Club Politics and Master Plans at Golf Clubs

[Tom_Doak]

I am cross-posting this from another thread, because that one is about Gil Hanse's work, and this response isn't about Gil's work, it's about my experiences with clubs that want to host big events.

Isn't one of the main jobs of the architect to steer the "troubled and misguided" committee in the right direction? In looking at previous Open Doctors, ie Reese how could you not blame him for his work? Aren't his new builds also a reflection of this?


No ~ Architects are in business to make money and most do this by working for clients who tell them what they want and the architect delivers. Are you a member of a private club? Think of the typical board member and ask yourself if any architect (employee in their mind) is telling the club members what to do? Guiding a "troubled and misguided" board in the right direction sounds great but just doesn't happen in the real world.

I assume that's why Tom Doak said ~ That's why I have generally not sought out these commissions.  In the end, if a club wants to host a big tournament, the ruling bodies will tell the architect what to do.

I take Tom for his word on his statement being true, you should too.

I would respond to Nick:


Different clubs work different ways. 


Every club has multiple factions:  low-handicappers, seniors, women, long-term members and legacies, architecture geeks, tree-huggers, guys who bring clients, etc.  At certain clubs one faction or the other has been dominant for a long time; but the bigger a master plan you are selling, the harder it is to get 2/3 of them on the same page. 


Restoration tends to be one of the few themes that most factions can agree on.  It's the low handicappers [and the tree-huggers] who push back against it the hardest, because they are worried the course will become too easy ... but if you can add a few back tees and you don't neuter the greens, that doesn't really happen.  And the low handicappers want the new grasses and the perfect bunkers and the whiff of new-car scent, so they are ultimately going to be in favor of the project.  They're probably the ones who started the process.


However, at the clubs that still want to host big tournaments, there is also the USGA volunteer faction, and the various subsets of other factions who have prided themselves forever on hosting big tournaments.  And when that status is threatened - like it was at Merion years ago - there are people who are just desperate to change things and get back in that game.  Every guest that would come there in the 80's and 90's would say, "It's a great course.  Too bad you can't host the Open anymore."  It wore on them to the point that they would do whatever the governing bodies tell them to do, to recapture their Identity. 


And the governing bodies are not shy about telling them what to do.  They pretend it's all the architect's recommendation, but it is not.  There will be whispers about which architect to hire, and the architect knows what is expected of him.  Even for the Mid-Am at Stonewall, they insisted on several new tees ... a couple of which I had suggested to begin with, and a couple that I totally disagreed with.  Even for the Senior Women's Open at Chicago Golf, they put in 4-5 new tees.  And they take the U. S. Open and the PGA 1000x more seriously than those events.  They want to control what color the paint in the bathroom is going to be.


So, in cases like that, how do you "steer the troubled and misguided committee in the right direction" ?  If you think what's good for the membership is more important than what's good for a major tournament, you don't even try for those jobs, because "the right direction" has already been written in the cards.




By the same token, the suggestion that architects should just come in and do whatever the client asks them, without any attempt at education or pushback, is terrible for golf.  Sure, it's the way a lot of architects work, because they want the work.  When I interviewed for the consulting job at Garden City [29 years ago!], the green chairman told me the previous candidate had pulled him aside and asked what they wanted him to say - which immediately disqualified him from consideration.  But not every green chairman is like Tom Poole was.


I guess most architects are in business to make money.  And ultimately that's why there is so much indifferent work done today.  C. B. Macdonald and George Thomas never accepted money for their services; Old Tom Morris and Alister MacKenzie and Donald Ross did, but I do believe they held themselves to a somewhat higher standard of what was good for the game.  Pete Dye was not designing golf courses to make money, and he made sure everyone working on his courses understood that.  I guess I'm still an idealist at heart.


BTW, when I was wrestling with the decision about which project in Wisconsin to commit to, my wife's advice was the same it always is:  pick the one you'd do if it was your last project, and there was no money involved.  She has never met Pete Dye, but it's almost like she knows him.

[Thomas Dai]

Fascinating opening post and thread.


Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ meets Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ meets ‘The Godfather’ at a private members golf club!


I recall another thread quite some time ago where a poster, from California I believe, suggested that blackmail, sorry I don’t mean blackmail at all, some ‘interesting’ personal knowledge on most, if not all, of the committee members was always something useful to have up ones sleeve from a leverage and negotiating point of view but maybe that would be better looked at from Don Corleone’s aspect!


Timing and tactics and strategy. Course management really, but in the committee room rather than on the golf course.


I recall from many years ago a Greens Chairman who was determined to make several changes to his course. He knew they’d never pass the membership test. He waited, and waited and waited. He put a plan to the membership  to build a lake in a ridiculous position on the course. He also proposed a few other daft things plus the things he really wanted to do. The agenda for the membership meeting, the agenda which he prepared, had the ridiculous lake and other daft things at the top and the things he really wanted to do, which he was deliberately vague about, at the bottom. He Chaired the meeting and talked himself and let the members howl in protest for ages about the ridiculous lake and the daft things so the meeting, which he scheduled for quite late one evening, ran very late. By the time the discussion on the ridiculous lake and the daft things was over, and he’d lost the vote on doing them as he knew he would, the vast majority in the audience were desperate to leave as it was getting really late so the projects he really wanted to do were voted though with scarcely a murmur of opposition. Timing and tactics and strategy. Bit like positioning General Patton at the Dover-Calais channel crossing point when the plan all along was to invade via Normandy.


Of course a few smart folks within the membership may pick up on such tactics and use such strategy in reverse. Then things get more interesting as the butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, tinkers, tailors etc start to openly squabble. Such is life at a private members golf club. A great venue for a situation comedy!


Atb

[Jeff_Brauer]

Thomas,


The old bait and switch works in gca offices, too, if you listen to associates.  Anyone working for a big firm has stories about purposely placing a few "Easter Eggs" for the boss to find and throw out.  Their goal is to minimize his participation of course, and hope the boss is happy making a few obvious changes.


I have generally steered away from a lot of club work. I have both gotten and lost jobs by trying to hold the ego in, and work within their parameters as well as being the iconoclast and telling them we were going to be different. 


BTW, it really isn't all or nothing, in most cases.  Yes, they may want to modernize a classic course, or totally re-route a nice routing, for example, but there are still a lot of decisions in just how to make the best of being on a track you are not comfortable with.


The stories of greens committees making bad decisions are legendary in gca circles, from a meeting where they started throwing chairs, to one where the club president voted down the greens chair proposals repeatedly, finally admitting it was because he had an affair with his wife, to just plain, dumb stuff.


Two examples of those - called to a local club, they said only one thing was sacred, the pond on 15.  Turns out a well respected member had donated it, but is looked like a wading pool, painted light blue, one foot deep, etc.  I said it had to go, lost the job.


Another great club said the sacred item was the Cottonwood by the 4th green, which it turned out had roots in the green, was on the SE side and shaded the green, etc.  Asked if I could save it, I replied, "Sure, just tell me where you want the logs stacked."


I didn't get that job either.

[Tom_Doak]

Thomas:


Yes, I'm on a roll today.  Signing up another new client.  Our daughter had a baby this morning.  And meanwhile I'm nursing my dog through her final days, after which I'm overdue in Australia.  So I'm definitely in "no b.s. mode".




Jeff:


My personal favorite was going to a club for the first time and sitting in on a green committee meeting.  The green chairman called the meeting to order, for the first point of order a committee member brought up something kind of snippy which I had no knowledge of, and the third thing said in the record was the green chairman saying, "I would never tell someone to go f*** themselves.  I am not that kind of person."


Personally, I have never done the bait and switch.  You don't need to if your intent is to actually restore the golf course.  You just have to keep pointing at the old photo on the wall and asking "why don't you want me to put it all back?"



That's how I got the cement pond at Bel Air out of there, in the end.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I always love the written record of some of those meetings.  After the "I'm voting no because that SOB slept with my wife" meeting, the record merely said, "After discussion, the motion was voted down."


