Hey architects: Is Routing Fun?

[Mike Hendren]

Mr. Junah's routing thread suggested this one.  For you architects out there:  Is routing "fun?"

Being the Tom Fazio of golf hole doodlers, one of my favorite diversions is to randomly draw land forms (dunes are the best)and (a few) trees with the occasional creek, then route nine or eighteen holes across/through them.  Admittedly, I am easily amused.

Is routing:  fun? challenging? problematic? simple? complex?
This inquiring mind wants to know.

Mike

[Brian Phillips]

Mike,

In my very very, short career i find routing one of the most fun parts of the job.  It is great walking the land with a decent topo map and then going back to the office to start sketching on tracing paper.

You think you have finally cracked it...show it to a colleague or even the wife and they find something wrong with it...so it is back to the drawing board..

Then you finally go back out to the site and check to see it it matches what you have put down on paper.

So yes I think routing is fun.

Brian

[Jeff_Brauer]

It can be fun, and it can be frustrating.  

Site quality determines that in part. So does how tired I am!  

Frankly, even though TEPaul touts the "open bottle" method of routing, I find if I am tired (may have been hung over in younger days, now, just old....) I find I can work on grading or green design.  Somehow, the routing process, if tired, just goes into a logjam, where I keep coming up with the same ideas - with the same flaws.  In the trade, we call it "designer's block."  Somehow, that just doesn't happen in feature design as much.

But, on a great site, routing is a pleasure.  Even a bad one, or one with housing can be enjoyable.  The worst are the ones you suspect will never turn into a real golf course, and all of us have done plenty of those!