Report from Lubbock

[Tom Doak]

Several people on the shaping thread have indirectly asked questions about how Texas Tech is shaping up, so I thought I'd report from the scene.

We have about eight holes shaped now; most of the rest are still in their pancake-flat original form.

Yes, it will be a difficult golf course -- they wanted it over 7000 yards from the back tees to make it a potential NCAA tournament venue, and in this windy climate that will be extremely long.  From the middle tees, it'll be much more manageable at 6300 yards, but still tough.

We've tried to use the wind to make it as tricky as we can -- long par-4's with optional carries off the tee into the wind, where the carries are hard to judge, followed by shorter holes downwind with fallaway greens or ridges or bunkers in front, so you really have to hit some kind of golf shot to get close to the holes.  Less green contour than some of our other courses, because the superintendent keeps talking about "10 to 12" on the Stimpmeter.

The theme of the shaping is erosion.  The bunkers are shaped like washouts -- deep and skinny -- and we've got a lot more of that look in the out-of-play areas and around the tees.  The berm which we built on two sides of the course [to hide some ugly apartments and enclose the golf views] is being shaped as the rim of a "canyon," with a relatively flat top but all kinds of shape on the face coming into the course.  We've also planted 450 trees on the first three holes we've shaped, most of them on the exterior to add height to the berm.

Some people will be shocked -- that it's so hard, that we moved so much earth [800,000 cubic yards, which some designers move routinely!], that it's nothing like Lubbock.  It's pretty wild, not like anything I've seen before, which is the whole idea.

[Joel_Stewart]

Tom:
What construction company did you end up hiring?

Also since you planted 450 trees on the first 8 holes, I assume that another 500 or so for the rest of the course?  What kind of trees are they?

[Peter Galea]

Tom,
Can you share any photos?

[TEPaul]

"The theme of the shaping is erosion--the bunkers are shaped like washouts--we've got a lot more of that look in out of play places and around tees."

Very interesting! Does that mean the theme of the course or the entire look of it will be one of "erosion"? Is that why you did the berms to look like canyon sides or walls that will also look like a much larger scale "erosion" and also carried that theme into the "out of the way places to also look "eroded"?

If the bunkers are long and skinny to look like "washouts" what about bunker drainage? Will water run through the long skinny bunkers like "washouts" and will these bunker surfaces be hard packed sand with smaller "washouts" and "rivulets" within them?

Are you creating bunkering or some bunkering that will look and act and play like "arroyos" of all sizes and dimensions? If so, I have never really heard of anything like that--but it certainly sounds interesting.  

If that's the theme I like the way you seem to carry it from the big bern "walls" into the "in play bunkers" and out into "out of the way" shaping that looks the same as the bunkers. Sounds like a "look" and "feel" that you're tying in throughout the entire visible golf course.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Tom,
How did you settle on the routing for this course and is it more difficult to establish one for a site with few features or one that has many?

[Don_Mahaffey]

Tom,
Are you really softening your green contours because the super wants to keep them fast? I appreciate super input into design to aid maintenance, but this doesn't seem like the way it should work. Not being critical, just curious.

[Jim_Kennedy]

TEPaul,
Didn't C&C incorporate "washouts" at Talking Stick?

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Tom, sounds like I should get out to Lubbock and slap the shit out of that superintendent.

Please do NOT deviate from the norm!

[Doug Wright]

I'm interested in the following from Mr. Doak above:

"Less green contour than some of our other courses, because the superintendent keeps talking about "10 to 12" on the Stimpmeter."

Is that really how it works? That the superintendent (or owner) determines the green contours that are designed in based on green speeds, or at all? What if that super heads for greener pastures in a year, or gets fired or whatever, and someone with a different view arrives? Perhaps this was a throwaway comment by Tom Doak, but I found it odd. My sense is that it would be the other way around--that the architect would design the greens and the super would deal with them speedwise.

Just my 2 cents...  

