Tom Doak says:
To be honest, posts like this strike me as pedantic, like looking for a typo or a grammatical error in a great piece of writing.
Not a good analogy at all. Unless you think drainage is a minor aspect of design, not one so major that the saying is “drainage, drainage, drainage..”
I understand that there is value in building things that drain properly, etc. -- I had a good mentor for that.
Looking back at all the times, I was with Pete, he did talk about drainage, a lot. Guess it is pretty important! And, there are some broad principles, i.e., water flows downhill, and many details to work out. As in, depending on soil type, water flow will become erosive at 3-5 ft/sec, and no golf course architect I know has yet to fool Mother Nature in this regard, so sand washes bunker faces out at a calculable point, considering length and volume of flow, type of sand, etc.
But sometimes you seem to place more value on that than on trying to build a course that transcends the above-average, so I doubt the younger generation is paying much heed to what you are trying to tell them.
Is this me being an out of touch dinosaur (I have been called that) or another example of the arrogance of youth believing that, “This time, it’s different.” I remember when I thought I had it all figured out! Fun times. Lots of mistakes have been made in both the stock market and golf course design based on that premise. Nature doesn’t change much. Water still flows downhill.
I have perused social media and designer websites of some of the younger generation. Yes, the desire to do something new and different does have some value. But in one case, a guy proudly posted a picture of his first shaping attempt of a punch bowl green. I believe to your eye and mine it would look just a bit under scaled, but since it was his first one, he had on the rose colored glasses. So, we can’t assume that it was just great design because they are trying something new (to them).
One problem in this discussion is that none of us will know the answer for another few decades, when we see how the work holds up. One thing we know (based on history) is that then next gen of gca's will crap all over it, because pushing "new and improved" and "the next great thing" will be just as good for marketing for them as it was for you.
As an example, last week after working for a few days on the Lido and trying to make the surface drainage from the greens go around the many greenside bunkers -- which was not a feature of the computer model simulation -- we took a field trip to The National Golf Links of America. One of our takeaways was that Macdonald and Raynor just let the drainage sheet off the greens and down the faces of the bunkers there! It's possible there was more "steering" of the drainage that's been messed up by 100 years of topdressing, but on a bunch of the greens, there were not many places to take the drainage except to a bunker.
Since this is a thread on pet subjects, I will add that I hate someone throwing out an example of how a feature worked to stifle scoring at a US Open, when talking about the design of an every day course. And, I think your above example is throwing out one example of a top 1% maintenance budget course to justify a design feature as “working” for the other 99% (or so) of courses without multi-million dollar budgets.
Design should solve problems, not create them, no? The problems of drainage into bunkers aren’t usually obvious on any particular day, but more noticeable over time.
I recall Killian and Nugent asking the same question of why drainage should never go into bunkers near the end of my tenure there. So, they built one that way. I went back to play that course a few years after I left for Texas and that bunker was a mud hole.
I recall cases of ill considered bunker drainage, and they ended up replacing sand every 2-3 years, not every 5-7, costing money. Or causing $10-55K of labor on a course that could surely use that money elsewhere.
I even recall designing a bunker with a 1% slope away – at the request of the PGA Tour consultant pro, who felt hitting into an upslope from the bunker displayed his skill better. After 10 years of mowing that pass between green and bunker on a riding mower, some of those 1% slopes got worn down, funneling drainage into the bunker in spots, and those were bad enough to require rebuilding to stop that problem.
Bottom line, I must go with repeated, and consistent design experience. Yes, that makes most of us more conservative with age, and yes, it’s easier to just implement a design rule that water drains away from the top of bunker edges at more than 1%, or whatever, because I know it will reduce future complaints (and yes, I have made mistakes over the years. Who likes to hear those?
So I guess Macdonald and Raynor had nothing on RTJ or Joe Finger . . . but neither of them ever came close to building anything like The National.
NGLA is a great course. No doubt. But it’s not suitable everywhere. And, I still have a hard time believing it wouldn’t be great if every bunker was designed to prevent drainage problems. It’s just a small slope you have to fit in there.
You have a way of putting out pithy sound bites, but it still doesn’t mean that it’s “sound practice” for many courses. That said, this is a situation where we might both be right. You are more right for 1-9% of the courses with unlimited budgets, and me probably more right for 90+% of US courses with tight budgets.
BTW, I would love to hear more about your “computer simulation.” I produce my own or at least the grading plans that make them up. Another one of my “dinosaur” concepts is that if you can build it, you really can draw it. 3D just helps that, not hurts it, if you embrace it.
So, there you have it, one (or more) of my pet subjects all in one post!