[Jeff_Brauer]

In Jay Flemma’s thread on my work, I mention mounding as some of the characteristics of much of my work and Adam Clayman asks why green backing mounds are so vilified. It’s a good question, and it came up in one of my conversations with a good player the other day.

Basically, I used mounds a lot (although I am no longer a mound-a-holic having completed a 12 step program)  There were the typical signs I was an addicted user…..A contractor told me he didn’t list me on his references after Art Hills refused to hire him, saying he had built “too many (insert your own colorful references here!) Brauer mounds”. ...... I dated only big breasted women.......I always ordered two scoops of ice cream.......it wasn't pretty I tell ya!

More than that, golfers seem to be getting tired of the “90’s style artistic” earthmoving.  Golf course architects pushed the envelope of what could be done in earthmoving, but even I was getting tired of looking at them.  While I see the beauty of many different design styles, most styles solve some problems and create others.

I came by my love of mounds honestly – my mentors used them a lot.  I graduated from University of Illinois in Landscape Architecture.  Their most famous graduate was Sasaki, who proclaimed “the land is putty” which doesn’t exactly jive with the long held notion in golf course architecture theory of “naturalism.”

But, in truth, even Ross and the other Golden Age guys used them a lot.  In “Golf Has Never Failed Me” Ross has a chapter called “Solid Mound Work.”  There are numerous examples of all Golden Age golf course architects using mounds to support bunkers and frame greens. And, properly done, mounding and earth forms can be a work of art.  It’s just that after 1950 or so, when earthmoving became economically feasible, mounds kept getting bigger and bigger and looked a lot less natural.  The reasons modern mounding doesn’t look as natural as older ones are many:

•   Mounds “season” over time as tree planting and changing grass lines keep them from looking as artificial.  The artificiality of mounds comes from:
o   Designing mounds on paper to relate to the green, typically placed on the inside curves, rather than ground forms
o   Over reliance on “shaped” mounds (no shaper is as varied as nature)
o   Saving fill by:
   Building steeper slopes.  RTJ and many others – like Ralph Plummer in Texas, built 5 and 6 to 1 slopes.  Mounds are often built as steep as 3:1 – the maximum slope most mowers can handle.
   Building mounds more than twice the slope of natural grade, which look out of place
   Forgetting to “feather” the toe of slope into natural grade at 6:1 or greater, even if the bulk of the mound is fairly steep, and many golf course architects lost sight of this.
   Building to the same height and slope
   Not following natural contours at all – for instance building the highest mounds on the higher natural side of the green
They do have their uses:
•   Creating a sense of “enclosure” which does seem to satisfy a human need to be in a clearly defined space.  This can be done with trees if present.
•   Framing Greens, providing a back drop when none exists otherwise
•   Keeping the average golfer’s approach shot “handy” to the green.
•   Helping the good player play more aggressively to back pins.
•   Helping all players with distance judgment

In fairways, gentle mounds (5:1 is about the max that can be mowed) can create shadow patterns and areas that are more or less desirable for a tee shot to land.  They can deflect tee shots that are not well struck.  Most golf course architects use these fairway mounds in the landing zones beyond 300 yards – building a bunker for the small percentage of players hitting it that long makes little sense, especially given that bunkers seldom trouble the stronger player.

Adjacent to fairways, they can do many of the same things:
•   Screen Objectionable Views (like the maintenance area or unsightly off site land uses)
•   Provide Safety from adjacent fairways or the practice fairway
•   Create dramatic shadow patterns
•   Give landscape plantings a good “head start” on achieving a desirable height
•   Show off landscape plantings, by allowing back plantings to be higher than front ones
•   Contain shots in lieu of greater width (although mounds also require space)
•   “Turn” doglegs left or right
•   Artificially create a “valley” fairway which is always a comfortable shot
•   Hide Cart Paths (although care must be taken to leave wide access routes)
•   Create drainage on flat ground

Mounds also have their problems:
•   They take longer and are more dangerous (in some cases) to mow
•   They require more irrigation and/or often dry out
•   While they contain moderately wild tee shots, overly wild shots that clear the mounds leave a blind approach and potential safety problems
•   When hot shots go well over the green, they result in a difficult pitch over the mound to a green sloping away, but the number of shots that go long is truly small.

The biggest reasons I have used them is to hold average players near greens to speed play on my mostly public course work.  I have seen it work on many occasions, because average players simply don’t get much back spin and their shots tend to roll out a little, and those mounds have kept them chipping from the fringe.  And, with faster greens and flatter slopes, the roll out on an average golfer’s shot is probably increasing, making small backing mounds even more necessary. 

