Improve the Eden 13th at NGLA: Might we?

[Ronald Montesano]

Concurrent thread on longest stretch of great holes, identified the 13th at NGLA as the break point of the course's 12-hole run of greatness.


Is 13 ungreat?


Is it as CBM wanted it to be?


If 1 and 2 are true, did he mess up?


Given what is there right now, on the ground, how might one improve 13, if it needs improvement/greatness?

[Cal Seifert]

CBM intended it to have a pond that must be cleared to reach the green so people cannot putt all the way up to it.

[Gib_Papazian]

Who identified #13 as such? Inflicting modern fad, fashion and sensibilities on a living work of art is madness - which is exactly how R.T. Jones Sr. was given the green light to fuck up one masterpiece after another, under some bullshit rubric he sold to the morons who run America's Green Committees.

If you want to tinker with America's seminal Mona Lisa, put the tee on #12 back where it belongs - behind the Double-Plateau - and seriously consider recontouring the putting surface in concert with Raynor's plasticine model, hanging on the wall in what was Professor Olson's Super Shop.

I've been AWOL for some years out here in the West, but I'm not certain we ascertained what the original 12th green looked like - nor if it was ever built to match the model. Because we have pretty hard evidence that is what was intended, it would be worth looking at - or at least finding conclusive evidence why it is currently characterless.

But screw with Macdonald's Eden? Why? C.B. had specific reasons for not constructing duplicate copies, but instead sought to take the best elements and blend them into an improved version of what he and Dev Emmett found overseas. You want to make it steeper, like the orginal? Deepen the bunkers? If there is historical precedent and the objective is solely to return it to the original configuration, okay. But allowing lesser lights to paint over the master's brushstrokes is heresy.



     

[Ronald Montesano]

I've gleaned this from Gib, who seems to subliminally suggest that {Size} {/Size} still matters

"If you want to tinker with America's seminal Mona Lisa, put the tee on #12 back where it belongs - behind the Double-Plateau - and seriously consider recontouring the putting surface in concert with Raynor's plasticine model, hanging on the wall in what was Professor Olson's Super Shop."

That's the sort of thing I envisioned with this thread. That someone from farthest occident might supply us with a bit of historical context. Thanks for that, GPap.

[Peter Pallotta]

To Gib's last point: over the years here I've wondered if all original architects aren't in fact the 'masters', at least in regards to that one specific course they were the first to route and design and build; and whether in this context all other architects who come later aren't the 'lesser lights' -- no matter their bona fides and reputations and own great work. It's easy to make that claim when the original architect is a towering figure like CBM; much more challenging to argue it when the first architect was -- to our modern/current eyes and tastes -- himself a lesser light and his course is being renovated by the likes of Tom D or C&C or Hanse etc.
Peter

[Tom_Doak]

To Gib's last point: over the years here I've wondered if all original architects aren't in fact the 'masters', at least in regards to that one specific course they were the first to route and design and build; and whether in this context all other architects who come later aren't the 'lesser lights' -- no matter their bona fides and reputations and own great work. It's easy to make that claim when the original architect is a towering figure like CBM; much more challenging to argue it when the first architect was -- to our modern/current eyes and tastes -- himself a lesser light and his course is being renovated by the likes of Tom D or C&C or Hanse etc.

Peter:


Can you cite an example of the latter case(s) ?


I engage in two kinds of consulting work.  The vast majority of it is to preserve or restore classic courses that I admire.  In that context I am rarely tempted to suggest changes even if I personally think they might make the course better.  I tend to believe in the original designer's decisions, unless there are mitigating factors, such as the sale of neighboring property into private hands that creates a safety problem today.


Occasionally, I will take on a job where I'm being specifically asked to "improve" a course that I am not such a fan of.  In those cases, both the club and I have declared our intent up front, but it pretty much has to be their idea first.  One reason I shy away from these is that sometimes I feel the main purpose of the inquiry is not really to change the course so much as to re-brand it, and I do not like my name being used in that way -- it feels fraudulent to me.


On my last road trip I looked at a course that will really test my boundaries regarding restoration -- if they hire me, which I fear they will.

[Gib_Papazian]

Peter,


There were several thousand golf courses built before, during and after the so-called "Golden Age" and the vast majority could hardly be identified as "classic" or a "masterpiece" - just as most painters from the Impressionist school do not have their works hanging in The Louvre.


The evolution of golf design is rather checkered - and like music (as much as art) - some stand more charming period piece than bonafide, foundational work that has stood the test of time - and spawned imitative efforts, more pastiche than groundbreaking. These "period pieces" have their own charm and appeal, without carrying the weighty burden of a pedestal in the Pantheon. 


One could easily make the argument that nearly everything C.B. brought to America was derivative in nature - but just as every piece of music has classical symphonic elements, there is also a point of departure where these bedrock principles morph into something so far from the foundation as to be unrecognizable - from Beethoven to the Rolling Stones.


There have certainly been misguided forays in strange directions, but nutrition free pap - like Ted Robinson's "Aquatic Presentations" or vapid, death-by-rote dogshit like every Rees Jones course I've ever played - eventually give way to courses presenting a thoughtful enigma. The best golf holes present no obvious right or wrong answer, just a different question, depending on who is trying to solve the puzzle.


And once an artist (like Tom D., not to swell my friend's head) throws down the gauntlet and presents a riddle *even he* cannot definitively solve, that is the highest level of design achievement.


So, don't fuck with the master's sculpture, just because you lack patience and have not contemplated it long enough to decipher its eternal truths.


