Liberty National and Maximalism: The Tipping Point?

[Neal_Meagher]

This being about the fourth thread regarding this week's FedEx Cup DRAMA at Liberty National, I'd like to pose a question from a slightly different point of view.

First, let's all just agree that what Bob Cupp did to reclaim what is, essentially, Jimmy Hoffa's final resting place, is pretty fantastic.  When I think about the logistics of importing tons upon tons of fill material (I have no idea how much) and then to cap the whole place and then resculpt it into anything resembling a greensward, I have to admire the effort.  To try and capture the off-site views also presents a wholly different set of design issues than most of us in this business ever have to deal with.

But, as so many here have mentioned in the other threads, there just seems to be something amiss.  I'd like to throw something into the fire for discussion that may shed some light on why this place seems to be such a lightning rod.

Can it be that Minimalism has won the war?  Not just the occasional skirmish or battle, but the whole damn war?  When we have Tiger Woods (admittedly through a verbose and not very bright pro am playing partner) belittling the course are we at the point where we need to step back and really say that too much shaping can be too much?  Now, as a tartan wearer, again, I gingerly step into this fray, but I really do want to understand where golf design is headed, given not only the collective dearth of new golf construction, but this new attention to golf architecture that Liberty National seems to have engendered.

To wit, has the past decade and a half's new golden age created a new standard?  Has the beautiful restraint but still bold strokes of, say, Friar's Head or Pacific Dunes so impacted the golf firmament to even the elite levels, that when faced with what, by all accounts, seems to be a very individualistic and almost throwback sort of "contemporary" golf course that no one knows where to put it?  I am very puzzled by the extreme reactions toward Liberty National and want to understand if these statements are made from the standpoint of a new level of awareness of where minimalism has taken us, or if it is a vanguard of things to come.  Is Liberty National and its ilk the wave of the future for anti-minimalism and a move back to 70's style contempo-golf design?

[Mark Pearce]

No.

[Ajay Yadav]

No.

As the consternation is due to a number of factors such as narrowness of the holes etc... that are probably unique to this course.

More land and perhaps the same or different architect and the outcome may well have been different..... Bayonne (which also was constrained by the amount of land) is a good example

[Jeff_Brauer]

Neal,

For a while, enviros wanted us to build golf courses ONLY on such scarred sites, which to them was a socially acceptable way to build a golf course. That concept of using crappy land - perhaps forced on us by others - is not dead.  For golfers, the idea of building in any style on more naturally appealing land hasn't gone away.  I doubt many really appreciate the techincal difficulty of building LN, they just know its not as purty as a course built on gently rolling land somewhere else.

For that matter, as impressive as the views are, I wonder if most of us see a disconnect of playing golf with a view of the NYC skyline?  After all, the move was to "country" clubs, not city clubs, even though most courses are or were a mix of the two, not really being that far out of the city.  But, I digress.

I think we will always see some of these courses on landfills, etc.  In some ways, the idea of an upper end course on one is what is the disconnect.  Most landfill courses have been lower end public courses.  The idea of trying to build a world class course on a dump site is fairly unique, I would think.

Short version - I don't think its a design style issue, I think its a site selection issue.  Where would you expect the next world class course to be - on the ocean in Oregon, or the linksland of Nebraska, or on a garbage dump in Jersey?

[Scott Warren]

Is there a point where views are so amazing that they overpower the golf experience itself?

[Voytek Wilczak]

Where would you expect the next world class course to be - on the ocean in Oregon, or the linksland of Nebraska, or on a garbage dump in Jersey?

Jeff - nice sound bite, but inaccurate. It is actually Bayonne that sits on top of a municipal landfill (household garbage), not Liberty. Liberty sits on flat (albeit chemically contaminated), industrial land. And, arguably, Bayonne gets pretty close to world-class. Liberty - not so much. So there.

The real question is whether it is even possible to engineer a naturally-looking golf course from scratch.

I think that Bayonne and Whistling Straites demonstrate that you can get darned close (although there will always be detractors).

That chance was lost at LN.

[Jeff_Brauer]

That said, my comment is more than sound bite.  Whether landfill or chemical dump, or other scarred industrial area, generally speaking, its easier to build a world class course on a world class site.  Or not have to spend your first $10Mil or so rectifying problems before even thinking about building the course!

Shadow Creek is a pretty good example of engineering from scratch to look like nature, but unlike LN, they could go down and up with the grades, not just mostly up.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Neal,
I think the tipping point was reached in the marketing, the only thing they left out was from page one of Rudy Giuliani's playbook.
People aren't stupid and don't like to be told just how 'good' something is, cream rises on its own. If they stayed away from this approach there would be less of a negative response.

