Old School Routing Aid

[Mike Hendren]

With regard to routing a golf course the eccentric George C. Thomas Jr. wrote:

  "Unless the solution comes with reasonable quickness on the ground, you will soon be marking up maps at a great rate, and a little trick taught me by Willie Tuckie, Jr. is a wonderful aid.  Your map is, of course, contoured to scale, and you can cut out of blotting paper miniature fairways, making them also to the same scale as the map; it is easy to place them on your contour map with thumb tacks, first having your map on a board.

  You will find that by hinging these little fairways at or about the 200-yard mark, you can make them follow the contours on the map as dog legs or straight holes.  You can play with them just as if they were picture puzzle units; and by making them of different lengths, all to scale, with their width corresponding to that of fairways from 65 to 80 yards wide, the one shotters unhinged and the three-shot holes hinged twice, you will find them of the upmost help. 

  Such a plan gives you clear thinking as you work on your map, and avoids the annoyance of constantly using new maps or erasing lines already drawn and found useless."

This begs two questions:
1.  Who the heck is Willie Tuckie, Jr.?
2.  Do golf course architects play with paper dolls?

Bogey

[RJ_Daley]

Mike, somewhere in the archives of GCA.com is a photo of a young lad of about 13 years with a set of "Tuckie" stick on templates of holes with hinged turning points.  I think the kid's name was Forest.   

[Bill_McBride]

Mike, somewhere in the archives of GCA.com is a photo of a young lad of about 13 years with a set of "Tuckie" stick on templates of holes with hinged turning points.  I think the kid's name was Forest.   

Forrest has a very good book, "Routing the Golf Course," that includes templates to show necessary width and turning points for various holes.   I think the turning points are more like 250 than 200 yards.   

[Mike Nuzzo]

I'm pretty sure C+C and Doak do not use those puppets.
I'm glad I don't either.

[Mike Nuzzo]

I do use a combination of centerlines and sketching on top of digital topo lines
Tom does it by hand - based on pictures posted - I haven't seen first hand

One problem with the stencils is their thickness - sometimes elevation can create the needed separation between holes, greens and tees

Most architects have them in some format of CAD - CAD is for weenies

[Ally Mcintosh]

I know a few architects who use that template method that George Thomas refers to...

I prefer a bunch of tracing paper, a variety of colour pencils and a scale rule...

[Jeff_Brauer]

I bet most archies have them.  I have them somewhere, in both100 and 200 scale.  We used clear plastic to see the topo below  and cut many different hole lengths.  I have seen other gca's who ingeniously have the Tee shot fixed, but a sliding second shot so each one can be any length.  Of course, you still need to make ten of them for 4's and various length for 3's plus 4 for par 5's.

[Tom_Doak]

I'm pretty sure C+C and Doak do not use those puppets.
I'm glad I don't either.

Actually, I had one of my interns [Angela Moser] make up several sets of those little hinged cardboard holes when we were working on potential routings for the Olympic project.  We were convinced that having holes of certain lengths would be one key to the design, so I wanted everyone who was working on potential routings [4-5 associates at the same time] to be working with the same overall lengths to make sure their design fit on the site.

Of course, when we lost the competition, those suckers were banished from the office forever.    But I have worked with big-time land planners who insisted on using them, because they won't give you one inch more width between their housing lots than what the template gives you.  [Actually, I walked away from that project.]

Most of the time, I just draw centerlines straight onto the map with a pencil.  There was very little topo of note on the Olympic site, but when you are working with good topo (or extreme topo), you don't want to block it all out with your little cut-outs ... you need to see what's happening in those landing areas.  And it's also important to remember that not everybody drives it 800 feet or 900 feet or whatever distance you use for your turning point, so it's okay to have a couple of holes where the natural landing area is a bit short of the turning point.

[Jeff_Brauer]

That is why I use clear plastic!  Actually, haven't used them since the Laredo project proposal.

[Mike Hendren]

Frankly, I'm astonished this practice endures in any iteration.  My apologies to the heirs of The Captain - perhaps he's not as eccentric as this suggests.

I do heartily recommend his Golf Architecture in America.  It is a treasure trove of design theory, practice, photographs and occasionally whacky concepts.  My fondest hope is to see some of his work one fine day.

Bogey

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mike,

It's always a surprise to anyone visiting a gca office to see those things.  Not sure why it should raise any ire.  The routing job is to fit 18 sausage shaped land parcels into a piece of property.  These can help quickly see potential routings.  Actually, my biggest use for them was to throw 18 holes measuring whatever we thought the course length might be just to see if 18 fit on the property at all, much less how they might fit in detail.

