How can a layman understand routing?

[David_Elvins]

How can a layman understand the golf course routing process?  Or critique a routing?

He can't.

That's the most common answer given on this discussion group.  However it is not one I agree with.  

13 years ago, when I first started reading golfclubatlas I had no clue on how the mystical (mythical?) process of routing a golf course worked.

Although some will no doubt suggest am being misguided, I now think it is definitely something that can be learnt and it is not beyond the keen observer to critique a routing or route a golf course.

Here are some ideas on how to understand the routing process.   I  would be interested if others could add their thoughts on what helped them understand routing.  

1. Learn to read topographical maps. Tom Doak bangs on about this - understand how to read a topo map. Look at topo maps of existing courses to get an idea of scale of features.

2.  Visit courses before and after construction.  Get a sense of scale - of what sort of land make what sort of golf hole. Pay particular attention to green sites and what kind of ground can produce what kind of green site.

3.  Learn about slope and what slope is suitable for certain features - drainage, placing a pin, holding a golf ball on a fairway (grass dependent of course), and what these slopes look like in the field and on maps.  

There are the three most important points IMO.  If you understand these then a lot of the little bits of gold that you come across talking to architects, reading books, or reading GCA make more sense.   It is also easier to imagine what areas of existing golf courses looked like before they were built, and therefor gain insight into what the architect was looking at before the course was built.

4.Try routing golf courses.

5 Study the Armchair architect contests on here.  There is some sensational stuff.  Also some poor 'mistakes' and sometimes looking at mistakes is more educational than looking at the best routings in the world.

6. Visit courses in the one area by different architects. By looking at how different architects have built courses similar terrain, you can learn a lot about routing by studying the differences in the courses and seeing how that ties back into the structure of the courses.

There are a few points to get started, I would be interested in the thoughts of others.  Whilst some will suggest that there is never enough information available to critique a routing, I think most critiques - golf courses, films, plays, etc - are done without information about the limtations that affected the final product.  I do not think the process of routing a golf course is that difficult (Hugh Wilson could do it) and  think more people should have to confidence to have a crack at understanding and/or discussing routing on here.

[Sean_A]

David

Sure, the jig saw element is important, but so are the pragmatics.  You are forgetting constraints such as budget, infrastructure location and anything to do with housing, environmental issues, owner demands etc.  Thats why I think its impossible to truly understand why and what concerning a project unless one is somehow connected.  For these reasons, I think its better for the layman to talk about the golf and forget the whys in how the course came to be.  Same for archies.  Its better to talk about what was produced rather than who produced it.   

Ciao   

[David_Elvins]

David

Sure, the jig saw element is important, but so are the pragmatics.  You are forgetting constraints such as budget, infrastructure location and anything to do with housing, environmental issues, owner demands etc.

Sean,

I don't think anyone has trouble understanding the pragmatic concepts, though.  Sure, you might not know all the details of a specific project, but you can get the concept that houses in the fairway landing area = bad.  

I think its better for the layman to talk about the golf and forget the whys in how the course came to be.  Same for archies.  Its better to talk about what was produced rather than who produced it.    

I completely disagree,  I think that the more people in the world that understand the whys and the hows, the better the standard of future golf courses.  In general so many committees, developers, clubs, and architects get the wrong final product because they make the same mistakes of process. If they understood the whys and hows of golf and golf architecture, they would be better off.

[Ally Mcintosh]

David,

You are right in almost everything you say although I still believe it is difficult to fully criticise a routing UNLESS you see a better solution.

A couple of points:

Without the understanding of topographical maps, you are dead in the water.

And when / if there is another armchair architect's contest, it should be conducted on a tight site with many constraints. The difference between a good routing and an average routing on these wonderfully undulating 1,000 acre sites that have been dished up to date will be the difference between a great course and an excellent course. On a tight site, it could be the difference between an excellent course and an awful course.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Echoing Sean, do you need to understand routing to understand whether you like a course or to consider its merits? Routing seems more about VORD, ie assessing the quality of the architect's effort relative to the property he was given and relative to what another architect might have accomplished.

