Is natural the ultimate goal?

[Jim Engh]

Oops! Sorry this was supposed to be a new topic. ROOKIES!!!

Greetings all! Apologies for not posting in a while.

Tom Doak made a post a couple of months ago as follows.....
 
"Heck, when I can have a friendly exchange with Jim Engh and not even mention how artificial his courses are, you know there's something wrong here."

I consider Tom a friend and we have had some fun conversations over the past few years. Yep, his delivery style does make me giggle.  Alas, the point of the issue is that his comment has peaked my curiosity.

Is natural the ultimate goal? 

Jim

[Andy Troeger]

Personally I think seeing as golf is supposed to be a game and all...FUN should be the ultimate goal.

Nothing against naturalism, often times its a nice feature if the property has something going for it to begin with, but it wouldn't be #1 to me.

[Joe Hancock]

Quote from: Jim Engh on Today at 01:48:02 pm


Is natural the ultimate goal?

Jim


Jim,
You pose what is, for me, a very easy question to answer.

Natural is the ultimate goal for those who try to design that way. I would shudder to think what great courses would never have existed if it was the only goal of all architects.

Your style is not something that should have to be reconciled by another methodology or philosophy. Many enjoy your courses and you obviously choose to design the way you do. Whether Tom Doak or any one of us chooses to agree with it is of small consequence in the big picture.

So, my answer is:

No.

Joe

[Kyle Henderson]

I'm all for variety. If every course was completely naturalistic, naturalism would lose its luster. Ditto if everyone started to emulate the "Engh Method."

Hopefully, designers will borrow a bit of what is known to work well, inject a lot of their unique talents, and produce a variety of  original courses which push the envelope without sacrificing playability for the sake of experimentalism.

[Doug Ralston]

Natural?

Jim, how could there ever be fairways in the desert? How many places are sand pits 'natural'? Must all courses in forest areas be played between trees?

One of the best courses I have played; Eagle Eye in Michigan, was completely 'contrived'. It is still great to play.

We have more options today because we have more powerful tools. I expect them to be used as a creative architect forsees. New ideads are almost always called unnatural, at first.

The only 'natural' possible, it seems to me, is to find a rabbit hole, and a place to start several hundred yards away, and do nothing but play.

All that said; capturing the natural beauty of a landform and building a course that accentuates it can certainly be a wonderous thing. Jim, you have done that well enough.

Doug

[Jason Topp]

Natural is not the ultimate goal, but it is a means to achieving the ultimate goal of a fun, beautiful and interesting experience.  

I think you fight an uphill battle when you try to do it through artificial looking golf courses.  TPC Sawgrass is a really fun layout, but feels like a battle in a garden rather than a battle in nature.  I think the experience suffers a bit for that reason.

[JMorgan]

Preferences make the world go round.  I would ask if there is an ultimate goal at all.   In fact some courses try too hard to imitate nature and end up looking worse than those courses that underline or emphasize a particular "theme" and repeat it well.

[Carl Rogers]

I am lost by this thread. 
How can a putting green and sand trap be natural?  How can a golf course be natural?
Is it that we have an innate sense of an idealized pastoral abstraction of what looks good or what is "natural"?

[Norbert P]

If every course was completely naturalistic, naturalism would lose its luster.

Naturalism is timeless and time is the true judge of art.

[Brent Boardman]

This all gets lost in the theoretical discussion of what exactly is nature.  To an extent, natural is "well, it was here when I got here, and it looks about right..."  Someday someone is gonna find something I dropped in the woods and think it's an ancient sherd from the natives - which, to an extent, it will be.

[Michael Dugger]

Naturalism is the goal for me, yes.

It sets better with me when it comes to looking at the game as a journey, exploring the wild blue yonder.  I want to be thrilled.

It seems to more closely resemble "golf in the beginning," which I only reference because it seems some credence ought to be paid to those who invented the game after all.

It sets better with me because I've yet to see any architect do it better than mother nature herself.

It sets better with me when it comes to beating back those naysayers who say golf courses are terrible for the environment.

Blatantly artificial is what I can find on any putt putt course.  Indeed there is a place for windmills and clown faces, but that's exactly where that place is, the putt putt course.

