Understanding, Appreciating and differentiating the architecture isn't always a

[Patrick_Mucci]

conscious process.

To some golfers it is, to others it isn't.

Architecture comes into focus differently for the wide spectrum of golfers.

Golf has a simple task.

The golfer must get his ball from point A to Point B on a field specifically prepared for play, in as few strokes as possible.

If we start with a playing field that's 3, 4, 5 or 6 football fields, end to end, the task becomes redundant, uninteresting with little challenge and no joy, especially with repeat play

It's only with the introduction of the architectural features that challenge and interest are created, especially with repeat play.

Some golfers understand the features as they relate to their game and the tactical plan they must forge to complete the task, some don't. 

Some understand the task, but ignore or can't recognize the tactical signals sent by the features.

Some see the features and signals consciously, others, like TEPaul, see them unconsciously or subconsciously, but, every golfer detects the features.  Yet, they don't necessarily understand the signal sent by the features in a conscious sense.

The notion that "golfers" don't care about the architecture isn't true.

They do care, some just can't decode and verbalize the conscious and/or subconscious impact of the tactical signals, sent by the features, and the resultant impact on their brain and their play.

Golfers understand uphill shots, downhill shots, sidehill lies, water hazards, OB, bunkers, doglegs, mounds and other features.  They understand them in the moment, when they're confronted by them.  They may not understand the interrelationship of all of the features on a given hole, but, they certainly recognize the component pieces that make up a particular hole.

Why do golfers like one course and detest another ?

Something about each course must have registered differently with them.

Why do Bethpage, Kohler, Bandon, Wild Horse and others, attract golfers from near and far if the TASK is the same and the architecture DOESN'T matter ?

The task remains the same no matter which course we play.
(Remember, point A to point B)
It's the architecture that creates the variety, interest, challenge and the joy/despair that forms the overall golfing experience

While the golfer might not be able to verbalize his preferences, there can be but one factor that differentiates his likes and dislikes, the architecture.

The architecture becomes the "chemistry" between the golf course and the golfer.

The architecture, or the introduction and use of features is what the archtitect uses to thwart the golfer from the pursuit of the universal task
of getting the ball from point A to point B in as few strokes as possible.

Like obscenity, the golfer may not be able to define architecture, but he knows it when he sees it. 

If any of you don't understand this post, please call TEPaul, collect, at Happydale Farms  1-IDO-NTG-ETIT

[Mike Sweeney]

Pat,

Can you list the courses that you have played this past year? Have any of them not sniffed a Top 100 list? And playing The Knoll with two GCA junkies does not count.

Go play Split Rock in The Bronx with the locals and see how far this architecture talk goes. I am not saying that there are not "Pizza Men" out there, but the regular guy does not care for the most part. Jeez most of my frienda at Merion think I am nuts and should work on my short game instead of this stuff. They are probably right. By the way, Split Rock is a pretty good course and it has some of the best greens on any muni that I have played including Bethpage Black. Of course you will never know! 

[Mike Sweeney]

Why do golfers like one course and detest another ?

Something about each course must have registered differently with them.

For 95% of the golfers:

1. Course conditioning.

2. Price

3. Value mix of #1 and #2.

[Peter Pallotta]

Pat - thanks. That's one of the best posts I've seen in a long time.  While Mike S knows his stuff and raises plausible objections, I think I agree with you. One of the many good things about your post is that it raises a number of important and interesting  questions about how architecture is understood and discussed and ranked.
Anyway, really good stuff there

Peter

[Wayne_Freedman]

Patrick,

It's well articulated and almost a sell, but I agree with Mike. You live in a dream world.

Give us ten golfers, and they will give us ten different reasons for playing; from fellowship, to ego, to business, to smoking cigars, to drinking, to obsession, to wacking the ball a long way, to chasing women, to escaping reality, to showing off their new clubs, to gambling.  Very few will mention architecture.

[Bill Brightly]

Well written, Pat.

Mike and Wayne are right, some high percentage of regular golfers, I'd say 95%, don't care too much about architecture.

I was qualifying for our club championship this weekend, playing with our best golfers, and I would casually point out the planned changes we would be making to restore our course back to the architect's original intent...I can sum up their responses like this: "yeah, yeah, that's nice, but where can we add more length?" It actually was pretty funny when I think how many hours I have spent studying the history of our architecture, and their concern is simply "get it over 7000 yards"...

