Beauty, Lines of Charm and Our Assessment of a Golf Course

[Adam_F_Collins]

The idea of aesthetics, art principles and beauty are a recurring topic here and there's no wonder. Golf courses are great pleasure gardens, shaped by the hand of man and are therefore subject to his value systems (what to leave in; what to wipe away or to change).

I had a conversation with Tom Paul and he was speaking about an idea regarding routing, or moving through a space of land and that there really wasn't any 'right' way to do that. This related to the idea of 'framing' and 'guiding' a golfer through the landscape.

Some believe that there should be little in the way of indications on the 'right' way to hit the ball. Others find a lack of 'shot definition' to be disconcerting and therefore less attractive or less beautiful. Then there are those who find definition to be 'unnatural' and therefore see it as ugly.

This type of discussion is generally ended in deadlock or in a Big World resting place of agreement-to-disagree. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so who can say?

But I think that in some sense, there are more universal areas of common ground here than we tend to mention.

If we look at the landscape from a most basic and primitive or instinctual perspective, I believe that we begin to see "lines of charm" as more than just the most desirable route to the hole, but also as the way we'd naturally like to take a walk...

In the most basic sense, we hit the golf ball and it becomes a forerunner in our physical movement through the space of a landscape. We hit it, watch where it goes, and know that we have to follow it. If it goes into the brush, we have to go there. If it goes up a hill, we have to trudge after it. If it goes downhill into the middle of open ground, so we go too.

Without the game of golf, we'd most certainly move through the space differently - without going into the brush. We'd probably avoid the steep hill unless our goal was to get up there to see from its height.

In a natural landscape without a golf course, we would avoid steep climbs, we would avoid the marshes, we would avoid thick brush. We would be attracted to open spaces and high vantage points. It is within our very nature to do so. As animals, we do not like it when we can't see. We don't like our movements hindered. Therefore, we don't find looking into the slope of a steep hill to be beautiful. We don't feel comfortable when we can't see where we're going. We like to find ourselves in open ground with a look at the land in front of us. We like gentle downhill walks. We like to look at marshes, but we don't like to get into them...

A golf course creates a path through a landscape, and the game of golf give us a little ball to send ahead of us. We give it our best swing, watch where it goes and we are happy or unhappy about where we see it is taking us.

I think there are grounds for an assessment of beauty here, and for the assessment of the quality of a golf course routing.

Thoughts?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Adam,
There's a running (or should I say walking?) joke around the campus at Hotchkiss about the location of paved walkways leading from place to place vs. the path that the students take. They are usually entirely different routes.

[Mark_Guiniven]

Adam are you taking anthropology classes at the moment or something?

I like your theory.

'ken Tarzan wouldn't want to go into some of the places I hit my ball!

[Adam_F_Collins]

Adam,
There's a running (or should I say walking?) joke around the campus at Hotchkiss about the location of paved walkways leading from place to place vs. the path that the students take. They are usually entirely different routes.

I think they call those "Desire Lines" in architecture...

[Adam_F_Collins]

Adam are you taking anthropology classes at the moment or something?

No, I'm not - but I find your question strangely complimentary so... thanks. The fact is that I feel that getting down to some of these basic human tendencies can result in better design. It also gives us some common ground in areas which are generally left to individual opinion - which adds up to nowhere.

[Adam_F_Collins]

I guess what it boils down to is this:

There ARE naturally existing "shot" definitions on a piece of earth. They lie on nearly the same paths as we would naturally take if we were walking the property without a golf ball to chase.

The architect has the task of fitting a golf course to these as best he or she can - and to minimize those areas in which we are forced to walk in places which we would naturally prefer not to. (ie: steep uphill, blind, tight, etc)

[RJ_Daley]

AFC, Jeremy Glenn also discussed this concept at length several years ago here on GCA.com.  His thoughts centered on Stanley Thompson's routing of Banff, Cape Breton Highlands and so many others...where Thompson would seem to take you on a journey of discovery that seemed to logically fit the natural instincts one would have to explore that local environment.

I agree with your thoughts that evaluation of a course should take in to account the method that the archie used to present the property in the most appealing manner to one's sense of place and directional orientation.  The idea of a "walk in the park" becomes an even more focused study of the nature of a property as it relates to a person's natural sense or curiosity to explore that locale of land.

