[archie_struthers]

 


Pretty much without exception the courses done by  great players of the modern era  haven't rivalled those of  average players who built most of the classic and acknowledged best courses in the world.  Is it a lack of attention to the craft ,  a tendency to design to their personal  playing  strengths ,  or is it just too early to judge their body of work ....... thinking mostlyNicklaus, Palmer , Player at first blush but others come to mind  .....I'll qualify this by acknowledging that of the Big Three Nicklaus has the best designs

[Mac Plumart]

Perhaps people can't be great at everything golf related...however what about these names...

Tom Morris

CB MacDonald

Donald Ross

and really Nicklaus is pretty darn solid.

EDIT...oh yeah, Crenshaw.

[Paul Jones]

I would guess that back then, an architect got a great piece of land and was able to build a great course and just have to worry about where to put the clubhouse.  Now, an architect will get a great piece of land and have to have every hole be surround by a road, house, subdivision, hugh clubhouse, etc...

I would not be specific to great golfers who are now architects, but all architects.  When the architects do get a great piece of land, I think they have done a great job: Sebonack, Bandon Resort, Sand Hills, Whistling Straits, Wade Hampton, The Golf Club, etc....

It is rare for me to see a great piece of land that is not a subdivision and have a bad course.

[Ben Sims]

Perhaps people can't be great at everything golf related...however what about these names...


and really Nicklaus is pretty darn solid.

EDIT...oh yeah, Crenshaw.

In agreement with most of what you said, however, don't forget that Crenshaw has Coore....

Kinda like golf great Tom Doak has Jim Urbina

[Mike Heisterkamp]

I don't think the quality of ones golf game has anything to do with their ability to design a great golf course. I think that the great players of the past two generations ie: Nicklaus, Palmer,Player, Love, Faldo took advantage of the monetary offers given to them by taking most any piece of property that someone who wanted to make money selling real estate offered up for a golf course. This can be said of any modern architect, fine player or not. The true genius comes when someone finds a piece of land worthy of a great golf course and takes advantage of the opportunity. There is no finer example than Crenshaw and Sand Hills. If more great players were interested in designing great golf courses instead of making money this would happen more often.

Mike Heisterkamp

[Jaeger Kovich]

There is a difference between athleticism and artistic creativity... Some are lucky enough to be incredible athletes and also be talented artists, but most are good at one thing.

How many baseball players do you see writing top-selling novels? How many football stars do you know who become engineers after they finish playing?
or
How many artists do you know who joined the senior tour after turning 50?

Architects are supremely talented individuals who receive years of training and learn to develop their own creative process. GCA requires the same talent and process, which in no way is connected to the physical act of being able to hit a little white ball 300 yards.

[Mac Plumart]

Ben...

you bring up a great point and one that I am interested in.  Coore and Crenshaw...are they both big contributors to the golf course design business, or is Crenshaw the marketing name and Coore the brains?  Anyway, I have no idea on the answers and am not implying anything at all...I've just always been curious about that.

EDIT...Mike, great quote..."If more great players were interested in designing great golf courses instead of making money this would happen more often."  I think this is a very interesting topic to consider about any architect and I think it boils down to does and architect have the inclination and financial foundation to be strictly an artist pursuing perfection of a craft or do they want to be a business man first.  Great post!

[archie_struthers]

 

note the question is to modern architects....specifically not to Willie Park ...Old Tom  et al

[Steve Lang]

   what is architecture.. its reconciling the form follows function or function follows form debate..

having lived with a bunch of them, this video captures it http://vimeo.com/3248803

copying great designs they've played or seen in their careers by imposing it on a piece of land, is a bit different than utilizing the design principals and demonstrating some personal creativity at a site.

[Anthony Gray]

  I believe the higher handicapers see the intangibles with the game better and thus the architecture.

  Anthony

[Mike_Clayton]

Not to generaliise - but perhaps it is the same reason they are lousy teachers of golf. They teach what they do - and design what they like.
The best teachers are either failed players - or Mac O'Grady.

