What's left to discuss?

[John Kavanaugh]

Paul,

My point is that plenty of great threads exist for the taking. You indicate why they aren't worth the effort.

I just genuinely thought it was a good example of a worthy topic.

I find it a little strange that anyone would suggest we've seen and done it all.

I will start the thread if you give me your word not to contribute in any manner and/or to not start a like thread piggybacking on our findings until the original thread is off the first page. I had this discussion today one on one with a fellow golfer and he came away unscathed and informed. Your choice.

[Paul Gray]

I've never started any piggy backing thread in my life. Nonetheless, start the aforementioned thread and I promise not to pass any comment until page 2. You have my word.

[Daniel Jones]

For example:  let's discuss the Toyotas and Hondas of golf ocurses and how they are designed condtrcuted and sustained instead of always talking of the Mercedes, Rolls etc..

As a newbie, it's pretty much all...well...new to me. So I'm far from exhausted with the topics that apparently hit the front page quite often. That said, I play a Honda with 220,000 miles on it twice a week and would really enjoy learning about others like it.

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks gents, some funny answers. Funny is good, on any thread.

Here's a few I'd like to know:

1. Jack of All Trades, Master of None -- Does it apply to Golf Course Professionals (including Architects)?

2. The People we Love Can Hurt us the Most -- How our most beloved Architects Have failed to Protect the Game

3. Golfers are the Most Pompous (and Gullible) Sportsmen on Earth -- Who else would pretend to tell a 6 from a 7, a 7 from an 8, or an 8 from a 9 (and who else would believe them)?

4. Familiarity Breeds Contempt -- Why not the respect they deserve for Mike Young and Jeff Brauer? Be specific or bugger off.

5. John Stuart Mills and Utilitarianism -- Tell me why Sean Arble isn't the most fortunate golfer on the planet?

6. My Petty Side -- Please tell me I'm wrong to suspect that all you belt-notchers have drunk way way too much Kool-Aid.

[Brett Wiesley]

There will always be newly interested people in gca and repeat threads should be welcomed as they will always refine themselves. The small vocal crowd should be careful not to scare away interested newbies.  We want to grow the game, or do we just lament courses that fall into NLE.

[Philip Hensley]

Has this site made a difference? We should start a thread discussing that question.

The hot dogs are $4.00 cheaper at SS.

  , luckily SS is public, a private club would have raised them $4 

But the hot dog eating use fee remains the same.

[Jason Thurman]

I find it a little strange that anyone would suggest we've seen and done it all.

I thought the same, which is what led to this thread. If you really think we've discussed everything, why are you here?

To be clear, I think the answer to Mike's question from Ran's thread is "No." Like others, I think we have a lot of technical concepts that deserve discussion. Most of us know very little about the actual construction process and I suspect there are even opportunities for the smart people on this site to come up with ideas that change the way construction of certain features is approached. For instance, jagged bunker edges may prove unstable over time, but there may also be new techniques to reinforce them that are developed from the discourse available on this site. Perhaps that's overly optimistic, but it seems feasible to me.

Beyond that, though, I also think our understanding of how players process and approach a course is still in its infancy. It seems to me that a lot of our strategic ideals are just hypothetical at this point with little real evidence to back them up, and a lot of the presumptions that drive how design is approached haven't been verified. In a recent thread, it was clear that we don't even have hard data that tells us what percentage of players can carry the ball X yards. I'd like to see research that gives us the answer to that, or research that tells us whether high handicappers are REALLY more likely to miss right than left, or data that quantifies why people stop playing or keep playing golf.

On top of all that, I think we still have a lot to learn about the lives of the ODGs and the evolution of courses from the Golden Age that aren't on the Top 100 lists. I'd also love to learn more about noteworthy holes on non-Top 100 courses. Maybe we've discussed the elite courses in plenty of depth, but there are lots of other courses worthy of discussion.

