"Designer Gene" and Technical Proficiency

[Forrest Richardson]

Good points. It might be good for many of us here to look carefully at the Great Jr golf Design Challenge entries. These are the golfers of tomorrow — and they’re sending us signals — wild and creative ideas, no sameness and the last thing they are articulating is krinkle edge bunkers and a minimalist approach. Their thinking is free, their ideas are interesting and they are uninhibited.

It’s a sad state of affairs when six remodeled homes in our neighborhood have been ‘redone’ with white paint, dark gray trim and odes to Chip and Joanna Gaines. We’ve done the same in golf design — few breakthoughs, seldom an Ah-ha’ moment and rarely anything to talk about except who did the work and whether you’ll be granted access.

[Ira Fishman]

Forrest,


I agree that even most of the best modern courses do not push the edge of the envelop except perhaps in green contours. Having said that, they do present a most enjoyable version of classic architecture, and as much as I concurred with Ian about the Koln Concerts, classic is classic for a good reason. My “beef” actually is more than modern designs do not generally incorporate the “quirky” features that did appear on golden age or even older links courses: blind shots, a Dell hole, volcano holes, etc. I know that economics often drives those decisions, but it would be great if developers gave architects freer rein to go back to the future.


Ira

[Forrest Richardson]

Bravo. Now convince the media elites who’s Rolodex-es contain the names of just 12 designers, and who’ve bought into the ‘Chip and Joanna’ mentality.

[Tom_Doak]

Good points. It might be good for many of us here to look carefully at the Great Jr golf Design Challenge entries. These are the golfers of tomorrow — and they’re sending us signals — wild and creative ideas, no sameness and the last thing they are articulating is krinkle edge bunkers and a minimalist approach. Their thinking is free, their ideas are interesting and they are uninhibited.

Forrest:


In my dream world, you'd have gotten to the 7th green at Streamsong by zip line instead of by bridge, but we all know why the client didn't buy off on that.


Alligators.

[Joe Hancock]

Good points. It might be good for many of us here to look carefully at the Great Jr golf Design Challenge entries. These are the golfers of tomorrow — and they’re sending us signals — wild and creative ideas, no sameness and the last thing they are articulating is krinkle edge bunkers and a minimalist approach. Their thinking is free, their ideas are interesting and they are uninhibited.

Forrest:


In my dream world, you'd have gotten to the 7th green at Streamsong by zip line instead of by bridge, but we all know why the client didn't buy off on that.


Alligators.

I once toured undeveloped land at Ballyneal w/ Rupert…one of his ideas was a par 3 hole whereby the golfer would zipline to a green after the tee shot, complete with a water landing….too bad things worked the way they did there.

[Kyle Harris]

Good points. It might be good for many of us here to look carefully at the Great Jr golf Design Challenge entries. These are the golfers of tomorrow — and they’re sending us signals — wild and creative ideas, no sameness and the last thing they are articulating is krinkle edge bunkers and a minimalist approach. Their thinking is free, their ideas are interesting and they are uninhibited.

Forrest:


In my dream world, you'd have gotten to the 7th green at Streamsong by zip line instead of by bridge, but we all know why the client didn't buy off on that.


Alligators.

I’ve Zip lined across more than enough water-filled mine pits in Florida to call BS on this!

[Tom_Doak]

I’ve Zip lined across more than enough water-filled mine pits in Florida to call BS on this!

Really?  You should have taken us when we were building the place, that would have been a great team bonding experience.


But, don't even try to tell me any of those venues were owned by The Mosaic Company.  They're a pretty risk-averse group.

[A.G._Crockett]

Fascinating discussion.  Thanks to all for your thoughts.

[Tim Martin]

Fascinating discussion.  Thanks to all for your thoughts.

+1-This has been an enlightening thread.

[Kalen Braley]

So i admit, can't tell if you folks are being serious with this zip line stuff.  Exactly how would this have worked at Streamsong?

P.S.  I've probably seem one too many zip line fail videos to ever get on one! 

