A mind is a terrible thing to waste...

[Forrest Richardson]

The threads on TPC No. 17 and styles got me to pound out the 1980s popular campaign by the United Negro College Fund: A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Besides born-again minimalist, classic and throw-backs, what has truly broken new ground in our era/age?

Has it been Bandon Dunes? Engh? Muirhead? Troon Golf and the approach to management? Has it been Fazio and a pursuit of defending par and distance? Has it been Shadow Creek? Or maybe the advent of touring pros gone wild with the boys with pencils?

[Mike_Young]

Forrest,
I don't think there has ever been a time in golf architecture where the shaping talent was at the level it is today.....I look at what was considered good shaping 20 years ago and much of it does not touch what is available today....IMHO

[Forrest Richardson]

Is the shaping today mimicking, or is it creating?

[Mike_Young]

Is the shaping today mimicking, or is it creating?

Seems like there is a little of both....but the mimicking is at such a scale that they can "create" a "mimicked " course in areas that would not have been thought possible 25 years ago.  

[Forrest Richardson]

Imagine that approach if taken in 1925. What would we think now, here in 2007?

[Jay Flemma]

Mike Strantz and Forrest Fezler do pretty well.

[Marty Bonnar]

Forrest,
a mind is indeed a terrible thing to waste.
Yours is clearly TERRBILEY wasted...

the proof-reader from Hell,
FBD.

[Ken Moum]

Is the shaping today mimicking, or is it creating?

What was it 80 years ago?

See:

"In discussing the need for simplicity of design, the chief object of every golf course architect worth his salt is to imitate the beauties of nature so closely as to make his work indistinguishable from nature itself."  -- Alister Mackenzie, Golf Architecture

[paul cowley]

Is the shaping today mimicking, or is it creating?

What was it 80 years ago?

See:

"In discussing the need for simplicity of design, the chief object of every golf course architect worth his salt is to imitate the beauties of nature so closely as to make his work indistinguishable from nature itself."  -- Alister Mackenzie, Golf Architecture

Personally I would love to sit down with Alister, with alcohol, and discuss with him his oft quoted quote.

I think we would come away friends........after we got through the clap trap.

[Don_Mahaffey]

Forrest,
I believe the modern "new ground broken" is that it seems most in the golf course development business have lost all ability to restrain themselves in any way.
We can find some justification to irrigate it with the most comprehensive system possible and then tell stories like "we used 2000 heads instead of 500 so we could save water"...or the perimeter of the golf course is so well "naturalized" that no one will ever know that the ground was entirely changed.
It just seems to me that modern design and construction means you have to do something to every square inch of the property in an effort to improve the ground.
Methinks most of this is done to improve someone's bottom line and just about everyone who designs or builds golf courses today could stand to use a little more restraint when building a new golf course.  

[paul cowley]

Good post Don.....I spend a fair amount of time jousting these windmills too....so much that I want to add one to a new course of ours too.....except that that Macdonald guy already did that too.......now I'm not sure at all anymore what too doo.

[Bill_McBride]

Good post Don.....I spend a fair amount of time jousting these windmills too....so much that I want to add one to a new course of ours too.....except that that Macdonald guy already did that too.......now I'm not sure at all anymore what too doo.

MacDonald was pretty cool - he built that neat windmill and then made the guy who suggested it pay for it!

[Mike_Young]

Is the shaping today mimicking, or is it creating?

What was it 80 years ago?

See:

"In discussing the need for simplicity of design, the chief object of every golf course architect worth his salt is to imitate the beauties of nature so closely as to make his work indistinguishable from nature itself."  -- Alister Mackenzie, Golf Architecture

Most of it was just pure crap.....while this site usually just brings up the few courses that were exceptions....but rest assured a lot of the old stuff was done by some farmer that had never seen a set of golf plans and he tired to emulate what the architect wanted after he spent the one or two days on site...and then he waited a good two years for the course to grow.....most of the old greens I have seen were not very natural.....very choppy edges and stuff that would get a guy fired today.....BUT I do agree with Allister.

[Forrest Richardson]

Martin — It was dark, I made a typo. My apologies.

Good posts here. But no one has really gotten to the meat.

[Steve Okula]

Besides born-again minimalist, classic and throw-backs, what has truly broken new ground in our era/age?

I nominate Kyle Philips work at Kingsbarns as groundbreaking, in the sense of imitation links. I don't know that anyone had tried that before, much less pulled it off so brilliantly.

[TEPaul]

Forrest Richardson said:

“Besides born-again minimalist, classic and throw-backs, what has truly broken new ground in our era/age?”

Don Mahaffey said:

“Forrest,
I believe the modern "new ground broken" is that it seems most in the golf course development business have lost all ability to restrain themselves in any way.”

Forrest and Don:

Consider again this quote of landscape architect Humphrey Repton in 1797:

"If it should appear that, instead of displaying new doctrines or furnishing novel ideas, this volume serves rather by a new method to elucidate old established principles, and to confirm long received opinions, I can only plead in my excuse that true taste, in every art, consists more in adapting tried expedients to peculiar circumstances than in that inordinate thirst after novelty, the characteristic of uncultivated minds, which from the facility of inventing wild theories, without experience, are apt to suppose that taste is displayed by novelty, genius by innovation, and that every change must necessarlly tend to improvement."

What do you make of that as a principle or guideline to follow in golf course architecture?

Personally, I particularly like this part;

“I can only plead in my excuse that true taste, in every art, consists more in adapting tried expedients to peculiar circumstances…….”

