[Anthony Gray]

  How about the routing of 7 and 11 at TOC for starters?

  Anthony

[Ally Mcintosh]

  How about the routing of 7 and 11 at TOC for starters?

  Anthony

You can build it today but you'd be firstly castigated and secondly open to causing injury... It's a fairly unsafe crossing that one...

Let's remember that what makes both 7 and 11 great golf holes is the holes themselves, not the fact that they cross which has absolutely no bearing on their quality... If there's a different option with equally good holes, you take it...

That said, there are many cases of new links designs with crossing holes, just ones without the inherent danger of that particular example...

[Michael Goldstein]

Ally - is it common for people to get injured on 7/11?

[Ally Mcintosh]

Probably not Michael... Well honed routines / caddy programs and luck... There is more chance that someone would get injured there than if the holes didn't cross and were seperated by a 60m buffer... That should often be enough...

Aside from that, it slows down play...

[Michael Goldstein]

Rules about blindness and what can or cannot be built agitate me. 

Innovation, creativity and quirk in golf course design has to be a good thing. 

Otherwise would 13 North Berwick have ever been built? The entire course at the Machrie? 17 at TOC? 8 at PV? Even (gasp) 17 at Sawgrass?

The conversation should be flipped because these days anything is possible. What can be built?

- Can you build a course with no hazards?
- What about with vertical artificial hazards?  Or hazards hanging in the sky to encourage the ground game?
- Can an exact copy of Augusta / TOC be built?

Anthony, maybe I have jacked your thread.  But food for thought.



   

[Michael Whitaker]

The 18th at Harbor Town couldn't be built today... they filled in a LOT of wetlands to create that hole.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Michael,

There are no rules... The question is always what makes the better course...

1. Does a course with no bunkers beat a course with bunkers on this site?
2. Does a blind crossing outweigh inferior green sites / holes that would have to be utilised if it were not there?

It's all decisions and compromise. There is no perfect solution. In the end, that is a large part of the architecture.... The creative flair and the eye for good golf forms a large part of that decision making process...

[Kalen Braley]

  How about the routing of 7 and 11 at TOC for starters?

  Anthony

Anthony,

I hearby condemn this thread and line of questioning.

TOC is cleary beyond reproach in any way, shape, or form....and what you're implying is equivilant to heresy that will result in a long penal sentence in the bowels of hell.

[Michael Goldstein]

Ally I don't disagree with you. 

It's exactly why I rebel against the word "can't".

For example the 13th hole at St Andrews Beach that I mention on the other thread.  People say you shouldn't build a blind tee shot to such an unreceptive fairway.  If TD adhered to a rule that you couldn't built this hole and his routing / golf course would probably suffer for it.

[john_stiles]

Many older courses skirted the wetlands, or perhaps had wetlands filled,   in the USA.  Those would be very difficult to build today in the USA.  An example was given above, and I can think of other older courses in the same boat.

Adding to the thread,    I would dare say that the 17th at TOC  would not be built today.     A blind tee shot over a shed and a slice with a titanium club head and rocket balls can hit a multi million dollar hotel.    Good luck building such a charming hole today.

[Joel_Stewart]

I doubt Pebble Beach or Cypress Point could be built today because of the California Coastal Commission.

[Melvyn Morrow]

The sadness of all this is that we seem scared to try to build great holes and courses. There is no reason why we do not apart from this mad idea that we know more about golf that the great designers of the past. Clearly the more courses we build the more we forget the basic principles that underline the game and the past great courses like TOC. Tom D comment todays shows that our designers still have it very much within them to do so but the game has gone too soft, it requires to be seen and is easy for the mass majority otherwise they seem not to want to play.

I would see most leave the game if we could get back in touch with the idea that golf needs to be challenging, that courses are not art or chocolate box pictures but real raw places to challenge our skills against ourselves, the designer and not forgetting Nature.

However the general attitude is to condemn our designers to the mundane, the fake and dreams of greater days by copying other great Holes (ops sorry templates). When money rules the game suffers, yet the best of our courses were designed and built without the overwhelming need to satisfy the investors but the potential customers who in the end would see the enterprise prosper by their repeat use of the facilities. Still IMHO the only way to run a golf club – for its members and potential visitors.

Oh those where the days.

Melvyn
 

 

[Tom_Doak]

Re:  Harbour Town and Cypress Point :  environmental rules clearly stipulate that you can't always build what your eye envisions on a given site.  [In fact, you might not be able to build on that site AT ALL.]  But, there might be somewhere else where you could build exactly the same hole and it would be okay.

