Tom Doak is obviously playing too much golf

[jeffwarne]

Tom,
Don't know if there've been 5 but.
If you were the owner/architect, and had no client to consider, how long would the Blue course be and what if anything would be different?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Sven and Patrick get to ask me five questions each, about the collaborative process in general, about Sebonack in particular, or about whatever the hell they want. 

And I'll answer them truthfully and as completely as I can. 

But they've got to promise the thread is OVER after that. 

And they'd better not make me ask what part of OVER they didn't understand.

Tom,

That's one hell of an offer.

But, I'm going to do you a favor and declare the thread OVER as of this reply.

However, I will take you up on your offer to answer five (5) of my questions when we see each other, or, off line.

The questions I have aren't really for public consumption and I'd rather that you be perfectly at ease and free to respond without any concerns.

Sorry to disappoint the peanut gallery/treehouse

Greg Tallman,

The "what ever it is that I do" is......... work and enjoy my family and friends.

But, if I told you what else I did today, you'd be even more upset.

Sven,

You love to speculate, I don't, so your question will just have to remain unanswered.

As to Sebonack, why don't you ask Tom Doak who suggested the joint venture with Nicklaus in the first place

Over and out.[/b][/size][/color]

[Tom_Doak]

Tom:

I have a question that might be useful as a case study.

Other than your first couple of courses, what course that you designed would you say that you maintained the most control (ie. you "micro-managed" every bump, hump and other parts of the project the most)?  

Likewise, other than Sebonack, what course that you designed would you say that you gave up the most management authority and relied on (or allowed) others for the finished product (ie. you accepted the work of others and allowed them creative license)?

How were the 2 processes different and how did it effect the end results?

#2:
Michael:

The transition from shaping everything myself to letting others do all of it was a gradual one ... I was still shaping some greens at Quail Crossing and Beechtree, but only one or two on any course after that.

I have never been afraid to let others contribute good ideas; I learned that from Pete Dye.  But I've pretty much always retained the final say-so over the end result, and I would say that I am no more or less likely to veto an idea from one of my associates today than I was ten years ago, or even twenty.  It all depends on how good their idea is.

The only project where I really allowed my associates to make more of the decisions was at Common Ground.  I had tried to convince the client to let Jim, Eric and Don design the course without my involvement, but even after they said they wanted me involved, I allowed each of them to pick three holes to design themselves, and there was only one of those I changed at all.  I thought it turned out great, but there is probably a bit more variety of different styles out there than I would have created on my own, for better or worse.

Sebonack was probably the most micro-managed project in history, because there was so much redundancy in the crew, and because we had to think about the politics of the group as well as just the design when we were building things.  I tried to give my crew the same freedom to rough in greens that I normally do, but it was much harder for them to build a green that passed muster with everyone than it normally is when they only have to get it past me, and there were some ruffled feathers along the way.  At times I felt like I had to defend their work, and once or twice we had to blow up a green I really liked because Jack didn't like it; there was even one green I didn't like but didn't go back to after Jack had given it his blessing.  In the end, I hate to say so but it just wasn't as much fun to work on that project as most of our other ones.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,
Don't know if there've been 5 but.
If you were the owner/architect, and had no client to consider, how long would the Blue course be and what if anything would be different?

Jeff:

I really don't know how to answer that about Streamsong, because a lot of the routing is the result of working with Bill Coore and making all 36 holes fit together, so it's not a good project to speculate as far as what I would have done differently if the choices had all been mine.

Generally speaking, I'd rather build courses at 6500 to 6900 yards, instead of 7200 (or 7500 like the client originally requested).  But, the only place where I changed a couple of holes to add length was in turning #16 to the East to gain length on both 16 and 17, and it made 17 Blue a much better hole, so I might well have done that anyway.

[Sven Nilsen]

Out as well, but will revisit the thread to see how Tom answers the ten (10) questions from the group.

Pat:

You've already told us that Tom was hired on your suggestion.  To round out the "speculation" on this thread, I'd bet you were hoping that the job would go to Tom solo over Jack or a pairing of the two.

All the best,

Sven

[Patrick_Mucci]

Out as well, but will revisit the thread to see how Tom answers the ten (10) questions from the group.

