If you actually spent a week on the site of a golf architecture project.....

[TEPaul]

......what do you who have never done that before think or suspect you would learn about golf course architecture?

[John Moore II]

I suspect that I would learn more than I can possibly suspect.

I feel like there is so little that I know about actual course construction that I can't even begin to understand how much I would learn by walking a semi-blank site for a week.

[JC Jones]

I am thinking you probably wouldn't learn much about punctuation and grammar, which apparently you need to do in order to form a coherent question.

In any event, I'd think I'd learn how someone route's a golf course and perhaps what it means to "not move any dirt" yet still "build a green."

[Ian Larson]

I am thinking you probably wouldn't learn much about punctuation and grammar, which apparently you need to do in order to form a coherent question.

In any event, I'd think I'd learn how someone route's a golf course and perhaps what it means to "not move any dirt" yet still "build a green."

Hilarious!!!!!!

[TEPaul]

"In any event, I'd think I'd learn how someone route's a golf course and perhaps what it means to "not move any dirt" yet still "build a green."


I'm quite sure you would learn a whole helluva lot more than that JC, but at this point there is certainly no reason whatsoever why you would realize it. Why would you if you'd never done it before? Do you think you know what it's remotely like to drive a stock car at 210mph on a steep oval in traffic if you've never been to a race or talked at length to a really good driver about what it's like?

[Ben Sims]

I'm smart enough to know that I don't know.  I just know that I would be underwhelmed by some stuff, and overwhelmed by other stuff.  I would probably have a perpetual inquisitive tilt to my cranium, kind of like the RCA dog. 

Either way Mr. Paul, your comments here and on the shaping thread lead me to this.

I have 30-something days of leave, youth, ambition, and some good boots.  I'd love to hang out on a site for a week if any of our resident architects and shapers will have me.

[TEPaul]

"I have 30-something days of leave, youth, ambition, and some good boots.  I'd love to hang out on a site for a week if any of our resident architects and shapers will have me."


Well, Ben, why don't you just ask them? There may be a good half dozen of them on this website. Some of the ones I went on site with asked me for various reasons so if they were willing to do that I sure doubt they would turn you down if you asked them.

Is there any chance you could prevail upon both MacWood and/or Moriarty to join you? If you could I believe you would be doing an incredible service for this website and DG.

[Ian Larson]

I've  done construction for 4 different projects now. One of which 4 courses were being built simultaneously right beside each other on a huge site. My two cents would be that with the golf architecture knowledge all you guys already have on here most would be underwhelmed just hanging around discussing the architecture.

I think what would blow you away would be hanging around the project manager, project superintendent, design associate...all of the guys that are leading the charge besides the architect that may or may not be there everyday. You will see how much engineering goes on in the actual "construction" and all of the coordinating it takes between management and all the contractors/subcontractors. It's all a complex yet well orchestrated chaos from my experience. And its soo much fun.

[Colin Macqueen]

Never having heaved a pick-axe or shovelled dirt for a living I think I would learn just where a lot of my muscles actually were! In all honesty I think that the eye-opener for me would be just what a synchronised dance it must be; creating well-thought out structures and formations in amongst the chaos which surely is a hallmark of a busy site whilst allowing for a bit of "instant" creativity on the micr-level. I also think that a major realisation would be just how important the role of trusted, involved shapers is. This thread (and the others e.g. the Goalby interview) commenting on construction and shaping etc. have been a revelation to me.

Such is my fascination that I have been printing out the threads over the last 24 hours to try and get an overview of the ideas flying around. More info just keeps coming on stream. Really interesting stuff.
Thanks,
Colin

[Pete_Pittock]

   Didn't spend a week with the Renaissance Group at Pacific Dunes but in the short times I were there I watched Tom and Jim grade and regrade the fifth green a number of times to get what they thought were the right slopes and tie sections of the green together. Also watched as the bunkers below the greens were placed and shaped.
   In construction of holes look at the golf course as a giant tree with the base of the trunk being the entrance/exit of construction equipment and crew. Construction begins at the furthest leaves and sequences back through twigs, branches and limbs to minimize compaction of soil, thus helping retain natural drainablility. How to construct drainage sumps to avoid placing unsightly drains. You don't have to hide cart paths if they aren't there.
   The importance of the end of the day rituals. Delegation of authority and ownership of the work. Tweaking (not what it normally means on the south coast). If you can hang out and have the main people spend a lot of time with you, then you know they have confidence in their crew and their workmanship.

