Designing for Maintenance and Beauty

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mike and Joe,

Thanks for posting. I had that article in the files years ago, lost it, and its nice to have it back as a record.

Adam,

In saying "still embedded in the modern PLAYER's pathos" are you discussing the "fairness" aspect for top players, or the general idea of what an American golf course ought to look like by the average Joe Six pack?  Obviously, designing for fairness, play value, etc. is a completely different issue than designing for ease of maintenance.

When I started at KN in 1977, they often referred to Cornish and Graves writings, including something called the design triangle.  It was a graphic attempt at showing the balance of design needs between playability, aesthetics and maintenance.  They would present it to each client, and let the client tell them if it was to be an equilateral triangle, or lean on side or the other.  Their inclination, the times, the client types, whatever, had more of their triangles lean towards maintenance.

The kinds of things they (and anyone really) had to consider to make a course maintainable included:

All machine mowing:

Max 3 to 1 slopes, 4-6 to 1 preferred.
Sand bunkers at least 8 feet from green to allow triplex green mower to turn on collar
Sand bunkers - tune shapes to turning radius of both mechanical bunker rakes (about 9 feet) and outside bank mowers (similar, with a few twists once they came out with mowers that could back up, etc.)

Well, there are more, of course but I won't bore you. Suffice to say, tuning the design to then maintenance equipment available certainly did lead to a formula for design followed by most of the era.  We were lucky to have Pete Dye come along and say "come up with new maintenance equipment to maintain my designs, rather than me design to suit your maintenance equipment."  And, design was better for it.

I understand that this site is mostly dedicated to discussing the top 1% of courses (arguing whether some course should be 85 or 43, for instance) but in the real world of America's 16,000 golf courses, which have always struggled to make a go of it, designing for maintenance was, is and will be a big issue.  I believe the next generation of designs below the top will return to this type of thinking, and perhaps the 1985-2005 period of the "upscale public" and "remote destination resorts" will be an anomaly.  Sort of golf's version of everyone being a genius in a bull market.

Obviously, we won't go exactly back to that 1950's landscape architecture version of golf design, but form still needs to follow function, and truthfully, these guys designed for the conditions they had in front of them, not to emulate Scottish links, etc., in the new world.  I don't think their design responses were out of line at all, even as easy as it is to sit here 40 years later and critique  on the internet.  The times simply wouldn't have supported the upscale course in those days (and the market isn't black and white, but it wouldn't support more than a few of them in select markets)

Or put another way, we will stop striving to make every course a new top 100 candidate, which was probably more folly than trying to design affordable, maintainable courses prior to 1985 or so.

Or put yet another way, too many designs (again, for those upscale publics) probably let the triangle tip too far towards aesthetics and the photo wow factor than was or is currently justified economically for most courses.

[SL_Solow]

I am surprised that no one has mentioned Robert Bruce Harris in this discussion.  Harris, the first President of the ASGCA, was trained as a landscape architect and began designing courses in the 1920's.  Harris bought  a number of failing courses and operated them as public facilities .  As such, he was quite aware of the expense of maintenance and modeled much of his design philosophy around maintenance issues.  Accordingly, bunkers were usually placed (or moved) at least one gang mower away from the edges of greens.  Shaping emphasized the ability to use machinery for maintenance.  The best example was one of the old courses at the Indian Lakes complex near Medinah, since remodeled.  The greens and bunkers were all circular so the a riding mower or sand pro could perform the cutting and raking in minimal time.  Incidentally, both Killian and Nugent started with Harris.

[MCirba]

Jeff and Shelly,

Two terrific posts and really getting to the heart of the matter of what I think the Cornish/Robinson articles were trying to emphasize.   Those times were indeed different than today but to use a term I hate, I believe the "paradigm" is going back to courses that are affordable, maintainable, easily (re: faster) navigated, and more user-friendly; in a word, "sustainable". 

The fact that the Cornish courses I grew up playing still exist in much their same form some 40-50 years after they were built provides evidence of their functional value.

[SL_Solow]

Thanks Mike, Jeff's post was far more informative than mine and I am pleased to be placed in such good company.  Your point about shifting priorities is well taken but it raises a more interesting question.  Putting aside temporary changes in taste or economics, how does one balance the need for efficiency in maintenance with aesthetic and strategic considerations?  How much does the anticipated income of a club  and the attendant maintenance budget impact on the ability of the architect to create interesting features.  For example, many of the Good Doctor's artistic bunkers do not fit the "easy maintenance " model.  Do we deprive ourselves of that artistic expression.  The same goes for Thompson and others.  But MacKenzie tended to build fewer bunkers than many others so I suppose he gets points for that.

Straight line fairways are easier to mow.  Did you ever see nature draw a straight line?  So how much naturalness do we sacrifice?  Bunkers placed closer to greens create different challenges but make for more difficult maintenance issues than Harris' model.

As stated,the issue is how does one balance the competing concerns while creating an interesting challenge that, as it evolves over time, continues to hold the interest of the player?  I suspect this varies from site to site and from owner to owner.  If one can keep maintenance costs down without reducing the interest of the course, then one has reached the ideal.  But how and where one allows for trade offs is a real challenge.  Of course, some architects on some projects never make a trade.  It will be intereting to see whether there is any long term impact.

[Jeff_Brauer]

A few more random thoughts on the subject.....

Years ago, I heard a pro (not a tour pro, but obviously influenced by one) stop a superintendent who was talking about easy to maintain features.  He said, "Please insert the word "properly" to every sentence you say about maintenance, as it needs to be "easy to maintain PROPERLY."  On one hand, he had a point.  On another, his definition of "properly" was getting closer to Augusta standards he thought should be implemented everywhere. 

