What is today's most important stage?

[Peter Pallotta]

Sure, all the world's a stage -- but Broadway is more influential & significant than the Poughkeepsie Summer Student Workshop.

What are the most important 'stages' for golf-golf course architecture today?

With all the social-economic, environmental and technological changes of the last two decades, is Augusta-The Masters still a key 'influencer'? If not, what's taken its place in the broader public consciousness?

Do global stages carry more weight than they once did, e.g. the upcoming Open at Royal St George, with its current naturalism-sustainability initiatives? Have the big magazines (and their ratings/rankings) dropped in importance with the explosion of social-media, e.g. Andy Johnson-Fried Egg, Erik Anders Lang-Random Golf?

Is what Mr. Keiser's been doing -- and the courses that have been winning all the awards -- the 'main stage'?

Is the PGA Tour more/less the 'Broadway' than it once was?

[Tom_Doak]

TV is still the main stage for golf:  the numbers of viewers are in the millions, and not many social media accounts can compete with that.  That's why the LPGA players complain about their lack of visibility in network coverage, on the Golf Channel, and on sports news presentations:  more TV coverage is why the guys get paid so much more for endorsements.


Golf architecture is still a pretty small niche and it's rarely presented directly as a topic.  TV is still powerful because those viewers will see how green the courses are and hear things about what's fair or not fair, and that relates to their limited understanding of architecture, which is disappointing for the topic ever going mainstream.


Those actually interested in golf architecture are far beyond the little scraps that are presented on TV, and magazine rankings are part of that.  But once you go beyond that, there are lots and lots of potential sub venues and I'm not sure what ones outweigh others . . . they all seem to serve different niches.

[JESII]

Its a very interesting question, Peter...as usual.


My gut reaction is that it's in the conference rooms in which architects are being interviewed for the various new projects and renovations. These conversations should elicit the direction golf will follow over the next cycle.


Are there new ideas?
What influence do/will maintenance goals and challenges have?

[Tom_Doak]

My gut reaction is that it's in the conference rooms in which architects are being interviewed for the various new projects and renovations. These conversations should elicit the direction golf will follow over the next cycle.

If that proves correct then we are in deep trouble, because a lot of those discussions are about spending $$$$ putting in bunker liners and sub air, and other things that will make new courses unaffordable to build or to play.


I mentioned on my last consulting stop that we had put in all different sorts of bunker liners on other projects in the past ten years, but I've built 38 new courses and I think there are only two of them that have bunker liners at all.

[Tommy Williamsen]

This might sound odd, but I think some of the more important courses, if that's what you mean by stages, are regular club courses like Sedgefield. Places like Augusta, Sawgrass, and Muirfield Village are hard for regular club players to relate to. They can relate to Sedgefield.


In the UK, the links courses that host the Scottish Open are important. Everyone knows the rota courses, but  how many had every heard of Gullane?

[JESII]

I was about to add...and Tom picked up on the theme...that the questions asked by the clients, indicating their interests and priorities, will be at least as important as the answers Tom and his peers provide.


The Golden Rule will thrive...

[Tom_Doak]

I was about to add...and Tom picked up on the theme...that the questions asked by the clients, indicating their interests and priorities, will be at least as important as the answers Tom and his peers provide.


The Golden Rule will thrive...

I had never actually thought about how that mechanism works, though.


For new courses we do not have the bunker liner salesmen and the SubAir guys and the contractors trying to upsell the client on such things.  Sometimes the turf guys and certainly the irrigation guys try to go over my head, though.


On renovations/restorations there are WAY more targets for such salesmen -- club president, everyone on the greens committee, greenkeeper, club manager -- so those projects are just full of places for the Golden Rule to yield dividends.  Not many architects fight against those things because the more the project costs, the easier it is to justify a higher consulting fee.


In the end, the green committee and board of directors at a club are spending other people's money, and are much more easily talked into spending it than the client of a new course spending his own money.

[JESII]

Tom,


While salesman may be A culprit...I suspect the normal phenomena of "keeping up with the Jones' has been and will continue to be the greatest influence in your client's minds.


Do the sales guys generally know about a new construction project before an architect is chosen?