[Kirk Gill]

Jim, how could there ever be fairways in the desert? How many places are sand pits 'natural'? Must all courses in forest areas be played between trees?

I've long had the same feelings as expressed by Doug Ralston. When I examine how I feel about a golf course, I don't think so much in terms of whether it looks natural or not, but more in terms of how it sits in the space it inhabits, how it connects with the surroundings to create a pleasing combination. Sometimes it seems to sit effortlessly in the land it inhabits, and I feel like I just "found" it there (TOC), and other times it's the juxtaposition between the course and the surrounding area that inspires, where the course couldn't possibly be there, but it is, and I get to play on it (Banff Springs). I feel perfectly willing to be astounded by the infinite inventiveness of nature and the cleverness of man, in concert, in opposition, or either, standing alone.

[Kyle Henderson]

I am lost by this thread. 
How can a putting green and sand trap be natural?  How can a golf course be natural?
Is it that we have an innate sense of an idealized pastoral abstraction of what looks good or what is "natural"?

I believe "naturalistic" (e.g. a green that appears to be merely a mown patch of grass in prexisting meadow) is the term best used to describe what golf course architects produce, not something genuinely natural (e.g. a rabbit hole in a meadow)

[Ken Moum]

I'm inclined to think that golf courses are better if they look as if they could have just happened.

That give you a lot of leeway, as there are plenty of wild and wooly landforms in this world. And they don't always look like the surrounding terrain.

The "unnatural" stuf that grates on me as a golfer is courses where it's obvious that everything was built by man, and none of it even slightly blends with the land.

I've played too many holes where the green looks like a pile of dirt that someone flattened out @ about three feet above the existing ground.

Nothing done by the architects around here is going to resemble that.

Ken

[Kyle Henderson]

If every course was completely naturalistic, naturalism would lose its luster.

Naturalism is timeless and time is the true judge of art.

Yes, but if every portrait was a derivative of the Mona Lisa, would many of us not grow tired of the genre altogether?

[Joe Hancock]

Michael Dugger said it many times in his post....for me, or...me....which is honestly admitting he has

Personal Preferences

That is what starts and ends this thread, for any of us.

Joe

[Brent Boardman]

In short, I believe most courses should be "contextual" (though I know that term is also loaded) instead of relying on the term "natural".  No one could then feel courses were monotonous, as so many different contexts exist within the land.  Where "contextual" is not readily a possibility, the course should simply be interesting and enjoyable.  We would then arrive at an acceptable balance (and not always feel like we were attempting to appreciate the same painting).

[Kalen Braley]

In laymans terms, I think naturalism is this:

The appearance that a small army of mowers was unleashed on a plot of land as it exists to indicate where the fairways and greens are.  A course that is naturalistic may have very well had lots of earth moved, but it appears to have not been touched, just mowed.

The biggest disconnect for me is having bunkers in parkland stlye courses, but on a sandy stretch of dunes, this is realistic.

Is naturalism a good goal to shoot for you?  I say heck yes.  But is it the only goal?  No way.  I don't think any of us would find much fun playing a course that sits dead flat on the land with no undulations of obstacles to negotiate.  Think corn field in dead flat Iowa plowed under and a naturalistic course put in its place.

[Bradley Anderson]

I think that harmony is the ultimate goal. Instead of asking if a golf course is natural, we should ask if it is in harmony with it's environment. And that includes a lot of elements that are not even necessarily golf related: the clubhouse architecture, the native terrain, the natural features of the land, the native flora, the community history and traditions, and the skyline, just to name a few.

Augusta is a club that engenders one of the strongest feelings of harmony of any club that I have ever visited, but  most of the golf features are not even particularly natural (although everyone has their own definition for what is natural). Everything about the Augusta, from the entrance drive, the clubhouse, the glassy smooth wide-open fairways, the towering pines, the pine straw, the huge rolling greens, the magnolias, the cabins, even the aroma; all the elements complement each other. You don't have competing themes at Augusta, but rather one motif. And this is a very hard thing to contrive. It requires extraordinary personalities to design and preserve.