[Ira Fishman]

da Vinci designed the first helicopter. He was both creative and innovative. He would have viewed a zip line as archaic.


Ira

[Mike_Young]

Evil Kneivel used to live in a camper at Rivermont Golf Club in Atlanta and decided on a bet to take a cart down the steepest par three there....those types of thing definitely have an affect on the gene pool itself...

[Ben Malach]

It's interesting out of all of the qualities that this thread has discussed. I find it interesting the one that I use daily hasn't even come up once.


That being the concept of empathy.


I view empathy as the heart of everything. How can I be asked to create. Without asking the question of how it impacts others and the world around me.


If you want to break down the philosophical heart of golf architecture. I think you will find that the core doesn't lie in some heuristic model. It lies in the fact that truly great golf is empathetic to everyone.

The whole minimalist movement asks everyone to consider the landscape. A strategic model of though asks us not only to consider the tiger but also the rabbit. These are two small examples but the more you dig and are around the act of design in all fields the more you will find the core lies in openness.


That's why across my career the best architects and shapers were always the kindest. This openness and kindness is something I struggle with as the job. Kind of beats it out of you in some ways. As this road is a hard one. So it's always impressed me that the best have figured out a way to protect their heart while still leaving it open to accept and create.


It's this courage to be open that I think really separates the design profession from others. As it's one of the few places where radical kindness and openness is an asset not a liability.

[Kyle Harris]

I’ve Zip lined across more than enough water-filled mine pits in Florida to call BS on this!

Really?  You should have taken us when we were building the place, that would have been a great team bonding experience.


But, don't even try to tell me any of those venues were owned by The Mosaic Company.  They're a pretty risk-averse group.

There's still time! 

And no, they weren't owned by Mosaic - though they did lease some of their land for an ATV park just north of Streamsong. I think we should put a life preserver near the bridge on Blue #7, though.

To the OP:

It doesn't take much to go out on social media and see any number of accounts capable of drawing compelling golf holes as creative doodles. They're largely derivative, but this isn't necessarily a knock because the golf ball can only do so much. Is it "genetic" or a form of language that is spoken by golfers. I took a survey type class as part of the PGM curriculum at Penn State on golf architecture which touched on some points of construction. Things that were important in 2003. I got marks off for not considering cart paths, for example, but oddly I was the only one in the class that actually considered the topography of the maps we were given for assignments.


I once posted some of the work here for critique and someone, who likely has never even been near a bulldozer, suggested "I take two weeks off and then quit."

My aesthetics then were driven by the late-90s era golf courses I had played then and places like Bandon were not even on my radar.

All of that is well and good, but finding, implementing, and maintaining the idea through time (and allowing it to the evolve as it MUST - there's not staving off evolution of a golf hole) are all brute force skills that can be learned with the right mind.

[John Kirk]

There's an amazing amount of things about golf that can be described mathematically.  The flight and rolling characteristics of a ball.  The size, firmness and slope of the ground.  The aerodynamic characteristics of the club.  Golf and most all sports operate in four dimensions, with time being the fourth one.

It probably helps to have a good academic knowledge of physics.  I learned about gravity and momentum and kinetic energy and fluid dynamics in college, things like that.  Most of that is a distant memory, but I could probably relearn the relationships quickly. 


However, I don't think it's as important as personal experience and obsession with the game.  While I do believe some people have greater genetic gifts in terms of learning ability and spatial orientation, a passion for understanding the game must be the greater determinant of inspired design.  Those two qualities may be one and the same.

The sooner a person develops good spatial orientation, the better.  Most of us old jocks develop that spatial orientation by playing sports.  I used Google a couple days ago to find relevant articles.  One study (sorry, I can't find it now) argued that a key tool was teaching how to accomplish geometric proofs.  Geometric proofs require the student to prove a certain physical relationship using standard geometric theorems and hypotheses.  A solution requires several steps of creative thought to accomplish the goal.  Apparently, this is a not a widely used teaching method anymore, and the researchers were concerned that the modern American education system might be overlooking a valuable tool in developing good spatial orientation.

