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Lou_Duran

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction
« Reply #25 on: October 30, 2018, 09:46:08 AM »
Tom-

I have no idea what the 2% reference is.  I doubt that you know me well enough to opine correctly about my position on specific political issues, but hey, the site appears to have ample bandwidth.

This is not a case of misappropriating a very pregnant phrase.   I've seen its most current usage as arguing in favor of going forward with partial solutions which have substantial backing as opposed to doing nothing in search of a "perfect", comprehensive solution which has to be shoved down people's throats.

I am not one to object to changes around the margins.  If the unintended hollow at TotD didn't depreciate the hole and the benefits to "fix it" were exceed by the costs, leave the thing alone.  At my home course, such a hollow would likely collect water and balls, a terrible combination which should demand attention.

It used to be, or so I am told, that courses were often opened without many bunkers and other design features completed, awaiting guidance from play (e.g. concentration of divots) and the availability of funds.  At least at The Golf Club, Pete was known to watch the pennies, something he apparently outgrew later in life at Crooked Stick (same with Nicklaus at MV).  Was he/they seeking perfection without significantly improving the good?  (insert ObamaCare here if that's what you were referring to).  I know members at both places who hang on to their wallets for dear life when Pete and Jack were hanging around their clubs a bit long.

Brock Lynch

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction
« Reply #26 on: October 30, 2018, 10:15:58 AM »
ftp://

One of the most interesting and challenging comments I have heard in my working world is the statement "perfection is the enemy of good enough".  I know this is not original but hearing it for the first time certainly sticks with you.

Not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good also has a political application.  No system is perfect, but that doesn't stop some from trying to destroy institutions which have produced very satisfactory results for large populations and survived the test of time.


Yeah, no kidding.  Our previous President used this phrase often when he was selling us out to enact some program to make a problem 2% better while preserving his donors' financial streams.


Of course, you probably objected on the grounds he was going too far.   :)   And I don't want to derail my own thread with politics, so let's just agree that the phrase can be misappropriated.



Tom


I think you forgot to put an "s" at the end of President.


Cheers


Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +2/-1
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction
« Reply #27 on: October 30, 2018, 12:39:20 PM »

Our previous President used this phrase often when he was selling us out to enact some program to make a problem 2% better while preserving his donors' financial streams.




Tom


I think you forgot to put an "s" at the end of President.



Brock:


No doubt that tons of politicians and Presidents have let us down.  But the first time I heard "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" was from President Obama selling his health insurance plan to expand coverage for some while expanding the health insurance industry's market share.  So the phrase will always have a negative connotation for me.

Daryl David

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction
« Reply #28 on: October 30, 2018, 12:53:17 PM »
I had a boss once that said it a different way. “Don’t fall prey to the fallacy of false precision”. 
« Last Edit: October 30, 2018, 07:23:38 PM by Daryl David »

Kalen Braley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction
« Reply #29 on: October 30, 2018, 05:56:59 PM »
As one who's worked in the software/hardware tech biz for nearly 20 years...Obama's words are sage advice.

I've seen Project Managers, Architects, and even VP level folks drive themselves crazy trying to make products perfect before ship/release. At some point you have to draw the line in the sand and say what can we live with, or not...otherwise you'll never release a thing..


P.S.  And I think this very much applies to those who resist a tournament ball.  The naysayers think you have to get it exactly right with Ball 1.0, Season 1.0....which is absurd.  You get something good and continuously tweak it to hopefully get what you want a few or maybe even several years down the road. But never releasing it is certainly the enemy to progress...
« Last Edit: October 30, 2018, 06:02:13 PM by Kalen Braley »

Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +2/-1
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction
« Reply #30 on: October 31, 2018, 10:22:02 AM »

I've seen Project Managers, Architects, and even VP level folks drive themselves crazy trying to make products perfect before ship/release. At some point you have to draw the line in the sand and say what can we live with, or not...otherwise you'll never release a thing..


P.S.  And I think this very much applies to those who resist a tournament ball.  The naysayers think you have to get it exactly right with Ball 1.0, Season 1.0....which is absurd.  You get something good and continuously tweak it to hopefully get what you want a few or maybe even several years down the road. But never releasing it is certainly the enemy to progress...


