A couple of interesting golf architecture articles

[Kye Goalby]

Check this link www.portfolio.com/culture-lifestyle/ and scroll down a bit to the "sports section".  There is a God!

[Mike Nuzzo]

This paragraph is great...

“Most golf course architects, you see pictures of them in the promotional stuff with a rolled-up set of plans in their hand,” Doak says of some of his celebrity colleagues. “Nobody’s got a picture of me doing that! Even though we draw up a fairly detailed plan for the client, once we get out there in the field, we’re trying to find ways to improve the place, not looking for photo ops where we can appear industrious and spackled with mud.”

Personally I do like to have photo ops though.

P.S.
And if you haven't seen this weeks Golf plus issue - Tom is also the Course Whisper - also a very good article.

Most impressive accomplishments.
Cheers

[Jim Nugent]

Tom Doak, the article about you says you are redoing the Valley Club's greens.  Do you think Bethpage Black's greens could or should be redone?  If so, what sort of general changes would you make on them?

I don't mean to limit this only to Tom.  Very interested in the thoughts of any of the architects.  

[Phil_the_Author]

Jin, though I am not one of the "architects" of whom you asked, I have been speaking to several behind the scenes for a while now about recovering the Blacks greens to their original sizes and dimensions where possible.

Some of this (not necessarily at my urging) has now been done and will continue. these will bring in to play quite dynamic areas of slope and undulations that will make the course not only play even more difficult, but be a strategically greater challenge for the best players.

[corey miller]

Phil

Why did they not do the greens expansion prior to the open?  It would seem that would be a low cost improvement relative to all the other work.

And, who is now making these sorts of decisions at Bethpage?

[Jim Nugent]

Phil, thanks for the info.  I'll be real interested to see how the pro's, the people on this forum, and everyday golfers who play the Black like the changes.  

Is the course working with any architects to expand the greens?  Does BPB have to close the greens, while they are working on them?  

[Ulrich Mayring]

This is a questionable article. Most of it is copied verbatim from Tom Doak's website, which in turn hasn't seen an update since 2005.

Ulrich

[Phil_the_Author]

Corey, you asked, "Why did they not do the greens expansion prior to the open?  It would seem that would be a low cost improvement relative to all the other work."

It might seem so, but it would have required rebuilding every single green, and the USGA's generosity in paying for things really did have reasonable bounds. As it was, the rebuilding of tees and every bunker except the carry on #7, and the new green on 18 exceeded the initial projections.

It was discussed but would have proven too costly.

Jim, you wrote and asked, "I'll be real interested to see how the pro's, the people on this forum, and everyday golfers who play the Black like the changes... Is the course working with any architects to expand the greens?  Does BPB have to close the greens, while they are working on them?"

Some changes are dramatic. For example #14. Though most think that it the changes are brand new, other than the front left tongue, the new putting surfaces on the back and back right behind the bunker are actually mostly recovered areas. They had just been missing for so long that no one today would recognize them as anything other than an addition.

On other holes, for example #11, unless you are looking for them you probably will only notice it if you play the hole before and after it was done to see the changes. This hole has been expanded a bit higher to the back and may even go a little further and farther left and right on the back edges.

Then there will be holes such as #7 where the change will look dramatic if it is done. The green needs expanding to the tops of the back moundings and to the left and right sides along these same mound crests. The undulations here would be starkly dramatic in scope and look.

Although conversation's about this subject has been held with all involved from architect to USGA, the work is all being done in-house under Craig Currier's watchful eye. He has gotten a great deal of praise but most don't appreciate how talented a young man he is. He also has a great respect for the history of the game and his course.

 

[Tom_Doak]

Ulrich:

You are correct that several of the "quotes" from me are actually taken off our web site.  That doesn't mean they're inaccurate.  You would likely be surprised at what percentage of articles resort to this approach in the Internet era of American journalism.

For that matter, the Sports Illustrated story has apparently used the same title as an article in the local Traverse City magazine which ran a year or two ago.  They might not have known this, but Google makes anything possible.  Michael Bamberger did spend 1/2 day with me in Scotland last month and another couple of chats on the phone, not to mention the article he did for the Phila. Enquirer when we were building Stonewall in 1992.

Jim N:  I just got back from The Valley Club, where we are restoring the greens to their original size at the same time we are rebuilding them to USGA specs.  The old greens were built from questionable soils and they have been difficult to maintain from the outset, but they managed to put up with them for 78 years before rebuilding!

I don't know about Bethpage's greens and whether they had different contour or different shapes to begin with ... we don't consult there.

[Michael Blake]

Posted by: Tom_Doak

Phila. Enquirer

Philadelphia INquirer  

[TEPaul]

TomD:

The article mentioned you studied landscape architecture at Cornell.

Could you give some examples of how you think LA has been best used and also misused in golf course architecture over the years?

