A mind is a terrible thing to waste...

[Forrest Richardson]

At the formation of the ASGCA several publications interviewed the founders. Some of the comments centered around the use of heavy equipment and means to create courses where none could ahve been created before. I recall posting an excerpt here from some golf journal of the time (1946). I will try and locate this...

But again — is "Mega Landform" the tool? I think so. Does it require art? No, because we see it abused and done just for the sake of getting from A to B, or even "because we can."

[paul cowley]

.......not in my book Richardson......more on this later...I have some ritualistic things to attend to.

[Bill_Yates]

Forrest,
My point was not that technology alone was the breakthrough and would make architecture a better art form, my point was that technology enabled today's designers to use far less than perfect sites on which to create their art.  

And I don't think the typewriter analogy quite fits this situation.  The creative genius of great poetry could be penned or typed on any kind of paper.  But the creative genius of a golf course architect could not have been exercised in a desert or a swamp without a huge amount of labor and cost or today's technology.  

Paul and Tom are making my point.  And that is the technology of this era is allowing today's great designers to make the "unnatural" look "natural."  

Thank God the Fownes did not have access to today's technology.  I don't believe there is one fairway at Oakmont that was built with a cut and fill approach.  And as a result, in those days without technology, the "natural look" of Oakmont and others was in fact natural.  

The fact that Tom can use his creative genius to take a moderately good piece of land and make it into a spectacular natural Pacific Dunes or Pete Dye could take a swamp and create the Harbour Town course, or Forrest Richardson can take the sand dunes of Mexico and create natural links holes, as well as a dramatic green complex for hole #11, is a testament to today's designers using today's tools to create something spectacular out of nothing.  

I agree with Paul, I believe that this capabiliy is the breakthrough of our era.

[Tom_Doak]

A "moderately good piece of land"?

Boy, I hope I get to work on a really good one someday!

[Kalen Braley]

I 2nd that one Tom,

I was just thinking the same thing on that.  If thats only moderately good, I would love to see a nice/great/excellent piece of property to build a course...

[Bill_Yates]

Tom,
The location for Pacific Dunes was absolutely spectacular.  There is no question about that.  And, there is also no question that you took that specacular site and built beautifully natural looking course that because of the location and the shaping, resides at the top of the rankings - a Doak 10.

My point, and I may well be wrong, was that your vision for the final product required that you use today's technology and move a great deal of material to create a natural looking course on that fantastic site.  

I'm not challenging you, I just want to understand what was there when you arrived and if today's technology enabled you to achieve your vision.  Had this been 1920 and at that same location, could you have built this Pacific Dunes Course in an equivalent time and cost framework?

[paul cowley]

At the formation of the ASGCA several publications interviewed the founders. Some of the comments centered around the use of heavy equipment and means to create courses where none could ahve been created before. I recall posting an excerpt here from some golf journal of the time (1946). I will try and locate this...

But again — is "Mega Landform" the tool? I think so. Does it require art? No, because we see it abused and done just for the sake of getting from A to B, or even "because we can."

Forrest....I guess I'll have to try explain myself......loathsome task.

The mega landform that I'm descibing is a total creation...and as artistic as the talent creating it.

It can be the ultimate in creating a routing, especially when a site has little to offer......and these are not just being built on land where in the old days one could not build a course..... actually the opposite is true.
Why did Tom Fazio choose to make Shadow Creek an ode to the North Carolina mountains in the Nevada desert?....I don't think it was just a way to get from point A to B, or just because he could, as part of a fascination with moving big dirt.

I would suggest the course was designed to get the most out of a bland environment by creating a totally new landform with enough interest where he could route a course and provide a foil for the golf holes and features associated with them.

I think the concept is bigger than you are willing to give credit for.

If I didn't have to board a plane shortly, I would be happy to provide the thought process that occurred as part of the creation of the three courses and their mega landforms we have built of late.....

[Forrest Richardson]

When Cowley resorts to perfoming "ritualistic things" we can all take cover — or comfort.

I have no disagreement with the idea that "mega landforms" are a defining part of this modern era. It ties nicely to many things — both good and not-so-good.

Sean asks whether golf needs some new and innovative approaches to holes — why can't we all just re-hash the same old designs, but on new sites and by new people? (Those are my words, but his question.)

Look at the defining work of Pete Dye...did he go beyond old ideas by taking them and putting a modern, "Dye" charm to them? Did he manufacture his own ideas? Are the sum of parts of many of his courses well into a league of their own? Who else has done this with regularity? Is this — combined with the "mega landform" — better or worse than just the singular?

