Is there too much emphasis on “quirk” or “features”?

[John Chilver-Stainer]

Ally,


I think a good comparison would be the courses at Carne. Having played the Hackett and Wild Atlantic Dunes in 2021 and 2022, I was disappointed with Eddie Hackett's opening 9 and his simple styling but revelled in the quirk of the back 9 of your own hand. A difference between night and day.


I find your statement to be in contradiction at Carne.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Ally,


I think a good comparison would be the courses at Carne. Having played the Hackett and Wild Atlantic Dunes in 2021 and 2022, I was disappointed with Eddie Hackett's opening 9 and his simple styling but revelled in the quirk of the back 9 of your own hand. A difference between night and day.


I find your statement to be in contradiction at Carne.

Haha - I knew there was a danger someone might bring that up!


What I will say is that the land provided most of the features. A lot of my decisions were around whether to remove the natural quirk to provide more ample playing corridors; or to leave it. So I was very minimal with adding “features” outside of what the routing provided.


Where I took a noticeably different approach was with the quite severely undulating greens; which was as much about tying in large grade changes and so not creating Hackett style ledge greens. The bunkering is very simple and sparse but the positioning is also different to what Hackett might have done.

[Adrian_Stiff]

The world has changed.


Candy sells.


Pretty pictures create desire, desire creates a person want to visit.


How many times do we see Sean's tour and that desire is created.


Bandon is poster child/ I wanna go.

[Tom_Doak]

Ben:


You raised a bunch of good questions so I'm going to go Pat Mucci on you.  Answers below in green, just for old times' sake:

Is someone going to garner praise and therefore get more work for building a modern Kilspindie? Probably not.  And it's not all the architects -- if you staff every project with a bunch of shapers, you get a bunch of shaping.  But the architect is the one who sent them all. Perhaps a better question is what’s the project you’re working on where you’re asking the client and also your team to do less? Is the site awesome?  We did less at High Pointe, because that's what it was always about.  We did less at Childress Hall, because the site was that awesome.  It was hard to do less at Cabot Highlands, because so much needed to be rebuilt, and because they want to charge $250 not $100 . . . but we still didn't go overboard with bunkers.


IMHO, the curmudgeon outlook on quirk begs the comment, not every site is a 10. Or even a 7. There must be a point where an architect and their team decide to add interest to a golf hole. I’m not sure where that line exists. The problem is in the assumption that every new project should try to be a 10, or even a 7.  As I said above, that goes along partly with the cost of building a new course and the need to try to get high $ green fees to make the construction costs back.


For goodness sakes I’m not advocating going back to the days of adding interest to meh sites the way it was done in the 80’s and 90’s.


I agree with you that I see a significant amount of work via social media that looks over-cooked. But I struggle with *why* it’s not good. Unless of course we think heavily contoured greens and manufactured fairway contours are the new containment mounding.  Maybe they are?

[Ben Sims]

Ben:


You raised a bunch of good questions so I'm going to go Pat Mucci on you.  Answers below in green, just for old times' sake:

I agree with you that I see a significant amount of work via social media that looks over-cooked. But I struggle with *why* it’s not good. Unless of course we think heavily contoured greens and manufactured fairway contours are the new containment mounding.  Maybe they are?

(Preface—thanks for the green ink. Brought back a memory or three.)


Oof. Depressing thought that last part. I feel like the blowback from those sorts greens we are mentioning without mentioning is starting to grow and affect the opinion of the retail golfer. But no one gives a hot take on the 5th at Cruden Bay. A bajillion square feet and falls away from the line of play with a three foot ridge in the middle. On a long four no less! But like most things old vs new, it gets a pass. As it should.


This is my concern on this topic, that enough will bemoan “too much” and the pendulum will shift to a newer minimalism. A boring one.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Ben, it won’t shift that way whilst there are enough good / caring architects and shapers around. The trend is never going back to boring minimalism. It will either be towards supercharged minimalism or towards all types of maximalism.


Everyone has a different trigger. Mine comes when I feel like I am playing something that is over-designed. I start feeling like I am in a theme park. I can really enjoy it but it will never compete with the natural elegance that a course at one with its surrounding landscape creates.

[Peter Sayegh]

There must be some instances of sound/esteemed golf architecture that are now considered "quirky."


Quirky courses and holes should unite all golfers. Members are proud of their understanding of them and Joe Public will travel to see something unique/unconventional and decipher them on their own.

[Ally Mcintosh]

I probably should have kept the word “quirk” out of the title.


It was more about designing lots of features… and features being interpreted as quirk…. and quirk being universally unimpeachable and considered great golf (regardless of whether it affects play)… and so more = great.

[Peter Bowman]

Just like any business, you gotta build or offer what patrons will come back again and again for.


A lot of golfers tell their buddies about the quirk because it stood out from the rest. 


