Style cycles

[TEPaul]

This general subject fascinates me as it pertains to golf course architecture as much as anything involved in golf architecture.

It fascinates me as it pertains to a lot of things---clothing fashion, music, building architecture, or even an "ethos" sift as evidenced by say Ronald Reagan's tendency to repopularize the "good old days" by evoking some of the selfless real heroes of the past and perhaps greater societial contentedness via a return to some more "innocent" time. Or the popularity of Tom Brokaw's book "The Greatest Generation".

I maintain that the United States of America since it probably is the most change oriented society and culture in the history of the world is the most prone to quicker and more dramatic "cycles" in all kinds of things, particularly in "styles".

This subject occured to me because of some recent threads---The one on architectural disasters---eg Stone Harbor G.C.'s "Jaws" hole was the example of a real disasterous style in golf architecture.

And then there were some posts on other threads that asked where golf architecture may go in the future stylistically (In that vein I really like the participation, questions and opinions of Peter Pallota who is so genuinely interested in this type of subject).

To even attempt to determine where golf architecture styles may go in the future there's probably a fundamental question to ask and answer---eg should even some of the raw material of style change be solely new and innovative, novel ideas etc, or should it be almost always fairly grounded in established artistic "principles" of and from the past that some may call artistic "Truths"?

Humphery Repton had a strong opinion on that in 1797;

"If it should appear that, instead of displaying new doctrines or furnishing novel ideas, this volume serves rather by a new method to elucidate old established principles, and to confirm long received opinions, I can only plead in my excuse that true taste, in every art, consists more in adapting tried expedients to peculiar circumstances than in that inordinate thirst after novelty, the characteristic of uncultivated minds, which from the facility of inventing wild theories, without experience, are apt to suppose that taste is displayed by novelty, genius by innovation, and that every change must necessarlly tend to improvement."

This quote appeared in Macdonald's "Scotland's Gift Golf" so obviously Macdonald agreed with Repton in this artistic/stylistic sense.

I think I agree with Repton and Macdonald, particularly when it comes to golf architectural styles but I don't think I agree with them completely.

I think novelty should be at least tried. It may fail as so much of it has and be relegated to the trash heap of some art form's history or evolution but there may be a chance some novelty would work and work well, aesthetically or functionally and then it too may take its place some day as a bona fide "principle" or artistic "Truth".

Why not at least try with some completely novel ideas? If artists stopped trying to apply novel artistic ideas 2,000 years ago, or 1,000 years ago or even 100 years ago where would we be today?

What do you think about the entire panoply of "styles" in golf architecture or the collected "style cycles" of golf architecture's approximately 150 year history and evolution?

I have no idea where things may go in the future, where they should go or can go. I only hope the future will bring less one-dimensionality and less "standardization" rather than more of it.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Love the topic, don't know the answer, other than like everything else in pop culture, the only constant is change in styles.  As gca's, and golfers, we just get tired of seeing the same type of stuff and the next new course gets more notoriety if a bit different.

That means that the current trend to minimalism will peter out at some time, but in favor of what style, I don't know. I think that no matter what the actual style elements are, it will likely be called "post minimalism" when the Brad Kleins and Ron Whitten's of the world finally identify that it has happened.

I actually think it will be technology driven as much as "just" a change of styles.  For example, if Paspallum becomes necessary because of water restrictions, how would a gca design a course to take best advantage of that?

As to your last comment, I kind of think that we have more diversity of style now than we have ever had, but I could be wrong.  Look at the diagonal diagrams in the Golden Age books, and they all look pretty similar to me.

[Phil_the_Author]

Tom, you asked, "Why not at least try with some completely novel ideas?"

Everyone loves modern art until they are told the price...

Then there is that many-headed hydra of our (all golfers) own creation called Rankings and ratings.

Finally, add in the impression that Augusta National is what is to be striven for in golf course evolution and I maintain that there it is an amazing thing that Desmond Muirhead was actually able to go as far as he did on a few course designs.