[TEPaul]

Adam Foster Collins said:

"I guess what it boils down to is this:
There ARE naturally existing "shot" definitions on a piece of earth. They lie on nearly the same paths as we would naturally take if we were walking the property without a golf ball to chase.
The architect has the task of fitting a golf course to these as best he or she can - and to minimize those areas in which we are forced to walk in places which we would naturally prefer not to. (ie: steep uphill, blind, tight, etc)"

Adam:

Very thoughtful thread indeed.

I believe what I said to you in that conversation we had was that perhaps the best natural architecture in some ways or many ways might mimic the feeling one gets if one stood on a wonderful piece of land at point A and imagined the best (perhaps shortest route) to pont B given various problems that may arise along that route.

This kind of golf course would probably in many ways mimic golf before golf architects became involved in the game or sport. Courses like that---the original Old Course---preceded man-made architecture to a very large extent and so consequently could be considered almost a totally natural golf course (what Max Behr referred to as "Wild" golf).

The point is those kinds of early pre-man-made of pre-architectural golf courses were essentially golf courses where the idea of "natural paths of least resistance" reigned. In other words, one just decided for himself what the paths of least or greastest resistance were (to the successful maneuvering of the golf ball) on totally natural landforms.

The ultimate point I think I was trying to make to you in that conversation was that this kind of thing established various strategies that appeared to the golfer to be his very own and not those layed out for him in some way and certainly not in some obvious way by another man (architect). This kind of total interrelation with Nature (entirely natural landforms unaltered by Man) was Behr's baseline of how to preserve the necessary relationship of "Nature" to golf and golf architecture. He did understand that in many cases Man (the architect) would alter Nature but the idea was that if he did he should do it in such a way that the golfer would not necessarily notice that he had done so.

[TEPaul]

Adam:

Last night after reading your thread and before posting, I had a very startlingly revelation.

Since the ultimate idea I was trying to get across in that conversation we had was that the "ideal" in this way would be for the golfer to feel (hopefully almost completely) that the strategies and directions he was taking and deciding to take with his golf ball as he played golf were strategies and directions of his very own mind and making and not those actually constructed by an architect for him to follow. Only in this way could a golfer feel that his round of golf was one of almost complete SELF-discovery.

It was Behr's philosophy that this type of feeling on the part of a golfer was the best of all feelings in golf, and perhaps the one to be striven for by an architect, because in a real sense it was the golfer's journey through and his contest with Nature itself. If it wasn't exactly man against unaltered Nature it was for the golf architect to make the golfer feel as if it was.

My startling revelation was this;

In 1999 I played for a week every day at first light this wonderful little golf course in Ireland that essentially ran back and forth along the side of a lowish mountain bordered by a river. It was called Mallow golf course.

For some reason I consider that week of golf the most exhilerating and satisfying experience I've ever had in golf. It was extremely dry that summer in Ireland and so the ball skittered forever along the ground. Up until now I thought that perhaps that week long experience with Mallow G.C was so exhilerating and satisfying because I'd never before played a golf course that was so fast---eg where the ball with the ground was so highlighted.

But I think this thread of yours has made me realize it was not just that and perhaps not really that at all that was so exhilerating and satisfying.

Due to your thread I think what was so exhilerating and exciting was during that entire week I played alone. I never talked to anyone about the course, I never asked anything about it or how to play it or not play it and noone was there to tell me anything about it.

So as the week went on (and with the extreme speed of the course) I tried this and that every day. One thing one day that looked like it should work but perhaps didn't for some reason I was not previously aware of, and then another thing the next day that worked much better for a reason I could see and understand after the fact but was not previously aware of.

What I mean to say is that entire week every day at first light on that golf course was my own self-discovery with the golf course itself---nothing else. There was never anyone there with me to tell me if what I was doing was right or wrong strategically, and still today I don't know if the things I did, the choices I made and the options I used with the ball et al were right or wrong. I just know they were my very own--my very own strategies and my own journey, my own self-discoveries, not the architect's or anyone else's.

For perhaps the only time in my life it was just me and a funny little semi-quirky, super fast golf course. I think it was all so exhilerating and satisfying to me because perhaps that's the way it is supposed to be, the way it was meant to be in the proper equation of the golfer and Nature.

I just know I'd never done anything like that before and unfortunately haven't since.

Thanks for the thread.

[Brent Hutto]

For some reason I consider that week of golf the most exhilerating and satisfying experience I've ever had in golf. It was extremely dry that summer in Ireland and so the ball skittered forever along the ground. Up until now I thought that perhaps that week long experience with Mallow G.C was so exhilerating and satisfying because I'd never before played a golf course that was so fast---eg where the ball with the ground was so highlighted.

