What do you suppose RTJ thought in 1951?

[Jeff_Brauer]

All the obtuse threads put an obtuse question (granted, pre coffee!)in my head this morning.....

The "groupthink" on this site is, in general, calling for a return to Golden Age values, seemingly lost after WWII when RTJ and Dick Wilson came to the forefront.  Sort of a call for a "paradigm shift"

Their work did represent a "paradigm shift" of its own.  Giving them the benefit of the doubt, and presuming them to be very intelligent men, what do you suppose were the design elements that they saw in Golden Age architecture that they felt the should retain, and what do you think they felt they should change, that would result in the work they accomplished?

This is an excersise in out of box (or mind!) thinking!

[TEPaul]

"Their work did represent a "paradigm shift" of its own.  Giving them the benefit of the doubt, and presuming them to be very intelligent men, what do you suppose were the design elements that they saw in Golden Age architecture that they felt the should retain, and what do you think they felt they should change, that would result in the work they accomplished?


Good question Jeff:

In my opinion, both of them saw pretty clearly the utility and benefit of using real increased length in golf and architecture.

I think they understood that got them on the early top course lists that relied primarily on "toughness" and toughness pretty much equaled raw length at almost 1 to 1.

Everything got bigger and longer---courses began to really stretch and the scale on them increased too.

This was probably facilitated by a couple of contributing factors---eg real improvement in construction techniques and machinery and a fast improvement in golf clubs making for increased height and more consistent distance. In other words the aerial option was coming on strong just after WWII

What they seemed to retain and improve on from the Golden Age is the use of angles, particularly the basic 45 degree diagonal to create a more effective progressive penalty technique that probably resulted in RTJ coigning the term "heroic" architecture (his combination of penal AND strategic architecture).

It might also be interesting to note and discuss that Pete Dye has basically been credited with being the first significant American architect to break away from the paradigm shift to increased size and scale from the first half of the so-called "Modern Age" and return to a smaller model---eg smaller greens----first represented by Hilton Head's.

I think it's also pretty hard to deny that Pete Dye almost alone at that time (around the late 1960s and on) really redefined things in the public eye for a very narrow "margin for error" equation. I think most of us realize how he basically did that.

I didn't read that anywhere---I remember it very well and the impact it had. That perception basically put Pete on the map HUGE! He got a ton of press with that fact alone.

[Mike Sweeney]

From Cornell GC:

"He was the author of many essays of golf course architecture, including contributions to Herbert Warren Wind's The Complete Golfer (1954), Will Grimsley's Golf Its History, Events, and People (1966) and Martin Sutton's Golf Courses Design, Construction and Upkeep (2nd ed., 1950). The Sutton work featured several of Jone's freehand sketches of golf holes. In 1989 his long awaited autobiography, Golf's Magnificent Challenge, co-authored with Larry Dennis, was published. He was also the subject of countless articles, the most significant of which was Wind's profile in The New Yorker of August 4, 1951, which established the profession of golf course architecture on a higher level of public awareness."

I think the last sentence sums it up. he was trying to create a "profession" and a "Brand", and he was successful at doing it. Every architect today is doing the same thing in one way or another, and they should thank RTJ for his ability to build it as a business.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Tom Paul,

It's clear you have forgotten more about architecture than the rest of us will ever learn.  Apparently, one of these things forgotten is that Wethered and Simpson include the heroic alongside the penal and strategic.  So we'll have to score that one for The Golden Age.

Mike,

It sounds like what you mean by "professionalize" is that he sold himself via post-WWII marketing.  Is that his only significant contribution to the creation of a "profession:" self-promotion in the age of the middle class and mass media?

Jeff,

"Groupthink," "paradigm," "out of box thinking:" what's with the consulting rigmarole???

It's hard to answer your questions without generalizing.  How can you attribute elements to the "Golden Age" as opposed to just "modern golf?"  That caveat aside, how about grandness of scale?

