Brian Silva on Classic Architecture

[Kirk Gill]

In other words, the utilitarian aspects/demands of the game have taken on too much importance across the board, at the expense of the experience of the game being tied much more intimately to the site itself.

On one hand, I agree with you, and I think the popularity of courses that AREN'T like that can be tied to the golfer's search for that kind of nature-connected experience.

On the other hand, a game IS being played, and if what a person really wants is an experience very closely tied to nature, there's all kinds of great places they can go where they don't have to have that experience interfered with by the hitting of a ball with a stick.

[Peter Pallotta]

Kirk - yes, but I can't help but wish that you'd quoted another part of my post too, the part about there being far more golf holes out there than are dreamt of in our philosophies. Besides liking that bit myself (I think it's pithy), I was trying to stress that all of my talk here (and certainly I think all of Behr's) is ALWAYS about the game of golf itself, not about golf as a substitute for a walk in the woods. I think that's the point, i.e. that this game can remain this game and in fact be enhanced as a game/sport by a closer participation and interaction with nature. That's why I mentioned Behr's golf credentials -- he knows what he's talking about re: the game and competition....and then some

Peter

[TEPaul]

"I'm theorizing that Behr might've been calling for a broad expansion in what is considered utilitarian, and of what is considered shot-testing, and was suggesting that architects should delve more deeply into nature's (and the natural site's) own inherent essence to discover brand new ways of thinking about this utilitarian aspect, and for brand new ways of expressing it."

Peter:

I'm certain he was calling for that or at least he was calling for a cessation of the increasing limitations on what might be used or useful or utilitarian regarding various natural characteristics of land and sites. I think that's why he was opposed to something like the almost expected or demanded practice of tilting of greens artificially toward the on-coming golfer. And also opposed to what he may've seen as Crane's prescription to "control" almost every shot (I'm not so sure that even was completely what Crane was proposing though).

The whole idea of this "shot-testing" thing back then is worth really analyzing.

One could probably make some case that it was in some ways anti-strategic or anti-optional or even what we sometimes call "shot-dictation" or "architectural dictation" by creating arrangments which were sort of do or die.

But I don't think it was exactly that or just that. The whole  concept of "shot-testing" as mentioned by architects like perhaps Flynn or Crump and such was all basically reducible down to that ever-present equation in golf of risk and reward in the currency of strokes expected to be gained or lost.

But the point is with the architects more into "strategic" designs the choice of how to deal with those shot gaining or losing risk/reward equations needed to be left to the golfer or at least they wanted golfers to feel that was their purview, their freedom through their own choices and courses needed to be arranged to provide that and that feeling.

As long as architects who were into producing "shot-testing" courses and architecture and arrangements recognized that and provided golfers with enough latitude to recognize these things and make their OWN decisions upon them then these courses, even if they were "shot-testing" in some ideal shot gaining way were still strategic and able to offer golfers what they could feel was "freedom"---perhaps the most important and baseline thing of all to Behr and his ideas.

After-all, Nature herself is most certainly capable of doing this too in even an unaltered state if an architect is smart enough to see the natural possibilities as Mackenzie did, for instance, with CPC's #9 or even #16 once Marion Hollins showed him it was actually possible to realistically hit a ball that far across the gorge . Of course the option to the left was always more obvious to Mackenzie.

[Kirk Gill]

Peter - you know what it might take to be able to find these other natural forms that could be used for golf, that don't necessarily conform to the ideas we have now of what forms can be used, and in what way?

I think it might take something that I've never done, but I'm sure is done by architects all the time. It would take going out to a site, and whipping out some golf balls and some clubs, and starting to walk around, hitting from place to place (obviously a difficult thing on a heavily treed site), and trying to discover the essence you're talking about. On one hand, good, talented people have been doing this for a long time, and have found greensites on top of hills, benched into hills, at the bottom of hills......and they've found fairways that slope from right to left, from left to right, downhill, uphill, over hills and ridges.........

