Become a GCA By School of Hard-Knocks?

[Tom_Doak]

TD is also right in that guys my age have to look in the mirror and realize much of our good luck came as a result of the times.  That said, Perry Maxwell and others started in worse economic times and managed to survive, if not prosper.  For that matter, coming out of college, I was lucky to even get a job in the field.  I had bugged Killian and Nugent so much from the age of 12, they felt they had to hire me.  In 1977, the profession was reeling from the politics of 1974 Watergate, oil prices being high, etc., not too dissimilar from right now.

Motivational speaking is not my forte.  (See my first post.)


But, for the same reasons as the late 1970's, now is a good time to be getting started, because there is work, and people are ramping up to do it.


P.S. Perry Maxwell only made it through the worst of times because he happened to live in the one part of America where oil and gas exploration kept the economy moving, and he had established his reputation there in the 20s before things went sideways.  He was also very hands-on; I hadn't realized until we worked on Dornick Hills that his construction foremen and shapers, the Woods brothers, were in fact his wife's brothers.  They spent the early part of the Depression in Michigan, working on Crystal Downs and the U of M courses.

[Thomas Dai]

In view of Peter Thomsons world tour ideas as expressed on another current thread pasted below is Niall’s comment on PWT’s thoughts on becoming an architect -

“I also had the pleasure of meeting Peter Thomson, back when I had aspirations of becoming a GCA and was with a group of other wannabees. I would describe him as being an old fashioned gentlemen who was kind enough to give us his time and the benefit of his wisdom. In truth I can't recall too much of the conversation other than his parting shot which was that instead of becoming GCA's that we should think of becoming shapers.”

Atb

[John Kavanaugh]

If we squash the dreams of golfers we will find ourselves playing the visions of internet influencers. I’ll take young Dr. Bowman over a vampire who currently feeds off the game.

[Don Mahaffey]

I like Kyle Harris’ comment about what are you going to do different than all of those who have a 10 year head start?


At age 50, you’ll have a hard time taking the shaper route. And the other route is to learn to draw on a computer and work toward being an associate. But I don’t know any architects hiring associates anymore. I see shapers get hired to also act as design associates, but I don’t remember the last time I met an “office” design associate.
There is a shortage of entry level individuals who want to learn to be construction superintendents. I know that title sounds nowhere near as sexy as architect or designer, but I’ll bet most here would be surprised at how involved construction personnel are in bringing a course to life.  It’s why I asked what you wanted to DO? Because if you want to build golf, the opportunities are there, now. It’s not dentist money out of the gate, but you’ll make a lot more taking a construction entry level path than establishing a design business, and you’ll quickly find out if it’s what you really want to do for the next 20 years.

[John Kavanaugh]

Don,


Could a guy today buy 2.5 million dollars in equipment and operate it at a loss of $500,000 for five years and break into the market?

[Don Mahaffey]

Yes, that’s an excellent business plan!

[John Kavanaugh]

It’s not uncommon for a man with an angst to build.

[Don Mahaffey]

Embrace therapy

[Peter Bowman]

If we squash the dreams of golfers we will find ourselves playing the visions of internet influencers. I’ll take young Dr. Bowman over a vampire who currently feeds off the game.

🍻

[Peter Bowman]

I like Kyle Harris’ comment about what are you going to do different than all of those who have a 10 year head start?


At age 50, you’ll have a hard time taking the shaper route. And the other route is to learn to draw on a computer and work toward being an associate. But I don’t know any architects hiring associates anymore. I see shapers get hired to also act as design associates, but I don’t remember the last time I met an “office” design associate.
There is a shortage of entry level individuals who want to learn to be construction superintendents. I know that title sounds nowhere near as sexy as architect or designer, but I’ll bet most here would be surprised at how involved construction personnel are in bringing a course to life.  It’s why I asked what you wanted to DO? Because if you want to build golf, the opportunities are there, now. It’s not dentist money out of the gate, but you’ll make a lot more taking a construction entry level path than establishing a design business, and you’ll quickly find out if it’s what you really want to do for the next 20 years.

Don would a GCA hire a 50-year-old guy willing to work for FREE in exchange for the opportunity to learn shaping, and then do the simple tasks for said GCA, and move on the bigger challenges as positive results continue?

To simplify what I aspire to DO, my answer is this: to see my personal creative visions for golf course design come to life.

With a career in golf course construction, I’ll prefer to create the plans rather than execute someone else’s. Certainly starting such a career will require following and executing someone else’s plans. Yes that may mean plenty of shovels and dirty fingernails and BO, Inconvenient travel, plenty of mistakes, cutthroat competition, disappointment, researching, you name it.