Mark

[Peter Pallotta]

I've always assumed that repeatability was one of the goals, post war, and with that quality control.  

The final product needed to be closely tied to/aligned with the modes of production.  

Efficiencies needed to be built-in the the building process, because more golf courses were being built more quickly.

My shorthand is thinking it like the post war development (and growth) of suburbs and planned communities.

Maybe that's a poor anology, though, and probably not giving RTJ enough credit (especially for the purely architectural side of things that TE discusses).

Peter

That would make Pete Dye like the 60s' hippie child of golf course architecture, chucking RTJ's squaresville scene and thumbing his nose at the industrial complex. I wonder if he was at Woodstock.  

[Peter Zarlengo]

I suppose that Trent Jones thought along similar lines that many other modernist designers thought along in 1951.

Modernism (and postmodernism for that matter) is a cultural attitude, not a design style. So everything from buildings, landscapes, and golf courses to music, art, and film was affected by these shifting cultural attitudes (search for universal truth, celebration of technology, use of binary relationships in worldview).

So I guess I think that Trent Jones and the other modernists were refelcting the attitudes and style of their times, instead of showing a total disregard for the Golden Age design elements.

[A.G._Crockett]

Is it possible that RTJ and the others of that era were just learning to use new technologies in GCA, and the emphasis on size and "clean" lines in things like tee boxes and bunkers was a function of the newer construction techniques?  

Might design in that era have become somewhat formulaic because of the ability to move large amounts of earth led to a sameness that we are now moving away from?  It seems that current GCA's understand that just because you CAN move lots of earth doesn't make the hole better.

Could RTJ and the others of the post-war era have thought that moving earth to achieve a certain look was in every case the way to build golf courses?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mark,

Not sure how I got into the jargon. Paradigm shift is a term I first heard in design school though, and probably would capture the thoughts prompting this thread the best. However, most paradigms are named after either the primary feature (cubism?) or their creators, no?


I agree grand scale, and more bold, more big, more green and more defined and more tough were all attributes of RTJ.  In the case of "defined" (the positive connotation of blindness elimination) I think that since the GA guys wrote about eliminating blindness, but by and large could only do it by routing, RTJ and others felt they should "finish the job" using the construction techniques to supplement routing.

So, is "finishing the job" a continuation, a paradigm shift, or a combo of both?

[TEPaul]

"Tom Paul,
It's clear you have forgotten more about architecture than the rest of us will ever learn.  Apparently, one of these things forgotten is that Wethered and Simpson include the heroic alongside the penal and strategic.  So we'll have to score that one for The Golden Age."

Mark:

Don't forget how far back RTJ went in architecture. The guy lived a very very long time and was active almost to the end. RTJ was beginning to be active in golf course architecture right around the time Wethered and Simpson wrote their seminal book on golf course architecture. It's no stretch to say that RTJ very much had his beginnings in the Golden Age era. The same can be said for Dick Wilson.

[john_stiles]

During WWII,  there was quite an advance in the use of bigger and better, and more efficient machines for earth moving.

Given a well known tendency towards easy bogey, hard par,  and everything and 'all' you could now do with machines,  it would seem to be a matter of form following function.

I have heard little and read less about his early work. It was the depression after all, and very little work was done.

But does his early work from 1930 to early 1940s offer any insights ?

[JC Urbina]

Jeff

They simply wanted to be different, and not status quotidian.

Pete and others chose to be different in the 60s and 70s

Doak and others chose to be different in the late 80s

Fazio and others chose to be different in the 80s and 90s

Desmond chose to be different.

It wasn't Paradigm Shift it was intelligent men choosing to be different then what was going on around them.

Some chose to lead some chose to follow.  

I have been working on a paper entitled the Holy Grail of Golf.  I have a section on this exact topic.

[BCrosby]

If you go back and look at RTJ's promotional materials, what jumps out at you is his emphasis on "efficiency", "science", and "engineering".

