Gil Hanse + Lido in Bangkok

[Tom_Doak]

So net net, I would guess that it would today be a top 5-ish or even top 3-ish.

Obviously this is 110% speculation and none of us know...which makes the question even better.

Yes, it's all a matter of opinion, but I do not think your estimate is very likely at all.


First of all, when Lido was named one of the top three courses in America, it was 1926.  Courses like Cypress Point and Pebble Beach [in its present form] did not yet exist.  There's a lot more competition than there was.


I feel certain that Lido got some of its stature from its setting between Reynolds Channel and the Atlantic Ocean, which lapped at the edge of the Biarritz 8th hole.  But long before the course ceased to exist, part of the 8th hole was washed away, and the seafront was taken up by beach cabanas.  Also, if the course still existed today, the traffic through the middle of the course would be a much bigger negative than it was in 1926.


The third and last point is that the holes were built very close together -- too close for today's game.  Our intent is to reproduce the course as exactly as we can in Wisconsin, but we have to space the holes further apart for safety.  Just to cite one example, the 15th green, 16th tee, 10th green, and 11th tee were all in play to either side of the par-5 17th.  If we built it exactly as it had been, I'd get sued the first month the course was open.


The original Lido did not have more acreage available to fix that problem, or to lengthen any of its holes to keep up with modern equipment.  It would still be 6400 yards on 115 acres, with a busy road you had to hit across four times.  Top five?  I don't think so.


Luckily, most of the problems in that last paragraph can be easily addressed in Wisconsin, but we still don't have an ocean setting to our advantage.  Where will it be ranked?  I don't really care; I just want to build it as faithfully as the lawyers will let me.

[Andrew Harvie]

So net net, I would guess that it would today be a top 5-ish or even top 3-ish.

Obviously this is 110% speculation and none of us know...which makes the question even better.

Yes, it's all a matter of opinion, but I do not think your estimate is very likely at all.


First of all, when Lido was named one of the top three courses in America, it was 1926.  Courses like Cypress Point and Pebble Beach [in its present form] did not yet exist.  There's a lot more competition than there was.


I feel certain that Lido got some of its stature from its setting between Reynolds Channel and the Atlantic Ocean, which lapped at the edge of the Biarritz 8th hole.  But long before the course ceased to exist, part of the 8th hole was washed away, and the seafront was taken up by beach cabanas.  Also, if the course still existed today, the traffic through the middle of the course would be a much bigger negative than it was in 1926.


The third and last point is that the holes were built very close together -- too close for today's game.  Our intent is to reproduce the course as exactly as we can in Wisconsin, but we have to space the holes further apart for safety.  Just to cite one example, the 15th green, 16th tee, 10th green, and 11th tee were all in play to either side of the par-5 17th.  If we built it exactly as it had been, I'd get sued the first month the course was open.


The original Lido did not have more acreage available to fix that problem, or to lengthen any of its holes to keep up with modern equipment.  It would still be 6400 yards on 115 acres, with a busy road you had to hit across four times.  Top five?  I don't think so.


Luckily, most of the problems in that last paragraph can be easily addressed in Wisconsin, but we still don't have an ocean setting to our advantage.  Where will it be ranked?  I don't really care; I just want to build it as faithfully as the lawyers will let me.

Lido recreation in North America from TD in Wisconsin? I'm calling a very, very high debut

[MCirba]

I love the dream and ideal and engineering of The Lido but would argue that historically most of man's attempts to artificially imitate the randomness of nature have fallen either slightly or woefully short.


I would guess it would be viewed today as a cool museum piece in a great setting and would be rated in the second 50 of existing US golf courses, doubtful on world lists.

[Ally Mcintosh]

I love the dream and ideal and engineering of The Lido but would argue that historically most of man's attempts to artificially imitate the randomness of nature have fallen either slightly or woefully short.


I would guess it would be viewed today as a cool museum piece in a great setting and would be rated in the second 50 of existing US golf courses, doubtful on world lists.

I’d trend towards this too.

[Peter Flory]

I love the dream and ideal and engineering of The Lido but would argue that historically most of man's attempts to artificially imitate the randomness of nature have fallen either slightly or woefully short.

I can't opine on where it would be ranked if it survived, mainly because of the bisecting road (as Tom mentioned).  That was going to be an ongoing headache and was the primary reason that the course wasn't rebuilt as was the plan when it was purchased back from the Navy.  If it weren't for that, I think that the core features and challenges would have aged just fine.  I believe that it would have been a little like the US version of Prestwick.  Intimate with severe features and enduring challenges, and fit together like a great jigsaw puzzle.  With a course like Prestwick, rankings don't matter as it is just in a different category. 

The original Lido was wild as hell and had very natural features from ground level (even if we can see some geometry from the air). I think that people probably get the wrong impression when they think of it as a template course because of all the Raynor template courses they've seen with clean lines.  Vardon and Ray were bigger fans of the Lido than the Americans as they considered it to be the only course in the US that rivaled the exposed seaside courses of the UK. 

