TE Paul,
I should be doing more in the office today, but you are getting in my way. Which is good because these types of discussions are helpful, no. I can speak from experience on bad routing plans and earthmoving so I probably should do that first rather than whoop up on poor Tom. I will tell you that I listened in on a conversation between him and von Hagge and he said a bad routing plan can easily be overcome if you move enough dirt. Maybe he is right, but is that a principle to live by?
Anyway, moving dirt because of featureless land is not the issue of which I was thinking. I was thinking of bad routings in the sense that more time spent on the land and studying the topos could have yielded golf holes whose strategic design and visual interest come from the land. A bad routing plan ignores these landforms and creates situations where large-scale earthmoving must be employed to fit a hole onto steep land, or remove massive ridges to get from the tee to the fairway or fairway to the green, or for any other number of reasons. In my case, I have a project under construction where the housing dominated the land plan not the golf course. My first routing basically separated the two land uses and the golf course made good use of the topo. The client would have nothing to do with this philosophy. In fact I almost got fired because at the same time James McLoughlin, of TMG, Inc., was doing a feasibility study, and in the study he advised the client to fire me and hire a big name architect, Ron Garl, which is not the first time he has promoted big name architects and Ron Garl, to clients for whom he consulting. I know RJ Daley does not like it when I mention names but I think of it as the old days when you acted up in the neighborhood there were a dozen neighbors that called your parents, it is a good way to correct shameful behavior. So, Tom Paul, what do you do, walk away, or compromise and work through a plan that salvages some good holes and meets your client’s needs. At the time I decided to work it out, not walk away, I do not think walking away from a tough situation is good for your reputation, nor does it set a good example for those people around you. Since then I have been through two additional golf course community projects and I must tell you it is getting hard to stick it out when the housing component so dominates the golf course. Fortunately, I have found some client’s whom believe separating the two land uses makes a lot of sense, and I wrote about it in the second book that Paul Daley is publishing next year I think, and I put it on the table anytime a housing developer talks to me about doing a golf course for their residential community. Basically, I am a strong, vocal proponent for separating the two land uses, yes the housing can skirt the golf course, but not protrude into the golf course, keep the course a core course. But here we are, a residential plan that has compromised the routing, caused long journeys between holes, put holes in some difficult terrain. By my standards, a bad routing plan. There are some great holes, or I should say fun holes though.
Another difficult situation, which I regret, is that an irrigation pond and two holes were built on one side of a road. Rather than haul the dirt from the pond to the other side of the road I decided to place it between the two holes. Now had we moved it to the other side of the hard it would have to have been placed somewhere on the golf course and screwed it up there. It is not pretty. I remember looking at the land as it was naturally and it was magnificent to look out over the land where both holes were to be placed. Now a big ridge separates the holes and that was not the best thing for them. However, what do you do with 20,000 cubic yards of dirt. You build a big landform like you said, maybe at the juncture between doglegged holes. The reason we built the ridge between the two holes was because another 70,000 yards was supposed to come from the residential housing, so we would have to spread it over a big area to get rid of that much dirt. Again, the housing trumped the golf course. Somehow that dirt never materialized and we were left with a puny ridge that separates two holes which did not need separation. Why separate holes? I like looking out over several holes. So in this case the routing was good but the irrigation pond and the dirt from the housing that was supposed to come conspired to compromise the natural beauty of the land where the two holes are now, and I was an accomplice. I agree, the dirt moving at the midbody of holes is disruptive. I think that is a great observation on your part.
I do not think moving massive dirt is a good reason because some think the land is mundane. First, I have walked land that people have warned me was mundane, no topography, when in fact there was magnificent movement, just not exaggerated movement. One project I did I thought the land was interesting, inspiring, so the design just laid back and let the land show off and Matt Ward in a review called the course repetitious because the land was just subtle farmland. One other reviewer said the course was too natural. I guess I do not accept that land is mundane, particularly in the Northeast. Is Garden City Golf Club mundane? Does the water tower and shopping center that peek over the tree line beyond #9 make me think massive dirt should have been moved to distract my attention? No way.
I think a great routing plan is a part of the construction documents. If it is routed well to the land then you have gone a long way toward constructing the course. A routing plan is a construction document. Didn’t you see that at Stonewall II? I only saw it briefly but you could tell that it was well done, well routed, and if you noticed of the six holes I saw constructed there was still quite a bit of vegetation in the fairways because they did not have to strip the topsoil in order to move massive amounts of dirt to correct a bad routing plan. But, if you gave that same routing plan to some we have mentioned here they still would have moved massive amounts of dirt in order to show off their great skills at imposing manmade beauty on the land. It is not enough that nature could have presented something remarkable, they have to show that man has moved beyond nature, that man has advanced the art form of golf architecture and it lies in the highly developed skills and sensibilities of our great shapers being orchestrated by the hand of the genius architect. Whew. I need to get back to work Tom, I am getting a little over dramatic. Anyway I hope I answered your question and keep your midbody thought out there so other people can absorb it.