Some great posts above, very thoughtful.
Sean,
I am not sure I understand your "courses for rich folks" dismissal of Rob's list. It might be more accurate to say these were courses commissioned by rich folks, or at least by developers who were willing to take a chance on something very different than what was going on in golf course development. I may be wrong but I think that generally, the costs of creating walkable courses that use the land as it is are relatively low if one sets aside side specific issues that any type of course would have to face. For example, it had to be very expensive to deal with the boulders at RCCC and to fight whatever permitting battles were necessary at Friars Head, but as for the actual creation of the course, the more traditional golf experience seems to be offer a more sustainable economic approach, at least from the supply side.
Also, while these may be some of best and best known courses of this movement of courses built to offer a more traditional golf experience, they are by no means the only courses. If I recall correctly, the story is that one well known designer passed on the site at Rustic Canyon because it was just not dramatic enough, then built (at substantially higher cost) a nearby cart ball course on land supposedly offering more drama. I don't know the details but I think it fair to say that the course has been a financial and critical failure, especially when compared to the simple course built for walking down the road. Other "poor man's" courses designed with walking in mind have also popped up here and there, haven't they?
Also, Sean I am not sure I understand what you mean by "the long term financial benefits of carts designed essentially for riders." If you are talking about cart revenue, won't most Americans ride whether the course is designed essentially for them or not? So there won't necessarily be a big revenue hit. It seems like we need to take the different costs of each into consideration and also the long term sustainability of the demand for the course. Will it still be all the rage when the next cart-ball course is designed down the road?
In fairness to Mr. Engh, I have heard that he is a very cost efficient designer, with accurate bids and very little waste. I believe his website used to tout his ability to planeverything in great detail on CAD (or something) so that the construction would be efficient, on time, and right the first time. Or something like that. His example of the double use of the cart paths at Lakota sounds like a terrific way to resolve a problem in a very cost efficient way. I don't know how his general approach compares cost-wise to the so-called minimalists, but it would be an interesting comparison, although I do realize these things are very site dependent.
As for Lederdach and Tobacco Road, I unfortunately haven't played them. Your description of Lederdach is interesting though because it sounds like, except for the transitions due to housing, KBM designed the course as one would design a walkable course even though it would not be walkable for most, and it sounds like the course benefited from this. But surely had it been designed without the housing it could have been even better, couldn't it?
In contrast, it sounds like Tobacco Road was designed for carts even though potentially walkable and in your opinion at least it lessened the experience. Let me ask you this, even if we assume that few would have walked at Tobacco Road (because of the weather and dust and such,) could the course have been better if it had been built as if it was going to be for walking-- with less emphasis on going for "wow factor" and more focus on coherent transitions and subtlety?
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Jeff,
Whether these courses ever allow carts or not, they were designed with walking in mind and that to me might be one of the keys to their quality. Of the ones I've played, they'd all be worse off with the addition of some of the attributes designing for cartball. Another way to look at it is to consider Sean's description of Lederdach, which sounds like it may have been designed with walking in mind even though it might be more of a cart ball course. This is an interesting example to me, because most cartball designers have apparently not given any much consideration to the walker's perspective, and have given little thought to issues such as intimacy, subtlety, continuity, pacing, flow, etc.
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Niall,
I think you nailed one crucial component of a quality golf course and that is the aspect of exploring or charting a course or taking one continuous adventure. A single journey. It matters if and how each successive hole relates to the last and the next, and how they flow through the landscape, each one connected to the last.
It makes sense to me that on the early on the golfer teed off within a close distance from the last hole. They were playing a game where you had to live with the consequences of your last shot, and hit the ball from where it ended up. So what sense would it have made if once they got to a hole they took ball in hand and carried it a 100 yards or so before they started up again? That would have broken the link on the links. The goal wasn't just to get to the hole. They then had to get from that hole to the next one, and from there to the next one, and so on.
This continuous adventure is one of the most compelling aspects of the game, and replicating it or at least approximating it is one of the most compelling challenges for the golf course architect. Golf at its best is a continuous, contiguous experience.
Take for example Cypress Point, where the golfer must leave the dunes and enter the woods before returning to the dunes. One of the many things that impresses me about the course is how well AM handled these transitions; but that the golfer isn't jolted from one setting to another. While the golfer may realize he is is somewhere else he/she still feels connected to what came before and what is to come. The course provides the golfer with a single authentic experience, and while their are incredible highlights the rest of the course is anything but mundane (except for maybe 18, but it may be too weird to be mundane.) Even where there is nothing spectacular.
Another example by AM and Hunter is the Valley Club. Not really any "spectacular" holes, but the whole is much greater than the parts, it fits so well in the setting and flows so well that you have had a fanstastic golfing experience without ever delving into the spectacular.
I love your "Greatest Hits" comparison, but I would emphasize that the original albums would be more like Symphonies or Operas (or at least Pink Floyd Albums) where they really were single complete works where each part was intended to interact with the last. The "Greatest Hits" of Beethoven's Symphonies is sure to have plenty of highlights, but it wouldn't make much sense or hold together like a single complete work.