[Carl Rogers]

It might be interesting to speculate if JN had never met up with PD and never collaborated on Harbor Town.  How (or if) would JN have developed as an Architect without that influence??

[Gary Slatter]

I think it's too early to tell, ask the question in 60 years.   
Will Mike Weir influence Ian Andrews, or will Ian influence Mike?
Does Coore influence Crenshaw, or the other way round.  Did Cupp influence Nicklaus?   Did Fought influence Cupp?   Did money influence Greg?   Will Players' courses be better in 50 years?   Would a new Donald Ross course draw flies?

It would really be interesting to see which new courses withstand the test of time?  Rich Goodale and I want to know.

[Tom_Doak]

Gary:

Surely, it is impossible to predict what people will think in 50 years' time.  Lately, it's hard to even know about the day after tomorrow.

I would agree with you that some of the courses now thought of as great will eventually fall by the wayside, due to changing trends and styles and the onslaught of technology.  However, the opposite is rarely true.  How many courses that are in today's top 100 were not thought of as great courses in their own day?

So I'll bet against Gary Player's courses eventually surpassing Sand Hills or Pacific Dunes.

[BCrosby]

TD -

It is interesting that in the early days of the US magazine rankings, there were a number of GA courses that didn't show up in early lists. NGLA comes to mind. I don't think Crystal Downs made the top 100 early on.

But those old lists (80's?) put a lot of weight on resistance to scoring. In fact, those early rankings were called the "100 hardest" courses or something. 

Bob

[Michael Blake]

Archie, I would imagine that they design to their strengths which you alluded to in your initial post.

I have no proof, but I'd guess that most great golfers think about the design of a hole from the middle of the fairway, a place where their tee shot normally ends up.  Or think that a missed approach shot 'just misses' the green.  They may not put much thought into the average player who spends most of his round hitting recovery shots from lots of different positions on the course.

For me, an average mid-capper,  the recovery shot is the most thrilling.  Though not when your only option is to punch it back into the fariway or attempt a full swing flop onto the green.

It's all about the recovery shot.  And that may be one area where the great golfer turned architect may not spend much time thinking about when designing.

[Richard Choi]

Perhaps the question should be other way around.

Why do you believe that just because you are a good golfer, you should be a good golf course architect as well? Being a great golfer requires extraordinary hand eye coordination, a ton of fast, twitch muscles to produce phenomenal club head speed, hands of a surgeon for those delicate shots around the green, and repeatable muscle control for consistent putting and swings.

Which of those skills translate into architecture? None.

Only thing that remotely comes into effect is strategy and I would say that is highly over-rated in the highest level of golf where it is pretty much bomb-and-gouge.

Isn't asking great golfers to be great golf course architects just like asking Jack Welch to be a great architect of office buildings?

[Rob Rigg]

It is rare for me to see a great piece of land that is not a subdivision and have a bad course.

Rees Jones' "Sandpines" on the Oregon Coast qualifies here.

Rich has a really good point.

The modern pro plays a game that is different than 99.9% of the golfing population, it makes no sense that 0.01% - who play a different game of golf - would be good at designing for the "masses".

Nevermind the fact that they have no schooling on anything having to do with course design theory, maintenance, irrigation design, etc. that the best modern designers possess in spades.

[Tom_Doak]

Richard:

Just guessing, but I'll bet Jack Welch thinks he could design a great office building.


BCrosby:

You are right, The National was nowhere to be found on the GOLF DIGEST rankings of 30 years ago.  It had been dismissed as too short and quirky.  But in its own time, it was always put somewhere in the top 5 American courses ... so contemporary opinion was not that far off base.

Crystal Downs had an entirely different problem ... nobody ever came up to see it.  When I was involved in the GOLF Magazine rankings back in the early 1980's, only two people on the panel had ever been there.  I doubt the GOLF DIGEST panel had it covered any better, since it made the GOLF list several years before DIGEST got around to it.