While intended for average players, I good players who won’t play a particular golf course architects work because he doesn’t provide backing mounds, which make back pins almost inaccessible in their minds.

So why are mounds vilified in the current era?  Of course, some of it that many, many mounds were built badly - with symetrical slopes, equal heights, etc.  But, are they truly misguided, or just overused in the last dozen years?  Is it human nature to see what’s wrong with any particular feature rather than what’s right?  And do we (particularly Americans) just get used to change and new and fresh styles (even if some of those are truly “retro”?

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

I suppose it IS human nature to see what's wrong with mounds instead of seeing what's right [at least for this particular human].  You did a pretty thorough analysis above, so I wanted to chime in with a few points you didn't raise.

In the old days, mounds were built for very practical reasons, such as getting rid of stones when the fairways were prepared for seeding.  They were extremely artificial, but when they did build them, the architects back then tried to make them cool to look at, and they usually succeeded.  It helped immensely that their mounds were covered with thin native grasses which added texture and local flavor, instead of bright green grass, or worse, hay.  I love those little chocolate drops, because they were as practical as the guys who built them.

As you say, many practical reasons to build mounds still exist in today's designs.  The problem is that they exist too much.  If you use them to hide cart paths, there are cart paths to hide for the entire length of every hole.  The other problem is that the mounds often draw your eye right to the things you're trying to hide, instead of making it go away.

 But it's your list I would argue against the most.

•   Creating a sense of “enclosure” which does seem to satisfy a human need to be in a clearly defined space.  This can be done with trees if present.
•   Framing Greens, providing a back drop when none exists otherwise
•   Keeping the average golfer’s approach shot “handy” to the green.
•   Helping the good player play more aggressively to back pins.
•   Helping all players with distance judgment

In the first two cases, I would argue that the mounds most architects build are not really nearly enough to provide a strong physical backdrop.  I noticed as a photographer that it's important for the flag to be flying against a good backdrop, but if the mounds come halfway up the flagstick as viewed from the fairway, it's very distracting and counter-productive.  Plus, many architects don't seem to understand that having NO immediate backdrop and looking through to what's in the distance can be better.

In the last two cases, why would I want to help the good player play more aggressively, or help anybody with distance judgment?  My goal is to make the course more difficult while building fewer hazards, and I've found that these visual tricks can accomplish much more than people give them credit for.  I guess we are just building for different purposes.

I think the reaction to over-mounding came in the late 1980's, a few years after it became common to grade courses from wall to wall.  Before that, mounding was a limited feature, but after 1980, once an architect started building mounds, it was like he had to keep on building them clear across the property, or it would look like the client didn't have enough money.

So, using mounds is sometimes okay, as long as you have an exit strategy.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Jeff,
 
You said: ...."properly done, mounding and earth forms can be a work of art."
If that's true, then it's also true that there aren't really too many places on a golf hole that might need one. We go to a course to play, to have fun, so I don't think we initially look for what’s wrong, more that we look, decide what's right, and the remainder of what we see is then more sharply judged. It's not that we mind the 'remainder', just that it had better have some value, and it's the lack of value that eventually disturbs us.

So, if the remainder in this case is mounding, stay away from the useless and fewer people will villify it.

[Peter Pallotta]

Jeff - thanks very much for an excellent and expansive post. It was very interesting to read your views/ideas and about how they have and haven't changed over time -- and many of the reasons you cite for using mounds I'd never considered before (and, now that I do consider them, make sense). 

One of the many things that struck me, though, was how you note that "most styles solve some problems and create others."  And I think this is where the use of mounds is sometimes problematic, i.e. they seem to me to 'solve' problems that never existed in the first place. 

For example, on a course I played before the snows came, a site that naturally sloped ended up with flattened-out fairways and mounds on either side.  What problem did that solve? What would've been the 'problem' with a mishit drive sliding down the slope of a fairwary and leaving a more difficult (or less desirable) angle of approach to the green?  Especially since the 'solution' was no great bonus: yes, the mounds helped contain my mishit drives, but the recovery shots from those mounds weren't very easy at all, i.e. it wasn't about a less desirable angle of approach to the green, it was now about trying to get a decent stance on a quite severely uphill or downhill or sidehill mound-lie.

Just one example on one course, so I don't want to make a rule of thumb out of that, but just thought I'd mention it.

