RTJ2 and their "Green Proclamation"

[Neil_Crafter]

In the January 2009 issue of the British publication "Golf Course Architecture", there is the following full page advert from the Robert Trent Jones II group declaring their "Green Proclamation".

Is this:

- anything new?

- something that most other architects are doing anyway? But are less vocal about?

- or just pretentious marketing?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Neil,

2 and 3.  But, basically when I saw it I used phrases that equate to "No. 1 and No. 2"

[Rob Rigg]

This is laughable, although it certainly indicates a change in philosophy from many of the RTJ II works I have seen that were built over the past 20 years. ie) heavy earth movement and many artificial hazard creations that are absolutely not in tune with the environment.

I guess RTJ is catching up to what a decent number of architects have been doing for a long time . . .

[Jeff_Brauer]

Just for the heck of it, lets discuss his aspiration to design courses that use less water, chemicals and fertilzers than "traditional" courses.

I have a few ideas on specific ways to do that, if by traditional he means "1990's era"

[Neil_Crafter]

Neil,

2 and 3.  But, basically when I saw it I used phrases that equate to "No. 1 and No. 2"

As in, excuse me I need to go to the toilet to do numbers 1 and 2?

I concur, I felt it to be numbers 2 and 3 simultaneously. There appears nothing new in there to me and these are all things we have been trying to do for a number of years, as I suspect have the vast majority of architects, just without as much fanfare.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Neil,

Yeah, bad joke, which I actually used years ago regarding Pinehurst in slighlty reconstituted fasion.....

Anyway, I like Bobby, but he is a marketer.  There is nothing in that statement that hasn't been written by Audubon International or many other groups, but he is trying to make it sound new and "fresh."  Time will tell.

Part of it is related to Bruce Charlton being President of ASGCA right now.  Bruce did craft a "Green Age" theme for his Presidency, and it looks to me like RTJII took the bulk of that for this message.  But, maybe it was the other way around.

[Craig Sweet]

I think it's great...they are highly visable, and regardless of motive, will draw positive attention to the industry and what many are already doing....

[Tom_Doak]

I don't agree that everybody has been doing this all along, otherwise there would be nothing to contrast with.  He is trying to compete with the golf pros who never talk about this stuff.  Additionally, "green" is certainly a bigger selling point in Europe (and probably even in Asia) than it is here.

It's only bad in that the tone implies that his firm is somehow special in this quest.

P.S.  I like Jeff, but he isn't a marketer. 

[Adam Russell]

Its just an ad, no more, no less. When number one ends with "and/or rehabilitate degraded landscapes and environments"  directly under a picture of a golf course designed on said landscape, its more of "hey, look at me!". Can't fault him for it, though

[Garland Bayley]

Did Toyota come out with a hybrid pan? Or, do you "move earth more efficently" with mules?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Garland,
'Efficient' would seem to mean 'less'.

[Garland Bayley]

Garland,
'Efficient' would seem to mean 'less'.

Efficient doen't mean less. If they wanted to say they were moving less dirt nowadays, they should have said that. Perhaps they are just doing a #1 with this like Jeff indicated.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Garland,
Yeah, it would have been more efficient to say that outright, but efficiency is production without waste, and if you are truly trying to "...create courses that fit their sites and respect the natural characteristics of the terrain" you are not wasting production time moving dirt to create extraneous features.

[Michael Dugger]

I think Mucci would call this kinda thing "disingenuous"

To anyone who knows anything about gca, quite obviously this is an attempt catch up to the "movement."

I smell John Strawn's influence here.....

 

[Garland Bayley]

Its just an ad, no more, no less. When number one ends with "and/or rehabilitate degraded landscapes and environments"  directly under a picture of a golf course designed on said landscape, its more of "hey, look at me!". Can't fault him for it, though

Wow! I didn't even look at the picture. That's Chambers Bay. Hardly the poster boy for efficient earth moving.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Micheal,

Yeah, that's how it struck me.  The big environmental push for golf was about 1995-6 with the conference and published bo0k "Environmental Principles for Golf Courses."  If you know anything about golf, a 14 year too late proclamation, rehashing that booklet, won't sway you.  But, as Tom D (that noted marketeer) notes, perhaps clients in RTJ's big markets of Asia and Europe won't have noticed.  It only takes one sucker....er, client to pay for the ads.