[Tom_Doak]

Voytek:

Are you sure of your facts on the sites of Liberty and Bayonne?

I've never been to Liberty National, but I understood that there was a section of landfill involved.  Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure Bayonne was all built up from a flat site with contaminated dredge material, and then capped, instead of built on "garbage".

Neal:

I agree with Jeff here.  In fact, I'll take it a step further:  the bulk of critique of any golf course [great, good, indifferent, or bad] is really about the site.  Tiger may not be one of those critics -- he may be responding to the tightness of parallel holes, etc., as Ajay noted.  But again, that's really about the constraints of the site, and the fact that NYC real estate is so expensive that even a zillion-dollar project has to be built on a relatively tight piece of ground.

[Voytek Wilczak]

Voytek:

Are you sure of your facts on the sites of Liberty and Bayonne?

I've never been to Liberty National, but I understood that there was a section of landfill involved.  Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure Bayonne was all built up from a flat site with contaminated dredge material, and then capped, instead of built on "garbage".

Tom:

I am positive. Being a golf geek (and your fan) for many years, and living in Jersey City for the past 25 years, I have been following the development of both Bayonne and LN pretty closely.

Bayonne has been built on a municipal landfill. They capped the landfill with New York Harbor dredgings (which are btw toxic, thanks to GE PCBs in the river) and then built it up with clean fill. They did a tremendous job overall.

The land on which LN was built was never a landfill. It was a refinery and oil storage site, flat as a pancake, but infused with oil in many places. Some of the chemical companies that occupied it probably dumped a few drums of other chemicals on the site, too.

So the critical differentiation is this: a landfill is a government permitted site to dump refuse (household and otherwise).  It is usually raised. That is the Bayonne site. A brownfield is a chemically contaminated land, which was illegally contaminated, never permitted by the government. It usually follows the original land contours (in this case - flat). That was the LN site.

[Bill_McBride]

Compare and contrast the Lido and Liberty National.  

And Shadow Creek I guess, and maybe Anaconda?

When there's a huge construction budget available, you can build a golf course almost anywhere.  Not everyone will necessarily like it.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Voytek,

I believe that the entire site at Bayonne was flat as a pancake at 10' ASL prior to the introduction of the golf course.

Everything on that site is imported.

[Voytek Wilczak]

Voytek,

I believe that the entire site at Bayonne was flat as a pancake at 10' ASL prior to the introduction of the golf course.

Everything on that site is imported.

Then I am puzzled.

How could a municipal landfill that Cherokee bought from Bayonne be flat???

Unless the landfill was small - only 10 feet tall - then OK.

[Tom_Doak]

Bill M:

Your thought on Lido vs. Liberty National is a good one.  Unfortunately, no one here ever saw Lido, and I haven't seen Liberty National either, so I can't make the comparison.

I CAN compare The Rawls Course with Pacific Dunes, which is more like what Neal was asking here originally, since The Rawls started from a blank site like Liberty National.  At The Rawls and Pacific Dunes we had a lot of the same crew -- except we had additional talent in Texas -- plus the same lead associate and the same designer.  And I don't think you would find ANYONE who thought The Rawls was the better course.  That just goes to show how much more difficult it is to take a blank site and turn it into something world class.

[Adam Clayman]

The real question is whether it is even possible to engineer a naturally-looking golf course from scratch.

Been done.



http://www.depts.ttu.edu/therawlscourse/Description.asp

[Voytek Wilczak]

Bill M:
That just goes to show how much more difficult it is to take a blank site and turn it into something world class.

The same thought has been in my head for a while now.

Any imitation of Mother Nature is bound to look fake, perhaps because we KNOW it was manufactured. If we did not know the golf course was manufactured, maybe we would not be bothered that much.

We should merge this thread with the one about TD building a Doak 10 course on the moon (which, btw LN site certainly was).

Fascinating discussion.

[Tom_Doak]

Voytek:

I do not think it's impossible to take a blank site and build something that looks natural.  Heck, Shadow Creek looks remarkably natural in many places, and they were trying to build a North Carolina mountain themed course in the Las Vegas desert.

But having the standard of building one of the great courses of the world out of nothing is a pretty big stretch.

[Adam Russell]

I think people would accept a course on a landfill that is world-class, regardless of the "fakeness". Its just the fact that we haven't seen a world-class effort come out of a degraded site because most of the landfill courses either do way too much (Whistling Straits) or way too little (the majority of brownfield designs). In fact, I think this might be the next challenge for golf course architects to stand out and push the discipline to a point where more acknowledge it and see it on a level of say, an architect. So the question remains: can an architect take a landfill and turn it into a world-class course? It hasn't happened yet.

