When Should A Club Engage An Architect?

[Jeff_Brauer]

As with Tom and Mark, I often go in on a 1-3 day course assessment.  If one day, I have an aerial photo printed, mark any prospective changes, get it color copied at Fed EX/Office Depot, etc. and hand it over.  In most cases, I tell them that if I mark a new bunker edge "here" it really means "here!"  Ditto with cart paths, tree removals, etc.  If they want it in CAD, or want a follow up report to "memorialize" the day, I need to charge another day or two.


Until this year, when I may have doubled my career output of master plans, I always shied away.  The second half of any master plan fee is coming up with priority list (top, second, maybe and meh), cost estimates, implementation plans, etc.  So many times, those fall apart after a few years, so short version, in many cases just providing the design input and perspective they don't have is enough, with a total fee of under $10K, 15K max.


As I said, everyone has a perspective on what their course needs.  It is still the gca who best understands all perspectives and has the training to put them together in a plan.

[Tom Bacsanyi]

To answer the question about tree removal, you don't need to spend a dime to ask your superintendent where the worst turf conditions on the course are, and whether or not trees are the root (haha) cause (typically they are). Those trees creating poor turf conditions should be the priority, and can be marked for deletion without digging up Alistair MacKenzie to give the ok.


As far as mowing lines, I believe the architects role is overrated. If your idea is to simply restore the original architects mowing lines, you need only consult an irrigation as-built if a newer course with multi-row irrigation, and using the shapes shown on the map and the head position and spacing as a reference, you should be able to see where your mowing lines need to be. If it's an older course, your irrigation system determines the fairway lines. So any fairway mowing line adjustments need to be supported by the irrigation system. If you have a single row, and double your fairway widths, you'll have a nice green landing strip and dead/dormant edges.


Now when it comes to doing stuff to the greens, or changing the strategy of a hole with mowing lines, irrigation stuff, or literally anything with bunkers, architects are absolutely necessary. But there's literally thousands of courses that just need to be put back the way they were by mowing back out to the throws of the single row system, and chopping trees down where the turf sucks. It's not that hard.

[Tom_Doak]

As with Tom and Mark, I often go in on a 1-3 day course assessment.  If one day, I have an aerial photo printed, mark any prospective changes, get it color copied at Fed EX/Office Depot, etc. and hand it over.  In most cases, I tell them that if I mark a new bunker edge "here" it really means "here!"  Ditto with cart paths, tree removals, etc.  If they want it in CAD, or want a follow up report to "memorialize" the day, I need to charge another day or two.

FWIW, that is often all that Alister MacKenzie was paid to do by his clients in the UK, and many of those in Australia, too.  UK clubs considered architects "consultants" and then it was up to them to decide what to do with the recommendations.  In his last few years, MacKenzie was able to get his brother involved with contracting at some of the courses, but not so much in the early years.

[Kalen Braley]

In my line of work, every now and then we assess where we're at using a 4 category system.

1) Things you know about and know how to address them.
2) Things you know about, but don't know the details on how to address them.
3) Things you don't know about, that are minor that may or may not need to be addressed.
4) Things you don't know about, that definitely need to be addressed.

From the perspective of a committee, I suspect they would generally do OK with numbers 1 and most  2s.   But you bring in someone for a day or two and a bunch of 3s are sprung on you, packaged as must fix 4s, and/or perhaps get a high estimate on effort/cost for some 2s, and its easy to be led down the proverbial primrose path.

[Pat Burke]

Op question


Answer


Before they ever have a greens committee or other golf genius who knows more than a professional

[Ally Mcintosh]

You can get a lot done with a once-a-year consultation visit and report, even if that report is just there to stop the new captain or greens committee chair coming up with left-field ideas.


Every course needs someone who brings consistency.


The trouble is you might pick the wrong architect who is only interested in making his mark.

[Tom_Doak]

You can get a lot done with a once-a-year consultation visit and report, even if that report is just there to stop the new captain or greens committee chair coming up with left-field ideas.

Every course needs someone who brings consistency.

