Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture => Topic started by: Ian Andrew on March 20, 2012, 01:57:07 PM
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min·i·mal·ism (mn-m-lzm)
n.
2. Use of the fewest and barest essentials or elements, as in the arts, literature, or design.
Everyone uses the catch phrase "Minimalism" to describe the work of a particular group of architects. Yet it's such a poorly coined phrase to descibe the movement since many of the projects involve major manipulations of the land even if well hidden from the player. Yet all their work is lumped together based upon an aesthetic quality.
Why the hell did we not end up with a more accurate phrase such Naturalism or Naturalistic as a description of the movement since much of what drew our attention was an aesthetics quality. I do believe there is something deeper to the architecture, but I'd hardly call that Minimalistic either since its about options and alternatives.
What I struggle with most is when I occasionally talk about a minimalistic approach to working on a site, largely based around an enviornmental approach to design and it's always mistaken for an aesthetic appearance rather than an working approach.
I hate the phrase, always have, always will ...
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Ian,
I see your point and I'll support the change. But could it be that "naturalism" has other well-known meanings?
Definition: naturalism
Part of Speech Definition
Noun 1. (philosophy) the doctrine that the world can be understood in scientific terms without recourse to spiritual or supernatural explanations.[Wordnet]
2. An artistic movement in 19th century France; artists and writers strove for detailed realistic and factual description.[Wordnet]
3. A state of nature; conformity to nature.[Websters]
4. The doctrine of those who deny a supernatural agency in the miracles and revelations recorded in the Bible, and in spiritual influences; also, any system of philosophy which refers the phenomena of nature to a blind force or forces acting necessarily or according to fixed laws, excluding origination or direction by one intelligent will.[Websters].
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Ian:
I understand what you are saying, but the bottom line is that trying to describe anyone's design philosophy in a single word is always doomed to failure. As you note, too, most people mistake the look of certain courses with a design philosophy, though the same philosophy could yield a way different aesthetic on a different site.
"Minimalism" is a far from perfect term, but I fear that "Naturalism" will be equally misunderstood. Look at the bright side: at least they don't call it "links-style" anymore.
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Ian - not to try to change your mind on the hate thing :), but a few years ago I had a thread about M vs N, in which I equated N with F (i.e. freedom). An architect outlined some general goals/prinicples which I assume others share. I paraphrase, and bold:
One of the most important skills in golf construction is to blend in the edges of where one has worked so it's hard to discern where the artificial work started. Ultimately, the reason that's so important is that if the golfer can't tell what is natural or artificial, then in theory the golfer will have unlimited options as to how to play any hole, instead of one or more which have been obviously prescribed by the architect. One even takes it to the level of trying to blur where the mowing lines stop, because even THAT sets limits on where a golfer might be supposed to play. We can't afford to maintain an unlimited amount of fairway, but we can try to make it LOOK that way.
Which is to say, I think the GOALS of N and the APPROACH that is M sometimes align very well, but not always and not necessarily so -- and especially not if the IDEAL is F.
I go back and forth in my own mind. Sometimes I want N and F at any costs; but sometimes I want to know in my heart of hearts that the land is as close to its original state as possible, and the M has ruled the day.
Peter
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Ian,
I have been thinking about this recently as well. When speaking to my advisor a couple of weeks ago, I used the word minimalism to refer to some aspects in the development of my thesis project. She took a similar stance to yours, stating that there is nothing minimalist about developing something on a former surface coal mine, no matter how lay of the land my proposed plan would be. She advised using the word "responsible" as opposed to "minimal" to refer to the type of development I was proposing. Having thought about this since then, I believe there is some merit to using the word "responsible" to describe the movement we have come to know as Minimalism.
But, as Tom already noted, it is silly to try and describe a design philosophy in one word and responsible is far too broad a word to try and define a movement with. Let's just be happy that golf development "seems" to be trending in the right direction!
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Ian, I thought you had a shot when I saw that Peter weighed in...
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I'd go with "Enlightened Pragmatism."
