[Garland Bayley]

...
I actually DID walk and carry my bag when I played Black Mesa three years ago.  There are a couple of long transitions, but I didn't think the walk was too bad, other than climbing up to #16 tee.  ...

Anthony, here is the question he has been dying to be asked.

Tom,

If you play Crystal Downs too often, do you get Downs syndrome?

Other questions
What did you think of the tee to fairway detours at Black Mesa?
Do you think the detours need to be paved?
What about the hike from 6 to 7?
How come the finished holes at Wicked Pony look so flat and uninteresting?
Is the best 9 yet to be built at Wicked Pony?
Do you think of Atlantic City Country Course as being your design, or a remodel?
Do you think Anthony's mom should have a feature interview here?
Are you coming to the Grudge Match, aka the Brawla in Walla Walla?
Do you think 5192 yard tees are ludicrous and an artifact of our cart golf culture?
Andy thinks I am nuts and too prejudiced against ponds. What do you think?

Thanks for your time,

The Gorilla of the Brawla.

[Michael Dugger]

I gotta confess, Barland Gayley is crackin' me up here!!!!

[Tony_Muldoon]

Tom for the record can you tell us what your team did at Rosapenna?

Is it open now and is there any chance of more work there?

Thanks for the time on the interview and the time you spend on here.  To play one of your courses is in my 'Top 10 must do's in golf'.

Tony

[Tom_Doak]

Tony:

So far the only thing we have done at Rosapenna is to build new greens on several of the new nine holes that go into play on the Old Tom Morris course this summer ... replacing the nine holes across the road.  Eric Iverson did all of that work himself, with a little help from George Waters; I had only walked the holes and made a few suggestions, including moving the green on the fifth hole.  We have talked with them about doing some more extensive work on the Sandy Hills course, but between the permits and the expense, nothing has happened yet and I'm not sure if it will.

Bayley:  When I was walking around with Pete Dye at the TPC at Sawgrass in 1982, someone asked him if he was bothered by all the criticism, and he said "As long as nobody calls it too dull or too easy, I'm happy."  Nobody has ever called any of my courses FLAT or UNINTERESTING.  I sincerely hope they finish Wicked Pony now so you will get to play those front nine holes ... you will be crying for your mama by the time you're done with them.

[Garland Bayley]

...Nobody has ever called any of my courses FLAT or UNINTERESTING.  I sincerely hope they finish Wicked Pony now so you will get to play those front nine holes ... you will be crying for your mama by the time you're done with them.

Matt Ward insists I play from the 5192 tees, because I'm so bad. You got 5192 tees?

[Bill_McBride]

Bill M:

I actually DID walk and carry my bag when I played Black Mesa three years ago.  There are a couple of long transitions, but I didn't think the walk was too bad, other than climbing up to #16 tee.  But, I think we pay more attention to the transitions than a lot of architects do, so I hope the walk on the new course will be tighter.  The only long walk I can think of is the transition from 14 green to 16 tee, which has got to be almost 800 yards with a long golf hole somewhere in there.  And I am pretty sure there is not as much elevation change on our site as on the original course.

I think you are right, it's a tough walk but walkable.  My first time there we were playing 36 and the high elevation made me worried about stamina.  The second time we were playing couples golf and walking was not in the equation with that group!  Hope to see your course open next time I'm there.

[Ash Towe]

Tom/Ran, thanks for the interview.  It was a very interesting read.
Tom, I hope you get the chance to work in New Zealand again, soon.

[JC Jones]

great read.  i hope you get a team together for High Pointe. It is frustrating having that course be 45 minutes away and not being able to play it. 

[Peter Pallotta]

Peter:

I was no different about expectations than anybody else while I was working on High Pointe; but by the time Pacific Dunes came around, I was a bit more grounded.

Tom - thanks. I had a feeling you'd say that.  I believe you, of course, but am interested in how some are able to get from "there" (the expectations) to "here" (the ground) while all the while doing the work -- and the kind of work -- they really believe in and are proud of.  I think choice (choices) plays a big part, maybe the biggest. But a philosophy about the work that's substantial enough to carry them across the proving grounds seems to be another, provided they keep the faith.  Just my experience; I'm not suggesting it's necessarily yours.

