Is a course's surrounding a part of the architecture?

[Mark_Fine]

A lot of discussion lately on what is "part of the golf course" and what is not.  I happen to believe that a golf course is more than just the 18 holes in the ground.  I think if you asked Ben Crenshaw to descibe his thoughts about the course at The Brookline Country Club, he would talk about more than just the tangible aspects of the design.  He would also probably comment on those intangibles (non-architecture stuff) and it would have an impact on his overall assessment of the greatness of the place.  

In that same vain, is the location of a course and its surrounds a part of its architecture?  

Since many here think we should be only evaluating "the architecture" of a course, I thought we might want to clarify the definition of what "the architecture" means!
Mark

[THuckaby2]

Now there's the $64K question, Mark.  This is indeed fundamental to nearly every discussion on this site, the old "would Cypress be Cypress if it was surrounded by a garbage dump?" question.

I'm of a mind that one's eyes aren't closed as one plays the game, so hell yes surroundings are a part of it.  But other purists here disagree I'm sure.

I guess for me it comes down to this:  evaluation of a "golf course" and the "design/architecture of a golf course" are indeed two different things, with the caveat that the former ought to be discussed by many, the latter by very few.

By that I mean, only those really in the business know what it takes to design a course, so only those ought to critique it.

But anyone who plays a course knows if he likes it or not, and can articulate why.

I see no problem with these being different, and I try like hell not to get too much into "design" for just this reason.

But this really is splitting hairs, isn't it?

TH

[John_Conley]

To the player, it is unquestionably part of the experience.  To the architect, because he cannot control it, it is ancillary.

That said, the design should take into account surroundings.  For example, the two looping nines at Seminole afford a view of the ocean when you get to the top of the hill, previewing the finish.

Bandon Dunes runs you away, to, away, and back to the ocean before the anti-climactic finish away.  Such routing decisions are not as necessary if trying to avoid roads or housing rather than featuring water or mountains.

[ForkaB]

Mark

I vote for "undeniably YES."  I spent a summer walking by the Seagram Builiding in NYC every day, and regardless of what you think of the form of that style of architecture, it would not have worked as well (or more precisely, the same) if it were located in Dubuque or San Francisco or Paris.  I would guess that when students study that building, they do not only look at a template of the building itself, but also how it integrates with its surroundings, human as well as physical.

The same should be true with a golf course--assuming it is a "course"--of course .

Rich

[aclayman]

I wonder if anyone has any feelings about the 'new house' on one of the greatest finishing holes in golf, the 18th at Pebble Beach?  

Since discretion is the better part of valor... I will reserve my opinion, but I will add, that it makes for a good reference point for targeting.

[Mark_Fine]

Good comments so far!  I am serious though about my question, what are we defining as "the architecture" of the golf course?  I suspect everyone has a difference of opinion.  If for example you believe "ambience" is a not factor then I would assume unless the "surroundings" are strategically in play, you could care less about them?  The "surroundings" do impact ambience don't they?

[THuckaby2]

I still maintain it's silly to think ambience has no effect.  For me it was all proven recently at Cypress.  I've had 200+ yard carries over water before, but only #16 made me drop to my knees.

Obviously this is the extreme, but again, make this a 200 yard carry over an ugly lake and the golf shot is the same, but absolutely NOT the same, if you get my meaning.

TH

[Peter Pratt]

I agree with most of the posts here that the surroundings are a part of the golf course. On the other hand, I think that their importance is too often exaggerated in the evaluation of a design. When you play a golf course, you are not playing the mountains in the distance. Tom Doak and others have nicely captured this matter by calling these courses "dumb blondes." Michigan has its share of these up north, but it also has some great courses with great views (like Arcadia Bluffs and Crystal Downs). I think Pebble Beach is overrated because of its location--the holes along the ocean are wonderful, but several of the inland holes are average. This raises another fun question--great courses with lousy (or unexciting) surroundings.

[jglenn]

In my mind, I have no doubt that the surroundings are "part of the golf course", and thus part of the ambience of the golf course.  And, depending on what the architect is able to do with these surroundings, it thus becomes part of the architecture.

We have been asking ourselves lately a number of variations on the "what criterias should we use to evaluate the golf course?".  Of course, the answer to that would depend on what exactly are we are trying to evaluate.  Are we trying to evaluate the entire golf complex (course, clubhouse, amenities, etc...)?  Are we trying to evaluate just the golf course itself?  By that, do we mean the physical, here-and-now golf course, or the "ambiance/historic aura/fame" aspect of it as well?  

