What the eye "sees"

[Peter Pallotta]

The PV thread reminded me of one I started a while back suggesting that the reason PV bunkers looked so natural was because of all the pine trees there. That is, even from just my little time in nature, I've come to associate pine trees with sandy soil, and so my eye "sees" (mostly unconsciously) the big, sprawling PV bunkers as very natural looking.

I'm wondering how far this unconscious "seeing" extends.

Personally, about the only golf courses I don't care for are the ones that really don't fit in at all with their natural surroundings, in the widest possible sense. I find that, no matter how well the architect has managed to make his man-made features and shaping look natural, it won't work for me if, for example, the drive up to the course has been mostly through gently rolling and heavily treed land and then the course itself has severely elevated tees and wide open vistas.  Even if I haven't been paying all that much attention on the drive up, my eye still "sees" something unnatural about the course, and it throws me off.  (I admit this is probably more important to me than it should be from a gca perspective; it's because a big part of the reason I golf is for some rare time in a peaceful and natural setting).    

Conversely, I really find attractive the pictures of all the courses Sean Arble plays, and Tony M's Cardigan; and it wouldn't make a difference to me whether I knew exactly what was natural and what was man-made on those courses. All those courses seem to match perfectly their natural surrounds, and so my eye "sees" them as soothingly natural.

I guess what I'm asking is if anyone else feels this way, and if perhaps much skillful designing and executing of natural looking features is in vain if the course as a whole just doesn't fit its surrounds, on the whole. Any thoughts?

Thanks
Peter

[TEPaul]

Peter;

The problem with you is you ask these great big really thoughtful and important questions when it's time for me to go to bed.

By the way, you do or should win the GOLFCLUBATLAS.com award for the most thoughtful and important threads and posts of this year or however long you've been on here.

But to offer a tidbit on your question;

I was really impressed when Coore and Crenshaw took on the Hidden Creek project.

In the beginning the whole idea was to try to figure out what the raw site reminded the architects most of. At first Bill thought maybe the piney, sandy soil of Pinehurst in New Jersey but then for whatever reason he felt it might be most like the Heathlands in England and the rest of the project and those used to carry it on should be recorded history on how best to go "site natural".

The thing that really made that sensibility come alive to me is their constant concern back then of whether or not the golf course would be "understood".

You've got to meet them someday. Those guys are really beauiful and you of all people would understand why they should be appreciated in what they both think and do.

[Mark_F]

Peter,

It will be interesting to see if any architects respond to this, and perhaps suggesting that given the right construction they can make something "fit."

No matter how skillful someone is, I don't believe they can entirely mimick nature, and there will always be the sense of something not quite right.

My home course was  beautifully constructed by Misters Doak and crew -however, the current revegetation programme being undertaken is not in sympathy with what would be there normally, and it all looks a little out of place, no matter how well done it is in parts.

It's interesting how one seemingly inconsequential little thing can throw out some people and result in a perhaps not quite so wholesome experience.

[Mark Pearce]

A few interesting comments here.  I played Kington yesterday (on which more later- suffice to say it more than lived up to Sean's hype) and what struck me was how completely natural fairways mix with greens which are obviously very far from natural.  They do really stand out but, despite that, they are extraordinarily attractive, perhaps because they are so unique in style.  I'd previously have said that I didn't like features that clearly stood out as unnatural but those Kington greens have made me reconsider that.

[Norbert P]

  I'm going to take another tack on this about honesty of the land.  At Royal Dornoch, on #14, Foxy, I got a kick out of seeing some dunes that were flat-topped.  I'm sure nature didn't make these guyots through eolian processes; they must've been made by man's hand.  Probably teeing grounds from days gone by.  They are not garish, distracting, or depreciative to the golf or to the naturalness. Though the members could have, over the decades or centuries,  remanipulated dunes to be more natural looking, I appreciated the history that they spoke of from those ancient playgrounds. It left a symbol of progress, of past toilers and tinkerers, of past creators and dreamers.  I think time and aging allows for allowances.  Man is a part of nature, after all.  It just seems that most men want to control and dominate it.

