News:

Welcome to the Golf Club Atlas Discussion Group!

Each user is approved by the Golf Club Atlas editorial staff. For any new inquiries, please contact us.


Ira Fishman

  • Karma: +0/-0
Secret Handshake Among Architects
« on: January 26, 2017, 05:27:11 PM »
Is there a hole that is so well-designed that if architects could or should have had a secret pledge to never repeat/replicate it, they would have chosen that hole?  Or to put it another way, if a player said I really want to play a hole like X hole, the answer would be that you have to travel to the one and only place that it exists?

Ian Andrew

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #1 on: January 26, 2017, 06:13:39 PM »

Is there a hole that is so well-designed that if architects could or should have had a secret pledge to never repeat/replicate it, they would have chosen that hole?  Or to put it another way, if a player said I really want to play a hole like X hole, the answer would be that you have to travel to the one and only place that it exists?


It's funny, but your question sent me in the opposite direction ... sort of.


They should have all agreed to never try and build a version of the 17th at Sawgrass after is was completed. I like it as a one off, but get pissed off at all other versions that I forced to face. The concept sucks ... nothing worse than a place where you have no alternatives and no recovery options.


The other that came to mind was the 6th at Riviera, I liked the hole in the flesh, but I never want to see another one again. Each version feels forced rather than created. Perhaps that's the example you seek.



With every golf development bubble, the end was unexpected and brutal....

Ian Andrew

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #2 on: January 26, 2017, 06:19:14 PM »

I'm not supposed to share it with golfers, but here's the architects secret handshake ... don't tell anybody
With every golf development bubble, the end was unexpected and brutal....

Kalen Braley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #3 on: January 26, 2017, 06:28:35 PM »
I am curious why we haven't seen more holes that look like Riv. #10.




Peter Pallotta

Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #4 on: January 26, 2017, 06:38:57 PM »
Ian - that secret handshake looks hard enough already, so how in the heck do you guys manage it wearing those red tartan blazers?  :)

Jeff_Brauer

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #5 on: January 26, 2017, 06:39:45 PM »


I'm not supposed to share it with golfers, but here's the architects secret handshake ... don't tell anybody



Aaahhh Ian, now I have to shoot you! ;D
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

Jeff_Brauer

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #6 on: January 26, 2017, 06:41:12 PM »


Kalen,


I can barely button my blazer after all these years, much less bend in it. So, to answer your questions, I take mine off before the "shake."


It is particularly hard on our female members, BTW.  And, a bit awkward.


And to answer the OP, I can't think of any off hand, since most of the greats have a feature plus the landscape.  Best example is all the long water par 3's, which presumably owe something to CP 16, but are nowhere near as good for at least scenery reasons.


And, ever since CBM said all we do is more or less adapt the greats, all such agreements were off the table.....Sure we copy the concepts, but try to disguise it by changing the aesthetics to meet the site.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2017, 06:44:51 PM by Jeff_Brauer »
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

Ian Andrew

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #7 on: January 26, 2017, 06:51:01 PM »

... better I don't
« Last Edit: January 26, 2017, 07:31:34 PM by Ian Andrew »
With every golf development bubble, the end was unexpected and brutal....

Peter Pallotta

Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #8 on: January 26, 2017, 07:46:25 PM »
 :)
Reminds me of when I was trying to learn to improvise on my clarinet. I studied the transcribed solos of many jazz greats, trying to understand the rules and the relationship between the notes they played and the chord progressions they were playing over/on. I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Finally I went to a composer and musician I knew and blurted out "This is making me crazy! They all seem to be playing any damn note they want whenever and wherever they feel like!" He smiled and in a mock whisper said: "Welcome - you've just gained entrance into the jazz musicians' secret coven. Now you know that any note can be played over any chord, and if it causes dissonance you're always just a semi-tone away from a note that will resolve it".  That was a revelation, a breakthrough. It changed my musical life! And it makes me think: maybe there is no secret handshake among architects, but I bet there is a secret, which is: do and build whatever the heck you feel like, because if there is a tee and a green/pin, golfers will make a golf hole out of *anything*, and interact with it in ways you can't begin to imagine - and even if it somehow turns out very badly you're always just one bunker or new tee box away from making it right!

« Last Edit: January 26, 2017, 08:05:22 PM by Peter Pallotta »

Jon Wiggett

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #9 on: January 27, 2017, 03:18:36 AM »
I am curious why we haven't seen more holes that look like Riv. #10.


Kalen,


a very good question and one that could be said for quite a few holes. I suspect it is down to the fact that it is so difficult to put your finger on the exact reasons for the difficulty that it presents. Yes, many can talk about what they are in vague or general terms but when it comes to doing a version that is different enough not to be an exact copy and yet still retain the spirit of the hole few if any can.


Jon

Ally Mcintosh

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #10 on: January 27, 2017, 05:00:28 AM »
I am curious why we haven't seen more holes that look like Riv. #10.


