[Ryan Farrow]

I think we can all agree that sites like Pacific Dunes, should look like Pacific Dunes.

And sites like ummmmmm.... ___________ should look, well... a little more natural.


But when you are given a flat, boring, average site, why should you even try for natural? Why not go for something different, something outrageous, un-natural, something that doesn't fit?

At what point is it not worth fitting the land and "tying in" to existing grades.


Like this:






or... a more recent example, like this:





(couldn't find the French Lick picture I was looking for)






And is this: what made Pete Dye, Pete Dye?




If you can't pull off a natural, free flowing look why does modern architecture always stay safe with boring, predicable shaping and containment mounding? ...... AND CONTAINED LOWS!



Where is the funk?

[Joe Hancock]

Ryan,

I agree. I thought the same thing when that MacKenzie photo hit my screen.

I'll see if I can't come up with more visual examples to go along with yours.

Joe

[Jeff_Brauer]

Ryan,

Actually you make a good point and should/could start a great philosophical debate.  In reality, the mounding and even extravagantly shaped bunkers that really (dating to Mac) don't look like nature, are attempts to create artistic man made shapes that appeal to the eye.  They are probably a necessity after golf moved to such a variety of sites.

For years, the biggest mystery I had in golf course architecture was why Fazio would move so much earth to create a look where not much was moved at all!  (on some of his sites, I still wonder why he does it)  I always figured that if you move the earth, or build a bunker, people ought to know it, since the owner paid for it!

That said, I got the impression that the course in the photos was simply an early Mac, before he had fully developed his sense of aesthetics or his builder just didn't quite get it.  The best feature is the graceful valley approach to the green.  The rest, not so much.

[Anthony Gray]

   Ryan,

  I think the contours of the course should be consistant. If it is funky then make all the holes funky. It is still golf. It is still play it as it lies and how many.

       Anthony

  And yes these type of concepts outside the box made Pete Dye.

[Ryan Farrow]

Anthony, I fully understand differing opinions on this, I probably was one of them up until recently. It really took me a while to appreciate the visuals of Petes work, and even and too an extent Raynors. I would call it a developed taste.

When I first got into GCA I was reading all the "Golden Agers" and Doak , and Shackelford.... and all you hear about is making things look natural. So it really took me a while to dig myself out of that mindset.


Jeff, Mackenzie is a confusing guy, I would agree with you and buy into your premise but he still did work like that throughout his career, to a smaller extent with the shaping and Augusta, and also at the Jockey Club. I can't remember reading about his thoughts on this type of less natural architecture.

[Tom Naccarato]

I tend to disagree with the Fazio thing.

I think his stuff does look like earth has been moved and lots of it. But thats because I'm looking more then others. (probably) If one were to look at some of the holes at the Quarry of La Quinta, you should see one of the holes, how much has been built up, yet little effort to hide it. Still, its actually a decent golf hole and that doesn't mean its bad in any respect; just shows how much earth he would move to just to create a golf hole. (which of course adds to the cost of building a golf course)

If I had any point of contention it would be the movement that makes no sense. Mackenzie's movement makes a lot of sense to me, and the entire reasoning of putting the people on those slopes off of the green was to show the amount of movement in those pictures. I think the photographer wanted to show that movement.

[Andy Hughes]

Ryan, there can't be much universal 'beef' about unnatural shapes--the much-loved Old Course has the most unnaturally spherical bunkers I have ever seen. Or maybe the the 'beef' is not fairly distributed.

Wonderful hole, but with apologies in advance to Melvyn, can anyone really think this is a natural look?

[Andy Troeger]

When I first got into GCA I was reading all the "Golden Agers" and Doak , and Shackelford.... and all you hear about is making things look natural. So it really took me a while to dig myself out of that mindset.

Interesting comment, and the exact opposite of my original perspective in the sense that I didn't really consider the "natural" look being better until I started reading this website. I see the point, especially from a cost perspective, but from just an aesthetic viewpoint I really don't care if something is natural or not if it looks good. I really couldn't care less if something plays "natural" if its fun to play. Its a nice goal, but I think overemphasized here. I like a lot of the stuff done both by Pete Dye and Jim Engh--not exactly minimalist, but very fun.

[Rich Goodale]

Spot on, Brother Naccarato!

The "old" Road Hole Bunker (c. 1976) was far better than the current version.  Same with "Hell"...........

Fra Ricardo

[Tom Naccarato]

Brother Goodale, I couldn't agree more!

[Andy Hughes]

Rich, I agree completely. Do you believe the changes are for aesthetics or costs?

