The New Gilded Age of Architecture

[Ally Mcintosh]

The phrase ‘eye candy’ always reminds me of an old dear friend who, before he married, used to date *a lot*. One day he got tired of yet another friend chiding him with a variation of the ‘beauty is only skin deep’ line/moral. To which my friend finally said “Yes, it is. But so fu-king what, what isn’t?! *Everything* is ‘only skin deep’. And whatever is *beneath* the skin I really don’t want to see!”
Which is to say: it’s *all* eye-candy — not because nothing else matters, but because ‘the surface’ is all most of us ever get to see, or need to see. Our ‘eyes’ can see no further.
And just like an attractive face is based on the bone structure beneath it, so too does a certain kind of architectural ‘eye candy’ speak of the underlying ‘structures’ of the design, ie the routing and use of natural features and strategy etc.
And I’m convinced that a course that is great *looking* (to me) is also a course that will be great *playing* (for me). And the opposite is true too.

I like this take on the subject.


Bunkers are like makeup - you can wear none or a lot, but to the discerning they only highlight what's underneath.  In the case of golf holes, that's about whether the features of the ground compose an interesting picture, but also how they interact with play.


I agree with your last point, too.  A non-golfer can recognize a beautiful course, just like a child recognizes a beautiful woman.

This is where I slightly disagree.


I think there is a tendency these days to apply too much makeup, past the point where it highlights the beauty beneath, reaching the point where it detracts.

[Tom_Doak]

Has there ever been a beauty contest where no makeup was allowed?*


That's all the rankings really are.


* No, because it's on TV.  (They even put makeup on me for the Golf Channel studio!)

[Ally Mcintosh]

Maybe that’s a good way of putting it: You need make-up for the cameras and we are living in the Social Media, photo-first age.


In person, on the ground, that make-up can sometimes seem like overkill.

[John Kavanaugh]

I am happy to say that Drone culture didn't seem to catch on.

[Mark_Fine]

I have never met an architect who didn’t try to build/design aesthetically pleasing golf holes.  But just like some beautiful women who are wearing way too much make-up and jewelry when it is not necessary, golf courses can be the same. 

[Ira Fishman]

Folks keep posting in generalities. Are there particular courses that you think are overdone for cosmetic reasons? When did the new gilded age start? With what courses?


Thanks.


Ira

[Mark_Fine]

I have seen no evidence of any new age of golf course design/architecture.  If anything we are in the age of less golf course design but as I said I believe there will be much more remodeling of existing courses especially with the Covid boom going on.  I also believe aesthetics will always remain high on the priority list.  Everyone loves a golf course that looks great and the more substance the better.  I was talking about the loss of "patina" on another thread on "restorations"  .  Patina is aesthetic isn't it 

[JC Urbina]

Michael,




Not sure on exterior appearance being paramount but.




I believe that the last 25 years have been the new wave of Golden Age designs and the Sand Hills ushered in that new era of golf theories.


Better Land
Understanding Owners
More Natural Looking Golf


An appetite to play something new and different by the thirsty golfing public.


Bill and Ben delivered.






When you asked about the New Gilded Age, it got me thinking about ideas that are not just about exterior appearance but golf that might  offer more than just a pretty face.. When I did my interview for Golf Club Atlas in 2002  I was asked to conjure up some ideas that I would like to talk about or build if given the chance. 


Maybe we are about to embark on something new or already have due to the Covid Pandemic I am not sure, but what we did find out was that golfers young and old came out in droves, golf courses both public, private and resort were packed.


So as not to get off track on this thread I am going to start a new one.


A very interesting question you posed.

[Mark_Fine]

Jim,
I agree with you about Sand Hills ushering in a new era.  But whether we are on to something new beyond that I am not sure.  There are definitely lots of people playing golf these days and many of them are new to the game or taking it up again (at least for now).  We will see if it is sustainable, hopefully so.  If anything, courses will need to be more fun and more playable for a wider range of golfer abilities.  Hopefully more will also promote and encourage walking (I am a big advocate of pull/push carts).  We have been building a lot more forward tees these days and I expect that will continue.  Despite what Bryson is doing with the long ball, we are not building many new back tees (we don't see many of those kind of players nor worry too much about them as they are few are far between).  I would love to see more shorter courses (I talked about a 10 par three, 4 par four, 4 par five championship design) but I just don't see many new courses being built.  The economics to make money in golf are very challenging but something like this could help.  But regardless what happens, I hope and expect golf courses to remain aesthetically attractive (and I don't mean flower beds and exotic plantings,...) 

