Precise randomness

[James Duncan]

Everyone dreams of working on a perfect site littered with natural features, in which case the primary role of the discerning golf architect is to identify, preserve and accentuate the most interesting of these features. But given that most sites are less than ideal, how is the sense of a natural site -- that elusive mixture of randomness and precision -- best created?

C. B. Macdonald took a measuring tape and got quirky precision by copying famous holes. That works well, but it's hardly an architectural breakthrough. Others have created randomness for the sake of creating randomness, but the best golf courses teach us nothing if not that there is magic in precision and architectural hierarchy, just as in all other art forms. So how is randomness and precision created together in the most meaningful way for golf?

If you had a relatively blank slate and was charged with creating a golf course that felt like a natural course, how would you go about doing it?

[Tom_Doak]

James:

Didn't we have this discussion at a gas station in upstate New York once?

[James Duncan]

I knew I could rely on you for this one, Tom 

That was a long time ago. What have you learned since then?

[Dónal Ó Ceallaigh]

James,

I'm glad you asked this question as it's something I've been thinking about for a while.

Last year, I took my children on a short drive to a beach close to my parents house. It's in north Donegal (Ireland) and it's one of the most amazing links landscapes in the north west of Ireland. I cannot imagine a golf course will ever be built there due to environmental restrictions. While taking a few photos of the children splashing about in the water, I wandered about the duneland and took some photos of the land itself. I got to thinking that for any budding architect, it couldn't but help to photograph and study landscapes such as duneland. As I thought about it a little more, and began to look more closely at the photos, I now believe that it is vital for an architect to study the landscape in very close detail. I think linksland is so full of random movement, that it's the perfect place to learn about randomness. Yet, linksland isn't all about smooth slopes and nicely contoured mounds; it possesses forms that are abrubt and surprising - almost unnatural.

We've all seen courses where the architect has put mounds at regular intervals down either side of a fairway, yet the fairway itself is perfectly flat. How can a hole look natural if it is flanked by non-random mounds that bear no relation to natural mounds that were created by erosion (wind/water).

To answer your question, I'd first go and study linksland.

[Peter Pallotta]

I've thought about this question, James. I don't know why, since I'll never be called upon to create such randomness. Some might think my ideas flawed, in that they are impractical, but here they are:

1. Lawn Darts. (Cheap ones, the dime-store variety. Thrown as far and high as possible; they are not so aerodynamically precise as to hold their line, and so where 60-80 of them land and stick you dig a deep hole and you'll get random hazards).

2. No budget.  (I don't mean a limited budget or a modest budget; I mean no budget - zero.  One would thus have to look really, really, really hard for 18 green sites and 18 tees, and would have to accept a heck of a lot of randomness in between).

You might be thinking I should've numbered those differently, i.e. having No. 2 (the routing) first and following that up with No. 1  (the creation of hazards).
 
But No - that would've been too obvious and pre-planned, and won't create the randomness you seek. (I even typed them out wrongly...I mean, randomly).  No, best to start with sprinkling bunkers about even before there is even a routing....and then have to accept those hazads wherever they end up in the routing (see No. 2).

Peter


  

[Tom_Doak]

James:

I don't remember if I had ever heard the word "fractals" back at the gas station.  Jesus, how many years ago was that?

Anyway, what I've learned since is that something truly random would not do.  It would not look natural, because Nature is not completely random.  It may not be easily predictable, but it does have its processes and patterns, and I think that something that was actually random would not pass the human smell test.

I think that Kingsbarns is probably the best course I've seen at imitating the contours of linksland from a flat site.  Mark Parsinen's choice to get the geologist David Price involved in the course was a great idea.  Yet it still didn't really work, as Peter suggests, because they had routed the course first and then tried to place "natural" forms where they wanted them to be for the golf ... so the placement is too contrived.  It would have worked better to build most of those features first, perhaps with the basic outline of the course in place, and then shifted greens and tees to make best use of them in a more natural way.

[Chip Gaskins]

A great juxtaposition would be the piece of land Erin Hills was built on versus Whistling Straits.  How would a great architect approach them to seem natural.

AND, does natural really matter sometime?

