Chaos vs Order

[Don Mahaffey]

It seems to me that really good golf course are chaotic in nature, or at least have some chaotic parts.
Chaotic is the best word I can think of but what I really like is sort of an anti-order design approach.

The longer I'm in golf, especially golf design/construction/creation, I've begun to feel that unless you resist, the golf industry will educate the creativity out of you. "Educating the creativity out" is not my line, it came from a TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson who was speaking to the ever increasing emphasis in our schools to cut or reduce arts programs in an effort to focus solely on academic subjects.

Here we often talk about formulaic design, construction and maintenance. I think this formulaic approach shows up strong whenever you are required to have a large diverse team of specialists involved in a project. When you get an architect, associate architects, construction company, agronomists, irrigation consultants, engineers, environmental experts, owners, superintendents, golf professionals...etc....when you try and build a project where so many have so much input, I think the formulas take over. I think a lot of golfers like courses that are created like this. They tend to be very strong functionally, usually have extremely good turf, and are often very playable. Those are all excellent qualities. But for me, they tend to get a little boring, predictable, a little to orderly.

I like some chaos. Some WTF moments. I don't think everything needs to make sense. I think some chaos experienced, not graded, is great for golf.

To me it seems one real debate in golf design is how much order vs how much chaos. I think too much order is the easy way out and doesn't require real problem solving. I think we've had some non-minimalist (or naturalist) designers try and adopt the look since it was trendy, but they brought too much order to the look. I think our best designers are those who can strike just the right balance between order and chaos.

Just random philosophical musings on a Sunday morning.  

[Peter Pallotta]

More musings, Don:

I think it's a knife edge - the moment an architect intentionally tries to create chaos, the rational mind/training at work in that intentionality takes over and tries to impose order and purpose onto the work. The way through, I think, is to operate out of a place where one doesn't fear mistakes, where one is at least willing to experience/explore where these so-called mistakes might lead. I'm reminded again of the great improviser, Charlie Parker -- his advice to younger jazz musicians was to "memorize the changes (i.e. chords) and then forget them." That way, the improvisor would stay in touch with the tune's "big shapes", i.e. the main melody and harmonic progression, but would not be tied to them, so that the thousands of little shapes he created in the moment and on the spot could soar and surprise both musician and listener alike. But for that to happen, of course, the improvisor couldn't be too afraid of making 'mistakes', or at least had to trust himself enough to believe that if so-called mistakes did happen he could make something beautiful out of them with his next choice of notes.

Peter

[RJ_Daley]

Don,, I think the concept you put forth is very much tied to the character and locational environment of the site where the golf course is planned.  

If you have a proposed development in a more suburban area, with high profile public attention, like an east coast high cost of land environmental controversy sort of project, well there is going to be a big team of all those specialists to get through all the permitting, landscape earth moving and engineering, etc.  If you participate in a project like you did at DR, you get to be a smaller team of supporting specialists that have far less pressures of modern urban, metropolitan or suburban development.  

Just the topography alone is usually a huge challenge requiring creativity to tame less than optimal sites.  That in my view will lead to the 'orderly' approach to tame, shape, and utilize the land available in a sort of formula or conventional wisdom sort of way, looking at what land plans and schemes, including routing patterns that have worked in the past.  

I think many of us who participate here on GCA love to seek out those more 'chaotic' golf courses that have been built in modern times around the world, and they tend to be on land parcels with less restrictions and regulatory demands (thus tend to be the remote venues, i.e. Barnbougle, Bandon, Cabot, Baja, Sand Hills, Streamsong, now King Island, and all he rest).   These more ideal sites allow a smaller design team to be creative if they have to do engineering and grading, or lay a course upon a suitably chaotic yet golf friendly topography.  The team or head architect/designer can be more singularly creative or influential in the product that ought to mimic nature's chaos far more than the big project high profile environmentally constrained and underwhelming topographic site.  

I think the same concepts of site specific land and location parcels supporting formula v chaos show up in classic older courses.  I think the tendency for the courses of the classic era still hold up because they were built on parcels demanding less restrictions and regulations than we have imposed in the modern era.  

And, that doesn't even start to consider the quantity and efficiency of the modern earth moving machines and infrastructure of water and drainage that can now be imposed on the land via formula vs cope with the and due to less powerful mechanical engineered capacity.  

Could it be as simple as the concept of "coping" with the land and nature's chaos vs taming the land by formula and developed conventional wisdom?

Great topic Don, you always come up with the kind of questions by a real guy on the ground doing it in the dirt and turf!

