Design and Maintenance

[Jim Sherma]

Sean - I agree with where you're coming from in terms of divorcing design from conditioning.


I try to assess courses by wondering what I would think of them if they were maintained in line with a decent public course. Would someone still think that there was something special about them if that was the case? There are certainly many very nice private clubs whose courses fall down a couple of notches when thought of this way. Generally it is because there is nothing of note that sticks out in terms of how the course uses the land that's available, or simply that there is no meaningful uniqueness in the available land.

[Sean_A]

Sean - I agree with where you're coming from in terms of divorcing design from conditioning.


I try to assess courses by wondering what I would think of them if they were maintained in line with a decent public course. Would someone still think that there was something special about them if that was the case? There are certainly many very nice private clubs whose courses fall down a couple of notches when thought of this way. Generally it is because there is nothing of note that sticks out in terms of how the course uses the land that's available, or simply that there is no meaningful uniqueness in the available land.

It's very rare for me to boost or reduce a course rating because of maintenance.

Ciao

[Mark_Fine]

Sean/Jim,
I agree good maintenance can prop up a weaker design.  And I also agree that I don't judge a course too much one way or the other by how it is maintained when studying the architecture.  HOWEVER, the point I was trying to make is that maintenance (or should I say maintenance budgets) can have a major impact on WHAT IS DESIGNED TO BEGIN WITH.  Maintenance budget concerns is in addition to the upfront cost/budget to build or renovate or restore the course in question. 

Take a course like Stone Eagle in Palm Desert, CA.  I love the golf course but I can’t imagine what the budget was to build it (does anyone here know) let alone to maintain it.  How many of the challenges/compromises that I listed in post #13 do you think the architect had to worry about when he designed that golf course?  Jim, if that course was maintained with a $350K budget how do you think it would look?  It wasn’t designed that way so it is almost impossible to picture.  It was all designed to be maintained a certain way and I don't think budget was an issue. 

Maintenance budgets impact all those design aspects that I listed in post #13 (at least for most golf courses).

At my one public course renovation project, maintenance cost management was a critical component in what we designed.  This HAD to be balanced carefully to make sure the new design was sustainable yet more fun and interesting to the wide level of golfers who play there.  This is not always so easy especially when dealing with an older course where you want to maintain or restore many of the original features, etc.  At this particular project the course used to have 39 bunkers totaling 117,000 square feet and averaging 3,000 square feet each.  It now it has 29 bunkers totaling 81,000 square feet and averaging 2,800 square feet. That’s a 26 percent reduction in bunkers and a 31 percent reduction in total sand area.  By diversifying the green surrounds and introducing low-mow areas and swales we created more varied recovery options for players.  The bunkers that we incorporated each now served a purpose and were well thought out.  We also had to keep pace of play in mind as this was another key design aspect that was important to manage.

I was adamant about green modifications and expansion believing that the larger greens would help offset some of the added construction and maintenance costs by helping spread out wear while introducing interesting hole locations that had been lost over time.  We also needed to do this to make everything tie in together so the changes didn’t just look like a bunker improvement project independent of the greens.  But a budget is a budget so we had to sacrifice elsewhere.  We did increase the average putting surface to about 7,200 square feet with many more pinnable areas than before which was about a ten percent increase in size.
My point here is all those design challenges I listed in post #13 and more had to be addressed.  This is almost always the case on the far majority of golf courses but are rarely of concern on the elite designs.  Lucky them

[Anthony_Nysse]

  We all know most supers would cut down every tree and put in wall to wall cart paths so golfers stay off the turf and limit contour in greens and if they could, get rid of most bunkers (and those that are kept must be machine raked), ... I could go on. 

Sad that we are viewed this way.....

[Mark_Fine]

Anthony,
Don't take my quote out of context.  You know what I am talking about.  I attend a ton of superintendent events (at least before Covid). I even have a super that works with me on many of my projects.  I talk with these guys all the time.  Supers drive many renovation/restoration projects and they have to be intimately involved with any successful process.  They have the toughest job in golf.  You know as well as anyone that trees out compete grass, their roots tear up cart paths as well as clog up or break drain lines and their shade and microclimates hinder green health.  Yes they play a role in GCA but most supers don't love them.  How would you like to have hundreds of Eucalyptus trees all over your golf course like Forrest and I had to deal with on one project in CA.  Talk about dirty trees.  Do you think the super loved them?  None of us really like golf cart paths but do you really love golf carts driving all over your golf course especially after it rained?  Do you enjoy hand watering high spots or dealing with dead grass on scalped greens or sharp mounds?  How fun is it to fly mow steep bunker surrounds or deal with sand washouts after a storm?  Supers deal with all of this and much more so yes I was being a bit dramatic with that quote but deep down, many supers would love to have courses that are much easier to maintain (which was the point I was trying to make).