Build vs Find - Maybe this is the truest test?

[Mark_Fine]

Maybe the greatest architects are the ones who “build” courses vs the ones who “find” them?  Yes I realize you can still muck it up (Old Head comes to mind) but if you start with a site that is an 8 or 9 or even a 10, you are way ahead of the game. You are mainly searching for the great holes vs having to build them.  But if you start with a site that is a 0 or a 1 or 2 (like most architects are stuck with) and you “build” something extraordinary, maybe that is the truest testament of a great architect and a truly extraordinary design? 


Sent from my iPhone

[Peter Pallotta]

Mark -

I'd literally just finished asking a question to architects on another thread when I saw this one, so I moved it here (as I think it is relevant to your thread)

Do the "best sites" necessarily have the "easiest routings"?

I don't mean the end result - the routing that we walk and play.

I mean, is part of the *very definition* of what an architect considers a 'great site' the fact that the routing possibilities are many, and even self-evident?

Are the sites that Mark describes as '8s', '9s' or '10s' rated that way because of their inherent -- and obvious -- possibilities, and *routing* possibilities in particular?   

Or conversely: have architects ever been to an (ostensibly) great & stunning site (e.g. by the sea, or on sandy plains/dunes) -- only to realize later that it was in fact *difficult* to find a great routing on that site?

Is every 'great site' always and in every way actually a 'great site'?

 

[Mark_Fine]

Peter,
The routing is sooo important but great sites (not all) likely yield many possibilities.  When I think of great sites with different routings I always think of Cypress Point.  We all know Raynor’s original routing was not used by MacKenzie.  Which one would have been greater?  We will never know.
Mark

[Tom_Doak]

Maybe the greatest architects are the ones who “build” courses vs the ones who “find” them?

Nobody cares who the greatest architects are, and nobody cares what we started with. 


They only care about our work product - they want to play a great course.

[Tom_Doak]

have architects ever been to an (ostensibly) great & stunning site (e.g. by the sea, or on sandy plains/dunes) -- only to realize later that it was in fact *difficult* to find a great routing on that site?

Absolutely.


Clients always want to know, like on the first day we see a site, whether we can build a great golf course on it.


And even on the best sites, any architect being realistic would have to qualify their response -- that the site has the right character for a great course, but that we still don't really know for sure until we have put the puzzle together, whether we can really make all the pieces fit perfectly.


But, of course, clients don't want to hear that, so we have to find different ways to say it, or just suck it up and be overly optimistic   


I hope that my routing book will give some sense of that, in showing all of the steps that led to the solution on a course like Pacific Dunes.  Sure, Mark will say that any other architect would have built a great course on that site, and that might have been good enough, if they didn't have Pacific Dunes to compare it to.

[Mark_Fine]

Tom,
You yourself said on another thread that you have had at least 10 sites that other architects would kill for.  There must be a reason you feel that way.  But regardless, my main point was that it takes a lot of talent to build something special on not only on a great site but maybe even more so on a poor site.  You don’t have to agree or disagree.  I just throw this out there as something to think about.


Note:  If more people started thinking this way, maybe courses on lesser “wow” sites might get more recognition for just how good they really are. 

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,
You yourself said on another thread that you have had at least 10 sites that other architects would kill for.  There must be a reason you feel that way.   

Yes, I feel humbled to have had the opportunity to work in all of those beautiful places.  And, very happy that I worked very hard from the time I was 18 years old, to become one of the two or three people who is trusted to make the most of a special site.

[JESII]

Wouldn’t the ultimate display of architectural genius be to do virtually nothing and have the course be tremendous?

[Peter Pallotta]

Wouldn’t the ultimate display of architectural genius be to do virtually nothing and have the course be tremendous?

Nearly brilliant. But you had to put the word "virtually" in there and wreck it. Sure, it helps with the cadence/metre of the sentence, but if you just said "nothing" my mind would've been blown!
There: you missed a chance to do a great service -- having me utterly at a loss for words, permanently like!   

[JESII]

Thank goodness

[Mark_Fine]

Jim,
One of my favorite holes at Lehigh is the 12th for that same reason you point out.  It took the genius of Flynn and discipline to recognize that hole was already there and to not redesign it and screw it up.  At the same time Tillinghast once said that you aren’t always blessed with great holes and it is up to the architect to “knock them into shape” so no one knows that was the case.  I am not sure which is harder to do especially when you are “blessed” with a featureless site that needs almost all 18 holes “knocked into shape” 😊

[JESII]

Playing a 6 on land worthy of a 3 is great...and not always easy to spot.


I’d still rather play an 8 every day...even if it’s on 9 land, which I definitely can’t spot.

[JESII]

I think the word build scares the idealist in me...

[Peter Pallotta]

This year I played two courses where most of the golf holes had been found instead of built. Most of the holes, but not all -- in one case flooding and in the other a new roadway necessitated the 'building' of several new holes, 60 to 80 years after the originals.
Like Jim, I can't tell a 6 built on a 3 or an 8 found on a 9 -- but I can tell the built from the found. And it's only in small part because of the differences in the golf holes themselves. In much larger part it's the difference in the all-that-is-not-golf-holes that is the dead giveaway.
When you 'find' something you find it 'somewhere'; but when you 'build' something you can build it 'anywhere'. And 'somewhere' is a definite place with its own qualities and characteristics, whereas 'anywhere' is pretty darn close to being 'nowhere'.
I don't think mere mortals are powerful or skilled enough to turn a nowhere into a somewhere -- at least not very convincingly. And most of those 'somewheres' are theme parks or strip malls, which (intentionally) try to make you feel like you could be 'anywhere'.
And for me, that's just leaves a burning desire to be 'someplace else'.

