Measuring an Architect's Impact on the Game

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks, Tom.  That description of the creative process -- hours passing, mind wandering, ideas flowing and changing and taking shape -- was very neat.

Peter

[Tom_Doak]

Matt:

I am home, so a couple of answers and then I'm off to bed.

We do not look for property that fits our design style.  We look for property that offers opportunities to build something different.

We've done a few courses with residential development.  Riverfront, as Carl Rogers would attest to, is overwhelmed by the houses because it was built through soybean fields and there was no mature vegetation to separate the golf from the housing.  Can't win there.  However, I am extremely pleased with the work we did at Tumble Creek in Washington ... the course is integrated with a residential development, but the houses are mostly hidden by setbacks and by mature trees, and there are enough places where the holes come together in big open spaces that it doesn't feel like a residential course at all.  I think the project we're building near Bend, Oregon also has a fine land plan (because I did a lot of it myself).  And even Quail Crossing in Evansville works pretty well at integrating golf and housing, though I haven't seen it for 7-8 years and I don't know if the houses are starting to swallow it.

There are certainly other good examples -- one of the first, St. George's Hill in England, is a good sight better than Tumble Creek, Cuscowilla or Wade Hampton.

[Matt Varney]

Tom,

Go to bed the last time you and I chatted you were on your way to NZ.

Thanks for your answers to my questions and I agree that setbacks, large trees and having a land plan the keep the residential development away from the course but still offers nice views works best.  I think it can be achieved as long as scale and balance are factored into the equation so that the housing is not overpowering and encroaching on the golf course.

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

This is a wonderful topic for it is both objective and so very subjective at the same time. Obviously the Ross, Tilly's and Mac/Raynors impacted so many strategic aspects of the game.  It is easy to run with thoughts of what each and others brought to the evolution of the game via their design vision. However we have the Jones Sr  and then Dye period which now has evolved into the Coore and Doak with Jack and Fazio before that. Yet I would like to think that is the easy fun discussion. I have yet to discuss architecture with any of architects on here from Neal M to Mike Young to Baxter, Nuzzo or Doak for that matter that the impact on the game was not indirectly in the discussion. Every course and every hole brings something to the game and that is the beauty of the profession to me. The canvas is open to new thoughts every time and the game allows for this with open wrms. One can take the concepts of others or bring their own to the table. I think this brings us to TOC which set the wheel of anything is possible in motion.

[Kirk Gill]

Tom Doak - thanks for the insight into the process your team is going through at the CGA course. The particular role that course is slated to play in the local scene will give it a chance to make an impact on a lot of golfers. Congratulations.


One other thing that's come to mind reading this thread is the impact that an architect can have if much of their work is in a particular geographical area. Around here you have to think of Babe Lind, or Dick Phelps, and more recently Jim Engh. It's not necessarily "giving back" per se, and I don't know that these architects worked pro bono to create their local body of work. Still, that work will be making an impact around here for a long time to come.

[TEPaul]

"How much impact does a dead architect have on the game if most (perhaps over 80% of) golfers will never have the opportunity to play a course he designed?"


Tim:

I think it's a crying shame that this question was apparently never asked of "The Father of American Golf Architecture", Charles Blair Macdonald! If he'd heard that the public golfer had some problem with who he designed for in his career and his impact on the game not having done something for the public, I have no doubt he probably would've said:

"Oh Yeah? Well tell them to just go eat cake!"

[Tom_Doak]

Tom P:

Do you really think so?  Macdonald cared deeply about giving American golfers the chance to experience the best of the game as it was played overseas -- do you really think he didn't care about the less affluent, as opposed to just assuming that less affluent Americans just wouldn't play golf?

Whatever the real answer, we are busy making up for his oversight out in Bandon.

[TEPaul]

TomD:

I was just trying to be humorous but you know that's probably a very good question.

Macdonald definitely had his own opinions on things and some very strong ones at that, and it seems to me looking through what they were on particular issues makes him almost impossible to categorize or be general about.

I mean what he did that time at the Shinnecock Open by offering to play with the black player when no one else would is very cool, in my book. But Macdonald's ideas on which clubs should make up the membership of the USGA was pretty ultra-elitist. And his ideas on I&B and the issue of "standardization" is truly fascinating and super old fashioned.

So, I don't know what he felt about public golfers. My sense is that with his complete love of what is sort of generally referred to as "the Spirit of St Andrews" he would've been all for it in America.

And what he had to say about that 1920s concept of whether golf was a "sport" or a "game" was actually pretty hilarious.

[Peter Pallotta]

Tom(s) -

I think that if CB Macdonald had had connections with mayors and town councils across America instead of/in addition to his contacts on Wall Street, the public game might've developed quite differently. (It just occurred to me that I've taken that idea from someone else; I think it might've been from something Tom D said a while back). But then again, if that were the case he probably wouldn't have become the CB Macdonald we know.

It's interesting to think about how that's changed, e.g. what Macdonald seemed to do 'alone' has now been spilt into two. That is, Macdonald as mover and shaker AND architect has become mover and shaker (e.g. Mike Keiser, Donald Trump etc) PLUS architect (Tom D, Tom F etc). 

Peter

[Tim Gavrich]

"How much impact does a dead architect have on the game if most (perhaps over 80% of) golfers will never have the opportunity to play a course he designed?"


Tim:

I think it's a crying shame that this question was apparently never asked of "The Father of American Golf Architecture", Charles Blair Macdonald! If he'd heard that the public golfer had some problem with who he designed for in his career and his impact on the game not having done something for the public, I have no doubt he probably would've said:

"Oh Yeah? Well tell them to just go eat cake!"

As humorous as the idea is, the view of some of these big-name architects who seem to only do big-budget playgrounds-of-the-rich-and-famous nowadays might not be so far off from this, it seems.  Many of the rich and famous play golf anyway; such projects just displace current golfers.  They don't bring new players to the game.

I'll exemplify my home state of Connecticut.  It would seem to me that Geoffrey Cornish has had a larger impact on the game of golf in Connecticut than have C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor.  Even though Yale and CC of Fairfield are pretty certainly two of the half dozen best golf courses in CT, their private natures (CCF to a much greater extent than Yale) have kept their respective clienteles very small.  In addition to his solid private courses (e.g. Hop Meadow, Ellington Ridge, Connecticut GC, etc.), he has courses like the two at Blackledge, Crestbrook Park, Orange Hills, Portland, Simsbury Farms, and others to his credit.  Is there any disputing that Cornish has brought more players to the game than Macdonald/Raynor (all they did in CT for the "common man" was Hotchkiss' course)?

I guess this discussion is kind of anti-architecturalist because it's fairly widely accepted that the quality of Macdonald's/Raynor's courses are higher than those of Cornish.  But if you can't afford to play a great golf course, a decent golf course is better than none at all.  So I guess that's what's at the root of my inquiry.  I can't stop any architect from taking a high-paying private job over a lower-budget job.  But perhaps crafting a great course for the masses will energize more people into the game and create more work for them in the future?

Youthful idealism over (for now).

[Tom_Doak]

Tim:

Your youthful idealism is just fine ... I grew up on one of Mr. Cornish's designs in Connecticut.  Of course, it was the contrast between Sterling Farms and Harbour Town and Pinehurst that really got me interested in golf architecture, but without Sterling Farms, I'd have had nowhere to play at all.