Replicas

[Tim_Weiman]

Allow me to offer a defense of Tour-18 in Houston.

For the majority of golfers, who will never have the opportunity to play Augusta, playing a replica of Amen corner, however inaccurate, is a lot of fun.

Having played only a couple of the real holes that were replicated at Tour-18, I could clearly see the inaccuracies and difference due to location and routing.  For the other holes, which I will likely never get to play for real, it was simply fun to play and imagine.  What is the down side?

Fun – isn’t that what the game is all about?

Dave,

Forgive me for being a bit of a golf architecture snob. I agree many golfers probably enjoy the Augusta holes.

My favorite is the Sawgrass hole, I guess because there is really nothing attractive about the original and so the Tour 18 version doesn't seem like much of a step down.

Otherwise, having seen many of the originals detracts quite a bit, but play it as scrabble in some corporate or industry outing and, yeah, I guess I can have fun.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Let's not forget that one of the great modern day designers, Pete Dye employed replicas

[Tom_Doak]

Let's not forget that one of the great modern day designers, Pete Dye employed replicas

Which holes at The Golf Club were replicas?

Which holes at Harbour Town were replicas?

Just asking as those were the two courses that made him well known.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Let's not forget that one of the great modern day designers, Pete Dye employed replicas

Which holes at The Golf Club were replicas?

Which holes at Harbour Town were replicas?

Just asking as those were the two courses that made him well known.

Tom Doak,

I didn't know that The Golf Club and Harbour Town were the only two courses that Pete designed.

But, If you've ever played Old Marsh, the 6th hole in particular, I think you'll recognize the template.

As to Harbour Town, I was fortunate enough to be playing with Pete when he was designing/building the course about 46 years ago.

Some of the things I remember him telling me was that he was influenced by what he saw in the UK and that he was going to incorporate 50 gallon drums and railroad ties when building the course.

This was the first time that I had met him, although he knew my dad from the insurance business.
It was also around the time I was begining to develop an interest in golf course architecture, hence, I absorbed every word.

We had a terrific time despite being match play competitors in a tournament.

[Tom_Doak]

Patrick:

No doubt, Mr. Dye fell back on a few favorite ideas later in his career, like the short par-4 with the blind green at Old Marsh.  [I believe it's the 5th hole, not the 6th.]  That hole was a copy of the 5th at Long Cove, where I happened to work, which was the first time he'd built such a hole.  I believe it was inspired by the 14th at North Berwick.

He also built several Redan holes, and of course the many par-4 finishing holes gently curving along a lake.

Pete had a lot of very flat sites where he had to create holes from scratch, and he needed ideas to start with.  It's much harder to keep doing that over and over again without repeating yourself.  Personally, though, I was sad to see it.  To me, what made Pete a great architect was having the guts to build that hole in the first place ... not repeating it on ten other sites.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tom,

# 5 it is.

I wonder, how much of a heavy work load leads the architect toward replication rather than creation ?

Time is the friend of the house in a casino, and I would imagine the same applies to the course the architect is crafting.
But, when an architect has multiple projects, at what point/number does creativity begin to suffer ?

At what point does it become expedient to insert a pre-fab ?

[Tom_Doak]

At what point does it become expedient to insert a pre-fab ?

For some architects, it is the day after they sign the deal.

I don't think Mr. Dye ever made concessions in his designs because of the time factor.  He spent more time on site on a project like Long Cove or Old Marsh than most of us ever do.  I just think it was difficult to keep starting from nothing and have to find inspiration.  It's hard enough on one project, not to mention five or ten.  When I worked for Pete, it was not unknown for him to tell one of the shapers to just go do something ... I can't use the precise language of his instructions here ... so he would have something to work from besides a flat expanse.