Wabi-sabi in Golf Course Construction

[Tom_Doak]

Someone sent me a link to an article about the Japanese aesthetic concept of wabi-sabi, the appreciation of imperfection.  Here's the link:


http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181021-japans-unusual-way-to-view-the-world

I think it's got a lot to do with what I've always liked about older golf courses, and features that appear to be natural, even if they aren't.  And it's also got a lot to do with why my skin crawls when clubs spend millions of dollars rebuilding and restoring their courses to perfection -- because they were never perfect to begin with.  A quote from the article:

"Without bright colours and ornate designs to rely on as signifiers of accepted beauty, guests were encouraged to study subtle colours and textures that would previously have been overlooked.

As to why they sought imperfect, rustic pieces, Prof Otabe explained that “wabi-sabi leaves something unfinished or incomplete for the play of imagination”. This opportunity to actively engage with something considered to be wabi-sabi achieves three things: an awareness of the natural forces involved in the creation of the piece; an acceptance of the power of nature; and an abandonment of dualism – the belief that we are separate from our surroundings."


For me, that's a pretty good description of what I find endearing about older golf courses, with all their little imperfections, from the contours of the putting greens to the mottling of the grass species in the roughs [and even on the greens].  The modern imperative of making everything "perfect" is getting away from the idea that hitting a ball around the countryside, and chasing after it, is inherently a natural game.

Ironically in the Asian countries the bulk of new courses express just the opposite of wabi-sabi:  they have been carved from inhospitable sites and engineered to death.  But of course many of them had Americans pointing the way.

[David_Tepper]

Tom -

There is a chapter in Bruce Springsteen's autobiography where he writes about recording/mixing/producing the "Born To Run" album and how he labored for months and months over it, trying to make it perfect.

Finally, Jon Landau told him the greatest art always had imperfections and convinced him to release the album as it was. The rest, as they say, is history.

DT

[Ian Andrew]

Tom,


I always found it fascinating that as Stanley Thompson grew as a designer he added more flourishes and adventure into his architecture. This essentially is fully realized at Banff Springs. Then at that artistic pinnacle, he began to remove elements, first at St. George's and then even more from Capilano. Eventually leading to five bunkerless holes at Highlands Links and for some of us his most inspiring golf course.

I can't counter the argument that economics did slowly play a role too, but it's hard not to notice that he choose to leave more and more of his canvas untouched. When my father was teaching me water colours in my teens, he constantly told me I painted too much. A few masterful strokes carry far greater weight than making too many.

If I were to criticise the current movement, it's that the artists too often the canvas because they can. Not every space needs to be addressed. I recently wondered -counter intuitively - if the limited time on site by someone like Ross contributed to a crisper, simpler and elegant vision of architecture.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom Doak, waba sabialist?

[Tom_Doak]

If I were to criticise the current movement, it's that the artists too often the canvas because they can. Not every space needs to be addressed. I recently wondered -counter intuitively - if the limited time on site by someone like Ross contributed to a crisper, simpler and elegant vision of architecture.

Ian:


I don't think your observation about Mr. Ross is counter-intuitive at all.  Part of the origin of minimalism - at least my strand of it - was that at High Pointe I tried to perform all of the shaping myself, in a few months' time, on a single D-3 bulldozer.  I was never going to cover the whole site with that, so I stuck to the areas that NEEDED to be re-shaped and kept the earthmoving to a minimum.


But it's not just time involvement that takes things further than they need to go, it's also money.  I think about that often while watching my younger associates and helpers create ginormous bunkers with 20-ton excavators and D-5's and -6's.  Their work would be better if they did less of it!  But they do not think of this because they've grown up working on big projects with ample budgets for others, instead of scraping by on their own version of High Pointe.


I like them all and I'm trying to help support them, but I don't want it to be counter-productive to the finished product.  It is no coincidence that some of my best work [Barnbougle, Ballyneal, St. Andrews Beach, Dismal River, The Loop] was done on smaller-budget projects, with smaller construction crews.  All but the last were on wonderful pieces of ground, though.

