Do you consider maintenance an element of the design...

[Mike_Young]

IMHO a design is developed by an architect knowing how it can be maintained and anticipating such.  If this is true the why do we maintain the ODG stuff as we do?  And if we don't then how can we consider these things restorations etc?

[Tim Nugent]

Mike, you really can't.  The combination of the architecture and the maintenance (as an element of the design) along with the clubs and balls in use at the time of the design are three legs of the same stool.  Change any one and it has a direct effect on the others.  Therefore, the strategy inherently changes. 
Perhaps the real question is "Is the Architecture only a subset of the Design?  IF so, one could Restore the Architecture and still not Restore the Design.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mike,

You are so deep!

If the Golden Age guys were flexible enough to allow elasticity in length, do we think they could have anticipated changing conditions in maintenance, too?  If so, should it matter?

[Tim Nugent]

Jeff, really?  Would GA greens have as much contour if ODG was thinking "Hmmm, although we can't cut any lower than we are now,  maybe someday they will breed grasses that can be cut 1/3 this height and invent the mowers that can do it, so I should probably flatten this puppy out - just in case."?  What are todays GCA's crystal balling for 100 yrs from now and are they designing to the prediction? I know I'm not.

[Mike_Young]

Jeff, really?  Would GA greens have as much contour if ODG was thinking "Hmmm, although we can't cut any lower than we are now,  maybe someday they will breed grasses that can be cut 1/3 this height and invent the mowers that can do it, so I should probably flatten this puppy out - just in case."?  What are todays GCA's crystal balling for 100 yrs from now and are they designing to the prediction? I know I'm not.

Tim,
Hmmmm....I would have to think to much to do that...

[Mike_Young]

Mike,

You are so deep!

If the Golden Age guys were flexible enough to allow elasticity in length, do we think they could have anticipated changing conditions in maintenance, too?  If so, should it matter?

Jeff,
That's a first..I've never been considered "deep"....
But I don't think they anticipated a lot of things....ex:  shaggy bunkers were a necessity ....I don't think they considered grooming bunkers and had no idea we would do such....and my pet peeve....they did not consider golf cars....their ingress and egress was front and then towards the next tee...and now we enter from a side and have to walk around "holy, strategic, historic" greenside bunkers....
Now that you are older..take you a bunch of that fish oil and you can think like that....

[JESII]

IMHO a design is developed by an architect knowing how it can be maintained and anticipating such.  If this is true the why do we maintain the ODG stuff as we do? 

Yes - because we can, and it makes the course/game better in almost every instance.

10 or 11 feet - not 13!

[Adrian_Stiff]

It is essential as an architect to the client to design a golf course that can maintained within an agreed cost structure. A bad architect will build can bust it. A bad architect by definition could actually build a fantastic looking golf course. IMO it is the most important thing to consider and should over-ride everything.

Great golf course design is a combination of whats good for golf, good for the turf and good for the pocket.

[Phil_the_Author]

Mike, consider this:

You have a great ODG golf course which suffered from cutbacks in maintenance budgets during the Great Depression and WWII. We'll name this Winged Foot West. The cutbacks were so severe that in a choice was forced upon the club to choose between letting the East course go fallow and be lost or allow the greens to shrink on each course thereby saving enough money that the East course was saved.

This lasted so long, 10+ years, that when the war was over and members back home and monies now available that the greens no longer were viewed as being too small and over time they would shrink even a bit further. Finally in the 1990's it was discovered through comparisons of old photographs that major portions of original putting surfaces had been lost and should be brought back... RESTORED to what they were originally.

If Maintenance is a a feature of design than on-going maintenance, good or bad, must be considered a feature of a RE-DESIGN. Yet no would say that WFW was redesigned yet everyone would say that the greens were restored.

The best part of this example is that is what actually happened in reality...

[Mike_Young]

Mike, consider this:

You have a great ODG golf course which suffered from cutbacks in maintenance budgets during the Great Depression and WWII. We'll name this Winged Foot West. The cutbacks were so severe that in a choice was forced upon the club to choose between letting the East course go fallow and be lost or allow the greens to shrink on each course thereby saving enough money that the East course was saved.

This lasted so long, 10+ years, that when the war was over and members back home and monies now available that the greens no longer were viewed as being too small and over time they would shrink even a bit further. Finally in the 1990's it was discovered through comparisons of old photographs that major portions of original putting surfaces had been lost and should be brought back... RESTORED to what they were originally.

If Maintenance is a a feature of design than on-going maintenance, good or bad, must be considered a feature of a RE-DESIGN. Yet no would say that WFW was redesigned yet everyone would say that the greens were restored.

The best part of this example is that is what actually happened in reality...

Phillip,
I had not thought about that aspect...I was thinking more of height of cuts, number of cuts, bunker maintenance, cart paths, and all the other little things that change play due to machine improvement...

[Bill_McBride]

It seems a lot of restoration these days is getting the greens back to their original size.

[Adam Clayman]

Mike, So much of the standard maintenance presentation is from weak minded copiers of the best club around.

Wing Foot is getting away from the standard, which, it could be argued, they set.


IMO, The maintenance should make as much sense as the design. A meld if you will?

[Roger Wolfe]

I understand Donald Ross was a superintendent by trade.  Therefore his greens were sloped for drainage and his bunkers flat bottom.  I imagine the thought of building a "maintenance-nightmare" flashed bunker never crossed his mind.