[Jim_Kennedy]

In 200 years what will the golf course lovers say about the period 1970 — 2020?- Forrest Richardson

They'll probably wonder why 'we' (that's a generic 'we')  didn't focus more on building courses that foster the simple pleasures, like those you list on your website..."A golf course is a place to recreate, to share friendships and celebrate the joys of a challenge. It is a place for the young to discover the worth of being outdoors, and the young-at-heart to discover that time does stand still-even if only for a few hours at a time." .... instead of heading in a high end, ratings chasing, lifestyle creating, product driven, eye popping, cachet creating direction.    

I could be wrong.  
 

[Forrest Richardson]

Well, Jim, maybe this is an opportunity to figure out what we are doing — and where we need to head.

Without too much exception this discussion group seems — nearly always — to fall in love with a much narrower ideal: MINIMALIST, CLASSIC and OLDER-IS-BETTER.

Do you suppose that is because 'we' haven't yet seen what's next, or is it because 'we' are truly disgusted with most all of what we have accomplished thus far (in these first 35 years)?

[Scott Witter]

Forrest:

Reading through this I can't tell if you really 'want' to know or find something groundbreaking, or what the importance might be to you beyond simple curiosity, which BTW is fine and understandable...however, and while I think it is interesting to consider, do YOU really think it is realistic to expect to 'discover' contributions that are profoundly different?  I mean this is a game, and while I completely agree with the art, science and psychology of the industry, it really isn't all that complicated.

As you say, I think you are more likely to find the breakthrough contributions within the 'movements, eras, with technology, experiences and approaches driving the process, but I tend to lean in favor with traditional/classic view whereas the game and the experience was simpler, straightforward, letting the game and the design of courses evolve.

"Without too much exception this discussion group seems — nearly always — to fall in love with a much narrower ideal: MINIMALIST, CLASSIC and OLDER-IS-BETTER.

Do you suppose that is because 'we' haven't yet seen what's next, or is it because 'we' are truly disgusted with most all of what we have accomplished thus far (in these first 35 years)?"

I guess then I would be pooled with the older classic group, that's okay.  But ask this, why is it then, judging by this group only, do they lean to the 'minimalist', or older is better works?  There must be something there worth its salt and I would say that much of the 'modern' work in the past few decades is not that inspiring or engaging and some of my early work would fall in that group as well.  To me the modern work is much easier to create...let the shapers have their fun and sprinkle a few visits here and there, (not all architects of course, but many have proceeded this way for years) but executing the older or the minimalist work takes more time to get the details right IMO and to make the holes blend with the character of the site.



 

[paul cowley]

....guys....I don't think we have to beat ourselves up too much.
The last I looked the sky still seemed to be holding up in one piece.
Its hard to analyze when you're still running the race.

The Classic/Older periods produced tremendous garbage that no longer exists because it was just that.
We are surrounded by garbage now as well .....but without benefit of the culling out process that only occurs over time.

I think folks looking back 100 years from now will be doing much the same thing....contrasting their current trash with the surviving great stuff from our Era.

[Forrest Richardson]

Frankly, Scott, I get discouraged with nearly every therad here on GCA — a majority of it is a waste, but apparently I am a minority...or maybe I just choose to say what I feel.

The topic is dear to me because I make my living at designing. Very often I reflect on what we are doing — not just my ofice, but offices everywhere — and I question (softly) whether it is right. In this thread I chose to speak loudly to see whether anyone was listening.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Forrest,
I don't know 'what's next' and I can't say that I'm 'truly disgusted' with what's been accomplished so far. I've enjoyed many newly built courses as well as older ones but, if a golf course is to offer itself up as "a place for the young to discover the worth of being outdoors, and the young-at-heart to discover that time does stand still-even if only for a few hours at a time" it seems easier to achieve at an older course where you might find less concrete edging the fairways, less than Augusta like maintenance, something less than a 40k sq. ft. clubhouse, etc.. You know, all the modern conveniences and contrivances that remind you that time has continued it's forward march, not stood still for that precious little while.

Yuck, way too sappy  

[Marty Bonnar]

Forrest,
I'd like to complete your thread title with, if I may:
"on something as trivial, unimportant and inconsequential as golf course design".
If I thought for a moment that minds who could be working on medical miracles, the mysteries of the universe or solving world hunger were being applied to glorified gardening, I'd be beyond annoyed.
Designing landscapes for a game is all it is. As a good friend OFTEN says to me: "Get ower yersel'"

regards,
FBD.