[TEPaul]

I should add that the thing that most put me in mind of this subject of style cycles was when I walked into the pro shop at my club the other day.

To my surprise the clothing inventory in the pro shop looked to me like a total and exact replication of Lilly Pulitzer's little shop in an arcade off Worth Ave in Palm Beach back in the early 1960s just before her unique style and her products exploded onto the world of clothing fashion.

The same hot pinks, bright yellows, lime greens, even some seersucker and madras.

I remember Lilly Pulitzer well. She was a rich Palm Beach girl with a lot of time on her hands and a ton of personal fashion style. She sure didn't need the money and I think she was originally just looking for a fun little pass-time. I'm not sure she was even interested in the kind of success her clothing line style brought her. The thing that really exploded into success for her was her little "LIlly" shift dress. I guess she could thank Jackie Kennedy for that because it seems that little "Lilly" shift was about all Jackie ever wore during the day. And because she did so did most of the other women of that type back in those days.

But what was really interesting is I played in a tournament called the Baily Cup the other day which is about a seventy five year old tourney every year on the first Wednesday in May between GMGC, HVGC, Merion and Pine Valley. And I played in the foursome matches against a guy I've known from Merion who about ten years ago bought the "Lilly" name and regenerated the line just about as it once was in style, color etc.

Right now he has to be just cleaning up. Have you noticed what a lot of the gals are wearing this spring---hot pinks, bright yellows, lime greens etc. LILLY is back bigtime in a real style cycle back.

I told him I used to know Lilly Pulitzer and also Donald Leas, a rich playboy type who was married to Fernanda Wetherill who basically created Lilly's men's line back then in the mid 1960s.

He told me I should get totally outfitted in his new rerun Lilly men's line. I told him I don't need to do that because I never throw anything away and it's all up in my attic where it's been for the last 35-40 years just waiting for its style to recycle back again.  

[TEPaul]

I guess I've mentioned it before but the best and most interesting examples of a style shift with some apparent novelty that I'm aware of is Paul Cowley's (Davis Love Co) military theme and also his Rice Field's course under construction right now with about 4-5 holes routed right into and through some recreated old rice fields in Georgia.

I stopped in there a month ago and I've got to tell you those holes into and through those rice fields are going to be very cool to play for a bunch of reasons. It's a style recycle but I don't know that golf architecture has ever seen it before.

[Eric Franzen]

Lilly Pulitzer...
Her stuff is quite hardcore!

 

[Kirk Gill]

Humphry Repton had a strong opinion on that in 1797;

"If it should appear that, instead of displaying new doctrines or furnishing novel ideas, this volume serves rather by a new method to elucidate old established principles, and to confirm long received opinions, I can only plead in my excuse that true taste, in every art, consists more in adapting tried expedients to peculiar circumstances than in that inordinate thirst after novelty, the characteristic of uncultivated minds, which from the facility of inventing wild theories, without experience, are apt to suppose that taste is displayed by novelty, genius by innovation, and that every change must necessarlly tend to improvement."

Is the thirst for novelty truly the characteristic of uncultivated minds? Are wild theories the province only of those who have no experience?

I tend to disagree with those assertions, at least in the modern world. What has happened time and time again is that things that were once considered to be wild and temporary innovations become codified into standards that later people use as a benchmark for their own innovations. The mind that is once considered to be uncultivated is later thought to be gifted with genius. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of tasteless novelty and stupid innovation out there, but I don't buy into the notion that the search for something new appeals only to uncultivated, inexperienced minds.

That said, I think that innovation in GCA is bound to be slower and more careful that innovations in other arts. First of all, golf courses are a lot more expensive to create than paintings or sculptures or books. Unless you're throwing your own money behind your own crazy new idea, it's going to be hard to find others who will bankroll your notions unless you've already managed a track record for success. Secondly, the bottom-line reality of golf courses is that the game of golf is played on them, with all its rules and history. There's only so much wiggle room there for the genius OR the uncultivated mind to innovate within those boundaries.

