What is better?

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Design by Maintenance or Maintenance by Design?

[Michael Dugger]

ah, classic paradox posed by the Emperor.

Better for what?

If we're talking better for the design, obviously maintenance by design.  

Of course that makes the vice versa, which I think is the point you are kind of driving at, correct me if I'm wrong, Tommy.

Isn't this a matter of give and take?  Maintenance concerns in one hand, wonderful design features that may be difficult to maintain in the other.

I'd say it depends on the budget of the club.  If it's not an issue give them the best damn course you can regardless of how tough it is to maintain.  It all flows downhill from there.  

But, I'd add, I'm inclined to think that there is a point in which if the design is too constrained by maintainance/budget issues, perhaps it is an unwise venture from the get go.      

[Mark_Fine]

Doesn't this in part depend on how much money you want to spend?  I remember Mike Strantz talking about Tobacco Road stating something like, "It costs a lot of money to keep this place looking like it is NOT maintained".  

[Michael Dugger]

There are many here much more versed in the specifics of Pine Valley than I......but don't they say the same thing about the "native" areas there as well.  

Natural looking = expensive

[guesst]

It is expensive to maintain a *native* environment without destroying it or allowing it to destroy your playing field.

*Nature* has taken over my 2 1/2 acres of Paradise.  She charged me nothing, but it is taking a pretty penny, however, to beat Her back enough to walk the property without getting mired in blackberry bushes.  

Mdugger, you hit the ball off the tee.  If money is not an issue, let's see a no-holds-barred approach to design.  If money is too much an issue, the restraints may be too great to seriously consider a new course... we don't need one more mediocre track.

As for the middle ground, I'm no agronomist, but there must be several solutions of varying costs for any given terrain.  Balance, gentlemen, is the key.

[allysmith]

Tommy,

Why not go down the Civil Engineering line of 'Designed In Maintenance' and have a detailed maintenance manual passed to the Course Superintendant so that it is maintained as the designer intended.

I suspect many maintenance problems occur when the Course Superintendant think he knows better than the guy who designed the course.

[Peter Galea]

I suspect many maintenance problems are created when the the architect designs something and "says" to the superintendent, "we've designed it, you figure out how to maintain it." I've heard it said, and seen it happen.
Along those same lines, an architect or owner "spec-ing" inapproprite plant materials for the area or designs not able to be maintained within the operating budget.
Design and maintenance must go "hand in hand" to be successful. "Hindsight" maintenance, is doomed to fail, or at the very least, be expensive. Form follows function.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Some great stuff here Pete. But I'm one of those that doesn't like the idea that a realy good looking bunker is going to be sacrificed because a superintendent doesn't want to know how to maintain it, especially if it is a bunker that is on a course that is striving to reclaim its orginal design features. The guy who is going to keep on maintaining the bunkers as he always did, on both a new or a renovated course.

Yes, it is a paradox. To some, those who don't look at golf courses as an art form themselves, it doesn't matter. I hate that, because in any art, especially when it is emulating nature, it is important that the scene depict Nature's challenges, and that the strengths or challenges come from how your mind perceives or, (as one who once properly explained it to me) the way our "lens" views these objects. Some of us have to train our lens how to focus, just like we have to train our palate how to recognize the essence of the product of the vine, and the environment it has grown in.

There are times when we even lose our sense of taste!

But the important thing is to start over, focus, and learn it all over again or learn it a newer way!--like riding a bycycle after 20 something years--As the Moody Blues once said, "It is a Question of Balance I for one think they were right.

[Mike_Young]

Maintenance is to be for golf and not that golf is to be for maintenance.
Tommy, it happens all the time.  Chipping areas eliminated, bunkers removed ,all types of maintenance related issues carried out unknowingly to meet a budget.
And today we have a problem in that many course have been designed with built in maintenance that can't be eliminated as it can on some of the older courses.

[RJ_Daley]

I think that all too often, when we discuss this topic, a focus is placed too much on bunkers.  We tend to see maintenance quality by first letting our eye go to how authentic or well formed a bunker is in relation to its placement and contrasted with its surrounds.  We tend to evalute maintenance by how the bunker style is presented to us.  While Tommy and others here discuss plant material, turf and native areas, I think that first focus starts from how the bunkers appear.  I think that Pete is getting more at the issue.  He first talks about the design specs and what plant material and design features are spec'd without serious focus on their relationship to the budget and feasibility to maintain them.  

