Cape Kidnappers:  the par-5 15th (running up the page on the left), and the par-5 16th and par-4 17th coming back the other way.

Fifteen and seventeen are about as minimalist as you get.  On 15 we didn't change grade anywhere by more than a foot, except for digging out a bit in front of the little bunker left of the green.  On 17 we did dig out some bunkers, but that's all.

Sixteen, on the other hand, took a lot of work.  The client liked the view from the back tee so much that they suggested everyone (even the ladies) play from there, and to make it playable for them we had to smash down the end of that ridge and fill in the valley in front of the tee to give shorter hitters somewhere to land.  We also lowered the second landing area and filled in the valley on the golfer's left of the fairway to make a two-tiered landing area ... with the original grade the left tier would have been 25 feet lower and V-shaped!

There were about five holes at Kidnappers where we did big work like that; on the rest we did virtually nothing.

[Coral_Ridge]

When, and if Geoff Shackelford writes a follow on book to "The Golden Age of Golf Design", will he have a chapter dedicated to The Minimalist School of Design.  I did search the GCA by using the word minimalist and came up with a lot of different posts.  I get the impression that opinions certainly vary on what it really is.  I suppose the definitions of the Philadelphia School and Ross School vary as well, so we shouldn't be surprised.

I did find it interesting that Coore & Crenshaw in the above Esquire piece were given the nod of designing the first golf course, Sand Hills, in effect beginning the origins of the Minimalist School of Design.


The Golden Age of Golf Design

[Marty Bonnar]

Do we think that Cape Kidnappers could be described as being a Penal Course?

Look at those fairways - only a minor hook or slice and you're in deep kakapopo (and no, that's not the local grass species).
I'm struggling to see how it might fit into a Strategic concept, but I guess it could well be Heroic!!!

Come on Tom, just how hard is it?

FBD.

[Chris_Clouser]

The "New" School of Minimalist Design!  

I have a theory about most of these "minimalist designers."

Look at where they grew up or played a lot of their golf.

Tom Doak - Crystal Downs
Mike DeVries - Crystal Downs
Bill Coore - Old Town
Ben Crenshaw - Austin CC
Tripp Davis - U of Oklahoma

I'll even throw in Tripp Davis since I seem to really like his work at Cherokee Hills that seemed really to be minimal except for the tree clearing.

What do all of these guys have in common?  Playing on courses constructed by Perry Maxwell and his crew.  Maxwell was a very minimalist designer, who could move the dirt if needed, but hated to do so.  

Maybe instead of Minimalist School, we should call it the Maxwell School of Design.  But he probably wouldn't want it that way due to his humble nature.

[paul cowley]

Tom...what's creating the harder edged look in the photo?... is that the look you want or is it a rainfall or maintenance or seasonal grassing issue?

[cary lichtenstein]

Jon:

Mimialism to some means moving almost no dirt at all, to others it is moving the appropraite amount of dirt to make the course as good as possible but trying to keep it looking like little or no dirt was moved.

I like the 2nd definition better.

Minimialism, IMHO works best on a great site with outstanding topography and doesn't work on flat boring sites at all. Sand Hills was not the birth of minimialism, perhaps credit for that should go to St. Andrews and the sheep

[Craig_Rokke]

[

    "Most of the best new golf courses in the world are the result of a new school of minimalist design that began with Sand Hills in remotest Nebraska. "

With a site like that, who would have actually wanted
to do anything but "minimalism."? Sometimes I think "minimalism" is a style or philosophy, other times, I
think it's reaching a place in a career where really good sites
come your way, and have enough built-in character that little earth-moving is needed.

[Tom_Doak]

I always give credit to Sand Hills as the start of new minimalism, even though High Pointe and Kapalua Plantation are both older.  Sand Hills is just the "killer app" that brought the idea to public consciousness.

Paul:  The "hard edge" is a combination of a wet grow-in season, and some banks that are too steep to mow with machines.  Luckily, when last I saw the course, they'd had some dry weather.  The fairways were much browner (as firm and fast as any course I've played -- ask anyone who was there), and they finally had time to start addressing some of the "edge issues" and start cutting back the thick stuff where possible.  It looks much better from the ground now, although maybe not as striking on a magazine cover.