I think there is STILL debate on the meaning of easy and properly, not to mention inserting "what per cent of the time" in the equation.  No footprints in bunkers....weekends, 5 days a week, six days a week?"  No fried egg lies? (which may require expensive sand or someone out there wetting it down every day)

It is just an example of how the tour pros in design and better players sort of used language to shift the debate on maintenance from what it had been, for better or worse (and probably parts of both)

Secondly, Ron Whitten put together a pamphlet on the supposed Chicago School for ASGCA several years back, with a collection of articles from Bendelow through Langford, to Harris.  Harris wrote a few articles strongly advocating that we no longer should emulate Scotland, as in "I think its high time we stopped imitating the old traditional golf course design, and build golf courses to satisfy our own player demands, pocketbooks, our maintenance, and our own peculiar American and topographical conditions.  Unfazed by tradition,  we can develop golf of the highest architectural standard which will be far better suited to Americans and modern American machinery."

In another post war article, he mentions streamlining, which I am convinced came from the railroad passenger trains of the time, which were converting from "standard" passenger cars (usually painted dark green with black roofs) to stainless steel cars with rounded shapes.

I also believe that they believed in most fields that the world should be designed differently, in essence making a whole new world to sort of rid themselves of the pre war ideas, given how bad that turned out.  Modernization was certainly the byword in many of these articles.

Harris also endorsed the elevated trap, similar to Cornish, and there are other similarities in the writings.

As to Shelly's question, it does vary from site to site, and in some cases, you can't have great aesthetics and easy maintenance.  While Harris is panned for his clamshell bunkers, Maxwell used basically the same style, for the same reasons, later in his career and seemed to create some well thought of courses.  In essence, the depression forced Maxwell, Harris and even Mac himself, to abandon the Mac style puzzle piece bunkers to ease maintenance.

Maybe its not so bad.  In essence, most bunkers should be judged by their placement over their appearance, no?

[Adam Clayman]

Jeff, I left out the maintenance aspect because I can't quantify that aspect beyond easing bunker maintenance and overwatering. Both are arguably related to the "fairness" umbrella, as just a way to ease the task at hand, by mitigating the ball's desire to roll out.

I'm truly saddened by the reality of living here on pure sand, and seeing every single public course soften their turf, and grown Parkland like rough, to the point of narcolepsy inducing golf.

Appeasing the modern players preference for favorable results versus the thrill of actually figuring out all the forces that act on each shot was at the heart of my opinion posted.

Mirroring society's lack of individual responsibility, playing golf no longer requires the player to keep pace because there is, for the most part, no longer consideration for others.

edit; As far as Whitten's conclusion about getting away from Scottish designs, imo, the loss was greater than just the features, or, style, the loss was how the sport was watered down, appeasing the need to stroke the ego of the player, rather than teach him/her humility through the unexpected outcomes.

[MCirba]

Jeff,

Interesting and insightful although I'd argue that there is more to bunkers than placement.   I can tell you that Cornish's elevated bunkers played much, much differently than deep and steep ones; some you could easily putt out of.

Adam,

Those are interesting points and it might be interesting to think about this discussion in terms of pace of play as well as maintenance costs in the old country on courses that are generally designed neither for maintenance nor beauty.   At least at on the links courses, however, they do benefit from sandy soil and I'd argue that a faster course means a faster game.

[BCowan]

''As far as Whitten's conclusion about getting away from Scottish designs, imo, the loss was greater than just the features, or, style, the loss was how the sport was watered down, appeasing the need to stroke the ego of the player, rather than teach him/her humility through the unexpected outcomes.''

   Well said Adam.  I was curious as to if Maxwell incorporated more bunkers in his solo designs than the good Dr?  Also if you take a Ross course with 100+ bunkers on it and compare it to a good Dr course with 50 or so bunkers, can one make a case that a good Dr course is cheaper to maint?  If one is trying to keep maint. costs down I prefer less bunkers, but ones that are real bunkers (which are to be avoided).  If bunkers are only raked weekly instead of daily maint. cost would go down without the need for template bunker schemes.   

[Jeff_Brauer]

Adam,

To be fair, Ron Whitten made no conclusions....I was quoting RB Harris directly from the articles that Whitten had collected.  Sorry if I gave that impression.

As to your general point, I guess I can't stress enough remembering KN (who worked for Harris) thinking all (or most) of the great courses were designed, we had as many as needed, and we needed more courses easy enough for the hacks to play. Short version, not every course starts with the intention of good architecture, but mostly functional architecture.

As to easing maintenance, besides watering, it really was about tuning all grades to then current mechanized equipment and their turning radius, maximum or productive slopes mowing ability, etc.

Mike,

I agree those elevated bunkers play differently than a deep pit.  Again, I believe in their minds, that was the point, to make it easier as well as more visible.  I guess the combo of intent and results speak for themselves and we can see the final product.

But, an interesting deeper issue to discuss.  In that time frame, was it more important to give the burgeoning golf population accessible, affordable golf with some compromised to the original game, or was it more important to try to preserve the old, harder game?  Again, the results speak, and the leaders of golf in the post WWII ear chose accessibility and affordability over some "purer" version of golf.

Given a generation that also went for TV dinners and McDonald's as their version of everyday food, it speaks to the entire mindset of most Americans at that time. Highly processed foods, highly processed golf, both pretty far from their natural, organic state.  A big bump in the appliances, cars, and other creature comforts, probably a period of accelerated change in that area.

BTW, if you ask non Americans to sum up Post WWII culture in one word, it would most often be "convenience."  All I am really saying is, against that backdrop, the choices made are pretty understandable.