[Niall C]

Let me also add that if Melvyn was still frequenting this parish, he'd likely be arguing that the early Scottish pro's knew a good design when they saw it and weren't afraid to use it again, and I think he'd be right. I've long thought that the Biarritz hole, or at least elements of it, were replicated by the boys from Musselburgh.

One crucial difference though between those old pro's and MacDonald etc, is that the old pro's didn't promote or become known for template hole design.

Niall 

[Mark_Fine]

Tom,
What is the difference between novel and original?  I guess novel is defined as unique and original is the first.  I didn’t say I liked or didn’t like what Muirhead or Engh have done but they both designed out of the box and their success is clearly controversial. 


Are the holes you mentioned novel or original or just improved versions of something before you that was novel or original?  You tell me.


I just played a Ross “volcano” hole.  Is that an original Ross idea or did he take that from Dornoch or Glen Eagles (he worked at both) because I believe they both have volcano holes.  Not sure who is credited with that design concept?

Putting a hazard in the center of a green as Thomas did at Riviera.  Is that novelty?  Is that originality?  Was he the first?  Many greens have hazardous features incorporated into them but most of the time they are mounds or swales vs an actual bunker. 

There are only so many things the architect has on his design pallet.  The combinations and permutations are not endless,…, or are they?  What is truly new will always be subjective.  The new Porsche 911 is an amazing car but is it just a better version of the Model T 

[Bret Lawrence]

I don’t think we would have the same standard duplications of holes without Macdonald identifying them as such. 


These holes are famously known in America, because of Macdonald’s explanation of the holes.  We are all familiar with a Redan or Eden or Biarritz or Road, but what is a “Valley” hole and how does a “5th at Garden City” differ strategically from a “Leven” hole?  Some of the features Macdonald borrowed weren’t fully explained and those “templates” are not as famous or as well understood as some of the holes or features that were identified by Macdonald. 


Did Macdonald tell us the Knoll hole was a “template” from Scotscraig or did we learn that from Tom Doak and George Bahto? Macdonald named the hole but never identified its origin. Every Macdonald Cape has a cape style green surrounded on three sides by trouble, but today many people concentrate on the tee shot over a slice of water or an angled bunker.  Was the “Cape” tee shot that we identify with today an integral part of Macdonald’s Cape template or was he really only focused on the green?


The word template means different things to different people.  Some people view it as an exact hard copy, others view it as a pattern with interchangeable parts.  It doesn’t mean the same thing to all people.  Who coined the word “template” anyway?  I have never read an article from when Raynor was alive that mentioned the word “template”. It seems to be a modern term dropped in the last few decades.


Mackenzie used templates in America, because that’s what Americans were familiar with. Didn’t Augusta have a hole based on the Eden and Road hole?  This isn’t to say these guys didn’t create their own original work, they created plenty of original work by drawing on their past experience. The templates are there if architects want them.  If you don’t need them and are artistic enough to come up with your own system all the power to you, but they are always there to fall back on if you need some variety, or if your developer requires a course to be built on these fundamentals.

[mike_malone]

How did Macdonald use these templates at Merion?

[Quinn Thompson]

The 'answer' begins with the word "Template".


Because "Template" and "Copying" are the same sisters...same parents.

[Bret Lawrence]

Quinn,


If your family and my family used the same Christmas Card “template” and all we change is the picture of the people and wardrobe, are these Christmas cards duplicates or copies of each other?  Some people may not even realize we used the same template!


Different sisters and different parents, but still a template.


Bret

[V. Kmetz]

Isn't the closest companion term to Template here...Recipe?


Aren't the features of the Template/Recipe...Ingredients?...


Aren't, oftentimes, Recipes named after their central ingredients (Punchbowl, Double Plateau), sometimes referential to a region or place (Eden/Biarritz, Leven), sometimes have exotic ingredients (Lions Mouth, Ha-Ha, Principal's Nose) mixed to the central, titular ones?


Isn't it true that two chefs next door following the same "Recipe" each bring different flavor to the dish, with the difference being as nuanced or as radical as the stove, the oven, the cookware, the altitude, and the local source "Ingredients" with which each of their dishes are being prepared?


As regards architectural emulation and template use, Isn't a golf course an 18 course meal?


