Which of your mistake / accident turned out the best in golf architecture ?

[Philippe Binette]

or mistakes by someone else ??

Sometimes in the design process, a mistake or an accident or ackward circumstances forces the architect to modify it's original idea and it turns out better than the architect had initially planned ?

Are there some mistakes or unfortunate events that turned out great ?

In that category, the 17th at Sawgrass is an example, where the excavation of the best sand on site led Alice Dye to say, let's make an island green !!!

A personal one, Jeff Mingay asked me to dig a little bunker at the back of 14th green at Sagebrush... There was a little existing landform there and Jeff had in mind a little scrape / shallow bunker... He only told me to built a bunker there... For my part, I had Garden City in mind... Jeff came back and saw the huge pile of dirt I had dug out and went WTF !!! and that's how the Penguin's bathtub was built !!!

[Tom_Doak]

Philippe:

Mr. Dye used to like to talk about these mistakes.  There was one at Teeth of the Dog where he left for a month and when he came back the crew had excavated a very deep pit for a green site [by hand!] that was not what he intended ... but he used it rather than having them spend another month putting it back.

Today, earthmoving and shaping "mistakes" are fixed more easily with the power of machinery, unless you see something you like in the mistake and decide to work with it instead.

One mistake that is hard to fix is clearing a hole too wide.  At Sebonack the clearing crew worked from our plans for a week or two with nobody on site to supervise, and when we came back the clearing for the 14th hole was about ninety yards wide, because we had been sloppy with the drawing.  [Jim Lipe was aghast.]  We narrowed it up with sandy wastes a la Pine Valley, and actually that hole helped set the style for the golf course ... though we also made a point of clearing a couple of other holes very narrow as a counter-balance.

It is good to be able to think on your feet in such times.

[Greg Tallman]

Philippe:

Mr. Dye used to like to talk about these mistakes.  There was one at Teeth of the Dog where he left for a month and when he came back the crew had excavated a very deep pit for a green site [by hand!] that was not what he intended ... but he used it rather than having them spend another month putting it back.

#8?

Today, earthmoving and shaping "mistakes" are fixed more easily with the power of machinery, unless you see something you like in the mistake and decide to work with it instead.

One mistake that is hard to fix is clearing a hole too wide.  At Sebonack the clearing crew worked from our plans for a week or two with nobody on site to supervise, and when we came back the clearing for the 14th hole was about ninety yards wide, because we had been sloppy with the drawing.  [Jim Lipe was aghast.]  We narrowed it up with sandy wastes a la Pine Valley, and actually that hole helped set the style for the golf course ... though we also made a point of clearing a couple of other holes very narrow as a counter-balance.

It is good to be able to think on your feet in such times.

[Tom_Doak]

There was one at Teeth of the Dog where he left for a month and when he came back the crew had excavated a very deep pit for a green site [by hand!] that was not what he intended ... but he used it rather than having them spend another month putting it back.

#8?

No, it was the 13th, the par-3 just after the old airport runway.

[JWL]

Tom
Just curious why everytime you make reference to me regarding Sebonack, you are stating at how aghast I was.   The only time I remember being close to aghast was when we were flagging the 6th hole and you stripped down to your undies because you were covered by ticks.   Now that was a ghastly site.      Happy New Year!

[Tom_Doak]

Tom
Just curious why everytime you make reference to me regarding Sebonack, you are stating at how aghast I was.   The only time I remember being close to aghast was when we were flagging the 6th hole and you stripped down to your undies because you were covered by ticks.   Now that was a ghastly site.      Happy New Year!

Jim:

I did not like having several hundred ticks on me either 

I was aghast myself about how wide #14 had been cleared but trying to hide it.  I remember you saying something like "My God, the hole is ninety yards wide."  I pretended it was all part of the plan ... which it was, but only because of a poorly drawn plan.  Actually, I wouldn't have minded more trees coming down there, but we were working with some pretty tight limits and I was afraid we were going to spend all our clearing allowance before we had 18 holes.

Happy New Year!

P.S.  Where do you live in Louisiana?  I might be down there soon to check out some courses for my book.

[Pete_Pittock]

Nicklaus's boulder out of the dump truck at Sherwood CC

[JWL]

It was a pretty funny sight.   I have sent you a note on your aol account.   Hope it still working.

[Pete_Pittock]

The Fazio boys opened up a lava tube while dynamiting on the 8th hole at their Pronghorn course. It changed the aesthetics, but I don't know if it changed the design.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Not quite a mistake, but on my first solo project, Desert Rose for budding muni king Jim Colbert, I had brought out some Chicago shapers I knew.  Somehow, one of them was building all the bunkers real shallow, and fighting me on other shaping ideas, even threatening to leave the project.

On a short par 3, I again strongly admonished him to get it deep.  I went to stake the next green, looked over and didn't see the dozer, and though maybe he really did leave the project.  As I started that way to look for him, I saw the cab of the dozer come up out of the hole.  When I got there, shaper says he hopes that is deep enough for me!  Had to be 15 feet deep.

I was worried because Colbert was coming out in an hour and it was a little over the top, but he liked it, and it stayed, raised a bit because the original bottom was too low to drain.

TD, if you are coming through DFW, look me up.  Would love to tour a few local courses with you, or have lunch.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Sorry for the trip down memory lane here, but another story from that project.

I actually started it as my last project for Ken Killian.  He had a signed agreement to provide daily on site architect, and I walked in on my 29th birthday, determined to start my own business before age 30.  He didn't have anyone else who could do it, and convinced me to stay on to finish the field work, which I did.  One of the great things about that situation is, I felt like I could try some things my boos wouldn't, and it didn't matter (to me) because it was his name on the project if it wasn't as good as I thought it would be.