Garland,

Placing a golf course on a waste site is considered very environmentally friendly, compared to putting one on a pristine, treed site that allows minimalism, but takes away natural habitat.  Its a good choice for that ad, for that and a few other reasons.

[Neil_Crafter]

Like ASGCA, our SAGCA here in Australia put out our first pamphlet on Golf and its benefits to the Environment around 95/96 and updated it a few years later. I can't see anything in the "Green Proclamation" that wasn't mentioned in either our pamphlet of the ASGCA material of the time.

[Jim_Kennedy]

I think he got a little off message. 

http://www.sequoyahnational.com/

[Neil_Crafter]

Jim
Thanks for posting this link. Looks like some of the green proclamation just got repealed!

Neil

[Bradley Anderson]

This kind of marketing nauseates me.

First of all, who is going to audit the claims of all these people in our industry who pontificate that their design and maintenance practices are more environmentally friendly than "traditional golf courses"?

Several years ago there was a golf course that was the poster child of GREEN and one day the assistant from that golf course told me what was really sprayed there. And when we played there we saw grass clippings being dumped into a stream. What a crock of shit.

Paul Voykin, used to say at Briarwood that he managed a nature friendly operation because it was the right thing to do, not so that he could win some awards, or so that he could tout himself as being morally superior to his peers.

If there was a way to make a wager on this, I would lay a lot of money on the fact that golf courses that are awarded for saying that they are GREEN are in fact not really any greener than the average.

[Ken Moum]

This kind of marketing nauseates me.

First of all, who is going to audit the claims of all these people in our industry who pontificate that their design and maintenance practices are more environmentally friendly than "traditional golf courses"?

There's even a term for this kind of thing.

Greenwashing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwash

The example that prompted the invention of the term--a hotel placard on reusing towels--has irked me from the first time I saw it. (I did waht they said, and the damned maid still took my towels and gave me a new set.

It looks to me like this is a calssic example of greenwashing, and the problem for golf is that if we continue to make these kind of claims, and then do something else, we will be found out.

And being found out as a liar is worse than being environmentally unconscious.

Ken

[Tim Nugent]

Jim, nice catch, I agree with Neil.  I guess a picture is worth a thousand words.  So much for"minimzing tree clearing" and fitting landforms into their natural environment.

Adrian, if you want to get a good indication of how Green a courses maintenance practices are just look at the annaul budget.  All inputs cost money.  Pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers.  Also, the size of the workforce needed is many times inversely proportional to the amount of consideration given to maintenance operation at the time of design - provided, of course, that undo expectations by the owners/members aren't allowed to skew the number.

As for the original questions, most journeyman architects have been subscribing to these "principals" for a long time - mainly do to the budgets they get to work with.   It seems it is the Marquee and Pro designers that get carried away by a marrage of having huge budgets and egos (theirs and their clients). 

So, it may just be a case of Bobby (through Bruce) finnaly seeing the light that the rest of us have been operating in for decades.  I guess even the big budgets are getting smaller these days and this is a good way to turn down the volume on his shops designs by trying to appear Pro-active rather than Re-active.

[Adam Russell]

As someone who has spent a great deal of time in those NC woods, those pictures of Sequoyah National are some of the saddest I've ever seen. The degradation of the old mountainsides looks horrible. I wonder what the tribe's forefathers would think of this particular brand of "green" golf course... 

[Jim_Kennedy]

Neil,
And here I was going to bat for the guy in an earlier post. Sheesh 

[Greg Chambers]

I was going to mention something, in reference to the picture, about all that erosion below those tees and the lack of any control devices, and how that is definately not green; but not knowing the situation or the project's approved storm water management plan, I won't say anything about all that erosion going on with an apparent disregard to any erosion control devices.