EDIT: I mean to include whether you like the routing in that personal assessment. Do you have to know the routing choices and compromises to decide whether you like it?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mark,

Your last sentence is a loser, IMHO.  It is just a cheap justification for anyone to claim their favorite architect would have done better.  There are very few opportunities (think Rio) where we might ever see another architect's solution.  Even in a design competition, it was still just a first plan that probably would haven changed over time.  And then, if never built, it would be even harder to really compare.

I do understand the "excellent site raises expectations" theory, and generally agree.  Still hard to really critique, sans another routing that is clearly better.  Even then, its a matter of opinion.  TD's Pacific Dunes is an example - I am sure many critique the back to back par 3's based on some routing principle, but was there really a better solution out there without them?  I don't know, and I don't care to spend any time wondering, really.

[Peter Pallotta]

I love a film like Mean Streets. I love a film like It's a Wonderful Life. I can understand the structure/plots (routing) of both those films and I can probably create my versions of the film's main characters (features). But what I would come up with is garbage, or pretty close to it. Because in both those films the structure and the characters emerged together, organically, one shaping the other in a virtuous circle as the screenplay developed and through filming and right up to the fine cut editing. Working backwards, reversing engineering, doesn't work all that well with art, because at the heart of art there is not a well worn structure/process or even deeply felt content/characters, but an Idea and a Theme and a Soul that can't really be identified from the outside because it comes from the inside.

Peter

[David_Elvins]

Echoing Sean, do you need to understand routing to understand whether you like a course or to consider its merits? Routing seems more about VORD, ie assessing the quality of the architect's effort relative to the property he was given and relative to what another architect might have accomplished.

EDIT: I mean to include whether you like the routing in that personal assessment. Do you have to know the routing choices and compromises to decide whether you like it?

Isn't there more to architecture than ranking courses? Are we just consumers of golf courses?  Shouldn't anyone who is on a committee at a club that is making architectural changes have an understanding of architecture and  architects?  And isn't part of having an understanding of architecture, having an understanding of routing?

[Adam Clayman]

David, I've never learned how to route, but, I have been able to feel, both physically and emotionally, routings that are either crap, thoughtful or arbitrary.

There are few greater joys in golf, than appreciating a sequence. Of course you have to swallow the blue pill, first.

[Sean_A]

David

Sure, the jig saw element is important, but so are the pragmatics.  You are forgetting constraints such as budget, infrastructure location and anything to do with housing, environmental issues, owner demands etc.

Sean,

I don't think anyone has trouble understanding the pragmatic concepts, though.  Sure, you might not know all the details of a specific project, but you can get the concept that houses in the fairway landing area = bad.  

I think its better for the layman to talk about the golf and forget the whys in how the course came to be.  Same for archies.  Its better to talk about what was produced rather than who produced it.    

I completely disagree,  I think that the more people in the world that understand the whys and the hows, the better the standard of future golf courses.  In general so many committees, developers, clubs, and architects get the wrong final product because they make the same mistakes of process. If they understood the whys and hows of golf and golf architecture, they would be better off.

David

That exactly my point.  Folks don't know the project constraints so they can't really opine on a routing even if they were savvy enough to come up with a better theoretical design.  But we can all comment on what we see and play as good, bad or indifferent.  It doesn't matter to me that a course is an indifferent experience because of A, B and C.  Those are issues for the archie to figure out.  As the customer my issue is playing a good course.  

I don't really buy there are mistakes of process that matter to me as the customer.  I have likes and dislikes about courses, not the process of designing and building courses.  

Ciao

[Tom_Doak]

How can a layman understand the golf course routing process?  Or critique a routing?

He can't.

That's the most common answer given on this discussion group.  However it is not one I agree with.  

13 years ago, when I first started reading golfclubatlas I had no clue on how the mystical (mythical?) process of routing a golf course worked.

Although some will no doubt suggest am being misguided, I now think it is definitely something that can be learnt and it is not beyond the keen observer to critique a routing or route a golf course.

Here are some ideas on how to understand the routing process.   I  would be interested if others could add their thoughts on what helped them understand routing.  

1. Learn to read topographical maps. Tom Doak bangs on about this - understand how to read a topo map. Look at topo maps of existing courses to get an idea of scale of features.

