[paul cowley]

....wilst flipping thru posts on bunker 'styles', and on the importance of placement over look, I wondered....
   Who in the past or present would be most capable of working in a variety of styles?...who would be least?

  Could Raynor have, if pressed, produced stylistic work ala Mackenzie....could Coore effect a Raynor on demand?....if 'style' is just the fleshing out of the strategic skeleton, which designers, past or present, could best work in a style other than their own?.....

[paul cowley]

....great question.

[paul cowley]

...does this question also ask who has or has had the most stylistic evolution?

[paul cowley]

 ...yeah.

[paul cowley]

 Devolution too?

[paul cowley]

...I don't think so ....I can't think of anyone of talent who has successfully devolved to a better level  

[paul cowley]

 ...but don't you think  devolution counts if you are considering the 'less is more' adage when contrasting the body of a single persons work ?

[Tom_Doak]

Paul:

I believe that Bill Coore has done something close to Ross or Raynor on occasion.

We certainly have done MacKenzie, Raynor, Ross and even Tillinghast in our restoration work ... and I am pretty confident we could do the same on our new courses if we really wanted to.  But we're still tinkering around with different styles of our own.

Pete Dye's original 18 holes at Crooked Stick included the full eclectic of those four ... there were bunkers and greens in homage to each of them.

[paul cowley]

Tom...thanks for the post...I was beginning to swirl and I need to get to work.

[paul cowley]

...but not so fast...my question was not as much 'who could or has', but who was or is best [or least] versatile.

[TEPaul]

I don't know who has but I know who could and probably will and pretty damn quick too.

You and the Davis Love Co. You wouldn't be asking a question like this if you didn't have this idea swirling in your mind. Don't try and deny it either. You can't double talk Old Tom here---I'm from New York City and I can tell what people are thinking at all times. It's true isn't it? Isn't it? ISN'T IT?

Yeah, I knew it.

I'd like to see some versatility with features that sort of function like bunkering but really aren't bunkers. I think I'm getting more and more anti-sand, particularly where sand soil is not naturally occuring. Putting sand in all golf locations just ain't that natural, it ain't fittin'....it just ain't fittin', ain't fittin'...

[paul cowley]

 Tom, I didn't know you were from the city but anyway , I think its time you get on the road ....go buy an old woody and put a mattress in the back and head south, we got cures for what ails you!

[Jeff_Brauer]

Paul,

I'll answer, providing you get some help!

Historically, Tillie seemed the most versatile.  He did Golden Valley in MN with very simple bunkers a year after SFCC's wavy, lacy bunkers, for example.  I still tend to think it was his construction crews and assistant Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, etc. who account for the differences, but they are there, nonetheless.

I can't think of anyone off hand in modern times who has displayed a radical difference in the same time period, but there probably are some.  My best variance example would be the different bunker styles at the Wilderness, Quarry and Legend in Minnesota, which was a conscious decison to make those courses look different in the same area.

Almost all of us evolve our styles to fit the times.  Even the most basic architects saw their bunker style lean to the eye candy in the 80's and 90's - I doubt you could compete for most jobs without going for "the look."  Now, I suspect (like MacKenzie in the depression) that we are moving to flatter, simpler to maintain bunkers because they fit the times......

[TEPaul]

"Historically, Tillie seemed the most versatile.  He did Golden Valley in MN with very simple bunkers a year after SFCC's wavy, lacy bunkers, for example.  I still tend to think it was his construction crews and assistant Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, etc. who account for the differences, but they are there, nonetheless."

Jeff:

I love it. I can just see Tillie trying to balance himself on his  shooting stick with his flask in one hand and waving his other hand screaming;

"Goddamn it you morons, I want a bunker over there that looks like a cloud, and another one over there that look like petunias, some out there that look like a bunch of fighting cocks in a ring and one over there that looks like a couple of mating cockatoos!!"

[TEPaul]

Can anyone deny the greatest variation in bunker styles was Desmond Muirhead? His Stone Harbor style damn near got him expunged from the biness. I think Stone Harbor should restore all his original bunkers to their former glory---eg the mermaid, the Norse Sword, the Jaws, the bunker in the shape of the state of New Jersey, etc.  

Are they trashing the Edsels that're still out there? Of course not---they're lovingly restoring them.

Hey Paul, I got a great idea for some real variety in bunkering even all architecture. Let's call the style "geometric". Maybe we can start a new era.

What goes around comes around Pal!

[TEPaul]

Paul:

Let's develop the "Early American Colonial style bunker", or "the Revolutionary War style bunker" or maybe we can do an original "Boer bunker" (ultra natural) that hardly any golfers will even notice is there!  

I'd like to try to do the original "privy bunker" or alternatively the "outhouse style" bunker. The question is whether to do a one holer or two holer.

We could even do a takeoff privy bunker concept on a question about that from President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln personally got in a carriage and went all the way out into the field from D.C to Maryland to see what in the hell McCellan was procrastinating so much for. When Lincoln got to McCellan's headquarters out in the field there was no one there except two privates digging a hole. Abe asked them what they were doing and they told him they were digging a privy for General McCellan. Abe asked them if it was going to be a one holer or a two holer and the privates told the President it was going to be one holer.

Lincoln said;

"Well, that's a very good thing because if it was a two holer before General McClellan could make up his mind he'd probably beshit himself."

I'm sure you can see the beauty of a two holer "privy bunker" in a strategic sense.

[Mike_Cirba]

Tilly & Flynn had the most versatility of style that I've seen.

Ironically, Ross did, as well, but somehow that's gotten lost.

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