[Mike Hendren]

Thoughts?

[Ian Andrew]

There are lots of architects who can build beautiful holes. There are only a few who who can build holes that are more fun to play with each round.

Modern architecture seems to suggest a course that is easy to understand and play the first time. Those courses usually look nice too, but I find those courses do not draw me out a second time like a course with more mystery.

Not all golf architecture has succumbed to this, but a picture of one of your holes in golf digest really helps get an architect attention.

[A.G._Crockett]

Without question!

Courses are marketed by total yardage, with 7000 yds. (or more) as an absolute minimum for new construction.

Giant bunkers that are not in play.  Huge greens that are virtually flat.

"Name" architects whose fees will force the courses they build to overcharge for courses that are like expensive rice cakes.  They cost a lot and look like food, but have no flavor and leave you hungry.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Bogey,

Yes, for reasons I have expounded on, but no, to the degree suggested in your witty catchphrase. The sky isn't falling, and if there was ever a time when you couldn't generalize about architecture, this might be it!

Generally, I think because of television we are all more visual than our forebearers, and design reflects that.

On the other hand, MacKenzie certainly was a visual architect, and it could just be that most of us are trying to meet that standard, albeit, with earthmoving machinery substituting for the natural beauty of a Cypress Point.  Once something like that course is out there, its hard not to want to equal it, even if your site isn't quite as good!

9 out of 10 golf course architect prefer Crest...um, MacKenzies work, at least by reading our press releases....So, basically, what is the harm in that?

Also, there is another side to Mr. Crocketts argument - postulated by Mr. Doak a long time ago - what bunkers are in play, and for whom?  Many would criticize the RTJ/Oakland Hills mentality of bunkers ONLY at the designated turning point of 285 or whatever yards, with no thought given to lesser players, no?  And, certainly, Mac's bunkering was somewhat random......

The other items in Mr. Crockett's post have been discussed often here, and whether you agree or not, there are reasons for those changes to architecture......

[ed_getka]

Mike,
  If you pay attention to marketing, I would say yes. And as Ian points out getting something in one of the rags will probably help business prospects, and obviously a low key, lay of the land course that doesn't photograph well is not going to make the cut.
   So for the majority of golfers I think it is true, but I know for myself that is not the case. Most of the courses I would really like to see, the majority of golfers have never heard of. For example, how many golfers (outside of here) do you know who have heard of Myopia, Prairie Dunes, Prestwick, Machrihanish, etc...

[PThomas]

no!  the glass is half full too!

thru the likes of the archies on this site, etc., and people on this site the tide has turned!

[rgkeller]

Thoughts?

To the sensational and to the "picture postcard syndrome" and its component, the "pretty bunker disease."

[T_MacWood]

Maybe. But there has long been a desire to build sensational or spectacular golf courses (Pebble Beach, Cypress Point, Olympic, Royal Palms, Banff, Pine Valley, Seminole, Ponte Vedra, Lido, NGLA, Princes, Hirono, Bethpage, etc.), but maybe not to the same degree as today....where a single signature hole photo in Links magazine very well could sell a pricey lot or stimulate a reservation at an expensive resort.

However today there does appear to be a shortage of very solid, perhaps visually modest in comparison to some, more natural courses of the Donald Ross or William Flynn type.

[Mike Benham]

The Donald says "yes" and he adds that it is about time ...

[RJ_Daley]

MIke, it hasn't fully succumbed.  It has partially given over to the sensational.  It is bifurcated.  The target market is what determines the level of sensationalism.  Intellingent design in GCA means game centric, efficient, and frugal design intended to offer more good golf to more people who want to play more, not pay more. (Wieman)

It is not sensational if it happens to be located next to a sensational setting.  That is just a fortuitous by-product or windfall to the design process.  In my mind, sensational golf course architecture is the artificial addition or incorporation into the design of superflous features to achieve a marketing effect WOW factor.  

I think it all comes down to the beholder.  Most of us know when we see an intelligent design feature that has everything to do with enhancing the game of golf, and which are just placed or manufactured gratuitously to pander to the sensational seeking herd mentality.  

