[Dave Bourgeois]

I’m sure that this has been discussed previously, but I am curious to hear new folks, and of course Treehouse legends the same.

Was there a particular architectural feature, or lack of features that peaked your interest in GCA?  

For me I became interested somewhere around the walk from the 3rd green to 4th tee @ Bethpage Black.  That kind of heightened my senses and made me keener on looking for features.  I also started to develop a sense of what appealed to me and the strategy that good architecture brings to the game.

For me a high point this year was understanding why something like a wide fairway is a legit feature and something that can defend a hole.

[cary lichtenstein]

Meeting JakaB

[Paul Payne]

I am a true noephyte when it comes to GCA.

I do however remember when I first began to think about GCA and how it affected courses and the way I saw the game.

I was playing Hazeltine and suddenly realized that there were many courses I had played that were more memorable and offered a wider variety of challenges from hole to hole. Hazeltine is a great tournament course but is a bit one dimensional. I am not sure, but maybe that could be said for many of todays PGA courses.

My realization was that I tend to prefer courses that force you to think more strategically and use more finesse right off the tee. By that I mean either shaping the shot or hitting a specific area of the fairway for a possible line in.

Hazeltine, as good as, it only has a few holes where the position of your tee shot can make or break the hole. It can put a high premium on accuracy but usually this is a do or die type of situatiuon, it is not offered as a choice. I have played other RTJ courses that do offer more choice off the tee, so I would guess this was part of the design strategy when Hazeltine was built.

Examples of courses that I like that do offer great choices off the tee are;

Sand Hills
Palmetto
Tobacco Road
Straits and Irish
Greywalls
RTJ Backbreaker/ Heartbreaker

There are probably more but this is a quick list. There are also many courses I love that are much more straighforward off the tee, but this anyway was the root of my curiosity over GCA.

[wsmorrison]

Living in Philadelphia, my GCA awareness came to me through playing Flynn courses.  There was something superior to other courses that I would play.  I couldn't understand what until I began to study golf course architecture.  This led to my studying other classic era golf architecture for perspective.  The learning never stops.

[Peter Pallotta]

I was 18, and working for the summer on a public course, and after a few weeks they had me mowing the greens and cutting the hole/pin placements each day. (Yes, I was one of THOSE guys.)

There was this dog-leg left, with a bunker on the right hand side. I was on the green, looking back up the fairway, and realized that most guys would try to land their drives away from that bunker, i.e. to the left side of the fairway. Then it hit me that, from there, the easier shot would be to the right side of the green...and so I cut the hole on the LEFT side, behind a bunker.  I was very proud of myself for that one.

The next day I realized I couldn't just leave the hole there, and I was bummed out, but I managed to put it back every 3 or 4 days for the whole summer....and the 'evil eye' I must have gotten from golfers affected my health for months
but my appreciation for gca was born...
Peter

 

[Evan Fleisher]

I think for me, one of the earlist GCA recollections was watching The Masters toooo-na-mint.  There was always so much talk about strategy and how to specifically play each shot on each hole and that had a certain level of heightened awareness for me...what it actually takes to play a golf hole.  Seeing that course year after year gave me the chance to "see" each of those holes over and over and watch how different players of differing abilities tackled the challenge laid before them...sort of a comfort thing like playing your home course again and again.

After that, it was probably more of a cerebral thing to play new courses (in person) and figure out the best way to play a hole, and what on the ground "feels" right when it comes to strategy and options to play a given hole and/or course.

The rest has been downhill from there...  

[John Kavanaugh]

Meeting JakaB

That is a nice thing to say and hits home for me as well.  I can't say I give a damn about GCA at all, I just like playing golf and that started when Dick Grout got me out on the course when I was 8 years old.   I have always found this notion of being architectural astute kinda silly.  I think the 15th green at Tabacco Road is great...You should have seen the putt Jeff Goldman hit.  This is a perfect example of how if architects took you guys seriously it would ruin the game.

[Dan Herrmann]

Sure...

In 8/2001, we planned a trip to Bandon.  I used a web search engine, and found Ran's review of Bandon here at golfclubatlas.com.

Using that info, I took time to really take in the courses out there, and try to understand them from an architectural standpoint.

Two years later, I stumbled into the Discussion Group, and I was really hooked.

[John Kavanaugh]

Using that info, I took time to really take in the courses out there, and try to understand them from an architectural standpoint.

Dan,

What do you mean...what is an architectural standpoint.

[W.H. Cosgrove]

Not a particular moment per se, however, I was getting a playing lesson from a pro named Ernie Taylor.  As he described shot making, it occurred to me that there was far more to the game than simply trying to hit the ball.  The next step was to make the gameboard work for me instead of against me.

To understand the gameboard, I had to understand the logic and strategy.  The architecture followed.  

So many players don't get past simply making contact they, never really understand the intricacies and magic of the game.  The design, for me, is the mystery.  If I can solve the puzzle, I might just find a way to take your money in that $2 nassau.

[Norbert P]

  Getting to Bandon Dunes just before sunset, a month after it opened.  I'd never seen such lively tall grass dancing together in the wind, making the land swell with mystical spirit.  The next day I played it and I was overwhelmed. I've only been a muni rat golfer and this place was like nothing I'd ever seen, much less considered. It made me appreciate golf courses beyond golf. The course made me want to read about the places that inspired its creators, namely, places in Ireland and Scotland, and bought both of Finegan's books, and a continuous stream of architecture books ever since.