  When I do see construction obviousness on newer courses, the notion hits me that the designer has a low land worth ethic.

 Great question Peter, I hope I haven't been garish, distracting or depreciative to the thread.

[Peter Pallotta]

Gents - thanks much to all; good posts/thoughts all around.

I want to keep thinking some more about your responses.

And Slag, I think you must be joking: if anything, you've elevated the original topic - thanks.

Peter  

[Mike McGuire]

Peter-

What your eye sees changes with your education. Tom Doak can distinguish natural land forms from manmade ones easily.

To some people there is no difference between a native woodland and ornamental spruces, they are all just trees.

[Rich Goodale]

 I'm going to take another tack on this about honesty of the land.  At Royal Dornoch, on #14, Foxy, I got a kick out of seeing some dunes that were flat-topped.  I'm sure nature didn't make these guyots through eolian processes; they must've been made by man's hand.  Probably teeing grounds from days gone by.  They are not garish, distracting, or depreciative to the golf or to the naturalness. Though the members could have, over the decades or centuries,  remanipulated dunes to be more natural looking, I appreciated the history that they spoke of from those ancient playgrounds. It left a symbol of progress, of past toilers and tinkerers, of past creators and dreamers.  I think time and aging allows for allowances.  Man is a part of nature, after all.  It just seems that most men want to control and dominate it.

  When I do see construction obviousness on newer courses, the notion hits me that the designer has a low land worth ethic.

 Great question Peter, I hope I haven't been garish, distracting or depreciative to the thread.

Norbert

I'll bet you a weeks worth of slag that those flat-topped fingers of land/dunes that stretch between the 12th and 15th holes at Dornoch are natural and not flattened out by man.

Ricardo

[TEPaul]

Slag:

#4 is an awesome post---some very rich food for thought in that one.

Peter said:

"I'm wondering how far this unconscious "seeing" extends."

Peter:

I think the key word in your remark is "unconscious". This is the area of the subliminal, an area that is more "feeling" than actually "seeing" visually, in my opinion.

It also may be one of the most important areas in all of golf course architecture or any other art form. I stress "may be". I say that because who can deny that this kind of thing will and does affect various people in vastly differing ways?

I think this is an area that Behr was ultimately trying to explore as to how various types of architecture affected golfers sensibilities in various ways. We do know that he preferred man-made golf architecture to appear to be as natural looking as it could be under the circumstances. He did say that only this way would man, the golfer, object to it less, particularly if it caught him up.

This is one area of Behr's philosophy I'm not so sure I agree with, particularly after we have had about eighty years to test his theory on golfers generally----eg hindsight; something he obviously did not have the benefit of.

I guess I should say, I, personally, do agree with what Behr said in this area but I think it may be true to say that not as many golfers as he might have hoped agree with it or are even subliminally aware of it.

On the other hand, more modern architects such as Desmond Muirhead most certainly did test the subliminal effects of various types of golf architecture. In so doing with a course like Stone Harbor he got pretty far away from what any of us might call the look of naturalism. He got into other types of symbolisms. Obviously, a guy like Fazio is very good at it in other more traditonal natural landscape architecture applications such as the art principles of Harmony, Rythym, Balance, Proportion and the one I may like the least--Emphasis.

But I think it all gets back to this comparison that Behr apparently tried to draw between Man's relationship to Man himself vs Man's fundamental relationship to Nature.

In that way, it's just perfect that Slag Bandoon mentioned that Man too is certainly a part of Nature. He certainly is that albeit one of the most remarkable parts of Nature imaginable in that he apart from all else in Nature seems on the verge of totally controlling Nature itself. The fact that MAN, generally, is either consciously or even subliminally aware of that, partiicularly in the last couple of hundred years, creates a whole different equation for a whole lot of things.

That's pretty heady stuff and unconsciously or subliminally it's bound to create some pretty interesting dynamics and dualities and such.

There is a book called "Landscape and Memory" by England's Simon Schama that deals directly with this entire subject. It's pretty damned deep. I almost drowned in it frankly.

But on the subject of landscape architecture of almost any era or style, including golf course architecture, I'm always struck by something Tom MacWood, seemingly alone amongst all golf architecture analysts or landscape architecture analysts, mentioned.