Kalen,


a very good question and one that could be said for quite a few holes. I suspect it is down to the fact that it is so difficult to put your finger on the exact reasons for the difficulty that it presents. Yes, many can talk about what they are in vague or general terms but when it comes to doing a version that is different enough not to be an exact copy and yet still retain the spirit of the hole few if any can.


Jon


In my opinion it is because you have a 100 yard wide fairway in the middle and a 10 yard wide green falling away.


To successfully create the same options, you need to be as bold as that. And for the few architects that are, they still have to get past developers and superintendents who aren't.


Ally

Neil White

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #11 on: January 27, 2017, 05:48:17 AM »
Ian - that secret handshake looks hard enough already, so how in the heck do you guys manage it wearing those red tartan blazers?  :)


Some better than others......



Thomas Dai

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #12 on: January 27, 2017, 08:10:02 AM »

Jeff_Brauer

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #13 on: January 27, 2017, 08:30:16 AM »

I am curious why we haven't seen more holes that look like Riv. #10.


It seems to me that has been copied on many modern courses.  But, like Riv, it seems like a once per course idea.  Nor it is hard to put your finger on its difficulty, albeit, most of us probably wouldn't slope the green away from the golfer, unless we had a similar ditch behind the green and that was the natural direction of flow.
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

Ira Fishman

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #14 on: January 27, 2017, 08:42:06 AM »
I am glad that my OP allowed the architects to have some fun.  Lord knows they have hard enough jobs trying to please too many conflicting constituencies.  Ian's post about TPC 17 and Riv 6 prompts a question about Lahinch 4 and 5.  Holes like TPC 17 and Riv 6 that really are not great designs but work in their site?  Or holes where impossible to find similar land form without being artificial about it?

Scott Szabo

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #15 on: January 27, 2017, 09:32:34 AM »
I am curious why we haven't seen more holes that look like Riv. #10.
Wild Horse #15 was designed with that hole in mind if I remember correctly.
"So your man hit it into a fairway bunker, hit the wrong side of the green, and couldn't hit a hybrid off a sidehill lie to take advantage of his length? We apologize for testing him so thoroughly." - Tom Doak, 6/29/10

BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #16 on: January 27, 2017, 10:05:30 AM »
:)
Reminds me of when I was trying to learn to improvise on my clarinet. I studied the transcribed solos of many jazz greats, trying to understand the rules and the relationship between the notes they played and the chord progressions they were playing over/on. I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Finally I went to a composer and musician I knew and blurted out "This is making me crazy! They all seem to be playing any damn note they want whenever and wherever they feel like!" He smiled and in a mock whisper said: "Welcome - you've just gained entrance into the jazz musicians' secret coven. Now you know that any note can be played over any chord, and if it causes dissonance you're always just a semi-tone away from a note that will resolve it".  That was a revelation, a breakthrough. It changed my musical life! And it makes me think: maybe there is no secret handshake among architects, but I bet there is a secret, which is: do and build whatever the heck you feel like, because if there is a tee and a green/pin, golfers will make a golf hole out of *anything*, and interact with it in ways you can't begin to imagine - and even if it somehow turns out very badly you're always just one bunker or new tee box away from making it right!

Good stuff Peter. In a different context, I was in France for a time after college. I was having trouble speaking the language until an older American ex-pat told me to throw caution to the wind and just ham it up when I was trying to speak French. He said you will feel like you are being a melodramatic idiot, but that's just because Americans speak with so little inflection, at least compared to the French (and even the Brits). You'll make tons of mistakes, he said, but you will learn the language much faster.

So that's what I did and he was right. I made embarrassing mistake after embarrassing mistake but my French interlocutors were (almost always) very patient. After a time I made fewer mistakes and at some point spoke pretty well. (I've since lost it.)

I guess the key take away was that you have to dive in and risk humiliation before you can move on. Stumble, fall, pick yourself up and do it again. Try some phrase, get corrected, and then try another new phrase. And so on.

It's a different kind of process from learning, say, chemistry or physics from a textbook, which is what I was used to. Speaking a new language proficiently is more like a performance art.

The parallels with golf architecture should be obvious.

Bob     




Forrest Richardson

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #17 on: January 27, 2017, 10:22:02 AM »
Ian says [about TPC 17]: "The concept sucks ... nothing worse than a place where you have no alternatives and no recovery options."

That IS the concept....No recovery. "If at first you don't succeed, maybe skydiving is not for you..."

