[Peter Pallotta]

Just thinking out loud.

The importance of what happens in between the architecture.  What thoughts/experiences occur in the spaces from one golf hole to another, e.g. from the approach shot on #7 to standing on the tee at #8. How design can best engender/shape the invisible architecture of the mind -- expectations, surprises, memories, and regrets.

Peter

[Wade Whitehead]

This sort of thing only happens without a golf cart.

The walks between greens and tees at Kinloch build interest and expectation for some reason.

WW

[Tom MacWood]

Here is an old thread that touches on juxtapositions in golf architecture, and the interesting aesthetic it creates.

http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,4760.0.html

[Mac Plumart]

I think you touch on a truly wonderful topic Peter.

Perhaps the dynamic shift of perception/reality when you drive through the front gates of Yeamans Hall captures some of what you are getting at.  It is not just the hole to hole transitions, it is the entire course that is in another world and sets the mood for the whole round.

[Charlie Goerges]

I'd love to see some post examples of good and bad instances of this concept. Incredible topic Peter.

[Jim_Kennedy]

PP,
I'd say a good example of this is found at a course like Plainfield, NJ, where expectations and memories are closely mixed.
The walk from green to tee is only several paces in some places, so your expectation of what's to come on the next hole is ever present, as is the memory of what just transpired on the previous one.

[Ben Sims]

Peter,

It is a natural progression that all situational aware beings will look for the next thing to hold their attention.  Hence, the best way to make expectations moot, is to hold attention so long and so forcefully, that one is not looking for the next thing. 

My best example is the 7th green at Ballyneal.  It is so cool, so new, and so "forceful", that you're not even concerned with the greatness of the 8th until you turn the corner.

[Tom_Doak]

Ben:

That's an interesting thought.  I generally try to keep my green-to-tee walks as short as I can make them, but you are right that occasionally, a longer interlude after the completion of a hole can have a strengthening effect.

It is certainly true what you said about the 7th at Ballyneal.  I never think about the 8th hole at all until I get up there, and from the rounds I've played, I don't think anyone else does, either ... most everyone seems to linger on that green for a bit and hit an extra putt or two.

They do not have the same luxury to linger at Pacific Dunes, yet the longer pauses when going from #11 to 12 and from #16 to 17 seem to reinforce the prominence of #11 and #16 in people's memories.  The longer walk makes it more difficult for you to forget what just happened.  [The same is true of #6, now that I think about it.]  I was only conscious of that in the transition from 11 to 12 while we were working on the course; it was a particularly awkward transition to make sure that players on #12 didn't hit down #4, but by routing the walk path along the sea for a bit I figured we could turn a negative into a positive.

The same is true of the walk from #4 to #5 at Barnbougle.  You are both elated at the prospect of changing wind directions, and reminded of the qualities of #4, unless you've lost a ball to the left of the #*!&^ green as I did on my last visit.

[Adam Clayman]

I doubt there's an example where the naturalness of a situation is not the biggest factor in keeping your primordial brain engaged. In other words, the un-natural will hardly ever hold your attention.

[Ben Sims]

Tom,

I'm as big a proponent of short green to tee transfers as anyone (please don't dig up that atrocious routing I did last year for the armchair archie #2).  But sometimes reflection can be a good thing.  Pac Dunes is a great walk because it allows you to amble.  One transition of reflection that you didn't mention is 13 to 14.  Somber as you're on the ocean for the last time, juiced for the experience you just had and then this little demur and razor thin par 3 appears.  

Architecture preceding the invisible space or "ma" should be of a nature to hold the golfer through the nothingness in order for the routing to both flow and be distinct.  I would think that in a perfect architecture world, your best holes would be followed by longer transitions than your average to good holes.  Simply because there's less in the mind after a mediocre hole to get you through the "space" to the next hole.

[Tom_Doak]

Architecture preceding the invisible space or "ma" should be of a nature to hold the golfer through the nothingness in order for the routing to both flow and be distinct.  I would think that in a perfect architecture world, your best holes would be followed by longer transitions than your average to good holes.

This has happened often enough in my own work that I suspect it's not entirely coincidence.

If you go for the "wow" green site for a great hole, it's often the case that you have a longer transition to get to the next tee, because you were less worried about the next tee than about the perfect green site.  Look at the 15th at Cypress Point, or the 8th at Pebble Beach.  However, nothing is universal ... the 18th tee at St. Andrews couldn't be closer to the Road green.