Peter  

[Rob Rigg]

...Nobody has ever called any of my courses FLAT or UNINTERESTING.  I sincerely hope they finish Wicked Pony now so you will get to play those front nine holes ... you will be crying for your mama by the time you're done with them.


Matt Ward insists I play from the 5192 tees, because I'm so bad. You got 5192 tees?
 

It was funny before, now I'm crying.

[Emil Weber]

I didn't know Tom made a routing for Old Head...  THAT would've been a great course 

[Ian Andrew]

Thanks Ben and Ran.

I always thought we were a little overdue on a follow up to the original interview.

I'm looking forward to his thoughts on Banff and Jasper.

[Tom_Doak]

Emil:

I don't think my routing for Old Head was much better or worse than any other.  1/2 to 2/3 of the holes along the coast were the same, and the inland holes are all pretty boring so how you routed them did not matter so much.  I certainly wouldn't have put in as much mounding, but I don't know that that would have made the course more appealing to many.

Actually the best idea I had was the very first one which had no chance of passing.  I told the owner I thought that 18 holes would feel really crammed onto the site and that he should think about building the best nine-hole course in the world.

[Richard Choi]

Hi Tom,

I've just read "The Seventh at St Andrews", the recount of how the Castle course was built written by Scott Gummer. It is a very fascinating tale about how architects submit and get a job and how they go about building it.

In one of the early sections, there is a following passage:

"Doak was not in the St Andrews stakes (i.e. not invited to submit a proposal), but Kidd did not know that. (Some time later, Kidd asked Doak why he did not throw his hat in the ring for No. 7 and Doak replied, curiously, that he did not know how to get in touch with the Links Trust-this despite having caddided on the links the summer after college graduation.)"

Can you elaborate on why you think you were not asked to submit a proposal by the Links Trust and why you didn't go after the job aggressively?

[Tom_Doak]

Richard:

I have never believed we stood a very good chance of winning a competition to design a course; the fact that someone is having a competition usually makes me suspicious whether they know what they are doing.  I've only ever had a couple of clients who could understand a routing plan well enough to decide who had submitted the best one, and if they're going to decide on the basis of graphics or presentation skills, I'm not going to win there.  Also, in most of those deals, someone has gamed the politics and gotten themselves the inside track, and that's not my m.o., either.

On the other hand, I've had enormous success on projects where the client was familiar with our work and called us directly.  While David was putting his all into that competition, I was out building Cape Kidnappers and Barnbougle and St. Andrews Beach.  And I think I made the right call to concentrate on those.

I really didn't know anything about the competition until it was half over, and I never really considered submitting an entry at that point; remember, I didn't have the same profile then that I do today, and my resume probably wouldn't have mattered much to the Links Trust anyway.  I don't know that the Links Trust ASKED anyone to submit a proposal ... they just put out an RFP, and if they had a mailing list, I wasn't on it.   But I don't know how many American designers were on it.

I am sort of curious why my not submitting a proposal made it to print at all, nor why it would be labeled by the author as "curious".

[Kyle Henderson]

Hi Tom,

I've just read "The Seventh at St Andrews", the recount of how the Castle course was built written by Scott Gummer. It is a very fascinating tale about how architects submit and get a job and how they go about building it.

In one of the early sections, there is a following passage:

"Doak was not in the St Andrews stakes (i.e. not invited to submit a proposal), but Kidd did not know that. (Some time later, Kidd asked Doak why he did not throw his hat in the ring for No. 7 and Doak replied, curiously, that he did not know how to get in touch with the Links Trust-this despite having caddided on the links the summer after college graduation.)"

Can you elaborate on why you think you were not asked to submit a proposal by the Links Trust and why you didn't go after the job aggressively?

Richard,

I was surprised that Gummer's book gave the names of all the design firms that failed to win the commission, along with the purported rationale for not aslecting them/going with DMK Design instead. I guess the Links Trust doesn't have to worry about stepping on toes.


Tom Doak,

I am eager to see the minor changes (new bunkering) at Ballyneal. Would you mind providing everyone with a brief synopsis of what those changes are and how they improve the course?

Thank you for continuing to dedicate so much of your time and insights to this dioscussion group.

