[Mike_Young]

I was reading the "Raynor Drawings found" post and got to thinking...

Most all of my designs have also been builds and myself and employees were there.  The two times we just did drawings and a visit every few weeks I felt a total disconnect.  I see these armchair contest and wonder if someone really considers a two dimensional a golf design.  And then I see where drawings are found of places that were never built and I totally miss it.  I think most all golf archies have a drawer full of routings/plans etc of places that were never done.  Can those be considered designs?

[Tom_Doak]

The worst part is that it seems like every potential client now wants to turn the selection process into a contest of pretty drawings, not realizing that the guy who produces the best drawings is probably only best at drawings, while others' designs rely undergo continual evolution during the construction process. 


The finished product is not a drawing, it's a golf course, and really the only way to judge an architect's skill is to look at the courses he's built previously.

[Mike_Young]

You can cook dude....

[BCowan]

I was reading the "Raynor Drawings found" post and got to thinking...

Most all of my designs have also been builds and myself and employees were there.  The two times we just did drawings and a visit every few weeks I felt a total disconnect.  I see these armchair contest and wonder if someone really considers a two dimensional a golf design.  And then I see where drawings are found of places that were never built and I totally miss it.  I think most all golf archies have a drawer full of routings/plans etc of places that were never done.  Can those be considered designs?

   So when you built courses that you liked, you didn't have a simple routing written down?  It could have been on a cocktail napkin I don't care?  Some on here praise Donald Ross's ability to route a Golf course, isn't that important?  Did Donald Ross mail in designs that are better then one's modern guys spent a lot of time on site?  The armchair ones are about nuts and bolts and I seldom do I fall for pretty color renderings but I'm not a judge.  I love old time sketches and don't like computer generated lines.  The Armchair contests are about who can come up with the best routing given a topo map.  Of course they aren't designs.  If computers can aid in showing tree removal to members who can't use their imagination then all the power to them. 

[Mike_Young]

I was reading the "Raynor Drawings found" post and got to thinking...

Most all of my designs have also been builds and myself and employees were there.  The two times we just did drawings and a visit every few weeks I felt a total disconnect.  I see these armchair contest and wonder if someone really considers a two dimensional a golf design.  And then I see where drawings are found of places that were never built and I totally miss it.  I think most all golf archies have a drawer full of routings/plans etc of places that were never done.  Can those be considered designs?

   So when you built courses that you liked, you didn't have a simple routing written down?  It could have been on a cocktail napkin I don't care?  Some on here praise Donald Ross's ability to route a Golf course, isn't that important?  Did Donald Ross mail in designs that are better then one's modern guys spent a lot of time on site?  The armchair ones are about nuts and bolts and I seldom do I fall for pretty color renderings but I'm not a judge.  I love old time sketches and don't like computer generated lines.  The Armchair contests are about who can come up with the best routing given a topo map.  Of course they aren't designs.  If computers can aid in showing tree removal to members who can't use their imagination then all the power to them.

Ben,
Of course I do routings.  And I do a few drawings to satisfy client but I rarely draw much of a green etc.  I'm just saying what TD describes above.  The drawing is a tool just like the shovel or a level.  They just frame better and are easier to display as historical pieces.  AND I have never built a golf course that was like my drawings...but I feel there were way too many built based on drawings.

[BCowan]

Mike,

  I agree with all you said.  Just don't include AAC in your lamenting..  We know we are Am's and we are just trying to learn and have fun.  How many times can we talk about Golden Age, C&C, and the other GCA talking points to death?  Maybe someday we will get the Armchairs in the dirt

[paul cowley]

Tom and Mike...agreed


All the working drawings I do to explore routings, grading plans and compute quantities are normally not what a client sees. The client does get to see more of a presentation plan that is really a talking piece to help convey the routing, paths, features etc...and to give the client a sense of my proficiency and create confidence that I know what I'm doing.


I have never yet drawn detailed greens grading plans though...and it's not that I can't. I just don't want anyone starting a green without me being there

[Mike_Young]

Mike,

  I agree with all you said.  Just don't include AAC in your lamenting..  We know we are Am's and we are just trying to learn and have fun.  How many times can we talk about Golden Age, C&C, and the other GCA talking points to death?  Maybe someday we will get the Armchairs in the dirt

I guess it's sort of like striping it on the practice range huh?

