Earthmoving at Pacific Dunes

[Eric_Terhorst]

Dear Matthew,

I am making reverse fun of Eric Terhorst, Michael Dugger, and others like myself who tried to give lots of answers, despite the double penalty of a wrong answer.  Mostly Eric Terhorst, who is otherwise a brilliant man.

Now THAT's funny.  John, you should have taken me up on that side bet!  

[Matthew Hunt]

Tom,

 Is there any earthwork on the course that couldn’t be achieved in the ‘golden age’? Is there anything you were able to do that say Mackenzie wouldn’t have be able to do?

Matt

[George Pazin]

For example I fail to see how the majority of Scottish links can be considered scenic or aesthetically pleasing.

You might feel differently if you spent significant time with parkland courses.

[Matthew Hunt]

For example I fail to see how the majority of Scottish links can be considered scenic or aesthetically pleasing.

You might feel differently if you spent significant time with parkland courses.

Yes, I am in a sentance a spoilted brat when it comes to scenery

Some Scottish Links are beautiful like Turburry but they in general they are not at the same level as those here in Ireland.

In regard to parkland layouts the lack of aesthetic interest this is partly to due to the fact that more ‘outside the box’ thinking is required on a parkland layout to make it pleasing to the eye not less as I read one architect. When Pine Valley, Augusta or NGLA was being built they could of all been good parkland layouts but one of the things that makes them great is the fact that they stunned the ‘cookie-cutter’ Image that most course open in but took risk and brought unique Ideas to please the eye.

Matt

[Tom_Doak]

Matthew:

If you insist on working only on projects with scenery comparable with home, you are going to have a very short career.

As to your question about earthwork, we did some things that Tom Morris would never have considered, but nothing that they wouldn't have done by 1925.  There are two caveats, though ...

1)  Not many older projects would have had the financial wherewithal to consider capping the sandstone along the 4th and 13th holes instead of building holes a bit more inland, and

2)  Pacific Dunes would have been tough to build at all without an EXTENSIVE irrigation system, because they go five months of the summer with dry, windy conditions and NO rain.  We did manage to build something at The Sheep Ranch without fairway irrigation, but the soils were a bit different up there ... building in the dunes would have been very tough in 1925.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

While I agree with the general premise that most courses wouldn't have the funds to do extensive earthmoving, many did and I have always been of the opinion that there was more earthmoving done than most get credit for.

Its not just Lido and a few others that prove it could be done.  Look at other earthworks of the times, like railroad building (esp. raising tracks after 1900 to minimize traffic conflicts) to see that engineers weren't adverse to moving earth when required, and sometimes lots of it.  Granted, golf may not have justified the expense, but most Golden Age courses were built for men of means and they probably had the same spare no expense attitude that Trump, Wynn, etc. have now.

I think the earthmoving was different back then. For example, I think I have seen the exact same fw contours at Beverly 11 and White Bear YC No. 2 from Ross. I think both were graded for visibility but the cuts came from the nearby roughs, rather than a central irrigation lake.

I see similar cuts and fills in LM work, at Wakonda, among others.  I think the Winged Foot Open program listed some construction quantities for that course, and if I recall right, the earthmoving was like 60,000 CY. Nothing like today but nothing to sneeze at, either, unless you have a cold!

Getting back to Pac Dunes, it sounds like your philosophy of moving it only when needed and moving it short distances sounds a lot like the Golden Age.  But, then again, I think most of us build the same way, mostly because on our budgets, we have to, whether we want to or not.

Jay Morrish calls himself a (retired) necessitist.

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

Sorry, but I don't believe we are all doing it the same way.

When I went around Colbert Hills a couple of years back, it was 38 degrees with a wind chill of 25, so I didn't get to take away much.  But I did notice that it seemed like nearly all the landing areas had a bit of fill to them.  I noticed it on a par-5 which had to go across a drainage area with its second shot [unfortunately, I don't remember what hole # as we didn't go in order] ... it looked like the left side of the landing area had to transition back from about three feet of fill, but looking at the outside contours, I couldn't imagine why you'd needed the fill to start with, other than there was so much shaping otherwise that the natural slopes would have stood out as being different.

I agree with you that many Golden Age projects did do more earthmoving than advertised ... but most of it was of the scale that could be done with a D-6 in the shaping budget on today's projects.

My goal when I started High Pointe was to keep scrapers off my golf courses entirely -- I think we've only used them on 3 or 4 projects out of 25 to date.  The traffic impact alone is reason enough to avoid them!

[Jeff_Brauer]

Well, there are differences, in both scale and technique, but I generally try to build as many greens as cut and fill balances as possible and am actually working on same for tees rather than placing fills automatically on flattish ground.   And, I like to keep a scraper around for those last minute "just in case changes" and to transport topsoil around if needed.

You could be talking about 10 or 1. In both cases, the areas near the creek had to be leveled from natural slope to keep the balls in the fw. Even at that, I don't think we got the right side of number 1 level enough.  As far as fw shaping, we visited other Kansas Zoysia courses (mostly Flint Hills) on bedrock and determined that the fw's had to have at least a 4.5% pitch for drainage, or the sod would stay wet, and actually set it at about 6% to allow for contractor error.  Actually, I think Zoysia would hold a ball on a cross slope of up to 10% so we might have been a bit conservative there and causes extra grading.

As to the other fw's, we trenched the irrigation in rock, so we didn't need 3' fills for that, but most areas did need to be covered with at least some topsoil from various areas around the course.

Did you ever look at those Ross fws' I mentioned, and do you have the same opinion?  I think those were horse and scooped.

Once, Danny Maples was showing slides of how the horse and scoop worked, and noted that if the driver hit a stump, he could flip right into the horses behind.  I commented that we don't use horse and scoop anymore, but we can still run into some real horses asses during construction nonetheless!

So, in some ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same!

[George Pazin]

But I did notice that it seemed like nearly all the landing areas had a bit of fill to them.

Do you mind if I ask how you noticed this? By comparing it to surrounds, or something else?

[Matthew Hunt]

Tom, thanks for the interesting answer for the earth moving question.

I failed to make this clear in previous that my grievance was not with the site but how the visual potential is exposed.

Matt