But I think this thread of yours has made me realize it was not just that and perhaps not really that at all that was so exhilerating and satisfying.

Due to your thread I think what was so exhilerating and exciting was during that entire week I played alone. I never talked to anyone about the course, I never asked anything about it or how to play it and noone was there to tell me anything about it.

Tom,

I'd like to offer an alternate perspective on the experience you described. By playing the course alone each day without translating it into a verbal discussion before or after you perhaps spent a week outside your usual judging frame of reference. I don't mean that you in particular are a judgemental person but that those of us interested in golf course architecture quite rightly ask ourselves to "judge" each feature or quirk that we encounter when playing a course in terms of being successful/failure, desirable/undesirable, strategic/penal, easy/hard.

For the vast majority of people, this judging process is not the experience that a golf course is designed to elicit. It is the experience itself rather than our intellectual (some would say overly intellectual) response to the experience that makes a golf course worth building and maintaining. I don't think our minds can switch instantly back and forth between intellectual judgement and instinctual appreciation. Maybe in your case it took a whole week to fully revert to the more instinctive mode.

The problem that my architecture obsession has caused for me is that it reinforces my own tendency to over-examine and ultimately over-criticize everything I encounter. The extra time spent in golf-course-judging mode results in additional difficulty not self-analyzing and self-criticizing my golf game and as a result I don't play as well as I did a year or so ago before discovering GCA as its own pursuit.

[JESII]

An intriguing thread, Adam. Well done.

I had a conversation with Tom Paul and he was speaking about an idea regarding routing, or moving through a space of land and that there really wasn't any 'right' way to do that. This related to the idea of 'framing' and 'guiding' a golfer through the landscape.

If we look at the landscape from a most basic and primitive or instinctual perspective, I believe that we begin to see "lines of charm" as more than just the most desirable route to the hole, but also as the way we'd naturally like to take a walk...

In the most basic sense, we hit the golf ball and it becomes a forerunner in our physical movement through the space of a landscape. We hit it, watch where it goes, and know that we have to follow it. If it goes into the brush, we have to go there. If it goes up a hill, we have to trudge after it. If it goes downhill into the middle of open ground, so we go too.

Without the game of golf, we'd most certainly move through the space differently - without going into the brush. We'd probably avoid the steep hill unless our goal was to get up there to see from its height.

In a natural landscape without a golf course, we would avoid steep climbs, we would avoid the marshes, we would avoid thick brush. We would be attracted to open spaces and high vantage points. It is within our very nature to do so. As animals, we do not like it when we can't see. We don't like our movements hindered. Therefore, we don't find looking into the slope of a steep hill to be beautiful. We don't feel comfortable when we can't see where we're going. We like to find ourselves in open ground with a look at the land in front of us. We like gentle downhill walks. We like to look at marshes, but we don't like to get into them...

A golf course creates a path through a landscape, and the game of golf give us a little ball to send ahead of us. We give it our best swing, watch where it goes and we are happy or unhappy about where we see it is taking us.

I think there are grounds for an assessment of beauty here, and for the assessment of the quality of a golf course routing.

Thoughts?

To preface my thoughts I must admit to not really understand how to judge the quality of a routing. I know I dislike long walks from green to tee, I know I like modest amounts of activity in the ground as opposed to flat land or severe slopes, but if you asked me to analuze a course already on the ground and make recommendations on its routing, I would not know where to begin. With that said...

I agree that a courses routing should be considered, after all that is what ties the whole course together in many ways. You can have the best, most consistently excellent set of greens in the game, but when the player is left confused about the evolution of the course from 1 through 18 a significant ingredient has been omitted. How does that happen? I have no idea. How can we think afterwards, "oh, this routing would have been much better"? How can we presume that the holes would be of equal quality if we were to use different pieces of the property to find them?

I personally disagree with the notion that the well routed course follows the route I would take if I went to that piece of ground (before development, obviously) and simply went for a walk. Some of the best holes in the world fit in no way to a normal walk path.

Thinking about this post got me thinking about the use of obstacles in the development of a hole and course. Probably from Adam's paragraph beginning "in a natural landscape" that I italicized in the quoted portion above. By 'obstacles' I mean creeks and ponds and unuseable (for golf) land forms like quarries or cliffs or dunes. Where, in the layout of a hole, should these features be presented? I feel they should be along the sides of the hole (or series of holes) as opposed to in the middle. In other words, should the golfer be forced to play across these types of features, or should they have the option to avoid or challenge them depending on the benefits of such. What would you do if you were taking a walk?