[Peter Pallotta]

Mike- my (sometime) take on this:

I think potential clients like to believe that they are smart and astute enough to understand and judge a set a drawings/routing plans. They probably don't have the first clue about what they are looking at, or about the merits of the would-be designs, but it gives them a sense of power/control and their egos a boost to "mull over" the plans.

They themselves have no talent, and deep down they hate the architect for having something they don't -- and so they try to devalue and under-cut that talent by: a) pretending that it is quite common, so much so that they can be the judge of it, and b) by subtly reinforcing the fact -- through asking several architects to submit plans -- that these potential designs are "only" paper drawings until money (something they do have) makes them real.

These clients lean over the drawings, nodding sagely here and tsk-tsking with disappointment there, all in an elaborate bit of play-acting meant to demonstrate, in short, that they know best. So in response, architects have three choices. 1) The cynical and/or desperate ones can encourage the client's ego and support the belief that he knows best. 2) The good ones will stick to their guns/talents and make an honest case for why their design works, knowing that at some point they may have to defer to the man with the money.  3) The ones who are too old and/or too wealthy to care can tell the client to go f--k himself.

My guess is that none of the architects on this board are yet of the #3 variety   

[BCowan]

Mike,

  I agree with all you said.  Just don't include AAC in your lamenting..  We know we are Am's and we are just trying to learn and have fun.  How many times can we talk about Golden Age, C&C, and the other GCA talking points to death?  Maybe someday we will get the Armchairs in the dirt

I guess it's sort of like striping it on the practice range huh?

Hey I can stripe it on the practice range from time to time and shoot 85 with the best of them  .  Thankfully Dr Mack entered a contest in 1914, I'm sure that didn't help his career any  .  I'm glad Archies compete with routings for owners. Competition brings out the best.  Of course all the ones competing know how to dig it out of the dirt or they wouldn't be at the table.  I love how we vilify owners who have money and actually invest in the game and make them out to be micro-managers 

[Jim_Kennedy]

I was reading the "Raynor Drawings found" post and got to thinking...

Most all of my designs have also been builds and myself and employees were there.  The two times we just did drawings and a visit every few weeks I felt a total disconnect.  I see these armchair contest and wonder if someone really considers a two dimensional a golf design.  And then I see where drawings are found of places that were never built and I totally miss it.  I think most all golf archies have a drawer full of routings/plans etc of places that were never done.  Can those be considered designs?

Of course those drawers full of plans are designs, they're just unrealized, that's all. 

The part you are missing about drawings from ODG architects is their historical value.

[Don Mahaffey]

Ben,
How many people in the world can rate a routing from a drawing? Even your architectural expert judges? Do they always agree on what is best? To rate a routing you have to see it in the ground IMO. 
I like doing plans, and I think a plan is a process, the verb, the task of planning and preparing for a project. Getting your mind around the ground, the quantities involved, the sequencing and construction phasing...all of that. But I have a few projects under my belt now and I've yet to see an as built look all that similar to the original plan.
Plans have their place, but what you do on paper is only a small percentage of the total design process. Yet I continue to run into people who view a golf course plan in the same vein as a plan for a 2000 sq ft track home that will be mass produced.  The idea that anyone could take a plan and just hand it to a builder is complete folly, if you want something decent that is. The contractors are good at what they do, and if you just give them a plan, they know enough to be sure the course will function, drain, irrigate....but the artistry will now be there. It is the act of taking the plan and putting it in the ground that separates architects, again IMO. I continue to be amazed at how little we talk here about the importance of the construction process.

Want to know why we have so many busy bunkers anymore? because they are easy to sketch. Try sketching contours with back drops and green contours. It is very difficult because everything has to be so overdone to be apparent to the layman's eye, but bunkers, we can have bunker drawing contests all the time.  People with the ability to draw cool looking bunkers are in abundant supply, people who know how to actually put them in the ground in a restrained way so they age well and add beauty to the course without  sticking them up in the air like a neon sign, that skill is scarce.