[Ben Sims]

Architecture preceding the invisible space or "ma" should be of a nature to hold the golfer through the nothingness in order for the routing to both flow and be distinct.  I would think that in a perfect architecture world, your best holes would be followed by longer transitions than your average to good holes.

This has happened often enough in my own work that I suspect it's not entirely coincidence.

If you go for the "wow" green site for a great hole, it's often the case that you have a longer transition to get to the next tee, because you were less worried about the next tee than about the perfect green site.  Look at the 15th at Cypress Point, or the 8th at Pebble Beach.  However, nothing is universal ... the 18th tee at St. Andrews couldn't be closer to the Road green.

...nothing is universal.  Just look a few hundred yards away from Pacific Dunes at Old Macdonald.  Open terrain.  How do you taper back the easy flow of the routing to make the holes distinct (of course them being named templates helps)?  The space between holes is minimal by design.  The ability to look ahead to any number of features well before encountering them is available as well.  How do you engage the golfer with meaningful transition then?   Masking features from differing angles had to be a priority in order to preserve newness of experience once on the tee.

The ma at Old Macdonald seemed to serve as mental gathering time to tackle another well known puzzle.  Pac, Crystal, Pine Valley; they all required emotional reflection between holes.  

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks.  More just thinking out loud:

A good golf hole, even an exceptional one, is in-and-out-itself fairly simple, i.e. there is not much complexity in/about it. So where does the magic of the truly great courses come from, the subtle resonances and interesting depths?  Wherein lies the Transcendent?

Read this:

Summer grasses,
all that remains
of soldiers' dreams

Peter  

[Mike_Young]

Ben,
I forgot where I first heard it but in a round of golf we are only over the ball for about 20 seconds per shot....so I think you are correct in weighing what happens between..whether it be inner hole or intra hole ( new term)  ....  IMHO that is why the double loaded housng corridors were doomed...  it is also an area of design that I don't think is given enough consideration yet it exist on all the greats....especially in the green to next tee transitions....I thought Ballyneal flowed seamlessly....( oops...am I a butt boy now)

[Jeff_Brauer]

A couple of experiences come to mind.  I recall a few things from design school.  One was my professor having us enter the Illini football stadium from the enclosed players tunnel, where it looks much bigger than when looking down at it from the top row.  On one course, I realized that there was thick brush behind the green which would provide a tunnel effect upon "arriving" on the next tee and I specifically told the field guys to NOT clear the path of underbrush at the sides.  When I made my next site visit, the project foreman had cleared it anyway in sort of a power struggle that sometimes happens.

I have occaisionally built steps and planters around the first tee to foster a sense of arrival on the course.

Lastly, I was always taught in design school that if something "dissapears around a corner" human nature makes it nearly impossible to not want to go see what is there, so my ponds and paths often go around a blind corner to foster that sense of exploration.

[Tim Bert]

Re: #7 at Ballyneal. I have been there 3 different times and enjoyed maybe 8-10 times around the front nine. I have NO idea how to get from #7 to #8. I am trying to recall right now, and i suppose it has to be from from short and right of the green but I not remembering it just thinking through logically where it must be. Not many courses I've walked that many times can stump me on a transition like that. This is intended as a long-winded comiment of that green.

[Chris Cupit]

Certainly one example mentioned before is at TPC Sawgrass.  The walk up to sixteen green brings the famous seventeenth into view and then the relatively long walk from the green to tee builds the tension as you approach the "shot".

[Chris Cupit]

Pine Valley seemed to me one of the best walks ever. It seemed like you just went from green quite seamlessly to the next tee. Merion was pretty awesome as well but the new back tees meant walking back quite a few times and would be the most incredible nitpick of an awesome round of golf.

I love how ocean side courses often wait a few holes before showing any leg so to speak.  Bandon Dunes and Royal County Down come to mind. Is there a better hole in the world than #3at RCD?

Augusta National gives you a great peak of twelve as you ay eleven and the tension has time to build there as well as there is a little walk and amazingly wide open view as you walk from eleven green back to twelve tee.

[Mac Plumart]

A couple of really, really cool thoughts and ideas on this thread...

I would think that in a perfect architecture world, your best holes would be followed by longer transitions than your average to good holes.  Simply because there's less in the mind after a mediocre hole to get you through the "space" to the next hole.

Let the great hole linger in the golfer's mind as the walk to the next hole.  This reflection time should allow the good holes attributes to sink in.


Certainly one example mentioned before is at TPC Sawgrass.  The walk up to sixteen green brings the famous seventeenth into view and then the relatively long walk from the green to tee builds the tension as you approach the "shot".