The first thing that comes to mind is #9 at Royal County Down. I would never walk over that hill if I were out for a liesurely stroll, but at the same time hitting that tee shot with the mountain in the background is about as cool as it gets if you ask me. This is frequently considered a great hole (with no argument from me) but could there have been a better use of the massive landform?[/color]

I would love to hear conversation about any course a large number of you are familiar with in regards to what holes are actually laid out in a manner consistent with the "walking tour" philosophy. I think in doing that we'll hear disagreement about the actual merits of the courses routing as well as individual hole recommendations.

[BCrosby]

TEP -

Wonderful post.

Behr is an interesting guy for a number of reasons, but chief among them is that he saw golf as the beginning point for other sorts human exploration and growth. Golf was the doorway to other dimensions. What Behr says about those extra dimensions is sometimes very, very hard to follow, but there is no doubt that his project was a noble one.

(It is a meme that Updike picked up, though I doubt Updike knows who Max Behr was. Updike is the only living writer that has tried to enter that space, I think. It's a messy place and it takes guts to wade into it. At least in public.)

I remember as a boy, late on summer afternoons when the Athens CC was empty and the trees were still not very tall, playing across fairways or playing holes backwards, generally making up stuff. My only rule was that I couldn't duplicate a shot from the regular course. After a while I developed an imaginary alternate course, subject to constant revisions as I played. A couple of times I bumped into groups that I didn't realize were still on the course and I had to come up with tortured explanations for what I was doing hitting the ball where I was hitting it.

At any rate, those late afternoons alone, finding my own version of Athens CC, are among my fondest golf memories. I haven't had the free time to do it since, but I would love to get back to that imaginary course someday. I think Behr would approve.

Bob  
 

[ForkaB]

Great post, Bob

We all have our own private Sheep Ranches, and they are out there on our own courses, if we just take the time to find them.

[Ed_Baker]

Congratulations to all, a first class thread, shades of early GCA.com

How much Behr has contributed to the game and it's architectural theory, he and Darwin have my vote for golf literatures most evocative authors.

Well done, Adam.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

I never cease to be amazed at the skill of architects of old who found good routings for their courses without all the aids of today, especially on wooded or unusually hilly country.  They couldn't go up in a helicopter or aeroplane (although Abercrombie is said to have gone up in a balloon to find a routing for Coombe Hill).  Yet they invariably found a rhythm to their routings which pleases even today, where such courses have survived.  

However, they were not necessarily beautiful.  Some of the photographs of these courses in their early days show them to be very bleak, their bunkers great gashes in the earth, many greens obviously created by heaving up the earth in an otherwise flat landscape.  I have just looked again at some of the photos in Hutchinson's British Golf Links and they were not universally attractive, Dornoch being a case in point.  Yet today it is heavenly.

[Forrest Richardson]

A routing is a hunt.

The best routings are treks which seem as if they were unfolding naturally — or at least, with surprise. Any decent hunt is made up of one surprise after another.

Framing, aesthetics, beauty, etc., are counterparts to the game. One cannot forget the game, just as one cannot forget the object of a hunt is to catch and devour as much as it is to be away from the village — and with company — out in the beautiful environs.

[Tony_Muldoon]

This is a great thread that takes my mind all over the place, anthropology to hunting, to the landscape.

Forest I no longer see a round as a series of hunts but rather series of quests to be the one who can lay their ball to rest.

I've been thinking a lot about links courses while reading this tread and the 'surprise' of the blind shot. In these terms it seems to be a basic necessity... to strike out and see what lies beyond.  What the flying ball represents here is awesome as we send it flying into the unknown.   I'm sure we each have our own favourite blind holes where we are tempted to fly over the edge of the ‘flat earth’ we can see.  I think they are more fun to play the second or third time, because although it’s a different challenge we have an idea of what we hope to see as we follow the ball. Will we be safe when we get there?

Links courses suggest to us out and back but with interesting diversions on the way. Often these are not obvious to one who would just walk and play for fun.  My preference is for ones that move across the dunes rather than following the safe path between them where the choice of next direction is not obvious and the beauty of nature is revealed to us in surprising ways.

[Patrick_Mucci]

AFC,

How would you view your premise or query in the context of TOC ?

[Adam_F_Collins]

Gentlemen,

I've been busy at school right up until this evening, and I am happy to discover your insightful replies. I come back to this forum, even in the busiest times - and you are the reason.