As it turns out, we do have several new tees in the plans and I like them because the existing (and restored) bunkers will be positioned in accordance with the arch's intent, but those guys dont care about the architecture...maybe the best we can hope for is that they apprecaite it on a subconscious level?

[Wayne_Freedman]

Bill,
I know the feeling. Played with our club president last weekend. Nice guy. Smart guy. Good golfer.
I think he gets a few of our suggested changes, but most of the members want more length, greener grass, and more trees, not fewer ones.

"Why take out trees? It means more wind."

The idea that more wind might make the course more interesting eluded him.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Pat
Q: Why do Bethpage, Kohler, Bandon, Wild Horse and others, attract golfers from near and far if the TASK is the same and the architecture DOESN'T matter ?

A: Because no matter what else they are, they aren't boring.

[DMoriarty]

Pat,

Can you list the courses that you have played this past year? Have any of them not sniffed a Top 100 list? And playing The Knoll with two GCA junkies does not count.

Go play Split Rock in The Bronx with the locals and see how far this architecture talk goes. I am not saying that there are not "Pizza Men" out there, but the regular guy does not care for the most part. Jeez most of my frienda at Merion think I am nuts and should work on my short game instead of this stuff. They are probably right. By the way, Split Rock is a pretty good course and it has some of the best greens on any muni that I have played including Bethpage Black. Of course you will never know! 

Patrick,

It's well articulated and almost a sell, but I agree with Mike. You live in a dream world.

Give us ten golfers, and they will give us ten different reasons for playing; from fellowship, to ego, to business, to smoking cigars, to drinking, to obsession, to wacking the ball a long way, to chasing women, to escaping reality, to showing off their new clubs, to gambling.  Very few will mention architecture.

Isn't part of the point that the reasons they give might not be the real reasons, or at least not truly reflect the complexity of the reasons?   

One can do most of these other things at a variety of courses, but still some are better than others.   Golfers may not be able to explain what it is, or even know for sure, but still some will be lastingly good and some won't.

[cary lichtenstein]

I'd say that 99+% don't care about architecture and never even thought about architecture with regard to golf.

The high handicapers just want to get to point B from point A. Nothing more.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Can you list the courses that you have played this past year? Have any of them not sniffed a Top 100 list? And playing The Knoll with two GCA junkies does not count.

St George's for starters.

Go play Split Rock in The Bronx with the locals and see how far this architecture talk goes.

Mike, you and others have completely missed the gist of this thread.
Please reread the opening post.

I am not saying that there are not "Pizza Men" out there, but the regular guy does not care for the most part.

You don't think that when a guy hits it into a fairway or greenside bunker, that they don't care, or when they're above the hole on a steep green, that they don't care ?  Or when they're faced with carrying a pond that fronts a green, or when a creek flanks a green ?  Of course they do.

They inherently recognize the good and bad places to be on a golf course.
They recognize easy and hard shot.

Just because they can't articulate the entirety of the situation, architecturally, as Tommy Naccarato or TEPaul might, doesn't mean that they don't care about architecture.  They do.  It's the architecture that affects their game and their scoring.

Jeez most of my frienda at Merion think I am nuts and should work on my short game instead of this stuff. They are probably right.

Your friends are just as much into the architecture, as it affects their game and play, as you are during your round.

I'm not talking about discussing architecture after a round, I'm talking about the recognition, by the golfer, of the architecture as he plays his round.  And to state, as  you and others have, that the golfer is clueless and/or disintereted in the architecture during his round is misguided to Paulian proportions.

By the way, Split Rock is a pretty good course and it has some of the best greens on any muni that I have played including Bethpage Black. Of course you will never know! 

I'm not so sure about that.
I have played Sandpines, Essex County West and Tokatee amongst others

[Adam Clayman]

Bill,
I know the feeling. Played with our club president last weekend. Nice guy. Smart guy. Good golfer.
I think he gets a few of our suggested changes, but most of the members want more length, greener grass, and more trees, not fewer ones.

"Why take out trees? It means more wind."

The idea that more wind might make the course more interesting eluded him.

Most of the members would therefore then be the lowest common denominator. No?

