So What is the Best New GC Design Idea of the 21st Century?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom Doak hopes that rolling tees aren't it, but doesn't offer a specific alternative.

Have we come up with anything really new in the first 3/4 decade of the 21st century?

Of all the newish ideas you have seen, what is the most striking/best you have seen?

[Adam Clayman]

Jeff, I suspect it will be a lot harder to identify anything new that the golfer would notice. Rather it would only be new to them, specifically. My impression is that anything new would be related to techniques employed by the gca. The recent thread on a new way to deal with surface drainage problems, being a case in point.
 
What's your impression of what's new?

[Lester George]

Jeff,

WAVE BUNKERS - where the you can actually get caught in the "TUBE" and the top of the wave is actually breaking over your head.  I've been conjuring this one for quite awhile.  Particularly handy against those pesky professional golfers who can get up and down from any bunker. 

WAVE BUNKERS can be "dialed-up" to any height on any occasion so the average golfer can make it around on his weekend, but when the pros show up for the ABC OPEN, you can adjust them to any nastiness you want.

What say you?

Lester

[Adam Clayman]

Lester, I've actually seen the wave bunker in use. Whether it was intentional or from years of use, it created a memory of witnessing one of the greatest pars when  a buddy was in the tube on a par 3 at the old (pre any modernizing) Black Horse course at Fort Ord.

Also, there's Tillies waves at SFGC, sans tubes.

[TEPaul]

"Tom Doak hopes that rolling tees aren't it, but doesn't offer a specific alternative."

JeffB:

I really don't know what TomD's problem is these days but I've noticed he almost automatically either criticizes or condemns almost every new thing or new idea that comes up. Now he's condemning the rolling of tees?

What in the world is the matter with Doak these days? Doesn't he realize that almost everything else on a golf course is getting rolled these days and he wants to prevent the poor tees from getting rolled too? How insensitive can he be? Doesn't he realize that tees have feelings too?

[Mike_Cirba]

I'm guessing that the next logical step for architecture that eschews the naturalist trend is either movable or mechanical features, which is something I just stole from Lester's mention of the "dialed up" wave bunker.

I'm also betting we're going to see more artificial turf golf courses during our lifetimes, particularly in areas where water is a precious resource.

Virtual golf will also take great strides, with 3-dimensional courses coming next, with an inherent ability to choose the "next hole", or next shot requirements on demand.   The technology will get so good within the next 50 years that our children will sometimes forget if they're actually outdoors or not.

The plus side is that 18 hole rounds will take less than an hour.   Another plus is that the need for golf carts will be eliminated.   On the downside, so will walking.

[Peter Pallotta]

Jeff
I don't know that it's a brand new idea, and not to blow smoke your way, by I think your Quarry Course and Mike DeVries' Mines Course are very important developments, i.e. essentially re-claiming the land, re-vitalizing it, leaving something there that's far better than was there before.  I think any new agronomic developments/research will go hand in hand with this. I don't want to get into an environmental debate - they seem to lead nowhere. But I'm convinced that land and water use and stewardship issues and going to increase exponentially in the coming years, even in the short term. So taking land that no one else wants or can use, and bringing it back to a fuller life, and enhancing biodiversity, all while giving us a field of play....well, that's the ticket. And if courses can be built inexpensively and maintained inexpensively and with respect, and if imaginative mixed-use ideas can be enacted, the good created will accrue to the broader community/society, and I think that's even better (and more necessary). I go on alot around here about expanding the conventional/traditional forms and ideas of what constitutes 'shot testing' and this is why -- I think the broader those concepts become and the more widely accepted they become, the more types of re-claimed land and the more kinds of 'boring' sites can become potential candidates for golf courses

Peter 

[Jason Topp]

Catch basins?

[Norbert P]

 Minimalism

[Jim Thompson]

Lester,

How does your wave bunker concept reconcile with the defined margins of a bunker???  Curious.

Thanks!

JT

[Jim Thompson]

Jeff,

I hope we see more edge play design with regard to fairways.. By that I mean the mandate to favor one side of a fairway or another to get to improve access to one side of a green or another.