RTJ was selling design services (with the aid of newer and bigger machines) that would save clubs money on building and maintaining golf courses.

Unlike the artsy-fartsy Golden Age courses, his were going to be tough and straight-forward. For those reasons RTJ was not going to waste a club's money now on constuction or later on maintenance.

You have to remember that the US was still getting on its economic feet in the '50's. It had been through two really tough decades. People were still stung by the Great Depression and worried often about when the next would come.

That was the mind set that RTJ was trying to sell to. And it had a direct bearing on the way he designed courses.

Bob
 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jim,

Great reply.

Isn't intelligent men deciding to do something different how paradigm shifts get started?

[Jason Topp]

Golden Age writings contained a lot of optimism that courses would be better once more powerful earth moving equipment was developed.  

If those guys had the equipment RTJ did, it would have been interesting to see what they would have done.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Apologies for the intrusion, but this is one of the things about this site that frustrates.

When a topic capable of generating really good thoughts emerges, it starts a-steamrolling so fast that the slower among us are faced with the Hobson's Choice of:

1. Going back and reading up on Stanley Thompson, re-reading Wind's piece, thinking on the validity of what Jim just wrote, etc. etc. -- in which case, our thought-out contribution is so late this ADD site already has moved on...
Or:
2. Post the best thought you've got right now.  This is just a lament of the slow.  Bob and Jim, excellent posts.

Mark

PS When this mythical site upgrade occurs, in addition to gleaning the chaff OT threads from threads that serve the purpose of this Board, wouldn't it be nice if it were moved to the slowest, kludgiest server they could find, one that posted, say, once a day? Either that, or go to a system that requires posts by snail mail...

[Dan Moore]

There is a fascinating essay Jones wrote about Baltusrol in the July 1954 issue of the USGA Journal of Turf Management.  In it he cites the improvement of equipment and course conditioning as the two main factors affecting course design in his era.  He studied top players and found  they were longer and far more consistent than players of the past (no great surprise).  His conclusion as to how design could deal with this were to lenghten holes, move bunkers farther down the hole and narrow the avenues of play.  To demonstrate his points he provides drawings of the 7th hole in a before and after comparison.  

[BCrosby]

Dan -

Why "difficulty" became a central focus in 50's (and later) gca is a bit of a mystery. Resistance to scoring moved from being one of a number of factors a GA archie might consider to being for RTJ THE factor.

RTJ knew GA architects as well as anyone of his generation. He was fully versed in the principles of strategic design. But he sold himself as a builder of hard, but easy to maintain golf courses.

Unlike MacK, Thomas, Simpson or Behr, when RTJ talked about gca, the word "pleasurable" does not come up much.

The historical reasons for that are a mystery to me.

Bob  

[Garland Bayley]

Jim,

Great reply.

Isn't intelligent men deciding to do something different how paradigm shifts get started?

Jeff,

You are using paradigm shift incorrectly.

Paradigm shifts happen when the underlying assumptions are proven false.

E.g., think Columbus and the flat world view.

[BCrosby]

Another way to think about RTJ is that his rise to fame and fortune marks the victory of Joshua Crane over MacKenzie and Behr.

At least until Dye and others came along a couple of decades later. And even then the "harder is better" mindset continued to be important.

Bob

[A.G._Crockett]

Jim,

Great reply.

Isn't intelligent men deciding to do something different how paradigm shifts get started?

Jeff,

You are using paradigm shift incorrectly.

Paradigm shifts happen when the underlying assumptions are proven false.

E.g., think Columbus and the flat world view.

Garland,
I don't think he is.  Paradigm means "an example serving as a model".  Changing the example serving as a model is a choice; it doesn't necessarily require proving anything false; it may be simply presuming that something else is better and acting accordingly.  

As such, viewing what happened to GCA in the 50's as a paradigm shift is accurate.  Heavy equipment, lots of earth-moving, grand scales, etc.; what RTJ and the others considered to be "a better way"...