It’s good marketing and good for the business to stay in business. 


I think it’s a particularly favorable thing if the quirk doesn’t affect the way the hole is played because there likely won’t be negative consequences about how it negatively affected their game, but it positively affected their experience of the hole/course.


In my field of dentistry, adding little quirks helps separate me from the stereotypical dental office experience.  People talk and refer and business gets better.  As a partial owner of a golf course that went insolvent not long ago, anything that keeps people talking about it and playing more it by enhancing or adding a harmless quirk, the better the chances golfers can continue to enjoy the course that stays in business

[Mike Bodo]

I'm just going to come out an say it: I think going for quirk is a virtue in an architect. That doesn't mean all quirk is good, it just means the architect is actually taking a big swing. It might not connect well, or could even end up being a whiff, but at least they tried something big.

I agree 100% Matt - escpecially when a developer is paying an architect big $$$ to come up with something exciting and memorable an otherwise featureless piece of terrain. Essentially, you're being asked to make something out of nothing. What choice do you have but to swing for the fences in that situation and hope you "hit" more often than you don't?

[Tim Gavrich]

That’s fine too, Matt. A lot of people feel that way and I am not talking necessarily about true competition either… On the other hand, if one is just hitting golf shots and not really caring about the result, then that person is less qualified to judge how good a golf course is. Because they’re not interacting with the course in any meaningful way.


Anyway, I’m off on a tangent. Tom’s last post summarises my primary point.

Ally--


I'm not sure this is a tangent at all in the context of this thread. I think it gets at a central issue because it underscores a key difference between golf and golfers in the U.S. and their counterparts overseas.


As long as recreational/non-competitive golfers continue to dominate in the U.S., I think we're going to continue to see courses built that lean towards the Instagram/amusement-park end of the spectrum. Golfers who don't really care about the score they're making require a higher level of stimulation by what you call "features" (which I assume make golf courses more expensive to build and maintain in light of Tom's quote about $100 vs. $250 green fees in Scotland) in order to be satisfied/impressed. They're setting aside the possibility of being stimulated by competition, which can make even mediocre/pedestrian courses fun to play.


Because competition is more tightly woven into the fabric of golf overseas, I would expect the new courses over there to be a little farther away from the amusement-park end of the spectrum, although I know that U.S. travel dollars spend over there as well.


Personally, I'm waiting for someone to build the next Harbour Town.

[Tom_Doak]

 "features" (which I assume make golf courses more expensive to build and maintain in light of Tom's quote about $100 vs. $250 green fees in Scotland) in order to be satisfied/impressed. They're setting aside the possibility of being stimulated by competition, which can make even mediocre/pedestrian courses fun to play.

Because competition is more tightly woven into the fabric of golf overseas, I would expect the new courses over there to be a little farther away from the amusement-park end of the spectrum, although I know that U.S. travel dollars spend over there as well

"Features" do not really add too much to the cost of building a golf course -- it's just a bit more shaping -- and whether they add to the maintenance cost depends on what sort of feature they are.  It's certainly NOT the difference between a $100 green fee and a $250 green fee.  My point, rather, was that new golf courses are much more of a commercial venture than old courses, and that drives demand for features that catch the customer's eye and justify an outsized green fee so that the whole investment can be recouped.


But your point is well taken that the need for features is amplified when people aren't playing a match to keep them engaged on a [relaxed] competitive level.  I guess I've always understood that intuitively, but I've never thought much about it while we were out there building golf holes.

[Tom_Doak]

I probably should have kept the word “quirk” out of the title.


It was more about designing lots of features… and features being interpreted as quirk…. and quirk being universally unimpeachable and considered great golf (regardless of whether it affects play)… and so more = great.

I agree.  Quirk [for me] is more of something weird that was out there that you tried to incorporate.

[Kalen Braley]

I probably should have kept the word “quirk” out of the title.


It was more about designing lots of features… and features being interpreted as quirk…. and quirk being universally unimpeachable and considered great golf (regardless of whether it affects play)… and so more = great.

I agree.  Quirk [for me] is more of something weird that was out there that you tried to incorporate.

Tom,

I'm curious do you consider your E green at Ballyneal to be quirk?  I certainly do, but I probably equate quirk and uniqueness a bit more than the average joe.

[Tim Martin]

I probably should have kept the word “quirk” out of the title.


It was more about designing lots of features… and features being interpreted as quirk…. and quirk being universally unimpeachable and considered great golf (regardless of whether it affects play)… and so more = great.

I agree.  Quirk [for me] is more of something weird that was out there that you tried to incorporate.

Tom-Do you think the lack of earthmoving equipment in the golden age lends itself to quirky features being more readily accepted than for modern designers? The golden age designers certainly crossed the line on occasion but don’t often get the same level of criticism.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom-Do you think the lack of earthmoving equipment in the golden age lends itself to quirky features being more readily accepted than for modern designers? The golden age designers certainly crossed the line on occasion but don’t often get the same level of criticism.

