People on this site use words like "naturalness" and phrases such as "the course looks like it belongs there".  

I am not sure what they are on about.  I see the photos of courses that are beautiful, but not at all natural.  When one pulls back and sees a a course within an area, to look natural it should not be noticed.  The photos of Ballyneal and the other Doak course on The Eagle Has Landed Thread look like artificial courses imposed on the landscape, which is what they are.  

Somebody please explain what they are on about with the "natural" comments.  I clearly don't understand the lingo.

Ciao

Sean

I see the photos of courses that are beautiful, but not at all natural.  When one pulls back and sees a course within an area, to look natural it should not be noticed.

What are examples of natural courses?

From the first step I took on TD Pac Dunes when it was just 12 holes, I just could not get Crudan Bay out of my mind.  The golf course set up very non-linear, I got lost just trying to find the next tee...

I saw the construction of Pac Dunes for two years while playing Bandon, it is as close to natural as any course I have played.

Sean, Modern sensitivities (reads Pussies) makes all golf courses look like that.

I assume, even the Sheep Ranch, fails to utilize unmaintained ground/turf. Natural so to speak.

If that is the unnaturalness of which you speak, it cannot be avoided, only minimized, which is the distnction I'm making.

In a Behrian sense, the canvas that resembles the native surrounds, more than a game board, wins.

Royal Ashdown Forest deserves a mention. It could easily melt into the natural landscape if they stopped maintaining it for a little while. What a wonderful place....

I think that is a great definition for a natural course...How would the land fit within its surroundings if let go for a season or two?

Perhaps high sheep country in general fits the bill best.  There must be more examples out there, but these big blow out bunkers all over the place, huge greens and fairways are not in the least natural.

My wife is always on about making her garden look like she has tamed nature.  She likes her plants spilling over the borders, but it is a pain to cut the grass!

High sheep country? What is more natural about the high sheep country as compared to the Sand Hills of Nebraska, the Heathland or Barnbougle? If a big blowout bunker in Nebraska or Oregon is natural, its as natural as whatever you invision in high sheep country (perhaps pretty flowers spilling into the fairway). I don't think this has anything to do with naturalness, but in your own personal preferences.

Sean,

Could you further explain or cite examples of what YOU mean by "natural" in your reference to a golf course anywhere, which we all assume means something different than the rest of us.

Aside from that, however, could you ever truly see a completely "natural" golf course and by your "ruggedness", how far are we to take that image?  At what level does the golf course stop being a golf course and become the landscape it is built upon and furthermore, is this completely necessary in order to appear natural, or at least be accepted, or looked upon as being a natural course by todays critical standardization.  It is a golf course and insofar as saying it will in fact by it "nature" be somewhat "unnatural"...is that wrong, or don't you just like it?

John O Simmonds, among many other great Landscape Architects, Landscape Gardeners and famous painters throughout history... were known for understanding the connection of man and nature and mans never ending desire to control nature and build upon it.  However, they also knew enough to recognize/see the great qualities of the existing naturalness and so they designed and painted, but they always found the TRUE landscape character of each site and if it was there, but only weakly identified, they enhanced it through careful and sensitive means to make their work appear natural, not out of character, scale, proportion and balance, but all the time accepting the fact and realizing that ANY aspect of their work was unnatural, but at least they respected the site enough to know this and understand their relationship to it.  

Sean
That wasn't the answer I was looking for....I was hoping you share a little more. Please elaboate on your ideas regarding high sheep country.

Golf courses are man-made, so in that repect they are not natural, however their main components are the earth and grass, so in that respect they are natural, that is if they are built on a site where earth and grass are naturally occuring....that's one of the problems with a desert golf course.

Since a golf course is made by man, what you strive for is a golf course that melds and blends as best as possible with its natural circumstances....with the knowledge the historical model for golf is the links and a sandy site. Some do it better than others.

Tom MacWood said:

"Golf courses are man-made, so in that repect they are not natural, however their main components are the earth and grass, so in that respect they are natural, that is if they are built on a site where earth and grass are naturally occuring....that's one of the problems with a desert golf course."

Tom MacW:

It sure is.  

"Since a golf course is made by man, what you strive for is a golf course that melds and blends as best as possible with its natural circumstances....with the knowledge the historical model for golf is the links and a sandy site. Some do it better than others."

The knowledge the historical model for golf is the links and a sandy site???"

Come on man, what does that really have to do with how well good man-made golf architecture the "lines" of which blends into its particular site ("circumstances, as you say) looks and plays today? Have you ever seen a natural sand dune in the Canadian Rockies? Have you even seen naturally occuring sand there?

