Derek:
My 19-year-old daughter could do a better job of Photoshopping that golf hole than anybody in my office can. But she can't build a golf hole at all.
We have always gotten a lot of consulting work, because my crew are able to build features that look like the work from 80 years ago, instead of like it was just built yesterday, and because clubs trust that we will take as long as necessary to get the details right. I didn't bid on the MPCC work -- I don't think the club have any idea what they are doing, honestly -- but I'm very concerned when even the guys on this web site equate the Photoshopped image to an actual design. If people here do it, surely the average club member would make the same mistake. I have always thought of Photoshop etc. as strictly sales tools. Now I'm wondering if I should turn the business over to my daughter!
Mr. Dye never wanted to leave us anything on paper to look at, for fear we'd try to stick too closely to it, or that the client might say he liked the drawing better than what Pete had built. This is just the next generation of that same argument.
Tom,
Fair enough. I'm not fan of photoshopping prospective holes, either, for the same reason I don't like those illustrated yardage books that depict flat holes in Florida with fairways that roll like Ballybunion--it's utterly fake.
When I see the hole we're discussing I don't know if it's being presented to a membership or committee as what the hole will actually look be like finished. To me it's purely conceptual, and in that regard it could give the membership an idea of what the overall concept for the rebuild will be, i.e. blending features into the dunes, rugged look, windswept, so on and so forth. Seems like photoshop can be an effective tool for that--not actual design.
If it is being presented to them as actual design, then I agree they've got their work cut out for them.
Curious, what do you see as the difference between presenting a committee with photoshopped holes versus presenting them with hand-drawn sketches of proposed holes?
Derek,
The entire purpose of using Photoshop isn't to build golf holes by, but to give members and idea of what it could possibly look like when finished and which they can present to a committee or membership in terms of acceptance. If an architect wants to get some idea of what it could look like in terms of remodeling, I think its a great
tool to utilize. Tom Doak is right though. It doesn't mean I could jump on a dozer or hoe and build a golf hole. That takes both experience and knowledge of the tools you are using. However, daring to dream, and thanks to guys like Jim Urbina, Gil and others, it allows me to exercise what artistic endeavors I have left in me, left when I had stopped oil painting years ago when I was in my teens.
I'd like to point out one other very important point which you mention, and that is building exactly to plan. the courses that do are sort of lifeless to me because they usually fight terrain and other instances--the finer details which Tom, Jim, Kye Goalby and every other talented architect/shaper builds, because they are in fact the true artisans of golf course design. They're the talent. They're building what they see are the possibilities, while knowing how golf shots react, or the type of golf shot they want you to produce.
About seven years ago, Gil Hanse, Jim Wagner, Geoff Shackelford and myself went to an exhibit at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, featuring the furniture and other works of Greene Brothers, widely known as the purveyors of the Art's & Crafts movement in America, more specifically Pasadena and California. While there, we came across a plan of a table lamp designed by Henry Greene with a wooden base deep set with walnut inlays and a Yellow to Gold salt glass shade. You could see Henry's detail in printing on the plan--just like the same font that is attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright and was used as the main font of Geoff Shackelford's once popular "the Golden Age of Golf Course Design" book. Two steps past the plan was the lamp itself and I was shocked to see that it wasn't accurate at all to the plan. Coming from a draughtsman Father who was a perfectionist, I was stunned! How could this be? The lamp in the plan looked perfect, but I was blinded as to the finish product until I started really looking and then realized that it EXCEEDED the beauty of the plan itself!
Jim Wagner saw me gawking at this, came over and said, "See, nothing ever goes as planned! They found a better way to do it with the materials they were working with. These types of plans are nothing but a guideline. Nothing gets built exactly to plan! Things get refined and their are changes...."
That day at the Huntington Library was probably the most informative if not influential Golf Architecture day of my life!
The Tichenor House plan and the table lamp. (Notice the minute differences!):