[Philip Hensley]

How bout this one:   will the jagged edged bunker concept stand the test of time in non sandy soils?  

  

Just to start the discussion,I'll say no. Pure speculation--the cost to maintain will eventually outweigh the design.

I'd like to read any kind of bunker design/maintenance discussion featuring architects and superintendents. For the 2nd or 3rd largest expense in a maintenance budget,care and feeding of bunkers is very misunderstood.

Good idea. Lonnie Poole golf course (nc state) reduced the size of their bunkers by nearly 25% and put new bunker drainage in. The main reason cited was that the bunkers are very time & $$$ intensive chores on the maintainence staff. They also had a huge rain in the spring that washed the sand out of every bunker on the course.

[BCowan]

Good post Jason.  I recall Dr Hurzdan saying 199 yards was the average carry for men.  That statistic was from his first and maybe in 2nd edition too.  That book is prob 18 years old.  More discussion about non top 100.  

Tree removal on courses built in last 20 years.  How many archies are handicapped by the owner and what ones leave too many trees up by greens.  

[Don Mahaffey]

Why the courses that inspired the Golden Age designers haven't inspired this generation, and please, don't blame the golfers.

I suppose a modern rocker looks to Eric Clapton, not Robert Johnson, but surely some starting out today have to be curious about where their idols found inspiration?

[Mark_Fine]

I have been off and on this site since the beginning and I am not sure if I ever saw a good thread about which "modern day" architects have the most repetitive/recognizable design style?  C&C along with Doak would lead the list and Fazio and Pete Dye would not be far behind.  Pretty easy to recognize each of these architect's golf courses though many others have been following form making it a little trickier to distinguish.   

[Tom_Doak]

I have been off and on this site since the beginning and I am not sure if I ever saw a good thread about which "modern day" architects have the most repetitive/recognizable design style?  C&C along with Doak would lead the list and Fazio and Pete Dye would not be far behind.  Pretty easy to recognize each of these architect's golf courses though many others have been following form making it a little trickier to distinguish.   

Well, I guess the more your courses are in the magazines the easier it is to identify them, but I don't think all of my courses are so easily recognized as "mine".  Some are more like others, but I doubt anyone seeing Cape Kidnappers or Common Ground or Tumble Creek for the first time would think they looked like the stereotype of my courses.

I think Pete Dye's courses are the most easily recognized.  The gentle curved shape of the holes around hazards is consistent throughout his work, even going back to the early days when his bunkering was different.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Well,  Melvyn Morrow has gone on Facebook to give his take on this topic.  He didn't ask me, but I will post his question the best I can decipher it in a short time:  Do we undervalue the designs of the pre 1900 era, and have we gotten too far away from them?

[Brent Hutto]

I'll propose some follow-on questions:

1) How many "designs of the pre-1900 era" are the available for play today in anything resembling their original form?

2) How many "designs of the pre-1900 era" are the available for play today OUTSIDE OF SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND in anything resembling their original form?

3) What is the maximum "value" that one can possibly place on something that you may well only see once or twice in your life?

And I'll answer the #3 of that list from my own perspective. I do not think it is possible for a course I am not going to play to be undervalued. I only care about golf courses as a place where I play golf, not as abstract examples or historical artifacts.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Brent,

Good question and one Melvyn seems to either fail to appreciate, or simply desire that nothing ever changes.

My oldest played US courses are Cape Arundel and NGLA, and a tour of Myopia Hunt, all early 1900's.  They look primitive in some ways, and really cool in others.  I do treasure the times I get to see these places, but probably consider them as much museum pieces as great architecture (NGLA perhaps excepted)  I mean, I like and appreciate the old features of the other two, and see some cool stuff (like tiered greens, that always struck me as more modern ideas, but there they are!)

MHM seems to rant about a mix of things, the early architects, carts, walking, in a strong belief we should get closer to Scotland's roots.  Whether or not that is practical in the vastly different climates of the US, and the Golden Age and other designers have continued to adapt, I don't think it was possible, or given human nature (as well as nature nature) that the game or architecture EVER would have just started and not evolved somehow. 