But that's not to say that new approaches couldn't be found. That new essences couldn't be discovered.

Am I completely missing your point?

[TEPaul]

Peter:

I may be wrong, but what you may be talking about or asking in your questions that Kelly or Kirk Gill answered, is something even more basic when it comes to golf expectations and utility for golf etc.

I'll give you an example--eg most of the surface landforms of greens, for instance, seem to be expected to tilt somewhat in the direction of the on-coming golfer.

What if more architects made more greens some of the other ways around? I think it's probably logical to say that in the real world of landforms to a "walker", for instance, only about 1/4 of landforms tilt towards the walker. The rest probably go right, left or away.  

Most of that is probably unacceptable today in architecture and perhaps something like that is what you mean.

[Peter Pallotta]

Kelly, Tom, Kirk - thanks.

Yes, I was thinking about a shift in the basic/foundational concepts of utility. As Kirk mentioned, architects have been walking the land in search of golf holes for a long time; but I was asking if the very holes architects have been LOOKING FOR and OPEN TO in their searches have become too formalized.

In Kelly's first post, I was a bit confused, i.e. on the one hand, I understand what he means about forms having taken on many different expressions; but on the other, I think that if these expressions were truly new and innovative ones, and truly came out of the essence of the land, there wouldn't be the resulting price to pay in terms of, for example, long journeys between holes.

Kelly put it very well in his other post, i.e. that the goal is "to discover design concepts that are not prototypical, and definitely informed by what you find on the land".  I'm just suggesting that if golf holes were in fact definitely informed first and foremost by the essence of the land/a specific site, the holes and design concepts that resulted would certainly NOT be prototypical....as long as the architect was open to breaking new ground like this.

Peter    
PS - Kelly, I hope you don't mind me taking a line of yours as my tag-line. I think it's very, very good.

[TEPaul]

".....but on the other, I think that if these expressions were truly new and innovative ones, and truly came out of the essence of the land, there wouldn't be the resulting price to pay in terms of, for example, long journeys between holes."

Peter:

That's a very good statement there and it put me in mind of something I'd not exactly thought of before.

The most work I ever did on a routing and design for a course (Ardrossan Farm) took me maybe 400-500 hours on that site. Part of the reason it took so long is I wasn't much good at using a topo and I ended up just using it for spatial (distance) reasons to tell what I was getting with balance and variety in the sequence. I'm also not much good at seeing the possiblilities of how to change landforms (at least on that particular site) so I didn't even try to visualize that. So, I don't know whether what I saw there naturally was something new or innovative but it sure was totally using the essence of what was there without changing it.

I did end up drawing not just the routing but most all the design details on that map and it now occurs to me that everything I did with just about every hole is just use the existing land almost exactly as it is naturally including just about every single green site.

It's still there as it was and I think most anyone could see it should be a really good golf course just as it is.

But I did hit at least two and maybe three glitches or obstacles that I was never happy about the resolution of.

On three of the holes I just couldn't get away from the previous green well enough in my opinion and that created what I'd consider some problems.

Later Bill Coore told me that on most projects the success of the course generally boils down to how well you overcome those few inherent obstacles you almost inevitably run into.

If I could've gotten through some trees I could've completely solved one problem, and another was just about a 100 yard walk up to the top of a hill to the next tee from the previous green. I never liked that but I rationalized it by saying to myself if George Crump did it between #11 green and #12 tee I could do that here.

The last one I never even came close to figuring out how to solve the problem without massively changing a really cool landform which I never wanted to do.

But if that routing and design wasn't the essence of that land I just can't imagine what would be or could be.

And one natural landform just as it is I think could've been one of the best and most unique holes in the world.

The irony is it was that very landform I loved so much for that hole that ended up killing the whole project. The owner of the property asked us to give that landform and the area it was in up and I refused and that was the end of the project. The reason he asked was pretty odd and also potentially solvable but I did not recognize then how to solve it as I do now. That's part of the learning experience, I guess.