He always said he did not necessarlly agree with the apparent dictate of all landscape architecture thinking that Nature's imperfections should be removed from the scene. There's no question this dictate is a form of "idealization", albeit for a purpose and perhaps a very good one, but Tom MacWood, for one, didn't seem to think this was a good idea in all cases, particularly in golf course architecture. In may ways, I think this is the basis of his real interest in the essence of the "Arts and Crafts" Movement.

On that particular point, which is certainly not an insignificant one, I believe I've always agreed with him.

[BCrosby]

Peter -

I agree, but let me flip things over.

There is a movement afoot to remove trees. Everywhere. It seems to be all the rage these days. And from a pure gca perspective, I'm on board.

But I've played on a couple of courses recently located in beautiful tree-lined neighborhoods. There are thick stands of oak and pine guarding the entrance roads, clubhouses, maintenance sheds, etc. All along the edges of the courses, there are mature, thick stands of oak and pine.

But within the course confines, almost all trees have been removed. "Denuded" comes to mind.

Now, again, from a pure gca perspective, the tree removal makes sense. New angles open up, better and more interesting recoveries are back on the board, and so forth.

But there is no getting around the fact that these tree removals  aren't "natural" to the surrounding neighborhoods. Maybe the lack of trees was natural back when the course was first built, but not these days. What is natural to these areas today is mature, thick stands of trees.

So my feelings are a little mixed about the virtues of tree removal. I generally like them. But there is an argument that they leave the course looking less like it fits in its "natural" setting. That argument has some teeth. It ought to be given some weight when undertaking tree removal programs.

Bob

[TEPaul]

Bob:

Regarding your last post, and particularly on the subject of trees (or not) on golf courses, it seems like some of us on here and elsewhere get so carried away sometimes about the "look of nature" or "naturalism" on golf courses that we tend to forget the obvious----eg a golf course is not JUST supposed to be some observable scene of Nature or even landscape architecture. We do need to play golf on these settings and that necessarily is always going to require various "exceptions" to a wholly natural look of some scene, particularly when it comes to trees.

Behr may've been the ultimate advocate for "naturalism" in golf architecture but even he did make his 4-5 "exceptions" to that philosophy for the single purpose of accomodating the game or sport of golf.

[JC Urbina]

Peter
In regards to what the eye "sees" I have spent considerable time in the last 7-8 years trying to eliminate lines on a golf course.  I refer to this as corridor golf.  Standing on a teeing ground, modern architecture has developed a need to have things in parallel.  When creating a golf course  we try to blur that line so that the golf course appears more natural.

I believe that the golf course should be viewed as infinite and it should not appear to have a starting and stopping point visually.  Even though we have created 18 individual holes.  My goal would be to create a golf course that is viewed as one playing ground with 18 individual parts.

That was one of the reason I started playing with the Uni-tee concept many years ago.  

[paul cowley]

 I hole heartily agree that one needs to take best advantage and utilize all the attributes that a site possesses.....on the course, and in its surrounds.

But what if these elements are lacking from the beginning?

That's the real challenge in most instances.

I could ramble on about hypotheticals or Shadow Creek.....and as much as I admire C&C's work, good site selection seems to be an important part of their process.

How about the lesser sites?


TomP's involved with one of those now, and although the very compact site lends itself to create a core layout, with a very traditional routing.......the entire course is open to the view and sounds of passing motorists on two sides.

With a big budget and more space we could create another world as a design solution....but that is not the case with this site.

Instead we are opting to just push up a long and linear earthen wall, about 7' high, planted with grass.

It immediately gives one a sense of enclosure, privacy and security.....and cuts down the noise and visual interference remarkably.

....and it also begins to create the environment that Peter seeks when he has the time to play.

 

[Rich Goodale]

Jim

Could you please explain to us amateurs what the "Uni-Tee concept" is?

Also, vis a vis lines, do you include curved lines in this elimination process?  I see more and more manufactured curved lines (mostly mowing patterns) on even the finest of courses these days.  Even if you as the designer succeeds in eliminating lines, how can you stop the super from creating them after you hand the course over to him or her?