Temple Grandin is quite famous these days.  She's a professor of animal science at Colorado State University, and she is renowned for developing humane physical systems for handling livestock.  Talk about having empathy.  Part of her epiphany in developing her original designs was recognizing the distress of the cattle and the ways they moved together.  Grandin has written an essay in today's New York Times about the importance of visual thinking and the failure of American society to develop this important skill.  It's a lovely article and relevant to this discussion.


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/09/opinion/temple-grandin-visual-thinking-autism.html


One last thing.  I am finding that one of the few gifts of growing older is a heightened sense of creativity.  I don't know why.  I keep reading and learning as much as I can, and maybe that increased knowledge leads to deeper, more abstract connections between things.  In my case, I also may be influenced by a burning desire to create something after a leisurely period in middle age.  I'm losing both mental and physical prowess, but boy do I have lots of ideas of things to write about.

 

[Tom_Doak]

Sadly, can't get past the paywall to read the Temple Grandin article.


Ben M:  thanks for a very good post.  My turn toward minimalism was a reaction to what was being built in the 80s, but you are right to observe that it forced me to be more creative, to incorporate the terrain and the environment in a way that many architects had forgotten about.  [Of course, the Golden Age guys all worked that way because most of them didn't have a choice.]

[A.G._Crockett]

Evil Kneivel used to live in a camper at Rivermont Golf Club in Atlanta and decided on a bet to take a cart down the steepest par three there....those types of thing definitely have an affect on the gene pool itself...

And the steepest par 3 at Rivermont is STEEP!  The cart path has a couple of switch backs to slow things down.

[Ben Malach]

Tom:


Was your drive to have a more minimal approach one driven from the want to be unique/more responsive to the environment like the old courses that we both admire?  Or was the choice a purely response to economics of the situation as it's easier to trust a younger unproven guy when his budget is lower than the accomplished competition?


I also remember you mentioning reading the book "Genius Lock: Towards a Phenomenology in Architecture" by  Christian Norberg-Schlutz. I remember after reading this book that was the first time I thought about empathy as an integral components of design. As how can I create emotions in the spaces that I build if I close my heart and mind of to the experience of others 


It helped that at the time I was still in school and watching a bunch of other young designers work. I can tell you to the students that became the best designers in that room were also the kindest to their peers and learned not only from doing their work but by watching the experience of others. As they were open to helping others in that act of kindness they were exposed to other workflows, skill sets and the other hundred intangible things that go into personal design process. I noticed this probably due to my own neural atypicality.


Temple Gradin's work and writing was a huge discovery for me when I found her in High School for the first time I felt seen. It also helps her work deals with cattle and havin grown up in southern Alberta my entire life. I knew what she was talking about when she was discussing how they moved and had different experience s.


This all leads me to the point that I only really discovered this spring on a two part CBC ideas podcast titled "The Myth of Normal". The central idea of the podcast that we need to do a better job of allowing different "neuro tribes"  to thrive rather than trying previously trying to fit people in boxes. The second part of the podcast actually has a great long form interview with Temple as she discusses the changes she has seen in her life and how they have impacted her and her work. It a must listen to anyone interested in the subject of how we as humans perceive the world. Which is pretty important to the subject of team building and golf architecture.

[John Kirk]

Let's see if this link can be read by the group.  I subscribe to the NYT now, and am trying the benefit of sharing an article for the first time.  Hopefully this works.


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/09/opinion/temple-grandin-visual-thinking-autism.html?smid=url-share

[Tom_Doak]

Let's see if this link can be read by the group.  I subscribe to the NYT now, and am trying the benefit of sharing an article for the first time.  Hopefully this works.


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/09/opinion/temple-grandin-visual-thinking-autism.html?smid=url-share

Nope, didn't work for me.  I doubt you can post a link to a public forum that multiple people use.  They are getting more proficient with their technology to block non-subscribers . . . which is one of two reasons why I seldom look at The New York Times anymore.

[Ira Fishman]

Let's see if this link can be read by the group.  I subscribe to the NYT now, and am trying the benefit of sharing an article for the first time.  Hopefully this works.