I remember all those Merion threads where certain people were holding up the greens committee records as telling the true story.  From what I have seen, I doubt it fully covered it.

[PCCraig]

Our daughter had a baby this morning. 

Congrats!

[Peter Pallotta]

Terrifc thread, with uniformly excellent posts. (And hearty congratulations, Tom!)

Tell me: do any of these committee chairs actually care about the golf course itself?

(It sounds to me like most are golf's version of today's 'successful' CEOs -- deemed successful more because of the positions they've attained, the rich salaries and bonuses they enjoy, and the enormous golden parachutes they've negotiated for themselves than because of their conscientious stewardship of the company and its long term health).

[Thomas Dai]

Some great stories and a no BS Grandpa. Perfect! And congratulations to all for the new arrival. I hope Mum and daughter are both doing well. Special times ahead. Very sorry to hear about your dogs situation. Good news about the new client though.


As to golf clubs and committees, rampant egos, vanity, arrogance, self importance etc know no limits. As has been said - “Why do golf clubs always have showers in the locker room?......Because a committee cannot run a bath!”. Regrettably pretty true in most cases.


Being on a golf club committee and trying to get anything done is a bit like attempted to walk through thick mud mixed with treacle.


And to answer Peters question, I am sure many/most care deeply about the golf course itself, or they do initially at least, but once they’ve become involved, and it’s hard not to become involved even to a minor extent, in the
politics/ego/power committee game then, we’ll, let’s be polite and say distractions occur and strategies and priorities change.


As to the minutes. Ha, ha, ha. I knew a committee chairman who wrote them being the meeting! I also recall attending an AGM when a member suggested that the best place to get a good lie at the club wasn’t on the golf course but was at a committee meeting!


If you don’t laugh you’ll cry!


Atb

[corey miller]

Peter


I was involved in a project and my committee chair (greens as well as restoration) cared deeply about getting it right.  Initially, he politely declined my volunteering but soon understood my knowledge and passion and perhaps friendship with George Bahto. 


When decisions appeared "easy" to me he continued to do the research so he had the proper answers for all.  In fact, one of the funny things was that those that disagreed with our committee always thought we were not listening when in fact every "suggestion" was vetted both within committee and with our architect.  It is those within the membership, with the egos you describe, that always think if they don't get their way it is because "they did not listen" rather than it being a lousy ill thought out idea.


All clubs have different cultures and all committee chairman have different credibility within the membership which influences exactly what a chairman can accomplish.


So I give strong marks to George Sanossian at Sleepy Hollow (who I worked with) in conjunction with Gil Hanse and George Bahto.


Equally.  Michael Moss at Sunningdale working with Mike Devries and Joe Hancock...fabulous


Michael Policano at Ridgewood working with Gil Hanse .


Bob Emmons at Huntington who I believe may have done the work in house based upon a plan from Tom Doak.


Steve Lapper at Paramount (not sure if he is actual chair but I believe he was instrumental) with Jim Urbina


Perhaps it is just being smart enough to work with the proper architect and actually listeneining and attempting  to become better  educated?


Hard for me to see much ego in these well crafted local plans that I am familiar. 


Funny thing is all these guys have visited and posted on this site......Kudos

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks much, Corey and Thomas - really good stuff.


It may have 'read' as if I simply wanted to have my impressions confirmed, but I really didn't. It is gratifying to me to read about people who honour their (true) responsibilities and focus on their (primary) task so well, as did the folks you mention.


And it was good of you to give each of those chairs a 'shout out' (if that's the right term -- I'm a bit out of touch with the modern lingo...)


Peter


 

[Randy Thompson]

Congrats to Tom on becoming a grand pa! In the mid eighties one of Pete´s best lines was, ¨There is not an architect alive including myself that is worth more than a 200,000 dollar fee!

[Tom_Doak]

Congrats to Tom on becoming a grand pa! In the mid eighties one of Pete´s best lines was, ¨There is not an architect alive including myself that is worth more than a 200,000 dollar fee!

