"the original intent of the architect"

[archie_struthers]

 




Is it sacrosanct on this forum. Does it matter whose work you are messing with ?

[Carl Rogers]

If tasked with a re-work of ( for example) an 80's Rees Jones or other non-descript course, what would be done? ...... with an open minded client.


Would Pinehurst No. 4 represent such a project?

[Ally Mcintosh]

What drives the question, Archie?


Big topic.

[archie_struthers]

 




Simple answer Ally. I'm a big fan of William Flynn, might be my fave for the work done around Philly and one of the best  manufactured courses at Indian Creek CC in Miami Beach. For years I hated (lol) the elbow bunker on the 14th hole at Philly CC and despite constant prodding as to its being awful could not get anyone to utter a word in that it was "original".

[MCirba]

I love William Flynn too but he also built the two gawdawful fairway bunkers guarding the creek on the left side of Merion East's 5th fairway.


Even God created wasps.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Ok,


What I actually believe is that every architect should have at least a course or two that remains more or less untouched (or at least under stricter governance) to remind us of their work...


after that, some of it should be fair game with proper reasoning, respect and distance in time.


It’s a completely unmanageable solution however.

[Tom_Doak]

Ok,


What I actually believe is that every architect should have at least a course or two that remains more or less untouched (or at least under stricter governance) to remind us of their work...


after that, some of it should be fair game with proper reasoning, respect and distance in time.


It’s a completely unmanageable solution however.

On a thread years ago I proposed that every architect should nominate three of his own courses to be preserved, and that the MacKenzie Society and others should nominate the three best preserved examples of their man's work, to put peer pressure on clubs not to change them.


That might cause other courses to be more mindful of preservation or to seek similar status by FAITHFULLY restoring their course, instead of moving bunkers around under the guise of "restoration".  Unfortunately, just as on here, so many members have allegiance to a particular architect that it could well turn into a scrum, but that's no different than now.


Had I nominated High Pointe as one of my three courses to preserve, would that have changed its fate?  Not necessarily, but quite possibly.

[Tom_Doak]

Simple answer Ally. I'm a big fan of William Flynn, might be my fave for the work done around Philly and one of the best  manufactured courses at Indian Creek CC in Miami Beach. For years I hated (lol) the elbow bunker on the 14th hole at Philly CC and despite constant prodding as to its being awful could not get anyone to utter a word in that it was "original".

Archie:


As you know, having built a course yourself, there are certain features of each that attracted more of your time and attention than others did.  Just because a feature is original doesn't necessarily mean that the architect loved it; it was just the best he [or his crew] could come up with at the time.


However, there's your opinion, and then there's Mr. Cirba's, and then of course every member has their own opinion, and every green chairman has an opportunity to act upon his opinion . . . and that's why so many great old courses have been effed up.  It's simpler to stick to Flynn's opinion, where you can.  That's why the Hippocratic oath [unfortunately not part of the ASGCA code] is "First, do no harm."


In the end, it's up to the club to decide if their mission is to preserve Flynn's work, or to pursue the "best possible course," while acknowledging that is a moving target, and entirely subjective.  So it should be up to that mission statement whether to consider the change you are suggesting, or shoot you down.


It would be better for the club to come up with the mission statement first, instead of relying on their consulting architect to do it for them.  The latter is like putting a fox in charge of your chicken coop.   




P.S.  The word "intent" has been abused by architects restoring other architects' work since the beginning of time.  That's a whole separate topic -- whether the bunker you hate should be moved 40 yards downrange -- but I don't think that's what you had in mind here.

[JESII]

Yes, I remember but forget...


What is it about this bunker Arch?


There was a saying from an ODG about placing a bunker right where you’d like to hit your approach shot from...someone help me!


This is That Bunker!

[Thomas Dai]

This seems a perplexing area of discussion although hopefully light will shine through for golf courses aren’t just fixed museum pieces to be looked at and analysed.
Even if mankind hasn’t altered the original intent of the architect nature will likely have done so and done so from day one without mankind maybe even noticing. And to what extent is original intent of the architect even the architects original intent given that architects plans and drawings and stakes on the ground were then interpreted by others with the architect maybe never even seeing the work on the ground as he originally intended it to appear?
In addition, there’s the relationship between original intent of the architect to original playability, original equipment, original maintenance practices and whatever else was occurring at the time of creation.
I’ll be interested in seeing how this thread develops.
Atb

[Peter Pallotta]

Archie -
this reminds me of another recent thread, the "Which Tom makes more sense - Simpson or Fazio?".
Most of us said we understand and side with Simpson (and his 'noble imperfections'), and not with Fazio's 'every hole is the best one'.
But we don't really mean it.
Or at least, judging from past actions, most clubs members and committee chairs and architects and average golfers don't really mean it.
We actually don't have an 'eye' for the beauties that Simpson describes, and we have even less of a willingness to leave well enough alone.
Or so it seems.
Judging from the past, what drives us most is the desire to have a course be 'perfect', just like Tom Fazio says...with perfect meaning exactly what we want to see in exactly the way we want to see it and at the exact moment when we want it done.
P
 

[Ian Andrew]

12th Hole at Laval-sur-le-lac (Blue) photo by Evan Schiller http://www.golfshots.com

When I designed Laval-sur-le-lac’s 12^th hole on the Blue Course I had a very specific challenge in mind. I wanted the upper route to be the most desired and rewarding and the lower route to be the safe but strategically inferior decision.