Vive le difference...

[Tom_Doak]

Are the holes you mentioned novel or original or just improved versions of something before you that was novel or original?  You tell me.



There are only so many things the architect has on his design pallet.  The combinations and permutations are not endless,…, or are they?  What is truly new will always be subjective.  The new Porsche 911 is an amazing car but is it just a better version of the Model T 

I think the holes I named are original . . . I know I didn't copy them from anywhere.  I was seeing if anyone here could name something similar enough to them.


If you want to classify everything since the Model T as unoriginal, then isn't this whole topic pretty moot after the first guy who dug a 4-1/4 inch hole in the ground?

[Kalen Braley]

I may have missed it, but wasn't Pete's island green at TPC a true original?

I'm struggling with this topic as well, because yes while a Model T and 911 are technically both automobiles, that's where it ends as they utilize vastly different technologies to get 4 tires moving... night and day!

P.S.  Tom speaking of Ballyneal, I woulda figured you would say 7, especially with that green?

[Gib_Papazian]

Tom,


With respect to the ORIGINAL Cape, you touched on an important point everybody seems to have glossed over. We both know #14 at NGLA featured a green surrounded on three sides by water - sticking out into the bay like a thumb. The direct route was straight at it, over an expanse of water - but for those who did not dare the carry (it was LONG), the closer your tee shot to the fairway on the left, the shorter the pitch to the putting surface.


But the definition got perverted over the years to mean any hole with a diagonal tee shot to a well guarded green. #5 at Mid Ocean is probably the closest relative to the original Cape, but the green is/was definitely not driveable across Mangrove Lake, that is for sure.

Pretty obvious as we have all seen the new incarnation copied, augmented, stolen or whatever dozens of times.

My thought is the closest approximation in the list of C.B./Raynor templates is #16 at Cypress Point. Shac and I have gone round and round (putting aside Phil Young) about the genesis of that hole, but Mackenzie's 2nd book seems to have settled the issue about Raynor, Marion Hollins - and who conjured up the idea.

Of course, you can make the argument #16 at Cypress is also a Biarritz hole, but my recollection (only saw a painting of it, since it NLE in France) is the original Chasm Hole did not have a bailout area - so it was a longer, do or die version of your mentor's 17th at TPC Sawgrass.

That is the trouble with trying to pin a specific template label on ANY hole that is not a 100% copy - there are bound to be different ingredients added from the designer's bag of tricks. There are really only 12 notes in music - but Mozart and Jerry Garcia used them in significantly different ways.

Yes, there have been many attempts to write popular music with esoteric (read: bizarre) time signatures, but you are right, most of the time the results are idiotic like the Mermaid hole - or modifications of a perfectly composed piece of music that ends up more nonsensical than the current 12th tee at NGLA.

I've been trying to conjure up a first cousin to your 6th at Pacific Dunes, but think the only similar hole from the standpoint of strategic arrangements might be a modified Leven hole. Call it a 2nd cousin, twice removed . . . . but I suspect you used some similar notes to bake that cake.

You've heard my plaintive whining before, but if there is anything in golf resembling #7 at Pac Dunes or #10 at Apache, please point it out. And while you are at it, teach me how a reasonably skilled golfer might avoid making (yet another) double-bogey next time.

Don't be insulted, but a steady diet of either as a "template" might drive me to take up tennis.










 




 


   

[Tom_Doak]

I may have missed it, but wasn't Pete's island green at TPC a true original?

I'm struggling with this topic as well, because yes while a Model T and 911 are technically both automobiles, that's where it ends as they utilize vastly different technologies to get 4 tires moving... night and day!

P.S.  Tom speaking of Ballyneal, I woulda figured you would say 7, especially with that green?

There were island greens before the 17th at the TPC.  In fact, Herbert Strong built one less than five miles from the TPC, at Ponte Vedra Club, sixty years earlier.  [I never heard Pete mention that hole but I'd be surprised if he didn't know about it.]  Pete was just the one who put the island green par-3 on the map, as did Macdonald with the Biarritz.


The green at Ballyneal was inspired by the 7th at Crystal Downs, although the setting for the green and therefore the shape of the green are different, and so is the way you play the hole.  [You don't deliberately use the slope to the left at Crystal Downs as a backboard for your second shot.]

