Is the pursuit of a natural appearance really only about the look?

[Dan King]

Sean Arble writes:
I agree with you.  But what happens when nature doesn't offer up any variety?

Doze it until it looks natural :-)

That's how I separate courses I like from ones I don't like, not by how much work went in it, but how much work in it attempting to make the game more fair. They exceed some internal limit I have set, they are overly artificial. They stay under my internal number and I like them, regardless how much dirt was moved.

BCrosby writes:
Spoken like a true Max Behrian.

I think I'll put that on my résumé. You think any law schools would be impressed with my Behrianism?

Nature messes with your rational expections about golfing outcomes.

Damn, I like that. I might just get it embroidered on a pillow (changing it to expectations).

Cheers,
Dan King

If some hole does not possess striking individuality through some gift of nature, it must be given as much as possible artificially, and the artifice must be introduced in so subtle a manner as to make it seem natural.
 --A.W. Tillinghast

[George Pazin]

My feeling about natural is that it isn't about the look as much as the attitude. The artificial was an attempt to make an unfair game fair. A more natural looking course is also going to enhance the unfairness inherent in the game. On a natural course, you can hit the drive of your life right down the middle and end up with a sloping lie, with the ball well below your feet. An unnatural course goes out of its way to reward a good shot.

The difference to me is the natural course is a test of golf while an unnatural course is a test of shots.

Cheers,
Dan King

However unlucky you may be, it really is not fair to expect your adversary's grief for your undeserved misfortunes to be as poignant as your own.
  --Horace Hutchinson  (Hints on Golf)

Maybe the best post on the thread - nice job, as always.

[TEPaul]

"Dan -
Spoken like a true Max Behrian.
Nature messes with your rational expections about golfing outcomes. There is no point at which the concepts of nature and concepts of equity intersect. Which goes to the heart of why Behr thought "natural" golf designs were so important and also why golf was fundamentally different from other "games." "

Bob:

Don't forget, I think we agreed that whenever we make statements like that we absolutely have to add WHY---eg because in golf unlike most every other ball game or stick and ball game, the ball in golf is not vied for.

As amazing as it seems I think very few people truly appreciate what that means in golf or for golf.

Since the golf ball is not vied for what is the only thing that can actually physically oppose a golfer? Obviously it can only be the golf course.

But does that then necessarily mean that a golf course should look natural?

Of course not, and that's where it gets a bit more complex with people like Max Behr and his philosophy of naturalism or the look of it via man-made golf architecture.

 

[TEPaul]

Nature messes with your rational expections about golfing outcomes.

Damn, I like that. I might just get it embroidered on a pillow (changing it to expectations).


Dan:

You can’t stop there. You need to add Bob Crosby’s next sentence:

“There is no point at which the concepts of nature and concepts of equity intersect.”

While that probably is true in the natural world when it comes to golf and particularly its Rules that is precisely why golf needed to create its very own context for “equity”, and it’s pretty unique from most any other game I’ve ever heard of.

Golf’s very own unique context of “equity” really is contained in Tuft’s Rules remark;

“Like situations must be treated alike.”

Very few seem to understand or appreciate what that really means.

“The only practical answer, therefore, is to disregard the attendant circumstances and deal with similar situations in the same way. The Rules cannot assure justice but they can establish principles which are, as far as possible, based on justice…….The approach is not whether “this particular situation is unfair to me,” but rather whether “others in a similar situation and I in mine are treated alike under the Rules.”

[Dan King]

TEPaul writes:
You can’t stop there. You need to add Bob Crosby’s next sentence

My embroidery skills are not nearly that good.

While that probably is true in the natural world when it comes to golf and particularly its Rules that is precisely why golf needed to create its very own context for “equity”, and it’s pretty unique from most any other game I’ve ever heard of.

You and I have gone back and forth on this regarding the rules. I believe the USGA has gone far from the idea of equity as preached by Tuft, and now sees there job as making the game fair. If you don't like how your ball lies, or it isn't as pristine as you like it to be, pick it up, clean it off and move it.

While in most areas of life I'm all for the idea of fairness -- I generally preach the enlightenment idea of liberalism -- in golf I hate the concept of fairness. Rather than testing the shots, I like it better if golf would spend more time testing the golfers ability to handle the unfairness in the game, both in the rules and on the playing conditions.