[DMoriarty]

Well, Ben, why don't you just ask them? . . .

Is there any chance you could prevail upon both MacWood and/or Moriarty to join you? If you could I believe you would be doing an incredible service for this website and DG.

TEPaul, What makes you think you know whether I have ever spent time onsite at a golf course project?  Are you keeping tabs on me by staring at the dregs left in each emptied wine glass as if reading tea leaves?   Given the incoherence of your posts perhaps you've been reading a bit much lately.

Seriously, how would you know whether I've spent time on site at such projects or not?   If I had, it is not as if I'd feel the need to constantly remind everyone that some designer or another nodded politely while I droned on self-importantly and kept them from doing their job.

  

[Phil_the_Author]

For me it would be a chance to learn the under-structure of a course as it is being built. The nuts and bolts that without which the top simply wouldn't work.

In other words, the why's and how's of drainage. The types of materials that go underneath to promote healthy turf. An understanding of why an undulation is simply that while many other times it is a necessity that allows the overall drainage to work.

How routing a course also involves the intertwining, not only of what is seen but what is not; those same underpinnings that allow for an entire area, not just a green site for example, but say several holes, fairways and all, to drain water in ways that will not unexpectedly prevent water from draining elsewhere.

Water is both life and death to a golf course and in ways that few of us, including myself, simply don't understand.

[Carl Rogers]

I spent 3 days at the Bay of Dreams, after initial clearing as it was beginning to be shaped, the last week of January 2006 with TD & Team as the result of winning Golf Magazine's Armchair Architect Contest in the fall of 2005.  The easiest comparison to make was in relation to my own field, Architect of Buildings.  However, that is a very limited comparison as the "design" element of golf has inherently a lot more fuzzy edges to it while the general "program" element of golf has an ultimate clarity.  There are fewer elements to design with but a greater range of design options.

I came to that conclusion because of the inherent margin of error in a topographic survey.  If you think that 2 foot intervals is giving you all the information you need about a site, then you miss a lot of detail and a lot of design possibililites.  The need to have the qualitative experience or the progression of walking the site can not be minimized.  At the Bay of Dreams, that problem was magnified because the topo was in meters.

I came away with an appreciation of the difficulty of the shaping task.  People like Brian Schneider and Brian Slawnik have very demanding jobs at a number of different levels.

Tom occasionally updated updated me on the progress of the project.  Much of what I saw on the "original" front nine at the Bay of Dreams was completely re-routed and re-worked later.

[Ben Voelker]

I spent a short time during a college internship on a project site, but it was merely a irrigation system replacement, so I think I still qualify for this thread

Beyond things I cannot even think of now, from a construction standpoint I think I would be most surprised to see the number of operations that must be completed simultaneously.  From an architecture standpoint, I think I would be surprised to see how the land looks before clearing and/or shaping and would probably have lots of questions about how a specific routing was chosen.

Ben

[Adam Clayman]

Wouldn't it depend on what project and who was in charge? Learning the nuts and bolts of how to run equiptment and then how that tool can be used to create the fields and features while considering drainage, play abilities and sustainabilty would likely be only learned from a cooperative teacher.

[TEPaul]

Those are some interesting and diverse thoughts and posts, guys; thanks----with the exception of David Moriarty's of course, which is the same old insulting tone that seems to be part and parcel of all his posts on this website. Ben Sims, please belay my suggestion to you to ask him if he would like to join you on a project site. Apparently just the idea that someone might think he had never been on one incites him to spew defensive insults about the tea leaf effect of the dregs of wine in the bottom of a glass or whatever.  

I hadn't really thought much of it before but even though it's an education being out there watching the construction of a course in action to me the best education is being out there with the architect before anything was done-----when he was trying to figure out what to do on a raw site.

[Mike Sweeney]

......what do you who have never done that before think or suspect you would learn about golf course architecture?

I spent an hour with Jim Wagner and Rodney way back when at French Creek when they were building the course. It was something like 93 degrees and 80% humidity. It was a dry summer so the dust caked on my body and I was there for a brief time.

I learned that golf course architecture is a really hard job and I had no regrets about being a desk jockey posting my "wisdom" in an air conditioned office.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mike,

After spending 20+ years in the construction business I came to a similar conclusion, it's much better to be the guy with the plans in your hand than the guy pinning sod to a steep bunker face in 90 degree heat. 

