[Patrick_Mucci]

In the context of MODERN COURSES, many times on this site, emphasis is placed on a golf course blending in with the surrounding land, but little is said about the strategic play of the course, as if the only important feature is the harmony between the land form and the golf course, with little emphasis or value placed on the playability, shot values, and strategy of the holes.

While most would certainly prefer to have both, sometimes that doesn't or can't happen.

So which is more important ?

As an end result, what type of course would you rather play, the course that blends in with its surrounds, with minimal strategy and shot values, or a course that doesn't blend in with its surrounds, but where shot value and strategy abound

[Tom MacWood (Guest)]

Both are equally important. Utilization of natural features provides the most stimulating strategic interest. Your question implies they are mutually exclusive -- its not either or.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tom MacWood,

My question doesn't imply that they are mutually exclusive, only that if you can't have both, which would you prefer to have.

[Rich_Goodale]

To me this is a no-brainer.  Without substance (i.e. playability) any form is meaningless in a golfing context.

[BarnyF]

Patrick,

It is so unlike you to try to trick the agri-architects in such a simple way.  Only one who is blinded by the past and all its failings would choose natural over nurturing.  Substance is the teat that we suckle to find a higher meaning to our golf game...Nature is but a setting much like the slop a young pig finds itself in as it fights for the prime feeding spot.  Nature is the creation of unthinking objects such as wind and water under the guidence of theoretical being.  Stategy is the creation of man....recognized by only man...which elevates this game from just another walk in the park.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Patrick,

Now that you are a senior member of GCA, do you find yourself having "senior GCA moments?  If so, I can hardly wait!

I have said this before (and I remember, because I am not a senior member!) but the form of most modern courses is dictated by their role as public courses, where the designer (and really even more, the management company) must assume that the golfer will come once, or once per year.  On any given day, half or more of the golfers will have never played your course.  And none will have caddies to tell them nuances.  Throw in the profit motive, which means you have to design to move them around, and a clear vision for design emerges for most new courses.

Contrast this with the country clubs of yore, where members were mostly males in the prime of life, would play the same course over and over, and had long time caddies to assist them or their guests with the course. Throw in the "break even, we hope, and if we don't, there will be an assessment" motive, and another design motiff may emerge!

Throw in societies' general trend towards the visual, and you have a situation where the form is more important than the substance.  Sad, but true, in my experience.....

Of course, it's just my opinion, and I could be wrong!

[Patrick_Mucci]

Barny F,

Reading the posts on this site for the last year I think some forget that a golf course is a field of competition to be played upon, and not a picture or mural to be stared at.

I believe emphasis should not be placed on the static elements, rather, the interactive elements.

Optimal Playability should be the primary focus of the architecture.

But, that's just my opinion.

Jeff,

INTENT, is an integral component of architecture.

It is difficult to compare or judge two courses when the intent of their use is at opposite or conflicting ends of the spectrum.

Would the example you cite, of a for profit public course, reject a Pine Valley design ?  I think it has to.

[Tom MacWood (Guest)]

What strange bedfellows.

John aka BarneyF, Rich & Pat

Why would a golf course design not embrace strategy?

And if a site possesses interesting natural features (assuming they aren't wetlands or someother quagmire), why wouldn't a design utilize them?

In what circumstance would one have to chose one over the other?

Pat
What does integrating a design with a natural environment have to do with a picture or a mural? I do not see the connection.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Pat,

I agree it has to.  I was going to tell the story of a tour pro/fledgling designer getting a tour of Cowboys GC.  

"It's just another high end daily fee that helps golfers by kicking their shots back to the fairways" was his remark. (Obviously a GCA lurker)  The incredulous management company President replied, "Well, did you ever consider that's exactly what we wanted?"

And, as I have related before, I get comments in and from the general public about the few holes where you have to know where to place the approach shot, ie below the pin.....

When I worked for a landscape company in college, I questioned the head of the design division about their philosophy of overplanting for "instant effect" at the detriment of looking crowded ten years on.  His response was, "They pay us for it to look good now".  I guess if you run a CCFAD, you figure that the $100 greens fee is paid for the golfer to have a good time today, not possibly enjoy some course nuance 10 years from now.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

My above post is not to imply there should be no strategy, just that it had better be clearly defined for the once a year player.