In the game of golf I occasionally play, it doesn't matter whose fault it is, you suffer the consequences. A cat grabs your ball and takes it away, tough luck, lose the hole and move on. End up with mud all over your ball, learn to deal with it. There is an obstruction in your way, go around or over it, or lose the hole.

It's a simple game for simple people.

Cheers,
Dan King

The only really unplayable lie I can think of is when you're suppose to be playing golf and come home with lipstick on your collar.
 --Arnold Palmer

[TEPaul]

"You and I have gone back and forth on this regarding the rules. I believe the USGA has gone far from the idea of equity as preached by Tuft, and now sees there job as making the game fair."

Dan:

I'm right with you. I agree. The new era approach to equity via the Rules seems to be nobody should get treated unfairly in Rules application, and that probably has sort of scotched one of Tuft's "working principles" which is "The Rules should never attempt to deal with the exceptional."

[Neil_Crafter]

I always thought it was Behrite .....

[Joe Hancock]

Is Max Behr related to Shakes Behr? Or are they one in the same?

To be, or not to be, I guess....

[Don_Mahaffey]

George,
Building a course that looks natural, at least by modern design and construction standards is not all that hard. Especially when most of us measure “natural” by long grass blowing in the wind and man made forms that transition nicely into the “native” or “natural” surrounds. What is infinitely harder, IMO, is to get a golf course to play naturally. For example, take a hole routed downhill towards some sort of natural drainage; say a creek, river…or dry wash. Even the area where the green would be built drains towards the back…naturally. Yet, what modern architects can resist the temptation to raise the rear of the green in the interest of fairness or playability? Yet if the player has ample room to feed the ball and if the architect can restrain himself enough not to put bunkers in exactly the spot the player needs to land his ball for the proper feed, then the hole in totally playable. Yet most modern architects would raise the back of the green, or better yet the entire green area (remember greens need to be built ) and then put some sort of hazard short of the green. What would have been a simple, subtle, yet difficult hole in certain conditions now becomes just another modern golf hole with frilly bunkers and nice green contours.
That, to me, is the difference between a natural look, and a natural hole. Most just can’t leave well enough alone.
And before everyone jumps on me and says it wouldn’t function because the fwy drains onto the green…I say spend half the $$$ you would have spent tearing everything up and putting it back on some creative draining solutions. If we can move mountains to build natural looking golf courses, we can drain an area like I described.

[George Pazin]

Thanks, Don, that is precisely the sort of distinction I was hoping to draw out with this thread.

I think you'd love the 1st, 10th and 12th at Oakmont.

[Tim Nugent]

I boil it down to how well the artifical ties and blends with the native.  Un fortunately, when given a couple hundred acre farm field with 12' of fall from one end to the other, it becomes a physical impossibility to remain natural.  In that instance first you have to create a terrain that will function - see the earlier post on drainage.  Once done, now you can fine-tune the golf holes into it.  The degree in which the Terra-forming can be made to "feel" natural depends on determining the proper balance of earthmovement.  The degree in which the golf course can "feel" naturalistic is how well the golf features tie into the terrain.

Unfortunately, sometimes the ground will not allow this to occur.
For example a Florida course with a high water table.  The starting point is - all together class - "drainage".  Go down 1 foot and you hit water.  Therefore, the bottom of a bunker has to be a minimum of 1' above water (2' of gravel bedding, 4" pipe, 2 " of gravel pipe cover - 8" and you don't want your pipe sitting water).  Now add 6" of sand.  How deep do you want the bunker 3-4'? Gotta build up the fairway too. Irrigation needs 18" for laterals and 3' for main lines. - Don't want that sitting in water either.  Where do you get the dirt to do all this filling? Dig some lakes. See where this is going? What if you have wetlands? Those cattails can grow 6'.  Is there a green on the otherside? Do you want to see it or will just the top of the flag surfice?
Where I'm going with this is too many forget the fact that for decades, golf course architects have been getting the land that's no good for anything else.  The good ;land has to be far enough away from a population center to be affordable. But then will the course be economical (without deep pocket subsidies or a housing development)?
I think every architect would love to have a piece of "Ideal" property that "the golf hole were there - all I had to do was find them".  I trust they would blow-up the site just to make it fit their design but rather the opposite.
Whether the bunkers are eroded/windswept or edged is getting a bit too much play in this thread. That's just part of a bigger picture.