[Mike Nuzzo]

That means that the current trend to minimalism will peter out at some time, but in favor of what style, I don't know.

I'd say minimalism has more to do with construction or technique than style.

An analogy:
I thought that style change in jeans effected the waist lines, the length (capants), finish (acid wash) - people still wear jeans.

I think the mass produced typical lacy edge bunker is a style that has grown stale, especially when done poorly.

I think of minimalism more as the jeans and less of the style.  Jeans aren't going out of style, just the waist lines.


As for new styles, it is very site dependant.  I tried to do some different things, but hell it is Texas, not England.

[Eric Franzen]

That said, I think that innovation in GCA is bound to be slower and more careful that innovations in other arts. First of all, golf courses are a lot more expensive to create than paintings or sculptures or books. Unless you're throwing your own money behind your own crazy new idea, it's going to be hard to find others who will bankroll your notions unless you've already managed a track record for success. Secondly, the bottom-line reality of golf courses is that the game of golf is played on them, with all its rules and history. There's only so much wiggle room there for the genius OR the uncultivated mind to innovate within those boundaries.

Innovation in GCA might also be a bit limited due to constrictions of the given canvas. The character of the site probably encourages or discourages when it comes to testing the architects creative boundaries. As you know, severe sites can sometimes force the architect to expand his horizon and try some unconventional things.  

[Mark Bourgeois]

Eric, looks like Paul Smith.

Jeff B.: would love more on the impact of paspalum. one i've heard is its potential to open new sites across the caribbean basin. would love to hear your thoughts on how the grass will play and how designs might differ in order to "play" to its strengths, weaknesses and peculiarities.

thanks,
mark

[Garland Bayley]

Is minimalism really a style?

Here's an analogy. Adam and Eve became aware of their nakedness and donned fig leaves out of necessity. All the further embellishments on the fig leaf base are the styles, but the nakedness covered by fig leaves was the base.

In minimalism, you have a base of land. To play golf out of necessity you begin to maintain a green here, a tee there. Thus you have minimalism, and it is the base. All further embellishments to that base define styles. The RTJ style, the T Fazio style, the AWT style, the Raynor style, etc.

[Peter Pallotta]

TE
A great topic for discussion.  I wish I could offer more than some rough thoughts about ‘framing’ that discussion:

I think we make too much out of the differences between the various current styles of architecture.  The distinctions may be real, but they are just that, distinctions, and fall within a pretty narrow bandwidth. (A poor analogy: we talk about right-wing and left-wing politics in America, and the differences are important to us; but from a global/historical perspective, the entire American political spectrum is very much centrist compared to the realities of right-wing fascism and left-wing communism.)  For any number of reasons, including economic ones, that bandwidth might widen considerably in the coming years.  And, since golf is now and will increasingly become a more global game, any thinking about future trends might best be done within a global context.  I don’t think it’s a given, for example, that the current American style(s) of architecture will necessarily continue to dominate the international marketplace, even in those emerging markets eager to emulate the American ethos.  

Also: Issues related to agronomy will play a large role in future trends, and to an extent that we are probably underestimating rather than overestimating. I think there’s an interesting parallel to what CB Macdonald faced when trying to import British links golf to American soils, with the struggles he had and the broadening of design styles/philosophies it brought about.  (TE, I think you must already realize this, as you pay a lot of attention to early agronomy issues; your attention is what first got me interested in the subject.)  But whereas Macdonald faced issues of what I’d call “practical agronomy”, the future will bring with it issues of “environmental agronomy”.  I think that’ll be a wide-open field, i.e. that there’ll be solutions found to problems that we don’t even know exist yet, and discoveries made and approaches tried (or required) that few are presently imagining.  In other words, necessity will be the mother of invention, but only at the very moment that the necessity becomes apparent.

I had a couple of other ideas I wanted to raise, but I can’t seem to put them into words right now, or at least into anything half-coherent. I'm going to try again later, as I think this is very important.