Thanks again
Peter   

[Andrew Summerell]

They do have their uses:
•   Creating a sense of “enclosure” which does seem to satisfy a human need to be in a clearly defined space.  This can be done with trees if present.
•   Framing Greens, providing a back drop when none exists otherwise
•   Keeping the average golfer’s approach shot “handy” to the green.
•   Helping the good player play more aggressively to back pins.
•   Helping all players with distance judgment

I have a big issue with #2. Some of my favourite holes in the world have no ground framing at all. Courses like Garden City & Swinley Forest use the lack of framing beautifully. Then there are 'skyline' greens like the 14th at NSW. I shudder to think what would have happened to that green if it was designed in the '80s.

My wife got it right many years ago when trying to understand my love of golf course architecture. She said," Isn't it just trying to make the best course you can by moving the least amount of dirt as possibly?"







BTW, I have no issue with you dating large breasted women.

[Tom Naccarato]

Because the way many architects use them, because they are containment and Golfer's want to be free without boundaries. We get enough of that in our daily lives.....

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs
Fuckin' up the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign.....

(thanks to the Five Man Electric Band for use of their lyrics)

To quickly address your points:

•   Creating a sense of “enclosure” which does seem to satisfy a human need to be in a clearly defined space.  This can be done with trees if present.

Jeff, This would be a prescribed design style wouldn't it? Honestly, the last thing a golfer needs is enclosure. He wants freedom, and while I can see some golfer's would want holes "on to themselves" hasn't this been abused just way too much in the past 50 years?
•   Framing Greens, providing a back drop when none exists otherwise

One hole, maybe two, ONLY when needed. It's also another design style that's been abused by so many architects for so many years. I'm asking this as a question: give me an example of a GREAT golf hole that has huge punch bowl like mounds built behind the green that are not natural?

•   Keeping the average golfer’s approach shot “handy” to the green.
Instead of trying to help average golfers, why not inspire them to become better players? Case Example: At the 11th & 14th holes at Rustic Canyon, those tee shots from the back tee are difficult to impossible for me in certain situations. Style, I look forward to taking on those shots each and every time. I'm inspired to make myself a better player to play those shots and now, I feel more confident, thus more inspired to play them again and again and again. This is the case of a tough feature making me want to be a better player.

•   Helping the good player play more aggressively to back pins.
Sounds too Fazio for me!

•   Helping all players with distance judgment
Jeff, I think this is the major problem with Golf today. Too many people aren't inspired to figure things out for themselves--they want it all handed to them including yardages and a cold one from the beer cart girl. GIVE ME BACK MY FUCKING SPORT! (Not you Jeff, the people who think that this crap has a place in Golf.) Getting back to the point, I want to figure out if the hole is farther away then it looks and closer then it seems afar. This type of thinking, helping players judge distance would completely destroy the beauty of any MacKenzie designed golf course.

[Jeff Goldman]

This issue strikes fairly close to me, since the one thing that I wasn't completely comfortable with in the renovation of the South Course at Olympia Fields, and the thing I would expect to get pushback from some of the folks here about, is some of the mounding on the bunkers.  The membership loves it, but me and a couple friends of mine do feel it went over the top in a few places (actually, I can point to 3 spots around the golf course where it doesn't seem to work for me).  The issue is purely aesthetic, and we don't question the value of the work as a whole, how much more fun the course is now, or the effectiveness of the bunkering, including the mounding, in adding a great deal of strategic interest without making the course impossible for the regular players to play (it actually is a little more playable for mid-handicappers now).  It really doesn't do any of the things listed by Jeff in his post, but at times is simply intimidating, at times gives something to try to ricochet off of (especially greenside of the 7th green), etc. etc.

I don't know how significant a role this should play in my view of the course now, but quite often last summer I was pulled in both directions.  I was having an absolute blast playing with the new width, with choices about trying to clear bunkers or get close to them for better approaches or stay safely out of the way, playing a bunch of shots away from the flag to try to get close to the flag by using the slopes and contour, including the mounding, etc. etc., but still wondering if it wouldn't be possible to just soften a couple of these things that don't come into play much just a bit.  
One other interesting thing--the peaks on the bunkers seem to help drainage a lot.

So what do you do when the stuff plays great, but in places looks off?  

[Andrew Summerell]

I know this will probably get me in trouble, but what do people think of some of Raynors’ mounding on flat ground? I have always felt it was unnatural, but wondered whether it got a free pass because he mostly only used it in the direct line of play.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Thanks for the responses, which are well considered.