Or are we trying to evaluate how good a job did the architect do (given budget or site constraints, etc...)?

That last one that would be very revealing...

[Matt_Ward]

Gentlemen:

Great thread Mark!!!

I assess the surroundings as the curtains in the restaurant. First, rate the food (course architecture) -- then the extras.

I'm human and I see what's immediately adjacent to the course. Clearly, the majesty of Pac Dunes is tied to its unique position on the Oregon coast. Anyone who doesn't have the pulse flutter is not of this earth.

However, Tom Doak designed an array of holes that test you completely. If someone literally put curtains around the outside boundary of the property I know I had just played a supreme golf course.

Peter makes a solid point -- sometimes the surroundings play too much of a role in a course's ultimate standing. The "dumb blond" theory is clearly an influencer with many people. Is the course pretty??? Ask most people who play Pelican Hill in So Cal and the answer is emphatically yes as they are mesmermized by the proximity to the coast and Catalina Island in the distant view from the property. I credit Tommy N for his asture observations on that course -- more surface level stuff than meaningful architectue.

This threads is not an "either or" -- it's about balancing the respective aspects in their entirety. I judge the following three aspects first:

1). The land the course is located on
2). The quality of the routing
3). The integration of shot values throughout the entire 18

The ambience, surroundings, whether you can walk or not, are all support players. They have a role -- I just don't think you give equal billing to the salad over the main entree.

Just an opinion.

[Aaron]

In my opnion,
Every golfer is effectd by the surrondings, even if he claims he is not. In that respect, the surronding are a part of architecture. Mind you, it is of course possible to create a great course in an area lacking the surrondings of the great courses.

An example of this is Mackenzie's Cypress. He had become so accustomed to his work being slammed and critisized, that when Cypress hindered no critical comments, Mackenzie became worried. Later he realized that the setting was so amazing that is off set any precieved unfairness in the holes.

Aaron

[TEPaul]

This really isn't that hard a question. It only depends on what you want to consider. It depends on what you want to talk about. Do you want to talk about the architecture of the golf course or do you want to talk about the architecture and the surroundings too?

If you want to talk about the architecture then talk about what an architect does and I don't think what he does gets into designing the surroundings too. He may get into enhancing surroundings somehow that are good or minimizing surroundings that aren't good and that's cool, but that's about all he can do.

And actually that's about the bottom line. Does an architect do about all that can be done to make that site and it's golf course really shine for great golf? Surroundings he can't control aren't golf course architecture and shouldn't be considered so by us, anyway. If raters and their lists want to consider it architecture, then so be it, but I'm never going to buy it!

I'll give you a great analogy that I wish some of you would give me an opinion on regarding this kind of question. When I was a little boy I lived in New York City and when you came down Park Avenue you could see Grand Central Station standing sentinel over the base of Park Ave's uptown section. And Grand Central station was framed by the sky behind it highlighting it's beautiful architecture!

And then they built some enormous skyscraper directly behind Grand Central station  blocking out the sky (plenty of controversy went with this skyscraper) and it became hard to see Grand Central well coming down Park Ave. But did that skyscraper actually change the architecture of Grand Central? Not in my book. And should the architect of Grand Central be accountable for that Skyscraper and what it did to his Grand Central Station or its backdrop?  Not in my book he shouldn't unless it was him who built the skyscraper too claiming he was trying to do something to Grand Central's architecture. And even then I wouldn't buy it! What he did first with Grand Central was Grand Central's architecture. What he did later was something else he did to the surroundings, separate from Grand Central's architecture.

A golf architect can't do much or maybe anything about the surroundings and the extent that he can't should not be considered golf course architecture!

[Jeff_McDowell]

Golf course architects have the unique ability to dictate what a golfer sees and when he sees it. This includes things off the site. Landscape architects called this a borrowed view. So, absolutely the surroundings should be considered part of the design.

Of course, there are some things the architect has no control over, so you can't get too critical about ugly things built after the golf course was built.

I would go so far to say the architect has control over what the golfer sees in a residential development. For example, holes that dogleg around houses bring the houses into the golf hole, and make the golfer feel like the are crowded. On the other hand, holes that play along or slightly away from houses can lessen the feeling of playing in a residential development.