Randy:


Thank you.  Little Oliver is actually our fifth grandchild ... my wife got started on this whole family legacy thing a few years before I did.  And for the many who have reached out to me in private about my dog, she actually had a great day today, so she is making the most of her time.


Yes, Pete Dye often said that no golf course architect should make more than the President of the United States.  I shudder to think what he would say today.


I would like to point out that my exposition above was all about general club politics.  Nowhere did I say or imply that green chairmen were doing the work for the wrong reasons.  Even from the start, most have encouraged me to maintain an independent voice, even if they were much older and wiser than me.   Now that I'm closer to their age [or older than they are!] and can consider myself friends with some of them, I just marvel at why anybody in their right mind would volunteer for the job.  They are harangued by members 24/7 over the smallest of things, and the best ones use up a lot of their lives simply protecting the greenkeeper from the tyranny of the masses.


I have worked with a ton of fine gentlemen, but I won't name-check them here because they know I am not a suck-up. 


Interestingly, I have had a couple of women as clients, but I've never met a woman green chair.

[Kevin_Reilly]

Peter, life as a CEO of any medium size company (or greater) is no walk in the park.  I've known a great many in my work career, and the life sacrifices they make (family time compromised, constant travel, 24/7 responsibilities, always being judged for what will happen tomorrow instead of congratulated for what happened yesterday) usually isn't a fair trade for the ultimate economic reward, no matter how great the riches might be.  The day to day life of a CEO isn't as glorious as Hollywood makes it seem, and the negative parts of the job that happen on a regular basis are always overlooked.


Green chairs are also, in my experience, well-intentioned volunteers (which are always in short supply at clubs) who may invest much time during their terms that goes unnoticed and under-appreciated by average members, dealing with the mundane most of the time.  Always with a neon sign over their heads at club events saying "COME OVER HERE AND TELL ME YOUR COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE COURSE".


I'd advise all to refrain from casting judgment on either of these positions without adequate experience with either.

[Nick Ribeiro]

Tom,

Congrats on Oliver and I am sorry to hear about your sidekick. Hopefully she can enjoy some more time running around a golf course!

Thanks for the clarification. I am not sure if anyone really believes an architect just rolls into a club and lays down the law or if its just an easy thing to say because they think it supports their hatred for some of the modern designers?

I am sure one of the hardest parts of your job is keeping everyone (low handicappers / seniors / women / long term members / legacies / tree huggers / architecture geeks) on the same page and happy. I can see how the better players would be the toughest to satisfy, especially at classics where the course is in danger of being too easy and most likely has many changes from origional design to combat the course becoming easier over time. I assume it is easier to work for 1 owner / dictator instead of an entire committee or club. I have said in other threads, some of these classics that host these big tournaments just are not the same as they were no matter what term we want to hide behind. Restoration / Renovation / Keeping Angles while adding distance / scaling greens to accept faster green speeds / changing grasses / altering bunkers, I am sorry but after all this why not just reroute the course while your at it? It is amazing to me to hear of all this technology used to shape the surfaces exactly to what they were a century ago, yet the green surfaces are built for US Open speeds. There is obviously a demand for championship design, hard par, and the demand expands with technology advancements in equipment.

It is nice to hear the green chairman at Garden City put the club and membership ahead of himself by disqualifying the candidate who asked him what he wanted and what he should say. I think the chairman did the right thing and it is members like this that keep Garden City in such high regard. With that said, it would be extremely hard for me to believe this situation isn't anything but the minority?

At stonewall, after the mid am, did the club take out the changes you totally disagreed with or are they still there?

Nick

[Tom_Doak]

Nick:


My responses pasted into your post below.

Tom,

Congrats on Oliver and I am sorry to hear about your sidekick. Hopefully she can enjoy some more time running around a golf course!