Probably yes.  But it's just human nature that a feature on a course that's older than you are is considered inevitable, whereas anything we build on a new course can be questioned, because we are here to answer.

[Ira Fishman]

Ally,


I think a good comparison would be the courses at Carne. Having played the Hackett and Wild Atlantic Dunes in 2021 and 2022, I was disappointed with Eddie Hackett's opening 9 and his simple styling but revelled in the quirk of the back 9 of your own hand. A difference between night and day.


I find your statement to be in contradiction at Carne.

Haha - I knew there was a danger someone might bring that up!


What I will say is that the land provided most of the features. A lot of my decisions were around whether to remove the natural quirk to provide more ample playing corridors; or to leave it. So I was very minimal with adding “features” outside of what the routing provided.


Where I took a noticeably different approach was with the quite severely undulating greens; which was as much about tying in large grade changes and so not creating Hackett style ledge greens. The bunkering is very simple and sparse but the positioning is also different to what Hackett might have done.

Ally’s holes at Carne are a wonderful example of the difference between bold natural features and manufactured ones. Fantastic routing in dramatic dunes. Big and bold but completely natural looking. And great fun too.

[Sean_A]

I probably should have kept the word “quirk” out of the title.


It was more about designing lots of features… and features being interpreted as quirk…. and quirk being universally unimpeachable and considered great golf (regardless of whether it affects play)… and so more = great.

I am trying to gain a baseline for your thoughts. What do you think about Arcadia South regarding this subject?


Ciao

[Thomas Dai]

Where extensive featuring is present maybe it’s dead flat that becomes the quirk?
Atb

[David Harshbarger]

I'm just going to come out an say it: I think going for quirk is a virtue in an architect. That doesn't mean all quirk is good, it just means the architect is actually taking a big swing. It might not connect well, or could even end up being a whiff, but at least they tried something big.

I totally respect an architect who is willing to stick their neck out and do something different.  In today's world, that would be doing LESS instead of MORE.  It's easy to do more, and there is rather a lot of it going on right now. That's not brave at all.

Is someone going to garner praise and therefore get more work for building a modern Kilspindie?

My home course has the many greens that look like the push up greens at Kilspindie- they play well, are easy to maintain, and create interest in the most minimal ways.


They must have been inexpensive to build as well. I can’t imagine them being built today as, with Kilspindie, they really only work because they and the tees are about the only shaped features. When the fairway isn’t shaped at all, a simple push up green shows at least some effort!


If there’s any market for that kind of course in 2024, I guess you could make a reputation for extreme the minimalism involved in designing it- which I imagine would hark back to placing a tee stake, a centerline stake, a green stake, a pile of dirt, and hiring the town drunk to level the pile.


Not that that couldn’t make for a great course! We all believe it has when that was the state of the art.

[Eric_Terhorst]

As one who doesn’t mind obviously built quirk I too would like to know the line between built and found quirk. Much also depends on what is quirk. Imo the template concept has done element quirk ala the Biaritz. I fear that much like the angst over wide fairways and tree removal, it’s small beer…nothing to worry about. That said, I would welcome simple and elegant designs. I am not sure I have seen a newish example that is top notch. Might The Loop qualify?

Ciao

I am with Sean, one who doesn't mind built quirk.   Isn't there an art to making built look like found, at which Doak, Coore, Kidd, and others excel at? 


I also welcome simple and elegant designs.  Holston Hills, on which Tom Doak has done work, figures into that category for me, and the tree removal to my mind has elevated the elegance.  Still, it seems like #6 and #15 at Holston Hills are quirky Ross, and mostly built.  And #16, the steep uphill, drivable (for Tiger players) is found.


Lawsonia is elegant, and quirky.  Just in two par threes, there's the legendary 7th, the Boxcar hole, with its engineered quirk, and the elegant 10th, with its straightforward, flat-topography design, matched with a beautifully engineered and challenging green.


Ballyneal to me has elegance and a few quirky elements, found and built (as I recall, it's been awhile).  The 7th hole and green, can't wait to see again.


The Loop seems to have found quirk, built quirk, and, particularly on the Black (according to me), an elegant flow.  A balance that works. One commentator I know said about the Loop, "this is the work of a confident golf architect."
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[Ally Mcintosh]

I probably should have kept the word “quirk” out of the title.


It was more about designing lots of features… and features being interpreted as quirk…. and quirk being universally unimpeachable and considered great golf (regardless of whether it affects play)… and so more = great.

I am trying to gain a baseline for your thoughts. What do you think about Arcadia South regarding this subject?


Ciao

Arcadia South did flash through my mind as this thread progressed but it is not quite what I was getting at, primarily because the whole course has a consistent message, a straight homage to Chicago GC.