[Peter Pallotta]

Interesting.
Many years ago, I read about a leaked memo from a senior executive at an American pharmaceutical company, outlining his strategic plans to 'pathologize' some two dozen common ailments over the next decade -- in other words, to use the media and medical practitioners and (paid for) research studies to create new diseases and then convince as many of us as possible that we are suffering from those (invariably long term & chronic) diseases so as to then sell us all a life-time supply of the latest miracle drug.
People are 'cutting cable' in droves, streaming services are proliferating, audiences are fragmenting, the younger generations are 'consuming' their sports & entertainment via various new platforms and in many different ways at all hours of the day and night, on their own personal schedules -- and besides all that, the 'numbers' on CBS for a regular PGA tour stop have never been particularly great/high: ie it's never been the 2 or 3 million viewers that has appealed to advertisers, it's the expensive drug-and-car-and-club buying  demographic that's kept golf on the air week in and week out for decades.
So maybe the two most important golf-related 'stages' are actually the marketing rooms of a) the drug companies and b) the seed-turf manufacturers -- continually pathologizing both our physical ailments and the many 'failings' of the golf courses we play.
How can one lone dedicated golf course architect possibly hold his own against the forces of such multinational powerhouses?!

[Don Mahaffey]

...How can one lone dedicated golf course architect possibly hold his own against the forces of such multinational powerhouses?!

Easy, say “We’re not doing that”.  I’ve seen that happen many times including Tom at Memorial re a greens construction issue that we all felt was not needed. 
I’ve heard for years how irrigation has gotten out of hand but I’ve only experienced two architects raise their hand and say “enough!”   It’s not that hard to stand up if you know you’re doing right for the client. Way more people in golf appreciate practicality than not. 

[Mark_Fine]

I am not a fan of liners and have used them maybe once or twice on my projects and only on the worst offending bunkers where the super overrules me.  I believe if bunkers are designed/built properly with more than adequate drainage, you rarely need them. 

[jeffwarne]

Makes my head hurt.
Played a wonderful Golden Age DR course today that was a mile from my boyhood home.
It was at its best when the army owned it in the 70's and put no money back into it.
Just painful to see some of the stuff they've done, including a badly underfunded, unneeded redesign 10-15 years ago, where they chose to try to do way too much, with minimal $ for the scale of the project, which didn't need doing in the first place.
The goal was to raise the winning score of the college event they host every year and they got it-because the event moved to a nearby modern monstrosity!


Then, on the 11th hole, there's a temporary tee and I walk over to see why, and there's a bunker being given the cement pond liner treatment(a hideously flat bunker in the middle of a formerly naturally contoured fairway you could now hit a putter out of for God's sake)
Just drives me insane with all the butchery that has taken place there, yet with the routing and site plan bones that remain, I can't help but think the money wasted on those stupid, round, concreted white sand bunkers, could go so far to improve this gem (not a restoration, but simply a salvation)


After watching yesterday's golf, a member of my group has the answer.
Every time you get an imperfect lie in a bunker, you use a "sand mat" and pour out a perfectly sized, white, Better Billy bunker concrete lined(what a ridiculous name-seriously)  area of perfect grain size/compaction, or whatever else is required for frickin' "consistent" hazards these days.


just deleted more of the rant...aaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhh

[mike_beene]

I think the stages like Memorial and the upscale municipal courses Jeff does have the chance to make influence many more people. Those same people watch Augusta and other majors and without realizing it change their tastes over time.

[Thomas Dai]

Not sure there's much point in watching mens pro golf on TV anymore? Courses that more and more look like each other, phoney scoring in relation to par, adverts galore, banal talking heads, relaxed rules etc whilst the best shots (and controversial bits) are usually available to view on social media pretty soon afterwards.
Just a short rant.

atb

[Sean_A]

Not sure there's much point in watching mens pro golf on TV anymore? Courses that more and more look like each other, phoney scoring in relation to par, adverts galore, banal talking heads, relaxed rules etc whilst the best shots (and controversial bits) are usually available to view on social media pretty soon afterwards.
Just a short rant.

atb

Ahh, with the exception of social media, your rant sounds very much like the pro golf I used to watch 45 to 25 years ago. In hindsight, moving to the UK has saved me untold hours of watching mostly boring sport because my sports weren't on broadcast TV very often.

I spose TV remains the main stage because of viewing numbers. But I do sense fragmentation with so many different tours on TV these days. I also sense fragmentation with the many social media platforms essentially replacing golf magazines. Most of all I sense a shift in target audience probably because of social media. It seems like a younger crowd is now being catered to like never before.