[Forrest Richardson]

Everything being relative, golf course design may only be trivial when we look outside our own boxes. Let's not do that just now.

Rather than focus on what hasn't been accomplished, what should we accomplish? That is really the question at hand.

Is Bill M. onto the best course of action: Focus — all of us — on affordable golf ?

[Mike_Young]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mark is almost always right. Each of you can conjure which may be those very few moments when he may miss the mark.

So, where's the beef?  In 200 years what will the golf course lovers say about the period 1970 — 2020?

Fifty years is a long time. What are the contributions OTHER THAN a return to early values and concepts?

Extravagance to the point of almost eliminating the game for the average person.....via perimeter items that were not critical to the playing of the game such as rock walls, bridging, excessive landscaping, handmowing, excessive heights of cut, extreme pampering of bunkers, lockerooms like the ritz....etc...AND so much of htis is built in to the point it cant be changed without renovation...JMO

[Forrest Richardson]

Mike — Would extreme bunker care include the Links Trust's pampering of the Road Bunker, Hell or others? Would stone walls or bridges include the Road Wall or Swilcan Bridge? How about the old reinforcing of the Redan?

[Mike_Young]

Mike — Would extreme bunker care include the Links Trust's pampering of the Road Bunker, Hell or others? Would stone walls or bridges include the Road Wall or Swilcan Bridge? How about the old reinforcing of the Redan?

Forrest,
I don't think they would be included.  But some of these new resort or rsidential courses with a few thousnad feet of rock wall around a lake that could be a grass bank or an elalborate stone bridge that could have been a basic 5T wooden bridge be included.  Plus I am not stressing the maintenance of these features as much in the future as i am saying they are unecessary for golf and helped drive the cost upward during the present 50 year period and not for the golf as much as for the RE value around the golf.....JMO

[Adam Clayman]

Frankly, Scott, I get discouraged with nearly every therad here on GCA — a majority of it is a waste, but apparently I am a minority...or maybe I just choose to say what I feel.

These are words which should be scrutinzed closely.

For me they imply some serious expectations.

Forrest, In the past you have poo pooed core principles, the movement to return to them and even the overall importance of this site as a resource. Now, it's a waste?

[Marty Bonnar]

Everything being relative, golf course design may only be trivial when we look outside our own boxes. Let's not do that just now.

Rather than focus on what hasn't been accomplished, what should we accomplish? That is really the question at hand.

Is Bill M. onto the best course of action: Focus — all of us — on affordable golf ?

Forrest,
I'd disagree. Golf Course Design will ALWAYS be trivial - in anyone's box.

However...

For the purposes of this discussion, I think I now see from where you cometh!

I concur 100% (don't you HATE those folk who say 110% - eedjits!) with the premise of AFFORDABLE golf. The game HAS to become more - not less - inclusive.

In my job - and Scottish/British life, in general - we now seem to focus on inclusivity in just about everything we do. Case in point - we now have a thing called DDA - The Disability Discrimination Act. Good legislation - flawed big time, but essentially good. Certainly makes me think anytime I am designing about how my design work might affect someone in a wheelchair, someone with impaired vision, someone with poor mobility...

As a Designer, I feel it only makes me better. Very few of these people might be golfers, but DESIGN needs to take account of their needs too.

Used to be that it was too easy to design with only yourself in mind. GOOD design is more 'informed' than that.

Affordable golf comes from somewhere around there too. Let's make this stupid game INCLUSIVE. Otherwise, the beast will expire unloved and uncared for.

FBD.

[Forrest Richardson]

Martin — Sounds as if the UK has adopted our great ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), a terrific movement and set of laws, but here it is also misguided on occasion. Such as the time the U.S. National Park Service (seriously) considered re-building the Bright Angel Trail that goes from the rim of the Grand Canyon to the bottom. Turns out it would have been impossible to make it "accessible".

Adam —  If I have "poo pooed core principles, the movement to return to them and even the overall importance of this site as a resource" I doubt it was quite that straight forward. My guess is that your impression may well have been because you absorbed my comments selectively. Or, as we say in Arizona, "out of context."

