Recognizing that Pat might start yelling idolization, I've only met Ben Crenshaw one time. It's Bill Coore that I know so much better.
But that one time was at Friar's Head when it was under construction or let's say under conceptualization. If you like architecture, and particularly if you like Coore & Crenshaw's stuff, it was great because they were all there--Bill and Ben and almost all "The Boys". I thought it was just going to be Bill but apparently Ben had arrived on the spur of the moment and I felt that I was barging in on a very important working session and apparently I might have been.
But Ben was much nicer than even I'd heard he was. He seemed smaller than I thought too. He seemed almost too small to be the great golfer that he was or is! A guy who is that nice sometimes makes a former New Yorker, such as myself, feel a little like a bull in a china shop--but anyway!
But apropos of this particular topic of whether or not the quality of their work will decline with Crenshaw going on the Senior Tour, it gave me a glimpse of the way they work together, always have and hopefully always will.
Their modus operandi again is mostly Bill Coore (and the Boys) in time on site, but Ben has all the oversight he needs and that's a lot, to my understanding. But it's never taken all that much of his time and the reason for that is you really do have to understand how the two of them work together or actually how all of them work together. It really is unusually symbiotic, and it's quite obvious to me because they all know each other so well and what each other thinks. These fellows don't have to deal with site specific architects, assistants and shapers and contractors and such that are unfamiliar to them and need to be on some instant learning curve. You combine that fact with a ton of real talent and you basically have a company that is very unusual in this day and age! And you combine that too with their two course per year schedule and understanding how and why they can do what they do becomes obvious!
So here they were conceptualizing particularly on Friar's #5. I certainly wanted to hear what they were saying but the two of them are basically such quiet soft spoken guys and the fact that neither one exactly fills the air with words I had a real hard time hearing them--just little bits of things--and what I did hear was impressive beyond belief!! To really hear them I would have had to put my head about an inch from them and even for a former New Yorker that just didn't seem appropriate at the time.
They were conceptualizing about the hole, the way the ball would react or bounce and play and the way various golfers would react to those possibilities combined with a bit of construction thoughts and arm-waving construction ideas!
No plans, no topos, no nothing, just good old fashioned "in the field" architectural conceptualization. I've been back a few times and BTW, that #5 is one of the coolest little par 4s I ever saw in my life! Different looking and a bit of a varied concept but it's going to be able to stick its little head right up there with the likes of Riviera's #10!
But, again, I really do feel nothing will change wiht them in the future!