Make the best (most fun?) course possible based on the needs of the target market
Accentuate the unique characteristics of the site
Do so efficiently with both the build budget
...and the maintenance budget
In some cases, that might mean manufacturing everything. In others, just cutting the grass and cutting the pins. In either case, the art is making it fun, and if reasonable expenses are required to amp the fun factor while ensuring sustainability, it would be malpractice not to do so.
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I'd go with "Enlightened Pragmatism."
That got nixed by the sales and marketing department :)
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I'd go with "Enlightened Pragmatism."
That got nixed by the sales and marketing department :)
;D Those damn marketing departments! They've been the ruin of many a great idea....
Bill -- if my post has any value, it was because I quoted almost verbatim a well-established voice on this site, which voice isn't mine. (I think Ian is weighing whether or not to shoot me down, but he can't until he figures out who the un-named source is!! Clever, i thought...)
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Jay Morrish once suggested that he was a "necessitilist".
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Gentlemen,
I have always disliked the term Minimalism but Naturalism has too many other connotations as Bill Brightly indicated.
Frugalism........... that should do it. The School of Frugality.
I have just conceived these somewhat ugly, but apt, words out of necessity! It is hard to imagine pleasing aesthetics coming out of the school of thought manacled with the above moniker but time will tell!
It appeals to this lad's heritage to boot!
In all seriousness I do not think it too bad a description.
Cheers Colin
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Jay Morrish once suggested that he was a "necessitilist".
Most architects say they have a minimalist approach and everyone says that they work with the land.
But in practice I often see a huge pile of dirt to build a tee because it was on the plans even though there was a perfectly suited land form just a dozen yards away and it also would have hid the cart path.
I wish clients wouldn't believe the hype (M. Young) and check out the work in person (D. Mahaffey).
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Mike,
I agree in general and specifically about clients hiring on work and qualifications, like Gil recently experienced.
To me the real proof is how much earth is moved on a good golf course holes you like. I have lots of courses that move around 100,000 CY yards of earth. No one example of moving, say 400,000 CY proves much about anything. Sometimes you need to move 400K CY to solve flood or other problems, create good holes, or fit a course in the housing development paying you to create a course to increase their land values. Not all courses start with high ideals, which can be a problem.
Don Knott (formerly of Jones, know on his own) had this quote - some of us are minimalist by choice, others by budget!
I think there are lots of architects out there in our camp of not moving much earth when the opportunity presents itself.
I also think its a mistake on some sites to move less earth just out of a philosophy of doing so, if it means creating bad holes. I have seen it happen all ways.
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Jeff:
It always sounds like we're much alike, even though I know we're not.
Can I ask, on your last best project, how many holes did you build where you didn't do any grading in the fairway? And how many greens did you build at natural grade, without cut or fill being imported?
At Streamsong, we did fairway grading on holes 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 and 14. Two of those were to create features, two to improve visibility, and two were filled just to get them dry. But we didn't do any fairway grading on holes 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 15, 17 or 18, apart from losing some dirt out of the bunkers. As to the greens, they're all shaped a bit, but we only took material to one of them, the par-3 10th. All the rest are pretty much at grade.
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Tom,
This is a stupid question, I hope, but does "at grade" mean you just stirred it up and threw some seed in? Or does it mean something else?
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Tom,
This is a stupid question, I hope, but does "at grade" mean you just stirred it up and threw some seed in? Or does it mean something else?
Jim:
No, there were only a couple of greens where we left the contours pretty much intact. Those are pretty difficult to come by in this day and age, when a slope of 3% is considered too severe.
We shaped the rest, but all of them with just the material that was right there ... no hauling fill in or out, and generally, cut-and-fill of less than a foot.
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Tom - your answer to Jim brings me right to the heart of Ian's post. WHY use only the material right there (no cut and fill etc), and that as a second choice to leaving the ground exactly as you found it? How would YOU characterize that approach -- is it a philosophical choice, an aesthetic one, a practical/cost-saving choice - a combination of all three and more?
Thanks
Peter
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Tom:
Probably more than any architect, you have been linked to the word "minimalism". This, along with the successful courses that you have designed, certainly has served you extremely well. However, I think over the last couple of years, the word has been given a meaning of "not moving dirt" instead of many of the concepts that you espoused in "Anatomy". Based on your posts, I have never gotten the feeling that you have a problem with moving dirt where necessary to have the best golf course.