Here, however, for your reading pleasure are some responses that will clarify these three jabs:

1.  I do poo poo core principals when I disagree with how they are applied, or when they become a set of rules that are taken never to be broken. I would do that on any site, discussion or reading. I was frank in my opinion of Saguaro by Coore and also some of the holes at Rustic Canyon — while I enjoyed both courses and think they are great examples of terrific work, I still maintain that the restraint imposed by core principals left the courses less than fulfilling had the designers taken a step beyond core principals to find some new principals and ideas that could be brought to the surface.

2.  A movement to a return to core principals is self-answered. Probably good in most if not many situations, but hardly a wish I would apply to anything, everything or anywhere. Like a pond without new water, the clarity can become clouded and the life that once flourished dies.

3.  This site is a terrific resource for discussion and ideas, and for sharing news and thoughts. It lets us down when the topics are lame and the focus gets away from interesting discussion. Of course, this is an opinion, and it is in the mind of the beholder, so I cannot be trusted any more than you could. This site is certainly not a waste...is that what you took away from my post?

More important Adam, what say you?  Besides a defending of core values, returning to them and the GCA website, are the designers of today pushing the limit, breaking new ground or devising great ideas?

[Mike_Young]

Adam,
IYO...do core principles change?
Miike

[Don_Mahaffey]

Forrest,
In your last post you state that a couple of golf courses seem to be less than they could have been because,

"I still maintain that the restraint imposed by core principals left the courses less than fulfilling had the designers taken a step beyond core principals to find some new principals and ideas that could be brought to the surface."

Do you feel these course were "under designed" or could have been better if the architects had done more?

What new principles are you talking about?


And BTW, I'm on record as saying that most of what is bad in modern GCA (and I think a lot of it is beyond terrible) is because the GCAs seem to be reaching for something to gain notoriety...and more work. I'm looking for a few more starving artists who love their craft to take GCA to the next level...not the self promoting, PR expert who dabbles in GCA and spends most of his time telling the world how great he is.  

[Adam Clayman]

IMO, Core principles do not change.
 Doctines, and attempts at fairness, are at the root of the era Forrest seems to be trying to get people to pigeonhole. Be it benching every green or narrowing every corridor (inorder to identify the staightest of ball strikers) gets far afield from those well founded core principles.

For me, the core principles are based in variety and the unpredictability associated with the differing conditions mother nature can throw at us. I may not be the best to convey them to you, but I know there are people who post here who do one helluva job conveying them.

With the advent of  four row irrigation systems and the lack of discipline to use them for anything but standardized conditions, is also at the root of the evil aspects to this era.

As Tom Doak eloquently once put, courses are the medium for the sport, not the sport itself.

[Forrest Richardson]

Adam — I like the core values you elude to.

Answer this, however...some core values are very narrow when we look at the entire history of the game. Archaic examples of golf did have narrow pathways (not everything was wide), it did yearn for better conditions (St, Andrews led the charge with its now-famous double greens "to make play fairer and more consitent") and we have now come to a comfortable era when stymies and water in bunkers is no longer appropriate.

Are you prepared to say that the core values you embrace — those nearly all of us here like to discuss and support — are THE core values and that anything short or more of them is not to be discussed, considered or thought about?

===

Don — There are areas at both Saguaro and Rustic that, in my opinion, could have been better had more earth been moved. Neither site was "ideal" for golf in every respect. Not many sites are. From my readings and personal interviews it is apparent that both sites were approached with a tendency to not move much earth and not go beyond the nominal effort that would have historically been applied, let's say, in the 1930s. My opinion is this: that doctrine got in the way of making both of those courses highly exceptional instead of just exceptional. But I still like them a lot.

[Don_Mahaffey]

Forrest,
Thank you for your response. Maybe I'd agree with you if you were more specific about what needed to be done to make those courses better.
It seems like, for the most part, the courses you mentioned have been well received by both the masses and the critics and certainly by many far from Golf Club Atlas who have no bias for or against any GCA.

Basically you made my point for me in that you feel like the product would be better if more had been done and I feel like most in the business just don't know when to stop. Just because you do more doesn't mean it's better, and although I believe those who over do it are driven to do the best possible job, I just can't help but think that in most cases they just don't know when to say when. Of course if they routed it right in the first place it's easier to get away from the need to feature shape everything in sight.

[Forrest Richardson]

"Just because you do more doesn't mean it's better" — agreed, of course I agree.

Ideas are paramount. Just because one adopts a doctrine that "less is more" does not mean you can somehow ignore ideas or creativity.

