[Patrick_Mucci]

If we agree that the object of the game is to get the ball from Point A to Point B in as few strokes as possible, does the architecture really matter ?

If there were three (3) football fields layed length to length, with a tee at one end and a cup/hole at the other,  and four golfers were betting each other on who could take the fewest strokes, wouldn't the spirit of competition and the general challenge be sufficient to fuel everyone's interest ?

Four golfers traversing 360 yards to get that 1.68 inch ball into that 4.25 inch hole in as few strokes as possible seems like it would keep them sufficiently occupied such that they'd want to repeat the process over and over again.

Five times ?  ten times ?  18 times ?

Let's say 18 times.

In order to create a little diversity to the challenge let's create 10 sets of 3 football fields, 4 sets of 1/2 football fields, and 4 sets of 4/5 football fields.   

Thus you'd have ten 360 yard holes, two 120 yard holes, two 240 yard holes, two 480 yard holes and two 600 yard holes.

They could be arranged in any order and direction so as to use the wind as an additional element to the challenge.

Would you spend a few hours playing that game against your friends ?

I would.

So, without any architectural additives you still have a very interesting game.

Now lets say that you couldn't find perfectly flat land to accomodate your football fields, so you had to lay them out over the natural terrain, and let's also assume that there are NO trees.

With NO bunkers and NO greens how much addititional interest is generated by the terrain over which the course was layed out ?

So, without any architectural additives you still have a very, very interesting game.

Let's suppose that the area within 20 yards of the hole had to be mown lower, like a green.

Now, you have a slightly different field of play.

Still, there are NO architectural additives and the game has taken on greater interest.

So what part of the interest in the GAME does architecture actually play ?

Is it over rated ?
Under rated ?

Is architecture MERELY the ICING ON THE CAKE ?

Would the best courses be those where the topography is the most interesting ?

Or would the best courses be those that are best sequenced over the topography ?

Or, would the best courses be those that are best sequenced and best layed out over the topography.

Let's say it's the latter, that those who can most creatively use the land to lay out and sequence their holes produce the best courses.

In the early stages of golf, isn't that what happened with an OUT and BACK configuration ?

Wasn't the real challenge, in creating a field of play, presented when golf moved off the flat sites next to the sea, to inland sites ?

Is it safe to say that the MACRO plot plan (architecture) is THE critical element in designing a golf course, with the MICRO portion being mostly window dressing ?

Your thoughts ? 

[Tom_Doak]

Patrick:

Architecture is a great catalyst for the game -- whether you are playing against someone, or out to enjoy yourself.

I don't know exactly how to answer your last set of questions.  The best layout on the best piece of land usually wins the rankings.  If it's one or the other, the best setting tends to be a bigger leg up ... perhaps just because there are a sufficient number of architects who know what they are doing, so that one "layout" cannot be vastly superior to the rest.

[Greg Tallman]

If there were three (3) football fields layed length to length, with a tee at one end and a cup/hole at the other,  and four golfers were betting each other on who could take the fewest strokes, wouldn't the spirit of competition and the general challenge be sufficient to fuel everyone's interest ?

I see you have discovered the course I grew up on.

Under the same mindset par is completely irrelevant yet a common tool in modern architecture if one buys into the romance we have with half par holes.

[Mike Nuzzo]

some people like the icing some like the cake
some people are entertained by any type of competition from checkers to chess
I had fun trying to break 10 windows in a golf simulator this past week but I would never play your football course
Cheers

[Jason McNamara]

Would you rather play tennis with your buddies at Wimbledon / Roland Garros / Newport, or on the city park cement?

And architecture (esp. good architecture) matters as well.  Your football fields don't encourage fades/draws/knockdowns.

[Joe Hancock]

some people like the icing some like the cake
some people are entertained by any type of competition from checkers to chess
I had fun trying to break 10 windows in a golf simulator this past week but I would never play your football course
Cheers

When choices are present, architecture matters. If you only have one option, it matters not.