It doesn't matter which economic strata the course development cost is in either.  Pacific Dunes, Sand Hills, Ballyneal, Friars Head are not sensational, they are intelligent design in a sensational setting.  Ocean Trails (Trump acres?), Pelican Hills, Shadow Creek, etc are sensational.

Don't we see the same sort of distinction in a different form in journalism?  There are the popular rags with bombastic headlines and shallow reporting, and the more informative and well crafted news stories oriented towards details and facts.

[Jeff_Brauer]

RJ,

I agree with most of your post, especially the game centric phrase.  No matter what Mac did, it was game centric, and attractive. That should be the mantra of all design.

I also agree with the idea that it is a big world out there.  As long as the market supports some who will pay for glitz, I am sure gca types will get requests for those types design.  In other words, a few Trump Nationals bother me not at all.  A country full of them would.  

However, if you look at what each of the 150 new courses built this year cost, I am sure there aren't more than a handful built at great expense to be spectacular.  AS you suggest, only a portion of the field has "succumbed".

[TEPaul]

I think it certainly has. To what degree I couldn't say. But these are my thoughts on the general subject;

At some point in its evolution, golf course architecture seriously morphed with "Art" ideas, particularly landscape architecture art ideas and as it did fundamental "Art Principles" came into play in golf course architecture where before that time they didn't really inter-relate at all.

What are those fundamental "Art Principles" that morphed into and affected golf course architecture so? According to Cornish & Whitten they are;

1. Harmony
2. Balance
3. Rhythm
4. Emphasis

One could probably rightly assume that "Art Principles" are almost entirely visual or visual stimuli. But how much does what's visual, or visually appealing or interesting in some way have to do with how well and how interesting a particular golf hole may play?

That is the fundamental question. In my opinion, not all that much, in the final analysis, even if one would have to admit that what's visually appealing in golf architecture, golf courses and golf holes is very important to so many golfers.

As an example of how much all this has changed from that time perhaps before the fundamentals of "Art Principles"  came into golf course architecture as compared to that time after "Art Principles" did come into golf architecture so totally, one probably just needs to look at the interesting evolution of the fact of blindness in golf architecture over the last 150 years or so.

It's no secret at all that there was an early time in golf course architecture and golf that blindness in certain ways was considered an architecturally "prized" thing for courses and holes to have and then really remarkably all that changed rather quickly to the feeling that blindness shouldn't much exist in good golf architecture.

If that transformation of opinion wasn't primarily due to the onset of "Art Principles" into golf architecture I would be totally shocked. I think there's no question of it.

The fact is that in those early times before sophisticated golf course architecture, golfers and the earliest architects basically used the forms of raw Nature for the field of play. Nature obviously doesn't conform completely to all of Man's  perceptions of "Art Priniciples", certainly not in the common occurence of blindness in raw Nature.

So, yes, to the degree that golf architects fixate on and apply dramatic "Art Principles" to golf course architecture they probably do let golf architecture succumb to the sensational, or the visually sensational.

Does what's visually sensational correlate to good and exciting golf and golf holes and how they play? Perhaps just somewhat, but essentially not really, in my opinion.

[TEPaul]

What would be some examples of good golf holes that have no sensationalism to them visually---that have almost nothing in the way of applied "Art Principles" to them?

Frankly, at first blush, it might seem hard to think of any or name any good golf holes that have little or no visual sensation to them or nothing in the way of applied "Art Principles".

But I did see about six of them yesterday at GCGC. Holes #3,4,7,8,17 and some of many of the rest couldn't even be seen from the tee because of the height of the fescue in front of you. Are there any applied art or landscape architecture "Art Principles" in looking across the top of an expanse of fescue that blinds everything that lies beyond it in the direction you understand you should go? Not in the slightest. But it certainly is interesting, and challenging and fun, at least to me, to try to just imagine where the best way is to go and what lies beyond that cannot be seen.

[TEPaul]

Pat:

I got a funny story for you of what the present blindness on some of the holes of GCGC created by the fescue can do to a golfer.

The fellow I played yesterday from Quebec said he played a practice round on Sunday at GCGC never having seen the course before. And so, standing on the 3rd tee he looked around and could see nothing of the fairway on the 3rd hole because of the fescue in front of it.

