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D_Malley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: What makes a view a view?
« Reply #25 on: February 05, 2010, 10:56:17 AM »
http://www.kbfound.org/wp-content/uploads/80_rgbjpg_m.jpg

from the pine hill thread
view or vista?

Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +3/-1
Re: What makes a view a view?
« Reply #26 on: February 05, 2010, 11:02:50 AM »
Brian:

Thanks for the follow-up.  I think you have me pretty well-pegged.  If a pimple is the only feature a hole has to work with, I try to make it important, instead of coming up with a grander concept in which it was irrelevant.

Indeed, the best hole on this new property I'm working with in Florida is one of the flatter holes there.  It's got a couple of perfect little rolls just in front of a good green site ... the rolls are leftovers from old mining days, you could wipe them out in two minutes with a big dozer.  Yet both Bill Coore and I found them independently and made them the focal point of a hole ... we both designed the same long par-4, so that you'd be coming into the green with a long, low-trajectory shot and the rolls would take on added prominence depending on your line of attack.

The good news (for me) is that I won the wrestling match to make this hole part of my 18.  I think there will be only one bunker ... a little one at the back of the green that is already dug out like a bunker now.  The bad news:  there is no vista and really no view to speak of.  Come to think of it, that's another element that most Florida courses sorely lack.  Everybody talks about how flat it is, but one downside of flat is that you don't get many views.

Mike_DeVries

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: What makes a view a view?
« Reply #27 on: February 05, 2010, 11:03:43 AM »
With all the pictures I have studied of Fazio courses he seems to use the Humphry Repton (the first to call himself a "landscape gardener") and Capability Brown style of soft and manicured shaping of fairways.  Whereas I liken the minimalist style (yours) towards that of Sir Uvedale Price and Richard Payne Knight who both advocated natural more "picturesque", unkempt-looking landscapes.

If you found a pimple in the landscape that gave the hole some more quirk or created another area of strategy in the hole, you would incorporate that into your design.  Repton, Brown and Fazio would bulldoze it away and soften that area because to them it would be just that, an ugly "pimple" in the landscape.  To me and you it is an opportunity to create even more thought and fun in playing the hole.

The "picturesque" argument was not "pretty" enough for it be successful whereas Repton and Brown's work was more commercial and therefore received more recognition even though to many (including myself) Repton and Brown altered the landscape for the sake of altering it just for revenue not because they really believed in what they were doing.

You design for the love of designing golf courses and your obsession with golf courses whereas Fazio is probably just a commercial entity.  You travel the world still analysing golf courses in down times (like I do), according to one interview, Fazio just plays more golf at his home course.

I find your book The Confidential Guide very similar (in my way of thinking  ;) )to that of Sir Uvedale Price's book An Essay on the Picturesque which criticizes the "unnatural" shaping and forming of Repton and Brown.  Many of the courses that you do not like are shaped ON TOP of the landscape instead of IN and WITH the landscape.  Shadow Creek is probably one of the few that gets a thumbs up in the book that is not shaped with the landscape or is sustainable with it's natural surroundings but is totally created alien to it's landscape.


Brian,
Interesting that you bring up the Capability Brown / Repton / Romantic vision of landscapes and transfer to golf courses – takes me back to the school days.      

My 10-year old had a root-vocabulary assignment just a couple days ago and vista was the word.  They had to provide definitions, synonyms, antonyms, etc.  So, in looking over his work, there were no antonyms and the definition talked about the “distant view through or along an opening : PROSPECT” – I had almost always thought of the vista in the more general terms of a grand view and had never thought of prospect in that way either.  Great to get a dual refresher course this week!

So, does anyone know of an antonym for vista?  We did quite a bit of searching and didn’t find any.

Cheers,
Mike

Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +3/-1
Re: What makes a view a view?
« Reply #28 on: February 05, 2010, 11:05:50 AM »
The antonym would be panorama.

I guess that's why people say "panoramic view" and not "panoramic vista".

Mike_DeVries

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: What makes a view a view?
« Reply #29 on: February 05, 2010, 11:18:13 AM »
The antonym would be panorama.

I guess that's why people say "panoramic view" and not "panoramic vista".