I was wondering though whether you think the word "minimalism" (and your link to it) has recently and unfairly hurt your chances to get a job. For instance, have you ever sought a job where the owner did not hire you because he wrongfully felt that you would not "move any dirt".
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Ian:
I understand what you are saying, but the bottom line is that trying to describe anyone's design philosophy in a single word is always doomed to failure.
So "Doakasim" is probably off the table then... Such is life, besides I think Colton already used that phrase on his explicit version of "I'm on a Doak" anyways.
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Tom,
This is a stupid question, I hope, but does "at grade" mean you just stirred it up and threw some seed in? Or does it mean something else?
Jim:
No, there were only a couple of greens where we left the contours pretty much intact. Those are pretty difficult to come by in this day and age, when a slope of 3% is considered too severe.
We shaped the rest, but all of them with just the material that was right there ... no hauling fill in or out, and generally, cut-and-fill of less than a foot.
Thanks Tom.
Ian,
I would think each step in this direction is good...even if we're using the worong words.
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Sam Snead asked what abandoned golf course he was looking at when he first viewed the crucible of architecture, the TOC. What he saw was a traditional golf course, one that could almost be mistaken for a naturally occurring part of its environment. To my way of thinking he unknowingly paid the course the highest of compliments with his remark.
There will never be one perfect word to describe 'minimalism'. No other school, be it in the arts, literature, building architecture, etc., can be explained by one word, just as one word could never describe to Snead what he was about to experience at TOC. People interested in GCA will always have to look past the one word descriptors and delve into the philosophy of what minimalism or naturalism are about.
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How about, Udowhatuhavetodo-ism?
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Tim - a good one, but I think it takes 2nd place to Colin's "Frugalism", which strikes me as ham-fisted and homely enough to be used only sparingly....
Peter
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Ian,
I like it, can I use it in my next interview or marketing ventures or is it already pattened? I wonder what the spanish translation would be, I guess I could just do like Archie Bunker and add an a! Naturalisma! yup, I like it!
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Tom - your answer to Jim brings me right to the heart of Ian's post. WHY use only the material right there (no cut and fill etc), and that as a second choice to leaving the ground exactly as you found it? How would YOU characterize that approach -- is it a philosophical choice, an aesthetic one, a practical/cost-saving choice - a combination of all three and more?
Thanks
Peter
Peter:
I think you made a false assumption above, if you meant to imply that I would always choose to leave the ground exactly as I found it if that was possible [if the grades worked]. My first duty is to make sure the course is interesting to play, and on the majority of holes, that's going to require a bit of manipulation. If I found a nice, flat site for a green, I wouldn't just take it and build a boring hole.
So, why do I do it the way I do? I'm not going to go all Max Behr on you here, even though I understand the ethos in what he and MacKenzie wrote about golf being a natural sport. At the same time, Jim Urbina and I had a few philosophical discussions with Jack Nicklaus on the same topic -- Jack's view being, what difference does it make as long as you build a better golf hole? -- and we never really gave him an answer that we were satisfied with. I'm well aware nowadays that building a course this way is much more sustainable [I'll get to that in my next post], but that was not the reason I started doing things my way, either.
I have never really said so in these terms, but I think the reason is because my method is exactly how I imagine all the great courses I admire were built. St. Andrews and Pine Valley and Merion and Pinehurst No. 2 were all constructed, to one degree or another, but they were done in a day before USGA greens and before we had big machines to haul dirt around the site from one place to the next. All of the shaping work was confined to small areas, where men [or maybe teams of horses] could dig out the bunkers and use the dirt for contouring right in that area. It's a very practical approach, which produced some undeniably great results.
It occurred to me after I had worked for Mr. Dye for a while that almost no one built courses that way anymore. Nearly everyone used big scrapers to move dirt around the site, oblivious to the damage they were doing to the soils en route. I decided to see if I could go back to the old method. All of the other benefits that came with it [environmental, aesthetic, practical, budgetary] were just byproducts of that approach that reinforced that I was on the right track.
