How does a home run like Black Sheep happen?

[Jimbo]

How does a home run like Black Sheep happen?

It seems like everyone here wants more of this type of golf course.  Why don’t more of these come to fruition?

Sorry David, and everyone who, if you want to take a pass on this and it drops off the first page immediately, I will understand.

For the practical of us in the business, the enthusiast, for the casual observer, or for the complainer who wonders why there aren’t more clubs like it:

What are the elements that allowed, and what had to be overcome to create such a nice place to be built considering the following:

Owner’s vision
Archtiect’s vision
Contractor’s Vision/Propensity to change order you
Superintendent’s vision

Monetary considerations
Time Constraints
Flexibility of all personalities
Owner Personality
Architect Talent and Time available
Architects Support
Administrative Support
Builder (Shaper Talent/Willingness to listen)
Irrigation designer talent
Irrigation installer talent
Municipal, State Interference
Builder Flexibility
Permitting issues
Agronomic talent
Zoning issues
Site conditions
Labor Issues

To reduce the overwhelming nature of the question, here are a couple of starter questions:

Did the owner have any idea of what you envisioned?
Did he envison it and ask you to execute it?
What did you look at together to reach a conclusion on the direction?
How close did it turn out to your vision?
How close to his?
At what point were you given a budget?
Did this change the design?
How much did you have to sell it or was it a layup?

And some even more specific ones:
Was it difficult to get across your ideas for the bunkers?
How much time did you spend on the site?
Did you have an Assistant?
Why aren’t there more courses like this?


And finally: Who found that excellent bunker sand?

[RJ_Daley]

Jimbo, a perfectly organized set of questions.  Now, if we could get Mr. Esler and Ran together, they would have the basis of a comprehensive interview feature.  Inquiring minds want to know...

[cary lichtenstein]

Jimbo:

Please tell us who you are

[Jimbo]

Oh, I am nobody.  I've been here at GCA for awhile.  Just a Superintendent who loves excellence, whether its design, construction or maintenance.  Real name, not hidden, is Jim DeReuil, I'm on one of those first GCA "Who are you's" lists and I've repeated that in threads elsewhere.

Definitely not an architect or player, though more and more, and now even more, I appreciate what architects do.  Have been involved in construction and maintenance for 13 years.

Just tryna understand more.  

Want to hit only home runs!

To calibrate my "finest course I've seen" statement, here are some places I have seen: ANGC, Loch Lomond, Turnberry, Western Gailes, Troon.  Having had zero expectation may indeed have helped.  Also a lack of exposure to high maintenance northern US golf courses may have colored my reaction.  For example, being allowed to take divots out of perfect bentgrass is something that went against my nature.  It is so forgiving.  Like hitting off a springy mat that corrects your fatties and lets your tops actually go somewhere.  That is the  best surface on earth!

The experience of this site has definitely helped me to tilt the balance of my maintenance slightly more toward firm than green.  Its a delicate balance cuz the courses I'm involved with are for profit.  Black Sheep showed me that, at least on bentgrass in Chicago, fast, firm and green are possible simultaneously.

[Dave Esler]

Jimbo, Sorry I missed your post on page 1, or better yet when it was a Page 2 Girl!-Im out now a lot more than Im in.

Your questions, all 832 of them!!!, display an insight to the critical dynamics that shape a project-good and bad-and Id like to do them justice by a thoughtful reply.

Im out of town a bit and then Spring Break (kids, no clubs), but I plan to get typing on returning.

Thanks sincerely for your interest. Dave
 

[Bob_Huntley]

Jimbo,

You make mention of Western Gailes, one of my all time favorites, however, have you any idea what caused the building of the three holes down at the end of the course that look so totally different from the rest?

Bob

[Tim Gavrich]

What/where is this 'Black Sheep' place?  Are there any pictures?

[PThomas]

suburban CHicago Tim..lots of pics on a thread from the past month or so

[Steve_ Shaffer]

For pics and info:

www.blacksheepgolfclub.com

[rocket]

I'm with you Jimbo.   we come from the same background but gained an interest in golf architecture.  
It's on my got to go and see list.   It's all so answers a few past recent posts on framing and convex bunkers.

[Jimbo]

Bob Huntley,
I must confess that I don't remember many real specifics about most those Scottish courses I listed.  I base that statement on an overall impression left by them on me now 12 years later.  

Railroad Issues?  WWII bombing? Bravehart Relics?  