Basically, no one thinks golf (or anything) is absolutely perfect right out of the box, and nothing can't stand a "wee bit of improvement".  Take a few hundred years of wee improvements, and voila, you have modern golf.  Some items are just as much an experiment with no real end in mind as early architectural features, but as always time will tell.

[John Kirk]

I'd like to keep exploring the idea that golf courses can be evaluated in terms of a) providing a comprehensive test of one's golf skills, and b) yielding a wide variety of golf shots for seasoned players of all abilities.  I like choosing outstanding golf courses and discussing them in great detail, sharing anecdotes and deciphering each hole, in a continuing effort to understand and appreciate what makes a golf course fun to play.

Baseball and golf are alike because they yield a similarly broad spectrum of plays.  Baseball has the occasional double steal or pickle play.  In golf, you can end up on a sand dune with your feet planted wherever they'll go, with the ball stuck waist high in the sand, as happened to me one day  at the 11th hole at Pacific Dunes.  I made a good 7, if I recall correctly.

So without offering truly detailed technical analysis, I like picking apart a golf course and determining its tendencies, and how it differs from other courses.  By looking at the shots a course yields, we incorporate all aspects of course design and maintenance.  I don't think the conversation to understand what makes a course great is complete, and even if it is, detailed, comprehensive analysis of great courses is valuable.

[JMEvensky]

Good question and one Melvyn seems to either fail to appreciate, or simply desire that nothing ever changes.

MHM seems to rant about a mix of things, the early architects, carts, walking, in a strong belief we should get closer to Scotland's roots.  Whether or not that is practical in the vastly different climates of the US, and the Golden Age and other designers have continued to adapt, I don't think it was possible, or given human nature (as well as nature nature) that the game or architecture EVER would have just started and not evolved somehow. 

Basically, no one thinks golf (or anything) is absolutely perfect right out of the box, and nothing can't stand a "wee bit of improvement".  Take a few hundred years of wee improvements, and voila, you have modern golf.  Some items are just as much an experiment with no real end in mind as early architectural features, but as always time will tell.

I like to think of MHM as the conscience of golf. Change is inevitable for most things,frequently in a misguided search for improvement.Everyone,MHM included,understands the game can't stay static.But maybe with MHM's proselytizing,more thought will go into changing things just because they can be changed.

MHM is the Don Quixote of golf--and I'm glad he's out there tilting at the windmills.

[Sean_A]

One aspect about the title of the thread is do we need to "fully" understand all the issues?  Does anybody need to know the average carry of a drive for males aged 25-30 etc etc?  This sort of data which is presumably used by archies (not sure though) doesn't really advance understanding of architecture...its data and imo architecture is not about responding to data.  While listening to the client and golfers is important, archies should be driving architecture...not developers, golfers and owners.  Its a hard thing for archies to cope with but when archies have freedom, the possibility for greatness increases....so the last thing archies should do is relinquish freedom when it is not absolutely necessary to do so.   

From my perspective, I don't really care about much about construction techniques etc...and I don't think many others do either.  Its a highly specialized topic which only a few people really understand and even they need to be on site to fully appreciate the issues. 

IMO, whats left to discuss is individual holes, features, concepts.  Its difficult to do and be inclusive with most of the brethren, but at least we have some archies, builders and greenkeepers on hand to help. 

Ciao

[Tom_Doak]

This sort of data which is presumably used by archies (not sure though) doesn't really advance understanding of architecture...its data and imo architecture is not about responding to data.  While listening to the client and golfers is important, archies should be driving architecture...not developers, golfers and owners.  

IMO, whats left to discuss is individual holes, features, concepts.  Its difficult to do and be inclusive with most of the brethren, but at least we have some archies, builders and greenkeepers on hand to help. 

Thank you!