Supers don't worry day to day over the health of a bunker.  They approach maintaining them (beyond sand pro or raking them) by infrequent grooming of edges, replacing clogged drainage or trimming edges.  Maintenance of them is more glacial.  But, plants, turf, and operating equipment over terrain, and negotiating difficult slopes and constant scouting and sampling the field of fairways, greens, tees and rough for outbreaks of disease, insects, and fertility, and applying needed chemicals is an EVERY DAY maintenance issue, that design and maintenance planning must be in harmony on those issues to be successful.  Minimalist design is just as critical to consider maintenance issues as highly engineered construction techniques.  Anticipating the issues during design, and then building in budget to maintain it is obviously the wisest approach.  But, superintendents inheriting an exciting design of unique features and not having the means to maintain it, is disaster and frustrating for all parties involved.  

[Mark_Fine]

Tommy,
Just think what it would cost to maintain all those bunkers at Barona if you didn't have dozens of Indians to do it?  You could not build something like that in most other locations as the labor rates would be prohibitive especially if you wanted affordable golf.
Mark

[Art_Schaupeter]

"Design by Maintenance or Maintenance by Design?"

These are not exclusive concepts, at least not for the types of courses, both new and old, that are embraced by the majority here.  The best courses have a combination of both design by maintenance and maintenance by design.  The key is finding the right balance between the two.  Additionally, the site and the owner/members have a substantial impact on the outcome as well.

Design by maintenance, by itself, will tend to result in a golf course of modest interest and modest challenge.  I think of the typical municipal course, providing a bare bones golf experience at a minimal cost.  Maintenance by design, by itself, makes me think of any number of CCFAD's, or a Shadow Creek, or even what Augusta National has become, at least leading up to the Masters each year.  No cost is spared to ensure that the design intent is carried out, regardless of the maintenance impact.

The reality for most courses/new projects is that while they might aspire to the higher end of the spectrum, the financial realities must be considered.  As a result, there must me a combination of the two concepts to be successful.  As Mark Fine alluded to, the owner's desire and financial commitment will impact how far the design can hedge one direction or the other.  A great site used properly will also help create the work of art that Tommy likes to see.

While I agree with Pete concerning the architect that "says" to the super, "this is how I designed it now you figure out how to maintain it", I have also run into the reverse, where the super doesn't have a concern for the design intent.  He just wants to maintain it in a minimal fashion.  Ideally, the super should be involved in the final stages of the design as well as the entire construction/renovation process to ensure that the design intent will mesh with the maintenance budget and intent.

[Peter Galea]

When "the super doesn't have a concern for the design intent,"
and doesn't follow the designer or owner's direction, it's time to find a new superintendent.

[Art_Schaupeter]

Pete,

Agreed.  That is why it is best to have the super involved in the design process as early as possible.

[ward peyronnin]

Are we really being totally fair to to the super? Many cases of maintainance by design are driven by budget constraints or member/green chairman biases that the super is trying to balance. Granted greenkeepers have a stubborn hidebound streak that comes to the fore in some of their practices and are not blameless but I have two instances to illustrate the opening premise.

I played the club championship today and the rakes that bear  a sticker " please leave rakes in bunkers " were all placed inside the hazards today. Clearly he knows better and will rise to the challenge but chooses to pinch a little on his mowing budget during normal play. This same super conceived of the idea of filling in the hollow in front of our first green and building a runway approach to help his mowing scheme. This hole was recently rerated  as the 2 handicap whole on the front side and would have been so homogenized if I ,as course remodeling chair, had not killed the plan that it would seriously weakened an already soft nine holes of golf (imagine filling in the quarry at Merion)

My point is our guy does a great job and I think knows what is right but lets the limitations imposed on his program override the day and I am sure this happens everywhere.

The architects would do well do develop a realistic aniticipated budget for a super to endorse if course are to be maintained as designed.

PS Tommy your post to a boy named sue was the funniest thing I've seen all month.

[Art_Schaupeter]

wpeyronnin,

I didn't intend to come down hard on the super, I was just seconding what Pete G. had mentioned earlier.  There is no doubt that for a project or course to be successful in the long run, the design must account for the type of maintenance anticipated and the budget allocated.

[paul cowley]

...the only way to guarantee an 'unmaintained' look is to design it as unmaintainable to begin with.....

[Tom_Doak]

I don't know if some of the above statements are true.

The bunkers at Pacific Dunes are extremely rugged.  They're costly to maintain ONLY because we had to spend a lot of money to irrigate them to keep the sand from blowing away.  If it weren't such a windy place, I believe they'd be pretty inexpensive bunkers ... they only mow them with a weed whacker.

The easiest bunkers to maintain have no steep slopes around them, like the bunkers of the 1950's, which led to boring golf.  That's not the answer.  The answer is for the architect to consider what he's doing, and to build features which are difficult to maintain sparingly, in locations where they are worth the effort.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Tom Doak,
Hallaleujah!

The entire inspiration of this post came from looking at the front cover of the current Links magazine.