[J Sadowsky]

Ernie Els also isn't a naturalist. 

http://www.linksmagazine.com/best_of_golf/columns/ernie_els/ernie_els_golf_course_design.aspx

Although there is some discussion of trying to be natural (obviously, I think that's always a consideration - artificiality for articiality's sake seems silly), I think this is Els' most important goal, and I think courses that pull it off are brilliant:

"This way, you can make up your own mind as to which shot to play as opposed to the course dictating a specific style. I feel this sort of creativity makes for the most enjoyable golf, no matter where you are in the world. "

Looking at photos, that's what makes Kinloch so beautiful - its not the most natural course (though its not overly artificial either), but the sheer number of options when playing is what makes it unique. 

[RJ_Daley]

If all courses were proposed to sit upon interesting land of ideal contouring and a setting that reflected a harmony with the regional land masses, then I'd say that it would be a pity to create or manufacture a golf course that insults those natural landforms and regional setting.  

Anotherwords, flattening a nicely rolling site instead of designing among and over such contours to use the land for strategy and golf feature-hazard creation that fits the areas natural tie-ins to the horizons, etc.  If one imposes many water features such as lakes and artificial water courses on a rolling prairie or sand hills, it insults nature.  On, tidewater, or low lands, one must use water and dig lakes for FW fill, etc.  But, if one insults the subtlety of low tidewater or lowlands, with goofy artificial series of willy nilly improbably mounds looking like a dead elephant burial grounds, it insults nature, as well.  

Even in the improbable areas for the siting of a golf course, such as someone mentioned Banff, there was a process that Stanley Thompson employed to find a very natural routing through the terraine and sited very plausible hole corridors that in no way insulted nature. (even though I haven't been there and am only going by photos I've seen)

So, if there is a flat piece of ground, with unremarkable or no distinquishing natural character, then the archie can still either create or manufacture something of great fun and strategic interest by finding 'something' that makes it plausibly tied into the ground and surrounds as a regional siting tied to a distant distiguishing feature, or just not make it so improbable that it offends the eye.

I think we do have preferences but generally know when something is implausible or whacky VS something that makes good golf sense and is natural and restrained or strikes just that right balance of manufactured artificiality to yield good golf.  

[Jeff Spittel]

Even for those who consider naturalism akin to a dry aged prime rib eye and Caymus Reserve, I'm sure a greasy cheeseburger and cold Budweiser is appealing from time to time.

 

[Michael Dugger]

In the beginning golf was played on linksland.  It was the ideal terrain because of its' natural characteristics.  It was unusable for agriculture, so towns did not deprive themselves of opportunities to grow food in lieu of golf.

The natural rolls and springy turf made it fun to hit a ball over the surface.

Sheep, seeking refuge from the wind. dug their way into the backside of humps.  Over time wind eroded these humps and bunkers were formed.

What's not natural about this?

[Joe Hancock]

I think we do have preferences but generally know when something is implausible or whacky VS something that makes good golf sense and is natural and restrained or strikes just that right balance of manufactured artificiality to yield good golf. 

Like Lawsonia, for instance?

 

[Richard Choi]

Hmmm... interesting topic. I would like to put it in a slight different context.

I think the goal for any artistic creation (I would categorize golf courses as an artistic creation), I believe is to create desired harmony with its surroundings.

Our brains are wired so that we recognize patterns in everything we hear, see, touch, etc. When something is not harmonic with its surroundings, it causes our brains to react in stress (evolutionary trait that helped us survive in the wild).

This fact is elegantly demonstrated in music. Most people have favorable responses to music by Beethoven or Mozart because they have very natural progression of chords that create beautiful harmonic resonance with how we feel.

I believe this is the same kind of sensation that people feel when they see a golf course that looks like it is part of the land and blends in beautifully with the surroudings. And it is what most people here are calling "naturalistic" design.

However, you can have slight disruptions in harmony to produce different, but still desired effects. Just like Stravinsky provoked a riot with his use of dissonant chords in "Rite of Spring", very modern designs such as the Stadium course goes against the accepted norm to produce "dissonant" harmony with it surrounding in a very calculated manner. And while the initial reaction from the public may be strongly against it, over time people get used to the dissonant qualities and the appreciation for the different harmonic quality grows.

This is pretty much how all artistic endeavors grow over time. I expect golf courses to follow the same paradigm.

So I would say "natural" should never be the ultimate goal. But how to shape the perception of "natural" should be.