There is no question, in golf architecture, at some point you've gotta draw the line and say the hole is done and just put the grass down.  But I don't know how many guys with any experience are going to keep dragging it out beyond that point.  We work outdoors, so nature is always going to keep us realistic.


As for the tournament ball, the naysayers are happy to throw out ANYTHING and EVERYTHING as a reason not to have it.  They are trying to hold on to the status quo, most likely because they are making money off the status quo.

JESII

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction
« Reply #31 on: October 31, 2018, 10:45:08 AM »
I am a naysayer on the tournament ball, and here's why;


The Tour would have to sign on...who in this room thinks the Tour is looking for their guys to hit it shorter?
If they signed on AND the Tour level ball were rolled back say 20%, who would be the first guys to find that 20% through various other ingredients to long distance (strength, speed, technology optimization)? The longest hitters because they have the most to gain.
We can all very easily ignore the notion of protecting our courses from the top 1% of players shooting low scores...we just have to decide we're going to. 99% is a pretty big number...

Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +2/-1
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction
« Reply #32 on: October 31, 2018, 10:50:54 AM »
I am a naysayer on the tournament ball, and here's why;

The Tour would have to sign on...


That's not an absolute.  The USGA could decide to make the change for the U.S. Open, and then the Tour would have to decide whether to follow suit.  That's not likely, but possible.


But, we have plenty of other threads discussing that topic, let's not lose this one into the same predictable posts by those on both sides.

V_Halyard

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction
« Reply #33 on: October 31, 2018, 11:26:45 AM »
Fantastic. I'm sharing this with my sister-in-law who wrote an award winning Wabi-Sabi book.
 :D  Now I can suck into arguments about golf architecture.  Priceless.
"It's a tiny little ball that doesn't even move... how hard could it be?"  I will walk and carry 'til I can't... or look (really) stupid.

Jeff_Brauer

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction
« Reply #34 on: October 31, 2018, 12:40:15 PM »

I've seen Project Managers, Architects, and even VP level folks drive themselves crazy trying to make products perfect before ship/release. At some point you have to draw the line in the sand and say what can we live with, or not...otherwise you'll never release a thing..




Yes, these days, some would expect the Wright Brothers to have held off until they could roll out a 787 Dreamliner.....
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

Mike_Young

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction
« Reply #35 on: October 31, 2018, 09:07:58 PM »
The way I see it this wabi-sabi stuff would be best practiced by nothing more than a routing plan with centerlines staked and a good team of designer/shapers.  The more layers of plans the tougher it becomes to wabi-sabi.  But the client often feels cheated if all he gets is a routing plan.
"just standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona"

Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +2/-1
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction
« Reply #36 on: October 31, 2018, 09:24:59 PM »
The way I see it this wabi-sabi stuff would be best practiced by nothing more than a routing plan with centerlines staked and a good team of designer/shapers.


That's pretty much all I do.  We usually have to draw something more to get approvals and satisfy the client, but as I learned from Mr Dye, just because somebody drew a plan doesn't mean anyone is going to look at it once construction starts!

Mike_Young

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction
« Reply #37 on: October 31, 2018, 09:30:07 PM »
The way I see it this wabi-sabi stuff would be best practiced by nothing more than a routing plan with centerlines staked and a good team of designer/shapers.


That's pretty much all I do.  We usually have to draw something more to get approvals and satisfy the client, but as I learned from Mr Dye, just because somebody drew a plan doesn't mean anyone is going to look at it once construction starts!
+1
"just standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona"

Ben Malach

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction
« Reply #38 on: November 01, 2018, 10:08:07 PM »
While reading the article I could not help but stop to think about these impact of these sentences when applied to the field of GCA.

"“wabi-sabi leaves something unfinished or incomplete for the play of imagination”. This opportunity to actively engage with something considered to be wabi-sabi achieves three things: an awareness of the natural forces involved in the creation of the piece; an acceptance of the power of nature; and an abandonment of dualism – the belief that we are separate from our surroundings."

