Rich -
thanks for that post. Can you expand on it a bit. What I found particularly interesting is the "critical final 5%" idea, i.e. that an Old Tom could instantly see the golf holes and lay them out in a day (the 95%), but that the final 5% is what really made the difference in creating a great golf course. If routing was and is such an important part of the process (especially prior to the earth-moving years), what kind of things/work/ideas were involved in that final 5% that was so crucial? I guess what I'm asking is: how can so little mean so much?
Thanks
Peter
Thanks, Peter
That "final 5%" idea is hardly mine--it is a pretty well known concept relative any sort of project management. The theory that skilled practitioners of any "art" can get 95% of the job conceptualized almost immediately is mine, and based on my own experience and my observation of others. In this context, the only way you can define that final 5% at the beginning is by calling it the "je ne sais quoi" factor. You know you have most of the problem licked, but you also know that there is something out there you have missed that is critical. Finding and fixing that elusive 5% is one of the key skills of any management task.
For a static art (e.g. painting, poetry, music), you can try to find and fix that final 5%, but once you put your work to paper or canvas its damned difficult to do any restoration. You can change the poem or the song but then it really isn't the same work that it used to be, and the prior work still exists, on paper, somewhere.
A golf course, on the other hand is almost infinitely more mutable that static art. Even if not touched at all after conception it changes from day one and will look more different for every year it exists. Does anybody think that today's Pine Valley looks anything like the course that Crump left, or even the course that some of our esteemed members first played back in the 50's and 60's? Courses are also much more complex than other forms of art or artifice because of their vast scale, their exposure to meteorloogical and geological forces and, most importantly) their continuing relationship with man.
Since they are mutable, getting that "final 5%" is far less important than it is in, say, composing a symphony since the architect must know that he will never get everything right the first time, and the course will change regardless of what skill or effort he puts into its design and construction. It is for this reason, I think, that so many of the greatest courses were designed by amateurs--they never considered themselves to be artists, but rather just active and passionate participants in an ongoing process.
Rich