[Tom_Doak]

There are really only 12 notes in music - but Mozart and Jerry Garcia used them in significantly different ways.

Yes, there have been many attempts to write popular music with esoteric (read: bizarre) time signatures, but you are right, most of the time the results are idiotic like the Mermaid hole - or modifications of a perfectly composed piece of music that ends up more nonsensical than the current 12th tee at NGLA.

I've been trying to conjure up a first cousin to your 6th at Pacific Dunes, but think the only similar hole from the standpoint of strategic arrangements might be a modified Leven hole. Call it a 2nd cousin, twice removed . . . . but I suspect you used some similar notes to bake that cake.

You've heard my plaintive whining before, but if there is anything in golf resembling #7 at Pac Dunes or #10 at Apache, please point it out. And while you are at it, teach me how a reasonably skilled golfer might avoid making (yet another) double-bogey next time.

Thank you for the music analogy, which is helpful here.  Are there no original songs, because most of the chords have been used by someone before?  I suppose there are some guys who would insist there are no original songs.


I do not see any of the Leven hole in the 6th at Pacific, other than it is of similar length.  The predecessor that most closely resembles it is probably the 4th at Woodlands in Australia -- short par-4, not as much topography, but it has the same super narrow green that you can play back and forth across if you go for it and miss to one side.  I was NOT thinking of that hole when I built the 6th at Pacific -- it's nowhere in my notes for the course -- although I did blatantly steal it for the 13th at Memorial Park.


Now, because I managed to think of that comparison, does that bolster the claim that everything has been done before?  I think the same guys would have made the same argument to the designer who built the hole at Woodlands, and they'd have been just as wrong then as now.  Of course, there are many thousands more courses in existence now as in the early 1900's, so the random odds that somebody else built something similar somewhere are much higher, but trying to find such connections when the designer himself didn't make those connections seems like a waste of time to me.


As for the 7th at Pacific Dunes, think of it as an Alps hole with much smaller hills blocking your path, and a different green orientation.  I didn't think of it that way when we built it; I just preserved the little hills and made you choose whether to play over them or lay up, an idea which predates even Macdonald.


As for the 10th at Apache Stronghold, we should all just hope that it survives so that it can befuddle someone else in the next generation of golf design students.

[Gib_Papazian]

Tom,


It is a terrible hole in my personal resume (read: Bucket List), but I've never been fortunate enough to play a Langford course. Those of my many friends in the Midwest all tell me much of his work - particularly Lawsonia - shrieks of Raynor.


I've read the same speculation as to whether their paths ever crossed, but in all the years of research, neither me nor Uncle George ever found any cross-referencing between the two - yet there is no denying the similarities between Langford and Raynor, although a cogent argument might be made the connective tissue seems more closely tied to Banks, given the severity of the land forms.


I have never been to a single one of his courses, but it seems unlikely such obvious and easily identifiable similarities came out of Langford's head - independently in a vacuum.


Of course, being impossibly taciturn, Raynor left us almost nothing in terms of notes - and his lone "interview" (really, just an article written about a west coast Lido)  revealed little of substance. So if he and Langford ever discussed the subject of golf design we would never know it.


Then again, both were Civil Engineers and Langford went to Yale - so that might establish a clue with respect to Banks (Hotchkiss, etc) - but I've never seen a shred of hard evidence.


I wonder how you would feel if some newbie maverick (that was you, 30 years ago) built a golf course, obviously using some of your original ideas as a template.


Not sure if you'd be flattered or pissed . . . . but it also begs the question whether any of the peeps you have mentored (or worked with) built something similar to your work downstream.


John Harbottle and I were good friends for years, but he never quite acknowledged the similarities between (some) of his work and Pete. Then again, Pete always seemed to take some inspiration from Raynor - but that might be me projecting a hallucination.


I've never asked Shac, but I do wonder how much of Rustic Canyon was inspired by a combination of George Thomas and Mackenzie.   


And then - how much of Tom Doak rubbed off on DeVries, Urbina or Gil?


Heck, I am not sure anymore which chicken came from which egg . . . . . .           

