[Jeff_Brauer]

On the template thread, I mentioned that no one design idea or theme does everything well, and yet many gca's over time have had periods or careers where they could be ID'd by a dominant design idea.

Those that come to mind are RTJ and pinching bunkers at prescribed distances, Maxwell Rolls, Nicklaus greens angled across the line of play, CC bunker style and perhaps Norman chipping areas.  

While some are stylistic - ie the CC bunkers,  things like repeating the pinched RTJ bunkers affect play.  I can see why RTJ did it - after the success of Oakland Hills, he kept going with what worked and made it his signature.  But, did that hold back his individual courses or design progression too much?

Some questions - what are some other dominant design ideas of gca's that we recognize if we know the gca?  

Are they a help or hindrance to really good gc architecture?

Lastly, why have so many even good gca's at times become something close to a one trick pony?

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

I don't know the answers to your other questions, but I know two answers to the last one:

a)  Architects get too busy once they are successful, and fall back on the things which got them there; and

b)  Clients hire them because they like certain aspects of the architect's previous work, and then ask them to repeat those things.

I can tell you that Pete Dye did not set out to build an island green at PGA West ... he originally designed a peninsula green, but the client insisted on an island just like at Sawgrass, and Pete obliged.  (Landmark was his biggest client.)  All of the subsequent island greens were built by Perry or P.B., as Pete did not want to repeat it.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

I guess I knew that.  I am thinking this thread could be similar to the templates thread - is it a good idea to have a dominant theme (even if original) such as tight tee shots, tough greens, etc. vs more variety on either one course or over the course of a career?

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

I don't know the answer to that one.  

I guess my courses would be stereotyped as having wild greens, even though not every one of them does ... though apparently even my tame ones are wild to some people.  Mostly it's because I believe that green contours are about the only way to defend against the strong player without beating up the average golfer.  I could easily build a course with narrow fairways and flat greens, but why bother?  You could hire Tom Weiskopf or Gary Player to do that.

I do feel strongly that I want to keep building courses that feel new and different to me, but some beliefs are fundamental to an architect's understanding of golf, don't you think?

[Cliff Hamm]

If I look at a painting and immediately recognize it as a Van Gogh is that good?  If I hear a piece of music and say that's Mozart is that good?  If I go to a golf course and say that's a ******,  is that a compliment or a detriment?  My initial thought is it would be nice to be able to design with tremendous variety, so the architect could not be guessed, and the course still recognized as great or at least very good.  In reality I suspect that no artist can be that creative and diverse.  That certainly seems to be the case in other fields.

[Mike_Young]

Jeff,
I think the biggest dominant theme that will not change no matter how much some groups or architects try to push it is the number of holes...18....is what it will always be....12 will not catch on....a few 9's here and there but we will always come back to 18.....
Mike

[Jim Nugent]

Mostly it's because I believe that green contours are about the only way to defend against the strong player without beating up the average golfer.

Tom, is that because you can build some pin positions that don't beat up the average guy, while other pins can challenge the strong player?  

[mike_beene]

Let's remember we live in a world with much more travel and information access.Fifty years ago the odds of someone playing multiple courses by the same architect were slim.What were the odds someone would play Royal Melbourne ,Pasatiempo,and Augusta when travel was slower.I bet our three day trips to Europe would be beyond comprehension to MacKenzie,Ross,etc.

[Norbert P]

 Eddie Hackett had such a recognizable minimalist style that one could easily see but it generally was attributed to low (and I mean granny gear low) funding for his courses (or his lack of travel abroad) and that he didn't really have continuous crews from one course to another.  He was more of a course layouter than a designer.  His style was to make land golfable and to let the golfers' play dictate changes to the courses. I think his decades in the biz must have taught him the perspective that the land would outlast him.

[Phil McDade]

Jeff:

Two that come to mind (I may be wrong on the first one, but not the second) are Tillie's bunkers and Langford/Moreau's used of dramatically pushed up greens, with steep falloffs.

I've always had the impresssion that Tillinghast's greenside bunkers (to use Winged Foot as an example) were very deep and had large lips that were higher than the green. Thus, a player who found himself in one would be taking a stance below the green surface, and then have to shoot over the top of the bunker lip that was above the surface. Maybe that's an over-generalization, and the Tillie experts here can weigh in. But he seemed to depend on those kinds of bunkers to examine what he regarded as something of the essence of golf, which (paraphrasing here) was an iron shot to a tightly guarded green.

As for L/M greens, pushed-up greens are a dime a dozen -- they are pretty common place on most munis, if for drainage reasons alone. But L/M elevated it to an arm form; it's really their signature, moreso I think than their innovative bunker designs. With some help from GCA poster Dan Moore, we recently may have uncovered a heretofore unknown L/M design based solely on several pushed-up greens at the course.

[Tom_Doak]

Jim N:

When I speak of defending against the better player on the greens, I'm just talking about building a green where if he gets above the hole, he has to think about trying to two-putt instead of playing for the birdie ... so the better players will aim a few feet away from the hole to give themselves an uphill putt.

Average golfers never think that way.  They're happy just to get on the green, they're happy to two-putt most of the time, and they are okay with three putts on occasion.

I realize that I do beat up some players who are not good putters ... every time I see someone pull out one of those long putters I just bite my lip because I know it's going to be a long day for them.  But I've always believed that good putting is within the realm of possibility for any player, young or old, short or tall, man or woman; whereas 280-yard carries to 22-yard fairways are not for everyone.

