Pat Mucci,
I should have known that there had to be a trick to it when you make a blanket statement.
Well, you should have known better.
I can't be blamed because you were unfamiliar with GCGC and their desire to have foursomes play in approximately 3 hours, without interruption..
How would you evaluate Seminole's halfway house ?[/color]
But my point still stands, different horses for different courses. If a course does have a half way house, it is important that it has the look and functionality to suit that particular course.
Could you describe how the halfway house should look and function at Pacific Dunes versus Shadow Creek.
Shoal Creek versus Sand Hills
Pete Dye's TPC versus Harbour Town ?
Should each architect have their own distinct style and functionality for the halfway houses that populate their golf courses ?
Should they be part of the original design ?
Should designers have a seperate department to handle this task ?
How about the clubhouse ?
According to your theory, shouldn't the club house have the same look and functionality as the golf course ?
Could you explain how a halfway house, or clubhouse would have the same functionality of the golf course ?[/color]
Pat Mucci,
Based on the "Pat Mucci Posting Theorem" that I developed some time back -"The quality of a Pat Mucci post is inversely proportional to the number of question marks it contains"- I think it would be fair to say that was not one of your better posts.
Most of the questions are a bit irrelevant to me as I live in Austraila, not eastern USA. One of the things that is dissapointing about this site for me is the constant referal to courses in NE America. It is always exciting when a more general topic such as this one comes up on the board that i can have a crack at jumping into. Therefor it is extremely dissapointing that you so often seem unable to discuss a general topic such as this one without trying to mold it into a thread that references the 30 or so exclusive clubs that you play in your corner of the world.
I think that it is great that Garden City has no half way house. When you play 18 holes in 3 hours there seems no need for a half way house, so that is perfect for the course. Although the fact that it takes 3 hours to play a round of golf is more a function of the exclusive small male membership than the lack of a half way house.
Personally I am more inclusionary, the more people playing golf, the better ,whether they are white, black, male or female. Some other clubs think the same way. These Clubs often have full time sheets, meaning 4-4.5 hour rounds are often the norm, and a half way snack a convenience. These clubs often have female members who are not as likely to urinate on a tree as a man, meaning on-course ameneties are required. So when you say that all clubs should aspire to have a half way house like Garden City, I find it very hard to see how this could be achieved without every club aspiring to have the membership structure of Garden City, a structure that, believe me, not many clubs would aspire to!
I am not sure whether your questions about clubhouses and half way houses were serious or not. But I would have thought the answers were fairly logical. In my experience, when the course designer has input into the clubhouse design, there is a greater chance that the clubhouse will fit in aesthetically with the course (sorry but specific examples wouldn't mean much to you). The same goes for halfway houses.
This thread started with Michael asking a question about how to construct half way house that didn't look over the top on an old traditional course. I suggested that he consider constructing the half way hut in the similar style to the clubhouse. This was based on research I conducted of various half way huts recently when helping to put together a design brief for the half way hut on a renovation project. I hope he takes the suggestion on board, along with your advice that all clubs should fall into line with your club, a club that is an outlier and an anomoly in the golfing world.