But the real point of this post, Peter, is back then I don't even remember thinking about the problems or processes of tying man-made architecture into the existing grades and landforms because essentially there just wasn't any of that at all in all that I did there. That was a long time ago and now I think I probably did what I did not so much because I was dedicatedly attempting to create something really natural through and through----I think it may've been because I just wasn't capable then of really seeing the possibilities of moving earth and "man-making" golf architecture.

The "innocence" in the eyes of babes, huh Peter!?  

[Peter Pallotta]

Tom -
thanks much for sharing that; I didn't know about any of it before.

Right to the point of this whole subject for me is your last paragraph, ie:

"...I don't even remember thinking about the problems or processes of tying man-made architecture into the existing grades and landforms because essentially there just wasn't any of that at all in all that I did there. That was a long time ago and now I think I probably did what I did not so much because I was dedicatedly attempting to create something really natural through and through-- I think it may've been because I just wasn't capable then of really seeing the possibilities of moving earth and "man-making" golf architecture."

What strikes me is that this probably describes the mind-set of some of those early architects who created the very courses -- and much of the charm and quirk and nuance of those courses -- that we appreciate so much today. (The Old Course comes to mind, as does the fact that Behr was such an ardent defender of it and of how it supported or embodied  the spirit of the game.)  

That is, some of those early architects were not self-consiously trying to create something 'new' and 'innovative', nor were they consumed with naturalism for naturalism's sake; but they were simply trying to use as much as possible the essence of the land (for practical as well as, I think, 'philosophical' reasons) and then happily accepting the variety and uniqueness of the holes that resulted.

In other words, they did not come to the land with pre-conceived notions of what golf holes 'should' be or were suppossed to be like. They did not come with the 'forms' of possible expression ready to override what the essence of the land offered naturally; they went about it the other way around, just like you did.

(Do you think this is an accurate assessment?)

In short, they were 'innocents' in the best sense of the word; not as in bumpkins who had not yet learned from experience the hard lessons of the world, but as men with open eyes and minds who looked at each new situation as a truly NEW situation, and brought a fresh approach to each one.        

I've used this jazz analogy before, but I think it's appropriate. Louis Armstong was simply trying to make fresh and pleasing and exciting music, relying only on what his own creativity and the chord sequence of a given tune provided him. It was only later that other minds -- and other TYPES of minds -- came in to study his music and to tell him and the rest of us "what he was doing" musically...and then it was a very short step from there to the formalizing of a 'jazz technique' with its standard chord progressions and phrases and cadences.

Peter  

[TEPaul]

"In other words, they did not come to the land with pre-conceived notions of what golf holes 'should' be or were suppossed to be like. They did not come with the 'forms' of possible expression ready to override what the essence of the land offered naturally; they went about it the other way around, just like you did.

(Do you think this is an accurate assessment?)"


Peter:

Sure, I think that assessment is pretty accurate.

You and I have talked about some of this on the phone in the past.

I just think people today have no real understanding or appreciation for how different golf and architecture was back then in the latter half of the 19th century when the first actual architects began to appear like Alan Robertson and then his student Tom Morris.

I mean consider these things about the way it was back then and how limiting it was to change things or even look for alternatives in variety and innovation in holes and such;

1. It was not until 1886 that most of the Rules had even released golfers from teeing off more than 12 club length from the previous hole. That's not the previous green, it was the previous cup. That's pretty limiting in alternatives for architects, don't you think?

2. Back then they probably didn't even get into planting grass as we do today---eg they basically just had to use what were called the existing "swards" (those areas where natural bents and fescues grew). So that right there probably completely limited their direction for next holes, not to mention most of those original "links" sites like TOC probably aren't more than 300 yards wide at any point on the course.

Years ago I came to call courses like that way back in that day as "path of least resistance" architecture. It pretty much began as just a "layout" and not much more.