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Tom:
Probably more than any architect, you have been linked to the word "minimalism". This, along with the successful courses that you have designed, certainly has served you extremely well. However, I think over the last couple of years, the word has been given a meaning of "not moving dirt" instead of many of the concepts that you espoused in "Anatomy". Based on your posts, I have never gotten the feeling that you have a problem with moving dirt where necessary to have the best golf course.
I was wondering though whether you think the word "minimalism" (and your link to it) has recently and unfairly hurt your chances to get a job. For instance, have you ever sought a job where the owner did not hire you because he wrongfully felt that you would not "move any dirt".
Michael:
If you're referring to the Olympics, no, I don't think minimalism stood in the way at all -- after all, they selected someone who learned his approach from me. It's possible that my take on sustainability [using the materials right on site, as opposed to importing materials, starting with no USGA greens] was a bit too radical for the Olympic jury, but mostly I just think the politics were on Gil's side.
There have certainly been some jobs over the years where I think clients were afraid that my "minimalist" style was not suited to their fairly dull site ... they just couldn't imagine that I could come up with an exciting course without moving a bunch of dirt. [They probably wouldn't have been happy with Donald Ross, either.] Usually, though, I wouldn't even be interviewed for those sorts of jobs. Of course, we have built a couple of courses which required wall-to-wall shaping, and we've also built some very good courses on relatively plain ground [Riverfront and The Renaissance Club and Common Ground are probably the best examples], so I would disagree with the premise ... I hate to be pigeonholed! But, you can't be all things to all people, and I can't complain about the number or quality of projects we have landed.
Honestly, the more disturbing trend is the reaction of the golf industry [in the U.S., anyway] to anyone trying to be more sustainable. I recently brought along a friend of mine who is an expert on sustainability on a consulting visit, trying to get him a little work at a club which could stand to think about the topic. Their reaction seemed extremely defensive. I think there are way too many people in golf -- members especially, but also club managers and superintendents -- who are afraid to tackle the topic of sustainability because they imagine their current standards are really more harmful to the environment than they are. They can't stand the thought of "going backwards" on those standards, or worse yet, losing control of the debate to the radical environmental lobby. So their solution is to start humming loudly and hope the subject goes away!
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Tom,
There is no question in my mind that Superintendents would embrace a more sustainable approach to golf maintenance now if they knew their jobs were not linked to the current level of expectations.
Members need to understand that the ball will still roll exactly the same even if the greens occasionally look a little less than perfect in appearance. They need to realize a quality surface is about roll, not colour or uniformity.
They need to understand that while this change in approach sounds like a lot of change, the reality is that they will barely notice the difference.
Change will come in Canada through legislation. My fight right now is getting the authorities to allow me enough tree removal to make a lower input style of maintenance possible. Yes tree removal is legislated in many areas here ...
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Ian,
Back when we interviewed for the El Paso job that Faz got, it struck me as odd that the city had both a tree planting ordinance and a water conservation ordinance, even though trees suck up far more moisture than turf. There are just enough examples of legislated environmentalism that are a bit off to make many fearful. Especially at the national level on countries as big as Canada and the US, where "one size fits all" regulations often fail because the issues are way different from coast to coast.
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Tom - thanks. I was not talking about the Olympic job but jobs in general. Really I was just wondering whether the term and the misconstrued meaning of the term has caused problems. At some point in time, Fazio and Nicklaus got pigeonholed for their manufactured, green look. While I would not be for it, I would imagine trends will change again in golf course architecture.
Your discussion on sustainability is interesting. Has anyone written a book on the subject? Are you considering it?
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Is there any chance that the silver lining of today's difficult economic environment is that it will force some of these sustainability and maintenance issues to the front burner?
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Tom,
Using Firekeeper as my last course and because it was named best public course in KS by Brad Klein and GolfWeek recently, so its among my best, here is your breakdown:
Fairways - No Grading
1, 2, 8, 10, 13,17 and the par 3's (5, 7, 13, 16)
Fairways - Limited/Specific Problem Grading
6 (filled and piped major swale in LZ)
9 (Lowered Green subtantially on uphill hole, grading out maybe 100 yards to tie green in)
12(cut swale in front of green for pad fill, and to create "dead ground for vision deception, a la Pinehurst 15)
14 (Slight cut for vision, level fw
15(Level LZ cross slope)
18(Level LZ cross slope, add "save lip" along creek, shaper added grass bunkers beyond the LZ to help visually split the double fw
Fairways with major grading for vision (routed over hills.....)