2.  Visit courses before and after construction.  Get a sense of scale - of what sort of land make what sort of golf hole. Pay particular attention to green sites and what kind of ground can produce what kind of green site.

3.  Learn about slope and what slope is suitable for certain features - drainage, placing a pin, holding a golf ball on a fairway (grass dependent of course), and what these slopes look like in the field and on maps.  

There are the three most important points IMO.  If you understand these then a lot of the little bits of gold that you come across talking to architects, reading books, or reading GCA make more sense.   It is also easier to imagine what areas of existing golf courses looked like before they were built, and therefor gain insight into what the architect was looking at before the course was built.

4.Try routing golf courses.

5 Study the Armchair architect contests on here.  There is some sensational stuff.  Also some poor 'mistakes' and sometimes looking at mistakes is more educational than looking at the best routings in the world.

6. Visit courses in the one area by different architects. By looking at how different architects have built courses similar terrain, you can learn a lot about routing by studying the differences in the courses and seeing how that ties back into the structure of the courses.

There are a few points to get started, I would be interested in the thoughts of others.  Whilst some will suggest that there is never enough information available to critique a routing, I think most critiques - golf courses, films, plays, etc - are done without information about the limtations that affected the final product.  I do not think the process of routing a golf course is that difficult (Hugh Wilson could do it) and  think more people should have to confidence to have a crack at understanding and/or discussing routing on here.

David:

If you've done all of the above, you are no longer so much of a layman.  But how many here have done so?

My problem with people discussing routing is that it's complicated, and most people's suggestions are going to be simple.  There are always trade-offs involved -- but rarely do people think about the trade-off necessary for the change they are suggesting.

Also, I hate it when people get simple rules stuck in their head [changing directions on par-3's, returning nines, avoid uphill holes, etc.] and bang on about them regardless of whether they apply well to a given site.  Commenting on these homilies doesn't add to the discussion, it distracts, and subtracts from the discussion.

As Adam implies, you don't have to know everything about routing to know whether the sequence of holes is appealing.

[Jud_T]

File under ignorant questions from the peanut gallery:

Were any courses from the Golden Age designed with topo maps?

[Craig Sweet]

Bad Routing is like pornography....I know it when I see it.

[Josh Tarble]

David, I've never learned how to route, but, I have been able to feel, both physically and emotionally, routings that are either crap, thoughtful or arbitrary.

There are few greater joys in golf, than appreciating a sequence. Of course you have to swallow the blue pill, first.

Adam hits on my opinion of routings.  I have no idea if it's a good or bad one, other than the way I feel about it.  Are there highs and lows, does it take you on a journey?  A course like Harbor Town is a perfect example...I have no idea if it was a good routing or if there were any other options, but the way it takes you through the island, the homes and almost a walk in the park only to open on the marsh is fantastic.

[Rich Goodale]

David

How can any uneducated pleb compare the Mona Lisa with Guernica?  How could Potter Stewart, a Supreme Court Justice uinfamiliar with pornography (presumably), decide (and memorably state) as to what was porn and what was not?

Well, I only know you briefly but well enough to know that I would respect whatever you say regarding the routing of any golf course.  Not that I would necessarily agree with you, but neither would I necessarily agree with Tom Doak on the same subject, even if regarding one of the courses into which he had poured all his love and all his skill.

I know a great routing when I see it, and so do most of us.  In our gut.  They are very, very few.

Rich

[Mark Bourgeois]

Jeff,

Exactly, that's my point. I'm wholly unqualified to assess one architect's actual work against potential or against what others might have done.

David, I'm not saying people shouldn't have an understanding of routing, nor that they should rank courses. I'm saying -- well, asking -- I'm asking whether you need to know the choices and compromises an architect made in order to appreciate (or criticize) the quality of the routing. I could not like a routing, say, and someone could then tell me all the problems with the property, the compromises that were made and that this was the Candide Routing, the best of all possible routings. But why should that change my opinion of the actual routing? Either I like it or I don't, either I think it's good or it's not.

As far as being on a committee or anything in a decision-making capacity, are your questions aimed at actually assessing the work done on a specific site by a specific architect? That to me is an entirely different matter. I would guess if I was forced to do that I would spend time walking the property with the original architect (if he's alive) and ask a ton of questions. I would be deeply concerned about making any changes.