[Don Mahaffey]

RJ,
I don't know if it is site specific as you describe.
A very severe site may be heavily graded to make it more orderly, and a flat site may be routed and graded to make it more chaotic.

I agree some projects require more specialists, but often those specialists are there to deal with certain issues, issues that we might describe as "site mistakes" to tie it back to Peter's post. It seems to me how those mistakes are dealt with will can be the difference between chaos and order.

[Bill_McBride]

Don, I would think of the three swales running toward the creek through the 15th green and the creek hard behind the 16th green as "WTF" moments at Wolf Point.   You?

[Peter Pallotta]

And further musings, Don (very good post there, RJ):

You may know that I am familiar with the majority of courses/architects discussed here only through photos and comments; I've played very few top courses. So, with that said:

It strikes me that this aesthetic/ethos you mention is exceedingly rare. Some of Mike Strantz's courses appear to have elements of chaos but for my tastes these elements are too consciously and precisely created, and so look to be not examples of refreshing randomness but instead whimsical but very obvious nods to the architect's craft, i.e. to the hand of man. On the other end of the spectrum, many of the courses by C&C seem simple, unforced and natural in comparison, and yet with only a few exceptions the chaos that C&C allow is of a very tamed and mellow sort, a 'controlled randomness' is how I would describe it (again, from photos only). I think that 14th at Bandon Trails was one of the few exceptions; there the chaos/randomness was more free and jagged, until golfers/the client complained enough that they had to change it.

Peter

[Don Mahaffey]

Peter,
I think you are on to something.
Forced chaos doesn't work and I guess that is sort of the gimmick/quirk line.

The last thing I wanted to do was bring DR Red into this for fear of the thread going off the rails, but I believe the chaotic nature of some of those holes is what makes it so good. And when I say that I have to rethink my response to RJ as maybe it is site specific in that we like natural chaos.

Which leads me to the other end of the spectrum and why the Raynor geometry design style is so highly rated. Could it be the extreme order he presents? Now I'm starting to count the atoms under my finger nails, but it does seem like the best of the best is at one end of the spectrum or the other. Down the middle with a little of each may be good golf, but not something that moves us?

[Tommy Williamsen]

I was in a profession that tends to "educate creativity out of one."  Doctrine and dogma don't allow for much creativity.  Lutheran liturgy does not allow for much creativity either.  This is the reason I had so much trouble with my bishops and others in the church hierarchy.  I always thought that doctrine was only a starting point and that theology began where doctrine ended.  For my bishops my theology seemed heretical. To me, my theology was grounded in the lives of my people.  It didn't seem heretical.  It just made sense.  Liturgy was the same.  I had no trouble changing the liturgy, even at the last moment if it didn't seem to be working.  For some it seemed chaotic.  To me it was being responsive.  In Myers/Briggs language I am an INFP where change is  cherished and prescribed rituals are a straight jacket.  In the Enneagram I am a Four, who needs to be unique. 

My love of golf architecture is similar.  My favorite courses are the ones that demand the creative approach to golf.  I hate courses that are "right out there in front of you." That's why I belong to Musgrove Mill and Ballyhack.  They require the player to think out of the box.  I found it interesting that in the Virginia Open one the the more difficult holes was number 11.  It's not even 400 yards long, but it requires the player to think. For some it is "chaotic" because if you hit it even in the middle left part of the fairway it runs off into the rough. It isn't tricked up at all, you just have to be smart.  Courses like Firestone South bore the hell out of me.  The West is much more interesting.  I love Ridgewood, where they are playing this week.  I enjoyed all three nines, but would much rather play TPC Boston.

My best friend, however, thinks I am from the moon.  He belongs to a nice Fazio Club where "everything is right in front of you." No blind shots and no surprises.  I play it and can't wait to finish.  Every course should have some hole where the player says, "What the heck is this?"  "I've never seen this before." Maybe even think, "This is the dumbest hole I've ever seen." It sure is more fun than a 420 hole with two bunkers in the landing area and two bunkers fronting a bland flat green.

[RJ_Daley]

Don, one way I think of it is if you are an architect and told we have a site of less than 200 acres, where you can see the Statue of Liberty, the site is highly environmentally sensitive and regulated to a fairthewell.  We want a championship course, a world class club house and prestige that commands membership fees in the hundreds of thousands, if not million.  Put together your team and routing ideas and engineering plans and get back to us with order v chaos.  The first thing on a tight and specifically acreage restrained site is you will have FWs that are generally almost exactly the same width requiring a specific and orderly exact irrigation partern, correct?  And it will need to drain to a very engineered and accountable system via regulations and permitting that further demands written and presented volume formulas, it seems to me.