Besides, you can always skip the hole, or concede. The routing of a golf course and all its nearly endless variables (tees, fairways, approaches, hazards, greens, etc.) make an exponential paint palette to draw from. While sameness will very often be evident, it is never EXACTLY the same. Take, for example, the many, many Redan holes across the globe. None equal that at Chicago GC, at least in my mind. But that does not take away my enjoyment of those with similar concept. Each is unique in their own way.
— Forrest Richardson, Golf Course Architect/ASGCA
    www.golfgroupltd.com
    www.golframes.com

Peter Pallotta

Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #18 on: January 27, 2017, 11:00:18 AM »
Bob - thanks, you made something much better out of my post. I think you hit on something important (and that line - "Speaking a new language proficiently is more like a performance art" - is beautifully succinct).  I grew up speaking Italian and well as English; I can't remember a time when I didn't speak both.  Over the years, I've found the strangest thing: when I speak Italian, even to myself, in my own head, not only is the language different, but the very words/ideas that come to me are different. It's as if I was a celebrity impressionist: if I'm doing Marlon Brando, what I say is very different than what would I'd say if I was doing Woody Allen. Somehow the sounds themselves carry a kind of meaning/intention. So, as silly as this sounds, I think that when someone is trying to learn,say, French, the best thing to do (and the equivalent of your throwing caution to the wind/performance art) is to pretend that one is French, i.e. to give your sense of yourself over to the language, the sound. And so, yes, as you suggest: working on a new site/golf course is akin to jumping in to a new language -- the bolder and braver you are, the better it works out
Peter

BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #19 on: January 27, 2017, 12:54:07 PM »
"... working on a new site/golf course is akin to jumping in to a new language -- the bolder and braver you are, the better it works out"

To perhaps stretch the metaphor beyond its useful range, a new site is like learning a new language. Some site "languages" don't have much of a vocabulary and need an architect's help to fill in gaps.  Think the Rawls Course in west Texas or a flat Florida site.

Other sites have rich, complicated vocabularies.  A good architect, after trial and error, learns the language of those sites. Ideally, at the end of the design process architectural features spill out of the head of the designer "naturally", as if he was speaking in the language of the site.

Bob 

   
« Last Edit: January 27, 2017, 02:40:46 PM by BCrosby »

Peter Pallotta

Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #20 on: January 27, 2017, 01:03:30 PM »
+1
FWIW, Bob, I think you've described the process (at least the inner process) perfectly.
And there is one thing and one thing only that can foster this deep familiarity, ie Time.
Bill Coore at Sand Hills took the time to learn/speak the site's language, until he was ready and able to speak on its behalf, and the story he told in the language was a golf course. It is still telling/sharing that story today, and will for decades to come.
Overly poetic and romantic and sentimental and airy-fairy of me? Perhaps. But I do believe that this is what happened.

Kalen Braley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #21 on: January 27, 2017, 01:39:26 PM »
Perhaps Riv. 10 is a bit like 17 at TOC....


The kind of hole that no one forgets and everyone wants to play....but so out of the box no one would dare try to replicate


IMO, The closest architect to still building super bold holes like this is Jim Engh....and they are lots of fun to play.

Garland Bayley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #22 on: January 27, 2017, 01:52:06 PM »
...
Besides, you can always skip the hole, or concede. ...


At $375/18=$21.83 I'm not skipping anything. And, I am bitching about it the whole way.
At $75/18=$4.17 I would play it with free golf balls (found off brands).


For the 18 handicapper and above, every hole has to have recovery shots.
"I enjoy a course where the challenges are contained WITHIN it, and recovery is part of the game  not a course where the challenge is to stay ON it." Jeff Warne

Bob Montle

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #23 on: January 27, 2017, 02:42:16 PM »
Peter,
Very good point about the mental images being different in different languages.
When I was trying to learn some Italian I enjoyed the fact that Italians could use one word that would require several words in English to convey the same thought.  That one word might have different nuances of meaning however, depending on the context.  I liked that.
An example is VIVERE

Vasco Rossi's songs were my favorites for many decades.
"If you're the swearing type, golf will give you plenty to swear about.  If you're the type to get down on yourself, you'll have ample opportunities to get depressed.  If you like to stop and smell the roses, here's your chance.  Golf never judges; it just brings out who you are."

Mike Nuzzo

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Secret Handshake Among Architects
« Reply #24 on: January 28, 2017, 11:25:27 AM »
Ian says [about TPC 17]: "The concept sucks ... nothing worse than a place where you have no alternatives and no recovery options."

That IS the concept....No recovery. "If at first you don't succeed, maybe skydiving is not for you..."

Besides, you can always skip the hole, or concede. The routing of a golf course and all its nearly endless variables (tees, fairways, approaches, hazards, greens, etc.) make an exponential paint palette to draw from. While sameness will very often be evident, it is never EXACTLY the same. Take, for example, the many, many Redan holes across the globe. None equal that at Chicago GC, at least in my mind. But that does not take away my enjoyment of those with similar concept. Each is unique in their own way.


I'll secret handshake THE Redan and THE 17th at Sawgrass.


I agree 100% with Ian.
He said he likes THE 17th, and no other versions.
I also like THE 17th and no other versions and hope to never build an island green.
I read in print that Gil talked Trump out of building an island green at Doral.


Also The Redan is the best in the globe, Chicago's is nothing like it IMO. I hope to never build A Redan.
Just because a ball rolls from right to left and the target is a little right of the green doesn't make a hole A Redan.
I know someone who named a par 3 "Redan", even though it clearly isn't because they were sick of everyone naming their hole a redan.


Cheers
Thinking of Bob, Rihc, Bill, George, Neil, Dr. Childs, & Tiger.

Tags:
Tags:

An Error Has Occurred!

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()
Back