Pushing dirt and creating golf sounds like a great gig as a shaper. Knowing myself, I’ll see so many ways to do it differently I’ll ultimately be driven toward opportunities that allow greater personal creative expression.  I suppose that’s why I only worked as an associate dentist for a year before I found my opportunity to do business my way. 

0% chance it’ll be that easy in the GCA world

[Mike Nuzzo]

Hi Peter
Good luck
I'll be brief...

Do you know how to design?
Most gcas aren't great designers ... imo

When I started 23 years ago my design skills were 10/10 and my engineering and project skills were a 10/10
I apprenticed for a year, after several years of golf specific skill building, to put everything together hoping to be an associate.
Then got lucky as f*ck when Al called.

That apprenticeship was at a club that Baxter had waited 13 years to develop.
I thought 13 years was an impossibly long time back then. It's not when you account for macro impacts.
Get your club in gear, draw some plans to inspire them, or hire someone to make some plans or renderings.

cheers

[Peter Bowman]

Hi Mike,


Thanks for sharing your success story.


I can’t say I know how to design a golf course. Need to learn those aspects.  I’ve been designing and building my Zen garden for the last 2 years. I intend for it to be a 10 year project evolution. I’m artistic and I can vividly imagine an end result before starting a project. Perhaps that’ll be a useful skill in the design process


My engineering skills suck.
Give me a paint brush, a pencil or some clay and I can create something of value. Give me a kit to build my kids’ playhouse and I’m pretty damned frustrated

[Mike Nuzzo]

You're welcome.
I was asking about design in general... teeth, caps, veneers, tools, dentist chair, waiting room, zen garden counts....
I was a designer of many, many things and just changed what I designed.
Visualization is a big deal, and composition is too (think who can take a good picture).
Drawing what you want at your club, communicating your plan, and convincing them to spend their money would be an excellent project for you.
cheers

[Peter Bowman]

You're welcome.
I was asking about design in general... teeth, caps, veneers, tools, dentist chair, waiting room, zen garden counts....
I was a designer of many, many things and just changed what I designed.
Visualization is a big deal, and composition is too (think who can take a good picture).
Drawing what you want at your club, communicating your plan, and convincing them to spend their money would be an excellent project for you.
cheers

Yes to all of the above, Mike. My more recent interests have been on design and space with consideration for Fibonacci ratios, fractal layers, balanced asymmetry, negative space, Feng Shui, and Pareto Principle.


The Zen garden has been a fun landscaping example where I’ve employed all of such. Position the plants, paths, trees, rocks, logs, grasses, mushrooms, pardoned weeds so that they appear to be where nature placed them itself and in harmony. Upon closer observation, one may notice the miniature abstract landscapes within the overall larger scene (mounds=hills, rocks=mountains, moss-grass, clubmoss=miniature pine trees, gravel path=river).


And yes I do a good bit of smile design with my implant cases transform train wrecks into something more beautiful. I suspect CAD will continue to influence golf course architecture too

[Mike Nuzzo]

Do you know what your superintendent wants?
Have they given you the irrigation and drainage as-builts?
Do you have lots of pictures of the areas you want to improve?
Have you measured areas and yardages using google earth?
cheers

[Charlie Goerges]

This is a very interesting topic, I'm loving the back-and-forth. It's that age-old question between "doing what you love" and "why would you want to take something you love and make it into work".


At least in this case, it doesn't seem to be a case of Peter risking homelessness with this type of career move.


Partly related, but a phenomenon I've seen in a couple of places is of a well-off middle-aged person turning their hobby into a new job. But in sort of a tangential way. Like a woodworking business where maybe most of the income is from a youtube channel or something like that. I'm curious if that type of scenario would appeal in this case. (I'd also be curious what it's like in that type of vocation to be competing against someone who doesn't even make money doing the actual thing?)

[Mike_Young]

Partly related, but a phenomenon I've seen in a couple of places is of a well-off middle-aged person turning their hobby into a new job. But in sort of a tangential way. Like a woodworking business where maybe most of the income is from a youtube channel or something like that. I'm curious if that type of scenario would appeal in this case. (I'd also be curious what it's like in that type of vocation to be competing against someone who doesn't even make money doing the actual thing?)

Hell,  there are plenty that :"play house" in the golf design business.  Either wife works or they made their money in another business or they inherited money.  But that's their deal....just like all the "senior tours" in Florida where you to pay to play for your own money...    oops..I forgot the golf writer business also...some of the real clowns in that business take themselves extremely seriously...