Pat:

You've already told us that Tom was hired on your suggestion.  
To round out the "speculation" on this thread, I'd bet you were hoping that the job would go to Tom solo over Jack or a pairing of the two.
ABSOLUTELY

All the best,

Sven

[Tom_Doak]

As to Sebonack, why don't you ask Tom Doak who suggested the joint venture with Nicklaus in the first place

Patrick:

Your response is unexpected, but I guess I should thank you for not putting me on the spot, even if it means calling a truce in your argument with Sven and others.

The question you did pose above is a good one, though, and I thought of it when the comparisons were being drawn between Sebonack and Augusta National.

My impression is that it was Bobby Jones rather than Clifford Roberts who chose MacKenzie for the assignment at Augusta National.  I don't know whether you are meaning to say that put Jones in charge.  If so, I disagree with you.  By picking MacKenzie instead of some weenie yes man, Jones deferred to MacKeznie's knowledge of design and happily accepted the role of "ideas man" instead of architect.  Jones' quotes on the subject indicate just that.  

I would compare that to Ben Crenshaw's decision to partner with Bill Coore, the most talented guy he could find, as opposed to some weenie yes man, and to put Bill's name first on their partnership and always give him the lion's share of the credit for their work.  Not many other Tour pros-turned-designers have gone that route ... in fact, if you look at their web sites, there are many where you can't even find the names of the guys who are doing a lot of the real work.

By contrast, it was Michael Pascucci who asked Jack Nicklaus to work with me, and vice versa, and it was always something of an arranged marriage.  In fact, Michael used the arrangement to triangulate between us on occasion when he wanted something his way, which as far as I know, Clifford Roberts never went near.  Then again, Roberts and Jones were partners in the deal, instead of client and paid help.

[John Kavanaugh]

This thread proves once again that the people who claim to have all the answers never know the questions.

[David_Elvins]

Tom,

Thanks for the fascinating insight.  If it is OK to chime in with a question, I would be interested to know the answer to the following.  

You have talked a lot over the years about collaboration in shaping but not as much about collaboration in routing.  Do you see routing as a collaborative process?  Do you ever let associates have a crack at drawing a routing for a site? Do you see collaboration on routing as a formal process or an ad hoc process?  

thanks.

[Patrick_Mucci]

The book, "Building Sebonack" is well worth acquiring and I'd recommend it to everyone.

Tom Doak,

I too think that Jones made the choice of MacKenzie after being exposed to his work.
At the time, MacKenzie was a spectacular architect, with recognition of same.

Jones was a great golfer.
And, as you've often alluded to, being a great golfer doesn't necessarily equate to being a good to great architect.

Roberts's role in governing ANGC is incredibly well documented from start to his end, yet, there's very little documentation about his involvement in the early phase of the development of ANGC, including the design and construction of the golf course, which seems odd.

[Michael Moore]

Question for Tom Doak

How has the internet and mobile telephony changed the way you collaborate?

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,

Thanks for the fascinating insight.  If it is OK to chime in with a question, I would be interested to know the answer to the following.  

You have talked a lot over the years about collaboration in shaping but not as much about collaboration in routing.  Do you see routing as a collaborative process?  Do you ever let associates have a crack at drawing a routing for a site? Do you see collaboration on routing as a formal process or an ad hoc process?  

thanks.

David:

The routing process is different from one project to the next.  It's also the most fun part of the project for me, and probably the thing I am best at, and if I do want to get others' input I have to hold myself back from getting ahead of them and just routing the whole course on the map as soon as it comes in.

There have been courses where I did the entire routing on paper in one shot - Sebonack and St. Andrews Beach are the best known of those.

There have been others which took lots of field visits and lots of re-thinking.  Usually when I go into the field to sort out the routing I will take along one associate and maybe one or two interns for the ride, and at times they have offered suggestions that went into the final plan; but probably not as often as they make good suggestions for bunkers or greens.  Jim Urbina helped a lot with the routings for Pacific Dunes and Ballyneal.  Bruce Hepner had a bunch of ideas for Cape Kidnappers after the client wasn't satisfied with my first effort.  Eric Iverson suggested the first three holes at Rock Creek, and the 14th-15th at Dismal River.  Michael Clayton famously turned around the 7th at Barnbougle after we didn't like a hole playing crosswind to the north there.  And I think I mentioned elsewhere that Brian Schneider suggested the 7th at Streamsong, after I'd discarded that green site earlier in the process.

