[Padraig Dooley]

We have five senses, touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. Proprioception, how your brain understands where you are in space, could be added in to.
How many of the senses are considered when designing a course? Do some consider all of the senses? Are some completely ignored?
Sight and visuals is the obvious one and get plenty of commentary. Touch is talked about too, the firm turf, the feel of the shot etc. Proprioception, would be the scale of the site, and again is discussed.
But what about smell? Routing away from undesirable smells and adding in memorable ones?

Hearing? Routing away from traffic or situating a green or tee near a babbling brook?
Finally, is there anyway to add taste in?

[Tom_Doak]

Padraig:


I like your topic.  I think it's been touched on occasionally by designers, but no more than that.


"Texture" on a golf course [different grasses, and other plant material] is mostly perceived as a visual thing, but it does have its own unique impact on play -- you don't feel it with your hands, but you feel it with your golf club.  I think texture is a very important element of the best courses, and sadly completely missing from many clubs that want to present everything as "clean" and perfect.


Sound issues are generally only addressed to try and diminish the impacts of outside forces:  for example, we have cut down trees and are building a berm along the road on three sides of the new Lido course, because a berm will deflect sound upwards from the road, where the trees would only have been a visual barrier.  In Bandon, we did discuss the possibility of building a green lower to the ocean, and it was noted that getting the sound of the surf would be a positive addition, but in the end you would take advantage of such opportunities for other reasons first.  I would not be surprised if the landscape architects who worked on Tom Fazio's high-end courses did things to amplify the sound of the babbling water features they built.


The most under-explored topic is taste.  When I first joined Crystal Downs, you could pick and eat wild strawberries out of the rough in June, and you can still pick blackberries and raspberries in spots, and eat the apples off the old orchard trees in the fall.  Now, alas, the strawberries have been eradicated in the process of making the rough more "fair".  But I do think that such natural opportunities are far more appealing than the soup stations on Discovery Land golf courses, and I guess I should think more about trying to add in some opportunities where previous landowners have not provided them.

[Thomas Dai]

Location dependent but the taste of salt on the lips, face, hands etc when a strong wind is blowing in from the sea across a links course (and the mucky, misting-up of spectacles from the same) is one example that comes to mind.
Atb

[Jeff_Brauer]

Agreed it's mostly visual, as I think most people are visually oriented, but not all.


As for taste, Innisbrook used to encourage picking up the oranges that had fallen, on the part of the course that was formerly an orchard.  My wife got so engrossed in free oranges we got warned for slow play.....Crystal Downs sounds neat that way, but I hear my father's advice to never pick a berry lower than a bear can pee......


As to sound, I have only had rare opportunities to place greens near oceans.  If you go too low to water elevation, sea spray will kill the greens, so you can rarely get it as close as you would want.  I did propose a waterfall once, and the pro objected on the theory that the sound would bother golfers putting.  I asked him why that didn't keep golfers away from Pebble Beach, and he shut up.


Sort of related, but many housing courses were planned with natives along the lots, many of which are removed because the homeowners feared snakes would live there.  For golfers, I usually leave a 5-6 ft strip of turf outside the path for similar reasons, thus addressing another human emotion - fear.


As to our perception of space, I do try to take advantage of that.  That is one reason greens are often surrounded by at least small mounds.  They demarcate the space and make you feel like you are someplace.  If you look at Europe's sidewalk cafe's, a different pavement keeps pedestrians from walking in the tables, a small hedge or fence you can see over makes people feel even more separated, and anything that blocks eyesight can make walkers and diners feel 100 miles apart.


Golf course architecture is one of the few forms of landscape architecture where the flow is tightly controlled.  If designing an urban square, people will enter and leave from multiple points.  In golf, it's always tee to green.  When I can, I like to take the walk from green to tee through a dense wooded area, so you sort of "enter" the next grand space, i.e., hole.  I have also built a few stairs or at least landscaped entries to the first tee, to give sort of a sense of arrival.

[Tom_Doak]

As to sound, I have only had rare opportunities to place greens near oceans.  If you go too low to water elevation, sea spray will kill the greens, so you can rarely get it as close as you would want.  I did propose a waterfall once, and the pro objected on the theory that the sound would bother golfers putting.  I asked him why that didn't keep golfers away from Pebble Beach, and he shut up.

The one time I played golf at the ASGCA annual meeting, in Palm Desert in 1984 while I was working on the plans for PGA West, they played a Ted Robinson designed housing development course called The Lakes, which IIRC advertised that it had 22 waterfalls.  On one hole, Harrison Minchew was looking for his ball at the edge of the lake in front of the green, but P.B. Dye and I had found his ball in a bunker further back -- but we could not get his attention, because the waterfalls were so loud he couldn't hear us yelling at him from thirty yards away.

[Tim Martin]

Atlantic City CC gets the benefit of the salt air from the marsh on the perimeter as well as the long views of the skyline. I think there is so much history surrounding the club that it’s impossible not to absorb some through osmosis. These factors heighten the senses to what is already a compelling round of golf.

[Jeff_Brauer]

As to sound, I have only had rare opportunities to place greens near oceans.  If you go too low to water elevation, sea spray will kill the greens, so you can rarely get it as close as you would want.  I did propose a waterfall once, and the pro objected on the theory that the sound would bother golfers putting.  I asked him why that didn't keep golfers away from Pebble Beach, and he shut up.