[Forrest Richardson]

Tom P. — Does the quote, "I can only plead in my excuse that true taste, in every art, consists more in adapting tried expedients to peculiar circumstances..." mean that classic design re-born in the 21st Century is a stellar contribution?

There have been a few posts to suggest this is so. Kingsbarns, for example.

I am not disagreeing, necessarily. I do think that the use of looks and styles of yesteryear can be exciting. My initial question asks what else is at play in today's world of golf design?

[paul cowley]

Ruins, Forrest, ruins .....the future of play in golf design is in ruins.

and forts....and walls.

History piercing itself out of the ground to proclaim "Notice me, I am real, I am your Past, I am your Future...beware my Gaze!".

[TEPaul]

"Tom P. — Does the quote, "I can only plead in my excuse that true taste, in every art, consists more in adapting tried expedients to peculiar circumstances..." mean that classic design re-born in the 21st Century is a stellar contribution?"

Forrest, yes, I think that's what the quote means. Or maybe it just means something like some classic strategic concept or classic strategic shot value workup reborn in a modern look---in modern clothes, so to speak.

Sometimes I call these kinds of things "conceptual copies" because what's copied is just the strategic concept or the conceptual shot value workup or pieces of it even though the hole may not look like the hole from whence the concept or shot values came.

I will give you a good example of how I think this kind of thing could work well.

If you had a pretty plain flatland landform why not put a par 3 on it that has a green that plays like NGLA's Road Hole green if golfers played to it from about 175 yards over to the right of the green? In my opinion, that would be a potentially awesome par 3 that would actually present some real strategies depending on where the pin was on it.

Some my say that kind of thing was an architect not using his imagination. I disagree completely. I think that kind of thing shows an architect using a lot of imagination and basically doing exactly what Repton said---eg "adapting tried expedients to peculiar circumstances."

[Forrest Richardson]

OK, I will yield to agree with you — and not necessarily because I am being forced. I think you make a good point, and the quote from 100+ years ago is appropriate.

So...what else? Is that it? Is this the ONLY contribution being made by the golf design minds of today? Is that enough — this one category / example?

[TEPaul]

"So...what else? Is that it? Is this the ONLY contribution being made by the golf design minds of today? Is that enough — this one category / example?"

Forrest:

Consider what Paul Cowley is saying. He's used various military elements in some of his designs. Who's done that as comprehensively or well? (It's just amazing to me the State and Federal conservation entities actually allowed Paul to use all that old military ruin stuff in his designs.  

And you should see some of his (Love Co's) recreated rice field holes. Who's ever done that? But those are old historical elements applied in some peculiar circumstances. The real question is do those old elements work well in the purpose they now serve---eg good strategies, good golf?

You should take a look to see exactly why they certainly seem to.

[Forrest Richardson]

OK, Cowley is using found features. I am not sure that qualifies as a contribution much different than old walls, hedges or any other feature already upon a site — but I do applaud it.

In the larger picture of golf architecture, what are the designers of today doing that will be considered a pure definition of our era? Anything else?

So far I see a return to classic design and values, and your newly posted return to using features that are already on sites.

Can we agree that Pete Dye is also a driving force, but that his style seems often too bold and unique for any decent architect to copy? I think that may be it, that to follow Pete would be seen as lame — egos will not allow it I suspect.

So...who else? What else?

[TEPaul]

"In the larger picture of golf architecture, what are the designers of today doing that will be considered a pure definition of our era? Anything else?"

Forrest:

OK, you pick a few architects from what you call "our era" that you think have done some really notable things architecturally, that have gotten the most positive noteriety. Then let's discuss what it is that sets them apart, and perhaps will make them and what they did define this era in the future. Let's even discuss where they came up with those things, those tried expedients or even novelties that've set them apart in this era of ours, that've given them the noteriety or made them the popular ones that will define our era in the future.

But that even begs a question---eg are all really great artists, many of whom have created some of the most notable art of all, and will in the future even trying to do it just to be popular, or are they doing it for other reasons too?  

[Bill_McBride]

Ruins, Forrest, ruins .....the future of play in golf design is in ruins.

and forts....and walls.

History piercing itself out of the ground to proclaim "Notice me, I am real, I am your Past, I am your Future...beware my Gaze!".

     "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
      Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
      Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
      The lone and level sands stretch far away."

-- from the club history of the Ozymandias Links Club.

Everything old is new again.

How about if what is new is this -- affordable golf design leading to affordable construction, leading to lower green fees and more accessibility to golf for the many?

Is this a new trend?  Which architects are presently working in this field?  What courses other than Rustic Canyon, the Hideway, what others are affordable new construction?  I suspect we are in for an  extended period of belt-tightening and that may be the new imperative.

Just speculatin'.

[Forrest Richardson]

Maybe that is a hang-up — even THE hang-up.

While golf architecture is "art", it is also science, psychology and — in essence — the design of a situation.

I think the comparison to "art" in golf design only scratches at the surface. Quite honestly, there is no comparison in terms of profession or undertaking. That is what makes it so bloody unique.

So, I will re-ask my question here for Tom P. and others...maybe more directly...

Are the minds in golf design today wasted on re-birthing looks and styles and approaches of the past? Are the minds of today forceful enough to dare to try new things? Are the minds of today contributing something other than to define an era known as "...the era when courses began to look like courses people had seen in books...it was good, but it was no Golden Age for certain..."?