PS:

I don't mean things like waterfalls. I guess I mean things more in an LA "art principles" sense.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom:

I think composition is one of the most important elements of golf course architecture -- building things which not only play the way you want them to play, but look right and sit comfortably in the landscape.  That's one of those art principles, although I have to say I don't think I learned much about it at Cornell, it's just something people have or don't have.  Brian Morgan, the golf photographer, looked at some of my pictures long ago and told me I had a great sense of composition, which I'd never thought about consciously at that point.  I'm sure that's one reason our courses are popular:  pretty much every associate I've ever had would get an A+ in composition.

Probably the other most important thing I learned from Landscape Architecture school (again, indirectly) is how to think in three dimensions.  Most of our assignments back in those days were on paper (CAD was still a dream in 1980-82) and I have always been awful at freehand drawing, so there wasn't much chance to put that 3-D thought to the test ... but Landscape Architecture is all about creating spaces in three dimensions, with grading and planting and vertical structures. And, so is golf course design, although I can assure you from experience that many golf course architects never think about it in that way at all.

I learned how to apply those ideas by going to see lots of the parks and plazas we studied in Landscape Architecture, and by going to see lots of golf courses but observing more than the strategic placement of the bunkers.  If you think about it, all the best features of golf courses (greens and bunkers) are intricate 3-D designs, and the exercise of routing a golf course is all about trying to lay out holes to fit a 3-D surface.

[TEPaul]

TomD:

Fantastic post there.

When you think about and execute these kinds of 3-D things in your mind's eye and on the ground are you also commensurately thinking about how they will effect the decisions golfers may make in their shot choices before they even hit the ball?

And further, how much of any of this do you think is an "aesthetic" application or conversely an application intended to affect play, on your part?

I'm quite sure you will probably say both. If so, has it always been that way on your part?

[Tom_Doak]

Tom P:

You need both parts, but it varies which comes first.  A few examples ...

a)  we'll think that we need to add one more fairway bunker to complete the visual puzzle, think through various options of where to put it that would work, and then pick the one that has the best effect on play.  Or,

b)  we'll move a green over thirty feet so that it has a certain relationship to a tree we are trying to save (both for spatial quality and for how it comes into play), or

c)  we'll move a green so it lines up with something in the background, and then we have to rethink how to design the green for playability.

The 3-D part is usually about playability ... thinking about the trajectory of a drive or an approach or a chip shot and how it will react when it lands on a certain slope, and adjusting the position of the green, or the pitch of the ground, or even the length of the hole (and thereby the trajectory of the approach shot) to make it play at a certain level of difficulty.  But, lots of aesthetic decisions are in 3-D as well -- for example, adjusting the elevation of a tee to control what you can see (or not see) beyond the green.

Has it always been that way for me?  No, I'd say it took me a few courses to get the hang of all the interplay.  Lots of Pete Dye's stuff was very two-dimensional [flat bunkers for example, or just fighting flatness in many places he built courses] so it took me a while to get the hang of 3-D bunker shaping ... taking Gil Hanse around Thomas and MacKenzie's work in California and then letting him concentrate on the bunker shaping at Black Forest was very helpful, for both of us.  I also got better at it when I stopped drawing plans of holes entirely, and just worked on them on the ground ... you can't help but work in 3-D when you are out in the real world.

[TEPaul]

Guys:

Do you see those last few posts from Doak? Well, in my opinion, it doesn't get any better than that as a discussion on architecture as to what goes on in the mind of an architect and how he tries to get things constructed on the ground and into a particular "look" and "into play".

Print those posts out fellas. I'm going to and I think I will put them in Far Hills NJ into the new USGA Architecture Archive in the new Arnold Palmer history century. Is that OK with you TomD? No point in erasing them now, I just copied them.  

Fifties years from now think how interesting that will be for future architect buffs to read.

This is the kind of thing that makes this website, in my opinion.

[Dan Kelly]

This is a questionable article. Most of it is copied verbatim from Tom Doak's website, which in turn hasn't seen an update since 2005.

Ulrich

Great catch, sir. Someone should inform the editor.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom P:

Good questions are what make this web site.  None of the above was in any of the last ten articles written about our work.  Of course, the perception is that's not what is interesting to the mainstream reader ... they want to know about me the person and anything controversial that I've had to say.

[TEPaul]

"Of course, the perception is that's not what is interesting to the mainstream reader ... they want to know about me the person and anything controversial that I've had to say."

TomD;

Well, then, I think you should inform your next interviewer that you feel, and in no uncertain terms, that tacky waterfalls and such on golf courses will be perhaps the primary contrbuting factor to the complete collapse of all mankind on this earth. Or at least it represents one of the best symbols of why it will inevitably happen which of course is Man's total lack of respect or disregard for the natural order of things on his planet.

Is that controversial enough for you?

If that doesn't work for you, I suggest you tell your interviewer that, in your opinion, any golf course architects who are so myopic as to think and work in only two dimensions should be relegated to eternal damnation, not to mention that the proverbial KIWI bird should KaKa on their projects and on their clients, and on anyone who either plays or praises their golf courses for all time to come.