[John Kavanaugh]

Jim,
I agree with you about Sand Hills ushering in a new era.  But whether we are on to something new beyond that I am not sure.  There are definitely lots of people playing golf these days and many of them are new to the game or taking it up again (at least for now).  We will see if it is sustainable, hopefully so.  If anything, courses will need to be more fun and more playable for a wider range of golfer abilities.  Hopefully more will also promote and encourage walking (I am a big advocate of pull/push carts).  We have been building a lot more forward tees these days and I expect that will continue.  Despite what Bryson is doing with the long ball, we are not building many new back tees (we don't see many of those kind of players nor worry too much about them as they are few are far between).  I would love to see more shorter courses (I talked about a 10 par three, 4 par four, 4 par five championship design) but I just don't see many new courses being built.  The economics to make money in golf are very challenging but something like this could help.  But regardless what happens, I hope and expect golf courses to remain aesthetically attractive (and I don't mean flower beds and exotic plantings,...) 

So, the opposite of a sold out Memorial Park.

[Mark_Fine]

John,
Not sure what you mean but I didn’t think Memorial was unattractive.  Hard to tell on TV but I liked the contouring and greensites,...

[John Kavanaugh]

I got the impression that you were saying that long and hard is out the window. The people I know under 50 will play all day for one long drive and screw the other 13. They just pull another personalized Vice out of the bag and pretend nothing happened. EZ-PZ.


Memorial is sold out after all.

[Sean_A]

Folks keep posting in generalities. Are there particular courses that you think are overdone for cosmetic reasons? When did the new gilded age start? With what courses?

Thanks.

Ira

Ira

I think the course that was just redone at Pinehurst is a good example. I also think Trump Aberdeen went overboard with visuals to the detriment of the design.

I think in small examples on tons of courses this is the case...mostly with bunkers, but I think alsowith "native rough" and lest we forget trees.  How many thousands of crazy trees were planted because folks thought they looked good?

Ciao

[John Kavanaugh]

Pinehurst #2 is a great example. We show up at the first tee and the starter tells us that it is impossible to know what is a waste area and what is a bunker. He actually says to play every shot on the course like a waste area. I suffer through the next four hours watching what every able bodied golfer who would commonly know the difference between a tee and his mother's teet take practice swings in green side bunkers. Why, because it was beautiful. It wasn't golf, it was just another excuse to say great shot. Which btw I forgot and still haven't heard the end of.

[John Kavanaugh]

I have actually played with a guy who had three cameras. In all fairness this counts his phone as one. Maybe I'm over reacting.

[Peter Flory]

The Golden Age courses seem extremely photogenic to me. 

[Tom_Doak]

The Golden Age courses seem extremely photogenic to me.

Interestingly, when George Thomas wrote his book in 1927, he had to encourage several architects (including Donald Ross) to get some examples of their work photographed so he could include them.  Maybe GT is to blame for it all 

[Peter Pallotta]

I read someplace that the reason the Red Sea is called the ‘red’ sea is because way back when they first named it, people’s eyes and/or sense of colour differed from our own, such that they actually saw it as ‘red’.

Not a good analogy, but I think our golf ancestors may have seen courses differently than we do — they looked for other things, and saw what they were looking for.

The ‘sense of place’ and of ‘history’ that the classic golden age courses now have and that appear to us now as lovely came with the many years and decades that have since passed — ie they have a sense of place in part because they themselves are (and have shaped) those very places; and they are historical because we ourselves make them so, simply by coming after them and continuing to honour them.

Where some of today’s new courses miss, I think, is in trying too hard and/or too obviously for an *instant* sense of place and of history;

and where some of today’s renovations miss, I think, is in superimposing in too ham-fisted a way a modern notion of beauty and naturalism onto a design-course that originally focused on other things and that conceived of those terms in different ways.

And the reason some new courses and recent renovations work as well as they do and strike a near-perfect balance is, I think, more a function of architectural talent and skill than of some accurate capturing of ‘original’ beauty and aesthetics.

[Mark_Fine]

Peter,
Don’t you think your last comments sound a bit like something Tom Fazio would say about “restorations” - Basically no need to really study what was there, I’m a better architect and have modern resources at my disposal. I can do better.  Don’t know how many “restorations” you have played lately but some are starting to look the same.