[TEPaul]

Strange bedfellows indeed! I'm not certain that some of us  aren't mixing up which term Pat Mucci means to use as naturalness and which he means to use as strategy. I guess I'm taking form as naturalness and substance as strategy, but I could be wrong about that, maybe it's the opposite. No matter which applies to which really as the point Pat's trying to make is quite clear.

Anyway, I couldn't agree more with Tom MacWood--why not have both! Why do they need to be mutually exclusive or why would someone even suggest such a thing? Pat is suggesting such a thing, and he's using it as a basic assumption to make a premise from which we're supposed to draw a conclusion or make a decision about what's better or more necessary. I don't know that anyone has to draw that conclusion or make that decision.

I'm interesting in some of the things that Jeff Brauer says too. They're some of the things that we've heard plenty of before--that you can't or shouldn't create a golf course for the occasional public player that confuses him in any way or that he feels he can't figure out quickly--maybe even the first and only time he plays it.

That does make sense on a particular level, I suppose, but on another level it really doesn't. It makes sense if you endorse the thought that he really is there only once or even one time a year. But wouldn't you think that some of these owners and their architects might look a little deeper into the issue and maybe conclude that if there was something about the golf course that was somewhat mysterious and that the player couldn't figure out the first time or the first few times that maybe he might be more motivated to come back again or maybe a bunch more times to see if he could figure it out better and how to do better on it? Wouldn't you think that maybe he would be a little bit curious about how to do  better? Can't we give the average American golfer just a little bit of credit for being a little bit curious? Jeff, that guy at the hockey game who was complaining about something on one of your courses--you should have just told him there really is a way to play it right or play it better and that he should just go out there a few more times and he will likely figure it out--and also, BTW, wouldn't that be fun to do?

And that gets directly into an issue that has disturbed some of us and an issue that there has been plenty of disagreement on recently. That issue is what the Public golfer, the Everyman golfer, the Modern golfer, or whatever you want to call the average American golfer today will and will not accept in a golf course.

Tom Fazio tells us in his recent book in no uncertain terms that he knows full well what the average golfer will accept in a golf course and its architecture and what he won't accept. I'm not at all sure about that! Even if TomF is right about that to a large degree, wouldn't you think he might try giving them something else to see if they might be interested in that too?

As far as I'm concerned I really don't think the modern age golfer, then or now, ever decided that he must have anything in particular in golf or it's architecture. He probably just gets used to what he's given and to a degree what he's told. When he says that he doesn't like any blindness, he doesn't like any unfairness at all, he doesn't want any inconsistency anywhere, he's probably just reacting to what he's been given for so long. Did the American golfer demand those things at some point in the beginning of the Modern Age of golf architecture? Not that I'm aware of. He was given it though for reasons that could be many and probably complicated and possibly had very little to do with what he may have wanted or not!

This is why some of us think that a designer like Tom Fazio who says those things with such certainty should stop saying those things and start to look into other approaches to architecture and see if he couldn't interest the American golfer in those other things that might be a really good  blend of both strategy and naturalness too.

But of course if he did that he would have to spend much more time looking at the site to figure out how to identify  more naturalness and/or the potential plethora of inherent features and how to combine that better and more completely with his architecture, no matter how small those things might be. But the more time doing that is going to lead to you know what!

But maybe the best question when it comes to form vs substance and whether one is more necessary or better than the other is who exactly asked that question in the first place? Maybe no one ever really did--maybe it just happened! And then of course I guess you have to ask the simple question of why do golf courses get built the way they do and who builds the golf courses--the arcthitect, the owner or the average golfer? Even that might be hard to answer but I do know that it's now down to 2 out of 3 because I do know the average golfer sure doesn't build them!

[Rich_Goodale]

TomP

I don't presume to speak for the rest of the "Gang of Three," but I think that Pat made it clear in his original post that he wa asking "IF" you had to make a choice between natural features and golfing strategy/playability, which would you choose?