For example, is it OK that a modern designer gets away with just taking a less-than-OK site and through modern means makes it quite nice, natural and beautiful — in-other-words, a really great job, but with holes we have all seen before in other locations? Or, is it a certain home run when the modern designer also injects a newness to the holes and design — components or features or options that may be the next Redan, Alps or Road?

Maybe we should focus on holes — not courses. What are the individual hole contributions of modern designers — to golf design? Is it enough to create a punchbown green that has elements of other "famous" holes? Is that enough?

[Kirk Gill]

I had the dubious opportunity this last weekend to play two courses that were routed through the valley areas of housing developments. The holes all went single-file between the houses, above left and above right. By necessity there were creekbeds meandering next to virtually every hole. Some holes were creatively shoe-horned into bits of property where a lot of imagination must have been required to see any kind of hole at all. Not that the resulting holes were all that noteworthy.

Is this a modern invention? I am not well-traveled enough to know, but did any of the old dead guys have to build courses in little valleys between houses, maximizing golf course frontage property? Are there examples of great or near-great courses that follow this paradigm?

[Forrest Richardson]

Sean — I did disclose that those were my words...you are right, your's were much kinder.

As for injecting any/all new ideas on any one site...no, I'm not suggesting that would be a good idea. Maybe fun, but likely not a good idea.

As for "something new under the sun"...that is really a cop out. There are loads of design trends and styles that can be classified as new. While they may draw from old values and classic approaches, they are "new" when brought to light in modern times and with a new flair.

[Tom_Doak]

Forrest:

You've got my support in that last paragraph.  There are people who insist there is nothing new to be done, and they're a downer to listen to.  

Sean:

When did the statute of limitations on something new run out?  With C.B. Macdonald, or was he just re-hashing features of the links?  I guess it's all God's work in the end, but can't anyone get any credit for bringing it to light?

[paul cowley]

Tom said..."Forrest:

You've got my support in that last paragraph.  There are people who insist there is nothing new to be done, and they're a downer to listen to.".....Amen.

When it gets to the point when much of my design isn't at least new to me [forget the rest of the world]...then I'm out of here...on to the next...I think its only healthy to re invent ones self every 15 years or so. I can feel my self morphing of late.

But back to Toms comment.....new is built on new is built on new....and its very hard to conveniently figure out where new starts and stops. Because it doesn't.

Some pre Neanderthal puts a branch between two trees to frame an opening...Babylonians create it out of stone ...the Greeks embellish and decorate....Romans add the arch and the vault...which becomes a segmented arch...and then a Gothic one.... then on to Greek Revival....and Victorian decoration...and back to post and beam and Mission...and on to Modern......and that's just in our little Euro centric vision.

I really is just kind of a Back to the Future Brave New World....going on 24.7.365 ad infinitum.....etc, etc.

And golfs not exempt from this.

In fact to celebrate that, tommorrow I plan to lay out the first semi tropical version of what I like to describe as the Doak Colorado Tee Complex......but in the newer Cabo Style .

[Peter Pallotta]

This continues to be a great thread, with so many excellent posts. I've wanted to jump in several times, but for some reason I find the subject very hard to get a handle on, and I can't seem to find a "way in" to the discussion. (And now I've gotten "in" with this cheap and tawdry aside.) The fact that I've found myself agreeing with several posters with very different POVs is probably indicative of my confusion.

Besides thanking Forrest for starting and sticking to the thread, I can only offer this: one of the reasons I find the discussion intriguing is that it seems to me to parallel exactly discussions going on in several (and totally) different fields that I'm familiar with.  And what those fields and gca have in common is that they all had great and towering founders (and early practitioners) who established powerfully enduring principles that the passage of time has not negated. The challenge for current practitioners is to honour but not be overwhelmed by the ghosts of the past; that's a really tough challenge, especially for anyone who takes their work and its principles seriously.  

I think Paul C just said something that is very sane and astute, and absolutely relevant: "when it gets to the point when much of my design isn't at least new to me [forget the rest of the world], then I'm out of here, on to the next".

Paul also had an earlier post urging a little peace of mind, given that only the perspective of time could help answer this question. I think he's right; but what gca also has in common with the other fields I know is that this truth hasn't stopped (and has never stopped) the desire and the need for this kind of constant questioning and self reflection.