Tom Paul, I'm glad this thread struck a chord with you. Our brief conversation left me wishing I were in a place in life which allowed me to visit you and play a proper round - someday.

JES II - Excellent points.

You make me rethink what I've said and I must add:

I guess it's not just following the ball that we do in golf - that is too simplistic and you make me realize that. The ball also provides us with a chance for "vicarious adventure" in that it is an extension of ourselves, AND IT CAN FLY!!! I know it sounds childish in a way - but it's true.

When we encounter a marsh or a deep gorge that our earthbound bodies would naturally avoid in a walk, the ball provides us with the chance to live out a fantasy. WE might not be able to fly over it to the safety of the open ground beyond, but the ball can - if we strike it just right...

If we succeed, we watch with a rush of joy as the ball sails across; if we fail, we watch in horror as the ball perishes - then we diecide whether to follow and search or to sacrifice the ball and put a new one in play.

This idea of the ball as an extension of ourselves is an important one, I think. It's where a lot of the fun comes from...

Patrick,

I have not played TOC. I would ask that someone who has should take a stab at applying these ideas to the game there. Your question is a good one.

[Marc Haring]

Adam

Great thread and it seems to be striking a chord with many.

It immediately reminded me of a personal experience I had. For about a year I was a member of a crazy little nine hole course in South Devon called Wrangaton. It was located right at the base of a 1700ft hill on the edge of Dartmoor and was entirely open, no bunkers and grazed short by free roaming ponies, sheep and highland cattle. There was also a stretch of flatish open moor that you could practice on that was littered with all sorts of natural obstacles; rock outcrops, clumps of bracken, slopes and marshy areas but all interlaced with little areas of almost perfect fine turf.

You can imagine he fun I had there right up until dark whenever I could get away. Deciding on what little piece of turf to try and reach and then deciding on how I would achieve it. It must have been so similar to that original St Andrews golf and it makes you wonder if that pre mower form of golf was not actually more exciting than the shrink wrapped, sterilized version we have all come to accept.  

[Adam_F_Collins]

AFC,

How would you view your premise or query in the context of TOC ?

After thinking more about this, Patrick, I guess that it would be like taking a walk in flattish, open ground by the sea. You can choose to walk in many directions. Your path is less dictated by large trees, or steep hills, but more by scattered hollows and bunkers and a desire to avoid the thick gorse...

A walk through dunes is a different feeling than walking through rolling meadows, or forested hills or mountain terrain.  I imagine the feeling of St. Andrews is a deep-breathing, fresh-aired, open feeling of options - just like the seaside here is... (only laden with all of that golf history on top of it to make every shot even more exciting)

[JESII]

Adam,

Your post #18 was a great reply to me as it answered very well my question about use of different obstacles on the ground. I think it ties in well with Tony Muldoon's post 2 prior. Blind shots are exhilirating to play, and especially on subsequent opportunities because you then know (or at least think you know) what you is required yet the uncertainty makes it exciting to hit the shot and seek the result. Challenging a forced carry over a creek or quarry gives many of the same feelings of uncertainty and relief or despair at the result with the difference being the fact that you can see what is there in one instance and you know if you do not pull off the shot you are dead, and in the other you do not know what is there so you all you can do is try. I guess this explains why blind hazards are so unattractive to so many people. It could also explain the lack of popularity of "reverse doglegs" (the kind the bend in one direction while the ground slopes the other).

How do we tie this in to the routing of the course?

Is it possible to overkill the forced carry proposition? How many blind shots are tolerable?

I like the "vicarious adventure" statement, but how do we balance that with, what I see as, the intellectual challenge of playing golf. Not high-level intellect, but I want to find the best way to utilize my abilities to get around a course and that's a mental exam. Does that portion (the strategic element) evolve during the "designing up" of a hole/course.

[Tony_Muldoon]

I have one problem here.  If offered the chance of a walk near the seaside (without a ball and club) I would always opt take off my shoes and walk the waters edge, there and back.  At some point I would literally immerse myself in the experience.

Looked at like that Golf can only offer the next most interesting route.  I have often wondered why courses like Hunstanton, Princes, Deal and Seacroft make such little effort to give you a good view of the sea.

[TEPaul]

Adam:

I've been away for a few days, but honestly, I don't remember a thread in the entire history of GOLFCLUBATLAS.com (what is it now about six years?) that has made me really think as much as this one.

Good show, Pal.

[paul cowley]

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