[Lou_Duran]

Sounds like the perfect philosophy for the Millennials- "maybe not approaching my best, but good enough".  I suspect that it would not be too hard today to create or leave imperfections.  But would the owners and customers allow it?  And how long would it take for any number of critics to lambast it?  Fazio would get killed if he created an unbalanced routing like CPC's.
 

[Peter Pallotta]

Tom - Thanks much for posting this. It resonates on many levels.
Coincidentally, I was looking earlier at Sean's profile of Saunton and thinking that it might require more 'imagination' than I possess. 
And as gca professionals, it seems a knife-edge: do you honour 'the elegant beauty of humble simplicity' and risk that it's recognized & appreciated by only a few? More fundamentally: is it perhaps presumptuous as a 'service provider' to ask golfers to embrace a new way of seeing instead of satisfying, as best you can, their current way?
Peter

[Randy Thompson]

I posted this on Facebook about four hours ago before reading this post.

I am going to post two photos of the same green, one is the arrival experience to the green. The other is looking right of the green from the left. I have been building and designing golf courses for over thirty years. Lots of mistakes and in general living and learning that keeps me growing. There are times when your canvas is so majestic that less becomes more and these photos reinforce the concept. The design doesn´t try to compete with the surroundings, that would be a losing battle. The attention is where it belongs, in the majestic surroundings!
20181026_133241 A by Randall Thompson, en Flickr


DSC01199 b by Randall Thompson, en Flickr

[Peter Pallotta]

Lovely work, Randy.
Yes, I imagine that wabi-sabi isn't about 'not doing your best' but more about re-defining what 'the best' actually means in any given situation. 
And I think it must be a subtle and living/evolving process, with no clear-cut or easy answers: I mean, a wonderfully 'turfy' 60-yard wide fairway might be framed either by sandy, wiry, rough-hewed waste areas or instead by perfectly manicured rows of red & yellow roses, but in both cases it will still/equally be 'framed'.
Peter       

[Steve Lang]

   looks like kintsugi is perhaps the more important concept, beyond new builds...

[Marty Bonnar]

Mamma mia!
(Sorry, I'm in Italy right now) but I absolutely love this.
The first time I saw a broken Japanese bowl mended with gold filler, I was consumed with admiration.
Instead of trying to conceal the cracks, the craftsman had honoured the piece by celebrating the damage. Blew my tiny artistic mind! Instantly changed the way I thought about what Art was and about how we should respond to age, time, use, value.
Buildings and landscapes are the same. Allowing things to grow old but using our skills and knowledge to keep them in 'good' condition is very challenging, but ultimately key to 'preservation'.
(Visited Pompeii yesterday so obviously a bit full of it today!)
F.

[John Kirk]

(My first thought was) Wabi-sabi does not apply to the Japanese excellence in auto manufacturing that raised the bar for automotive reliability in the eighties and nineties.  The improvements were based on statistical analysis of manufacturing accuracy and tolerances, which led to greater reliability.  In this case, Japan followed the lead of an American engineer, W. Edwards Deming, whose ideas about statistical process control were ignored by American auto manufacturers until they were well behind.
Wabi-sabi and golf courses good, Wabi-sabi and cars, not so much.

[David_Tepper]

"Wabi-sabi and golf courses good, Wabi-sabi and cars, not so much."
John Kirk -
Not so good for semiconductors either.
DT

[Bill Crane]

A little dab goes great on Albacore Avacado rolls.
Old golf courses hold a charm that comes with the Patina of age.  The genesis of that Patina can be a number of forces such as bunker splash build up, and the effect of water draining.   Wayne Morrison and I had an interesting discussion about this three years ago.
At compact Springdale 17 of our greens have not moved substantially since the Wm Flynn re-design that opened in 1927- so there are places with substantial slopes near the green side bunkers. The bunker splash slopes can counter what is often called “The Tower Effect” - putts that break away from Cleveland Tower on the highest point on the property.   The actual force is the greens sloping toward the brook which of course is the lowest point of the property.
The drainage to the brook causes interesting undulations throughout the course that effects play more than immediately perceived.  When you play on a late fall afternoon with low light you can really start to see the ripples, ridges and slopes that have built up over time.
Drainage effects and bunker splash are in essence natural imperfections that you rarely see on heavily shaped modern courses. 
Peter Dye was right about drainage for other reasons as well.
Probably many old courses were designed in a way that left these natural features in the land since they had less effective equipment and time to do shaping, in addition to these features building up during the extended life of the course.

