Are we propping them up?

[Mark_Fine]

Mike,
All fair comments and thanks for posting.  Sorry we both got each other going.  No worries on this end.  You need to have thick skin to be in the business as you know. 

The big challenge for GCA is sadly that it is becoming a dying profession.  If you are a young individual (or any individual) who is aspiring to be a Golf Architect, good luck because the chances you will get to ever route and build a brand new golf course is slim to none.  The number of new courses being built each year is minimal and reserved mostly for the elite names.  The only thing keeping the lights on for most who are still in the business and/or who eventually want to design and build their own courses is some kind of renovation work and if that doesn’t really count as true golf course architecture then GCA is all but dead except for a chosen few. 

We will leave it as a difference of opinion about those individuals doing something other than building new courses 

[Tim_Weiman]

Mark,


Interesting thread.


One question about your account of Arthur Hills and Lehigh: do you know if he was given any direction from the club before he put his plan together?


Or was it just a general “show us what you think we should do”?

[Mark_Fine]

Tim,
Glad someone found it interesting 


I just texted the super who was involved with the original Lehigh CC Master Plan and this was his text back to me:


“Early nineties Lehigh had no idea who Flynn was.   Neither did I to be honest with you. Fortunately I knew something didn't feel right.”


This is the problem that many clubs still have to this day, they don’t know what they have but they know they need to do something (or at least think they should do something) to keep/make their course more relevant.  In Lehigh’s case they thought it was best to hire a noted golf architect to help them and so it goes. 

[SL_Solow]

Mark,  I think you miss the point in your most recent post.  Architects who behave as Hills is purported to have done, or like Killian & Nugent operated in the Chicago area in the 70's and 80's, (and there are others) are a significant part of the problem.  An architect with respect for and an appreciation of the development of GCA would have worked to explain to Lehigh what the members had.  He might have presented alternatives ranging from a restoration to a "sympathetic renovation" to a remodel and made recommendations.  If the attitude is that "the members don't know what they have so I'll do what I want", or, perhaps even worse, "I am better than the classical architects", the architect is serving only himself and not his clients. I leave aside any responsibility to the art form.  Nor am I suggesting that every old course is worth preserving.  I am arguing that the architect has an obligation to fairly evaluate the existing course and its "bones" and to make a fair presentation to the client which acknowledges the value of that which exists.  I think a club should consult with several architects and compare their evaluations and ideas.  Fortunately Lehigh was able to do that.  Incidentally, returning to another point, in considering those recommendations, it shouldn't matter whether the architects are "restoration specialists" or individuals who have designed and routed courses from scratch.  There is little question that these are different, albeit related, skills.  Why that matters in the context of evaluating renovated/restored courses is something I continue to try to understand.

[Mark_Fine]

SL,
I think what you are saying is what I am saying.  Any architect or call them what you want, that was hired to help Lehigh CC prepare a Master Plan should be looking at all those things and helping the club figure out what they have and what they should do (if anything) to their golf course.  I am not sure why that message didn't get across.  This is not about BS, this is about education and most of the time that is where I feel I spend most of my time when I work with different clubs. At Ft. Monmouth in NJ for example when I first got hired there, they weren't even sure if they had a true Tillinghast design. It is a long story but a lot of research was required to figure that all out and determine and educate the club's management how the course had evolved.  This is what should have happened at Lehigh.  I hope we are saying the same thing. 

[Sven Nilsen]

Any architect or call them what you want, that was hired to help Lehigh CC prepare a Master Plan should be looking at all those things and helping the club figure out what they have and what they should do (if anything) to their golf course. 

That is a very easy statement to put forth in this day and age.  But that attitude wasn't as pervasive as we'd like to think it was back in the 90's, and certainly even less so before that.


The game has had its eras, from the early days to the Golden Age to the Dark Ages and on.  The thought that a club should be looking backwards to move forwards took a while to catch on.  We happen to be currently living in the age of that idea's zenith. 


It has been suggested in this thread that restoration has become such a big part of the industry these days because there aren't many new courses being built.  I'd suggest that even if the new course numbers were up, we'd still be seeing clubs looking to recapture their former glory and thus a market for restoration experts.  And to be clear, those restoration experts are the guys that are willing and most importantly able to tell a club what they have.