This goes directly to the lessons Golf can teach us about our wants. These "most golfers" don't seem to care to delve deeper into the subject and only react to their wants and desires. For the most part these opinions are not based in equity. Hopefully someone who has delved deeper in the subject is around to voice opposition to the subjective rookie mistakes most golfers spout.

[Peter Pallotta]

"This goes directly to the lessons Golf can teach us about our wants..."

Adam - That's a terrific way of putting it.  It seems to me that golf (and golf course architecture) CAN teach those lessons, but only to those willing to be taught.  Sorry to trot out Max Behr again, but on the question of whether he was right in his views about golf as a sport (and on the kind of golf course architecture that best supports that sport), I think he was -- except that he seems to have overestimated the human desire and capacity for learning lessons...

Peter

[Kirk Gill]

I'd say that 99+% don't care about architecture and never even thought about architecture with regard to golf.

The high handicapers just want to get to point B from point A. Nothing more.

Cary, with all due respect I disagree, and in Pat's post he points out something that I DO agree with on this issue.

Golfers understand uphill shots, downhill shots, sidehill lies, water hazards, OB, bunkers, doglegs, mounds and other features.  They understand them in the moment, when they're confronted by them.  They may not understand the interrelationship of all of the features on a given hole, but, they certainly recognize the component pieces that make up a particular hole.

Of course, the arrangement of those architectural features might not be the "reason" that a golfer wants to play, the beer and the cart girls and the conditioning might all seem more important to them, but there comes a time when every golfer grabs a club and hits a ball, and has to deal with the stuff that's in between him and where he wants the ball to go. The player may just want to get from point a to point b, but the player also acknowledges what's between those points, and on some level deals with that when preparing to hit a shot.

Of course, it must be said that some humans are just absolute swine, and there are some golfers who fit into that category. I just like to believe that they constitute nowhere near the majority of golfers. Perhaps those "swine" are only in need of a little learning, or guidance. And as to whether or not great golf courses should be played by those who don't appreciate their architectural greatness, you can go one of two directions on that. Jesus said "cast not pearls before swine," but William Carlos Williams made another point when he said "Children pick flowers. Let them. Though having them in hand they have no further use of them but leave them crumpled at the curb's edge."

Am I wrong or have I been extraordinarily pompous lately?

[DMoriarty]

Most golfers don't enjoy talking about architecture, don't necessarily understand how it all fits together, and are very much out of their element when pressured to comment on architecture, especially among the no-it-all types that inhabit this place. 

But this is different than enjoying good architecture.   It is enjoying a good book.   Most just enjoy the book, or they don't.   Most are not interested in understanding, much less discussing, the intricacies of the writing process, the plot structure, the tricks of an author's trade.  In fact for many it would make the book less enjoyable to have to consider all this extraneous (from their perspective) garbage.   

But it would be foolish to think that these things were not important just because the average reader could not expound on their importance. 

[Jerry Kluger]

Most golfers - I don't care what their handicap is - take architecture to mean how the course looks not how the course plays or how to play the course.  Only after they see a positive result from some architectural feature do they ever consider how architecture affects their play. 

I would think that players at Kohler or Bandon are much more likely to care about architecture than those who play Bethpage or Wild Horse.  I'm not saying that the architecture is better, but there is a better chance that they will appreciate the architecture. 

[Patrick_Mucci]

Jerry, et. al.,

Golfers recognize architectural features and the tactical signals they send to the eye.

Golfers recollect the incremental risks presented by the features they've played.

Given the choice of a deep, steep faced bunker and a shallow one, they'll try to avoid the deep one, and while they'll avoid the shallow one, it doesn't have the same fear factor as the deep one, hence it will be discounted in the context of the risk of challenging it.

The same for streams or ponds that must be carried.
The golfer sees those features and understands the consequences for failure to carry them.  But, if the carry isn't a do/die carry, they too are marginalized in the golfers mind.

Golfers see the terrain and architectural features.

Based on that information they develop a plan of play

They attempt execute that plan.

They understand the consequences for failure in terms of the features.

They understand "rough" and its impact on their game.
"                           "bunkers"  " their  "  "
"                            "water hazards"  "  "

Their understanding and it's incorporation into their game could fall under the general heading of course management.

However, there are those golfers who understand architecture, who fail in the course management department for several reasons.

1.     They have an inflated view of their abilities
2.     They're reckless.

But, that doesn't mean that they don't understand the architecture and its purpose.