JT

[Matt Waterbury]

Jeff,

WAVE BUNKERS - where the you can actually get caught in the "TUBE" and the top of the wave is actually breaking over your head.  I've been conjuring this one for quite awhile.  Particularly handy against those pesky professional golfers who can get up and down from any bunker. 

WAVE BUNKERS can be "dialed-up" to any height on any occasion so the average golfer can make it around on his weekend, but when the pros show up for the ABC OPEN, you can adjust them to any nastiness you want.

What say you?

Lester

Lester, I have the Ballyhack materials in front of me, and I can't seem to find any mention of this quantum leap in bunker design...certainly would seal the deal for me...

Matt

[wsmorrison]

I think a combination of as many of the MacRayBanks templates in one hole and whatever is left over combined in the following hole would be the best new design idea of all time.  Perhaps a real architect can combine them all into one hole.  I would need two holes, amateur that I am.  Everything will be laser straight with perfectly level bunker floors and grass faces beyond 90 degrees.  Even Brian Silva wouldn't dare try that.  Cantilevers will be necessary, but it is an homage to the engineered look so it should be acceptable to all fans of the style.

Pat Mucci will instantly join the club that offers such holes no matter the cost.   He will assuredly be bewitched, bothered and bewildered at the wonderment of it all.  He'll just stand there transfixed for hours on end staring with unbounded joy and around his neck an extra absorbent bib to catch the drool.

Here are my design proposals:

I'd start the Raynor Prized Dogleg off with a Redan fairway landing area (the green is already so familiar, I thought I'd alter the concept to the tee shot landing area) with a bit of a Hog's Back.  I'd then utilize a brilliant composite of a Leven convex bunker and Alps mounding fronting the perched Knoll green with Bottle like fall-offs, leaving a bit of room to land the ball and run it past a Road Hole bunker.  The green, situated exactly like the original Cape Hole green at NGLA, would be a combination of a prototypical Banks Double Plateau with a tilt reminiscent of the Eden Hole green.

On the next hole, I would try to somehow combine the remaining templates.  Perhaps I'll design a Punchbowl green with a Biarritz swale precisely perpendicular to the line of play and exactly 3 feet deep the entire length of the swale.  The greenside bunkering will be similar to the Short complex.  The tee shot will need to carry a Sahara bunker complex to a Valley landing area offering two routes similar to the Channel where the player selecting the easier route will be faced with a Hell Bunker from the Long Hole.

Because the public will be demanding to play the same holes on their own courses, you can expect to see copies of these holes on all courses I will be designing in the future.   You gotta give the public what it wants.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jeff
I don't know that it's a brand new idea, and not to blow smoke your way, by I think your Quarry Course and Mike DeVries' Mines Course are very important developments, i.e. essentially re-claiming the land, re-vitalizing it, leaving something there that's far better than was there before.  I think any new agronomic developments/research will go hand in hand with this. I don't want to get into an environmental debate - they seem to lead nowhere. But I'm convinced that land and water use and stewardship issues and going to increase exponentially in the coming years, even in the short term. So taking land that no one else wants or can use, and bringing it back to a fuller life, and enhancing biodiversity, all while giving us a field of play....well, that's the ticket. And if courses can be built inexpensively and maintained inexpensively and with respect, and if imaginative mixed-use ideas can be enacted, the good created will accrue to the broader community/society, and I think that's even better (and more necessary). I go on alot around here about expanding the conventional/traditional forms and ideas of what constitutes 'shot testing' and this is why -- I think the broader those concepts become and the more widely accepted they become, the more types of re-claimed land and the more kinds of 'boring' sites can become potential candidates for golf courses

Peter 

Peter,

That was one idea that came into my head as well.  While every generation of gca's has used vision or technology to push golf to sites not heard of before - Sunningdale, mountaintops, deserts - I think that pushing even further to reclaimed sites is different enough in concept - i.e. make silk purse out of sow's ear - to warrant being called a new direction.

[Brad Tufts]

I dunno if it is a "Best New" feature, but Jim Engh's "muscle" bunkers seem pretty interesting to me.  I haven't been able to experience any let (hopefully in CO this fall), but they look very different.

Ironically enough, many of them I've seen pictures of look like some of Leeds' bunkers at Myopia!