Thanks in advance.

Rich

[paul cowley]

Jim....I applaud your uni-tee concept that I experienced when I was at Ballyneal. I enjoyed it so much that I am taking the concept over the border and combining it with a grass cart path system that plays through the dunes of Baja.

Thanks for your creativity.

[Joe Hancock]

Jim and Rich,

Would the 4th picture down on TommyKnockers Tumble Creek thread show the "straight line elimination" that you're talking about? I think it is a good example of using big, curving lines during clearing to get away from "parallel".

Joe

[Ron Farris]

I've come to associate pine trees with sandy soil

I've come to associate pine trees with ROCKS!
Here in the Black Hills we virtually have no sand, but we have a tremendous amount of Ponderosa Pine trees.  They like the rocky soil of the extremely old Black Hills.  The sand we get usually comes from the Cheyenne River about 60 miles east of here and the sand company is quite proud of their sand.

The trees do not make the local courses natural at all, with the exception of the Golf Club at Red Rock and Devil Tower Golf Club in Hulette, Wyoming.  Great job Kevin Atkinson in Hulette on the back nine!

[RJ_Daley]

This discussion takes me back to a few pages at the end of John Strawn's book.  (I lent it out and never got it back so I can't go to it for exact quotes, but paraphrazing);  Man has that subliminal, unconcious attraction or allure to a field of play in the modern world, that was the field of hunting and gathering in the ancient world.  Somehow, the hunting that was goal oriented and tied to the incursion and pursuit upon the land was replaced by the gamesmanship of the field games, like golf, steeplechase, crosscountry, biathlete, or modern hunting, etc.  What stays in the subconciousness, (some sort of built up genetic thing that is mostly instinct to hunt and evaluate the hunting land) is an affinity or allure to the land.  Picture yourself as a lion sitting upon a knoll looking down on the Serangetti plain - your domain and the pantry you are going to extract your prize from.  You are the one that has a sort of dominian over those lands.  You form an instinct and emotional attachment for that land.

To the golfer, in the subconcious, you feel if it is natural and your domain as your inner psyche accepts and defines the plain you are about to go pursue your prize, your golf game.  If it doesn't look right, you are somewhat unnerved if it is not what your natural subconcious understands as the happy hunting ground.  

Of course, and golf course is going to have man made features that need to be there for the game to make sense.  But, we have our most revered courses that do come close to that natural plain of hunting ground.  I think most of all that is why the open dunesland, linksland, prairie land has such appeal, if it is done correctly, blended into nature, and following nature to the greatest extent of minimalism possible to still make good golf sense.

The uni-tee is part of the flow of the hunting plain rather than an artificial rampart from which to launch your pursuit.  Chambers Bay and BallyNeal have that in spades.

One more anecdote:  I used to frequent a tavern where there was a character who was a pretty severe alcoholic, and resided on the same stool every night, in a state of babbling oblivion.  This gent had a long tough tour in WWII fighting in Italy with 10th mountain.   While his comments were bigotted, he used to say, there were two kinds of guineaes; swamp guineaes and mountain guineaes.  

For purposes of this subliminal projection of one's ancient sense of natural lands one is attracted to for the pursuit of golf, I think we have two kinds of allure and sensibility to accept these golfing fields as natural.  We are either forrestland golfers or open plains - links land golfers in our deep down.  The forest (parkland) courses, and the plains-dunes open links like courses seem to be preferences to individuals, perhaps as an ancient instinct of where your tribe flourished.  We know deep down what land features for our purposes of pursuit of golf belongs there in a natural aesthetic affinity and acceptance of either the parkland or open plain.   When those lines of knowing it when you see it are distorted by very unnatural created features that just don't blend, we feel it.  

The man made features may be appropriate for creation of the strategy and challenge of the game of golf, but they unnerve us as not belonging...

[Mark_Rowlinson]

'the drive up to the course'

Isn't that an emotive subject?

I can't think of a more uplifting drive to a course than that across the salt marshes to Rpyal West Norfolk. You are already drinking in the place as soon as you turn off the main road.