So do you know what he did? He looked out to the left and spotted the fairway on #17 coming down the other way and he just assumed that the 3rd hole must be a dogleg right around the trees off the tee on #3 and on the left of #17 fairway. So he played a nice tee shot off the 3rd tee to the 17th tee fairway, got out there and realized----OOOPs----look at all that fairway and that green way over on the right he couldn't see on the 3rd tee!  

[Mark_Rowlinson]

I rather suspect that all the TV coverage from Zeppelins and high towers is going to rebound and that so many of the modern courses are going to be revealed for what they are - housing estates with fairways threaded through them.  One of these days a TV golf director will realise that those shots they get from Shinnecock, TOC, Merion or Royal Melbourne have so much greater beauty to them that they begin to shy away even from Pebble Beach, in which housing and other human monstrosities can be seen on just about every hole, despite the presence of the ocean, and that cart paths look awful when viewed from the blimp.

[Tom_Doak]

For the most part, I think it has.  When was the last time you remember someone talking about a good modern course that looked anything like a Donald Ross course?  On less than 200 acres, or with less than 50 bunkers?

I've done some projects which were deliberately "less spectacular" visually, and none of them have been received with the same fanfare as their sexier siblings.  Tumble Creek is a good example -- Jonathan can't figure out what he didn't like about it, but I think what he didn't like about it is that it wasn't overdone.

[J_McKenzie]

     
     "We believe modern course should be designed in the traditional manner, where emphasis is placed on strategy and playability, and creativity is reflected in the subtleties of the detail.  In the last 20 years, it seems most new courses were built to be dazziling or stupendous.  'Stupendous' should not be the goal.  'Pleasing' should be the goal."

                                   -Davis Love III

I thought this quote from Davis was relavent to this thread, especially if you substitute "sensational" for "spectacular".

[TEPaul]

This Love Design Co in my opinion is on a most interesting and exciting road in architecture. The thing I like about all the guys in that outfit is they have opinions on things that're uniquely their own. This outfit does not appear to be playing "follow the leader" to anyone. The things that seem to inspire them--particularly some things in combination are fascinating to me. I think they have real talent for applying some pretty unique and interesting concepts and ideas in both play and look. I may be wrong but I got this sneaking suspicion that a guy who may've had more influence in certain ways on Davis Love in golf and maybe architecture too than I would've thought is Ben Crenshaw. I mayve only seen one of their courses and it just may've been the first one they ever did--I think it was called Laurel Island Links, but when I first saw it everything about it just felt right and good, the look, the way it played, the aura etc. And I could certainly see in it that the last thing they were thinking about doing is trying to act sensational!   Or as Davis Love said in that quote above---stupendous or dazzling. To me it just looks like the Love Design Co has some all around great taste.

[Dan Kelly]

I've done some projects which were deliberately "less spectacular" visually, and none of them have been received with the same fanfare as their sexier siblings.

Tom --

Could any of these "sexier siblings" have been better golf courses, in your opinion, if your clients had been willing to accept "less spectacular"?

Dan

[Tom_Doak]

Dan:

I'm not sure Pacific Dunes or Barnbougle would be any better of a golf course if we hadn't done some bunkers for visual purposes.  But they wouldn't be any worse, either, and they might have cost a bit less to build.

[paul cowley]

TEP... thankyou and we are an interesting group [at least to us]....maybe its because Davis' career is not dependent on GCA that the superfluous has very little relevance here ....its almost a litmus test of what or what not to keep [just this week we wiped out a great looking bunker on a par three we were building because making it a greenside mound would have been more challenging for the better player, while a bunker would have the opposite effect for the less able].Anything excessive is usually eliminated.....maybe in the big annals of design it will hurt us, only time will tell...but I can say that everyone from Davis down is comfortable with this approach because it really helps define what the essence of a hole....if it depends on something excessive for interest then its probably a poor hole to begin with.

Every hole starts out with a complete strategic storyline and then becomes dressed out in whatever seems to fit the site or venue the best.....I can honestly say that we have never built a hole in 13 years with a photo op as the driving force.

On occasion some of our attempts to create something from a nothing site have resulted in photo ops but hey, sometimes good form can really follow function....or maybe we were creative [or lucky] enough to incorporate this in our design

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