[James Duncan]

Peter,

I like the lawn dart idea and it may not be as far-fetched as you think. As a matter of fact, a lot of the best work we do is the product of happy accidents. A truck driver dumps a few piles here, or the irrigation crew stockpiles some spoils there -- when the cards are right that's the kind of stuff that triggers the most original work. We've also seriously toyed with the idea of using some seemingly random characteristic on a topo map (a slight rise or depression) to dictate potential bunker placements and then edit those locations as the search for holes takes place, but only on sites that were well suited for golf in their natural state.

Tom,

I agree that absolute randomness doesn't work. A number of people go to the Sand Hills, for example, and exclaim that any imbecile could design a good golf course in that country. This is simply not the case. Certain arrangements and sequences work better than others, and many don't work at all there. Kingsbarns is indeed a good example of a course made to look and feel like a piece of natural linksland. But let's say you had gone and built the features first and then tweaked the green and tee sites afterward. Who referees that game? If there is credence to Dr. MacKenzie's line about getting the village idiot to build flat greens if you're looking for good contours, then how do you deliberately ask someone to go and do something interesting without giving them too many instructions? If the person you're asking already "knows what's good" he or she will be slanted in that direction and the game is up. All of us who work in the industry are guilty of that.

Donal,

I've had the good fortune to spend a fair bit of time wandering around linksland and I share your love for that landscape. In terms of studying that type of property for golf, however, I've found that you have to be diligent when trying to figure out what you're looking at. Towering sand dunes and marram grass would be out of place in most instances elsewhere, and there are many mediocre links courses that don't begin to compare with the best man-made courses that embody the core principles of the finest links. But let's say you had studied links property and were given a flat field. What would you do then?

Chip,

I'm not so sure that natural matters all the time. Again, to me at least, it's the essence of the best links, and being able to convey knowledge of that type of property elsewhere that is the high game in golf course design, or a major component. Easy to talk about, tricky to do.

On a less than ideal site I've often wondered if we should start out by cataloging whatever natural features there may be and devise a skeletal course layout based upon that information. Then get a small crew that has not the faintest concept of what golf is about and ask it to dig some pits and pile the material here and there. There would be as little of a plan as would be practical. Only then do the golf people get a chance to edit, and they would have to force themselves to let half-baked idea simmer for a good long while, simply to thwart the temptation to do what they already know works well.

Take holes like the 2nd and 16th at North Berwick West. The fairway on the 2nd is so interesting because of the old quarry off to the left, and the green complex on 16th benefits from the same feature in the opposite direction. The quarry looks like it belongs there because, well, it was there. The resulting contours are terrific, but it works so well for golf only because it is located precisely where it is relative to the golf holes. I can think of very few man-made features on other golf courses that are as attractive as that former pit and its surrounds. It was man-made, it can be built, but it was not built for golf..

[Bill Brightly]

C. B. Macdonald took a measuring tape and got quirky precision by copying famous holes.

He copied FEATURES of holes, not holes...

That works well, but it's hardly an architectural breakthrough.

National was a stunning breakthrough when it was built

[Tom_Doak]

James:

I wouldn't send the village idiot out in front to do the shaping.  I'd send somebody who was really pretty smart, but either I'd pick someone who didn't play golf, or I would deliberately mislead them as to where the greens were.

[JC Urbina]

The Duke,

I do it everyday and the best example are the dunes left of # 15 at Pacific Dunes,  They are totally man made but you would never know it.  Keiser and I were quizzing Ron Whitten one day  about which dunes were created and which were natural.  The key is  how you look at the feature you are going to create.  Randomness is very easy to create in fact if you had a flat piece of land and you asked me to create something I could. All I would ask you to do is tell me where you were planning on creating your stating and stopping point.

That's all I will say.

[Sean_A]

I think this question fits in with my concept of blowing up a flatish piece of land before building.  Honestly, just dynomite the crap out of the land, route a course, shape/grade some particulars and grow some grass.  For me, one of the most important things is to get the look right when one is not looking down the fairway. 