Peter  

[Forrest Richardson]

Look at the restaurant chain, Ed Debivic's. It is now an has-been.

But, during the late 1980s and all through the 1990s, Ed Debevic's was the cat's meow.

http://featuredfoods.com/cgi-local/SoftCart.exe/a-store/c-Ed_DebevicAns.shtml?L+scstore+dwdb4669debevicff27fb27+1178878956

Here we could take in a 1950s diner theme — all regurgitated. It was the parallel to classic golf courses revisited. "What is old is new again."

How absoultely lame.

This is, of course, not to say the food was OK or the experience OK — even neat. But it simply broke no new ground and was a reinvention.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

[Peter Pallotta]

TE
first, a clarification of my last post: when I say "I think we make too much out of the differences between the various current styles of architecture", I mean that in terms of trying to use those "differences" to predict future trends. In other words, I'm speculating that future styles/trends won't be characterized as simple extensions, developments or negations of one particular style or another, whether that's  Fazio, C&C, RTJ-ish, Nicklaus, etc, etc. The basic and enduring principles, I think, are pretty well understood by all practitioners, and are made manifest in all these styles, although various designers of course make many choices (sometimes not strictly 'golf-related') and how/when to utilize them.

Second, last night what is probably a wonky idea occurred to me. You know how, currently, architects are sometimes faced with environmentally sensitive/protected areas, and have to work hard (and make concessions) to route a course around them?  Well, imagine a future time and place when ALL the area is environmentally sensitive/protected, the entire site of a potential golf course I mean. That site might be a combination of natural/native grasses, wetlands, trees, landforms etc. There'd be a need then for architects to make a virtue out of these "restrictions". What might that mean? It might be a course with no bunkers, very random strategic features, no irrigation, conditions dictated entirely by nature, walking only, and as much of an "experience" of golf in a natural setting as I can imagine.    

Anyway, still thinking about all this.

Peter

[Peter Pallotta]

One last random thought (I promise):

When I was watching Franz Klammer’s amazingly exciting downhill races in the 1970s, I’d have never imagined that the sporting world of the future would find a need and niche for competitive snowboarding, and over moguls no less.  

Yes, golf is slow to change, but isn’t it possible that golf (or at least an off-shoot of golf) might move in an equally unexpected direction? Maybe it will move (in concert with developing environmental issues) towards a more “rudimentary” sport, with different objectives and equipment.  An off-shoot of golf might well move in the direction of attempting to maximize the “experience” of the sport, away from a focus on scoring and towards a greater participation with/in nature itself, including our human natures.

There’s been “hints” about this possibility for years now, i.e. the experience of golf as meditation. Fostering that experience would, I think, both demand and encourage a changing architectural style/approach.

Peter

[Mike Nuzzo]

Ed Debivic's sounds like the TPC concept.
If it works once, lets do it again and again, oh and sell shirts and crap too!

[Mike Nuzzo]

I like Mike's quote over here better....

Forrest,
I don't think there has ever been a time in golf architecture where the shaping talent was at the level it is today.....I look at what was considered good shaping 20 years ago and much of it does not touch what is available today....IMHO

Not a style change, but if it is going to change your shaper will know.

A good test to know if you have style is to ask your shaper if you're doing anything different.

Don and I asked our very experienced shaper (who shaped most of the course) if he learned on the project.  Turns out we all did.  I think that is a very good sign.

Cheers

[cary lichtenstein]

I actually think it will be technology driven as much as "just" a change of styles.  For example, if Paspallum becomes necessary because of water restrictions, how would a gca design a course to take best advantage of that?

Great comment. I played a Paspallum course a couple of days ago and letting the rough grow pretty thick would change the pitching, chipping, lob game substantially. It puts a new fear into you because the the clubhead speed and steepness you need.

That's the best part of my game and I found it very challenging. It would bring a hole new element back into play made obsolete my the 56 and 60 degree wedges.