(the last line is a paraphrase from Prince Puckler, for those who have actually read Scotland's Gift)


   


   


 


 


                                                 

[Gib_Papazian]

Tom,


You posted right before I hit "Submit."


I can liken Peter's query to some of your work - fast forward 50 years, praying the balls and equipment will not have watered down the game itself to the point of obsolescence.


Right off the top of my head, #10 at Apache Stronghold is a perfect example. I still have no idea how to play it (four tries), except to deduce I've not settled on the best strategy. #7 at Pac Dunes is a par-4, but every time the wind shifts or dies down, the player is presented with a different geometry problem. Same goes for #16 at Pac Dunes - the shortest par-6 in America.


The only thing I have learned is the danger of changing my mind in mid-backswing.   


So, I agree with you - if some douchebag Green Chair comes along in 50 years and tries to rethink your thoughts (to make it [sneer] "fair") - is that not like defacing a painting solely because most viewers are incapable of grasping the aesthetic or strategic intent?


I understand that sometimes there are realities to consider - like #12 at Garden City, destroyed by R.T.Jones - where restoring the hole (exactly) would render it unplayable with modern green speeds. At the very least, you managed to crawl into *Emmett's skull and restore the basic strategic elements - thereby honoring the original intent.


*I cannot remember whether the 12th was more Travis than Emmet, can you comment on that?   

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks, gents - good posts.
No examples to cite, Tom. As Gib intuited, I'm wondering about the inherent value of a golf course -- any golf course -- in its original form, i.e. simply because it still is what it first was.

[Matt_Cohn]

Just hypothetically, could you improve it by not having it play in the same direction as the other two par 3's? 

[Gib_Papazian]

Matt,


That is an incredibly sharp observation, it never occurred to me that all three par-3's at NGLA go in the same compass direction. Nice idea about the Eden, except you'd have to rotate Bullhead Bay 180 degrees.


My thought above on #12 are (partially) no longer valid - a sad admission of how long it has been since I was back - it appears the club has restored the original teeing area behind #11. Now, the geometry of the hole makes sense again. I'm still curious as to what the original 12th green looked like - to the best of my recollection, the plasticine model had a double-tier configuration with a horseshoe shaped upper zone.


Obviously, the Cape Hole bears no resemblance to the original (after the new entrance road was built) - but it looked more like #16 at Cypress Point than what we have come to call a Macdonald Cape.   


 

[Tom_Doak]

I understand that sometimes there are realities to consider - like #12 at Garden City, destroyed by R.T.Jones - where restoring the hole (exactly) would render it unplayable with modern green speeds. At the very least, you managed to crawl into *Emmett's skull and restore the basic strategic elements - thereby honoring the original intent.

*I cannot remember whether the 12th was more Travis than Emmet, can you comment on that?   

I have never seen a conclusive account of whether that crazy 12th green existed before Travis worked at Garden City.  My assumption is that it's his, because I know he built a somewhat similar green at Columbia near D.C. [since bastardized], and I doubt he would have just stolen the idea from Emmet.


Our decision not to restore the green exactly had nothing to do with playability and everything to do with mow-ability.  It took twenty years of consulting there for a greenkeeper to sign on to being able to maintain it, and we had to agree to build it to his satisfaction.  The original green was mowed at much different heights, but even then, I don't understand how they did it -- the mounds in the green were about a foot higher than what we restored, and that much steeper, too.


P.S.  All your references to my work are 20 years old!     We should get you to Rock Creek, and Ballyneal, and The Loop.

[Tom_Doak]

Thanks, gents - good posts.
No examples to cite, Tom. As Gib intuited, I'm wondering about the inherent value of a golf course -- any golf course -- in its original form, i.e. simply because it still is what it first was.

Peter:


I have done several restoration projects where there were a handful of bunkers or other features that the club resisted restoring, because they felt the bunkers were superfluous, or too penal for average players, or not in play for good players, or some such reason.  And in many cases the clubs came back after 2-3 years and said they'd like to restore those features, too -- or, in some cases, we kept after them to do it.


I am always amazed when we have put back a hole exactly as it was, how perfectly it seems to fit the landscape, and how much those "superfluous" features add to the puzzle.  Frequently, they also add strategic interest for the senior players, who don't mind having a bunker to think about every once in a while.


Of course, though, I'm talking about courses by Raynor and MacKenzie in the anecdote above.  I once declared here that there were maybe 10% of courses that were worth preserving in their original form, and was made fun of by the other architects for suggesting that any course was perfect.  [Though I did not suggest any of them were perfect . . . only good enough that someone trying to make them better would be more likely to make them worse.]  You could be right that there are more than that, but surely there are others that were badly fit to the terrain and would benefit from a second effort.

[Peter Pallotta]

"Though I did not suggest any of them were perfect -- only good enough that someone trying to make them better would be more likely to make them worse."

The distinction you make there, Tom, seems to me an excellent one -- and one that only a very few could meaningfully make, i.e. in theory and in practice both. [It's not coincidental, I don't think, that the architects who made fun of you were unable or unwilling to make/see the same distinction.] For the vast majority of golf courses (not including those by Raynor and Mackenzie etc), it strikes me as the only distinction worth considering -- not whether golf course X is 'perfect' or 'great' or even 'very good', but whether the original (and its 'originality') could be improved upon, i.e. whether what might be gained would actually outweigh what would surely be lost. And extrapolating from other creative endeavours of which I've been a part, I'm not sure there's all that many working professionals who have the insight/imagination/expertise to fully realize what they're gambling with, and the value/qualities of the original that would be lost in their proposed renovation.