Oh, and at the risk of becoming a charter member of the Paul Cowley fan club, I have to compliment him for the most fantastically strange post of all, in which he suggests that the future of golf is in ruins, and forts and walls, and then writes:
 
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!".  

That "beware my Gaze" is a stroke of genius. I'm glad I hadn't had anything sronger than coffee when I first read it.

Peter

[Forrest Richardson]

I am glad the thread is popular, at least among a few of us. Here, for the record, is the original post (question) —

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?

I am very interested in seeing what may qualify — what is truly new or may have broken new ground. We have listed several things, of which they fall all over the map. That is OK...but is there a category that should be on our minds? Is there something that we might focus on in the next 20+ years?

[Adam Clayman]

The berm Tom built in Lubbock was pretty cutting edge stuff. At least to me.

Would this be an area worthy of Forrest's criteria?

I still feel that each site should be inherently different that with sound principles and thoughtful design, each and every course should yield something new.


It doesn't preclude new artistic roads, but they sure can be a gamble, and with someone elses money (and alot of it) you'd better be right.

[Tom_Doak]

Adam:

I don't think the berm in Lubbock is new at all -- it's the same mega landform I saw Pete Dye use 26 years ago (and which we also used at The Legends, by the way).  The only thing new about it is that we refused to call it a "Scottish-style dune" and instead made it flat-topped with eroded-looking banks, so that it would look more natural for West Texas.

[Ken Moum]

Is there something that we might focus on in the next 20+ years?

Sure, how about making golf courses that look like they grew out of the land.

IMHO, that's the thing that the best old dead guys and the best old alive guys, and the best not-so-old guys have done--regardless of whether they had had the perfect land to start with or had to build it from scratch.

The recent thread on views surrounding a golf course was enlightening to me, because I really haven't ever been much into the surrounding scenery (But then I never played Cypress Point or Pebble)

What I think is the biggest advancement of today's architecture is that it learned to not make the mistakes of the kind of courses I grew up playing.

They were built post-war--mostly on dead flat land--and all of the human constructions look phony. Now we have courses being built on similarly featureless land, but whose landforms seem totally natural.

Only by comparing them to surrounding terrain can you get an inkling of what's been done. And even then, you can't be completely sure that the golf course was flat to begin with.

I have played too much golf on courses where the green complexes look sort of like this:

_____//////\\\\\\_____

Today, and in the foreseeable future, architects are going to make courses like the Castle Course, where the landforms look exactly like something that could be natural, even if it's not.

And then, they can express their artistry of in routing a fun-to-play course in and among the landscape, real or not.

Us humans all find pleasure in certain kinds of natural landforms, and disharmony in the rigid, unnatural ones. Golf is better when the course looks like it's always been there to discover.

Ken

[Forrest Richardson]

kmoum — I've never met anyone named "kmoum", a first!

What makes a golf course that is artificial in construction so good when in reality it is a fake? Why is it OK — even great — to see a golf landscape that looks as if "it grew out of the land" when that is a lie/falsehood?

Personally, I detest fake leather (plastic that looks like leather), Formica laminate that tries to approximate real bamboo, or veneer stone that looks — from a distance — as real stone. I also don't like fake plants in building lobbies, even though many are so realistic you can hardly tell the difference.

Why is this OK on golf courses?

[Kalen Braley]

kmoum — I've never met anyone named "kmoum", a first!

What makes a golf course that is artificial in construction so good when in reality it is a fake? Why is it OK — even great — to see a golf landscape that looks as if "it grew out of the land" when that is a lie/falsehood?

Personally, I detest fake leather (plastic that looks like leather), Formica laminate that tries to approximate real bamboo, or veneer stone that looks — from a distance — as real stone. I also don't like fake plants in building lobbies, even though many are so realistic you can hardly tell the difference.

Why is this OK on golf courses?

Forrest,

I understand where I think you are going with this one, and I have given it thought over the years as well.  We all know that when we play golf, that something artificial has taken place.  The grass has been mowed, the bunkers have been added and raked, the grass has been watered, etc., etc.

The approach I take though is when I look at a golf course, and it looks like they just planted some grass and started maintaining it, and did nothing else...then thats pretty impressive to me.  Almost as if they course was always there, and it just needed maintainence.  