[TEPaul]

I agree on the greenspeed/contour thing. Talk to the owner or super and if they don't understand call TommyN and get him out there to slap some people upside the head! If that doesn't work I'll make the call to Gib Papazian and get him out there to annihilate someone so you won't be suspected of murder (Gib is in and out of town as fast as it happens anyway so don't worry about him).

I quesiton your remark about maybe doing some real stacked sod bunkers out there too. I really can't see something like that tying in well with an "erosion" bunker theme in Lubbock Texas. Why make things harder on yourself than they already are on an unusual site?

Just my 1 cent worth!

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul and Doug Wright,

Green superintedents come and go,
the ARCHITECTURE endures.

I too don't understand the rationale.

[Tim_Weiman]

Pat et al:

I don't understand what is so difficult to figure out.  In many places there is pressure to maintain greens in the 10-12 Stimp range.  Adhering to this philosophy does restrict the contour architects can build into greens.

Personally, I think greens like what TD built at Lost Dunes are far more fun, but apparently, that is not what the client wants.  Has Tom ever said he doesn't listen to clients?  Wasn't he very open about taking input from MK at Pacific Dunes?

[Tom Doak]

Where is Ed Baker when I need him?  The trend in all of golf is toward faster and faster greens, and this is a young superintendent who can do it.  And the University wants "the best," and that equates to fast greens.  

On top of that, Lubbock is a very windy place, so the greens are bound to be even faster than what he tries for.

I'm not making them as flat as Tom Weiskopf's greens, for God's sake.  They'll still be tricky to putt, like say Beechtree or Pacific Dunes.  I'm just not building 4% and 5% tilt.

To answer some other queries:

The contractor is Golf Works, Inc. out of Austin, Texas.  However, we have also placed four shapers on the job to do the detail work:  Brian Slawnik and Eric Iverson from my company, plus Kye Goalby and Jack Dredla.  [Jim Urbina and I get on the dozers occasionally, too.]

That's 450 trees on the first THREE holes.  We figure about 2500 for the entire course, and they're not small trees, either.  We're using about twelve different species, from Afghan pines [no kidding] for visual screening to live oaks and honey locusts for shade to flowering crabapples and broom for color.

Doing the routing for this was an odd exercise -- it had more to do with making the drainage network efficient than anything else.  The prevailing wind was a big factor, even though the winds out there seem to blow from everywhere.

I doubt we'll wind up using any sod walls, but there are some very steep sections of the bunker faces where perhaps a sod wall would hold up the slope and be easier to maintain.  I wasn't thinking about an entire sod-wall face, just little portions here and there.

[Scott_Burroughs]

The tree situation sounds almost like Shadow Creek.  Will they be in play like a parkland course or are they more for visual reasons?

[RJ_Daley]

What is the budget figure for rope and wire to hold up that many trees during establishment/grow-in?  

Is Dredla your snake wrangler?  

[Lou Duran]

Tom D,

From a technical standpoint, this course should be a nice contrast to your work at PD.  When I first heard of the concept, it sounded  a lot like Shadow Creek with a more modest budget (not that $10MM+/- is a small amount).  It will be interesting to see how the finished product compares.  The trees will give the property an interesting look.  I hope that you are not planting Sweet Gums- the seed pods create quite a mess.  Have you chosen the grasses?  Will they be overseeding the fairways in the winter (I am assuming that the greens will be some type of bent)?

[TEPaul]

Tom Doak;

Here's a good question for you. You once implied that if someone really threw a lot of money at you like Wynn did at Shadow Creek that you would have built a great course for so much less that you woulda given the rest back to them provided you didn't actually have a Wynn who seemed to know exactly how he wanted to spend all that money.

But if Lubbock costs $10mil and for some reason they gave you $50mil with no demands, what would you do differently out there? Would you just spend the $10mil you are now and give them #40mil back? OOps, sorry, give them $30mil back and keep the other $10mil for being so clever as to have saved them $30mil?