For what it’s worth, I liked the course - I thought the greens (big, bold and bad) were really well done - an homage but in no way a straight copy of the templates. The fairway bunkering lacked a little variety given it was so copious and prominent - it was playful but repeated the same trick too often.


It is a bit of a theme park but the site needed something.


I have quite a few better examples in mind of my premise: some are part-renovations that feel over-designed and incongruous to what remains from the original course. A couple of others are new courses where the land could have done much of the talking but the architect just kept adding features and touch-points.


I know how easy it is to keep adding things, particularly on good land. It takes a lot of restraint to shoot for simple elegance rather than yet another “cool visual feature”. That is the more, more, more issue.


The second spin on this is that in the internet age, there have become a lot more architecture junkies who know the history and really appreciate that history. In the past, golf course lovers didn’t really care about the architectural history - they just took the courses at face value. Now we have a whole bunch of junkies who see a new course with a Principal’s Nose bunker, or a Biarritz Green swale etc… etc… and they hang on to that, because they and the architect are now in the know together… I feel architects / shapers are throwing stuff in just for that kind of reaction.

[Sean_A]

I probably should have kept the word “quirk” out of the title.


It was more about designing lots of features… and features being interpreted as quirk…. and quirk being universally unimpeachable and considered great golf (regardless of whether it affects play)… and so more = great.

I am trying to gain a baseline for your thoughts. What do you think about Arcadia South regarding this subject?

Ciao

Arcadia South did flash through my mind as this thread progressed but it is not quite what I was getting at, primarily because the whole course has a consistent message, a straight homage to Chicago GC.


For what it’s worth, I liked the course - I thought the greens (big, bold and bad) were really well done - an homage but in no way a straight copy of the templates. The fairway bunkering lacked a little variety given it was so copious and prominent - it was playful but repeated the same trick too often.

It is a bit of a theme park but the site needed something.


I have quite a few better examples in mind of my premise: some are part-renovations that feel over-designed and incongruous to what remains from the original course. A couple of others are new courses where the land could have done much of the talking but the architect just kept adding features and touch-points.


I know how easy it is to keep adding things, particularly on good land. It takes a lot of restraint to shoot for simple elegance rather than yet another “cool visual feature”. That is the more, more, more issue.


The second spin on this is that in the internet age, there have become a lot more architecture junkies who know the history and really appreciate that history. In the past, golf course lovers didn’t really care about the architectural history - they just took the courses at face value. Now we have a whole bunch of junkies who see a new course with a Principal’s Nose bunker, or a Biarritz Green swale etc… etc… and they hang on to that, because they and the architect are now in the know together… I feel architects / shapers are throwing stuff in just for that kind of reaction.

Ally


I think we agree on Arcadia South. Although I was more focused on the bunkering which seems a case a few too many often repeated…not unusual even if the bunkers aren’t quirky.

I guess I don’t mind some obvious throwback recognisable features. I enjoyed Meadowbrook a ton and the kitchen sink was chucked into the redesign. It’s a place I would like to play often. Mind you, it’s private so much of the idea of designing for wow factor is nullified.

One concept which people think of as quirky is double greens. I am a huge fan, but I think so because it’s simple presentation, not quirky. I would like to see more double greens. I do notice greens close to each and wonder why not combine them and remove jarring rough between short grass areas…simple presentation.

Bottom line is I think people like the idea of participating in golf history. If they get to play courses with feature homage it keeps them closer to history.

Ciao

[Tom_Doak]

One concept which people think of as quirky is double greens. I am a huge fan, but I think so because it’s simple presentation, not quirky. I would like to see more double greens. I do notice greens close to each and wonder why not combine them and remove jarring rough between short grass areas…simple presentation.

Double greens are exactly the kind of feature I dislike, for the reason Ally said.  Nicklaus and Weiskopf each built a bunch of them in the USA back in the 80s and 90s, and the only reason for them was so that the marketing brochure could say the course has a double green “just like St Andrews”.  None of them ever felt “found” or that the design had evolved to connecting the greens in the field.

[Jeff Schley]

One concept which people think of as quirky is double greens. I am a huge fan, but I think so because it’s simple presentation, not quirky. I would like to see more double greens. I do notice greens close to each and wonder why not combine them and remove jarring rough between short grass areas…simple presentation.

Double greens are exactly the kind of feature I dislike, for the reason Ally said.  Nicklaus and Weiskopf each built a bunch of them in the USA back in the 80s and 90s, and the only reason for them was so that the marketing brochure could say the course has a double green “just like St Andrews”.  None of them ever felt “found” or that the design had evolved to connecting the greens in the field.

True PGA West Nicklaus Tournament has 9/18 linked by a small strip of grass. Grand Cypress a Nicklaus and then Aviara, which is a Palmer design has one. They have to be a nightmare for a superintendent.