Best Regards,
Kyle

[Richard Choi]

The half the book is really Kidd's biography and the author plays up the cordial but cool rivalry between you and Kidd. There are a couple of passages regarding to you and neither were "kind" in nature. It seemed to me the author was trying to drum up something that is not there. (ex. when you praised the Castle Course as "better than expected", Kidd takes that as a slight, as in you were not expecting much out of Kidd, although you probably meant better than what you thought the flat farm land site could have produced.)

The book says there were 12 RFP's sent out. I believe the only American who got an RFP was Kyle Phillips. Canadian Doug Carrick got one as well. Out of those, they interviewed 6 before selecting Kidd. Kidd thought that he was competing against you, Nicklaus, and several other "well known" architects, but none of them got an invite.

[Tom_Doak]

I do think David sees more rivalry with me than the other way around.  Scott Gummer spent a lot of time with David on that book, but he never talked to me about it at all, so what you have is David's perspective.  I have just always thought of it as a friendly rivalry, but I don't need a rivalry to keep me motivated ... good pieces of ground are more than enough for that.  (Perhaps the fact that I haven't even read the book would indicate that I'm not overly worried about it ... although I'm sure somebody could spin that as me being insecure if they tried hard enough!)

I don't have any idea where my quote about The Castle Course came from; I don't remember saying anything like that about it, or saying much at all, really.  (Does anyone remember if that came from here?)  I only saw a few holes roughed in during construction, and I talked to David a month or so after I was there and asked him directly (as a friend) if he was sure he wanted to keep all those little humps in the fairway because it looked like it would be controversial.  He replied that he was sure he did.

[Richard Choi]

Man, now I wish I had the book with me in my office...

The quote was attributed to you as you said after you took that initial tour during contruction. I guess Kidd wasn't there, but he heard that quote from someone who was there with you.

[JC Jones]

Man, now I wish I had the book with me in my office...

The quote was attributed to you as you said after you took that initial tour during contruction. I guess Kidd wasn't there, but he heard that quote from someone who was there with you.

if thats the case, that is not very good journalism/authorship.

[Eric Smith]

It's on page 195.

"Later that week, on Friday afternoon, Tom Doak turned up onsite.  Kidd's friendly rival was over playing in the Dunhill Links Championship....  Peter Mason showed Doak around.  Kimber was already gone for the day, but McShane ran into Doak outside the office trailer.  "Looks like you guys are having fun," Doak offered, which  McShane took as a cop-out bordering on an insult. Mason later relayed to Kimber Doak's comment that "No. 7 far exceeded his expectations."  It was a backhanded compliment, to Kimber's mind, as if Doak thought they would screw it up, but they hadn't.  As for Kidd, he would have appreciated, and in fact expected a call from Doak.  Regardless, Kidd is from the sticks and stones school; what Doak said about No. 7 was not of consequence-though Kidd would have loved to see the look in his eyes."


Scott Gummer (now a Discussion Group member ) - I hope you don't mind my posting the quote from your book.

[Tom_Doak]

I suppose if I said something like, "Fascinating," everybody would take that out of context and assume I meant something else now, too.  That is part of the problem with being famously critical.  It seems like unless you are just effusive with praise, they take it to mean you really hated something.  And I am almost never effusive with praise ... but that doesn't mean I hate everything.

I was just curious to see what they were building, I wasn't there to critique it for anyone but myself.

I hope Scott Gummer comments on this, so I can twist his words around out of context.

[JC Jones]

I hope Scott Gummer comments on this, so I can twist his words around out of context.

Now THAT is funny.

[Greg Tallman]

Emil:

I don't think my routing for Old Head was much better or worse than any other.  1/2 to 2/3 of the holes along the coast were the same, and the inland holes are all pretty boring so how you routed them did not matter so much.  I certainly wouldn't have put in as much mounding, but I don't know that that would have made the course more appealing to many.

Actually the best idea I had was the very first one which had no chance of passing.  I told the owner I thought that 18 holes would feel really crammed onto the site and that he should think about building the best nine-hole course in the world.

Given the current economic climate and the continuing issue with 6 hour rounds that may have been a brilliant suggestion that was likely scoffed at.

[Scott Warren]

An interesting quote on Scott's website:

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds"
 — Francis Bacon

I suppose in light of the above, there's a few ways you could interpret that...

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