I can certainly agree with this perspective.  One of the problems with many courses is the lack of consistency.  In High Pointe's twenty-year life, my clients employed six different greenkeepers and several golf professionals, in addition to years when they only had a greenkeeper and not a PGA pro, and one where they only had a "head mowing guy".  Plus, they had the architect living across town, and didn't want me to spend time with the greenkeeper!


I tend to think too much about the professional salesmen who inhabit all rungs of the golf business and try their damnedest to sell you on change that will just coincidentally put money in their pockets.

 "Rogue green chairmen" and superintendents often take the blame for changes to our famous older courses, or poor handling of their evolution, but in many cases the work we are doing is specifically to reverse the work of previous consulting architects, who may have been hired by a "rogue green chairman" with their own ideas, or maybe not.

It occurred to me to analyze this by looking at the problems I've been hired to fix over the years at various clubs, and where they actually originated.


Some examples from each side of the ledger:

Removing work done by a previous architect:  Garden City Golf Club, Camargo Club, Bel Air, Hollywood, San Francisco Golf Club [though the architect at SFGC was a 1940's golf pro working "under orders"]

Repairing things done by green chairman / evolution:  The Creek, Shoreacres, Chicago Golf Club, Rochester MN, Pasatiempo


The main difference between the former and the latter is that the former cost about 10x as much to fix!


[edited to fix formatting]

[Forrest Richardson]

I've always said, "Every golf course should have a golf course architect." By that, I mean every club should identify a golf architect they CAN go to, when the need arises. Even if it's just a few hours and lunch every so often, the eyes and ears of a qualified person outside the club has a host of benefits.

[Jim_Coleman]

   Hanse's work at WF (which is getting rave reviews) is the perfect example of why a club needs an architect to do virtually all the things on my list.  Would it have been a good thing for a super, in the name of agronomy, to remove most of the trees Hanse left standing?  The before and after pictures would probably be breathtaking; but with the shot values changed forever, would WF be better?  Or what if the super decided to return the course to where it was 100 years ago by removing the bunkers that have been added over the years to account for changes in the game?  Or what if he refused to consider adding new bunkers (as Hanse has done) to challenge golfers in today's game?  Or what if the super decided to change the mowing patterns of fairways and greens to give the members his concept of Tillie's original intent?  And what if WF had a member who fancied himself as a Tillie expert and worked with the super to implement his concepts?     
   The point is, a good architect is indispensable to make all but the most mundane changes to the playability of a course.  Just as there are those who say basketball players should shut up and dribble (a view I find abhorrent), supers should shut up and grow grass, unless they get help from a good architect.  And a good architect will take lots of input from a good super in making his recommendations.

[Forrest Richardson]

Well stated Jim — I think most of us would embrace the idea of collaboration. Super, club leaders AND the golf architect, are all essential when it comes to renovation/restoration/remodeling. I would also add in the agronomist, irrigation consultant and shaper team as they all need to be involved depending on what is being done.


The golf design community may be "guilty" of being "biased" in our thinking, but when it comes up, we often communicate that the most reasonable "well rounded" individual in the process is the golf course architect. Why? Because we are usually trained and have skills to cover all areas of the golf course — strategy, construction, infrastructure and aesthetics. I suppose you could add logistics to that list — e.g., the sequence, budgeting and timing of how it all comes together.


In my 30 years visiting clubs I have seen plenty of failures in those last few items (sequence, budget and timing) — work that was begun, but not completed...begun, but not completed well...and, shamefully, work begun that should never have been done in the first place. Another topic (for another time) would be the ill-advised clubhouse, swimming pool or other club work that draws down the budget to fix or better the golf course — such as the $20 million clubhouse that is built on top of once great holes in order to keep the course open and not interrupt the status quo of club life.

[corey miller]

A well educated Superintendent is more than capable of doing some of the work. 


However, what I don't understand is that if we are going to treat consulting architects as deities, why do we leave it to others to make decisions as to green speed and height of rough?  Certainly that has more implications for play and playablility than the always lauded green expansions.

[David_Elvins]

   Hanse's work at WF (which is getting rave reviews) is the perfect example of why a club needs an architect to do virtually all the things on my list.