Now, as an architect, go out into 3000 acres of Hooker County, or a large area of Port LaVacca, or King Island, and find me a world class routing somewhere out there, and make it wild, chaotic, wide in places, finicky and requiring deft touch in others, a real rollercoaster of thrills and spills.  And, you won't see too many enviro regulators by the way.  

I'd like to see TD give us an analysis of this interesting discussion you have posed here Don, comparing his experiences of the team he had to co-manage at SEbonack vs the team he had to manage at DR and which produced more order or chaos and which is to the most successful final product of a golf experience for the golfing consumer.

[Ally Mcintosh]

The chaos theory of strategy is the exact term that I have used in the past... Take a masterplan, stick 100 pins in it whilst blindfolded, create bunkers where the pins are, and you probably have more strategy - and certainly more variety -  than in many modern, formulaic designs...

[RJ_Daley]

Which leads me to the other end of the spectrum and why the Raynor geometry design style is so highly rated. Could it be the extreme order he presents? Now I'm starting to count the atoms under my finger nails, but it does seem like the best of the best is at one end of the spectrum or the other. Down the middle with a little of each may be good golf, but not something that moves us?

Yup, that is quite a conundrum you pose there! 

We know a version or iteration of a Raynor style geometry can be built in modern times, i.e. Black Creek.  It appears to be highly acclaimed.  I'd love to see it.  But generally speaking, could Raynor's courses even with his engineering expertise and reputation, be built on the same locations today within the constraints of regulations and permitting.  I don't know... 

If Raynor was able to produce his geometric template golf courses today as a contemporary of Doak, De Vries, C&C when they have had good natural sites, which genre of courses would capture the most golf consumer acclaim. 

Probably, it would be the big world theory and golfers would seek out both kinds of golf style experiences.   

[Jim_Kennedy]

I believe the reason that Raynor's designs are so comforting and visually appealing is not necessarily due to their engineered look or artificial appearance, but due to Raynors ability to indentify and utilize nature. Fishers Island, Yeamans Hall, Fairfield, Creek, St.Louis, Camargo, Shoreacres, Yale and the other most admired Raynor designs seem to have a common thread - a naturally bless(ed) and in some case(s) idyllic setting. He seemed to have a tremendous ability to identify a sites most interesting natural attributes and to route his course to take full advantage of those attributes. The result is combination of strong strategic golf holes, uniquely engineered features of tees, greens and bunkers, and a beautifully natural and undisturbed backdrop. The juxtaposition of the man-made and the natural creates a contrast that brings attention to both - creating an intensity or hyper-awareness of both. -Tom MacWood, 2002


Edit: Pallottesean translation: Raynor stayed in touch with the big harmonies and riffed it in between.   

[Thomas Dai]

Helicopter golf.

Have the military randomly drop bombs from a helicopter all over your site (make sure they all go off!)

Climb into the same or another 'chopper. Have with you 36 weighted flags of two different colours. Fly in a zigzag pattern over the site. Whilst doing so randomly throw all the flags of one colour out the left side of the 'chopper and the other coloured flags out of the other door. One colour to be tee-sites. The other colour to be green-sites. Then join them up on the ground!


atb

[Mike_Young]

Don,

With all due respect to tall of the ODG's....in a sense this entire site has been an effort to bring order to the chaos of the golden age.  That's one reason we all like those courses so much and yet we constantly put words in the mouths of the ODG's and discuss and pontificate regarding such much more than they ever did.....
Read Jim Hanson's book on RTJ and he makes mention of his efforts to have golf design viewed in a more professional manner than it was.  There was a conscious effort made to bring order and form to the chaos over the years.  It has helped to create an unsustainable product...JMO..

[Paul Gray]

Could it be as simple as the concept of "coping" with the land and nature's chaos vs taming the land by formula and developed conventional wisdom?

Great topic Don, you always come up with the kind of questions by a real guy on the ground doing it in the dirt and turf!

I think you may have hit the nail on the head.

Man's ability to tame the land is arguably the single most dangerous threat to imaginative design. If we follow the principle that nature provides the most intricate dilemmas, it follows that taming that nature is an act of dumbing down.

To take that a step further, taming nature seemingly begins to mean formulating course set ups. Where sand dunes were once tidied up a bit but essentially remained where nature had put them, too many architects now come along and, because they can, decide such hazards are no longer relevant to the modern game and subsequently fill them in, replacing them with manicured wing bunkers on both sides of the putting surface and/or traps placed repetitively down the line of least resistance.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Don,

Interesting, and I do enjoy delving into some of the philosophical topics like this.