Mike N.,

You'll play alone in a golf simulator, but would never play a flat golf course with a bunch of friends for drinks/ shekels/ food?

Hope you're well,

Joe

[Michael Blake]

If we agree that the object of the game is to get the ball from Point A to Point B in as few strokes as possible, does the architecture really matter ?

Mr. Mucci,

That certainly is the object of the game, but it is not the reason that I play.  And I suspect it's not the reason that most play.

I play for the freedom of trying to execute any shot I want to, at any time.  That could still be accomplished on your football field course, but it would be pretty boring.

The 'architectural additives' is what thrills us.  It tempts us.  It scares us.  It intrigues us.  It makes us think.

[Pat Burke]

For me, it's all that does interest me to play a round any more.
If I have the opportunity to play an architecturally significant course, I tend to get interested.
Usually I just play with students in order to help them, but would rarely just go out to play the same course.
Kind of like going to the beach for me any more.  I'd rather drive an extra amount of time to get to a great spot, than straight down the road to the nearest
That beach has sand and waves, but the other beach just calms my soul

[Tim Bert]

I'd like to pretend I wouldn't play your game on the football field, but I know I would.  I will play just about anything, and if I'm competing with my friends then even better.  I'll sit on a couch and toss a ball back and forth across the room with a buddy for an hour.  I'll make up dumb games that are quite pointless with both my 5 yr old son and my 35 yr old friends.

I'd play the football field game.  But without the architecture it wouldn't be nearly as fun or as interesting, and I wouldn't play it as frequently as I play golf.  Unless, of course, you had concrete paths along the side of the football field with gas guzzling two-seat vehicles to drive you to the result of each shot. 

[Charlie Goerges]

I agree with Joe H. If you've got a choice, it matters. And I think that in any endeavor like this, people will naturally choose the more interesting and challenging landscape.

Have you ever played Bocce Ball? It's not entirely unlike lawn bowling, but at my family's traditional fourth of July picnic, the game definitely gets played over the road less traveled. This are not the most interesting "shots" I've seen played by far. But they get the point across. We want the more interesting and varied landscape if at all possible.

Tee shot:





Result:

[Kalen Braley]

Would you rather play tennis with your buddies at Wimbledon / Roland Garros / Newport, or on the city park cement?

And architecture (esp. good architecture) matters as well.  Your football fields don't encourage fades/draws/knockdowns.

What do you mean you have to decide if your going left or right around those sets of goal posts in the middle..   

[Rich Goodale]

Pat

You can have the golf without the architecture but you can't have the architecture without the golf.  Of course, the game started the former way, no matter where or when, but as it developed it must have very quickly become clear that adding "architrectural" features (whether built or found) made the game more challenging and more interesting.  But, to answer your question, I would say only to the degree that you value challenge and interest over the bare fundamentals of the game.  I personally think that the essentials (i.e. distances, number of holes, rules, walkability etc.) trump the frills (i.e. vistas, hazards, contours, conditioning etc.), but that's just me.  Obviously, others on this forum think differently, although I can never figure out why....

Rich

[Anthony Gray]

  Nature and variety are elements that make golf great. But for some competition with themselves or others is the most important thing.

  Anthony

[Peter Pallotta]

That's the interesting thing, isn't it -- that architecture is experienced by a golfer even when no architect (save for the almighty) has consciously put it there.  I think architects who begin with that assumption -- i.e. that as soon as a field is deemed a field of play, architecture is thereby brought into existence -- tend to design more inspiriing and, let's call them, soulful golf courses. 

So to answer your question more directly, Patrick - no, architecture is not the "icing on the cake"; it is the cake, and the icing too.  That we've come to a point where we feel we need to make the distinction between the cake and the icing means that either there's been a lot of poor architecture created over the years, or (I think more likely) that somewhere along the line everyone involved started defining architecture much too narrowly.

Peter

[Sean_A]

That's the interesting thing, isn't it -- that architecture is experienced by a golfer even when no architect (save for the almighty) has consciously put it there.  I think architects who begin with that assumption -- i.e. that as soon as a field is deemed a field of play, architecture is thereby brought into existence -- tend to design more inspiriing and, let's call them, soulful golf courses. 

