Mike and Matt and others:
I appreciate your sentiments regarding rankings, and I appreciate the interesting discussions that come from these lists; it must be great fun for many people, and I do not want to seem like the sniveling members of the ASGCA who felt the need to actually write a paper about it of all things. I think the rankings personally hurt those of us who do not register, because we do have a lot of pride in what we have created. If you really care about something or someone you hate to see them neglected or criticized, but that is a part of it. My distaste for the ratings and rankings is soley personal, but that is my problem.
Matt, you mentioned Hawk Pointe going private, and yes it will in 2004. I hope I am not premature in saying so but I believe they are going to make that announcement. When this happens, some of the rough and other challenges you mentioned will begin to happen. (Also, the owner mentioned taking out all cart paths, and being a walking/caddy course). For instance, they have kept the area between #3 fairway and the wetland cut down, but when I go there next time we are going to mark out a line that will define a native area that will be allowed to grow, and it will increase the strategy of the hole. The more you cut off the angle to the fairway on the teeshot the more chance you have to lose the ball in the natural vegetaion, or have to play out to the fiarway and lose a shot. The superintendent, who is excellent, Dave Reece, mentioned a bunker in here, but it does not fit the terrain because this area is low and wet. Again, the natural land can produced a significant strategic element in this situation, it does not need a manmade bunker to kick your butt. This was my inspiration for this land at the time, let the natural land do as much for me as possible.
You mentioned holes of similar distances, and par threes or similar challenge. The course was routed to take advantage of the natural terrain, and other natural elements, that was primary. Where distances shook out was not important, I wanted the best hole in that particular part of the site, irregardless of distance. As I described in a strategic book I produced for the owner, the course markers should be placed to provide the variety in distance. In other words, the par threes are all in a similar range, however there are pin areas on each green that accomodate long shots and short shots, so the markers can be placed that day in a way that provides a wide range of distances. If I have the room to make all the par threes play 200 yards why not provide that knowing that this provides maximum flexibility and the greens can be designed to have pin areas that are challenging from 140 and 210 yards. The flaw in this is that the course does not always get set up to provide the variety. That comes with education on my part with the owner and superintendent.
There was not as much land available as you think. There are wetland riparian areas cutting through the property that have jurisdictional setbacks, so a significant amount of land is lost to these natural areas. But, again maybe this is a flaw in my design approach, land based design, but I walk the land looking for the best holes, and the distances of each holes are set by this approach. In other words, variety in distance is not the primary concern. I do not have the formulas you use for ranking variety in hole lengths, shot values, etc. I find the best 18 holes I can. I am more focused on what these distances end up being because I have been sensitive to input similar to yours that has come from others as well. But, as I said, I do not think you can evaluate variety by looking at the scorecard. Variety is built into all those par threes, and the fault really lies with course setup that day.
Mike mentioned bunker shapes not being great, which is true in some cases. Some bunkers are built into existing slopes, like the big one on the outside turn on #1, but I did not think it appropriate to put a lot of whale fins and supperfulous shapes into the bunkers, what meaning does all these fancy lines have in the final analysis? None I think. You will see the beginning of something I am doing now with bunkers on a couple of holes at my new course on Long Island. Significant earthforms on the edge between bunker and green, which will provide for some intersting recovery shots that must be played over these earthforms onto the green. But, Mike is right that some bunkers could be better. I toured Friar's Head, and my word, the bunkers there make the rest of us look like we are engaged in child's play. Absolutely beautiful, incredible work. you guys always swooned over C&C and the boys to a point that I began to think this was a gay man's disscussion group. But, I see in the presentation at least some increbible work. The greens were equally impressive. I only toured it from the superintendents truck, but the place looked like a masterpiece. However, there did not seem to be a lot of strategy in the tee shots, not much in terms of cross bunkering, or other elements jutting across your line of play. This may be a wrong evaluation since I only saw the course from the side, and from a few tees as well, which is why I think the tee shot strategy may not live up to the rest of the course
Matt,
your comments are important and well taken. That is the beauty of this group, people like you who have a serious passion for the game make me want to do better, produce better work. It is discouraging to see the types of people in this businss, see my tirade on management companies. But, the people in this discussion group give me hope about the game, it makes me want to design for the serious golfer, and a high handicap player can be a serious golfer, so I do not mean exclusively the low handicap player. The seroius golfer does not care for all bunkers being machine raked, or all greens being mowed by riding mowers, the serious golfer does not want all greens open in the front, or flat fair greens to move play along. The serious golfer likes the unexpected , the challenge, the battle against the natural elements, and knows all will not be fair. There is so much more that defines the serious golfer and it goes on everyday on this website. I do not know about other architects, but I got to telll you this place energizes me because you care. I wish Ran would produce an annual compilation of all the threads, because there is good information here. Look at Dunlop White's article, what a great piece of work. I wish Ran would do like the New York Times and have a printer friendly key so I can print some of this information to keep. I guess I should send him my contribution before I keep going on about what he should do.