You might want me to negotiate for you if you find a heavy hitter low on ideas! It's called the Chinese bargaining method! You start with an enormous spread and you negotiate numbers so fast they get confused where they started or where they ended up in relation to it, as well as exactly what they're gonna get for it which works kinda well with a client low on ideas!

But is there something out there you think you'd like to do if a ton more money was available--other than my scam?

[Tom Doak]

The trees are certainly going to make a big difference.  Mostly, they're visual, to screen out two ugly boundaries and to break up the space into more manageable portions.

The comparison to Shadow Creek isn't quite fair, since the budget is less than 25% as high.  Shadow Creek has ten times as many trees as we do in Lubbock.

However, the donor for the golf course, Jerry Rawls, has told me all along to spend whatever it takes to create a special golf course and a course which will compare with the best university courses in the country.  Mr. Rawls believes that his experiences mingling with faculty and businessmen and fellow students in the informal setting of the golf course while he was in college was an important factor in his own success.

Several people involved with the project suggested we build the same kind of water features that made Shadow Creek famous, but frankly I just don't think they're worth what they cost to build.  We're spending just enough to accomplish the goals we've been given; I'm sure we could have built everything twice as big and twice as deep, but I don't think it would have been productive.  Even at that size, we couldn't have hidden some of the power line which runs down one side of the property.

Tom Paul:  I did speak to a potential client about 18 months ago who wanted to spend $50 million to build a world-class resort course.  At the time, the gentleman was worth $9 billion; his company has suffered in the market since then, so his plans are on hold.  What would we do?  I'd love to see someday.

[RJ_Daley]

Tom, with you posting at 2:01Am, it seems like you are almost having to go sleepless as if being up with a colicky baby.  

[TEPaul]

TomD:

You had a client who wanted to spend $50mil to build a world class resort course? What the hell does that mean exactly, in your opinion?

What if you were convinced it would only take about $15mil to build him his world class resort course? Would he still want to spend the remaining $35mil on it?

I think you can convince him that you can build him every bit as world class a course for $15mil as for $50mil. As to the remaining $35mil, well something very nice can be done with that whether he just wants to give you the remaining $35mil or do it himself.

There's a property in Virginia that could also be a world class golf course--matter or fact it looks to me to be one already just sitting there! Actually it's big enough to be about 2-3 of them with great hole landforms sitting there that lead one to say; "Oh look there's a great hole, there's another and on and on! It's a natural "courses within a course" site if I ever saw one. You could do that and still have about $10-15mil left over for some serious whiskey money.

Some people yesterday were talking about that $70 mil course that Rees built out west that MGM doesn't seem to want anymore now that they've bought out Wynn and Shadow Creek!

How can you spend $70mil on a golf course anyway? I'd think you'd have to make greens out of gold to do that! The way these people were talking about that course was odd anyway. They all said it's really something to see because of what it is where it is. They didn't even seem interested in its architecture or how it played only in the fact that it cost $70mil to build. That's why they went there to see what a $70 mil course looks like.

So is what you're saying about Texas Tech is even if you could spend twice as much that probably wouldn't really make the course better?

[John_D._Bernhardt]

I am curious about the whole purpose of the berm here.

[TEPaul]

Apparently it's to block out visually some things that are UUUgly!

[Dave Wilber]

Heh!!

Sorry Tommy, but if anyone is going to slap around the superintendent at Texas Tech (whom I found and helped them hire) it is going to be Me, Myself and I !!

And as a little remider, we aren't growing fescue/bent and doing that sort of surface here at Tech (as done at Pacific Dunes) but instead we are growing Bentgrass in the west texas wind. You bet they'll be fast. Won't be easy to slow them down on some days.

[Mashie1]

800,000 cubic yards of earthmoving, artificial planting of trees and $10 mil+ budget!!!! - are the days of design integrity based upon the premise of minimalism gone for Mr. Doak after the success of Pacific Dunes?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm...


 

[Nick Bunch]

Here is a link to some pictures from construction of the course -

http://www.raiderpower.com/pictures/golfcourse/

Nick.