The one time I played golf at the ASGCA annual meeting, in Palm Desert in 1984 while I was working on the plans for PGA West, they played a Ted Robinson designed housing development course called The Lakes, which IIRC advertised that it had 22 waterfalls.  On one hole, Harrison Minchew was looking for his ball at the edge of the lake in front of the green, but P.B. Dye and I had found his ball in a bunker further back -- but we could not get his attention, because the waterfalls were so loud he couldn't hear us yelling at him from thirty yards away.

The course I was talking about was at Opryland and I got a lesson in waterfalls.  One of their engineers said you had to start at 3000 GPM if you wanted to make any effect at all like the ones inside their hotel.  The pro and I were discussing pipe size and he wanted it limited to a 4" pipe, or about 160 GPM.  We ended up going perhaps 1000 GPM to simulate a babbling brook over a Niagra Falls wannabe.

[Sean_A]

I agree with Tom about feel. Quite a bit of sensation comes through the clubs and feet.

I know nothing about birds, but their song can play a part in enjoying seaside golf.

Ciao

[Mark Kiely]

I recall multiple rounds as a teenager playing Palm Springs Municipal (now Tahquitz Creek Legends) and partaking in the abundant grapefruit growing in many backyards along the course. Very refreshing when it's 110 degrees.


(Safe to admit now that the statute of limitations has presumably expired some 30+ years later.)


On the scent front, I partially associate Phoenix area courses in springtime with orange blossoms, but that's not specifically designed into a course.


I used to play Skylinks in Long Beach early in the morning quite frequently, and you sure knew when 7:00 am arrived because the planes at the adjacent Long Beach Airport would fire up their engines. Again, not designed into the experience, though.

[Eric Smith]

I know nothing about birds, but their song can play a part in enjoying seaside golf.

Ciao

There is certainly a sense of place with the feral chickens and crowing roosters(!) wandering the golf courses of Kauai.

[Marty Bonnar]

I know nothing about birds, but their song can play a part in enjoying seaside golf.

Ciao

There is certainly a sense of place with the feral chickens and crowing roosters(!) wandering the golf courses of Kauai.

I absolutely love birds. The dozens of peacocks at Makalei near Kona were both a visual and aural treat, but the song of a Skylark ascending over a sun-baked Links in the mid-summer touches the true golfers soul.
F.

[Tim Gavrich]

Orchard Creek GC (Paul Cowley) in Altamont, N.Y. engages with your sense of taste. Each hole is named for a different variety of apple which grows along it, so you can sample a bunch during a round and then buy them from the commercial store on property.


It's more part of agronomy than design but I've noticed a distinct (pleasant) aroma on courses I've played with zoysia fairways. Anyone else experienced this?


The flowers at Caledonia play up the arboretum feel to the place.


On the non-golf-related sight/sound front, the Blue Angels practicing overhead while I played Pensacola CC was a treat.

[Ira Fishman]

Trying to extract oneself from heather is a jarring sense of touch. The animals at Brora provide sound and perhaps some smell.


Ira

[JMEvensky]

Trying to extract oneself from heather is a jarring sense of touch. The animals at Brora provide sound and perhaps some smell.


Ira

There's a club in Mississippi about 1/2 mile from a slaughterhouse--no heather but sounds and smells in spades.

[Kalen Braley]

Many Northern Utah courses are subject to two things, one positive, the other negative.

Given the valley used to be a giant lake, Lake Bonneville, much of the middle ground eroded/washed out to create a relatively flat valley floor that meets the mountains at significant inflection point where its gets steep quickly and rises up nearly a mile.  The result is no matter where you are, you always have a terrific view of the mountains, which I've seen used to wonderful effect on several courses.

The negative is given the area is surrounded by desert in every direction except to the east, its not uncommon to get nasty dust storms or worse yet in late summer, the Great Salt Lake gets a funky smell that permeates everything and you can almost taste it.

[Tommy Williamsen]

Hearing elephants trumpet, watching buffalo roam, and antelope play at Leopard Creek make it hard to concentrate on golf.

[Tom_Doak]

In Myrtle Beach and other southern places, there is a nasty smell I used to encounter when the wind was blowing from a certain direction.  For a while I assumed it was a smell coming from the marshes at low tide, until one day I drove past the paper mill south of town on my way to Charleston, and then I knew where the mystery smell came from!

[Ira Fishman]

I am not sure if the factory is still operating, but a couple of holes at Hershey East played right below a chocolate factory.


Ira

[Peter Pallotta]

When I first read the subject line I thought the distinction would be between designing for the 'senses' and designing for the 'intellect' -- the ideas and choices and memories and categories and conceptual constructs of the mind. During the Masters we always read about Jones' desire for an inland 'links' course, and for golf holes that captured the essence of some of the best ones he'd ever played on both sides of the Atlantic. That makes me think that Jones was designing for the intellect much more than for the senses; in sights and sounds and smells and feels, Augusta Georgia and St Andrews Scotland don't have much in common.
 

[Jeff_Brauer]

There have been a few holes that have been designed for one's "sense of humor."  And more courses, usually unintentionally designed to require you to have a sense of humor to even attempt to play them.

[Peter Flory]

Finally, is there anyway to add taste in?

Does bad taste count?

[Mark Mammel]

Some days when there is a strong onshore breeze off of Bird Rock you can certainly smell and nearly taste the guano when playing Spyglass Hill #5.

[Jeff_Brauer]

OT, but the last post reminds me of a great John LaFoy story.  He showed up to a project one sunny day in a raincoat and hat.  Someone asked him why, and he said, "This site used to be a landfill, and the pigeons don't know it's a golf course yet."

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