To me the answer to that question is simple, as I said above.  If you or the other Tom in your "Gang of Two" really think that you can always have your cake and eat it too, I think you are mistaken.  Compromise is the essence of GCA, IMHO.

If, on the other hand, you agree that compromise is inevitable, on which side would YOU err--naturalness or playability?

[TEPaul]

Rich:

I see, the elusive "if" again. Maybe Pat should send you his topics to proof-read for clarity because I missed that "if" or implied "if".

But "if" you put it that way I would certainly agree with you and say that "playability" or Pat's strategy (substance?) would be more important to me!

But why do you mention a cliche like "to have your cake and eat it too" that you say Tom MacWood and I are insisting on? That to me implies mutual exclusivity--that you can only have one and not the other. And it probably implies the same thing  to Tom MacWood.

I understand the need for compromise but what exactly is the need to compromise between strategy and naturalness? Give me some good examples and I might agree with you on them.

You might come up with an example like a golf course in a landfill and that's a good point or maybe even something like Shadow Creek. I really don't have a problem with Shadow Creek because in a way a lot of money out there likely created some kind of good imitation of naturalness although that naturalness may be akin to something that's about 1000 miles removed from the desert that Shadow Creek is in. I don't mind that though, particularly in a place like Las Vegas which is largely a fantasyland that's been that way a long time and is sort of a uniquely American phenomenon at this point.

But it really isn't even things like a landfill or Shadow Creek (which is something that looks far removed from the Nevada desert). Some golf architects produce architecture that doesn't even attempt to mimic nature in any form anywhere. I guess I can live with that too if it's something like Stone Harbor, but I wouldn't want to see a trend of something like that, although I'm sorry even that was changed to look even remotely natural. To me the beauty of Stone Harbor is it does have a large degree of strategy but when it comes to the question of "naturalness" it's a great example of the exception that proves the rule--in this case the principle of "naturalness".

So no matter where one builds why couldn't they try for some kind of naturalness and strategy too? I just don't want to see Pat create some kind of premise like this followed by a number of people saying that strategy is the better or more important of the two. Because if that's where this is leading then he could go on and conclude this proves that strategy is the better element, the only necessary element and therefore naturalness is not important or that it's even an element which isn't needed at all--and I don't agree with that!

So again, if this is an "if" question I would agree with you--but it better be a very rare "if".

[Rich_Goodale]

Tom

Even though Pat didn't use the "if" word in his post, his question clearly implies a choice on a continuum of naturalness and playability.  Of course, when you can get both, so much the better--but I think his point was that this is not always possible, particularly for new projects, and if not, shouldn't architects be erring on the side of playability rather than naturalness?  He also implies that some on this website seem to believe the opposite.

In terms of some examples, how about:

Pine Valley:  was Crump's intent more based on "the harmony between the land form and the golf course" or "the playability, shot values, and strategy of the holes?"  Your previous posts seem to indicate the latter, particularly at the point that he became "stuck" on what to do next.

Friar's Head:  Coore and Crenshaw could have built a course entirely in the "natural" dunes land to the north of the property but chose, rather to "manufacture" the majority of holes on the flat.  The gave up a helluva lot of harmony with nature to create some great strategy adn a great and bold routing.

Dornoch:  Nobody whose primary interest was "harmony with the land forms" would have built holes 6-11 after the war, with the discontinuous routing and the manufactured green sites on 6 and 10.  They would have re-built the old holes down on the lower links.  (PS--it is interesting that Mike Miller, in Geoff Shack's book, uses the 6th as an example of "Golden Age" architecture, even though it was built in 1946!).

Finally, just in theory:  what should an archtect do if he finds a great green site, or fairway, or whatever, but it lies 500-1000 yards away from the rest of the proposed routing.  Should he try to find a way to get out there, perhaps compromising the overall wholeness of the routing and perhaps requiring some heavy engineering to make the holes out and back interesting from a playability point of view, or should he "stay home" and stick to the more obvious landforms?  Just wonderin'.

Does this all make any sense, compadre?

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

I thought my brief FIRST and SECOND posts made my position crystal clear, so I'm at a loss as to the confusion you seem to be laboring under.