[Brett_Morrissy]

Apologies for offering just one or two examples - Does the Coore & Crenshaw  partnership apply in regard to G. Norman's work (Bob Harrison) - he has a couple of great designs here in Australia.

[Jim Nugent]

How many great modern golfers actually design the courses under their names?

Arnie does not.  Player, I believe, does not.  We've talked about Jack's role over and over: he appears to spend only a few days, at most, on any course, and does not do the routing.  Which is why I personally don't consider him a golf course architect.  I've always been curious to see what Jack could do, if he put in the time on some courses that, say, Doak does. 

Daly doesn't design.  Couples doesn't design.  I think.

Love, apparently, gets more involved.  Crenshaw does.  And they, or their teams, have turned out great to fantastic courses.  Mike Clayton, certainly a really really good golfer, gets more involved.  He co-designed a world top 50 course.

So maybe some of it is who actually designs, vs who is there for marketing.   

[Tom_Doak]

How many great modern golfers actually design the courses under their names?

Arnie does not.  Player, I believe, does not.  We've talked about Jack's role over and over: he appears to spend only a few days, at most, on any course, and does not do the routing.  Which is why I personally don't consider him a golf course architect.  I've always been curious to see what Jack could do, if he put in the time on some courses that, say, Doak does. 

Daly doesn't design.  Couples doesn't design.  I think.

Love, apparently, gets more involved.  Crenshaw does.  And they, or their teams, have turned out great to fantastic courses.  Mike Clayton, certainly a really really good golfer, gets more involved.  He co-designed a world top 50 course.

So maybe some of it is who actually designs, vs who is there for marketing.   

Jim:

Most of the above is hearsay, and you are assigning to different people what you want to assign them.

I know Ben Crenshaw and Mike Clayton really well, and I can vouch for their passion for golf course architecture, but even they do not spend as much time on the ground as most people assume.  (Nor, for that matter, do I.)  I won't put Paul Cowley on the spot, but I'll bet Davis Love was not at Diamante very many days.

A fact:  Mike Clayton did not have more to do with Barnbougle than Jack Nicklaus had to do with Sebonack.  His input might have been better, and he did spend more days on site, but Jack had more power to influence what happened and that balanced it out.  And both courses are very highly regarded.

Another fact:  Speculating what Jack would do if he spent as much time on site as I did, is silly.  He's never going to spend that time.  On at least three separate occasions, he asked me why the heck I would spend so much time on one project instead of doing three times as many ... he really thought I was wasting my time being there so much.  And when he had a site in the Sand Hills, he spent 3 days there.


Brett:

I've heard that Bob Harrison is no longer working with Greg Norman, though I haven't confirmed that.  If so, that's a shame.  Bob was a good complement to Greg; he was not afraid to tell him they needed to work on making the course more playable for average golfers (like Bob himself).  Which is exactly the kind of input Greg needs, and doesn't get from anyone else.  But if it's true they've split, I will be interested to see what Bob builds on his own.

[Philippe Binette]

I think to become great at something, you have to give it a fair bit of time and that's what most tour pros don't have: time..

unless you make a real commitment to design (and find a great partner) it's hard to achieve success. Golf course design can look 'easy' on the outside but it's not, and if you can only do it 10 weeks a year, well, it's hard. if you play 30 tournaments, plus practice, plus family time, plus sponsor time plus, plus, plus.

At the Prairie Club , Tom Lehman showed up every time he could and I was surprise to see how often he was there. I was only there 24 days and he made I think 3 3-day trips to a site that is hard to get.

I'd rather be a great player and an 'average architect' than to only be an architect and be an 'average architect'...

[Ian Andrew]

edited out - since I'm not 100% sure

[Philippe Binette]

Good decision Ian, I've been down the road of writing unclear comments that turn out stupid.

A note, the 3-3 day trip by Tom Lehman were done in the 24 days span I was there.

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