Neat aside: I volunteered for '94 Open at Turnberry (Parnevik didn't look at the scoreboard there near the end, and risked more than he had to, remember?) and was lucky enough to get to tour/play a bunch of those western courses and St. Andrews.   I'm not a little guy. They had me carrying scores with the last group, since I was bigger than the rest of the score carriers (usually 12 year old kids) and stuffed into a little jump suit (that told everyone that I thought a major flood was imminent--I actually made the golf edition of SI in my dweeb little suit).  They put me in the last group so I could fend off the crowd with sweeping motions if they got too close to the players as they rushed #18. They actually authorized me to take people out!  Luckily the golfing  Brits are a well behaved bunch.   By the way, "volunteers" were paid (read beer drinking money, what a deal!).  Got to walk and speak each day with a different BIGGA greenskeeper assigned to each group.  Played golf with some of them too, they were great fun loving guys.  I remember remarking to one of them at Turnberry that I thought the greens needed water, they were absolutely smoking black. He said "Occchhhhh, just a wee bit a wilt".  The way the Brits speak and express themselves and use the language made me feel about 1" tall.  Lovely people.

David, I look forward to your reply.  Thanks for responding.

P.S. If you happen to be spring breaking near the Florida Panhandle, as a multitude of Chicagoans do, please IM me.

[ForkaB]

Jimbo,

You make mention of Western Gailes, one of my all time favorites, however, have you any idea what caused the building of the three holes down at the end of the course that look so totally different from the rest?

Bob

Bob

Those holes were changed (in 1980 or so) to accommodate an access road to the petrochemical/pharmaceutical plants to the north in Irvine.  I've played the course both pre-, during- and post-renovation.  I think they fit in very well, all other things being equal......  

[TEPaul]

"It seems like everyone here wants more of this type of golf course.  Why don’t more of these come to fruition?"

Jimbo:

More of these are going to come to fruition. One of the reasons is Black Sheep has published those photos. We're gonna take them and mimic them. If they didn't want that to happen they shouldn't have put them on the Internet.  

You know the way I've sometimes mentioned the importance of "top lines"? In that topographical environment out there I think David Esler absolutely NAILED all his architectural "top lines" with what's out there. He just NAILED them----better than I've ever seen anywhere in country like that. All I can say is there must have been a whole lot of Esler and his crew standing out on those holes looking and looking and looking and massaging and massaging and massaging as things were coming into being.

I've never actually been there but from those photos that course's architecture looks to be about as good as it can get in that kind of topographical environment.

After that success you know what I'd like to see David Easler try next? I'd like to see him get into a desert or prarie site with less than a foot of elevation. If he could pull off his "top lines" in that extreme topographical environment (nothing) half as well as he did at Black Sheep, I'd say he would've done about the ultimate in architecture and I'd put him on the list of the all time greats---in "Look" of marrying his architectural "lines" to a natural topographical environemnt.    

[Jimbo]

"Top lines", I will look up some of your posts on the topic.

I think I know what you mean instinctively though.  

You might think this a reach but would the structure of a grove of trees with  flat, wide tops (like you might see on National Geographic African savannah) give you this feel?  In other words, your standing on the savannah, and as you look out, they define the horizon and there is nothing behind them, sticking up and breaking up their horizontal, flat-topped flow.  And you can see plenty of sky behind adn above them.  And since the grove is natural, there is something beautiful about its randomness--the elevation of the horizon they present would not be uniform but a little higher here to the left, a little lower there on the right---and yet  they present a sense of structure that defines the scene of everything below and between you and them.  

So I think you are saying that David set up the horizon lines to look natural and define the scene occuring on the golf hole?  As I think back and look at the pictures I agree.  He's done it with not only greens complexes and edges along the fairways, but somehow within fairways and bunker complexes in your line of sight.  To do that and not make it look too busy must be difficult. And cresting the features with wispy grasses is some nice lipstick.  The sky is large out there.  It feels way better than a parkland course with towering trees lining the holes which provide framing but which confine your eye too much. You cant see the forest for the trees.  That is something that didn't occur to me, thanks for revealing it.  It makes so much sense.

The antithesis of his delightful framing would have been the choclate drops that so many US "links" courses use, right?

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Good luck with projects.

[TEPaul]

Jimbo;

Yes, I think so. By matching (or twisting and turning) the "top lines" of architecture (that I define as that which is "made") against natural "lines", I think you can certainly use what you described. Basically, I'm talking about the "lines" of the architecture sort of naturally flowing and twisting and turning with everything that's around and behind it in view.

I'll give you an interesting and unusual mini-example of that we feel we picked up on.

At Flynn's Cascades course in Virginia there was an old photo of the top line on a bunker scheme across the fairway on the 12th hole that was very pronounced and seemingly radical and out of place in its environment until you looked up on the top of the mountain about a mile behind it and noticed the exact same "lines" on the top profile of a part of the mountain. It was very cool and very unique.