By leaving remnants of unfinished or incomplete features like grassed hollows, bunkers that fade into unplayable ares and the like. We open the experience of golf up beyond the course. This integrates that course into the locality making it simpler for the player to get lost in the environment. Therefore creating a strong sense experiential immersion allowing the user to become open to quirk or interest that normally they would be scared to embrace in a naked context.This environmental integration also allows us to highlight key things that would normally be lost on a more traditional manicured golf course.
@benmalach on Instagram and Twitter

Charles Lund

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction New
« Reply #39 on: November 05, 2018, 07:57:47 AM »

I am in Japan again and visiting more gardens.  I saw the discussion of wabi-sabi and golf course construction and the expression that characterizes "the perfect being the enemy of the good."  I have played three of Japan's highly regarded courses and was grateful for getting invitations to play them.  Although I liked having these golf experiences, I am more drawn to this part of the world for getting ideas and inspiration for hobby landscape gardening back home.


There are a lot of aspects of Japanese culture that probably are useful in providing some context for appreciating and understanding wabi-sabi.


1.  Having a long time horizon with a respect for tradition and view of the future contributes to a great deal of patience.
2.  Acceptance of change is ingrained in light of centuries of typhoons, floods, earthquakes, and fires as well as cyclical changes with seasons that are celebrated with the Sakura season, Japanese maple color change, and winter festivals.
3.  Temples over centuries have been destroyed by fire and rebuilt or restored on numerous occasions.
4.  I visited Nikko and Koyasan this trip where Buddhism had origins here, going back 1200 years.  The cemetary in Koyasan spans that length of time and has 200,000 monuments, including feudal lords from different eras and important Buddhist figures.  The cemetary is located amidst cedar trees that are centuries old.  Compare the span of less than 250 years for the U.S.as a sovereign nation with the span of the shogunate beginning around 1600.  Americans have a hard time thinking beyond the immediate, so there is less tolerance for small flaws, from which character might emerge.
5.  There is respect for nature and even a tendency to view matter such as rocks as having vitality.  This means taking care of damaged trees, bracing trees to prevent ice damage in winter, anchoring them with cables to protect and stabilize them from typhoons, shaping trees through skilled hand pruning, meticulously removing grass and unwanted growth from moss areas to promote moss growth in moss gardens  I saw a tree in a garden on my first trip here.  It was severely damaged by wind over 150 years ago.  It was pruned over time into a shape similar to a ship with mast and prow.
6.  Japan started an innovative high speed rail system and fine tuned it over time.  The Shinkansen has never had a passenger fatality involving an accident, departs on time, arrives on time, and runs on time.  The train system here is a remarkable example of electrical, computer, systems, and human factors engineering which evolved over time, but began as well engineered.
7.  Gardens here have beauty across seasons that aren't dependent on massive bursts of color and can be appreciated as materials, land forms, and shapes in the absence of color.  I think this derives from acceptance of nature operating on the landscape in annual cycles and over time.  This probably favors a willingness to tolerate shortcomings and work with an attitude of minimizing obvious flaws rather than absolutistically insisting on eliminating them.


Without claiming expertise in wabi-sabi, it seems like an outcome of numerous cultural values quite unlike those found in Western culture.  Isolation probably allowed this island nation to evolve in distinct ways, although Buddhism originated in India and arrived through China over a millenium ago.


Charles Lund
« Last Edit: November 05, 2018, 04:19:59 PM by Charles Lund »

Peter Pallotta

Re: Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction New
« Reply #40 on: November 05, 2018, 09:07:30 AM »
Wonderful post, Charles - thanks.

It reminded me of a friend who lived in Japan for about 20 years, and started and raised his family there. He told me there was a colloquial expression used when someone received a gift from anyone other than a family member.

It translates roughly into "This isn't finished yet" -- meant to acknowledge the gift, tell the giver that you recognized the 'debt' you now owed him, and commit to completing the exchange/restoring the balance by one day giving him a gift in return.   

I suppose this reflects some of Confucianism's influence there, and the 'rituals' that inform communal/societal life and that shape the relationship between individual wants and collective needs.

More to the point of this thread: maybe when one's sense of self & personal value is more closely tied to relationships with others, it's easier and more fitting to "leave room" in one's work for others to participate in/complete.   

Peter
« Last Edit: November 05, 2018, 09:34:01 AM by Peter Pallotta »

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