[Norbert P]

... every time I see someone pull out one of those long putters I just bite my lip because I know it's going to be a long day for them.  

   Whenever I see someone carrying one of those long putters I pray for lightning.  

  I've never used one, and think their goofy-looking, but why should they have a harder time on your greens than traditional putters?
( BTW ... why, WHY, did the USGA disallow Crenshaw's putter while these brontoputters are allowed?).  

[Tom_Doak]

Slag:

The long putter is a pretty healthy tip-off that the gentleman* in question is a poor putter if he had to resort to that thing.  There are exceptions to this rule, but not many.

* I was going to change this but then I realized I've never seen a woman play golf with one.  Has anybody?

[cary lichtenstein]

One of the design themes I don't care for is when the architect makes every tee shot look almost identical for all 14 driving holes.

I remember a course in Jackson Hole, Wyoming I played last year and I kept commenting, "all these holes look the same"

I dislike "sameness" thru out the course. Sometimes I feel with certain architects, that the back 9 was just a regurgitation of the front.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jeff:

I don't know the answers to your other questions, but I know two answers to the last one:

a)  Architects get too busy once they are successful, and fall back on the things which got them there; and

b)  Clients hire them because they like certain aspects of the architect's previous work, and then ask them to repeat those things.

I can tell you that Pete Dye did not set out to build an island green at PGA West ... he originally designed a peninsula green, but the client insisted on an island just like at Sawgrass, and Pete obliged.  (Landmark was his biggest client.)  All of the subsequent island greens were built by Perry or P.B., as Pete did not want to repeat it.

Tom,

I wonder about pete not building an island green.....since he repeated so many other themes - long strip bunkers, railroad ties (dropped after a while, I know) Pot bunkers, etc., do you think he felt the island was a gimmick rather than a design feature/idea/concept - not unlike what Tiger was saying?  It would be kind of ironic if he didn't really like his best known hole, wouldn't it?

Like you, I strive to keep the style changing, but I doubt I will change core principles too much.  For example, for all the talk of blind holes here, while I have had to build a few, I don't go out of my way to do so just because a few people think they are trendy.  If they happen to happen, they happen, I guess.

On the other hand, things like an old fashioned look or small bunker look after the larger bunkers I had done earlier make sense to me, just to keep me interested in things. Its kind of like playing a $2 Nassau to stay interested in golf.

Some style changes can affect play, though.  What if Pete changed from strip bunkers to clusters of small pot bunkers along the fw on his next course?  The strip bunker punishes equally, but the series of bunkers would not only look different, but would offer perhaps a 50-50% chance of a miss finding sand vs. rough, which would affect playability.

I actually got out of bed to type this, it was on my mind since you wrote it.

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

I believe Pete has tried using pot bunkers instead of waste bunkers (at least, I heard there were a lot of pot bunkers at Colleton River and at the TPC in New Orleans, I've never seen either one).

At Crooked Stick, he built different holes that emulated Macdonald, Ross, and MacKenzie, although some of them have since been modified.  Radrick Farms looks more like a Trent Jones course.  He told me at Long Cove that Harbour Town was a departure because he felt "it was time to do something different" and I think he has felt that way ever since ... it's one of the main reasons I work the same way, that plus I've seen so many different styles around the world that I admired.

I don't know that he dislikes the 17th at the TPC but I am pretty sure he wishes it wasn't his best-known design.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Of course, we are mixing the template discussion in here, but they are related, but if Pete Dye did a similar length hole, with the same fw angle, bunker placement and green, but substituted pot bunkers for strip bunkers, would it be a "template" despite the use of differing bunkers?

Over the weekend we have discussed templates, style, dominant themes, and original new directions in gca.  In my mind the template and dominant design feature (such as green contours or bunker placements) reflect play characteristics, while style and theme  generally reflect visual characteristics, which could be very different even given the same play characteristics.  Of course, I suppose that two visually similar courses (say Fazio and Tillie) could play entirely differently as well.

I know I am arguing semantics rather than design, but it fits my idea that we replicate several play concepts (say, angled fw in Petes case) quite consciously.  Different bunkering is a style choice on top of the basic play concept of a hole.  Tom Doak or Pete Dye calls those concepts "core principles" and Raynor called them templates (or someone called them that for him.  I doubt he ever used that term)

I am not seeing huge differences in the thought processes, other than on the internal justifications/emphasis of originality vs. replication/modification of the tried and true in the minds of the designers.

Put another way, Petes (and Tom's) admissions that he was always trying something different, was in reality an admission that the golf course was "built" to a large degree no matter what the characteristic of the land.  Yes, the holes and their built features should "spring from the land" whenever possible, but there are some preconcieved ideas that go into any design, and the designer in part looks for the land to support the ideas as much as he looks for ideas to fit the land.

As always, I could be wrong, and probably am!

[Matt_Ward]

Jeff:

I like the spin in saying the words "dynamic theme" when in simple terms you are saying nothing more than DESIGN SAMENESS.

I agree w Doak -- architects fall back on what they have done previously (their comfort zone) because it falls within their skills and because it's likely those contributions that interested prospective clients in the first place (their business / financial zone).

Architects are like film directors in many ways. I don't expect Wes Craven to direct a chick flick. That doesn't mean I would elevate Craven to super status beyond his limited area of involvement in the film industry.

No doubt architects try to establish a niche that will have them stand apart from others. My issue is that when such niche situations develop and their brand name becomes identifiable in such a limited manner -- I frankly get tired of playing the same dog-and-pony show type courses.

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