That is the difference to me than seeing a course with man made ponds with concrete bottoms and fountains.  Just this last weekend I played a course here locally that was laid out really well and the greens were fantastic.  But they literally littered the place with 20-30 little ponds and didn't even try to make them fit it.  They stuck out like a sore thumb.  Without these, the place would have looked awesome..

[Forrest Richardson]

You are describing the other extreme. I am not advocating either one...just asking the question.

You bring up a good point — golf courses ARE conditioned nature, even in the instances that "the course was just found, as if nature intended it to be..."

[Peter Pallotta]

Forrest
you asked what "should" be on our minds for the future. Honestly, I wish developers and architects thought more and more about reclaiming and revitalizing degraded land sites, e.g. landfills and industrial dumps etc. I wish developers and architects thought more about the nature-golf course relationship, i.e. about how the field of play is also green and natural space that's of value independent of its "use". I wish developers, architects, superintendents, community planners and scientists all worked together more closely to take 200 acres of utter wasteland and a) bring life back to all of it, a newly clean and healthy environment of grass and trees and water and birds, b) set aside only 100 acres of it for the golf course, a 6400 yard walking-only course, c) leave the extra 100 acres of now beautiful landscape just as is, and open to the public, and call it a gift and a thank you from golfers and golf-lovers to the community at large, and d) use this one course as a model to be repeated elsewhere, and as a model of how golf lovers and the golf industry can -- willingly, imaginatively, and with care -- truly give back more than they take, from the game and from the world.

It's being done already, I know. Developers would have to lead the charge, I know.  What architect would want to spend days and weeks on a piece of landfill or industrial waste instead of on a coastline or prairie or forest or plain; I know. The whole vision is a bit impractical and idealistic, I know.  But, since you asked....

Peter

[Bill_Yates]

Forrest,
Say what?

By your response to kmoum, every golf course you have built and will build using construction equipment is a "fake."  But I must say they are good fakes.

I don't think anyone here is talking about fake rocks, fake leather, fake sand or fake trees ala Disney.  You can't possibly say that your course in Mexico is natural, but still you were able to make many of the holes look like they belong without using fake material.  

My earlier point was and still is; the architectural breakthrough of this age is that now we have the technology to "condition nature," including some pretty awful terrain, to render a "natural course."

[Forrest Richardson]

Peter — Sounds like you are describing some desert courses — 200 acres of land, about 60 acres of improved turf!

Bill — As always, good points. But, is it essential that golf courses "look" natural? Why is this a good idea when it is obvious (usually) that they are anything but natural?

[Bill_Yates]

Forrest,
Most of our passion for the game lies in the course and it's challenges.  And I would guess that we are always in the quest to experience the origins of the game.  

By that I mean no matter how advanced the age, I believe that we will always find the original links courses and the traditional golden-age courses to be the ones to play and to replicate.  Why? Because they fit the land so comfortably, they fit our eye, and they fit our notion of what golf was and should be, a challenge with our inner self and a challenge with "nature."

 

[Kalen Braley]

Forrest,

Once again, really good question here as it relates to how essential is it that courses look natural.  I suspect with the crowd here, you have a pretty good idea of what they will think.

However this becomes really interesting as you expand this question out to the golfing public at large.  I've met many people who are more than happy just to get out on thier local muni, despite how mediocre it is.  I've met far less who really dig the architecture and appreciate the work put into it whether for good or bad.

That being said, almost everyone's eyes in the preceding group will light up when talking about the possibilities of playing a pebble beach or some other really well known course.  Is it because of the natural beauty?  Perhaps. Is it because they are marketed better and very well known?  In my mind this is probably the biggest reason and Torrey Pines is the poster child for this.

So the crux of this issue is, that just like a car commercial, if golfers can be persuaded to have preferences for certain types of courses, then I think they will fall in line like sheep, as most people really are just sheep. What the golfing masses will end up liking is not only what they are fed, but also what they think they are being fed without knowing what that they are missing.

So if you're local muni does some great advertising about being a championship course, having a state of the art doubler decker lighted range, and a magnificent clubhouse, then I think the vast majority of them will like what they are being fed, even though we may think they don't know any better.

I don't know if its a curse or a blessing that most of are alot more discriminating in what we will partake of.  Is it better to be in masses and live in ignorant bliss, or in my case to seek out and learn of the best of the best, knowing that in my case I'll likely never be able to feast on most of them?

All I can say is for me personally, I like what I like, and I've always been that way with GCA.  Finding this site has been great to expanding my horizons and learning more, but in the end thats just my take!!  My friends still don't get it...