Re:  safety issues such as #7 or #17 on The Old Course:  holes similar to these could be built and enjoyed by golfers, if the owner of the course is willing to deal with the liability issues they cause.  That would be a very rare owner in today's world, but it is NOT an absolute.  In fact, I've got a plan on my desk right now for a course with crossover tee shots.  The owner does not expect the course to receive a lot of play, and the safety issues are less severe than on 7 / 11 on The Old Course, so he is not too worried about it, though we both understand it might have to be modified in a few years if he wants to open the course to more outside play.

Melvyn is right, that people in the modern age are too quick to dismiss good ideas for boilerplate reasons.  If it's a really inspiring idea with a problem, you should think really hard about whether the problem can be addressed, instead of just giving up.

[Philippe Binette]

Garden City... people would come up and say: Stop the minimalist crap and built something man !!!

[David Harshbarger]

Rules about blindness and what can or cannot be built agitate me. 

Innovation, creativity and quirk in golf course design has to be a good thing. 

Otherwise would 13 North Berwick have ever been built? The entire course at the Machrie? 17 at TOC? 8 at PV? Even (gasp) 17 at Sawgrass?

The conversation should be flipped because these days anything is possible. What can be built?

- Can you build a course with no hazards?
- What about with vertical artificial hazards?  Or hazards hanging in the sky to encourage the ground game?
- Can an exact copy of Augusta / TOC be built?

Anthony, maybe I have jacked your thread.  But food for thought.



   

Michael, I don't know that anyone has answers for these that would satisfy the intent of the question.

However, as far as courses with no hazards, I believe these are fairly common in the uninspired muni/public arena, where 9 or 18 holes are laid out in a field and can be played for $10.  Could a great course be built thusly?  To me, there'd have to be a rationale to do so, other than to just do it, would that be:

• Extreme minimalism - taken to the point that the design would not incorporate man made hazards
• Extreme sensitivity to maintenance - refusing to include whole classes of features that introduce running costs
• Extreme regulation - some sort of government regulation or property covenant or somesuch that restricts the features used

On the vertical hazards, that's an interesting question, especially as it relates to lengthening courses and equipment.  Has anyone actually tried artificial vertical hazards, other than the hazards presented by trees?  We've all been faced with power lines at some point, but who actually sees those as a plus?  What could be done that wouldn't be seen as gimicky?

Dave

[Michael Goldstein]

Property rights and environmental regulations are different in each jurisdiction.  So whilst Cypress might not be able to be built in California, it could be built elsewhere in the world.

Similarly with other wetland sites like Harbor Town.

As for the issue of safety and liability - as Tom mentions, this relates to the particular circumstances of the course and jurisdiction.  You could never build Quaker Ridge nowadays if the housing existed first.

David:
1) I don't know whether a great course could be built with no hazards?  It's probably a question worth asking TD.  You'd obviously need great land, a windy site and an epic routing.

2) Vertical hazards would be cool.  They'd reduce the amount of land needed and the impact on technology.  Theoretically you could have things hanging everywhere requiring a golfer to shape the ball etc.  I started thinking about it after playing a local public course on a tiny piece of land with huge nets that stop the ball going out onto the roads.


 

[Philippe Binette]

The Himalayas - blind par 3 over a 35 feet high dune... can't see that coming soon

[Michael Goldstein]

Philippe, why not?

[Michael Whitaker]

Philippe, why not?

Because Mike Strantz is dead and no one else has balls to build something like that today.

[Anthony Gray]

The Himalayas - blind par 3 over a 35 feet high dune... can't see that coming soon

  I would like to see it on a modern course. I just can't see it being all that different than an Alps.

  Anthony

[Kalen Braley]

Anthony,

They pretty much had it on a modern course when they built it at Erin Hills as the Dell Hole.

Suffice to say, it didn't last very long.

[Anthony Gray]

Anthony,

They pretty much had it on a modern course when they built it at Erin Hills as the Dell Hole.

Suffice to say, it didn't last very long.

  I'm putting one on my course.

[Philippe Binette]

we can built the himalayas today, technically...

confincing the man putting the money forward is another issue

[john_stiles]

As to what can't be built today,  ask  Essex County,  if a house built many years after the course,  could cause a course to move a par 3 green ?   Essex County would say it did.

Liability is an issue in USA.   It would be extremely difficult to build a TOC 17th hole in the US, when adjoining properties are not owned by the club.   I would say that you could not do this in Massachusetts.
 
Silva built a nice par 5 Alps with punchbowl at the modern Black Creek IMO.   It is not 30 feet,  but still high enough, and the effect is the same total blindness.    Of course,  Black Creek has very informed owners like Doug Stein and King Oehmig.

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