I struggle to see how Winged Foot is a good example for anything other than a handful of elite US Open clubs.


The changes to the course since the last US Open have cost many millions of dollars and led to what seems like limited improvement to the course. 


That's not an example that most clubs should follow, imo.

[Forrest Richardson]

Corey — Golf architects get asked, occasionally, about green speeds, rough, etc.  Of course we weigh in heavily on this when we first go about designing a new course, or re-work an existing club. I often become involved in such discussions when visiting a club to discuss changes, such as re-surfacing greens.

Set-up and conditioning are up to the committees, owners and operators — at least for the most part. While I can "suggest" and provide an "Owner's Manual" for the course, I don't have the control once we're done.

As for GCAs being treated as "deities" ... I'm not sure that applies to the majority of us! Perhaps a few...perhaps some here on the Atlas has this regard...and I suppose there are the player-designers who often get praised as deities. All "perhaps".

[Jeff_Brauer]

Diety.....devil....dumbass.....most of what we get called seems to start with a D.


Although, the Diety (i.e., star system) applies in gca, and I have to believe one of the top guys could suggest moving a bunker and everyone oohs and ahs.  One of the rest of us suggests it and it would be "Dumbass tried to move one of our bunkers!"    So many get good architecture confused with either maintenance or celebrity status of the architect.


Corey Miller:  Does your comment anticipate the super is capable of envisioning design changes, or just carrying them out?  Many are great at construction, a few good at design, and even then, at least some consultation for a broader perspective never hurts.


I agree that Winged Foot is such a special case (as is Augusta) that it probably doesn't fit the mold for most courses to emulate.  Most of our master plans (albeit for much lesser courses) presume changes that will cut costs or potentially raise revenues, and ideally both, given how tough the golf biz is these days.  And, only a few clubs have "hosting a major" as one of their biz goals.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Personally, I’ve seen in a couple of clubs that when the super is excellent at his job, he starts to move-in to that crossover super/architect role for things like mowing lines and run-offs (often very successfully) but the line then gets blurred and the club trusts him with pure design/build work, often far less successfully.


Long-winded way of saying that many clubs don’t know where the demarcation between super and architect should be.

[Forrest Richardson]

Once you realize that (for the most part) mowing lines, bunker edging, rough heights, etc. are all very temporary and "moments in time" on a golf course, you begin to understand where golf course architecture actually resides.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Temporary, yes, and easily changeable for mow lines.  But design seeks the best solution, which at least trends towards permanence, no?  So, is the definition of when to engage an architect reduced to "If we can fix a flub cheap, we won't use an architect?"


My mom used to say, "There's a little trick (or science) to everything."  Everything is designed.  It is either designed well or designed badly.  Not much in between.  Even "details" like mowing lines.  How they flow and fit the landscape can be attractive and strategic, or it can just be wider or narrower. 


Would you rather have someone trained in landscape architecture, who has thought about and executed such things for decades looking at this type of design problem, or super who was assigned the task of changing mowing lines by the green chair yesterday at the meeting?  I mean, for a measly $2500, wouldn't it pay to get it closer to visually and strategically correct (albeit, both, particularly the latter are subjective to a degree)? 


And, for that matter, not every architect is as strong visually and/or strategically as they ideally might be.  I suspect many in house efforts came when they tried an architect on a low ball budget, i.e., we just need you to draw up our ideas, or "we only want to spend $1000 and have you make one visit" and didn't get what they wanted.  What they probably need is to pay a bit more and have the gca committed to that project to get the best.


Of course, if they lay it out themselves, they may not ever know just how much better it could be, either.  Or, have such an ego that whoever laid it out can't conceive of it being better, i.e., pride of authorship.  Or, they just haven't realized or don't care about the above - i.e., It is either designed well or designed badly.  Not much in between.


Of course part II, as mentioned there are supers who are quite good at it, having studied design a bit, and more so, having studied their own course even more than quite a bit.  So, results no matter how its done are both all over the map, and of course, subject to the whims and opinions of every golfer who plays there.  Sometimes, little design issues go back and forth many times at nearly every club, and some public courses, too.