[Bart Bradley]

Jeff,

Exactly, that's my point. I'm wholly unqualified to assess one architect's actual work against potential or against what others might have done.

David, I'm not saying people shouldn't have an understanding of routing, nor that they should rank courses. I'm saying -- well, asking -- I'm asking whether you need to know the choices and compromises an architect made in order to appreciate (or criticize) the quality of the routing. I could not like a routing, say, and someone could then tell me all the problems with the property, the compromises that were made and that this was the Candide Routing, the best of all possible routings. But why should that change my opinion of the actual routing? Either I like it or I don't, either I think it's good or it's not.

As far as being on a committee or anything in a decision-making capacity, are your questions aimed at actually assessing the work done on a specific site by a specific architect? That to me is an entirely different matter. I would guess if I was forced to do that I would spend time walking the property with the original architect (if he's alive) and ask a ton of questions. I would be deeply concerned about making any changes.

Mark:

Exactly.  As outsiders we can only judge a routing as it compares to our ideals (whether those be personal or consensus).  A routing might be genius and the best possible one given the constraints of the project but could still fall short of what we (again either personally or collectively) deem ideal in a theoretical sense.

Bart 

[William_G]

Were any courses from the Golden Age designed with topo maps?

+1 on that...topo maps are an aid but not a requirement for a routing

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jud, most all of the Golden Age courses were routed with topo maps.  In fact, Ross is famous for routing about half of his courses on those without ever seeing the site.

William G, you are pretty badly mistake in the post just above.  There are some things just figured out best on paper.  As in, the "things look so big before construction thread".  Only way to know if you have a, say 400 yard par 4 is to measure it on paper.  Also, they help a bunch in staying on the property you have to work with......

But, to follow up what TD said, none of us in the biz was born a router.  We learned from doing, usually supervised by a mentor who knew what they were doing, which is the big difference in the self study some here have done.  Unless critiqued by someone knowledgeable, or having something built and played (and managed for maintenance, speed of play, etc for several years) you really don't know enough about routing.  You might be making your same imaginary mistake over and over again in each attempt.

It might be interesting for those of us who are architects or had any experience to post some of our "ah hah" moments when we realized something.  For me, it was that elevated tees have to be right on the precipice of a downhill slope if you want to see the fairway.  Pushing them back even a few yards sometimes has you hitting out into sky.

[Tim_Weiman]

David,

The things you mentioned are all great, but based on my very, very limited experience - closely observing one project development (Sand Ridge, Chardon, Oh, Tom Fazio) - I would respectfully say that unless you worked closely with the project team from the very beginning it would be almost impossible to assess the architect's routing job performance.

Then, even if you had that experience, it would be for one project and not the perspective and wisdom that would be gained from working multiple projects.

Golf architecture is my favorite hobby, but not my profession. I'm an oil supply and distribution guy by training. Recently, there was a crude oil issue here in Texas that got a little screwed up. The representatives of a leading firm said some things that made absolutely no sense. But, the only reason I knew that was decades of experience.

I doubt 99% of golfers have seen as much of the world's best courses as I have. But, that still puts me a long way from professionals in the business such as those who post here.

Still, that doesn't mean we can't comment about routing matters on golfclubatlas.com.

People like Jeff Brauer or Tom Doak are the producers. We are the consumers. Both perspectives are valid.


IMO, offering a consumer perspective on routing is probably best done following an actual site visit and, if possible, spending time with a project team member.

I didn't follow all the Dismal discussion, but suspect that one problem those associated with the project had was hearing criticism from people who hadn't actually visited the site. That doesn't automatically negate the value of a critic's input, but does to some degree make it carry less weight.

[William_G]

Jeff,

Ok I stand corrected, thanks

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

Not to take exception to your points, but I am mostly a self-taught router ... Mr. Dye didn't have any of us in the office to work on them.  In the time I worked for him I only had anything to do with a couple of routings, and even those were flat sites like PGA West where the land plan governed the routing.