I will ask the same question I did on the "Golf Isn't Meant To Be Easy" thread......is your perspective long enough?

Also, in a deep philosophical bent, I will offer that while it appears to be random, there really is a pattern to nature if you study it long enough.  Granted, rivers cut where the soil is weakest, which may have been from a random stopping of a glacier, but once that event was set, the rest of the process was inevitable.

In a more practical bent, as time goes on, architects learned things (and also forgot other things.....)  It seems almost natural that a profession would slowly discard what worked less well (cross bunkers, etc.)  That is accelerated by cost issues - in every recession/depression, those chaos bunkers/features which look great, look less great when funds are tight to maintain them.  If you factor in a cost/benefit ratio, "WTF" has always come in lower in supers and architects minds. I am not sure, but probably, based on what I have seen, most golfers (perhaps with the creativity educated out of them in their fields, or daily life) don't seem to care for them as much as the creative types that we are (as architects or buffs). At some point, there is a sliding scale between chaos and order that suits more people, who have those leanings.

In other words, lots of factors go into getting more conservative.  I recall Ditka coaching the Bears. First two years, Payton throwing passes, McMahon catching some, Fridge running the ball.  A year after the Super Bowl win, all that was gone.  Like most coaches, he just got more conservative as time went on.  He had the luxury of talent to allow such shenanigans.  Just like architects in the Golden Age and the 1990-2006 had money to burn on great things like chaos. 

Short version, worthy to strive for, lots of reasons why it goes away, sometimes, starting with the super on the first mowing!

Paul,

I came out of the University of Illinois, and the most famous LA grad there is Hideo Sasaki, whose motto was "The earth is putty."  He did some great designs.  It can lead to better things or worse, more imaginative using the whole tool box.  Time will tell if those designs are the best, but there is certainly imagination in working that way.

That said, I know what you mean.  "Necessity is the mother of invention" has lead to some of my best little features, with low budgets often causing things to be left where they were, etc. to get some of that chaos we are seeking.  I agree that once you decide on a built theme, say, to mound the sides of the fairway, or wide fw chipping area at greens, it always seems you have to carry the theme out (trust me, owners never like you saying you have "an eclectic style."  The beauty of the minimalist style is that following nature probably leads to more subtle variety, because the land offers it, and your "consistency" is leaving the land alone to the greatest degree possible.  That certainly takes creativity, too!

[Jeff Bergeron]

Fundamentally it takes an enlightened owner to allow some chaos.There are not many of those. Elected boards shy away from chaos for fear of member repercussions. We are all the worse because of this attitude.

[Don Mahaffey]

Jeff,
We're both fairly predictable so I'm not surprised by your answer.

Also, in a deep philosophical bent, I will offer that while it appears to be random, there really is a pattern to nature if you study it long enough.  Granted, rivers cut where the soil is weakest, which may have been from a random stopping of a glacier, but once that event was set, the rest of the process was inevitable.

I don't think nature is as orderly, or as predictable, as you infer.

In a more practical bent, as time goes on, architects learned things (and also forgot other things.....)  It seems almost natural that a profession would slowly discard what worked less well (cross bunkers, etc.)  That is accelerated by cost issues - in every recession/depression, those chaos bunkers/features which look great, look less great when funds are tight to maintain them.  If you factor in a cost/benefit ratio, "WTF" has always come in lower in supers and architects minds.

It really is a matter of deciding what works. And what works from a golf industry point of view is all about what do the majority of golfers like? (or better said, what you think the majority of golfers like) So if you have a cross bunker and enough golfers bitch loud enough to seem like the majority, out comes the cross bunker, and you probably never build one again. But, the unanswered golf industry question is, "does designing and maintaining for the majority make for good business?"  I think that is a good question.

In other words, lots of factors go into getting more conservative.  I recall Ditka coaching the Bears. First two years, Payton throwing passes, McMahon catching some, Fridge running the ball.  A year after the Super Bowl win, all that was gone.  Like most coaches, he just got more conservative as time went on.  He had the luxury of talent to allow such shenanigans.  Just like architects in the Golden Age and the 1990-2006 had money to burn on great things like chaos.  

IMO, most architects of 1990-2006 were all about order, more the better.
Your analogy is a good one. But I'll take the hungry versions of Lombardi, Parcells, Belichick, Ditka, whomever, I'll take the part that hasn't quite had enough experience to have it all figured out.  In most cases getting more conservative wasn't the best approach.