During construction we worked towards this using the spoils, they had to go somewhere, so I incorporated them into the design. We knew we would get material from the screening topsoil and would supplement with materials from the one major cut I made in the entire project. I intended a higher shelf that you would desire to find from the tee for visibility. We ended up finding a major run of limestone in our cut and I knew I was going to be short of what I needed. Shit happens. Because of the circumstances I ended up altering the intent of the hole and the design of the green. The consequence was it made playing lower a better option that I intended.

The hole opened. It was the one hole out of the group that did not fulfill my original intentions and while I was “happy” with the hole, I was not “completely satisfied” with the results, not because it was bad, but because I had not achieved the entire concept. My intent was different than the results.

What followed was the hole opened for play and players choose to go low far more than they played up. They were more comfortable with the option than I intended. The good side of this was weaker players loved playing to the upper side of the fairway on their second. Didn't see that coming, because it gave them safer options they liked and the feeder slope would sometimes get them home in regulation. Longer players would chase the upper shelf too because they liked a full look at the green. But the bulk off players played low.

I ended up the guest speaker for 40 golf industry people who were all invited to play the course. I spoke about the golf course and the intentional rhythms. Then, as I strangely love to do, I shared the fact that the 12^th hole did not turn out as planned.

Our host for the evening chimed in and asked the 40 people their favorite hole. 32 people selected the 12th and then more fascinatingly they began to share why. I listened and realized that as architects we may organize or influence play, but we do not actually determine how the field of play will be used. We may assume a particular outcome, but if we provide room and options, golfers will choose their own routes. Most had selected the hole because they thought it was the most fun way to play.

The design drawings I made is clear with notes that spell out the intent. It's not what I built.

[MCirba]

Tom Doak,

There's also the issue on some courses of which version of the original architect's intent do you go back to?
I'm a believer that club's should pick a point in time, a high-water mark if you will, and go from there but even that method is not completely infallible.  I seem to recall that some folks at Garden City wanted to restore to the 1924 Walker Cup or 1936 US Amateur, can't recall which, probably because the original wild 12th existed at that time but that was evidently a bit of a hot potato for some time.

In the case of the two left-hand fairway bunkers at Merion's 5th, if memory serves they were built for the 1930 US Amateur but were already gone before the 1934 US Open, but when the club decided to have Fazio restore the course back around 2000, they were put back in simply because they were on the 1930 aerial.   I had joked with my Merion friends that Flynn perhaps had a bender the night before the tournament, woke up, realized to his horror what he'd done, and plowed them up right after the tournament.   
I'm not sure if they are still there after the latest work as I haven't been over there to play yet.

[mike_malone]

Thankfully Flynn was flawless at Rolling Green

[Tom_Doak]

Ian:


That was a great post.


I realized years ago that some holes don't work out as envisioned, and sometimes they work out better.  Once I realized that, I stopped trying to control how people play, and would give them as many options as possible so they would have a chance [but also a hard time] to figure out what is really the best approach for themselves.  For golfers, as much as for us, the strategy they take is often not the optimal one.


Gil Hanse drew up a bunch of notes when we were done with Black Forest, to leave with our client and the superintendent on how we wanted the course to be maintained.  I dug them up a few years ago, and disagreed with several, because we had insisted on leaving grass long on some bunker faces for a certain look, and it just made it too hard to play.




Mike Cirba:


I agree that no method is infallible, but just as with the above, sometimes clubs themselves are not the best judge of when the high-water mark was.  It took 18 years to convince Garden City to put back the 12th hole, and I could never get them to return the 5th to the original 300-yard par-4.  Ironically, we had them play to the original green site as a temporary green while we built a new one on the site of where Mr. Jones had moved it in the 1950's, but they just refused to give up the extra sixty yards.  To be fair, there are already two other 300-yard holes on the course, and they weren't as drivable in the early days as they are now!

[Thomas Dai]

If there were a GCA ‘like’ icon I’d click it for this -

“...... I stopped trying to control how people play, and would give them as many options as possible so they would have a chance [but also a hard time] to figure out what is really the best approach for themselves.  For golfers, as much as for us, the strategy they take is often not the optimal one.”

Numerous options are fine by me, but is it possible to have too many options?
Atb

[Kalen Braley]

I think Peter makes an excellent point in his prior post with "What we say and what we do" are often two entirely different things.

That being said, in the context of GCA, I think perfection for some could very well mean building something that doesn't look perfect, or even be perfect for that matter.