Tom MacWood,

I thought my example of static versus interactive physical activities differentiated form versus substance from a golfing point of view, and emphasized what many have seem to have forgotten, that golf is a game played upon a surface where strategy and playability are an integral part of the game, unlike sitting and staring at a mural, which requires no physical interaction.

Rich and others understood MY thread the way I intended it.

[Tom MacWood (Guest)]

Pat
I would love for you to answer my questions, I'm still unclear. Why would an architect not consider strategy or why a golf architect would not attempt to utilize natural features -- assuming they are not a puddle and the home of some endangered lizard or mushroom? Perhaps if you could cite examples that illustrate your point it would become clearer as to why anyone would be presented with this decision -- maybe an example of a natural integrated golf course that lacks strategy or vice versa. Your hypothetical seems unrealistic to me at this point. How do you seperate form from substance, as far as I can tell they are linked.

I still do not understand the comparison of a naturally integrated golf course with a painting or mural -- where did you come up with these ideas? You claim some on this site have been promoting this idea -- who? And what does that have to do with your original post about integrating a design into its natural environment. Is a naturally integrated course the same as a mural in your mind? What do you make of Macdonald and MacKenzie's comments, and many others of that era, comparing golf design to art? Do you think they were guilty of emphasizing form over strategy?

Are you saying some golf courses are static (natural/non strategic) and others are not (unnatural/strategic), or are you saying that all golf courses are not static. I don't see how anything that requires activity, including a golf course is static. Please explain so I might understand or if not you, maybe Rich and John aka BarneyF might explain it since they seem to understand.

[TEPaul]

PatM and RichG:

I'm going to be blunt and tell you that I'm pretty damn shocked at your responses.

Rich:

I can't speak about Dornoch on this particular subject because I've never seen the golf course, even in photos. But Pine Valley and Friar's Head I have seen and you are so off base in what you state and ask about them in relation to this particular topic and subject I wouldn't even know how to start to respond.

Pat:

Your response is nothing more than a poor attempt to continue debating a premise, which is, in my opinion, a false one. I read your FIRST and SECOND posts very carefully and there's nothing much there to discuss, other than what already has been discussed! You're once again attempting to get into a dialetic on architecture on a bogus assumption. And if you seriously think otherwise just give me an example, any example, of a golf course or a raw site that any architect logically has to make a decision between strategy and naturalness on and then maybe we can have some valid point or starting point to have an architectural discussion on. Otherwise, I really have no more to say than what I already have which in my opinion is an honest and accurate response to any post you've made up to this point on this subject and topic!

[Rich_Goodale]

Tom

I'm shocked that you are shocked, but it still seems plain as day to me, and I think I know you well enough to say that if I could articulate better what seems obvious to me you would fully agree and make us a "Gang of Four."

But, for the time being what we have here is a failure to communicate............

Goodnight.

[TEPaul]

Rich:

Sorry about that--maybe I flew off the handle for a moment. Actually, when I came home last night (from Bradley Klein's excellent lecture on Ross at Jeffersonville G.C) I was thinking a lot about Brian Phillip's really interesting thread on some of Robert Hunter's quotes on naturalness in architecture vs what man has to do to make a playing field for golf in any natural setting. Maybe I got the two threads a bit confused in my mind.

But you did give me a couple of examples (I think I asked you for some examples) of where form was or had to be sacrificed to substance. The examples were Dornoch, Pine Valley and Friar's Head.

I've never been to Dornoch so I can't say but Pine Valley and Friar's Head? You imply that Geo. Crump got stuck near the completion of his routing. I think he did get stuck for some time on the 12-15 stretch. But how is that remotely connected to sacrificing form (naturalness or even a natural routing) to substance (strategy)? How is the way in which  he resolved that problem remotely connected to that or this subject?  I can't see any connection at all. What am I missing?

Crump (with some help from his friends--ie, Tillinghast) apparently spotted a much more potential green site (extremely natural one) at the end of what was to become #13 and that basically allowed the remaining holes and the routing to fall into place. #13 (and particularly it's green site) happen to be one of the most natural and coincidentally  strategic holes in the world of golf arcthitecture. By time and hard analytical work he seemed to have picked up a group of holes to complete his course (12-15) that have high degrees of form and substance (naturalness and strategy).