[Tom_Doak]

Drainage effects and bunker splash are in essence natural imperfections that you rarely see on heavily shaped modern courses. 

Bunker splash was one of the first things I thought of when applying the article to golf courses.


However, it's a double-edged sword.  A certain amount of golf-induced change to slopes is cool, but with modern green speeds, there comes a point when there is so much buildup that the green is no longer functional.  They have to rebuild the Road bunker at St. Andrews every few years to reduce the sand buildup.  The same is true of the edges of greens at Royal Melbourne -- we had to rebuild the 5th West green last year and removed 6-8 inches of buildup from bunker play at the edges of the green in the process.


Note that with slower green speeds this wasn't as much of a problem, so clubs let the situation go unaddressed for longer back in the day.

[Peter Pallotta]

Not course construction related: but those classic old clapboard sided clubhouses, their wood plank locker room floors mottled with a century of metal spike marks, why are they still there to be enjoyed for their humble, imperfect & simple beauty? Maybe because old money had the good sense not to spend new money in an attempt to make more money through borrowed money.

I'd imagine there are some gca-related equivalents...   

[Tim Gavrich]

I think this concept is part of why I've never understood the "It looks like it's been here forever!" line about new golf courses. However many hundreds of times I've heard it or read it, I've never thought it was remotely plausible about even the most sensitively andm inimally shaped new course. New courses all have that plasticky sheen for a little while. It takes time for the turf and contours and features of a golf course to look lived-in and for imperfections to come about and/or reveal themselves.

Even more than in architecture, I'd love to see a greater embrace of wabi-sabi in maintenance. I'll never forget the jerk I once caddied for who, on a 90-degree day, pointed to a slightly brown patch of rough just off a tee box and spat, "I pay $20,000 a year for THIS?!"

[Bill Crane]

Drainage effects and bunker splash are in essence natural imperfections that you rarely see on heavily shaped modern courses. 

A certain amount of golf-induced change to slopes is cool, but with modern green speeds, there comes a point when there is so much buildup that the green is no longer functional. 

No Kidding. 


This coming Saturday is our "Get Tough"   {Supers Revenge) tournament with Flags in some really hairy places that can produce 5 putts.   


When we get a little speed on the greens at this time and May/June it seems like the breaks increase exponentially.  Soon as they hit 10 the ball really starts to move and sidehill/downhill putts become very testy.   


And there is significantly less pinnable green area.

[Dan Smoot]

Sounds like the perfect philosophy for the Millennials- "maybe not approaching my best, but good enough".  I suspect that it would not be too hard today to create or leave imperfections.  But would the owners and customers allow it?  And how long would it take for any number of critics to lambast it?  Fazio would get killed if he created an unbalanced routing like CPC's.

One of the most interesting and challenging comments I have heard in my working world is the statement "perfection is the enemy of good enough".  I know this is not original but hearing it for the first time certainly sticks with you.

[Ira Fishman]

Dan,


I have used that line for at least 20 years to encourage people to not get hung up on finishing a project or offering an idea.  Forever, I attributed to Burke, but could not actually confirm it when I tried to do so. 


Ira

[Jeff_Brauer]

And yet the image on this site is TD or CC on a sand pro, endlessly shaping a green contour to get just the right amount of "random" while the Lester George, Jeff Brauer and Mike Youngs would be thoroughly trashed for approving a green quickly.  At least, IMHO.  It would seem if you are hell bent on avoiding perfection as a design rule, you would tend to approve things more quickly, not take more time.


I looked for my gca book by Kato, but couldn't find it, to see if he had anything to say on the subject.  Would be interesting.