That said, what is it about visaulizing holes that way, rather than as pencil lines on paper any different?

[Mike Nuzzo]

That said, what is it about visaulizing holes that way, rather than as pencil lines on paper any different?

I think Mike is astonished that anyone would use sausage puppets, pencils or tracing paper.
Mike - come by my office and I can show you design efficiency - I use none of those things.
If only I had a workload like Tom or Jeff.

Cheers

[Mike Hendren]

The Captain used paper dolls, Tommy.

[Tom_Doak]

I'm pretty sure C+C and Doak do not use those puppets.
I'm glad I don't either.

You were half wrong, Mike!

[Thomas Dai]

I wonder if any of the courses near Billund in Denmark were routed with the help of Lego?

Atb

[Mike Nuzzo]

I'm pretty sure C+C and Doak do not use those puppets.
I'm glad I don't either.

You were half wrong, Mike!

0 for 2 as it turns out.
At the time I must have been more turned off by the literal golf hole puppets.... they are usually wide, look clumsy, and more standard.


0 for 3 really. I've used a digital match stick version that I thought had less rigidity than those. I don't see Doak and Coore using the meat puppets as their first tool. I assume early in the process Doak finds natural features that would make great holes as anchor points and then connects some of the dots. As early in the process when Coore works on how to walk across the property.


It seems a little bit of all the techniques to varied levels on any site helps.
I start by looking for features, visualizing different routes across the site, and a combination of match sticks and Coores little men.

[Tom_Doak]

Mike:


No, you were half right -- I don't use the little cutouts. 


The only time I did was for our attempt to win the bid for the Olympic course in Rio.  I had a bunch of young associates helping out and part of my plan was to vary the lengths of the holes a certain way, so we used cut-outs to try different routing ideas while keeping the hole lengths the same.  But that was a flat site; when I'm on good ground I just follow the topo and I don't care that much what the lengths of the holes are.

[Ben Sims]

…when I'm on good ground I just follow the topo and I don't care that much what the lengths of the holes are.

For whatever reason, when I do these exercises in my head or sketch holes at home, I despise the use of turn points altogether.


But this feels idealistic and probably wrong; a hobbyist ignoring basics.

[Michael Whitaker]

Mike - did you ever track down Tuckie?

[Mike Nuzzo]

…when I'm on good ground I just follow the topo and I don't care that much what the lengths of the holes are.

For whatever reason, when I do these exercises in my head or sketch holes at home, I despise the use of turn points altogether.


But this feels idealistic and probably wrong; a hobbyist ignoring basics.

Ben
I agree with your assessment of turning points.
they can be 600 - 900+'.
I've used varying turning point lengths from commensurate tees - and I don't find those that useful either.
The player can wind up anywhere.
Maybe they are just best for measuring the final length of a hole, which doesn't matter much to me anyway.
Cheers

[Ally Mcintosh]

Turning points are functional to measure hole length and separation whilst routing. They should be the same length on any one course.


The trouble occurs when architects habitually design their holes around the turning point, deliberately dog-legging the fairway at that point and consistently bunkering at the approx distance to aid the turn. Classic course design does not have its fairway lines follow the centreline so rigidly, using offsets and sweeping curves more effectively.

[Eric LeFante]

I'm pretty sure C+C and Doak do not use those puppets.
I'm glad I don't either.

I think Bill Coore does without a topo map:




https://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php?topic=72600.0

[Bruce Katona]

So, as a land planner primarily, I always used the templates to put together a stick routing and residential.


Why?


1. I needed to see if 18 reasonable holes, getting to about 7000 yards from the back tees with at least a par of 70 and the required number of units would fit on a site while maintaining safe golf hole corridors and separation between golf and other adjacent uses.


2. Next was how the to uses (golf & residential) would interact and react to one another.
     A. Intersection of uses - cart/walking paths crossing over residential streets. Road crossing for golf should be avoided.
     B. Working hard to keep the slice off the tee interior to the golf course and not hit housing/clubhouse location/ other required             amenities.
     C. How to get overall infrastructure/utilities routed to minimize costs.
     D. Locating and sizing required drainage & irrigation ponds
     E. Minimize environmental permitting by looking to avoid or minimize impacts to critical environmental areas.
     F. Tring to avoid a routing and land plan where the driving range & Hole 1 play into the rising sun in the AM & 9/18 not playing
[size=78%]          into the setting sun (not as successful).[/size]