[Mike_Young]

Again.....I appreciate and study the dead guys but don't drool all over them...so...I don't pretend to know all the little things like where they went to the bathroom on each course etc,  ....BUT...to me one of the most obvious differences between dead guy stuff and today's stuff is fairway shaping.....seems to me like most golf design consisted of greens ,tees and fairway bunkers until around 1982.....did any of the dead guys shape fairways???

[Tom_Doak]

Mike:  Rarely, and that's one of the many defintions of minimalism.

In fact, they didn't even "finish" fairways to the same extent we do today; most older courses (at least the ones on well-draining soils) are full of little wrinkles and pockets and eccentricities that just weren't smoothed out.  Crystal Downs and Belvedere have them from 1 to 18.  Today, it's very hard to stop a contractor from smoothing those wrinkles out, and of course a lot of golfers want them smoothed out so the cart ride won't be so bumpy.  

[Mike_Young]

Tom,
Thats what I thought.....

[Jeff_Mingay]

Most pieces of ground drain naturally (otherwise, it's a wetland). Yet, so often we find modern golf courses built that require catch basin drains in the fairways.

Doesn't this seem illogical?  

[A_Clay_Man]

Is it also the case that the "dead guys" specifically picked a specfic fairway corridor, due to the natural rolls or eccentricites of the topo? Much more than today, I also assume.

The courses/holes that came to mind while reading this post was first on kettlle morraine in Northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, and then, on the Roosevelt nine in Griffith Park. Weird huh? but, something about that place just oozes a microcosim of greatness. I have to see Lakeside next time i'm there.

[Tom_Doak]

I will have to revise my earlier statement a bit.  I've seen lots of old courses that have little pieces of a fairway where it is clear that they filled in a wetland or some other feature, and I've seen others (such as Onwentsia) where there are MAJOR drains running through the course, so it appears they must have shaped the fairways a bit to corral those low areas.

Mike is generally right about the timing, though.  I remember looking at the plans for Kemper Lakes (built in the mid 1970's) and being surprised that there was no shaping at all on the fairways.  They brought in fill to build the bunkers and greens and shaped that, and they were done.

[Mike_Young]

Adam,
I agree and I also think most routed with sheet drainage across the fairways...yet today so many route for containment and into the topo instead of parallel to.... bt much is due to housing corridors etc...

[Ian Andrew]

Most pieces of ground drain naturally (otherwise, it's a wetland). Yet, so often we find modern golf courses built that require catch basin drains in the fairways.

Doesn't this seem illogical?  

Jeff,

Most peices drain naturally, but not fast enough for healthy turfgrass or to avoid compaction under saturated conditions. We drain them because people want to play them right away. They also like firm and fast, and the only way to approach that is drainage. Are you suggesting we shouldn't drain greens ?

I agree with you on basins, but I don't on the rest.

[Jeff_Mingay]

Ian,

What's "the rest"?

All I'm saying is, most 200-300 acre properties drain naturally (in regard to fairway areas, not greens in most cases, of course).

There's a natural drainage pattern in place. Ideally, golf courses should be designed around those natural drainage patterns, as opposed to disrupting them  and necessitating the installation of too many catch basin drains in the fairways.  

We didn't "shape" any of the fairways at Blackhawk, except the 1st and 14th. But a few modifications were made, here and there, to direct surface water off fairways. Granted, there are a few catch basins in the fairways at Blackhawk, but we tried to direct surface water to "out of play areas" rather than simply direct it to a catch basin in the fairway.

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