So to answer your question more directly, Patrick - no, architecture is not the "icing on the cake"; it is the cake, and the icing too.  That we've come to a point where we feel we need to make the distinction between the cake and the icing means that either there's been a lot of poor architecture created over the years, or (I think more likely) that somewhere along the line everyone involved started defining architecture much too narrowly.

Peter

Pietro

Finally, someone with a bit of sense.  There is only architecture where the field of play (thats the course folks) is concerned.  It doesn't matter how or why the features are in place, it only matters that they effect play.  So yes, architecture matters one heck of a lot for without it there is no golf. 

Ciao

[Kirk Gill]

If golf had started in the panhandle of Texas, then the inherent interest in hitting a ball from one place to the other would have been minimal. It might have excited a few, but it would probably have only been taken up by navel-staring lonely introverts who were pathetically walking along hitting a ball with a stick as their sole source of enjoyment. The other kids would likely have found that it was more fun to have their friends try and prevent them from getting the ball where they wanted to put it, and you'd have something more along the lines of field hockey, or hurling - a game suited to a flat pitch. Linksland was a pretty crappy place for hurling, but seemed to work out well for the singular attractions of golf. So in my mind, the architecture came first. It just took time and experience for the players to find out which kind of landforms were the most enjoyable to play on, and the vocabulary of golf architecture was born.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Patrick:

Architecture is a great catalyst for the game

Tom, I think that's both an accurate and a terrific statement, one that I will probably quote many times.

[Richard Choi]

Pat, if we did not care about the journey between the tee and the hole, we would all be bowling, not golfing.

[Lyne Morrison]

Patrick, while the local oval may aid in honing ones swing and in your example provide a little camaraderie – for me it cannot feed the soul in the manner that good architecture does.


But really - to round out this thread we should have a couple of words from Max Behr.

First up he may suggest that your football field options are ‘simply the imposition of ideas upon situations which are in no way fitted by nature to receive them’.

On the other hand, I think he would agree that the really big challenge inland was producing quality fields of play. With reference to this test he notes ‘experience has taught us that courses constructed with no higher end than merely to create playgrounds around which one may strike a ball present the golfer with little more than a landscape brutalised with the ideas of some other golfer’ - and also that – ‘the golfer of the future will demand of a golf course that relief to be found in the aesthetic pleasure to be derived from the landscape which expresses not mans will but the operation of natural forces’.  One would think that acknowledgement of this ideal carries forth a design commitment that recognises and values the finer detail of the earth's natural features.

He enlightens us further - ‘that which in linksland appealed unconsciously to the golfer was the absence of evidence of mans handiwork. He was in the presence of Nature unstained by artificiality’.

And so even today Mr Behr’s words ring true ‘… if golf architecture is to be what it should be, we must finally come to realise that golf is as much an aesthetic experience as it is one of skill.’

Cheers -- Lyne

[BCrosby]

That's the interesting thing, isn't it -- that architecture is experienced by a golfer even when no architect (save for the almighty) has consciously put it there.  I think architects who begin with that assumption -- i.e. that as soon as a field is deemed a field of play, architecture is thereby brought into existence -- tend to design more inspiriing and, let's call them, soulful golf courses. 

So to answer your question more directly, Patrick - no, architecture is not the "icing on the cake"; it is the cake, and the icing too.  That we've come to a point where we feel we need to make the distinction between the cake and the icing means that either there's been a lot of poor architecture created over the years, or (I think more likely) that somewhere along the line everyone involved started defining architecture much too narrowly.

Peter

Pietro

Finally, someone with a bit of sense.  There is only architecture where the field of play (thats the course folks) is concerned.  It doesn't matter how or why the features are in place, it only matters that they effect play.  So yes, architecture matters one heck of a lot for without it there is no golf. 

Ciao

Peter and Sean nail it. Golf is comprised of only three things. Equipment, rules and golf courses. The first two are limited by sanctioning bodies and apply uniformly to all golfers everywhere.