[Voytek Wilczak]

I think people would accept a course on a landfill that is world-class, regardless of the "fakeness". Its just the fact that we haven't seen a world-class effort come out of a degraded site because most of the landfill courses either do way too much (Whistling Straits) or way too little (the majority of brownfield designs). In fact, I think this might be the next challenge for golf course architects to stand out and push the discipline to a point where more acknowledge it and see it on a level of say, an architect. So the question remains: can an architect take a landfill and turn it into a world-class course? It hasn't happened yet.

Exactly. Is this the next challenge for GCA?

I will go waaaay on the limb here (and I know I am way out of my element), but is building courses from scratch the way of the future?

I mean - in the go-go years before the world economy went into the cardiac arrest - the talented architects could build wonderful courses in remote areas because there was money around.

These days? - perhaps not so much.

[Ken Moum]

As usual, I think the Doctor has written eloquently on this subject

"In constructing natural looking undulations, one should attempt to study the manner in which those among the sand dunes are formed. These are fashioned by the wind blowing the sand in the form of waves which have become gradually turfed over in the course of time. Natural undulations are therefore of a similar shape to the waves one sees by the seashore and are all sorts of shapes and sizes, but are characterized by the fact that the hollows between the waves are broader than the waves themselves." -- Alister Mackenzie

Also of value:

It by no means follows that what appears to be attractive at first sight will be so permanently. A good golf course grows on one like a good painting, good music, or any other artistic creation. -- Alister Mackenzie

[Mike_Young]

I think Indian Creek was built on a manmade island.....would that count?
I built a course in Louisiana at the end of a runway and the land had 1 foot of fall in 1200 hundred feet....but then it was not world class either....

But this entire debate is no different than going to a Democratic convention and pushing George Bush or going to a Republican convention and pushing Obama.  LN will never be praised here and I don't think anybody won or lost anything with Tiger's comment other than Tiger and the dude that made it public.....And I also don't think BC is worried about learning anything from JN or TF....if the owner is satisfied with the results...all is probably ok....

[Jeff_Brauer]

One thought I had reading Tillie on TMac's "curious" thread was his quote that our "up to date" golf courses were superior. It got me to thinking - can great golf courses be made anymore trying to replicate what was done in the past, or do they have to look towards the future?  And I am guessing that future includes environmentally scarred sites.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Voytek,
You can read about Bayonne and its flat-as-a-tabletop site here:
http://www.mgagolf.org/intraclub/query/catquery.html?doc_number=4982


Jeff,
The future that includes environmentally scarred sites is making some serious monies for its investors.

[Adam Russell]

One thought I had reading Tillie on TMac's "curious" thread was his quote that our "up to date" golf courses were superior. It got me to thinking - can great golf courses be made anymore trying to replicate what was done in the past, or do they have to look towards the future?  And I am guessing that future includes environmentally scarred sites.

While I think great courses will always use principles of the past, future clubs will begin to get into the extremes of site and type of design. So whether you combine an extremely natural site with a pop art feel or a scarred site with simplistic design, the future will push GCA towards the ends of the spectrum but still use elements of the original game. BTW I'm talking future as in happening within next hundred years.

[Mike Hendren]

Neal,

First, it's great to see you posting.  I hope you are well.

I like your question.  My initial thought is how many people will ever get to play the golf course?  Even the access hungry treehouse doesn't report a lot of rounds there.  By comparison,  how many people will see it on the television, where it doesn't show all that bad, particularly when they zoom in on Mickelson standing on the tee of that par three with Lady Liberty virtually sitting on his right shoulder.  

I can't fathom anyone on here advocating that it's a great golf course, but like Anthony Nysse I like the gathering edges of the bunkers, the absence of frilly edges on the bunkers and the lack of hay three feet tall.  

If you recall I play at Legends Club which has two 18's designed by Cupp/Kite.  Like most, I'd rank the courses in the 4.5 to 5 range, but also note that there is some very good golf course architecture there, inconsistent though it might be.  In other words, it's good enough, which I opine is the plumb-line for most of America's golfing public.  Liberty National likely falls in that same category, though with world class views.  

I would be interested in your thoughts on Legends Club (which btw the way I have no interest in defending) if you played it prior to losing your mind and migrating to the Left Coast.

BTW, the entrance to Brentwood CC continues to look marvelous.

Kindest regards,

Mike