[Tom_Doak]

One of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid was "Get Smart" ... there it was Kaos vs. Control.  The longer I live, the more appropriate that gets.  It seems like everything the government does is about Control ... and for that matter, what most of our enemies want to do is Control things, just with different priorities than the U.S.A.

Jeff Bergeron is also correct in pointing out that few clients are really comfortable with Chaos.  The only way they get there is if you tell them in the beginning that's how it's going to be.  But, most architects like to pretend they've got a "vision" in their heads of the completed design, that they've got things under control, so they appear to be more professional.

Every book I've read about the future of business suggests that successful businesses of the future need to be less top-down management and more hands-on, real-time solutions from the front line people ... which is pretty much in line with how we've been building courses for the last 10-15 years.  Now I've just got to convince my clients that's what's happening, and they don't need me to come back so often to manage things.  But, part of me still wants to have the last word on every hole, and that takes a lot of extra travel time.

[Paul Gray]

It really is a matter of deciding what works. And what works from a golf industry point of view is all about what do the majority of golfers like? (or better said, what you think the majority of golfers like) So if you have a cross bunker and enough golfers bitch loud enough to seem like the majority, out comes the cross bunker, and you probably never build one again. But, the unanswered golf industry question is, "does designing and maintaining for the majority make for good business?"  I think that is a good question.

Herein, for me, lies one of the fundamental faults of any short term business model which immediately treats the consumer as sovereign.

The problem begins with assuming that he who shouts loudest actually represents the majority. It is equally assumed, and is particularly dangerous in golf, that the consumer actually knows what he or she likes. Thirdly, scant regard is given to what is desirable in the long term (imagine Prestwick if the trends of time had been allowed to prevail). The net result is a confused membership that has no grasp of why they are not enamoured with the bastardised product and no solution to income not meeting overheads.

How many British golfers at average courses would love to see sprinklers introduced with no grasp of the fact that they would enjoy their game LESS if such action was taken. Thirty+ years of irrigation systems on British courses has, by and large, had a negative effect. Nonetheless, introducing such systems is still seen by most club golfers of a sign of their course moving up in the world.     

[Don Mahaffey]

more reading if you are interested in this subject.

www.heldermann-verlag.de/jgg/jgg01_05/jgg0418.pdf

Abstract. Since the beginning of human history, the geometric order and chaos
exists in the architectural and urban structures together. In context of future
dissertation, this paper presents an opinion, that for a good quality of architectural
space the balance between order and chaos is necessary. The architectonic space
is created by design and other self-organising processes as well. In the long term
it is unforeseeable and unstable. The development of the chaos theory creates
a new perspective for better understanding of chaos and complex processes in
architecture. Some aspects of this theory can by applied in design.

[Jud_T]

Don,

The juxtaposition of minimalist chaos and Raynor is an interesting one for me as I tend to really like both ends of the spectrum but not much in the middle.  With Raynor I suppose part of the attraction is the comfort of templates you've seen before;  but I also think it's the boldness of some of the features and the strategic shotmaking they require as well as the artistic way they were implemented (probably why I like Langford so much as well).  The point is that even though there's repetition and a manufactured look, the templates were designed and built out of a set of theoretically ideal golf holes FROM A PLAYING POINT OF VIEW.  This is what makes both ends of the Bell Curve so interesting.  Where golf went off the rails is when they became more concerned with how the course looked, it's status, marketability, repeatable green speeds, tournament viability, difficulty, repeatable rote maintenance, functionability for carts, testing every club in your bag, safety issues, working for medal play, greens committees etc. instead of simply how the damned game would be played for fun and exercise over a piece of ground suited for the purpose.

As for business models it's guys like Mike Keiser and Steve Jobs who had the vision to give people what they didn't know they wanted yet.  This of course takes balls and/or money, both of which are in short supply these days.

[Chris Shaida]

Add Peter's ingredient of 'memorizing so you can forget' (perhaps storing in some layer of (sub) consciousness so one can clear out another layer for more intriguing activities) to Jim(/Peter's) notion of 'big harmonies' and maybe one get's to a description of at least one kind of 'good' chaos' in which some chaotic element on/inside the golf hole connects to (harmonizes with) some bigger element in the surrounding landscape.  So one 'memorizes' how a golf hole is 'supposed to be ordered', confronts an element that confounds that supposed order, but then sees/feels how that confounding element is in harmony with something much bigger.
 

[Paul Gray]

Don,

Interesting stuff and something completely new to me.

Thanks.

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

But isnt the chaos you are discussing really just individual perspective and unstifled artistic form, only view as chaos by those who choose to confrom?