  Also, there was a terrific story written about Eddie Hacket that spoke of his saintly approach to golf design/discovery.

 

[Craig_Rokke]

There were two "light bulb" type moments for me. The first was about
1990. I was on the Ocean City boardwalk, and Cornish&Whitten's book, with its 75% off price tag yelled out to me from the bargain bin at the bookstore. I
became hooked.

About 9 or 10 years later, I had an occasion to meet Gil Hanse.
I knew his name from his work at Downingtown and Stonewall.
In an effort to learn more about Gil's work, I stumbled upon the well-known website later that day.

[Voytek Wilczak]

For me it was my first time at Ballybunion, in howling wind and horizontal rain, the tall grasses swaying wildly, the towering, intimidating dunes everywhere.

I started thinking - what is it in certain courses that inspires my awe, while others leave me cold?

Since I am a mediocre golfer (but love the game), the fine points of GCA escape me, but the "shock and awe" factor of a given golf course is fun to analyze (for me).

[Pat Howard]

I think the 15th green at Tabacco Road is great...You should have seen the putt Jeff Goldman hit.  This is a perfect example of how if architects took you guys seriously it would ruin the game.

Are you including yourself in this statement? I'm also wondering what a course that you designed would look like, and if it was better than ANGC would you call everyone liars?!

[Gene Greco]

Dave,

   Mine occurred on the same golf course at virtually the same point - on the fourth tee of Bethpage Black.

What a great lesson in golf course architecture holes 4 - 12 and 15-17 present!

[Lloyd_Cole]

I stumbled on a couple of T Doak's books about 10 or 12 years ago - Anatomy of a Golf Course and then the Confidential Guide. A couple of years later I made a trip up the East Coast of Scotland and beforehand decided to do some research...

[RJ_Daley]

As I've recounted on GCA.com many times before, I first became aware of the idea that there was such a thing as golf course architecture as a seriously intelligent design vs some haphazard laying out of tees fairways and greens across any old land, when periodically being taken on day trips as a youth with my uncle to Lawsonia.  That is where I saw the intelligent design of golf rather than the old hard pan flatish muni I was familiar with around town.

[John Kavanaugh]

I think the 15th green at Tabacco Road is great...You should have seen the putt Jeff Goldman hit.  This is a perfect example of how if architects took you guys seriously it would ruin the game.

Are you including yourself in this statement? I'm also wondering what a course that you designed would look like, and if it was better than ANGC would you call everyone liars?!

Pat,

I have never considered designing a course so I have no idea what it would look like,  but if I did and anyone said it was better than ANGC I would indeed call them a liar.

[Shane Sullivan]

I finally read Raymond Floyd's Elements of Scoring.  He said that to get the most out of your game you have to look at the hole as an architect would.  All of a sudden the course I had played many times looked completely different.

[Doug Siebert]

My first visit to Scotland really opened my eyes.  I was a bit worried going over there, since I'd always been kind of a fair weather golfer, and hearing all these horror stories of hailstorms appearing at a moment's notice, 50 mph winds, rain squalls, etc. had me worried.  Especially since my dad was paying for it and made it clear I couldn't wimp out and quit if the weather got bad

While it didn't hail, I did play in some pretty insane winds on a couple days and found I had to reinvent my game for the conditions and the firm turf.  Took a few days, but I started getting the hang of it and really noticed all those features that are hidden from someone who hits the ball a mile in the air and plays soft American style courses.

Seeing them on TV and experiencing them in person were wholly different things.  To those who haven't ever been there, find a way, it will be WELL worth it!

[Matt_Sullivan]

About 4 years ago I joined a new club with two courses and started keeping stats -- fairways and greens hit, scrambling, putts etc.

I also kept individual hole scores. After a while you notice, statistically, which holes you play well and poorly. On each of the two courses there were three or four holes that I played badly, so I started to analyse the holes to work out why. That was the beginning of my fascination with architecture -- why was I scoring poorly on that hole, what features made it tough for me, how should I go about the hole better, and so forth.

At about this time I bought Tom Doak's "Anatomy of a Golf Course" on a friend's recommendation. And I have been hooked ever since

[Yannick Pilon]

This will sound stupid, but for me, everything started with scorecards when I was about seven years old.

I used to love to draw and I frequently joined my father on his weekly rounds at Carling Lake north of Montreal.  They used to have a nice rendering of the golf course on the scorecard... so I started drawing golf courses in big scrapbooks....

Never stopped since! Except the scrapbook is now a pretty powerful computer!

[bstark]

  Walking the then under construction LI National with RTJ Jr. and whispering to my friend that the hole needed to have a bigger area for bailouts on the right side of the green. The hole was a longish par three, over water, into a prevailing breeze and had a very narrow green. Right after I made the comment to my buddy, RTJ turns to Don Knott his right hand guy and says "you better increase the size of the mowed area to the right".

  My buddy turned to me a said, "maybe you've got a future in this business"

[Mike Hendren]

Also, there was a terrific story written about Eddie Hacket that spoke of his saintly approach to golf design/discovery.

Norbert,

This article?

http://www.irishgolf.com/king.html

Mike

[Dan Herrmann]

Using that info, I took time to really take in the courses out there, and try to understand them from an architectural standpoint.

Dan,

What do you mean...what is an architectural standpoint.

John,
I meant that Ran's course reviews enlightened me to appreciate the architecture of a golf course that I'd never even considered previously.

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