For PGA West, what Pete drew for me to understand it was a cross section of how the course would be built from the flat desert ... lots on both sides built up from grade, waste areas or ponds built down into the ground from there, fairways relatively close to original grade so the houses looked down on them a bit, and spectator mounds in the middle to separate the out and back holes and stop the houses from looking into each other's bedrooms.  It was a pretty simple concept that required about a million cubic yards of earthmoving.  But it didn't teach me much about routing.

I learned far more from Pete sharing with me the original routing for The Honors Course, one day at lunch while we were working on Long Cove.  The Honors is built on the side of a hill -- the whole property slopes to the west [or maybe northwest] at a 5 to 8 percent slope, which was enough that you wouldn't want to keep playing up and down it repeatedly.  Most of the holes are laid across the side of the hill to minimize the difficulty of the walk -- it was laid out to be walked.  However, as you know, no big slope like that would exist without rivulets and ravines where the drainage water collected on its way down the hill ... so the key to the routing was getting tees, landing areas and greens on "high ground," and hitting over the drainage areas with your golf shots.  It really was a minimalist routing [except for the big lake Pete created at the bottom side], and it had everything to do with how I look at things.  I've been showing it to all of my interns when I start to teach them about routing.

The rest of my self-taught skill at routing comes from having walked so many golf courses, not always in sequence, and figuring out as I walked how the plan came together.  That is one aspect of design where you can learn much more when you're just out walking a course, than you would ever learn while you were playing.

It doesn't hurt, either, to have topo maps of several famous courses in my vault.

[Thomas Dai]

I played a UK links course recently that is much praised on here. As I walked along I thought the it didn't really matter where the tees, greens, bunkers and fairways for each hole were actually positioned, you could pretty much play from any tee to any green and still have a damn fine course, better than damn fine maybe, and still have a great deal of fun.

Okay, it was a UK links so not many trees or housing and obstructions around, but I decided to term this helicopter golf - you could fly over the links and from the left hand window throw out 18 tee markers and from the right hand door you throw out 18 flags. Then you join them up. You might end up with a bit of quirk, but what the hell, who in their right mind would route a course where on one hole you tee-off blind over a hotel to a green positioned inches away from a paved public roadway!:)

I like what TD said about the routing at Cruden Bay - routed as if out for a walk.

atb

[Jud_T]

From the recent Golfweek article on Bill Coore:

 "It's not unusual for Coore to follow the trail of animals to see how they track a site.  That approach helped him find a routing for Bandon Trails in Oregon that today enables golfers to traverse three distinct landscapes: dunes, meadow and traditional Northwest parkland."

"If I can find a way to walk around that's not too strenuous and reveals the land's interesting features," Coore says, "and I'm thinking about rock and vegetation and views, and to walk around it and see those different elements, and have them work in some sort of a walkabout, and, oh, by the way, it happens to work for golf, great, we can make it work."

[Tom_Doak]

From the recent Golfweek article on Bill Coore:

 "It's not unusual for Coore to follow the trail of animals to see how they track a site.  That approach helped him find a routing for Bandon Trails in Oregon that today enables golfers to traverse three distinct landscapes: dunes, meadow and traditional Northwest parkland."

That story has been around for a while, and I think it's been blown out of proportion a bit.  When you are walking around a site that's covered in vegetation, there are places where the animal trails are the only way to get around.  It doesn't mean we are the Deer Whisperer.

I got to spend a few days walking around with Bill in the process of routing the two courses at Streamsong.  In contrast to what Jeff stated above, Bill does not work mostly from the map ... he walks the property and follows his eye, trying to put together combinations of good holes.  [He also carries a rangefinder, so that he isn't fooled by his eye on distances.]  After a spell of walking, he'll go back to the hotel and try to put what he saw on paper, but in my experience he didn't try to find a hole on paper first, as I often do.  I learned a lot from that experience, though I won't describe it in any more detail, as it's Bill's to share (or not).

If you go back to the theory that becoming great at something requires 10,000 hours of attention and practice, I would guess that Bill's logged more time walking around doing routings than most of us, which is probably one reason he's so good at it.  I'd also guess that all of my walking around a thousand golf courses for the first time and puzzling them together constitutes a good proportion of my 10,000 hours.