[Peter Bowman]

Do you know what your superintendent wants? He is an enigma to say the least. I’m one of his biggest supporters, however. He’s extremely resistant to change or doing anything that “most courses don’t do”. I’m his opposite, I like my course to offer to golfers what “most other golf courses don’t do”
Have they given you the irrigation and drainage as-builts? I’m not sure if they still have the irrigation plans from 1999. Drainage is easy, water pools in the same places every snow that lol. The Super has done a couple things to minimize this
Do you have lots of pictures of the areas you want to improve? I have ground level and drone shots of the whole course. We do have some photos of Hooper’s early days with Stiles’ original bunker margins.  They had much more character than our current smooth edges
Have you measured areas and yardages using google earth?

 

[Tim_Weiman]

Peter,


I know or have spent time with several of the people in this thread, including Tom Doak, Don Mahaffey, Ian Andrew and Mike Young. All are experienced, very knowledgable and have a real world understanding of the business.


My advice would be to take seriously what they say. They know what they are talking about.


As for me, I fell in love with golf architecture at about three years old, thanks to my parents belonging to Leewood Golf Club in Eastchester, NY, a course with no real claim to fame except apparently Babe Ruth like playing there and was made an Honorary member.


I bought my first golf architecture book in 1966 when Sports Illustrated published “The Best 18 Holes in America” written by Dan Jenkins. Today my collection is about 350 books and I was fortunate to have an essay I wrote about Ballybunion included in Paul Daley’s wonderful multi volume Golf Architecture: A Worldwide Perspective.

Thanks to the SI book, I realized at a young age (10) that if golf courses are what I love, I would have to travel…..a lot. I certainly haven’t traveled as much as someone like Tom, but I have seen (walked or played) many of the courses most appealing to me, though a few stand out among those I haven’t experienced, including Hirono, Alwoodley and New South Wales.


I guess what I am trying to say is that there is a big difference between loving golf architecture as an art form (I certainly do) and actually working in the business. I think this is what the guys I mentioned are trying to say.

[Kalen Braley]

Sounds like most of us were terrific parents in dashing our kids dreams good and proper from a young age!   

P.S.  Peter my own dream is to hit it big with the lottery or crypto, buy land and build my own place, but even I know better now that in the unlikely event it happens, I would hire someone like Tom or Mike to do all the heavy lifting!

[Anthony Butler]

You're welcome.
I was asking about design in general... teeth, caps, veneers, tools, dentist chair, waiting room, zen garden counts....
I was a designer of many, many things and just changed what I designed.
Visualization is a big deal, and composition is too (think who can take a good picture).
Drawing what you want at your club, communicating your plan, and convincing them to spend their money would be an excellent project for you.
cheers

Peter - I noticed in the recent Golf Magazine rankings that Hooper came in 5th in New Hampshire. As a member of Dublin Lake Club about 15 miles back along 101 it interests me that a nine-hole course would get that recognition, esp when they left a couple of 18 hole Donald Ross courses off the list. I'll have to wander over when I get the opportunity this summer.

At this point, the recognition Hooper has received may inspire your fellow members into further improvement, so I would second Mike Nuzzo's thought about first attempting to influence whatever can be paid for at your home course. Who knows you might be the next Rob Collins!

As far as developing world-class expertise, I've been lucky enough to meet a number of people I would consider to be masters of their craft. Tom Doak being one of those people... he knows everything about building a world class golf course. Permitting, budgeting etc.  A couple of the others being one of the Coen Brothers (when they agreed to take a meeting about doing a commercial for our ad agency) and of course Steve Jobs.. To Tom's initial point, not only are these extraordinarily talented people, they were laser focused on what they saw as their life's mission from a very early age... (Steve Jobs was fishing parts out of the rubbish bins at Xerox Spark when he was 16 years of age to build things with Steve Wozniak. Ethan and Joel Coen were making some pretty funny home movies when they were barely in their teens in Minnesota.)

So the possibility of developing world-class GCA expertise and the reputation that goes with it is something that unfortunately should have been started at least 20 years ago. That said, you could have some fun if you can master driving one of those shaping vehicles around a green site.   

[John Kavanaugh]

There is some real ageist crap being spewed here.

[Marty Bonnar]

Is it safe?

Love that reference, JakaB. Babe and Doc would be amused. Szell maybe not so much.
Is it just me or is the phrase ‘school of hard knocks’ being totally misused/misunderstood here?
F.

[Anthony Butler]

There is some real ageist crap being spewed here.

Can you explain what you mean here? The only 'ageist crap' I've seen in this thread is people advising Peter he would have been better off to consider this career option at an earlier age.


Considering many of the people who provided that advice, I would put it under the category of 'shared wisdom'.

[John Kavanaugh]

The good dentist is only 41. He’ll make his nut by 50. To say that the creative aspect of life has passed him by is ageist by definition.


Even the grounded grouch admitted it’s possible with enough money and patience. Why is a professional golfer so much mor qualified than a dentist? Age is the only “excuse” I’ve seen given.