Also, sometimes clients make us better by asking us to keep working on it.  Mike Keiser is very good at that; he sent me back to the drawing board for a better version of Pacific Dunes, he asked if it was possible to finish up on the ocean at Barnbougle instead of playing outward along the beach on #10, and I probably wouldn't have made the leap to build the 7th and 8th at Old Macdonald if he hadn't been concerned about the halfway house view.  He didn't find any of those holes himself, but he did suspect there was a better solution still at hand.  That's one of the hardest things about routing a course, you never know if you've really got the best possible solution; unlike a crossword, they don't print the answer in the paper the next day.

For a couple of years, I tried to give my associates more chance to participate in routing the courses by giving them the blank topos when they would come into the office, but I have to admit that I wasn't very good at looking at their ideas on paper -- I'd see one or two holes that turned me off, or led to a dead end, and I'd just dismiss the rest of them.  Plus, the guys that work for me have pretty good faith in my ability to route a golf course.  Some of them just felt like it was a waste of time to try and find something I wouldn't.

I have been thinking about conversations here recently on how to route a golf course, and I'm happy to report that I am going to do something about it.  I told four of my interns while we were in Florida that they are going to help me prepare a book or a CD that shows all of our best projects and how the routing decisions were made -- so that I can teach them, and in the process we'll try to teach everyone else.  That will obviously be a lot more detailed than a single post on Golf Club Atlas.

[Mark Steffey]

i like that view best of all.  one of the things i find interesting when visiting chechessee are the different course routings that hand in the men's locker lounge.  on one drawing they move the 4th hole to the left off 3 green instead of the finished right.  now the hole would go through when is now woods and work back up a hill that is the current par 3 16th.  which of course flips the 15th hole as the tee box is where the green is and moves south towards.

the bunkers and greens are micro
the routing is macro.

i like macro.

[David_Elvins]

Thanks Tom.

[Tom_Doak]

Question for Tom Doak

How has the internet and mobile telephony changed the way you collaborate?

Michael:

Really, not at all.

I remember when I worked for Pete Dye, that he made fun of the idea of computer-generated plans for a golf course, and I thought he was stuck in a previous era.  But, I'm the same way now.

I told both Jim Urbina and Eric Iverson years ago that if I started making design decisions based on photos sent by email, they were authorized to shoot me.  I just don't think that's a good substitute for being there.  In fact, I'd be better off just leaving the decisions to the guy who is there, if I can't go myself.

That's five questions.

[Bill_McBride]

The book, "Building Sebonack" is well worth acquiring and I'd recommend it to everyone.

Tom Doak,

I too think that Jones made the choice of MacKenzie after being exposed to his work.
At the time, MacKenzie was a spectacular architect, with recognition of same.

Jones was a great golfer.
And, as you've often alluded to, being a great golfer doesn't necessarily equate to being a good to great architect.

I suspect Jones was well acquainted with Mackenzie before 1929.  With his survey and wonderful map of The Old Course (which I was amazed by in Peter Dawson's office, the map is huge!), Mackenzie was an acknowledged expert on the course.  Jones was in love with the course from the early '20's, surely he was very familiar with Mackenzie from the UK if not with his US work.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Bill,

Jones initially hated, repeat, hated TOC, so let's not paint an unrealistic picture of Jones's perception of and relationship with TOC

[Phil McDade]

Tom:

Thanks for doing this, and providing some insights into routing. There's another thread floating around about routing, that I've chimed in on, with a focus on Erin Hills (and I understand perfectly well if you don't want to revisit some of those routing discussions). But, if I may ask some closely related follow-ups:

Does routing in your mind follow a format of: I need to get from point A to point B, and from point B to point C, all the way to the 18th green? In short, is it a linear process? Or do you look at the overall canvas and find obvious holes, and work the rest of the routing around those holes? Or a mix of those? (I was struck, in reading the book about the development of Bandon Dunes, how Kidd was sort of stuck for awhile on his routing of Dunes until Mike Keiser bought more land, which "unlocked" the routing dilemma for him. You've also talked about your use of the par 5s as "transition" holes at Pacific Dunes to get from one part of the course to another.) And a final question: Have you ever had to abandon a really terrific hole -- perhaps even in your mind a world-class hole -- because it just didn't fit in the routing, and would've compromised the rest or a portion of the remaining course?