I add the entire 16th hole at Sawgrass builds that tension/excitement...not just the walk off the green.  As you approach your ball after your tee shot on 16 you can see 17th hole.  And from then on that anticpation builds and builds and builds.  That aspect of that hole to hole transition might be the best in the world.

Again, Peter, you've started a great thread with terriffic food for thought.

[Tom_Doak]

Certainly one example mentioned before is at TPC Sawgrass.  The walk up to sixteen green brings the famous seventeenth into view and then the relatively long walk from the green to tee builds the tension as you approach the "shot".

I add the entire 16th hole at Sawgrass builds that tension/excitement...not just the walk off the green.  As you approach your ball after your tee shot on 16 you can see 17th hole.  And from then on that anticpation builds and builds and builds.  That aspect of that hole to hole transition might be the best in the world.

There has been a lot of credit given on this thread for design ideas that were at best, afterthoughts, and in some cases never thought of at all.

The above example of the TPC at Sawgrass is one such.  When the course was built originally, there was a tall, narrow peninsula of spectator mound sticking out into the lake between #16 and #17.  You couldn't see the 17th green from the 16th green at all.  And it proved to be a problem, because there was so much crowd noise on those two holes, with the galleries oblivious to whether golfers were getting ready to hit on the other hole, that it was very distracting to the players.  So, they dug out the spectator mound -- discovering in the process that they had buried a lot of debris from the construction underneath it, so it was a very expensive change.

Of course, you could argue that NOT seeing the 17th until you were on the long walk around the corner from the 16th was a different way to build tension.  I don't remember Mr. Dye ever saying that was a goal, but he didn't say it wasn't, either.  The main tension-builder there is that there are often two groups backed up when you get to the tee, so you have to sit around and wait for them to play and try not to think about it.  Luckily, no one is using THAT as a strategy to deliberately build tension into the architecture.

[Peter Pallotta]

Mac - thanks. Food for thought is the best I could hope for. Interesting, though, that so many of the posts have to do with the literal transition from one hole to the next, i.e. the walk in between and the element/effect of Time.  Others that come quickly to mind - the transition from a long Par 5 (and the range of shots that it requires) to a short Par 3; from an approach that (apparently) is fraught with danger to a tee shot that is (apparently) quite benign -- and the range of possibilities/actualities that are involved; and from the (seemingly) straightforward to the (seemingly) complex (i.e. choice laden).

Peter     

[BCrosby]

Great thread.

I can think of lots of special transitions. They seem to occur most often on good courses. For example, it's hard to beat that moment when your emerge from the canopy of cypress trees onto the 16th tee at Cypress Point. Or standing on the 16th green on TOC looking at the wall that must be negotiated on the next tee.

Peachtree GC has a couple fascinating transitional moments. It's not a change in mood or a sudden spectacular view or a foretaste of an interesting hole. It is a transition from one era of golf architecture to another. I've always thought the walk through the pines between the first green at PGC (a classic GA hole) and the second tee (a classic RTJ Modern hole) is walking from one gca era to the next. You walk from gca's past to its future. In fact there are several transitions like that between holes at PGC. That's not surprising on reflection. The course itself straddles those two architectural eras.

Bob    

[Ben Sims]

I think this thread is getting off topic and bit watered down.  I don't look at it as a direct commentary on actual green to tee transitions, rather, a discourse on the ability of negative space to have an impact mentally.

My opinion is that stirring architecture will take care of itself and make the golfer unaware of the negative space.   Every great golf course I've ever played only had one constant, the ability to spatially confuse my brain.  When the course is really good, I lose track of time and space.  This should be Tom's new definition of a 10.

[Peter Pallotta]

Bob - lovely example, Peachtree, of the invisible resonances.

Ben - I'm enjoying your posts; but I don't think I understand ma or negative space, almost not at all but certainly not enough to comment.
It strikes me, though, that perhaps it is precisely because "stirring architecture takes care of itself" that the invisible architecture of magical courses can be felt and resonates, i.e. that something extra (in thought and feeling) that connects and magnifies and enriches the experience between two individual examples (i.e. golf holes) of excellent architecture. In short, it is that which alters the doors of perception.

Peter  

[BCrosby]

"There has been a lot of credit given on this thread for design ideas that were at best, afterthoughts, and in some cases never thought of at all."

The inimitable Mike Young drilled that idea into my head long ago. I remember coming up with exotic explanations for Ross' brilliant and unusual bunker locations at Athens CC. Mike listened patiently (which is totally out of character) and then shut me down with the comment that Ross built the bunkers where he did because he needed fill dirt.

Bob  

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()