[D Moriarty]

TEPaul:

I respectfully disagree with your Grand Central analogy.  I assume that when the architect built Grand Central, he considered the very perspective from Park avenue that you remember so vividly.  The surroundings of the building, the sky, and the way the sky highlighted the details of the building were the architect's canvas, and the building his brushstrokes.  Both were part of the art.

It may not be the fault of the architect (unless he could have forseen the later construction), but the architecture is certainly diminished (or potentially enhanced) by subsequent changes to the canvas.

For example, on another thread I recently mentioned the 17th at Manele Bay.  The par 4 plays perched on 200 foot cliffs over the Pacific.  There is a 230 foot carry off the tee, then the hole doglegs right and downhill to the green.  Both the right edge of the fairway and the green appear to be perched on the ocean cliff.  The green gives the illusion that it is much closer to the ocean than it actually is.  A beautiful hole.

On a recent visit I was shocked to see a giant building pad slightly behind and to the left of the green.  When the house is built,instead of shooting to a silouette green with an ocean backdrop, one will shoot at house which will likely block the view and destroy the illusion and mistique of nearness of the ocean cliff.

Jeff McDonald may be right on this example, the architect may be at fault, as it is hard to imagine that the architect (Nicklaus et al) was not aware of the future housing plans before the course was built.

But even if is not the architect's fault, the architecture is certainly diminished.

[Mark_Fine]

You heard the old saying regarding resturants, "great food, but no atmosphere"!  I believe the greatest resturants have both great food and great atmosphere (of course both are subjective to the individual).  And so it goes with the greatest golf courses, the atmosphere is "part of the golf course" which is what we are rating/evaluating.

If you discount the atmosphere, you are discounting the golf course.  

Mark

[Craig_Rokke]

Have you ever played a course bordering a major highway? Or highways? Or loading docks
featuring trucks and forklifts with backup
alarms? Or how about when the course is surrounded by nothing but nice scenery. Surroundings definitely play a role in your perception.

(How about smell? If you've gotten out of your car at either Hartfeld or Inniscrone,
you know what I mean.)

[Mark_Fine]

Maybe this will help, I remember walking a potential site for a new golf course with Tom Doak and he noticed an industrial plant in the distance not too far from the boarder of the property.  It clearly affected his thoughts on the possible golf hole layouts.  

I also walked the same site with Gil Hanse and at one point he explained how he would clear out series of trees to open up the views of the distant hillsides.  

Seems to me these two architects were concerned about the "surroundings" and how they played an integral part of the golf course.

Maybe Tom or Gil will chime in here.  

The key is balance and not allowing one facet or aspect of a golf course to dominate your thinking.  

To go back to Matt's analogy, if the food is great but your table was right next to the kitchen door or the wine stunk, just remember you could always get a better table next time or order a different bottle of wine so don't nix the entire resturant because of one thing.  

[C Rokke]

Most of the Stanley Thompson course pictures I've seen answer Mark's question well.

[Mark_Fine]

Craig,
I'm playing a pretty good one of his designs next week, St. Georges.  I'll let you know if you're right  
Mark

[TEPaul]

D. Moriarty:

I do see your point, no doubt about that and it's a very good point, and I'm sure that most people would agree with the way you look at this question. For some reason I don't though and I tend simply to look at the architecture itself, what the architect himself did and just leave it at that, at least when it comes to analyzing JUST architecture!

I have no problem either considering the surroundings of a golf course as something separate from an architect's architecture and critique the whole package as part of a golf setting or whatever. But I think if we are doing architectural analysis we should stick strictly to what an architect himself does with a particular site and just leave the analysis of his architecture to an opinion of whether HE DID ALL THAT HE COULD DO OR NOT.

Otherwise, maybe we should refer to an architect as more than an architect and call him a site analyzer as well and critique him for taking a poor site and the location decisions he makes although the architecture he created on that poor site may be brilliant in and of itself.

Don't laugh, I really don't think such a critique is necessarily unreasonable, but it would get into more than architecture and into site analysis--which may be something he should do--discriminatingly picking his canvas, as you implied above! And maybe we should critique an architect for that too, albeit separately.

If we want to go that far, I have no problem with that either and in that case we could probably question or consider why he might have taken such a site with such surroundings but to me that's a separate question than what he did architecturally.

If you don't do it that way then I think the world and even us get into criticizing an architect for things he has no control over, other than his decision to take the job or not and that to me is not golf architecture either, it's just someone's decision.