I also found myself wondering if Waba sabi was a direct conflict with the more Western "form follows function.?"


Lastly, the story of preferring cruder Japanese bowls over more perfect Chinese ones, simply struck me as wanting to form their own nationalistic architectural/art style, not unlike American architects (Wright, others) trying to have a true American original style rather than the imposing Beaux Arts style from Europe. 


Or maybe even Pete Dye trying to be different than RTJ, or TD and CC striving to be different from both RTJ and Dye?


Of course, that would be western (and probably my personal style) of trying to break down mystical ideas into more scientific ones.  In some ways, we just can't help it.


Anyway, nice topic.  I enjoy the philosophical ones, despite my first, somewhat snarky comments .  Not being able to resist, apparently, to Ian's comments about Donald Ross, maybe he was the inspiration for Obama's famous tag line "You didn't build that."  In Ross's case, he didn't.  Or, many other golden agers who just couldn't be on site to make every critical decision as it is sometimes possible to do today.

[Lou_Duran]

ftp://

One of the most interesting and challenging comments I have heard in my working world is the statement "perfection is the enemy of good enough".  I know this is not original but hearing it for the first time certainly sticks with you.

Not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good also has a political application.  No system is perfect, but that doesn't stop some from trying to destroy institutions which have produced very satisfactory results for large populations and survived the test of time.  I could see Burke and Locke having a fascination debate on the topic.

The pursuit of perfection for its own ends probably has also derailed some very good golf swings.  Not that mine qualified, but I spent two or three years trying to convert my athletic swing into one more controlled, on plane, and with few moving parts.  The results were disastrous and I never fully recovered.

[Colin Macqueen]

Gentlemen,


A wonderful thread! As Jeff B. says "...... nice topic.  I enjoy the philosophical ones...". This is a thread that goes into my collection,  a [/size]realm gem![/color]

[/size]Cheers Colin[/color]

[Tom_Doak]

ftp://

One of the most interesting and challenging comments I have heard in my working world is the statement "perfection is the enemy of good enough".  I know this is not original but hearing it for the first time certainly sticks with you.

Not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good also has a political application.  No system is perfect, but that doesn't stop some from trying to destroy institutions which have produced very satisfactory results for large populations and survived the test of time.

Yeah, no kidding.  Our previous President used this phrase often when he was selling us out to enact some program to make a problem 2% better while preserving his donors' financial streams.


Of course, you probably objected on the grounds he was going too far.      And I don't want to derail my own thread with politics, so let's just agree that the phrase can be misappropriated.

[Tom_Doak]

And yet the image on this site is TD or CC on a sand pro, endlessly shaping a green contour to get just the right amount of "random"

The sand pro thing is Bill Coore's gig.  I haven't been on one in a very long time, nor have I pretended to.  I've got an entirely different idea of when to turn things over to someone else - it's sometime after drawing a plan but before a hole is ready to seed.


Which is not to say that finish work is unimportant; there is a reason we have a small platoon on most construction sites who report directly to us, and not to a contractor.  But I know I can rely on the excellent people who work for me.  Nobody on our crew gets to a position of autonomy until they have shown they understand the difference between "perfect" and natural-looking.  And if they have to make a last-minute change to something I've approved in order for it to look right or work right, that's okay, because I'm not perfect, either.


When I worked for Mr. Dye, one time he had me down to Teeth of the Dog, to take pictures of it for an article in GOLF Magazine.  He spent part of a day telling me stories of how several of his most famous holes began with mistakes that someone on the construction crew had made by misunderstanding his instructions, and how he had just tried to work with what they gave him (by accident) instead of trying to go back to what he'd been thinking to begin with.  [Which, come to think of it, fits neatly with my recent post about how hard it is to erase others' work in major renovations.]


The hole that prompted the discussion was the 13th at Teeth of the Dog ... Pete said he hadn't intended to hollow out the whole area around the green, but someone misunderstood, and when he came back two months later and they'd done it all by hand, he couldn't tell them to put it back!


So, I was trained about wabi-sabi quite young, I just didn't have a term for it.