Coore and Crenshaw at Friar's Head? You imply if they had stayed in the dunes to the north they would have created a golf course much more in harmony with nature. I agree, they probably would have created a course more in harmony with the dunes if they'd stayed in them but the last I heard Ken Bakst asked them to build an 18 hole golf course not a 9 hole one and approximately 9 holes was all they were ever going to find in the dunes to the north! There isn't the real estate up there Rich, unless they built a minuscule little 18 hole course of somewhere in the 3000-3500yd range.

So they went from the dunes to the flat land a couple of times and did it brilliantly by any architectural measure. To me and many others this created a golf course of immense interest and variety without the slightest sacrifice of form to substance or vice versa. In a broad sense what they did there was not unlike what Flynn did at nearby Shinnecock in a routing sense by going from the flat land into more dramatic topography (flat front nine vs more topographical back nine at Shinnecock) but C&C did it a few more times than Flynn did. And frankly, exactly how they did tie the "transition holes" into the routing as well as the design of either end of those "transition holes" could be some of the best of it in an architectural sense!

Of course they had to make or "manufacture" some architecture in the flat terrain but what they did and how they did it is a testament to "less is more" in my opinion. Out in the flat land I feel part of those excellent holes is as much what they didn't do as what they did do. This to me is letting the site show the architect its potential for golf holes and the true variety of them at that. Another architect may very well have tried to "manufacture" the hell out of that flat land into something more in tune with the topographical dunes area and that would have been and absolute tragedy, in my opinion. It would have been a failure to see the potential of the flat land for what it is and for golf.

I feel the same way about what Doak did at Pacific Dunes in the area you call "the bridge". You seem to imply that the way Doak used that flatter land was wrong in some way, in a routing sense or whatever. You seem to imply that he should have stayed in more topographical land somehow. I don't agree with that at all and I think the way he did Pacific Dunes both the flat areas and the more topographical areas made no concession of form to substance at all or vice versa.

But you guys are insisting that sometimes architects have to make concessions and compromises of form to substance and maybe you're right. But give me a few more examples that we can discuss because the ones you just gave me are excellent examples of exactly how a good architect did not need to make any compromises or concessions that way at all.

[Tom MacWood (Guest)]

Rich
I disagree with your conclusion on 6-11 at Dornoch. I for one believe the 6th is in perfect harmony with the land, it might of required the hand of man, but what great Golden Age architect did not create man-made features -- after all they were architects.  Are you saying that an architect is only capable of one dominant thought? Either he is total and complete focus on integration with the land without any thought of strategy or routing. Or he is in total and complete focus on strategy and routing, and could care less about natural features -- that is the falacy of this entire thread, they are equally important.

And by the way the 6th is very similar to the work of Raynor,  MacKenzie, Travis, Ross, Thompson and a great number of A&C architects. Infact the 7th at Palmetto (Leeds/MacKenzie) has often been cited as a copy of the 6th at Dornoch,(the 11th at Essex County is also similar) -- problem is they were both designed prior to the 6th. Was George Duncan influenced by these designs when he designed the 6th?

[BarnyF]

The humps and bumps shown on the Boca Rio thread are hardly natural for Florida and were created to improve the natural flat sheet flow so common in Florida.  The humps and bumps are an improvement in that they create strategic choices and fun on a hole that would be "naturally" flat and boring.  How about the bunker along the sea wall on the 18th at Pebble Beach...Is this a natural formation...does it prevent an errant shot from going into the natural ocean...or is it once again proof that man controls his destiny and his games...while the ignorant wind and rain are simply at the mercy of gravity and thermodynamic fluctuations.  What you puritans don't seem to understand is that the Architect is not guided by nature...nature is under the guidence of the Architect.

[Tom MacWood (Guest)]

John aka BarneyF
A much better effort, your beautifully written post of yesterday was very strong on form, but unfortunately...