Tom Doak,

You have mentioned both the photography and the water shed year of 1980 recently and here again.  For no particular reason, i would be interested in why 1980 was a watershed year to you, and why photography is considered most important.

I also recall you saying you are generally a proponent of difficult golf and understand why you avoid using these.  I am not a proponent of difficult golf per se, perhaps because of the public courses I most often design, so there would be a different philosphy.  

Tom N,

As to your question of why not ask golfers to get better, I gather that if they haven't gotten better statistically in the 100 years golf has been played in America, rather than wish for something I can't change, I will design for it.  I figure if golf takes too long then practice to play hard courses really takes too long, and most folks don't practice.

I don't know if the prescribed style or a logical reaction to what I see in "real world" golf.  I also don't know what LA or other book I read about the sense of enclosure (bambi, get into the woods!) or whether you can back up your statement about open spaces affects on people.  But, I know I have read that theory somewhere and have experiened it. It may be because I am a city guy and a farm boy might feel way better about being in the wide open spaces.

I mentioned the helping the better player because one mentioned it to me recently.  While I understand the counter arguments, just like the moderate bunker thing, I actually wonder if golf is more exciting for most if they can play aggressively and the course lets them do so, rather than takes away the advantage by being so tough that an aggressive miss is punished too strongly.  Many good players feel that way.  Some don't.  Or, maybe its a Texas thing?

As to judging distance, well almost any bunker also helps in the same way, and it helps without artifical aids.  While I am not opposed to an occaisional visual trick, does any architect really do it constantly?

Again, thanks for the responses.  Its sometimes tough to articulate on a theoretical type subject like this, I know.

[Bill_McBride]

For those who have seen them, I think the Nicklaus "chocolate drop "mounds at Grand Cypress near Orlando may represent the bottom of the mound cycle.

[Adam Clayman]

Jeff, I sense Yours are a subset of the mounds mostly being discussed. But even so, I would argue ...

but still wondering if it wouldn't be possible to just soften a couple of these things that don't come into play much just a bit.

that, if some of the bunker mounds @ OF work from certain shots, perhaps the ones that you don't think work, also have creative use value from areas you may not have envisioned. I also believe wholeheartedly that if the grass on these mini  bunker mounds is kept standard long, without adequate firmness, they are essentially moot, superfluous.

Wholesale use of Mounds, coinciding with the Augusta Syndrome, does not compute. The need to keep mounds green causing the rest of the area to be a bog, is a practical justification for vilification.

 Mackenzie's mounds in South America sees like a great place for further study.

[Gary_Mahanay]

Westridge, a Brauer course in McKinney, Tx. , has some incredible mounding both down the fairways and around the greens.  This course has housing on at least one side of every fairway and a few holes have houses on both sides.  The mounds Jeff used seem to make you focus more on the golf hole your playing than the surrounding development.  This course I believe is the better for it.  And he was able to do it even around the greens with a limited amount of catch basins.

Now the Brauer course up the road in Gunter, "The Bridges at Preston Crossing", has little if any containment type mounding and though this is also a housing development the overall envelope for each hole seems to be much bigger or wider.  There aren't many houses built there yet so there is a much more wide open feel to the place and mounding would probably look kind of funky.

Jeff, does the size of the envelope for each hole or the overall openness of the property make any difference to whether large containment mounds look better or not?

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

1980 was a watershed year in my mind, I guess because that's when I really started getting around and seeing things. 

One of the first places I started was at Merion, and when I was out there late in the afternoon I happened to meet Brian Morgan, who was taking pictures for U.S. Open previews the next year ... just starting his career as the first independent golf photographer.  Before Brian, nobody made a living as an independent; Steve Szurlej at GOLF DIGEST was the only full-time golf course photographer.  But once Brian got established, all of a sudden photography was an integral part of marketing, which hadn't existed to that degree before, either.

Pete Dye's work in the 1970's didn't have much in the way of wall-to-wall contouring; Muirfield Village didn't either; and I still remember my shock at seeing the Killian & Nugent plan of [mid-1970's] Kemper Lakes a few years ago and noticing that there was no contouring except for fairway bunkers and tees and greens ... in fact it wasn't even drawn on a topo map!

The TPC at Sawgrass, to the best of my knowledge, is what changed all that.  Tom Fazio declared himself an admirer of it, and though Jack Nicklaus said he hated it, he just happened to start building courses with mounding and artificial contouring and island greens right after that.

Maybe 1980 is not the perfect date, but it's pretty close.