[Tom_Doak]

Gib:


I think there's little doubt that Langford was influenced by Macdonald and Raynor when he went to school back east.  But while his bunker style is similar, I haven't seen cases of him building copies of the template holes.


And, absolutely, Pete Dye was influenced by Raynor and Macdonald AND Langford [who built Maxinkuckee where Alice's family had a summer house].  Pete loved Camargo, and he's the one who taught Urbina what a Redan was, while building the ASU golf course.  But to say that Pete Dye never had an original idea and just built templates, would be pretty blind.


I think my principal influence on my associates [past and present] has been the same one that Mr. Dye had on me -- the imperative that getting out there and building courses is the best way to design.  Any of them who are worth a nickel are grinding hard to design something that sets them apart, because they want to compete with me, not copy me.  [Although Gil did tell me a few years ago that he'd used a concept I suggested in the early 1990's to win a job in China, which never got built due to the moratorium.  But I really got the idea from Pasatiempo and LACC, anyway].


I don't know if you know it, but John Harbottle was my roommate for several months when we both worked for Perry Dye.  We were very different dudes -- one of our co-workers once said that John liked everything and I didn't like anything    -- and there was a lot of truth to that because I had seen so many courses already, and John had only seen what he'd grown up around in Tacoma.  [Plus John was a real extrovert, and I am not.]  But we took away very different things from Pete; because John was never really comfortable with that seat-of-the-dozer design method, I think his courses wound up looking more like Dye courses than mine do.

[Gib_Papazian]

Tom,


Yeah I will echo your sentiments, John H. had a bias towards Pete's designs - and I found endless connective threads between the two.


Of course I knew you two were roommates - and John never expressed anything but admiration for you and Pete. I'm sure you knew that, but if not . . . . . I was very fond of him of course; I think it bothered him a bit that Mom was a storied championship amateur player - I used to give him 2 or 3 a side - but there is no denying John left a more indelible mark on the game.


Stevenson Ranch was one of my favorite courses on Earth . . . . I got to play it one last time, a week before it closed - probably best John passed before it was bulldozed into an almond orchard. The founder (a friend who also belongs to Olympic) was outvoted by his siblings - con dinero el mono bailar.


I pray you'll never have to endure High Pointe being led to the gallows - in whatever stage of decay it is in.


And I would never say Pete and Alice built nothing but templates - although some of his creations still look like supercharged versions of some "tried and true" strategic arrangements. 
 


 

[Sven Nilsen]

Of course, you can make the argument #16 at Cypress is also a Biarritz hole, but my recollection (only saw a painting of it, since it NLE in France) is the original Chasm Hole did not have a bailout area - so it was a longer, do or die version of your mentor's 17th at TPC Sawgrass.

Gib:


Its been determined that the hole at Biarritz that CBM used as the inspiration for the template was not the Chasm Hole.  The Chasm Hole was gone by the time he visited the course, and his description of the hole that was the inspiration notes its was a par 4.


Sven

[Tom_Doak]

I pray you'll never have to endure High Pointe being led to the gallows - in whatever stage of decay it is in.

You must have been out of touch for a while . . . High Pointe was sold off for farmland in 2009 after the original owner passed away, and his son wanted nothing to do with golf.  It's a hops farm now!  Although most of the back nine was not planted upon, so I might resurrect it in my retirement.


Luckily, I have some other good courses to hang my hat on, that are better loved and better funded.

[Kalen Braley]

Tom,

I think he meant to say Apache Stronghold, which at this point may be inevitable too.

[Gib_Papazian]

Tom,


Sorry to learn that about High Pointe - I've wanted to play it since you wrote The Anatomy. But it does demonstrate I've been mostly on the periphery during this last awful decade.


Sven,


Little doubt you are correct - I stopped hard research on this particular subject more than 10 years back - so like everything else - my knowledge is dated and my certainty about anything is uncertain at best. What year was the Chasm Hole razed? I can look it up if I dig a little, but you've got the easy answer at your fingertips.


The reason is wondering if Dev Emmet saw it first - given that I was never really able to ascertain when C.B. was in France after coming back to America, so the inspiration might have been drawings from Emmet . . . . . but I'm not sure, that is just speculation. 

[Tim Martin]

I may have missed it, but wasn't Pete's island green at TPC a true original?