It's just great that golf and perhaps even golf architecture started in the linksland of Scotland but it also immigated out of the linksland and to vastly different sites and circumstances beginning over 150 years ago. Isn't it about time golf architecture attempts to do its own thing in sites around the world using materials that are natural to particular and various circumstances? More particularly isn't it about time it stops using materials that are wholly unnatural to various sites, particularly if it ever really does want to push the envelop of appearing as natural and naturally occuring as possible?

Golf course architecture certainly doesn't have all that many sylistic and artistic restraints compared to the architecture of other sports but if it's to be really free architecturally it's about time golf architects learn or just admit that it really isn't necessary to haul sand into every site they go to if there is no naturally occuring sand with hundreds of miles of that site.

It's not as if sites all over the world don't offer interesting alternatives and interesting materials to take the place of sand bunkering as a feature so as to make golf courses look more natural to what you call their 'natural circumstances'.

I guess the question is where are the architects who have the imagination and the guts to break free of that one odd vestige of linksland golf---the sand bunker--- that's not exactly necessary to golf or architecture but has totally hung on through these last 150 years when golf left the linksland?

I've literally never heard any architect explain why sand bunkering on sites that have no sand is necessary other than the fact that everyone seems to think it's necessary.

There are certainly enough alternatives and they should be tried in the future, and most certainly if architects really are interested in going more "site natural" in the things they do and with the things they use.

Who's ever seen a natural sand blowout or sand dune in the Canadian Rockies? Who's even seen naturally occuring sand there?

The tie in to the natural surroundings is the key IMHO.  I truly enjoyed playing Black Mesa but don't think it was possible to tie the fairway and first-cut grasses into the very rocky "rough" areas in the relatively seamless fashion that C&C were able to do at Talking Stick, or Tom Doak & Co at Apache Stronghold.  

True, the green grass of the fairway is not natural in the slightest, but given that obvious caveat, the tie ins to nature are the key.

I thought the fairway, and in some cases greenside, bunkering at TSN tied into the desert far better than most.  And I just love the little bunker left of #11 at Pacific Dunes, which looks like it has been there for an eon.

What I consider "unnatural" golf architecture, for better or worse, is Pete Dye's island greens, or his short par 4 with the giant mound rearing up out of a flattish fairway and hiding all pins but the one set right by the lake on the left.  Now to me that's "unnatural" and therefore less desirable than the examples above.

Given all this, it's hard to reconcile the typical GCAer's simultaneous admiration of the "natural" look and the totally artificial look of many of MacDonald/Raynor's creations.  The high right side of #7 Redan at Chicago Golf Club comes to mind!

I guess the solution to this apparent contradiction is the love and appreciation of the historical side of classical golf, whether it's MacKenzie on the one hand or MacDonald on the other.

TE
Golf was born on sand, the historical model for a golf course is sandy, so no, to answer your question, a golf course in the Canadian Rockies is not typcial of the natural model and therefore it can not be as natural (or typical), as much as I love Stanley Thompson. One of the primary components of a golf course (commonly man-made in modern times) is the sand hazard, it was naturally occuring on the historic model....there aren't too many naturally occuring sanddunes in the Rockies....High Sheep Country, now that is another story.

I played Alwoodley GC in Leeds and as we sat outside the clubhouse we all agreed that the course was very natural.

My reasons for this is:
-The colouring. Irregation and fertilizing are kept to a minimum allowing the fairways and greens to melt in to the surroundings as good as possible. The course isn't only green in different tones, but also has yellow and brownish at places. The rough is heather, long pale grass and gorse.
-The routing. You never see more than two or three greens from anywhere on the course, and that gives you a feeling that you are "in the nature".
-The way earth hasn't been moved. You can still see marks of the agicultural activites from pre 1907 on the fairways.

It is just a feeling of the course being layed out and not built or man made.

Tom MacW:

Regarding your post #26, tell me something I don't know rather than repeating what I just said.

I more than realize what the historical model is for a golf course and golf course architecture. However, as Max Behr very correctly mentioned, the sand bunker on many courses in this world is not a natural feature and frankly is not really a necessary feature. There certainly are natural alternatives in various sites to the sand bunker, you know?

And if you don't think so, and you think that for some reason the sand bunker actually is a necessary or essential feature on all golf courses all over the world, even those where sand is not natural, I wish you'd try to tell me why you think that's so. But if your only answer is that you feel that so many people feel that way because it's been that way so long, then don't bother answering the question.