It also looks like we have an imitator, or at least in the same style ballpark at Fallen Oak in MS, I think by Fazio?

[Lester George]

Matt,

I will definitely put one in at Ballyhack somewhere, I just haven,t figured out the "Adjustable" part yet.  Any ideas?

Lester

[Tommy Williamsen]

I am finding more short par fours.  I'm not sure that it is "21st' century.  But in the last decade or so more courses are being built with a good short par four on both the front and back nines.  They are exciting.  I have also found that not every course has to be 7400 yards long.  There are good designs that are way short of that.  Bandon is a good example. 

[Doug Ralston]

Certainly the most powerful new idea in golf course design since TOC is verticality. I know it has not completely caught on yet, but adding an entire new dimension [literally] to design will make new ideas for fairway flow, bunker shaping, and green placement. It will offer shots at all kinda of angles, and decisions based on both carry and run. Of course, new opportunities for beauty too.

Thank God courses are not limited to wimpy seasides and pathetic little rolling hills. You needn't make your 'long par-4' 500yds, if instead it rises 80ft over 390yds. And then a small basin for your green completely changes the play again.

Get used to it. Mountains will take eons to erode, so they are in your forseeable future. Use your imagination, and revel!  

Doug

[Matt Waterbury]

Matt,

I will definitely put one in at Ballyhack somewhere, I just haven,t figured out the "Adjustable" part yet.  Any ideas?

Lester

Lester,

Might I suggest that you start with the following approach:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/51938/indoor_surfing/

Of course, you'll have to figure out the appropriate adjustments to run sand through it rather than water, but I'm sure you've solved harder problems...

As for placement, I think the two bunkers in the middle of #2 are ideal: the nearest to the tee will break towards the green, and the other will be a true test and break back towards the tee. You have to provide options off the tee...

Cheers,
Matt

[Kirk Gill]

Adding to what Mr. Cirba said above, how about greens with underlying hydraulics that can be used to make minute adjustments to green contours, creating continually new playing experiences?

Of course, that would likely completely destroy the underlying structure of the green, and the whole thing would eventually (or very quickly!) fall apart, but that would then be a restoration/renovation opportunity.

Ok, so that won't work..........

[Kalen Braley]

I think the reversible course will be the next thing in this century.  Teton Reserve in Wymoing supposedly has the only one here in the states.  Andy T is supposed to play it later this spring and I look forward to a full report from him.

Think golf course architecure is not enough of a challenge anymore?  Trying desging a course where they play interesting and challenging from not just one direction, but in 2 directions.  It'll be a retro TOC course with all the modern upgrades.

This is the real wave of the future...although the wave bunkers sounds interesting too 

[Michael Dugger]

I gotta say the Coore and Crenshaw green which bleeds right into the following hole teeing grounds.

[Rich Goodale]

I gotta say the Coore and Crenshaw green which bleeds right into the following hole teeing grounds.

That idea is as old as the game of golf (remember the old rule about teeing your ball up within a few paces from the last hole?), and I very much doubt that C&C were the first to use it in the 21st century.

[Garland Bayley]

Forrest Richardson wants to build a par 2. Has proposed it, only to get it shot down by the developer. Extending this idea, why not build a course with predominantly par 1.5s, 2.5s, 3.5s, 4.5s, and 5.5s.

Say

20yds (1.5)
30yds (1.5)
40yds (1.5)
95yds (2.5)
105yds (2.5)
115yds (2.5)
275 yds (3.5)
285 yds (3.5)
295 yds (3.5)
395 yds (4)
405 yds (4)
415 yds (4)
485 yds (4.5)
495 yds (4.5)
505 yds (4.5)
675 yds (5.5)
685 yds (5.5)
695 yds (5.5)
6025 (64.5)

[Tom_Doak]

The only one of these ideas I've heard which I'd agree with as being "new" is the par-2.  If that ever catches on, Forrest will be a genius.

I do think the reversible course has potential, though it isn't completely new, obviously.  Years ago I asked Mr. Rawls to consider letting us make The Rawls Course a reversible design, but he wouldn't go for it.  I learned my lesson:  I'm working on another one as we speak, but this time I'm not going to tell the client about it until opening day.