As much as I love the course I wish there was more complaint about the bunkers. Of course, I say that as someone not responsible for maintaining them...

[Rich Goodale]

AHughes

It's all about money--maintenance from the cost side, what the Links Trust thinks the punters prefer from the revenue side.

J-P

[TEPaul]

Ryan:

I've seen some of those old Mackenzie photos before. Some of them are pretty shocking looking to me as an attempt at some kind of total exaggeration of Nature or a natural look. And it's not as if noone back then noticed what an exaggeration it was. There's a very fine article from 1919 by Horace Hutchinson about this very thing.

Of course I don't know it and probably never will or could but something tells me that when Mackenzie looked back from say the late 1920s at those early photos of what did quite a bit earlier he probably was not at all proud of it.  

[Adam Clayman]

It appears it was the sand bunkering within those hillocks which didn't work. The mounding made the cut and was used to great affect in South America ...

 



and So. Georgia ...




Think 8th green.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Adam,

Your comment reminds me that RTJ went out of his way to build 4-5 mounds and then put the sand in below them.  I never thought of it as a revolutionary approach or anything, but certainly building bunkers in one big slope as in the MacK pix above is not as natural looking as setting them down in the mounds.....

[Kalen Braley]

Ryan,

I agree with you in large part about bringing the funk.

For me however I prefer a funky hole when it seems to blend in with its surrounds.  Consider holes like 6 and 16 at PD....plenty funky, but also with a good mix of naturalism.  This is my preferred m/o for golf holes.

That being said, if one can't pull this off and blend the funk with nature's hand, then just bringing is next best IMO.  Some of Engh's stuff comes to mind like the 14 at Redlands Mesa where the approach is over a giant boulder.  And the 17th par 3 hole at this same course gave me a similar ear to ear grin.

I'll post some pics tonight.

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

Next time you come up to Michigan, we will take a walk in the Sleeping Bear Dunes.  I don't think those MacKenzie bunkers at Headingley look natural at all, BUT the Doctor was not wrong about blowouts starting at the top of the dune, and not the bottom.  You're just so used to seeing common golf bunkering that what's natural would look unnatural to you.

Ryan:

I agree with you completely, that if one has a flat site, anything goes as to what you should make it look like.  Bob Cupp tried to do something like that years ago at Hilton Head, but it was doomed not only because it was radical, but because the golf course was stretched out through development, so the geometric forms stood out against trees, etc.  I am waiting for someone to have the guts to build a completely pop art style golf course with wild landforms -- which also plays well.  I am betting it will take the collaboration of a brilliant landscape architect with an imaginative golf course architect -- but I don't know of any clients who are looking to try something as daring as that.

AHughes:  You are right that a lot of the bunker shapes in the UK are unnatural, but that's because they have completely lost track of the art of building them.  Practically none of the bunkers on the Old Course were round or symmetrical when I was living there in 1982 ... but they've all been rebuilt a few times since, and the guys rebuilding them have lost track of what's natural.

[Jeff_Brauer]

TD,

Was the Mac bunker model those kind of blowouts, or the low area where sheep supposedly huddled at his beloved TOC to create the first bunkers?  Or, the dug out camoflauge trenches of WWI?

Or later, just abstracted artistic shapes, like ANGC no. 10? (yes I know, very simplified from original version now.

Come to think of it, when did the Mac bunker style evolve to its 1926 Australian style and why?  If he had been to CA, did he see Tillie's 1916 SFGC work or any of Bell's work?  There are similarities and I wonder how much each managed to influence each other.

[Andy Hughes]

AHughes:  You are right that a lot of the bunker shapes in the UK are unnatural, but that's because they have completely lost track of the art of building them.  Practically none of the bunkers on the Old Course were round or symmetrical when I was living there in 1982 ... but they've all been rebuilt a few times since, and the guys rebuilding them have lost track of what's natural.

Rich, or 'Jean Paul' , suggests cost is an issue. I imagine it is easier (i.e. less costly) to maintain a perfectly round bunker. Its almost hard to believe those performing work upon TOC and those who are in charge the course have lost their way so far from a more natural look. I had just assumed the 'perfect circle' was in vogue in Scotland.

[Mark Bourgeois]

TD,

Was the Mac bunker model those kind of blowouts, or the low area where sheep supposedly huddled at his beloved TOC to create the first bunkers?  Or, the dug out camoflauge trenches of WWI?

Or later, just abstracted artistic shapes, like ANGC no. 10? (yes I know, very simplified from original version now.