[Garland Bayley]

[/size]...  The Armchair contests are about who can come up with the best routing given a topo map.  Of course they aren't designs.  If computers can aid in showing tree removal to members who can't use their imagination then all the power to them.

I doubt it.


If so, Alex Miller would always win. 

[Garland Bayley]

...  The Armchair contests are about who can come up with the best routing given a topo map.  Of course they aren't designs.  If computers can aid in showing tree removal to members who can't use their imagination then all the power to them.

I doubt it.


If so, Alex Miller would always win. 

I hate this new version of the website software.

[BCowan]

Don,

How many people in the world can rate a routing from a drawing? That is kinda of a vague question.  You don't think a group of Archies that knows the land and has walked it many times can't judge a group of routings?  Lets not include editing and finishing.  You are basically saying that Archies can't visualize another Archies routing
and at times admit it might be Superior to theirs?  Since we are talking about Mike Keiser and he has had experience watching his courses built, you don't think that accounts for anything? 

Even your architectural expert judges? That is a nice condescending comment, not surprised in the least.

Do they always agree on what is best? Disagreements should be praised and there is nothing wrong with gridlock

To rate a routing you have to see it in the ground IMO.  You are saying many Archies don't have visualization skills to see others ideas in simple form of a routing?  Don't you think Archies have seen other Archies work and can see a routing and have a GOOD idea of how it might turn out? 

I like doing plans, and I think a plan is a process, the verb, the task of planning and preparing for a project. Getting your mind around the ground, the quantities involved, the sequencing and construction phasing...all of that. But I have a few projects under my belt now and I've yet to see an as built look all that similar to the original plan. So the routing has drastically changed when you start playing in the dirt?  I never said routing was the be all end all. 


Plans have their place, but what you do on paper is only a small percentage of the total design process. Yet I continue to run into people who view a golf course plan in the same vein as a plan for a 2000 sq ft track home that will be mass produced.  The idea that anyone could take a plan and just hand it to a builder is complete folly, if you want something decent that is. The contractors are good at what they do, and if you just give them a plan, they know enough to be sure the course will function, drain, irrigate....Again i understand what you are saying but you are including design in on a basic routing plan.  How many of your initial routing plan (not including bunkering) have you altered?  Well in current AAC i know where the drainage problems are.  What if you don't want irrigation 

but the artistry will now be there. It is the act of taking the plan and putting it in the ground that separates architects, again IMO. There is a course that I love the routing and don't like the design principals of it.  Is that okay?  Again you are including design into the routing aspect.

I continue to be amazed at how little we talk here about the importance of the construction process. Initiate it more, instead of criticizing things in a condescending way.

Want to know why we have so many busy bunkers anymore? because they are easy to sketch. Try sketching contours with back drops and green contours. It is very difficult because everything has to be so overdone to be apparent to the layman's eye, but bunkers, we can have bunker drawing contests all the time.  I prefer grass bunkers 

People with the ability to draw cool looking bunkers are in abundant supply, people who know how to actually put them in the ground in a restrained way so they age well and add beauty to the course without  sticking them up in the air like a neon sign, that skill is scarce.  Was does this have to do with routing a golf course?  I'd love to see Archies own golf courses so they have to accept what they have put into the ground and can't shift the blame.  I know Mike Young is already there. 

[Tom_Doak]

Competition brings out the best.  Of course all the ones competing know how to dig it out of the dirt or they wouldn't be at the table.  I love how we vilify owners who have money and actually invest in the game and make them out to be micro-managers 

Ben:


Not all architects know how to dig it out of the dirt equally.  Not at all.  There is a bigger gap between the best and the rest in the dirt, than there is on paper.


The only thing all architects know how to do is sell themselves, one way or another.  Clients are basing their decisions on that salesmanship, because they can't see the product they are buying.  Only a few clients are micro-managers, and those are pretty easily identified early in the process ... but many of them are rookies in the golf course development business, and they are easily fooled by salesmen, or worse yet, by consultants and management companies who "help" them choose a certain candidate in a contest that isn't on the level.

