rgkeller,

Please wait. If your fears are realised beyond opening day, well said, and well forewarned. For now, let's see what they do first.

A Clayman,

Craig E- The ten mil Doak spent at TT is minimalistic when compared to TF and others.

So the name of the architect determines if you classify the work as minimalist ??

There's no cup.  I've carefully placed the flagstick so as to disturb no soil.

I like Ian's take on minimalism. Therefore I think the definition of a minimalist is- An architect who builds the least amount of crap.

Tom, as my mother used to say, "Tell the truth and shame the devil."  

I, for one, don't care how much dirt is moved as long as the finished product provides a strategic challange that fits the landscape around it.  I'm more worried about the ends than the means.  If you moved a big pile of dirt somewhere and created a great course I'd be happier than if you moved next to nothing and created a boring course.  And I'd certainly be much happier than if you moved a big pile and created a non-strategic piece of over-engineered crap.  I guess for me, the end justifies the means.

Tom Doak - Since I'm fresh from Apache Stronghold, I'm curious how much dirt you moved there.

It looked like that was a minimalist design in general.
Maybe the par 3 #3 you moved some dirt.
The Par 4 #5 green - Those contours couldn't have been there before?
Maybe the canyon hole #13 you moved some dirt?
#18 tee and canyon - Was that there before?

Jack Nicholson - "You can't handle the truth."

Isn't asking how much dirt was moved akin to asking a magician to reveal how a trick was done?

This whole issue reminds me of Tom Wolfe's book The Painted Word.  In it, he mocks the modern art "cognoscenti" who evaluated the quality of a painting by sidling up to the canvas and judging the amount of paint used.  

Tom Doak:

Don't tell. If you do there're going to be a bunch of people on here that're going to tell you they knew all along and that's crap--I gaurantee it. Go ahead and tell anyone what you were thinking about when you designed and built some holes--where the inspiration came from and what the concept was to be perhaps but don't tell them what you found and what you made. Don't ever tell in detail what you made and what you didn't. If you never tell, you'll probably get some architectural egos claiming you manufactured something you never even touched and who has the last laugh then?

Tom D,

I wouldn't tell a soul about the earthmoving.  It is your trade secret.  No one needs to know and if you are achieving a natural look without anyone knowing that it was unnatural in the first place then why spoil it.

It would be like being a magician who performs a trick and then shows the audience how it was done.

Let them believe that the site was natural.  There are so many on here that just don't realise how much actually does get moved on a site.

Many here can't even comprehend how much 400 000 cubic yards is.  The largest earthmoving I have been involved with is 1 million m3 but that was to build the high speed railway from Oslo's airport to the city centre and that took us 1.5 years of 40 tonn excavators and god knows how many dumpers.

To give people an idea of how much (400 000 cubic yards) 300 000 m3 is think of this:

One Moxy dumper can carry approximately 20 m3.  So to move 300 000 m3 of clay or earth you need 15,000 truckloads of Moxy's.

A 40 tonn excavator can excavate approximately 1.5 to 2.5 m3 per bucket so that is 120 000 bucket loads at least.

The other thing you have to realise is that when we talk about earthmoving it is the compacted state we talk about.  When you excavate the material you are digging usually expands by about 20% to 40% depending on what you are excavating.  When we blast here in Norway we have to times the natural state of rock by 60% to get the blasted state to be loaded.

Lets get back to sand capping and how much work that actually is.

Lets presume that we use a short Par 4 as our median.  A short par 4 has an acerage of about 5.5 acres (Routing the Golf Course - Forrest Richardson) this is equivalent to  22 000 m2.

Now lets assume a capping of 30cm compacted for the golf hole.  Sand compacts about 30% so to achieve 30cm compacted fairway we need approximately 40 cm on the fairway before tracking in by the dozer.

So, here we go:

22 000 m2 of golf hole x 18 holes = 400 000 m2

400 000m2 x 0.4 = 160 000 m3

160 000 m3 / 20 m3 per truckload = 8 000 trucks needed to cap the whole course.

Lets now presume that a D6 dozer is going to push this out on the fairway.  Lets also presume that it is not going to push more than 50 metres.  According to my Caterpillar performance handbook a normal D6M can push on average 239m3 using a semi universal blade with an experienced driver working at approximately 80% hour rate.

160 000 m3 / 239m3/hr = 669 hours.  

So it is going to take at least 7 weeks to spread all of this sand over an 18 hole golf course using a D6M dozer.

Now I don't really care how a golf course is made as long as it is fun and looks as natural as it can when finished but for some on this website to say sand capping is minimalistic is IMHO just not true.  It requires a lot of man hours as well as money.

Minimalism in this day and age does not exist anymore.

Brian

I think what we are witnessing is someone trying to come to terms with a philosophy they expounded several years ago.  What minimalism meant to them back then has evolved, possibly become irrelevant, or restrictive, because they have outgrown the term.  Possibly either he wants to shed the stigma, or redefine it in order to make their career appear consistent with their initial foray into the business.  Every creative person has the right to mature, evolve, and try their darnest to define themselves as opposed to letting others do that.  And, every creative person does not want to appear to have abdicated their responsibility to a movement they helped foster if it still is meaningful to them.  Many here are more than willing to let him do that because of hero worship.  Or many here struggle with the definition of the term and are willingly to allow the leader of the movement to define what the movement means.  Or many here for some God forsaken reason like a guy that uses the term weenie!

A definition of the term might need to start with the historical use of the term in the art and architecture world, for which others on this site are much more qualified to render.  This definition when applied to golf architecture may have some important links, but it seems one issue separates golf architecture from the other disciplines in that golf architecture has much to do with the playing of a sport, whereas the other disciplines do not have that element and that seems to be an element that makes golf architecture and its relationship to minimalism profoundly different from other disciplines relationships to the minimalism philosophy.  For one, rarely do you see the golf architecture minimalism term “weenie” used in art or architecture, except maybe in the case of a Maplethorpe exhibit, but I am not certain if he was considered a minimalist.  

Actually, with GCA having over 2200 members and less than 100 of those making a contribution maybe that's not such a bad idea!

Brian:

   Thanks for explaining some of real nuts and bolts of this stuff to neophyte amateurs like myself. More of these types of posts would give greater insight to all as to how involved golf architecture really is.