P.S. I'd be curious, in the same vein as Ian, any archies wanna post holes of a hole that turned out exactly like you intended, and is therefore perfect to you?

[Tim Martin]

I recall three double penalty situations on otherwise well presented courses this year. Two involved a tree and a creek and one was with a tree and a bunker. In all three instances the trees were installed long after opening day with the architect clearly envisioning that the the creek in each case and bunker were a sufficient hazard unto themselves.

[Ian Andrew]

I'll take the bait ...



11th hole at Laval-sur-le-lac ... photo by Evan Schiller http://www.golfshots.com


Kalen,

Below is the image I put together before the course was ever built. The ridge the green sits on did not exist. It was the low point in the land. I had to do something because I had limited land to work with and using this triangle in theis way unlocked the current routing.

So, I added a feature to give the hole a logical place to end.I conceived and built a 15 foot ridge using left over limestone rock from construction. This is an example of a hole I "conceived" that ended up as I planned it - just look at the drawing - it's remarkably close to how it was designed. It's funny these two examples sit side by side.

[Peter Pallotta]

K -
in a way, isn't what Ian and Tom wrote another way of saying what Simpson was saying, i.e. that the pursuit of perfection can be so controlling that it leaves no room for golfers to engage with the field of play? It leaves us cold.
Maybe the 'golf course as it evolves and comes to be' is a lot smarter than any architect can be.
Which relates to Tim's point as well. In those three cases/courses, somebody thought they were smarter than both the architect and the golf course. "I know - let me plant a tree over here", like no one ever thought of that before.
 


 

[Tom_Doak]

I think Peter makes an excellent point in his prior post with "What we say and what we do" are often two entirely different things.

That being said, in the context of GCA, I think perfection for some could very well mean building something that doesn't look perfect, or even be perfect for that matter.

P.S. I'd be curious, in the same vein as Ian, any archies wanna post holes of a hole that turned out exactly like you intended, and is therefore perfect to you?

I don't even try to draw out my ideas as precisely as Ian provides for his 11th hole at Laval.  I leave it more vague, so that my associates and interns can make it better.


The first hole that popped into mind for me as turning out exactly as I wanted was the 8th hole at Pacific Dunes.  When I completed the routing, the green site was a thicket of trees and bushes, and we couldn't even walk into it to see what was in there.  Once we got it cleared out, I had an idea for the hole -- actually on the plane headed home -- and I sent my idea back to Jim Urbina so he could start building a green based on the 3rd hole at Woking [England].  It doesn't look like the 3rd at Woking, but it plays just like it, and it turned out pretty much exactly like I'd envisioned.  But better!

[archie_struthers]

 


Sully, the 14th at Philly CC has a bunker on the corner right about where you might hit it from the tips, I couldn't reach it anymore  , well maybe with new equipment!  The green slopes radically left to right and I would love to see them shave the rough short left of the green to bring the ground game into play. But that's another story.


The bunker looks awful from the tee IMO and basically tells you don't hit it left which is the short way home , a direct line. I'm hard pressed to believe that Flynn put it there as relief, which it is today. Its far easier to hit it out of the bunker and hold the green for an expert than out of the heavy rough which is all down the left side. My biggest beef isn't the bunker is easier, but that it looks so incongruous in that spot. It's just not aesthetically pleasing and serves no strategic value.


As to the architects original intent if I hit the lottery and bought Twisted Dune back I would immediately bulldoze the 3rd green and completely change the way that hole plays. Don't know what I was thinking at the time, except perhaps I wanted the players to see all the upcoming holes as they looked across the landscape. Anyway it doesn't work as the green would have been so much better being at elevation 20' versus elevation 70'. 


So as Tom points out there is a lot of stuff the original architect might like to redo with time and money and just never got around to or it didn't make financial sense to the membership. I'd concur that if in doubt let it lie but strict adherence to hands off might not always be the right path!

[Niall C]

Archie


As to your OP question "does it matter who's work you are messing with ?" I think the answer fundamentally is no. I will caveat that to say that whoever makes the decision should be mindful of what they are changing and ask themselves why they are doing it.


Ian


Many thanks for your posts, I really enjoyed them. I'm sure you don't need me to create work for you but if you were interested in creating a thread on that particular course illustrating thew design intent for each hole and the decisions you then had to make in the field I for one would love to see it. We do tend to spend a lot of time on design ideas on this site but I think marrying the ideas up with the decisions required when putting them into practice makes a much more interesting read.


Niall

[mike_malone]

 If you have a great architect, great original designs on paper,  great photo evidence of the opening year , and a great find of a photo two years later by your consultants that shows no changes that’s an enviable place to be.


Then when you realize that the photos taken 10 years after opening which show changes that are very unlikely to be the original guy’s ideas then you can safely call the original opening the high point.


Being one of the  best Flynn original designs worth restoring to his original intent is a rare and high honor. No one in their right mind would not cherish  that. 

[archie_struthers]

 




Mayday....well said






p.s.   guess it wasn't imHo   lol