[Rob Rigg]

I think mounding is vilified most often because, unless done properly, it is rarely aesthetically pleasing for many of the "pro" mounding reasons Jeff stated.

I totally understand why they are helpful on public golf courses, but I do not enjoy playing heavily mounded courses and there are many.

I played a course earlier this year and felt like I was dealing with mounded guard rails on most of the holes. Something like the "perimeter weighted fairways" that RTJ II discussed in an interview. The mounds hemmed you in and made you feel a bit claustrophobic.

Mounding can often ruin the fluid lines that exist across an open golf course. There is something manufactured about them that many people probably do not notice, but I have never enjoyed.

This may be one of those situations where the anti-mounding opinions of many members of the site does not correlate to the opinions of the golfing public who do not mind mounding from an aesthetic perspective and enjoy what mounding can do to improve their scores and speed up their rounds.

[Andrew Summerell]

This one might have a few too many mounds 

[Dan Herrmann]

Have you ever read Bob Jones' take on mounding at ANGC?  Unfortunately, the 2nd cut and abundance of new trees have rendered some of them moot.

[Sean_A]

My only real problem with mounding is the framing aspect which also gives hints for yardage and contains shots.  If its good to frame a hole this way, where does it stop?  You could end up with hundreds of the damn things.  I spose aesthetics also play a role, but there aree ways around this if the numbers are kept down.  That isn't to say that mounding isn't good, it is good, but in limited dosages and preferably tied into a larger plan for the hole.  I tend to like mounding in the centre of play to shed shots away from the target rather than on the edge to contain shots.

Ciao

[Mike McGuire]

Scale - wrong size to look right.

[Mike_Cirba]

Why are mounds vilified?

Grand Cypress
Loxahatchee
Rees Jones

I especially love wall to wall mounding down the sides of every fairway on a course where you have to take a cart.   One never gets to see the golf course, but you do get to see big, redundant, symmetrical mounds on one side and condos on the other while riding to the next shot, that is, if you can figure out where they might let you in some gap between the mounds to find your ball.

Seriously, if you can show me a natural, symmetrical mound anywhere on the planet other than showing up as tacky as a aluminum Christmas tree on a golf course, perhaps you can sway me. 

Otherwise, they better be irregular, staggered, and tied into something natural or they better be created to bury rocks and stumps and still be irregular, staggered, and tied into something. 

[Jim_Kennedy]

Seriously, if you can show me a natural, symmetrical mound anywhere on the planet other than showing up as tacky as a aluminum Christmas tree on a golf course, perhaps you can sway me. - MCirba

 

Mike,
Grabbing the sides of your chair will lessen the dizzying effects associated with swaying, and to and fro is much easier to recover from than side to side.

[Pete Lavallee]

Upon approaching these mounds, Golf's Most Beloved Figure said to me: "When Rees builds these he is villified", upon which I replied "No, if he could build these he would finally be praised".



I was told that Stanley Thompson built them well after the course was established, to mimick the mountains in the distant background. It seems to me that mounds built by hand trump those built my the dozer.

[paul cowley]

....less are more...more or less....

[Mike_Cirba]

Jim Kennedy,

Where are those mounds located?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Pete,

No doubt that horse built mounds had lesser scale and more randomness.  Perhaps some of the vilification is the in the larger scale and often symetrical nature of modern mounds.   However, an even larger scale works better - In essence, if you make them big enough, and longer than round, and angle them so the golfer rarely sees the back side, then they can look like "land forms" rather than mounds. 

Fazio does this well, basically creating valley fw nearly every hole.  But, his earthmoving budgets can run close to 1M CY to do so.  I have sometimes wondered, like others, if recreating nature you your own specifications is really worth the effort.  In some cases and on some sites, yes, it is.

Someone brought up the idea of "where do you stop" and its true - if we use mounds or land forms, I find its best to just use them for bunkers support or whatever (from the list) reason we feel we need them, and just stop, admitting they are a built feature for a purpose.  Other gca's have felt the need to continue "the theme" all the way down the fw once started.  While I can see that point, and have done it, it rarely works well, IMHO.

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Mike Cirba  Happy Holidays and well said. Stamped or mounding of any kind when consistently shaped has grown to be the singular most offensive feature of a course. While I always think of Tommy N anytime I see a wild water feature it is those mounds stamped one after another in regular formation which push me to the edge. Jeff much like 1950's building design the age of the mound needs to go away. I did almost spit my eggs out when reading that Art Hills line. lol

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