Thanks for the clarification. I am not sure if anyone really believes an architect just rolls into a club and lays down the law or if its just an easy thing to say because they think it supports their hatred for some of the modern designers?
    - It depends on what you're trying to do.  At Bel Air, I knew exactly where I thought they should go, and before I started talking to the green committee and the board in my first meeting with them, there were maybe only 3 or 4 out of 15 who were on the same page.  But I wasn't selling my own brilliance, I told them they were arguing any details of the design with George Thomas, whose work they professed to love.  Likewise, if you're beholden to getting a USGA event, you listen to the designer who knows what they want, or you don't get the event. 
     But, those are fairly rare circumstances.  Most clubs have a green committee that has an idea what they are looking for.  It would be nice if they'd try to keep that to a "mission statement" instead of a mandate to "fix the third green," but a lot of them are more particular.

I am sure one of the hardest parts of your job is keeping everyone (low handicappers / seniors / women / long term members / legacies / tree huggers / architecture geeks) on the same page and happy. I can see how the better players would be the toughest to satisfy, especially at classics where the course is in danger of being too easy and most likely has many changes from origional design to combat the course becoming easier over time. I assume it is easier to work for 1 owner / dictator instead of an entire committee or club. I have said in other threads, some of these classics that host these big tournaments just are not the same as they were no matter what term we want to hide behind. Restoration / Renovation / Keeping Angles while adding distance / scaling greens to accept faster green speeds / changing grasses / altering bunkers, I am sorry but after all this why not just reroute the course while your at it? It is amazing to me to hear of all this technology used to shape the surfaces exactly to what they were a century ago, yet the green surfaces are built for US Open speeds. There is obviously a demand for championship design, hard par, and the demand expands with technology advancements in equipment.
     - Thank God, I do not have to worry about "keeping everyone on the same page".  I just keep myself on the right page, and keep telling everyone else why I'm there.  But I try to avoid clubs where I feel my recommendations would require a lot of "selling", because I'm not a salesman by nature, and because I suspect at a club that's divided the work you talk them into is not going to last long-term.  If we are not working on a long-term solution that a membership will respect, then the work is a waste of their money and my effort.  I'd rather spend my time on things that will last.

It is nice to hear the green chairman at Garden City put the club and membership ahead of himself by disqualifying the candidate who asked him what he wanted and what he should say. I think the chairman did the right thing and it is members like this that keep Garden City in such high regard. With that said, it would be extremely hard for me to believe this situation isn't anything but the minority?
     - Well, it's certainly not uncommon for green committees to interview a bunch of candidates until they find one who seems to be happy to do the things they want to do to the course.  If it were uncommon, that architect would never have approached the green chair as he did.  I'd say Garden City was rare in that they didn't really have an agenda when they started the process; they just knew that nobody had really looked at the course that way for a long time, and they thought it was time.  That was in 1989, which is even longer ago than it sounds; nobody was doing restorations then.  And our work at GCGC has not been 100% restoration as it has for some other clubs.

At stonewall, after the mid am, did the club take out the changes you totally disagreed with or are they still there?
    - The Mid Am was the last time I was out on the North course, so I'm not sure, but I suspect the tees are still there.  It's less costly to just abandon them than to dig them up.  On the other hand, it's not unlikely they are saving them in case they get to host another tournament down the road.  But I doubt there are any members who use the tees in question.

Nick

[corey miller]

Nick


Are there any highly regarded classic clubs that have undergone restorative surgery (or whatever you want to call it) over the last ten years that have not been improved for the members?


I understand that there are "degrees of better" but I am hard pressed to think of one that is worse. Again, most of the work (whatever you want to call it) is low hanging fruit: tree, fairway mowing lines, green expansion and perhaps new bunkers.


Of course there were lost opportunities but  I have to believe most are better.




Not sure about the story at Garden City but I myself am "guilty" of asking our green chairman/restoration chairman what the agenda is and how it should be presented.  Yes, "what to say".


Of course, we were working as a team in coordination with a well regarded restoration specialist with a firm mandate from the board.  We also made a commitment to attempt to be "all in" on the recommendations and not revert to the Chinese restaurant columns.   


Any small suggestions I had I can present directly to the chairman or the architect but I have found it is best for the team to have a united front in the grill room.


So yes..Garden City might be in the minority but perhaps for the wrong reasons? 


 ADDENDUM.  Nick- Tom and I posted at the same time and his post brings clarity to the situation at GCGC.  I agree with you.