The San Luis Obispo project came with quite a few challenges, but I happy to state that we have managed to overcome most of the shortcomings thus far - thanks to Neal's circumspect approach and an excellent construction crew that never settles for “quick and dirty.”
For those on this board who have never actually had the opportunity to test out your ideas in the real world, there is absolutely no substitute for sharp and experienced builders and an architect who is flexible when necessary, but with the courage to stick by his guns when meddlesome back-seat drivers try to inflict their whim on the project.
Kikuyu fairways presented some interesting factors to consider – ironically, the last project we did (I was in a far more limited capacity) was also a club with kikuyu fairways, so I had a clearer idea of what was doable and what would not work with some pet strategies and strategic arrangements.
As most of us know, this particular variety does not lend itself well to fast & firm playing surfaces, but the ball tends to sit up very well. I'm not sure whether the chicken or the egg came first out there, but the golf course and bunkering schematics played as an aerial game almost exclusively. The good part is that you can scalp it pretty close as long as a little brown won't get the jungle drums beating in the grillroom.
In the interest of full-disclosure, I am a hopeless low-ball hitter in the same vein as Tiger Bernhardt. Thus, I find golf courses that demand I fly the ball through the air over and over and over to reach the green to be unnecessarily frustrating. At San Luis Obispo, we quickly discovered there was only one way to skin the cat on most of the holes - and by the time I tottered down the hill on #18, I was exhausted and grumpy.
So, for those who complain that certain architects (and fledgling consultants) view the game through a prism of their own golf games, I plead guilty as charged and do not apologize for it. The fact is that most golfers – and I was a low-handicap player for 25 years – not only prefer the option of using the contours of the ground to direct their ball, but find it absolutely necessary to finish the hole.
The first order of business, after making a couple of lengthy site visits, was to unroll the topo and figure out a way to turn a one-dimensional, objective examination into a whimsical adventure. Of course, there is also the six-letter profanity to consider; Neal might be the best in world at squeezing every drop out of a BUDGET onto the finished product.
We are an interesting pair and have been close friends for many years – which may be how his measured intellect tolerates a manic ex-golf writer who core-dumps ideas all day long with no filter between his crackerbox cranium and acerbic tongue.
Needless to say, I am not allowed to attend Green Committee meetings.
However, I spent an entire day alone with the Green Chairman examining the golf course - which doubtless left the General Manager and nervous Neal gobbling Tums and holding their breath. However, as luck would have it, the Chairman is every bit as opinionated and bombastic as moi' and spent his young adulthood playing Crystal Downs. We got along famously . . . . . .
Life is full of trade-offs as it was necessary to prioritize what absolutely had to be done in Phase One and what could be left for the next go-round. We were to leave the putting surfaces alone with the exception of #9, a hideous, dysfunctional train-wreck (illustrated above) that at first blush looked like a “before photo” in a diet commercial featuring Haystack Calhoun.
What you see in the pictures is all Neal. He was on a speed run with his sketch pad once we decided specifically what was wrong with the hole and I stood out of the way and watched the maestro wave his wand.
The new putting surface had to match, which it certainly does. Loren Roberts was literally raised on the golf course and there is no doubt he learned to roll the rock with supernatural consistency due to the please-God-take-my-life, frightening speed and pitch to the greens. Imagine Oakmont with putting surfaces at 6% and more. I hope they will eventually slow them down to a more rational level, but that is like asking John Holmes to surgically shorten his dick.
The bunkering schematics we conjured up are more in proportion to the surrounds and introduce different entrances onto the putting surfaces. We paid very close attention and remained open to using the existing contours around the green complexes – most of which were covered over in scraggly rough.
The importance of a Superintendent buying into the new look cannot be underestimated; an experienced guy who has been through all the wars is sometimes is resistant to change. I think Neal was a breath of fresh air and a tactful architect who wins over the Super will find his job immeasurably easier.
On several holes – the par-3 #3 comes to mind – we were able to completely change the character of the hole simply by replacing an ugly oval bunker with a jazzed up puzzle-piece and moving the roughlines out of the line of play. Voila! You suddenly have a pretty decent modified Reverse-Redan.
There are many other examples of contours adjacent to the greens covered in rough that, when mowed down to fairway height, introduce a variety of maddening short-game options, specifically on the “bail-out side” of #15 & #16.
Since very few here have played the golf course, I'm not going to type out a pedantic recitation of why we decided to rearrange and add a carry bunker to #5 or why there are no greenside bunkers at all on #16 – you'll just have to see for yourself. My favorite hole is #4, where Neal conjured up the idea of some wild mounds in front of the green while I channeled the Great Bahto to make it somewhat of a Leven Hole.
