To move or not to move?....

[Paul Payne]

I was sitting in a local Starbucks watching a major development going in across the street and it got me thinking;

Do you think any of the architects of the golden age would have given in to the urge to move mountains of earth if they had the equipment to do so?

I very much appreciate what has become the minimalist movement of today, I really do prefer those types of courses, but it raises an interesting question, and that is, did the designers of 100 years ago lay out their courses the way they did because that is all their technology allowed? If the same designer had the equipment of today available to him, would he have chosen to route things differently?

Worse yet, would they have given in to the trademark of victorian excess? (Were they really all Arts & Crafters?)

This may have been asked before and if so I apologioze, but I am sure I am not as knoweledgeable about GCA as many on this site and I am curious about what your opinions might be?

[Craig_Rokke]

As a tangential question, are architect's fees typically tied to the overall cost of the project (including earthmoving)? Or are they typically a set rate?

Additionally, at what point does shaping and earthmoving
transition to architect and his crew from larger site contractors? When the greensites and bunkers are ready to go in--or do general site contractors sometimes do them as well?

[Tom_Doak]

Macdonald would move a lot of earth.  Ross would not think of it.  MacKenzie would be doing things beyond our wildest imagination and making them look natural.

Craig:  Fees are indirectly tied to the overall cost of the project, in that it's hard to command a big fee for a low-budget course, and you'd be stupid to charge a low fee for a big-budget course.  But it's very indirect; most architects have a set fee based on their approach.

Very few architects do the shaping work within their own staff -- at times, the Joneses and Tom Fazio have done this, Pete Dye, Bill Coore and myself, but that's about all.  The rest rely on golf course contractors to provide the shapers for the greens and bunkers.

[Ian Andrew]

There is no doubt in my mind that Stanley thompson would have moved earth. If you think about his career, he moved lots of dirt and changed lots of landscapes.

He was very bold in his shapes, his ideas and his architecture. He certainly was not afraid to think in a grand scale.

Here is small but facinating exmple. The bunkers on the left are respectively 12 and 16 feet deep. The mounds behind the bunkers were both built up, the first was capped with an additional four foot fill and the second is capped with an additional six foot fill. How many architects would have done this.



It's the scale thing, only a few great ones can work in a large scale. Those architects could of moved earth comfortably, and likely did on occasion, but well enough that most people can't tell.

[Bill_McBride]

Not only would MacDonald have moved a lot of earth, he and Raynor DID!  Think about the elevated sides of #7 Redan and #13 Eden at Chicago Golf Club, each must be at least 15' of fill in the air!

Almost every one of those template holes required quite a bit of moving of the dirt, right?

It always fascinates me how the aficianados of classical GCA love the old guys for their minimalist approach, and some of the new guys for minimal earthmoving, but worship MacDonald who moved as much dirt as Tom Fazio!

Me too.....there aren't many courses as much fun as Chicago, Mid-Ocean, Yale and the Creek, the four I've been to.

[Paul Payne]

This is interesting because I had always been under the impression that one of the trademarks of the old designs was the minimal amount of earth moving they had done.

Now I begin to understand two things. 1) They may have excavated more than I had thought, and 2) They may have liked to do more had they had the proper equipment.

This brings two questions to mind.

First is simple, do you think we would have liked their courses as well had they been able to move earth to their hearts content?

Second is more conplicated to me. I have seen local club courses that seem to be just plowed into the property with no real regard to the terrain at all. I have always felt that aesthetically these kinds of courses were not good. However, it would seem that this fact alone would not impact the courses quality rating if the layout of each hole and the flow from one hole to another were superior.

Am I off on this?

Now that I think about it Straits and Irish may both fit in this catagory. Are there people out there who dislike those two courses just because of how unnatural they are?  

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