[Mike_Young]

Peter,
I have never had a client like you describe.  What I have had is guys who feel like the more pages of drawing they recieve the more work you have done.  I once saw a project designed by an Australian signature with about 50 pages of drawings.  The first 18 were at a particular scale and then the next 18 were at an enlarged scale where they took two pages each and then a few more misc drawings.  It could have all been done on about 5 or 10 sheets.

Ben,
Reread what Don M was saying...I did not see it as condescending....and don't really take the AAC stuff for more than it is...a coloring book....I'm not sure one can find the drainage problems from such.  they might know where water is supposedly going but that's about it.  Don is right in his comments IMHO.
And TD says it best in his comments....I am constantly amazed at the difference between an associate who has been drafting plans and a guy who has been on the site designing and building.  IN MY OPINION..there is no comparison..TD was also politely describing how much BS s in this business.

[BCowan]

Competition brings out the best.  Of course all the ones competing know how to dig it out of the dirt or they wouldn't be at the table.  I love how we vilify owners who have money and actually invest in the game and make them out to be micro-managers 

Ben:


Not all architects know how to dig it out of the dirt equally.  Not at all.  There is a bigger gap between the best and the rest in the dirt, than there is on paper.


The only thing all architects know how to do is sell themselves, one way or another.  Clients are basing their decisions on that salesmanship, because they can't see the product they are buying.  Only a few clients are micro-managers, and those are pretty easily identified early in the process ... but many of them are rookies in the golf course development business, and they are easily fooled by salesmen, or worse yet, by consultants and management companies who "help" them choose a certain candidate in a contest that isn't on the level.

Tom,

I was talking about Sand Valley which a GCA poster lamented a certain course owners competition.  Of course not all are close to equal, but I'm sure Mikes finalist were. Just like all owners aren't equal.

No one has yet answered if they radicly change routing in the field?

As it pertains to AAC some of u are becoming a bore.  Glad Dr Mack competed   

[Mike_Young]

Ben,
For the last 30 years many routings were already done when the golf architect was hired....sad but true...and if lucky he was able to make a few adjustments..but housing developments just did it that way.  Secondly, there are no completely accurate topo maps so sometimes routings are changed in the field.  Rare is the time you would change a par four to a par three etc but there are changes left and right backwards and forward if the hole allows...UNLESS you just send a bunch of drawings to a builder and he just moves dirt to fit the stakes and then you show up for approval once a month...

[Jonathan Mallard]

Ben,
For the last 30 years many routings were already done when the golf architect was hired....sad but true...and if lucky he was able to make a few adjustments..but housing developments just did it that way.  Secondly, there are no completely accurate topo maps so sometimes routings are changed in the field.  Rare is the time you would change a par four to a par three etc but there are changes left and right backwards and forward if the hole allows...UNLESS you just send a bunch of drawings to a builder and he just moves dirt to fit the stakes and then you show up for approval once a month...

So, how many projects include a field survey to a degree of accuracy required to address your comments above?

[Mike_Young]

Jonothan,
I don't know.  I would not need a filed survey because we adjust on site as needed.   but I'm sure some might require it...

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,

I was talking about Sand Valley which a GCA poster lamented a certain course owners competition.  Of course not all are close to equal, but I'm sure Mikes finalist were. Just like all owners aren't equal.

No one has yet answered if they radicly change routing in the field?

As the saying goes, some are more equal than others 


As for changing a routing in the field, I've done so fairly often, sometimes radically and sometimes less so.  I guess it depends on your level of comfort.  For Pacific Dunes, between the final walk-through when Mr. Keiser approved the routing, and the end of construction, we made the following changes:


   #2  shifted the green site sixty yards toward the tee, shortening the hole
   #4  combined with the original #5 to make a long par-4 ... the version Mike walked had a par-3 from the current tees to the start of the fairway, followed by a short par-4 to the current green site, that would not have been such a great hole
   #5  added to the routing, a hole I'd come up with in an earlier version
   #6  moved tee to accommodate the change to #5 -- the hole we built was in my very first routing, but Mr. Keiser had worried it was too short
   #8  moved green a bit back and to the right when we cleared out a cool green site
   #9  added the lower green as an alternate


The reason we came up with all of those changes later in the game is because we knew the site much better after we'd spent a month or two working on it every day.  For instance, I understood that the prevailing wind would make the original #4 a weird hole where nobody could hold the green well downwind, and that the next hole would play too short because of the same wind unless the tee went further back, which would push the 12th hole out further away from the shoreline.