KK always liked backing mounds behind the green.  On one hole, I put a lower grass bunker right behind the green backing that by a mound, which actually gave the green some good depth, and the skyline of that mound crossed behind some other mounds, which is a good look.

I thought it looked great.  Colbert loved it, and even Ken liked it from the tee.  But when he got to the green, he said "We don't do it this way" and wanted to move that mound right up to the back of the green.  Colbert explained that besides the different and good look, he preferred to chip/wedge uphill from behind at least a few greens.  Jim and I wanted it to stay, but Ken kept arguing, and looking quite silly, that it should go away.

That was one of the prime reasons Jim Colbert left Ken to become one of my early clients, because only my boss seemed to think this design idea was a mistake.  BTW, I wouldn't take him as a client until HE wrote Ken a letter detailing why he wasn't going to use him anymore and that it was nothing I was promoting.  At that point of Ken's life, he had a few other issues he was dealing with as well that made it hard for him to provide the service he normally provided.

I am sure each architect here could provide a dozen such examples.  Not sure how much detail the board really wants to hear, but to those of us in the biz, it probably stirs some old memories!

At the risk of boring everyone (stop reading if you want....) another Killian backing mound story.  At what is now George Dunne SW of Chicago, the other design associate (Bob Lohmann) and I were of the belief that the backing mounds were getting too standardized.  We came up with a scheme in the plans phase to alternate between 0 to 5 mounds, 3 times each, behind the various greens as fit the site.  Bob was the full time guy, and I drew most of the plans. We all made a site visit one day, and Ken (and to some degree Dick Nugent) looked at the first six greens shaped.  Ken pushed to turn the one big broad backing mound into two or three, left the two and three mound greens, and wanted to reduce the ones with more mounds, etc. 

Basically, he was comfortable with 2 or 3 mound greens.  Bob was so frustrated he drove his old Chevy Nova field car up, unloaded all the equipment and left, but did come back the next day (with donuts!) and apologized and was back on the job.    I also recall the 11th green at lake Arrowhead in WI (soon to be more famous as the next door neighbor to Sand Valley) where the pine backdrop and elevated green inspired me to stack two bunkers left and go with no mound backdrop.  Ken didn't like either feature, saying sand too far from the green was bad, even it if did take up the topo well, and that it needed a mound no matter what behind the green. I think the green got one low ridge behind to appease him, but the stacked bunkers stayed.

But, it was a lesson to me in not allowing myself to get pigeon holed into one design idea so strictly.  Maybe this post belongs in the most recognizable style thread......

[John Chilver-Stainer]

My favourite story goes back a few years, before I outlawed certain activities on site. It concerned an excavator operator who was an in-law relative of the contractor and in need of some work. His main jobs were straight excavating and loading - no shaping. 

After a few days we noticed in the afternoons that his breath smelt similar to the fuel he was burning, and sure enough we were informed he was a "dip" but promised he wouldn't be an obstacle.

One afternoon, for lack of other work, he was given a simple job to cover with top soil an old site road which crossed between a tee and a fairway. The job was just to smooth the road out and cover it with 25cm of top soil which would be delivered from a depot on site.

In the evening I was doing my rounds and went to see how he was getting on. To my astonishment I was confronted with some wild hillocks and hollows which by chance tied in with the surrounding  features.

I called over the site manager and future greenkeeper for a second opinion. We checked it out from all sides and viewed it from the tee and we both agreed - a piece of genious shaping - and so the excavator operator wasn't chastised and his good work remains today, which I comment on each time I pass by.

[Greg Clark]

There was one at Teeth of the Dog where he left for a month and when he came back the crew had excavated a very deep pit for a green site [by hand!] that was not what he intended ... but he used it rather than having them spend another month putting it back.

#8?

No, it was the 13th, the par-3 just after the old airport runway.

While certainly not the most dramatic par 3 on the course, I liked 13 when I played it 15+ years ago.  I did not know the story, so thanks for sharing. 

[Ian Andrew]

13th at Laval



I had been "very specific" on site about the depth of the fairway bunkers in the second landing multiple times with the shaper and Site Supervisor.  The drawings gave the top of the fairway bunkers and the front of the green the exact same elevation. Essentially original grade. We built the fairway bunkers first (with an excavator) and were stymied by bedrock and raised the backs of the bunkers three feet to compensate for the lost height (and maintain the depth I wanted).

I was at Laval most days, but was also working on the bunkers at Highlands Links and would leave for four days every few weeks. I left before they got to the green to started to rough it in. The Supervisor was called away on one of those days and there was a question of what to do with some fill generated from the one cut on the property.

So the Shaper decided to check the 13th green, noticed the green was four feet lower and directed the trucks of rock, then mixed materials and finally a foot and half of clay onto the green site to put it on rough grade.

The supervisor returned the next day, stopped the work and phoned. I told him to leave it all alone and we would look. Pulling this all apart would be time consuming and complicated because the rock had been in filled and backed with granular from the site to get rid of any air pockets and was hard as a rock.

I didn't initially like what I saw, but directed them to other sites and told them I needed time to think. I grew to like the hill and then went to work on what to do with it.

I liked the fact that the second and third shot had become a lot more challenging and it counterbalanced the feeding slopes into the adjacent five. I added the front bunker to emphasize the reward for carrying the bunkers by making the lay-up a really delicate pitch. The change emphasized all the angles and choices found in  the second shot. I wanted all the second shots on the fives to be difficult choices.