Ciao

[Thomas Dai]

Not sure there's much point in watching mens pro golf on TV anymore? Courses that more and more look like each other, phoney scoring in relation to par, adverts galore, banal talking heads, relaxed rules etc whilst the best shots (and controversial bits) are usually available to view on social media pretty soon afterwards.
Just a short rant.
atb

Ahh, with the exception of social media, your rant sounds very much like the pro golf I used to watch 45 to 25 years ago. In hindsight, moving to the UK has saved me untold hours of watching mostly boring sport because my sports weren't on broadcast TV very often. 😎
Ciao

The time frame you mention is interesting.
Pre-early 1990's European mens pro golf as shown on TV in the UK was played on all sorts of different types of courses, some quality, some less so and played in all sorts of weather. Sometimes an event would be green and lush, sometimes wet and soft, or baked out and ultra firm and usually played on decent heathlands, decent links, maybe a few 'iffy' parklands or 'iffy' newer courses too. At the same time in the UK we'd get to view Aussie golf and it would be generally similar although with Downunders type of terrain/weather. In retrospect US TV golf was quite bland back then too, not as bland as now, but still blandish, but we hadn't had access to view much of it on TV before so it was new and different and thus watchable.
Since then however, European TV golf has got considerably blander course wise and US golf has got even more more bland whilst Aussie golf has seemingly disappeared from our screens. And the talking heads aspect has gone through the roof.
atb

[Sean_A]

I wasn't around to see much if any interesting courses on UK TV for regular tour events. I do recall some spring tournaments at uninspired newish UK courses such as The Oxfordshire. The thing which stood out most was wooly caps etc 😎. I couldn't wrap my head around why they were playing in the UK at this time of year. I reckon things went seriously south in the UK for interesting host courses once the Belfry became the Euro home for the Ryder Cup.

Ciao

[Richard Fisher]

And making Wentworth the permanent home of the PGA champ (whilst 100% understandable for economic and logistic reasons) removed at a stroke some of the other interesting tournament/championship courses from British TV screens, and the chance of seeing Open courses outside their normal July window. To this day I have very happy memories of Arnold Palmer winning the Penfold PGA (?) at Sandwich in the  1975, coming from behind in a gale on the first occasion the remodelled RStG course had been used for anything semi-major: prior to that I think that the Walker Cup and Dunlop Masters of 1967, when Tony Jacklin secured the first British 'live TV' hole-in-one at the 16th, were the last times the 'old' RStG had been seen on British television screens.


To look at the venues played for British professional events in the 1960s and1970s is to encounter a vanished world of Little Aston, Southerndown, Maesdu, Long Ashton, Hillside, Walton Heath, Porthcawl and numerous other venues, some (as Thomas Dai comments above) truly world-class, some markedly less so. But nobody could complain about a lack of variety.

[Ira Fishman]

A bit of a different perspective. The biggest tournaments comprise the biggest stage. The PGA has upped its game particularly the future sites, and the US Open future sites almost uniformly terrific courses. Adding Portrush to Open rota is a big plus. The Ryder Cup admittedly is a mixed bag. But overall the biggest stage(s) look brighter.


Of course it would be great if more people watched the US Am and Walker Cup.


Ira

[Greg Hohman]

Peter, Broadway is theater’s PB Pro-Am with its corporate and entertainment “stars.”

[Peter Pallotta]

You have a good point there, Greg. I hadn't thought if it. Yes, I suppose for every Book of Mormons or new Mamet play or revival of Iceman Cometh there's ten more Phantom of the Operas with someone who used to star in Full House or That 70s Show.

[Terry Lavin]

I was about to add...and Tom picked up on the theme...that the questions asked by the clients, indicating their interests and priorities, will be at least as important as the answers Tom and his peers provide.


The Golden Rule will thrive...

I had never actually thought about how that mechanism works, though.


For new courses we do not have the bunker liner salesmen and the SubAir guys and the contractors trying to upsell the client on such things.  Sometimes the turf guys and certainly the irrigation guys try to go over my head, though.


On renovations/restorations there are WAY more targets for such salesmen -- club president, everyone on the greens committee, greenkeeper, club manager -- so those projects are just full of places for the Golden Rule to yield dividends.  Not many architects fight against those things because the more the project costs, the easier it is to justify a higher consulting fee.


In the end, the green committee and board of directors at a club are spending other people's money, and are much more easily talked into spending it than the client of a new course spending his own money.

Country Club Malpractice 101. Press repeat. Assess the asses again...