[Mark_Fine]

Sven,
You are correct about that attitude not being pervasive back when Lehigh invited Mr. Hills in to do a Master Plan.  Actually Master Plans back then were not that pervasive either.   Very few clubs had them but that is a whole new topic of discussion.  What happened at Lehigh is a big reason why I got in the business. I saw an opportunity to focus on this kind of work as very few were focused on the evolution of classic golf courses or even cared about what some dead guy designed 70 or 80+ years ago.  Only a handful of guys like Ron Forse and Gil Hanse were doing this kind of work at the time.  Both had a big influence on me.  Gil and I met often and he is the one who convinced me to give this a try.  He was so busy at the time doing restoration/renovation work that he would refer clients to me that he didn’t have time to pursue.  It made my start much easier since I didn’t take the traditional path into this business.  Since I started consulting (now over 25 years ago and 18 years since I officially set up my business) there has been much more emphasis on this kind of work.  Some may think that is good and some bad but as Forrest Richardson pointed out, it is just another cycle in GCA. 

[SL_Solow]

Sven,


I agree that trends come and go.  But I am trying to understand the implications of your statement.  Surely, the recognition that some architects may adopt trends does not mean that we should suspend our critical judgment in deciding what is good or bad in the design of golf courses or in our evaluation of the work undertaken by particular architects.  As one who witnessed the disfigurement of many classic golf courses in the Chicago area when the trend to add trees and water was all the rage, I cannot excuse the work by simply acknowledging that "everyone was doing it".  Indeed, it is the job of the critic to evaluate trends and to opine on whether they improve the discipline or are mere fads which will run their course.  When the medium is GCA, where the changes to a course are "in the ground"  momentary trends can have long term impacts, unlike fads in fashion or music which are quickly forgotten.  Of course a critic runs the risk of being left in the past; I borrow Peter's favorite analogy in remembering those jazz critics of the 1940's who were so wedded to swing that they could not recognize the long term appeal of bop. So I am not arguing for a static set of standards in making evaluations.  But I cannot excuse demonstrably bad work by saying tastes change and therefore, those following trends are to be excused when their work does not stand the test of time.  This criticism is magnified when their work extends to hurting already excellent work.

[Mark_Fine]

Sven,
AMEN!  We agree   

[Sven Nilsen]

Sven,


I agree that trends come and go.  But I am trying to understand the implications of your statement.  Surely, the recognition that some architects may adopt trends does not mean that we should suspend our critical judgment in deciding what is good or bad in the design of golf courses or in our evaluation of the work undertaken by particular architects. 

Shel-


Think of it this way.  The idea of restoring a course to its Golden Age roots is a newer concept.  30 or 40 years ago any work to the course would have been more in the way of updating, perhaps incorporating the hot fads of the day.  Today, there is more of a movement to recapture.  So even as original design trends come and go, so have the trends related to how courses are renovated, with the idea of restoring being the trend of the moment. 


[I am in no way making a judgment if one trend is better than the other.  That is probably a conversation for a different thread, and one that really needs to be examined on a case by case basis, a thought that touches on other concepts raised in this thread on deciding if a course is worthy of restoration.  We are lucky today that there are more people than ever with the knowledge and skills to make those kinds of determinations and more clubs/courses willing to seek out that kind of advice.  Call it a positive side effect of the ever increasing awareness and appreciation for Golden Age design and the expanding breadth of our collective historical knowledge.]


To use an example, Oakland Hills has seen its fair share of "updates" since Donald Ross last touched it, including a major overhaul by RTJ Sr. to bring it up to the highest championship standards of his day.  It is only recently that the idea of returning to the original Ross concept took hold. 


Hope that helps,


Sven


PS - I don't think there are many "true restorations" out there.  Even in the other thread where Tom discussed his work, he talked about adding tees where they could.  All restorations are in some way a best efforts, in that the architect/restoration expert is using their knowledge of the original architect's work on top of any available plans and photos to try to recreate what was originally there.  Often, subsequent changes have to be incorporated, or are incorporated because they have merit.  But no restoration is "true" in the sense that you are 100% returning to the course as it exactly was 90 or 100 years ago.  Part of that is due to the fact that the canvas is natural, and part is due to the limitations on knowing exactly what was there.  We gain more knowledge every day, but no one was doing laser mapping of their courses back in 1928.

[Mark_Fine]

Sven,
Another excellent post/summary!!  Well written.


You might see the post I made on #2 in the thread about repainting the Mona Lisa,...