I'm struggling with this topic as well, because yes while a Model T and 911 are technically both automobiles, that's where it ends as they utilize vastly different technologies to get 4 tires moving... night and day!

P.S.  Tom speaking of Ballyneal, I woulda figured you would say 7, especially with that green?

There were island greens before the 17th at the TPC.  In fact, Herbert Strong built one less than five miles from the TPC, at Ponte Vedra Club, sixty years earlier.  [I never heard Pete mention that hole but I'd be surprised if he didn't know about it.]  Pete was just the one who put the island green par-3 on the map, as did Macdonald with the Biarritz.

I remember reading that Alice Dye brought the idea to Pete after playing at the Ponte Vedra Club at the same time he was building TPC Sawgrass. I don’t know if that’s lore or if there is some truth to it.

[Mark_Fine]

We all agree a car isn’t just a car.  The same goes for golf holes.  Same can be said for many things.  I think it is more the use of the design pallet items that makes a hole special vs whether the are functionally the same kind of hole. 

[Sven Nilsen]

Little doubt you are correct - I stopped hard research on this particular subject more than 10 years back - so like everything else - my knowledge is dated and my certainty about anything is uncertain at best. What year was the Chasm Hole razed? I can look it up if I dig a little, but you've got the easy answer at your fingertips.


The reason is wondering if Dev Emmet saw it first - given that I was never really able to ascertain when C.B. was in France after coming back to America, so the inspiration might have been drawings from Emmet . . . . . but I'm not sure, that is just speculation.

The Chasm Hole disappeared around 1902.  The following is taken from this thread -


https://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,21926.200.html.


CBM and Whigham visited Biarritz (with Arnaud Massy) in early 1906 on their tour of great courses in preparation for the creation of NGLA, and CBM  mentioned what became known as his Biarritz concept shortly thereafter in a letter printed in a June 20, 1906 NY Sun article about his recent trip abroad:

"The best holes have not been found on the five British championship links alone.  . . . The idea for one hole comes from Biarritz.  The hole in question is not a good one, but it revealed a fine and original principle that will be incorporated into my selection." 

CBM expanded on the description later that year in his article on ideal holes in Outing Magazine where he provided a sample listing of 18 holes:

"15. 210 yards. Suggested by 12th Biarritz making sharp hog back in the middle of the course.  Stopping thirty yards from the hole bunkered to the right of the green and good low ground to the left of the plateau green."

H.J. Whigham repeated this early understanding in 1913 when describing  the inspiration for Piping Rock's Biarritz: 

"There is a Biarritz hole of about 220 yards which is new to this country and is one of the best one-shot holes in existence. There is a hog's back extending to within thirty yards of the green and a dip between the hog's back and the green."

[Jeff_Brauer]

Sven,


That would seem to put a carry mound 30 yards short of the green, and the swale centered on about 15 yards in front of the green, no?  I actually have done a few par 3 holes like THAT, usually with the fronting mounds hiding the big dip, in an effort to make the hole look shorter than it really is.  I actually think it works better in the second LZ of a shorter par 4, where most players will have to reach the green with some carry.  If they hit the mound (sometimes covered in longer grass) they can still wedge on and hit the green in regulation, so (as per the worst strategy thread) it should theoretically negate most complains, lol)


Not actually related, but it was one such hole that experienced a golfer slugfest during a recent Korn Ferry qualifying match.  I don't think it was the architecture.....but perhaps it would have been cool if it was!

[Gib_Papazian]

I'm pulling this off a file card in my head, but my recollection is also the original intent was the swale being closely mowed turf, not part of the green. I know the Biarritz swale at Creek Club (#11 I think) was formalized into putting surface later on - but damn if I can remember the evolution of the Biarritz at Piping Rock.


A good example of giving a great concept a hard tweak to produce a far more interesting hole is the Biarritz at Old Macdonald. Having an irregular half-pipe within the confines of the putting surface increases the "fun factor" x5 . . . . . but is it still a Biarritz? Or is it a Doak Biarritz?


Sven, Thank you for filling in the blanks . . . . I'm still trying to get caught up after wandering in the wilderness the last few years. 







 

[Jim_Kennedy]

Best read in a while, like a blast from the past!

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