[Thomas Dai]

Eddie Hackett?
atb

[archie_struthers]

 


The threads premise makes perfect sense. To build a great course on a bad site may be the ultimate test for an architect.

[Jeff Schley]

The threads premise makes perfect sense. To build a great course on a bad site may be the ultimate test for an architect.

So with today's economics these opportunities are probably very rare as it would take a huge budget.  I'm thinking Shadow Creek off the top of my head.

[Thomas Dai]

The threads premise makes perfect sense. To build a great course on a bad site may be the ultimate test for an architect.

And the frequently unsung James Braid for one often did so and for very little money and with no great technological help either.
atb

[Mark_Fine]

Build is somewhat a "negative" word on this site.  In a different thread I made a post about the most “effective use of the land”.  I will repeat it for what it is worth. 

"First of all how many people really know what was there before the golf course?  A handful at most.  If it was a competition between who had to move the least amount of dirt then that might have more merit or who needed the lowest construction budget,...  I still remember someone saying that Pete Dye was brilliant at “finding” golf holes.  Pete Dye is one of my favorite architects.  I love the man and think he is brilliant and one of the greatest architects ever, but in my opinion Pete didn’t find golf holes, he bulldozed the hell out of the land and built exactly what he wanted.  And in most cases what he built was amazing.  Did he make the most effective use of the land?  The answer is all relative.  How many golf holes did Pete find at Whistling Straits    

[Ally Mcintosh]

The threads premise makes perfect sense. To build a great course on a bad site may be the ultimate test for an architect.

Yes.

But to sum up the way of looking at things, you have to define a great site / bad site in to two sub-sets:

1. Size / shape of land
2. Soil and natural features

For number 1, a great site can yield a very difficult routing if it is wild or small or strangely shaped or have a load of environmental restrictions. A bad site can yield a very easy routing if it is big with next to no natural features: You just blow it up and route what you want.

For number 2, good soil and good natural features (given a good and easy land parcel) is always easier to make a great course than if given poor soil with no features.

After this, you then have to define what makes good architecture. Again let's divide that in to two:

1. The detail / aesthetics / strategy
2. The technical side of architecture (drainage, irrigation, engineering, science, cost & contracts)

An architect on a great site can sometimes make a great course by excelling at point 1 but not necessarily point 2.

An architect on a bad site can only make a great course by excelling at both points 1 and 2.

[Mark_Fine]

Ally,
Good points.  Who here has played David McLay Kidd's Castle Course at St. Andrews?  Did anyone see the land before the course was "built"?  I did, it was featureless potato fields.  I remember being on site with Paul Dunn watching him shape out green sites in a sand box in his trailer.  They didn't find many holes there.  They had to build them.  That was not one of those "this land was destined by God to be a golf course" 


Mark

[Jeff Schley]

Ally,
Good points.  Who here has played David McLay Kidd's Castle Course at St. Andrews?  Did anyone see the land before the course was "built"?  I did, it was featureless potato fields.  I remember being on site with Paul Dunn watching him shape out green sites in a sand box in his trailer.  They didn't find many holes there.  They had to build them.  That was not one of those "this land was destined by God to be a golf course" 


Mark

I have played it back in 2013 I think.  I believe it has been softened some over the years and me and my dad liked the quirkiness as it wasn't a cookie cutter course. Definitely needed a second round there to understand where you are going and how to play the course.

[Marty Bonnar]

Ally,
Good points.  Who here has played David McLay Kidd's Castle Course at St. Andrews?  Did anyone see the land before the course was "built"?  I did, it was featureless potato fields.  I remember being on site with Paul Dunn watching him shape out green sites in a sand box in his trailer.  They didn't find many holes there.  They had to build them.  That was not one of those "this land was destined by God to be a golf course" 


Mark

Not Paul Kimber?

[Tim Martin]

Mark-I wonder how this applies to the greens? You can find a natural green site but you still have to build the green itself.

[V_Halyard]

Enjoying this thread. The site development process appears to be akin to the "_____'s Got Talent" shows. Some sites have natural talent and others are ugly ducklings. I am intrigued by the storytelling aspect of "build vs find".  These efforts that have delivered the Streamsongs, Chambers Bays and Sweetens Coves of the world. (Hey, I have an idea, let's take this Dead EPA site or pancake flat piece of city land and turn it into an architecturally significant and/or championship golf course...")

Arguably the aforementioned in addition to the Greywalls, Sand Valleys, Whistling Straits, and DMK's Castle course are equally compelling as places that were not obvious destinations for great golf, but have proven otherwise. Whether you like the way they play, they have delivered golf joy for thousands on land that was far from a set of oceanside rolling dune.

The process is the same as talent hunting in entertainment. Some land has obvious "Talent" others have to be "discovered" and/or "Developed". End the end, all of it needs that expert level of professional finish.  Many were convinced that Craig Haltom was out of his mind to propose a super resort in the middle of Wisconsin. I have not read the minutes but I would imagine the first conversations Tacoma city council about the Chambers Bay Land were quite colorful.

Golf is personal preference entertainment. Architecturally excellent golf is compelling and more entertaining than an unkempt hillside overrun with trees and weeds. this shows that great golf is also also portable. A well architected/restored course or muny on a nondescript or decrepit piece of land has a better chance at appeasing this group/raters/panelists/golfers than a poorly executed course on a spectacular shoreline dune.
It would also likely do better business which is the crux of the entire exercise.