Almost as good is to turn off the hideous and busy A64 down a little lane and find Ganton at the bottom of it.

And there are great old courses which come as a great surprise. There is no anticipation in driving through urban St Annes to find Royal Lytham, nor the mundane roads of the Wirral to find Royal Liverpool, but when you get there....

I bet Sean is warming up to Kington for twenty miles of glorious countryside, ditto at Pennard.

TOC rather depends on from where you approach.

Perhaps it is the drive to the course which makes me so fond of those mad courses in north Wales, Bala and Ffestiniog.

We're going to the Walker Cup at RCD next weekend and staying with family in Rathfriland.  Already I'm debating whether to take the flat route through Castlewellan (practical) or take the hilly route and come in through Bryanston - the latter, I think - the Mourne Mountains are such a part of the backdrop even though they are irrelevant to play - or are they?

[TEPaul]

Mark:

Speaking of driving up to a golf course, particularly a great golf course, I doubt there's a greater difference of feeling in all the world than difference of driving through the community of Clementon NJ and surrounds and up to the gates of Pine Valley and then being inside.

Perhaps one of the most anticipatory drives I've ever had is that long country road to Old Head and then the impact of seeing "Old Head" come into view as you crest over that last hill. The sheer antiquity of the place is pretty overwhelming.

How in God's name they ever got the permission to build a golf course on that historic site, I'll never understand.

[Mike_Cirba]

This may be the best thread in the history of GCA.

There has been so much written here that is profound that I'm feeling unworthy to contribute.

This one needs to be bronzed and put somewhere permanently, however.

[paul cowley]

RJ.....that was one fine post.

[TEPaul]

MikeC:

I agree about this thread.

Unfortunately, threads like this one that tend towards the sort of deeply philosophical aren't great big sellers on this website.

But does it surprise you who started this thread?

I've said it before and I'll say it again---Peter Pallotta was a real shot in the arm to GOLFCLUBALTLAS.com just when we needed it most. I'm just sorry that Adam Foster Collins doesn't seem to be around anymore. This type of thread was his thing if anything was. I'd also like to see a guy like Tom MacWood come back and comment on this thread, even if he seemed to me to be the type who didn't so much get into discussing the deeply philosophical on architecture as he did in supplying some interesting fact based reseach to support it in one way or another.

[JC Urbina]

Richard
I started the uni-tee concept ( Doak hates my name for it) at Pacific Dunes because I thought that teeing grounds were the most artificial aspect of the golf course _____ if you know what I mean.  The land deserved better then ______ so I started playing with how the golf course could look more natural if you just played with the starting point.  Robert Hunter in his book describes how a golf course should appear as natural as possible including the teeing grounds.  I tried to take that one step farther.  I also did something else with the tee so that if you were ever on any other part of the golf course when you looked back at a teeing ground you would not notice what you always see with other very ______ looking tees.  But I will let the people who have been out  on site try to figure that one out.

 Lines are created by mowing patterns and yes a super can influnece the lines.

 According to RJ Daley  Chambers Bay has a similiar looking tee concept.

TE Pauls explains in his journey to the Old Head how coming over the crest of the hill brings some type of rush with anticpation.  I try to do that with  grassing lines for the fairways.  Trying to divert the eye so that you can't focus on where the crest of the hill will lead you.  While others are putting bunkers as guides to where you should go, I prefer to let your senses lead you to where you should be.  

[TEPaul]

"Trying to divert the eye so that you can't focus on where the crest of the hill will lead you.  While others are putting bunkers as guides to where you should go, I prefer to let your senses lead you to where you should be."

Jim:

I'd love to hear at least a half dozen examples of holes where you think you pulled off that kind of thing best and how.

Another question for you:

Have you ever considered trying to do a golf course without sand bunkers and what that would mean regarding a golfer's eye and how he found his own strategies without the seeming help of the architecture or architect?

I'm sure you're aware of this semi-traditional defiintion of the "art" principle of "Emphasis". It states: "to draw the eye to the most important part".

Personally, I don't think I like that idea in golf architecture if it always means to draw the eye to where you "should" hit the ball. To me that's "architectural/strategic" dictation.