Which leaves golf courses. They are the only variable. Which means that how you experience the game from day to day is a function of the golf architecture of the courses you play. Which also means that golf archtiecture has a huge responsibility. It is not just what makes golf interesting or dull to play (though it is certainly that too), golf architecture is one of the things that constitutes golf itself.

Pat's example above is not of the absence of gca; it is an example of bad gca. There is no escaping gca or its importance.

Bob

   

[PCCraig]

If there were three (3) football fields layed length to length, with a tee at one end and a cup/hole at the other,  and four golfers were betting each other on who could take the fewest strokes, wouldn't the spirit of competition and the general challenge be sufficient to fuel everyone's interest ?

Isn't that how the game of Golf got started?

It just so happened that the football field was Links land with natural elements. The first GCA strategy came from the guy who thought he could manuver around an element in order to get to the hole faster than his buddy.

So isn't most GCA now just a variation of that? The placing of obsticles and defenses in which to slow the golfer from getting to the hole?

[JeffTodd]

I HAVE played the football field course, literally. Taking up the game as a teen, along with my friends, we did not always have access/transportation/money to play a traditional golf course, so we made up our own on a football field that was next to a baseball field that was next to a soccer field that was behind a high school that had a cross country track running around it. Rather than a hole we played to a stake, or a post, or a trashcan, or whatever target that was selected.

Four fifteen year old novices, who could not have named a single golf architect, immediately grew tired of playing the straight out and straight back "holes" and the game quickly evolved into one where new holes and routings were selected, with the best ones being used again and again and the less compelling shots and holes abandoned for new ones. Pieces of the property that begged for turning points, or offered drop or blind shots quickly became favored because they were more fun, demanded better execution, and dished out reward and punishment to those who deserved it. Holes that traversed the flat and featureless sporting fields did not last long in the rota. They were simply too boring when compared to playing across and around the bumps and hollows found on the rest of the property.

Despite having no knowledge of golf history, and the tendency toward naming holes, we named the holes that were keepers so no further explanation was needed when it was announced that next we'll play "the ridge hole." There were no hole numbers, just the names of shots that were favored. When no exciting shots remained unplayed the game was over and a winner was declared. I doubt we ever sought to play nine or eighteen holes; we played the holes that came naturally and quit when none remained.

The allure of better and more interesting architecture - whether it be by the hand of nature, the hand of man, or a combination of both - is inherent to the game and obvious even to those who are completely ignorant of golf's most basic architectural fundamentals. The architecture DOES matter a great deal and we're naturally drawn toward it whether we realize it or not. A true football field course, with nothing but a hole at the other end, would not get much repeat play.

[BCrosby]

Pat's example also teases out something about the role of gca. We don't mind the uniformity of tennis courts or football fields because the variety and interest of those sports are provided by your opponents. The venues for thoses sports function as a backdrop to direct, human competition.

But golf is played in parallel and so golfing competitions don't work in the same way as they do in other sports. Golf courses don't function as mere backdrops.  Golf courses function, in an important sense, as an active opponent. As such they are charged with providing the challenge and interest to the game - a responsibility that venues in other sports don't have to worry about. That golf courses serve that function is an important part of why golf is so unique and fascinating.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Pat, if we did not care about the journey between the tee and the hole, we would all be bowling, not golfing.

Richard,

Reread the opening post.

It's apparent that you didn't understand it.

Thanks

[PCCraig]

Pat's example also teases out something about the role of gca. We don't mind the uniformity of tennis courts or football fields because the variety and interest of those sports are provided by your opponents. The venues for thoses sports function as a backdrop to direct, human competition.

But golf is played in parallel and so golfing competitions don't work in the same way as they do in other sports. Golf courses don't function as mere backdrops.  Golf courses function, in an important sense, as an active opponent. As such they are charged with providing the challenge and interest to the game - a responsibility that venues in other sports don't have to worry about. That golf courses serve that function is an important part of why golf is so unique and fascinating.

Well said.

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