Lots of architects pretend that they can visualize the whole course before they start and can get it on plans just right, and that will save the owner money.  You can believe that if you want, but not many of those guys have built anything we consider great, and I would posit that it's because they stick to the plans even if they see something better later on in the process, because doing otherwise would be admitting they didn't see it all to start with.


But even Mike Keiser -- who is the most sophisticated client I've had -- would not remember all the changes I described above, unless I put the map right in front of him to remind him.  It's really not surprising he couldn't visualize it all in the beginning, since I couldn't, either; I just wonder if he's started to forget how the magic really happens, or if he ever really noticed in the first place. 

[Peter Pallotta]

I don't know which "certain poster" Ben has in mind, but I was amongst those that lamented Mr Keiser's 'competition' at Sand Valley.

I still think it's a shi--y thing to do to people, especially to professionals, and even more so to professionals who have delivered the goods for you in the past.

Just my personal opinion, of course -- Mr K can do whatever he likes, and architects likewise can respond in any way them deem best.

But like auditioning actors for roles in movies, I don't think it's actually about (or leads to) getting the "best work possible".  Again, others - maybe even most -- can say that I'm wrong.

Peter
I am the poster that Ben suggests is "vilifying" owners/clients; I don't think I'm doing that, and I wouldn't want to -- but I do have the opinion that they know less than they think they do...which is okay since I'm sure they'd think I know even less!
   

[Tom_Doak]

The other part of the process I failed to mention [because I was just answering Ben's question] is that the routing is seldom a one-step process.


I've mentioned here before that St. Andrews Beach and Sebonack are the two courses I've built [two out of 35] where my first routing wound up being used in its entirety.  That leaves 33 others where I did more than one version.


On all of my three most famous courses -- Pacific Dunes, Cape Kidnappers, and Barnbougle Dunes -- the routing was a three-step process.  Version 1 was done on paper, before I saw the site.  Version 2 was produced after a multi-day site visit, and presented to the client for feedback.  And, following that feedback, Version 3 was done after another multiple-day visit, to try and address the things that mattered to the client.


For Pacific Dunes, Mr. Keiser's main input on version 2 was that he thought we had too many long holes playing north into the prevailing wind, and all the coastal holes going in the same direction [north].  Most of the changes involved sorting out how to get the routing to cross over twice, so we could get in to play #4 heading south, and then get out again ... because it was clear to me that #10, 11 and 13 were way better playing to the north.


For Cape Kidnappers, Mr. Robertson was concerned that my original plan didn't have returning nines [it came back to the clubhouse after the tenth], and that we weren't going as far out onto the dramatic land as we might, where holes 15-16-17 are today.  Once I understood that he was okay with a hole like #15, with forty yards of fairway and oblivion to both sides, it only took a few days to sort out the rest of it.


For Barnbougle Dunes, Mr. Keiser looked at my version 2 routing and suggested it would be even better if the back nine ended along the beach, instead of having #10 on the beach and ending inland.  I went back and found #17 and #15 as they are, and showed him those the next day, which meant that I eventually re-routed the whole back nine, [almost] backwards from how it goes now.  [#13 green would still have been in the same place, just played from a different angle.]


That's really how the process should work.  Having everyone do a "final" routing at the beginning is silly, because it invites everyone to pander to what they think will appeal to the client, instead of seeing what the land really offers and then reconciling it with how the client really thinks.

[Steve Lang]

   Speaking as an Amateur Armchair Architect, i do consider pdf'd 2-d drawings to be designs, without ever being on paper, but I have to admit that one of the biggest kicks of my life was getting on a dozer, revving up the diesel engine and moving some dirt around, knocking down some shrubbery, then digging a little of s farm pond with a 2 yard bucket backhoe... driving a tractor was pretty tame after that..


All the real architects I know go through many iterations of design until  something has to be picked, in college they used countless rolls of tracing paper, now they're using computer aided tools or having someone get it into the CAD machine or software of choice.


Go figure... Design, Art, Architecture & Planning

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