Look at the gnarly cross bunker on 17 on the right side of this photo as an example of its aesthetic. 


It was a linksy wasteland with sand everywhere and full exposure to the elements.  At ground level, you're just in the chaos, battling for angles and constantly balancing risk and reward.



The fairways were all rumpled up to present the challenges of true links courses.  CBM was incredibly specific with his undulations and they appear to have been carried out in minute detail from the plans by the construction crew. 


1st hole as an example: angled with shadows showing the undulations.  To my eye, they are very irregular and it looks like he laid the hole over terrain that had been there forever.  It has great quirkiness to it and speaks to CBM's creativity.  I don't think that this hole would come across as artificial if it had survived, mainly because CBM did such a great job randomizing the terrain. 

[Thomas Dai]

An inspired-by imitation of a collection of inspired-by imitations from 100 yrs ago? Sounds cool though.

atb


For reference purposes - https://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,60459.0.html

[Robin_Hiseman]

Thank you for the considered responses to my question. Really interesting insights.


Here's the next question.


Philosophically, what is the difference between this (and Tom's Wisconsin version) and the much ridiculed Tour 18 concept?

[Tom_Doak]

Philosophically, what is the difference between this (and Tom's Wisconsin version) and the much ridiculed Tour 18 concept?

Unlike most of Macdonald's courses, the Lido had to create holes entirely from scratch, so his philosophy of taking the best ideas from the UK (instead of finding inspiration from the natural contours of the ground) is more easily justified.  Lido was for Macdonald what Shadow Creek is for Tom Fazio.


You could say Macdonald's whole career was a set of Tour 18 type courses, and you wouldn't be far off, except he didn't build all his Redans alike so there was an effort to adapt those concepts to the ground at National or Yale or Chicago Golf.


For myself, the Wisconsin attempt to recreate the Lido is about recreating something that was lost, a whole course with its own character (portions of which, as detailed above, are irreprducible).  Can we get the contours right?  (It's a lot more intricate than copying the 12th at Augusta.)  Can we capture its character?


The typical all-star cast of Tour 18 does not really HAVE a character of its own; the selections were not made to create a cohesive whole, as Macdonald's were.


Sure, there is a similar appeal to the retail golfer, and that's part of why the project is being developed, but that's not why I'm involved.

[Tom Bacsanyi]

Tom,


So what does the ground look like where this course is to be constructed? Is it dead flat and featureless like Shadow Creek's site? Or do you basically have to bulldoze it flat to create a blank canvas?

[Tom_Doak]

So what does the ground look like where this course is to be constructed? Is it dead flat and featureless like Shadow Creek's site? Or do you basically have to bulldoze it flat to create a blank canvas?

They are logging it now.  It's very sandy and softly undulating, with a sharper 15-foot ridge running E-W through the middle.  The earthwork calculator says we are looking at 600,000 or 700,000 cubic yards of earthmoving, 2/3 of which is digging the big interior pond.  The original course was said to require 2 million yards of fill - so they must have had a lot of work just to get its head above water!


(FYI, Shadow Creek was not flat to start with either - it tilted fairly sharply from N to S.)

[Tom Bacsanyi]

Where does one get the earthmoving figure? Do you already have all the features and elevations mapped over the property so it's just a matter of cutting and filling to the specs? Exactly how close to the Lido will it be hole by hole? I know you said that there will be more space between the holes out of necessity.


How much earthmoving is 600-700k yds^3 relatively? Will construction be a similar process to the Rawls course where you basically had to plan the whole thing out in advance and couldn't just route it in the field?

[Tom_Doak]

Tom:


Answers to your questions:

Where does one get the earthmoving figure? Do you already have all the features and elevations mapped over the property so it's just a matter of cutting and filling to the specs?  --  Yes, we have a working topo map and feed it into a computer which also has the existing topo.


Exactly how close to the Lido will it be hole by hole? I know you said that there will be more space between the holes out of necessity.  --  The holes themselves will be spot on, as close as we are able to determine from photographs and the model and all of Peter Flory's work.  There is some additional spacing for safety, so there will be room to add longer & shorter tees, but you'll be able to play from exactly the same yardages Macdonald had, too.


How much earthmoving is 600-700k yds^3 relatively?  --  The Rawls Course was 800k which is by far the most I've ever done.  Twenty years ago, designers used to say 300,000 cubic yards was required for an "average" project, but I've only done that maybe four times out of forty.  The majority of my courses have been under 50,000 cubic yards.


Will construction be a similar process to the Rawls course where you basically had to plan the whole thing out in advance and couldn't just route it in the field? -- We have a plan for the contractor to grade everything; then we'll have to see how close it looks to the photos, and how much shaping we need to do.  We did that for The Rawls Course, too, but the decision on how much more we should do was entirely my call there, whereas for Lido we are working toward a very specific goal.

[Thomas Dai]

As seen on a Google sat map during construction - https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@13.6107716,100.8842073,16z/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e2
and the Clubs website including insights from GH - https://brc.co.th/

Atb