The main — and only — problem I ever seem to have with minimalist, classic, Golden Age design is that the IDEA cannot stop there.

The best things(s) about Pacific Dunes are not that Tom sought to be minimalist, classic or restrained. Rather, that he took those ideas and ran with them..........but along the way he remembered to be creative and to think for himself. I am guessing that he was not content with what people before him had done. He plodded along his own line of thinking.

[Adam Clayman]

Forrest, I deleted my first post on this thread, but since you are all dancing around it...

There are at least two well known new designs where the designers moved too little dirt, and the results were that the courses get discussed in the context of having potential. Thats code for they needed to be made better.

In this day and age with massive fees and computer programs, I wonder if returning to designing in the dirt isn't the absolute pinnancle of design. I'd say thats where the buck should stop. Each site being unique will still yield varied architecture, assuming the GCA can bring out the sites specific potential. Even if it requires moving massive amounts of dirt. The key thing thats at play here is someone's mis-interpretation of the term minimalism. And, I'll bet Mr. Doak will be the first to tell you (as he has already) he moved alot of dirt at both Pac Dunes and Ballyneal, and defies anyone to show him where he had done it.

Building a berm to separate the housing from the course at Rustic would be an obvious eyesore, not in character with the design, it's budget or the feeling of playing near a small community. Were there other spots more dirt shoulda been moved?

[Forrest Richardson]

I am not prepared to re-design anyone's work. At least not at this hour on a Sunday!  

As for designing in the dirt, that is a great experience and it yields (it can yield) terrific results. It is not for every site, project or situation. Just as not all art or science can say there is only one way to accomplish great results.

As you and others will agree, site selection and routing account for a very large and essential percentage of any project. Those are certainly done in the field, but they also require lots of paper, plans and study late at night, or whenever. And, there is also a lot of work done in plan form that allows projects to be budgeted, planned and integrated with other elements — homes, roads, clubhouses, parking, practice, drainage, irrigation, etc.  Even when there are no homes, there are nearly always a few elements that require planning in very small scale rather than on site.

[Mike_Young]

There are at least two well known new designs where the designers moved too little dirt, and the results were that the courses get discussed in the context of having potential. Thats code for they needed to be made better.

Adam,
I don't know of  what 2 designs you speak ......I would bet if they needed more dirt move it would be for drainage or diversion of water .... IMHO one can move huge amounts of dirt an as long as they extend into long earthforms they will be hard to distinguish from the natural land vs. little mounded chocolate drop types of shaping.....having said this some of the so-called "minimalism" could take more earth move than some of the modern work.....there are not many sites where a good golf course can be placed without dirt move....my problem comes from when one is so "into" minmalsim that he will not move dirt when it is needed.  That is worse than some of the new stuff that gets slammed here...IMHO
Mike

[Scott Witter]

Forrest:

"Frankly, Scott, I get discouraged with nearly every therad here on GCA — a majority of it is a waste, but apparently I am a minority...or maybe I just choose to say what I feel.

The topic is dear to me because I make my living at designing. Very often I reflect on what we are doing — not just my ofice, but offices everywhere — and I question (softly) whether it is right. In this thread I chose to speak loudly to see whether anyone was listening."

I appreciate your frankness as well as your topic for it IS important and yes many of us ARE listening and interested.  Having said this, I hope you took my reply correctly...though I am not convinced you did?

About 4 years ago, while hitting balls at the range of a new course I opened, another golfer at the range started a conversation...after he knew who I was he quickly asked me if I felt good about what I created and how the course would reach very few golfers, but only a select few who could afford to pay and play.  Did I think those golfers really cared about my work, was it going to advance the game and the interest for younger players, if it is so much better than what exists, why shouldn't it be affordable for everyone? Did I feel as though I failed and wasted my talent he asked??

I had never thought about this situation in the way that he phrased his concern and it did make me think very long and hard about the bigger picture and your statement "and I question (softly) whether it is right." has raised this story.

BTW and IMO this is an outstanding thread and rivals many of the greats we have had...to my surprise there are not more architects and those 'in the know' voicing their thoughts.

[Forrest Richardson]

Scott — I think there have been some good comments here. But, I too, am surprised at the generally lame substance received. I was not intending to chime in until hearing from "everyone". You nailed it: There have been very few, overall, who have commented.

I think it is a real shame that we cannot — as a group of enthusiasts with opinions — come up with more ideas. Past and present.

The list from a few pages ago was a start.

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