In my mind the architect and nature are in partnership, optimumly with nature being the senior partner. In some cases, like Boca Rio, Shadow Creek and perhaps the majority of the golf courses your brother designs, nature doesn't bring much to the table and the architect must improvise -- every situation is different.

The greatest feature Nature provides are interesting undulations and contours of the ground -- of course the bunker at the 18th is man-made as our 99.9% of all bunkers, past or present.  No one is advocating Ashdown Forest as the only true form of golf architecture. The problem is when the architect ignores nature or designs over/overpowers nature in cases when nature has provided a great deal. That is a problem with many modern golf courses.

What is your favorite hole at VN? What makes VN interesting and unique?  How could the course be improved in your mind?

[Bill_Coggins]

Pat,

I would definitely choose Substance over Form.  Give me a "good" course through the sewage treatment plant and I'll be happy... Cuz the crowd will be off playing the newest Form course.

I would definitely say that a deverloper (seeking profits) would be nuts to build Substance over Form. Simple because my co-workers could careless about Substance.  They see price and Form.  All else is for extremists...

[Rich_Goodale]

The Two Tom's

I'm a Libran, but even I cannot find always find a perfect 50/50 balance in my mind when confronted with two often contradictory alternatives.  At some point in every creative process, people (even archtects!) have to come off the fence and take a stand, and when those choices present themselves in the proces of making a golf course, I would prefer that the archie err on the side of substance rather than form.

Tom P

I'll have to wait to go back into the fabled GCA archives before trying to see if what I rememberd from TomP's perorations on the decisions made adn not made at PV were.  In terms of Friar's Head, I'll stand by my opinion that C&C&B (rightly) made the conscious decision to optimize the playability of their golf course rather than optimize the harmony between that golf course and its surrounding land forms.  In terms of Dornoch, the incredible and yet unnatural beauty of the 6th remains a perfect example of why architects should not be bound by the cliches of the landform they are dealing with.  As does the 2nd there, which Ross wanted to emasculate and turn into a punchbowl.  It is perhaps not surprising that those two holes which are most uncharacteristic of the surrounding topography are perhaps the two best examples of par 3s which require as much strategic thinking as any par 4 or 5 you can imagine.  Or, are there other holes of similar length (165-180 yards) out there where scratch players often lay up with wedges in order to preserve their score?

TomMacW

I don't have a clue if Duncan even made it over to the States, much less play the holes you mention, unless it was in one of the pre-War Ryder Cups.  My guess is that at Dornoch he ran into a steep hillside and did what any good architect would do--cut a hole into the side of it, and then climb up the hill to (hopefully) find the next hole.   He really didn't have anywhere else to go as the land to the right (the current 11th) was only wide enough for one fairway.  However, he COULD have built a green site long and right of where the current 6th sits, at the base of the hillside, making the hole into a 180-200 yard slight downhiller.  It would have probably been a better hole in terms of harmony with the existing land forms, but a much, much poorer hole in terms of susbtance.  I, for one, am very glad he got the dozer out and started cutting.......

[TEPaul]

Rich:

For some reason on this particular subject we don't seem to be on the same page at all--we really aren't even talking the same language. I can see from your examples, particularly Friar's Head, (or the Pine Valley example)  when you discuss subtance (strategy) and form (harmony with the site and naturalness) you seem to be under the impression that an architect can't touch anything on the site--that he has to do a routing somehow without moving or altering a single thing.

That kind of thing is not at all what we're talking about here. That kind of thing is what TOC might have been before man added a single architectural feature to the course. That was before even Alan Robertson and that kind of game and thinking preceded the entire subject and practice of golf course architecture itself. We're talking here about practicing architecture that stays in harmony with a site not something that tries to create a golf course without touching anything.

You really should pick up a copy of Robert Hunter's "The Links" and you'll see what we're talking about. Right up front he conceded that tees, fairways, greens and probably bunkers had to be created by the architect to make a playable and interesting golf course and that they were inherently unnatural, but in creating them an architect should strive as best he could to design them in such a way that they were in as much harmony with nature and the site as possible--but obviously the architect had to do something, make those things etc, etc!

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