Here is what my friend wrote about his course.  I removed the course name to protect the innocent 


“Getting back to my course, take the first fairway for example. Prior to this latest redo the rise up the fairway to the approach had the most beautiful patch work of grasses. It was one of the first things you noticed walking up after an ideal tee shot. Lots of patina that was the result of decades and decades of natural selection. Despite many over-seedings much of the old varieties still out competed newer ones. This is an agronomic advantage, why would you want to undo it! One can make a good argument sadly that there was a big upside agronomically to reconstructing the greens. Not so with re-grassing the fairways. There is more poa annua in the first fairway now than prior to re-grassing and it has only been a couple years. Many other fairways show similar outbreaks. There will be great efforts to correct this leading to more down time and spotty results. In the natural world patina is more than just aesthetics. Nature loves biodiversity. I have often said that there is much too much manipulation in course maintenance, usually working against nature to achieve some type of playability or monoculture. This is why clubs with much smaller budgets and a smart super can achieve 80-90% of what other higher end clubs can. It is however the aesthetics part of patina that we see first and foremost. To that extent the turf at my club no longer tells the great stories it used to. I see this happening at countless classic clubs. All the recent redos look exactly the same. I am all for renovations, upgrades etc. when warranted but there should be more of an effort to work with what is there. The allure of "new" is very powerful and overrated!”

[Sean_A]

Mark

I am fairly well convinced that what we are currently seeing in the UK with all the squiggly bunkers for restorations/renovations are based at least somewhat on what the shapers are capable of achieving. If we are to believe the talk, then all these bunkers on different courses which look very similar in terms shape, size and orientation were that way originally. I find this very suspicious. If the current UK work is indicative of original work, I welcome clever archies and shapers who can improve on the original.

Ciao

[Mark_Fine]

Sean,
I think I understand what you are saying.  I am not one who believes in restoring a poor golf hole for the sake of “restoration” but at the same time what is the cutoff when doing this kind of work?  That is where someone like Fazio for example (maybe rightfully so) says why bother worrying about what was there or original design intent or style,... I can do better.  That is why I said at the start of this thread that I think “restoration” has run its course and the new era (like it or not) will be “remolding” of courses both older and newer.  Architects won’t take the time needed to study course evolution for the reasons you stated - “they are more clever and can improve on the original”. 

[Sean_A]

Sean,
I think I understand what you are saying.  I am not one who believes in restoring a poor golf hole for the sake of “restoration” but at the same time what is the cutoff when doing this kind of work?  That is where someone like Fazio for example (maybe rightfully so) says why bother worrying about what was there or original design intent or style,... I can do better.  That is why I said at the start of this thread that I think “restoration” has run its course and the new era (like it or not) will be “remolding” of courses both older and newer.  Architects won’t take the time needed to study course evolution for the reasons you stated - “they are more clever and can improve on the original”.

Mark

I am not talking about the substance of the hole, just the bunker look. I am continually disappointed with bunker renos on inland UK courses. Worse, the look is repeated practically everywhere. I can't get my head around it, but at least I'm not paying the bills.

Like some, I do think there are courses which should be properly restored if work is going to be done. Other courses, I am not overly bothered about. For instance, B Schneider's work at Llenarch looks very intriguing and I think he put in many of his own ideas.

Ciao

[Steve Lang]

  Looking at the Golf Top 100 magazine pictures would lead one to think perhaps bronzed if not gilded.


SO it depends who's your peer group, and do you go along with fashion or be yourself?


https://youtu.be/ulycWLxj7Kg

[Tom_Doak]

Sean,
I think I understand what you are saying.  I am not one who believes in restoring a poor golf hole for the sake of “restoration” but at the same time what is the cutoff when doing this kind of work?  That is where someone like Fazio for example (maybe rightfully so) says why bother worrying about what was there or original design intent or style,... I can do better.  That is why I said at the start of this thread that I think “restoration” has run its course and the new era (like it or not) will be “remolding” of courses both older and newer.  Architects won’t take the time needed to study course evolution for the reasons you stated - “they are more clever and can improve on the original”.

Your own main contribution to the work at Cherry Hills years ago was the idea of moving the entire 8th hole by 75-100 yards to make more room to lengthen the 9th.  So the truth is that even the guys who are historians are not adverse to suggesting their own ideas (and wanting some credit for them).


A lot of the restorations in recent years are full of changes justified by equipment evolution.  That is not what I would call a restoration, and we all know they only use the term to make it easier to get membership approval. 


I am proud to have resisted the temptation to change places like Bel Air and The Valley Club and SFGC and Shoreacres, but I agree with Sean that there is a limited nimber of places where that's really the best choice, and most of those have already been done.  So it is not surprising that architects will shift gears to justify their continued existence.

[Adam Lawrence]

I read someplace that the reason the Red Sea is called the ‘red’ sea is because way back when they first named it, people’s eyes and/or sense of colour differed from our own, such that they actually saw it as ‘red’.

Possible. Homer refers repeatedly to the 'wine-dark sea'.