[Kirk Gill]

It's like most things that you think about from afar and then would get to experience up close and personal......some notions would be dashed and some new ones would be learned. I liked what Ian Larson and Colin MacQueen said - it would be most interesting to learn about the collaboration required, and the nuts and bolts operations that are necessary for all the things I tend to discuss (macro stuff) to even exist at all.

[Ryan Farrow]

 Someone should delete this thread.

[Joe Bausch]

I wonder if we could get a new course project to agree to put up maybe 6 or so live web cams.  That could be pretty neat!   

[TEPaul]

Mike Sweeney:

I'm glad you mentioned Rodney Hines and Jim Wagner and French Creek. I really miss seeing Rodney and talking to him about architecture. He was on site all the time at our restoration at Gulph Mills. Next time I get to Boston I'm going to look him up.

One day I was at French Creek with Rodney around the 16th green and Rodney said to the half dozen or so Spanish speaking laborers out there as they were attempting to float the 16th green: "Do you guys want to listen to me this time or would you prefer to just do this about ten more times?" I think I fell over laughing at that one.

And then I turned around and looked at the 17th hole from the tee that was set at about a 45 degree angle to the line of play and I asked Rodney what in the world was going on with this hole to which Rodney said: "Oh that's Bill Kittleman's hole. There seems to be more stuff going on with that one but of course none of us have any idea what any of it means."

And then he showed me Bill Kittleman's so-called "garage" which is built in to the side of that long-running bank along the right side of that hole.

As I walked back to my car down what is now #18 I could see Jim Wagner who was over on the middle of #16 trying to wrestle an enormous "chunk" of sod off a bucket and up into the side of that big bunker (they were using the "chunking" method of bunker sodding). The thing came loose and pushed him backward and over into the bunker at which point he got up and started screaming at the large piece of sod and slugged and kicked it into some kind of submission.

You guys have got to make the effort to get out on some of these projects if they are somewhere around you. You can't believe what you learn, and there is always some memorable and incredibily funny stuff too, like the foregoing.

As for Moriarty, I have no idea if you've ever been out on a golf architecture project when it is being conceived and created but I highly recommend it if you haven't been----which frankly I couldn't care less if you have or haven't, and I apologize if you thought I was implying you never had been. And yes, one time on a project down around Delaware and Maryland, the inimitable Paul Cowley and I actually did discover an amazingly novel architectural/strategic concept in the "tea leaf" effect in the dregs of wine in the bottom of a wine glass. I think that was just before Paul arrived at his inspiration for "Mars Debris" architectural mounding.

[TEPaul]

"I wonder if we could get a new course project to agree to put up maybe 6 or so live web cams.  That could be pretty neat!    "


That would be pretty neat, Joe, and certainly edifying for us all on here----that is providing you don't put the web-cams in the back of your car and forget about them and ruin them as you did the video of the last architectural meeting here at the barn office! 

[Charlie Goerges]

If I spent a week on site with Jack N. I'd probably see about 3/4 of the earth and 17 different golf courses. THAT would certainly be a learning experience!

[TEPaul]

Even though I sure to do believe it is such an interesting (and unexpectedly interesting) education to be out there on various sites with these architects, particularly in the "designing up" phase there is one particular aspect that I have to admit was pretty disappointing and disallusioning to me and particularly on the sites that seemed to offer a number of really interesting landform opportunities for golf.

And what I am about to say is true of all the architects I've been out on sites with which includes all my favorite architects. It seems to me when they all run into some problem or obstacle with a landform----problems with perhaps drainage patterns or percieved problems with playability issues their first inclination seems to be to just throw a bunker at it.

I have nothing per se against sand bunkers but I feel of all the architects I've known there is an inclination to use too much sand bunkering. I think some of them feel it's an opportunity to make some artisitc statement of their own or perhaps even that if there are not a certain number of sand bunkers on any golf course they will be perceived as not really doing their job.

Again, I have nothing against sand bunkers in most cases but I would personally use far less of them on sites that have good natural topographical opportunities for golf and particularly on sites where there is no natural sand for perhaps hundreds of miles around.

As Max Behr said, sand bunkers seem to be that odd vestige of the original linksland that completely held on to golf and golf architecture all over the world and oddly on so many sites that have no natural sand as the linksland did.

The fact is sand bunkers are not inexpensive to make and they surely are not cheap to maintain!