My friend Tom Doak once called me out for wanting to do my own “Macdonald Redux” - maybe he and Urbina are afraid Neal and I will top Old Mac someday ;-) - but if you learn to play guitar jamming along with Grateful Dead records, the chances are pretty good that there will always be little pieces of Sugar Magnolia in everything you write.
Like Pete Dye isn't a later day Seth Raynor?
Go ahead, argue with me on that point.
One thing that cannot be underestimated is the importance of rough lines and tree removal. We spend a lot of time on this website whining about too many trees – and rightly so. SLO – from what we are told – used to be a corridor of drippy pines, most of which were lost to the pitch canker (I think).
Neal did an incredible job of convincing the naysayers that not only was it necessary to remove or trim random the junk eucalyptus trees, but also get rid of a dozen stone pines that somehow got planted directly in the line of play to our new bunkers.
Several times after we widened a fairway to eliminate an arbitrary rough line and rearrange and rebuild the bunkers, everyone would comment how terrific it looked. Now, drop a ball in exactly the right spot in the (new) fairway to introduce the best angle to approach the green and – well, look! . . . . there is a scraggly tree overhanging and blocking the line to the green.
Somehow, those trees were not quite so sacred once it could be clearly illustrated that the entire exercise and construction expenditures are a waste if you don't ditch that putrid looking poplar, planted by a bird shitting on what was once the fairway.
Truth be told, I am awfully proud of what we have done so far – and since I am my own worst critic and a congenital curmudgeon – I'm not the slightest bit afraid to bring in Tommy Naccarato or Shackelford for the critics perspective. Neal and I actually have been talking about organizing an outing for the Treehouse intellectuals. The food in San Luis Obispo and Shell Beach is excellent and the chicks are college-town hot. What else do you want from life?
One more word about the 18th hole, a blind tee shot over a ridge to a catch-basin fairway, and back up the hill to an amphitheater green complex. It looks like an elongated version of #18 at Olympic Lake, but absolutely nothing about the hole worked, including a bunker that washed out constantly.
We went round and round, trying to produce – if not perhaps a boffo finish – something visually intriguing and memorable. I've got to admit that I had no solution for the myriad of technical problems. And here lies the dividing line between the kind of theoretical masturbation that goes on in the Treehouse by all the armchair architects (me included) and the actual nuts and bolts under the hood of the golf course.
For example, I'm a damned good litigator as Pro Se and have ghost written enough briefs to know that my line of manure stands up in the Family Law arena. But once you pull off the training wheels and have to sink or swim in the highly technical world of insurance or appellate law, it becomes apparent you don't know squat and should STFUp, step aside and let the real gunners handle the howitzers.
And so it goes with golf architecture, in case any of you Foot-Joy sniffers out there are unclear, be clear about this: There are a thousand factors that go into making a creative decision when building a golf course - and just because you have a nifty-ass idea in your head that would make Mackenzie stand up and take notice has no bearing on whether it can actually be done with environmental constraints, water lines or just plain not enough dough in the kitty.
I've gotten quite an education over the years from Neal on this subject, who frequently laments that few in the Treehouse have any idea how many trade-offs are sometimes necessary to translate that spiffy drawing into the actual dirt.
It is one thing to push sand around in the Pine Barrens where drainage is hardly an issue and quite another to sculpt something of merit and strategic excellence with adobe soil, effluent water and shrieking hot summers.
So, back to #18 and all the dumb-ass solutions I came up with to make it stand up with the rest of the golf course. I'm going to toot my horn and assert that my contributions out there have tangible value and am frankly a little shocked that some of my ideas ended up translating very well into the dirt.
But I know that nearly everything I draw up has a visceral connection to a hole buried deep in my memory. Whether conscious or not, all I am doing is drawing on a lifetime of experience and trying to plug it into what is in front of me out there. I've never scratched out something completely original on a golf course in my life.
Don't forget one thing: When the backhoe has struck a sewer pipe that cannot be moved and the construction crew is sitting there on-the-clock waiting for some direction, everybody looks at THE ARCHITECT and asks “Okay coach, call the play.”
Right now. On the fly. Therein lies the difference between a Pro and a prophylactic. 90% of the Green Chairmen in America need to learn that immutable truth. Just because you have a Juris Doctorate from WTF Law School does not make you an architect any more than having a Golf Architecture degree from Cornell makes you a lawyer.