This is why I have additional respect for an outfit like Coore and Crenshaw (and some of the others). They take sites sometimes that they know have problems that they will not be able to make perfect. But they do the best they can and in my opinion have done some amazing things in an architectural sense with some less than good sites and surroundings. I'm sure they realize they will be criticized for failing to do things even if they know they could not control them but they do the best they can with the architecture that they can control. Because they do these things does not diminish their architecture or them as architects, in my opinion.

I don't think that the architect that built Grand Central Station was responsible architecturally either for the surroundings of his building. You may think so but I don't. Certainly he could have made the decision not to do it at all but he did it anyway. And as far as I'm concerned the architecture of Grand Central is just as beautiful as it always was, you just have to look a little harder to see it. Nothing has changed with its architecture so it is just as valid as it always was. And I suppose you could return it to what it was once in the eyes of and the opinions of people like youself who think the architecture has changed somehow or been affected.

You could do that by tearing down what we used to call the PanAm building behind it and backdrop it again with the sky! And then you would think that it was good again, where I think it always has been.

[Gene Greco]

Mark Fine's comment regarding sitting next to the kitchen door of a restaurant brings back a childhood memory, which also is pertinent to this discussion.
My parents had agreed to have dinner with another couple who had asked my dad to find the best Italian seafood restaurant in NY. Their daughter was 13 and I was 14 so the restaurant was of no concern to me. We headed to a place outside New York City which was across the street from the fishing boats, a true hole in the wall.
Once there we had to wait about an hour for a table and once inside, we were introduced to pure chaos. We were seated next to the double kitchen doors which were endlessly in motion. The baked clams and other assorted appetizers drew ooohs and aahs from the adults while Lynn and I stared at one another oblivious to all.
About this time Lynn's mom stopped one of the waiters, who was dripping in sweat, and requested to be seated at another table. His response was simply,"Hey, Lady! Did you come here to eat, or what?"
The moral of the story is the answer to this question is inside you, grasshopper. If the primary situation you play golf is in a tournament setting I would think the surroundings are of little consequence when it comes time to evaluate the merits or lack thereof of the design of the golf course. For the majority who play golf as a leisure pasttime the surroundings are an integral part of the total golfing experience.

[Mark_Fine]

Tom,
Clearly we won't get you to change your perception and that's fine.  I hear where you are coming from and in the purist sense you may be right.  But a lot of this discussion is about critiquing golf courses and not "just" golf architecture.  These Top 100 lists that I know you are not a fan of are a consensus opinion of the 100 greatest "golf courses" not necessarily the 100 greatest examples of golf architecture.  And as I have said before, I believe the greatest courses of them all have it all!

Mark
 

[TEPaul]

I completely agree that the surroundings can be an integral part of the total golf experience, but are the surroundings architecture? No they are not! Architecture is a part and certainly an integral part. The surroundings are a part and maybe an integral part, but they are not the same! They may be parts of the total golf experience and certainly integral parts and together they may make up the whole but they are not the same thing.

[Mike_Cirba]

The answer to the question is YES, resoundingly!

Part of the job of the architect is to effectively integrate the golf course into the surroundings so that it appears to be wholly ingrained into the environment.

Ideally, it should be seamless, and I hate to use a classic example but although Merion is bordered by housing, a busy avenue, and other amenities necessitated by civilization, it seems as though it's been there forever.  In fact, the road is used as an OB hazard strategically!

How could an architect fail to notice a pretty distant view, or conversely, an eyesore and not consider that in the design and architecture of the course?  

It's the integration of the course with the surroundings where architecture comes in, and how effectively that is done that is part of the equation in how we enjoy (or rate) a course.

[TEPaul]

You too, huh, Mike!

I did know that Wilson and Flynn did much good design and architectural work on Merion. Some beautiful construcion work too. What I didn't know was that they did design work on Ardmore Ave and Club House Rd. I knew they routed their golf course along those roads and used them as a strategic asset but I didn't know they designed them--I always thought they just designed some of their holes along them. I didn't know they designed any of the houses around Merion either. In that what architects actually design is called architecture, I thought that's where architecture ended.

I've had a ball playing golf at Merion on what Wilson/Flynn designed there but I hope to play my golf on what they designed and not out in OB on Ardmore Ave or in somebody's surrounding house, but maybe you're more adventurous than I am.

Did Chandler Egan and his compatriots design the bay beside Pebble? I thought somebody else designed that--what was that guys name anyway?