[TEPaul]

"That would make Pete Dye like the 60s' hippie child of golf course architecture, chucking RTJ's squaresville scene and thumbing his nose at the industrial complex. I wonder if he was at Woodstock."

Peter:

It may be sort of hard to say just why Pete Dye created something of a paradigm shift in architecture right about at the middle of the so-called Modern Age era but the common story is that he and Alice may've been the first of the modern era contingent to make a dedicated and extended trip to the old world of golf to really study it.

In my opinion, what he came back with from that study trip and used in his architecture is pretty damned interesting and not exactly what one might expect.

 

[TEPaul]

Bob Crosby said:

"Dan -
Why "difficulty" became a central focus in 50's (and later) gca is a bit of a mystery. Resistance to scoring moved from being one of a number of factors a GA archie might consider to being for RTJ THE factor."

Bob:

To unravel that mystery what do you think of the explanation on post #1 regarding "toughness" and why the likes of RTJ and Wilson got into it and particularly how they got into it---eg much more length---eg raw distance translates to toughness in the world of golf course rating (USGA "course rating")?

The point is the original modern day ranking magazine list was "America's 200 TOUGHEST Courses".

That list rather quickly morphed into magazines ranking called "The 100 BEST Courses in America".

The point is those lists emerged out of primarily raw distance criteria.

RTJ and Wilson weren't dumb. It probably didn't take them long to realize to get their courses on that original list one just needed to make the longest courses--eg "toughest"---eg "Best".

[BCrosby]

TEP -

I'm not sure rankings drove RTJ or DW to do the tough and tougher thing. Rankings in the major mags didn't get started until the early 80's, no?

Bob

[Tom_Doak]

When I was a $4 per hour construction intern at Long Cove, I was driving Mr. Dye out to the other end of the site one morning and I asked him about Harbour Town and how different it was than his other work, especially the Radrick Farms course that he'd done a few years before, which looked more like a Jones course to me.

Pete replied that he had looked up to Mr. Jones' work when he started out on his own, but he'd been experimenting with other stuff, and then when he was working at Harbour Town, he had to drive past Palmetto Dunes every morning and he just made up his mind that somebody had to go in a different direction, because they all couldn't keep making things longer and bigger ad infinitum.

I don't know how or why he happened to share that story with me at that time -- I was 20 and certainly not on the radar as someone who would make it on his own in the business.  But, when I did, I knew that I wouldn't make a name for myself by trying to build Pete Dye style courses, and that conversation was what led me to do something different myself -- even if it had some historical precedent.

Was Mr. Jones the same?  Perhaps, but I think there is also a lot of truth to the idea that he was trying to turn golf architecture into a business that was repeatable and therefore scalable to greater size.  It was not lost on him that most of the competition in the postwar business was either gone or slowing down, and that he had a chance to dominate the profession like nobody in the twenties could have.  He adopted technology to do so, both because he had seen the beginnings of it in the 1930's, and to prevent somebody else from coming along and rendering him obsolete.

At the same time, I don't think Mr. Jones was all about the "clean lines" you see on his courses today.  Yes, he did invent the runway tee because it made maintenance easier (and addressed added length), but a lot of his courses featured very lacy-edged bunkering.  In the latter case, you are just confusing the simultaneous change in golf course maintenance practices (as far as "clean" bunker edging) with Mr. Jones' style.  

[Garland Bayley]

Garland,
I don't think he is.  Paradigm means "an example serving as a model".  Changing the example serving as a model is a choice; it doesn't necessarily require proving anything false; it may be simply presuming that something else is better and acting accordingly.  

As such, viewing what happened to GCA in the 50's as a paradigm shift is accurate.  Heavy equipment, lots of earth-moving, grand scales, etc.; what RTJ and the others considered to be "a better way"...

I of course may be wrong, but I believe the term paradigm shift was coined in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions  by Thomas S. Kuhn
as meaning just what I said.