Thanks in advance.

[Mark Steffey]

The book, "Building Sebonack" is well worth acquiring and I'd recommend it to everyone.

bought it last night, shipped today.

hope y'all are right!!

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mark,

I think you'll really enjoy the book.

It's well written and gives you an historical glimpse into that section of Long Island, the land that the course sits on and the course itself.

It's all the news that's "fit" to print.

Plenty of great photos too.

Let me know what you think after you're done reading it.

[Tom_Doak]

Does routing in your mind follow a format of: I need to get from point A to point B, and from point B to point C, all the way to the 18th green? In short, is it a linear process? Or do you look at the overall canvas and find obvious holes, and work the rest of the routing around those holes? Or a mix of those? (I was struck, in reading the book about the development of Bandon Dunes, how Kidd was sort of stuck for awhile on his routing of Dunes until Mike Keiser bought more land, which "unlocked" the routing dilemma for him. You've also talked about your use of the par 5s as "transition" holes at Pacific Dunes to get from one part of the course to another.) And a final question: Have you ever had to abandon a really terrific hole -- perhaps even in your mind a world-class hole -- because it just didn't fit in the routing, and would've compromised the rest or a portion of the remaining course?

Phil:

What works best for routing a course depends on the nature of the ground.  If there's a lot of topography, I've found that the property tends to divide itself into smaller parts (say, because of a ridge you generally wouldn't play over), so typically we wind up solving small areas that have 3-6 holes in them, and fitting those together as we go. 

So, you'll find a sequence of 4-5 holes that you want to keep, and then you'll try to find another loop, and then maybe you'll go back and change one of the first holes to make the link between loops work better.

For example, take Streamsong Blue.  The 3rd-6th holes were part of an early routing that Bill Coore had done, and so was the 15th Red.  But I found there wasn't really enough space for a short par-3 in between the 6th and Red 15th before you crossed over behind it ... so that's how the 7th Blue and its walk across the water came to be.  Likewise, the tee shot over the lake at the 14th had to be a tee shot, so I found my way there after #8 with what are now the 12th and 13th; and then added the 9th through 11th on flatter ground to get to the right number of holes.  Also, originally the 16th played more to the south and the 17th was shorter; by turning 16 to the west, I kept the same three finishing holes but added 150-200 yards to the overall length, and made 17 into a much more dramatic hole.

[Jim Colton]

Tom,

  Bonus question: are there any good alligator stories from the construction of Streamsong?

[Jud_T]

Relief from Alligator:

http://www.golfchannel.com/media/golf-rules-relief-alligator/

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,

  Bonus question: are there any good alligator stories from the construction of Streamsong?

Jim:

Not that I know of.  I do remember that when Bill and I were out there, we were particularly concerned about walking through the area which is now #8 fairway of the Blue course, because there were some low wet areas with a lot of bush around them.  Sure enough, when we cleared it out, we found the little pond that's to the right of #8 about 100-150 yards short of the green, and there was a resident alligator there who has never wanted to move out.

My best alligator story is from the third hole at Long Cove.  The hole has a lagoon 60 yards in front of the tee and all along the left side, and when we were building it (in 1981), we only had a tape measure to measure the holes.  P.B. Dye asked me to measure that one and we measured it around on dry land and added 60 yards for the tee shot, and I reported back that it was 570 yards.  He said that was impossible, and I said it was probably quite a bit shorter on the bee line over the water for your second shot.  P.B. had designed it so that some people could get home in two, so he wanted to know for sure how long it was.

So, he ordered us to go out and measure the direct line, by swimming with the tape measure across the lagoon.  One of my roommates from the mountains of S.C., Dan-O, was the designated swimmer.  I was the guy who stayed upstream and threw dirt clods at the resident alligator to keep him from bothering Dan-O.

I was bummed that I missed out in your auction for a round of golf with P.B., just because I wanted to laugh about stuff like that with him.

[Bill_McBride]

Bill,

Jones initially hated, repeat, hated TOC, so let's not paint an unrealistic picture of Jones's perception of and relationship with TOC

Read how long he hated it and how rapidly his perception, respect and love for the course changed.  It didn't take long.

None of that changes the fact that he would have been well aware of Dr. Mackenzie long before 1929 and the first round knock out at Pebble Beach.