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Phil McDade

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Tribute to PacDunes -- adjunct thread on routing
« on: June 07, 2008, 09:05:05 PM »
Tim Bert's thread on PacDunes rivals (so far) George Pazin's thread last year on Oakmont as one of the most insightful and interesting I've read on the discussion board. It prompted some thoughts that I think are better discussed, if the board feels so motivated, on a separate thread rather than taking Tim's thread off on a major tangent.

Of all the things I appreciate about golf architecture and design, routing is the one that boggles my mind. In recent years, I've paid more attention to how an architect routed a course, and can see (sort of) the obvious ways an architect could route a hole around a particular feature, be it a body of water, or natural valley, or natural green setting. But fitting all of that together, into a cohesive 18 holes, is something that resembles art, in my mind.

Several GCA posters (astutely, I think) have suggested the best courses resemble a symphony, with subtle introductions, exhilirating and quiet moments, grand finishes, and flourishes here and there.

Art Fuller's thread shows a map of the PacDunes routing, and what strikes me is how different it is than most course routings. The beginning seems somewhat conventional (vaguely reminiscent of Whistling Straits), in that Doak and Co. start from the far corner of the property and make a beeline for the coast. But at #4, he seems to take an unconventional turn. Instead of heading north up the coast (current #13), he turns abruptly, goes along the coast for just one hole, then zig-zags his way back away from the coast, and ends the front nine not really near the 1st tee (like a conventional out and back front nine). The back nine follows perhaps a bit more traditional path -- although as many have pointed out, it's a quite unconventional nine, with the back-to-back par 3s to begin the round and only two par 4s the entire nine.

I'd can see, looking at the map, a more conventional routing -- with a front nine (in order) of current holes 1, 2, 3, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, followed by a back nine (in order) of current holes 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 4, 5, 6, 7.



Yardages of these "conventional" nines wouldn't differ all that much from the current nines -- the front would be 17 yards longer, with the back 17 yards shorter (a nominal two yards per hole, on average). This conventional nine would also, one might argue, have the added virtue of having two of the course's more acclaimed holes (4 and 6) falling on the back nine, with the acclaimed risk/reward #6 in particular playing as the 17th hole, the kind of hole one likes to see near the end of a round for match-play purposes. And it would end strongly, with a 464 yd. par 4. True, the pars of the nines would be quite unconventional -- 37 front, 34 back. But not all that much more unconventional than a back nine with only two par 4s, as exists now.

My questions (perhaps premature, given that Tim's only one-third of the way through his thread) are these: does the current routing of PacDunes flow like a great course should? Does the routing seem as "unconventional" as it does on the map? Would routing PacDunes along the lines of a more conventional way that I've suggested (there may be others) compromise the course?

This isn't meant to be a criticism of the current routing of PacDunes at all; rather, while Tim's thread examines in terrific detail the ins-and-outs of particular holes, I'm also interested in how the whole thing fits together, and flows (for lack of a better word). Thus, an adjunct thread (and the last thing I want to do is deter from frank and interesting discussions of each hole in Tim's thread...)



« Last Edit: June 07, 2008, 09:06:42 PM by Phil McDade »

Tom_Doak

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Re: Tribute to PacDunes -- adjunct thread on routing
« Reply #1 on: June 07, 2008, 09:50:04 PM »
Phil:

The current routing for Pacific Dunes is ordered in the way I conceived it.

When I recognized the "imbalance" of the two nines in terms of having so many par-3's on the back ... at lunch the day we walked the routing for the first time ... I started thinking about the alternative order you suggest.  However, I really didn't like the would-be long walk from #18 to #8 which would have broken up the experience, and the par 37-34 thing bothered Mr. Keiser more than the number of par-3's on the back nine.  Plus, we had walked the routing as it is, and everyone agreed that the "flow" of it was too cool to change.  So it stayed.

Phil McDade

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Re: Tribute to PacDunes -- adjunct thread on routing
« Reply #2 on: June 07, 2008, 10:10:45 PM »
Tom:

Thanks; interesting information on Mr. Keiser's thoughts on imbalanced nines (37-34) compared to the four 3s on the back nine. The PD par sequence (not necessarily the routing) reminds me a bit of Machrihanish, which has 8 par 4s and one lone par 3 on the front nine (no par 5s), then two par 5s and three par 3s (two of them back-to-back, late) on the back nine.

I also found it interesting that you found, or tucked, three of the par 3s into one corner of the property. Pete Dye, as you probably know, deliberately placed all four of Whistling Straits par 3s along the Lake Michigan coast, in part because he wanted to fully utilize the winds coming off the lake to impact those tee shots. But that's probably the difference between an entirely man-made course like WS and one like PD in which landforms and terrain as found were utilized much more deliberately.

Tom_Doak

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Re: Tribute to PacDunes -- adjunct thread on routing
« Reply #3 on: June 07, 2008, 11:47:02 PM »
Phil:

Those three short holes you refer to (5, 10, 11) were the first three holes we built at Pacific Dunes.  We had the shaping on all three of them done in just over two weeks!

BTW, I've never talked with Mr. Dye about the layout of Whistling Straits, but I would bet that the location of his par-3's had a lot to do with Mr. Kohler wanting to count as many holes "on the lake" as possible.  Mr. Keiser had the same feeling about the ocean, which is one reason David Kidd's routing goes out to touch the cliff as many times as possible.

Jim Colton

Re: Tribute to PacDunes -- adjunct thread on routing
« Reply #4 on: June 08, 2008, 12:21:38 AM »
Phil,

I agree with you that routing is an art form.  I like to think of myself as a pretty smart guy, but I wouldn't have the first clue of how to effectively route a course, much less determine whether that routing was the optimal one given the property and the constraints involved.  I guess that's why I'm the one paying to play instead of getting paid to design.

This thread made me think of Tom's Feature Interview here back in 2001 (a fascinating read 7 years later), where he said, "I’d like to think that I would have designed the same course at Sand Hills that Bill and Ben did; and I’d like to believe they would have made most of the same decisions I did at Pacific Dunes."  Given the scale of SH (did C&C say that they had 100's of holes to choose from?) and the unconventional routing of PD, could this really be true?  Would two different architects (assume similar quality) come up with the same routing?  I don't really have a sense for the process, so please pardon my ignorance.  Is it one of those things where the optimal routing is tough to find, but when you've found it, it sticks out like a sore thumb?  I kind of get a sense of that from Tom's comments about when they all walked it for the first time with Keiser.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2008, 12:23:11 AM by Jim Colton »

Phil McDade

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Re: Tribute to PacDunes -- adjunct thread on routing
« Reply #5 on: June 08, 2008, 11:11:30 AM »
Jim:

I've wondered that, too. I would think different architects would come up with even slight variations of routings (including at least a few different holes), given the same terrain and land to work with. It might be just as good, or perhaps even better, but I would think it would have to be somewhat different.

Tom -- there is no question that Kohler and Dye wanted to maximize the coastline with as many holes as possible. That course was built with the clear intention of hosting the kinds of tournaments it has -- majors and high-profile, televised competition. Its most obvious asset, with that in mind, was the rugged, cliff-like coastline of the lake.

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