Ciao  

[Dónal Ó Ceallaigh]

Donal,

I've had the good fortune to spend a fair bit of time wandering around linksland and I share your love for that landscape. In terms of studying that type of property for golf, however, I've found that you have to be diligent when trying to figure out what you're looking at. Towering sand dunes and marram grass would be out of place in most instances elsewhere, and there are many mediocre links courses that don't begin to compare with the best man-made courses that embody the core principles of the finest links. But let's say you had studied links property and were given a flat field. What would you do then?

Yes, I agree that a links landscape would not be suitable in all cases. For example, I don't think that a Kingsbarns landscape would really suit a parkland site, but your initial question mentioned a "blank slate", and in that case I'd try to replicate a links landscape.

As Tom says, nature isn't truly random, something to which I alluded to in my first post. You can have nice rolling duneland and then all of a sudden, you have an feature, which almost looks unnatural, yet it is totally natural. The key is to replicate nature. In some of the pictures I've seen of Kingsbarns, the same type of mounds appear on several holes. It does look a bit contrived, almost as if they tried too hard.

As to what to do next, well I think I'd go along with what Tom and Sean suggested; create the features first and then route the course.

[James Duncan]

Kahuna-hana:

In one fell swoop you have solved all my problems as per usual.

[James Duncan]

Urbinski:

All kidding aside you'd be hard pressed to consider the site for Pacific Dunes a blank slate. One thing is adding a dune or other feature to blend in where others exist, another is creating something that works where there is little or nothing to begin with. And I don't mean that in any way to take away from the work at PD.

Is it fair to say that The Legends is the most blank slate you've ever worked on? If the phone rang tomorrow and someone offered you a site like that would you (a) consider the commission and (b) what would you do differently compared to what you guys did twenty years ago?

[Tom_Doak]

James:

Jim was still working for Perry Dye when I built The Legends.  The Heathland course was built by me and Mike DeVries, plus two shapers who had worked for Larry Young on his previous courses.  One of them was a lifer in the shaping business, and he really did not like it when I insisted on getting back onto the greens on a dozer myself after he felt they were done!  [Gil Hanse was also there a little bit at the end, but he was still at Cornell for most of it.] 

But Jim did run the job at Texas Tech which was even flatter than the site in Myrtle Beach -- three feet of tilt over 320 acres.

Sean's approach is interesting because it is EXACTLY what's happened in Florida ... a mining company just went in and tore up the site not thinking about golf at all, and left it long enough for some vegetation to grow back ... and accidentally turned it into a very good piece of property for golf.  We just don't get to take any credit for the first half of the process.

[Peter Pallotta]

Off Sean's and Tom's mention of blowing things up before the routing starts, I think it's time to mention again Mr. Rocco Nocco, an unsung hero who worked with Macdonald-Raynor during the 1910s.  I have come to imagine that Mr. Nocco handled the dynamite in those days.  I could go on and on about Mr. Nocco, but it's best maybe to let him speak for himself:

"Hey, you want to blow something up, you call Rocco. That's me, Rocco. Don't worry about nothing, I'll take care of everything.  I'll blow up anything you want, I don't give a f-ck.  Last time, last year, I blew up something over there, you know, around the corner over there, and one of the big-shots comes over and says 'Hey Rocco, that looks just like a hole from Saint Andrews now.'   I tell him, 'So what, what the  f-ck do I care?' You know what I mean? That's all it takes to make a golf hole? So let's make a million of them then, what do I care. I'm not gonna be playing the stupid game anyway. Are you kidding me - walking around like a jerk-off in some bad slacks, sticks in my hand, 'Oh, tally-ho, fine shot old chap!'  F-ck that sh-t!  Give me the ponies anytime. Come on, get serious - what do I know about Saint Andrews? Who the hell is Saint Andrews anyway that they gotta go name a golf course after him? Some English saint, right? Yeah, naturally. Listen, for my money, you wanna name a golf course, name it after a good saint, a big saint - you know, Saint Peter, Saint Paul, one of the big guys. Look, if you didn't actually die to become a saint, you ain't a saint in my books. You gotta die, you gotta actually take the hit -- otherwise they'd be making everyone a saint! But anyway, what the f-uck am I talking about -- you wanna blow something up, you tell me where and when and you pay me the money and I'll make all the f-cking Saint Andrews holes you want...."