Tom,
That makes sense, but panorama is often listed as a synonym of vista! 
Mike

Brian Phillips

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: What makes a view a view?
« Reply #30 on: February 05, 2010, 11:58:23 AM »
http://www.kbfound.org/wp-content/uploads/80_rgbjpg_m.jpg

from the pine hill thread
view or vista?



100% vista with a view of the city... ;)

That is a fantastic study hole as it has been created to line up exactly with the highest skyscrapers in the background.  Unless they were built after the course...

The very first course I was in charge of building in Oslo was below Holmenkollen Ski Jump.  I moved a tee without asking the architect to make sure the line was off the top of the ski jump!

I don't think he ever noticed!
« Last Edit: February 05, 2010, 12:05:57 PM by Brian Phillips »
Bunkers, if they be good bunkers, and bunkers of strong character, refuse to be disregarded, and insist on asserting themselves; they do not mind being avoided, but they decline to be ignored - John Low Concerning Golf

RJ_Daley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: What makes a view a view?
« Reply #31 on: February 05, 2010, 12:07:09 PM »
I think that Brian's immediate understanding that the vista is the narrow, framed portion of the view, was right on.  I also think Greg Murphy's discussion of the concepts in Cullen's book, and the materials described in his links was first described for me in the last chapter of John Strawn's book, "Driving the Green" where he speaks of the savannah landscapes and what draws the innate senses of man, as the evolved hunter gatherer, as it relates to his affinity for the golf fields of play.  

Within the golf course, I think you have opportunities for views and vistas.  On many picturesque locations, you might be drawn to the overall views during walks from green to tee, or lingering on a tee for a while.  Sometimes you take in views while waiting to hit a shot.  But, once the game is on, you start to transition to the vista, or the more narrow target area.  That is, unless you are playing to a skyline green, which seems to be more a view... You may note landscape features that 'blend' into the view, but to me, the focal point of the game is vista.  The aesthetic aspect of being in a location and taking the location in for its beauty or just understanding it situationally in the world where it exists, is taking in the views.  

One aspect of view that makes me wonder is if the view is generally of nothing, or something.  Anotherwords, you stand on a tee beside the vast ocean, or endless body of water, and what is the view, nothing but water for at least 180* of the total 360* panorama.  So, aesthetically, you like 'nothing' in your view?  You stand on a tee like a location such as Banff, and you see a 360* panorama of mountain vistas, and forests, and lodge, etc., therefore you like "something" in your view?  
« Last Edit: February 05, 2010, 12:10:07 PM by RJ_Daley »
No actual golf rounds were ruined or delayed, nor golf rules broken, in the taking of any photographs that may be displayed by the above forum user.

David_Tepper

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: What makes a view a view?
« Reply #32 on: February 05, 2010, 12:22:37 PM »
Castle Stuart is certainly the most deliberately self-conscious view & vista course I have ever seen. The very first words on the Castle Stuart website are: "a visual experience unlike any other in golf."  Many of the holes are routed to frame the various landmarks along the Moray Firth.

www.castlestuartgolf.com 

Brian Phillips

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: What makes a view a view?
« Reply #33 on: February 05, 2010, 04:15:09 PM »
David,

I totally agree and sometimes I think it is on the edge of using a little too much....if I was to find something wrong with the course... 8)
Bunkers, if they be good bunkers, and bunkers of strong character, refuse to be disregarded, and insist on asserting themselves; they do not mind being avoided, but they decline to be ignored - John Low Concerning Golf

Richard Choi

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: What makes a view a view?
« Reply #34 on: February 05, 2010, 04:54:23 PM »
Greg covered the evolutionary reasoning behind human's preference for wide open views, but I would take it one step further.

One of the hypothesis given for our affinity for wide open space is that it make is more difficult for predators to ambush you when you are at a place where there is no place to hide nearby. It lowers our stress level and makes it easier to relax.

This hypothesis would also explain why most golfers do not like blind shots and like holes where tee boxes are high up and "everything is right in front of you". Seeing your hazards (predators) and traps in plain view would also lower your stress level and make it easier to enjoy the hole.

Rob Rigg

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: What makes a view a view?
« Reply #35 on: February 05, 2010, 10:25:41 PM »
Rich,

Does that mean that the 1500 of us who do like blind tee shots and other quirkly elements would have been eaten by Tony the Tiger? :)