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/09/opinion/temple-grandin-visual-thinking-autism.html?smid=url-share

John,


Fascinating article. I am a subscriber which is why it must have worked for me. Her insights into the narrow and tradition bound aspects of the US education system are particularly insightful.


Ira

[Tom_Doak]

I remember after reading this book that was the first time I thought about empathy as an integral components of design. As how can I create emotions in the spaces that I build if I close my heart and mind of to the experience of others 

It helped that at the time I was still in school and watching a bunch of other young designers work. I can tell you to the students that became the best designers in that room were also the kindest to their peers and learned not only from doing their work but by watching the experience of others. As they were open to helping others in that act of kindness they were exposed to other workflows, skill sets and the other hundred intangible things that go into personal design process. I noticed this probably due to my own neural atypicality.

Ben:


Bingo!  Part of the reason I react so much to this idea that some people are just natural designers, and others aren't, is that it I believe that design is a collaborative process.  And for my teammates I don't want a bunch of clones of myself.  I don't need that -- I need others who are looking at the thing from different angles. 


Any one of them could be doing this job and doing it well, although they will probably be better at it if they also have a team, and it includes someone like me.


I have seen other firms in action where everyone thinks like the boss, or worries what the boss will think.  That's just not how great work gets done.


As to your first question, my original choice of minimalism was less about the environment, and more about admiring old courses and wondering why nobody built stuff like that anymore.  That was one of the things Ben Crenshaw and I corresponded about back when I was still in college!  My mantra at High Pointe was "when in doubt, do less".  [It's a particularly good time to remind me of that, so thank you.]


It was only after we started on High Pointe, and my associate Tom Mead recognized the environmental aspect of what we were doing, that I really thought about that part . . . although, I did spend enough time with Walter Woods in St. Andrews to have some of his ethos drilled into me.

[John Kirk]

Let's see if this link can be read by the group.  I subscribe to the NYT now, and am trying the benefit of sharing an article for the first time.  Hopefully this works.


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/09/opinion/temple-grandin-visual-thinking-autism.html?smid=url-share

Nope, didn't work for me.  I doubt you can post a link to a public forum that multiple people use.  They are getting more proficient with their technology to block non-subscribers . . . which is one of two reasons why I seldom look at The New York Times anymore.

Actually, I can share this on Facebook and four other common social apps.  I didn't read the rules carefully enough, and thought I could share on Golf Club Atlas.

In the article she makes the case for the traditional European education of choosing between an academic or vocational path of study at a fairly young age, 14 or 15.  She believes that many of the tradesmen that she has worked with over the years had similar visual learning skills (autistic traits) to her own strengths.  Without elaborating, I agree.

[archie_struthers]

 




Think Mike hit the nail on the head. You have to see what fits on the property. Once you can figure a start and an end point you are moving along. Never been a fan of courses that end away from the clubhouse though on occasion it may be the only option. Kind of fun to see the watering hole coming down the stretch for me.


If we are talking seeing a hole in advance I might disagree with some others . I believe you need to see how a ball will roll out so if you have some understanding of how people hit it you have an advantage. I guess you could do a formulaic plan that uses width and yardage charts to help but that doesn't seem like too much fun to me.  Because as we know drainage makes the playing and maintaining so much more fun and easier.  Have to think watching the water move during a storm sometimes beats all the levels and transits post construction.


Some people see more

[Charlie Goerges]

In the article she makes the case for the traditional European education of choosing between an academic or vocational path of study at a fairly young age, 14 or 15.  She believes that many of the tradesmen that she has worked with over the years had similar visual learning skills (autistic traits) to her own strengths.  Without elaborating, I agree.

While I'd agree that the system you describe would be better than the one we have (in the US), I feel like it creates a false dichotomy between the trades and academic paths. Does an architect or accountant or a doctor need to read philosophy any more than a machinist, a builder or an engineer? I would like it better if everyone could make that determination a bit more on their own, though with some guidance. (If I hadn't been required to take Phil 101, I likely would have missed out on so much that makes me who I am today, for good or ill)