My usual glibness aside, the tie-ins are what make minimalism "minimalism."
The minute you need to change something you do everything possible to make it seem like you never changed it in the first place.
Kyle,
Wouldn't this be better described as naturalism? To get it right the first time, without much dirt moving, is minimalism...but the ensuing fix(es) to appear to the golfer as it was always there seems like naturalism...
I agree here with Kalen - it was Kyle's second sentence that nailed it. But the first one is a bit debatable and depends on how you define minimalism.
Tom D says he coined the term as it befits golf course architecture. And so I'm sure he would agree with Kyle.
But true minimalism for me is actually doing less, not just making it look like less (naturalism): Eddie Hackett was a true minimalist but - depending on his construction crew - his tie-ins can be fairly awful in places.
Going back to Tim's original point, good tie-ins can mean a far larger area of work than most greens-crews would allow for if conducting in-house rather than under the guidance of a GCA / shaper / builder. Naturalism can be hard work.
But Kyles's first sentence is one to live by, especially the first part of that which hints at the main point: The first question should always be "do we really need to do anything here?"
Ally:
First of all, Ron Whitten actually coined the term "minimalism" for golf architecture, attempting to explain what Bill Coore and I were doing differently from other designers, back in about 1995. Of course, he also included Donald Steel in that discussion, and I thought Donald's work was much more about limiting the area of disturbance [and much less about massaging the natural contours] than ours.
As with all terms related to golf architecture [see: championship, links, etc.] the word has become more of a sales pitch and different people have totally different understandings of it, and arguing about who's right is fruitless. We can only explain what we are trying to do, ourselves.
For me, tie-ins are hugely important.
One of the reasons I hate USGA greens construction is because the tie-ins are so hard to get right with the third layer of material . . . it takes a lot of work to make the seam between green and surrounds seamless, and most contractors fall well short of success.
Indeed, on renovations in general, tie-ins are much harder to pull off, because you are ripping up more grass to make the tie-in better, instead of just working further out in the sand/dirt. There are great sketches in Thomas's and Simpson's books of how a mound should look, which illustrate how much further out you must go to get the tie-in right on a form like that. On a renovation job, that adds expense . . . on a new course, it really doesn't.
When building a new course, we are thinking about the tie-ins from all angles, everywhere we have to do our work. Of course, we'll get things right within the area being re-grassed . . . the trick on a new course is to choose the line carefully between the native vegetation you're leaving and the area you will grass and mow, so it doesn't call attention to changes in the terrain. [Simplest illustration: if we have to change the slope on the outside edge of a hole, we will work back to the steepest part of the slope, so we can continue it that steeply for a while and re-shape the transition to our new contours.] But at the same time, you've got to do it in lines that don't look weird or awkward from the golfer's viewpoint. Sometimes we build a hole much wider than otherwise necessary in order to find a tie-in that works.
But, yes, at the same time, I would prefer not to change the grades in a fairway at all, if they work reasonably well for golf.