Rocco's point being -- I think -- that if you want to create random features, maybe it's best to have a guy like him come in before the "big-shots" arrive. 

Peter

[James Duncan]

Tom, Jim,

Apologies for the mix-up. Sounds like Florida will provide an opportunity to put some of these theories into practice.

Peter,

Glad Mr. Nocco had a way with words as well as dynamite.

[Bill_McBride]

The Duke,

I do it everyday and the best example are the dunes left of # 15 at Pacific Dunes,  They are totally man made but you would never know it.  Keiser and I were quizzing Ron Whitten one day  about which dunes were created and which were natural.  The key is  how you look at the feature you are going to create.  Randomness is very easy to create in fact if you had a flat piece of land and you asked me to create something I could. All I would ask you to do is tell me where you were planning on creating your stating and stopping point.

That's all I will say.

In my opinion this is the key to the whole thing.  Do the cutting, filling and shaping that has to take place to create features and proper drainage but without evidence of the hand of man.

I saw some great examples recently at Ballyneal but I'll bet there were lots more than I couldn't tell from raw nature.

[RJ_Daley]

I sort of go along with the ideal (not practicality) of randomly and indiscriminately doing something to disturb the land with no particular goal or game in mind, then having the golf archie come in and work with it.  So, ideally and in a fantasy world, I"d try to get an in with the pentagon and ask them to carpet bomb the land tract, then find a way to cause a series of flash floods across that same land, then go in with the idea in mind of routing a g.c. over that.

Back in the real world, perhaps the land at Rustic Canyon has something to say for using what little is there to route subtly and be conservative in what you do.  If the land is minimally dramatic, but has micro or minor features, use them to the max.  IN the land between where you route holes using the minimal but existing features in the golf scheme, on that land where it seems so impossible to find anything, you just have to try to mimic the minimal modest feature you did find and use.

On the unremarkable land, you just have to do what you have to do to get the material to create interesting pushed up green complexes and surrounds.  Dig the lakes, spread the material, and only grade elevation and slopes in a modest way, where they will do the most good.   

When you think about it, the chop hills where BallyNeal is exactly located, is a round peg in a square hole.  Those amazing hills or dunes rise up from the flatness that is the immediate country that surrounds it.  But of course that is a randomness amongst general flatness that only Ma Nature can do, and not manmade equip could do in practicality.

Maybe there are al kinds of ways to approach it based on each course builder's sensibilities and that is why we like some folks efforts and interpretations and not so much others...  the only formula is there is no standard one.

[Ben Sims]

This is a fantastic thread.  I've following it since Tom scolded me for mucking around on the beard puller thread.  

I think that nature isn't so much random, as reactionist.  Fly over the Great Sand Dunes Monument in southern Colorado or watch the sand ripples created on a beach as waves recede and you'll see how perfectly nature can order itself.   It isn't until nature has a reason to change it's order that it does.  This is a loose version of chaos theory.  Put a few handfuls of sand in those ripples on the beach, and nature then spaces those ripples around the  "problem".  

Go into a forest sometime and see how well trees space themselves throughout the forest.  It looks random, but you'll find that it's actually very uniform.  

I feel that golf courses can be shaped in the same manner.  I think that you can move dirt that looks out of place at first, and shape it in such a way that it looks like nature has "reacted" or evolved around that feature.  Which in turn makes that shaping look more natural.  


  

[James Duncan]

Ben,

If beard-pulling is the prerequisite for engaging in this type of discussion I'm growing one to the ground. May in fact help compensate for the growing absence of hair on the top of my head. I couldn't agree more on your observations on the patterns of nature. Study those incredible contours at TOC -- one of the beard-puller's fringe benefits watching The Open there -- and it's nothing but patterns. The trick in golf architecture I suppose then becomes deploying those patterns with no pattern -- or other patterns that do not register consciously with the casual observer.

JD 

[Paul_Turner]

Painswick's 6th and 11th have some of the best accidental shaping.

[Dave Falkner]

wasnt it  Devereaux Emmet who did the measuring  not CB Mcdonald?

[James Duncan]

Paul,

Painswick (which I have not seen) does appear to be an excellent example: at once both perplexing and exacting.

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