Come to think of it, when did the Mac bunker style evolve to its 1926 Australian style and why?  If he had been to CA, did he see Tillie's 1916 SFGC work or any of Bell's work?  There are similarities and I wonder how much each managed to influence each other.

Jeff, the model absolutely was trench building.  Mac's muse here wasn't simply Nature the Artist but rather Nature the Engineer.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mark,

In one of the real strengths of gca. com, someone posted the trench articles by Mac a while back. I read them all, personally concluded that his point was simpler than many here made it out to be, but highly exageratted as to its design importance, in part to create some differentiation between his brand and others.  JMHO.

I still believe he had artistic flare and that his bunkers are simply fairly abstract art.  I don't see a lot of connection to trenches, blowouts, or other features of nature. I think he built them simply as works of art.  Nothing in a cape and bay type bunker is truly natural or nature inspired.  It certainly isn't trench inspired!

[Mark Bourgeois]

Jeff

His certainly was given to exaggeration but as I've never built a trench I can't say whether his method was indeed superior!  Just to be clear on the point I was making: Mac wrote about the proper way to construct a trench so that it wouldn't collapse.  This was analogous to the "proper" slope for bunkers as well as the location of the edge of the sand relative to the crown of the hummock.

This seems to be the best / first documented "inspiration" for his bunker style.  There are aesthetic connections to trenches, but unlike the engineering connection those don't stand alone, as the TOC influence must be counted, too.

By the way, a lot of the capes on RM bunkers were added later and not part of Mac's original design.

Mark

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mark,

didn't know the bunkering I was playing was not mac at all! Damn!

As I recall the trench article, he had photos showing straight lines and then his method - a rolling top edge covered with chunks of sod so that to the enemy, it appeared blended into the landscape and wasn't obvious.

I wrote on this site that I thought the biggest part of that method applicable to golf design was to feather out slopes about twice as far as you think they need to be, and not to end an artificial slope abruptly.  Nothing more, nothing less, but then I like to simplify things for my own feeble little mind......that said, I think I'm right!

However, I don't recall being impressed with the idea of a trench collapsing.  Certainly, soldiers weren't going to dig a trench that was a mile wide in the name of expediency.  Broader slopes on the outside might limit collapses, but as above, I basically thought his point was how well they disguised the trench from the far side.  On a golf cousre, that would be like "you can't see the bunkers when you look back from the green." Now that comment can go on the thread about golf writing (started as every club in the bag)

[TEPaul]

"I still believe he had artistic flare and that his bunkers are simply fairly abstract art.  I don't see a lot of connection to trenches, blowouts, or other features of nature. I think he built them simply as works of art.  Nothing in a cape and bay type bunker is truly natural or nature inspired.  It certainly isn't trench inspired!"

Mr. Jeffrey:

In my opinion, that is one of the real on-going misconceptions about MacKenzie's theory on camouflage translated from Boer military trench constuction to golf course architecture.

One thing you need to keep in mind about Boer military trenches (that were manned) is they looked nothing at all like any kind of military trenches that preceded them or were used by the British in the Boer War. That's basically the point and it's what Mackenzie picked up on.

One should also keep in mind that apparently the Boers also constructed military trenches that looked exactly like the highly artificial looking British trenches but the Boer's didn't man them. They were dummy trenches to draw away British fire from where the Boers really were.

So clearly Mackenzie never intended his bunkering or golf architecture to look anything like the standard rectangular highly artificial construction of British military trenching.

I also think in the back of Mackenzie's mind the theory or philosophy he picked up from the Boers and applied to golf course architecture was, among a few other things such as "Tying in", supposed to be a form of visual and strategic deception; in other words there was not supposed to be a lot of "shot dictation" if you know what I mean. Nothing was supposed to be too obvious in where to go or not (and this may've been the only real correlation he made or meant to make between firing ordnance at targets and hitting golf shots at particular targets). Sometimes what looked like the right place to go strategically was the wrong place and what looked like the wrong place to go was the right place to go (just like what the Boers did to the British with their manned highly natural looking visually deceptive trenches compared to their artificial looking highly obvious dummy trenches). A few of the holes of Cypress are apparently textbook examples of that (according to Shackelford).

This probably had a lot to do with the fact his style and architecture was sometimes referred to as "Looks harder than it plays"----eg it's not too obvious where to go with your ball (like the British firing shots on the wrong target that's unmanned).

[Jeff_Brauer]

My good Mr. Paul,

Are you "a-pauled" at my analysis, good sir?

I had forgotten about the dummy trenches, and recalled that the basic was Boers mimicked nature, Brits used artificial.  I recall the article being about how to better mimic nature, although there certainly may have been some military strategy in there as well.....

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