3, 4, 11.
So, its 10-6-4 on the fw.
We probably differ a bit on green construction, as most had fill added, none were right on grade, and only greens 8, 10, 14 were built balancing on site cut and fill. On other projects, I have had more of those.
As for tees, the numbers would be similar to the greens, but more were cut and fill balance in the gentle hillsides.
Overall, I moved 90,000 CY of bulk dirt there. LUI thinks we went over by 20%, which may be the case, we really didn't measure, but still, that is a pretty low earthmoving number.
Moreover, its not all that unusual for me. Firekeeper replaced Colbert Hills as the top public in KS, and I would have to check the files, but because of rock, we didn't move a lot of earth at all, finding ways to scrape up what we needed. I think you commented on the lack of earthmoving when you visited there. Also, I recall you commenting on how little earth was moved on my first project as an associate with Killian and Nugent - Kemper Lakes.
By contrast, my other KS course (now ranked third public in the state) at Sand Creek Station in Newton sits on a floodplain site, with water table a few feet below the surface, and had a requirement for detention ponds as part of the housing. The earthmoving was over 400,000 CY there. So, as Tim says, a guy does what a guy has to do!
Hope that answers your question, but I always fell into, and was trained as the forced minimalist by budget....
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Jud,
I will say that a combo of budget and rising costs did have an effect on Firekeeper. Aa native americans, they were into all the sustainability we could provide and less disturbance of the land was a given. Oddly, we seemed to be the only ones who focused on that in our presentation.....
It was also the first time I really could see how budgets would eliminate the desire for 7600 or more yard courses. We ended up at 7400, but the back tees are about 15 x 15 feet, and require a 200 yard carry over natives to the fairways to save costs. Still, you have to stretch cart paths irrigation mains all the way around a course, although on a core course, it was much easier than a housing course.
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I've always been sceptical of the various names chosen for different (building) architectural styles, neo this, post that, thingy'ism... as Tom Doak says its just not possible to sum up such complex designs and styles, set in different areas and with different heritage in such a way. The different building styles often manage to do it by having sub genres as it were such as The International Style of Modernism, but even that needs breaking up in all honesty.
Anyway, that aside, I do agree with Ian that Minimalism just isn't the right phrase for the style of golf architecture it is assigned to, especially in relation to other art forms that use the term and that Naturalism is possibly better? Naturalistic is often used in gardening and landscaping but it does grate on me somewhat. I think this has been touched on before somewhere on here, but is it possible that it should be termed Post Modern? Discuss... ;D
A pity that the guys practicing the "X" style of architecture in question don't have the egos 8) that the likes of CBM or MacKenzie had, as they could possibly have taken a leaf from the dutch artists and architects of the post WWI period and called it THE Style!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Stijl
(Note: this is a poor attempt at humour and in no way do I see comparisons between the works of Rietveld and Doak ::) )
Cheers,
James
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Tom - thanks much for your answer in post No. 24. It fits with the picture you described in another thread about the dominant trend in gca in the late 70s and early 80s, when Pete Dye was the go-to guy for turning poor sites into good courses. (I also liked the image of you and Jim having a discussion with Jack N; Jack seems to me a smart fellow, and a direct thinker/talker: his question as to why 'do less' is in fact a good and valid one). At the risk of getting simplistic/boring, another question: can you identify a point in your career wihen the foundational approach you'd decided to take (minimal earth moving) had added to it a second 'layer', i.e. the layer of naturalism (e.g. blending the edges between the found and the made/the natural and the artificial, so that in theory at least the golfer has unlimited options as to how to play the hole, instead of one or more options obviously prescribed by the architect.)? Did you find it a two-step approach, or instead did you find that the latter, N, was inherent in the former, M?
Thanks, I'm really enjoying this practical-philosophical take on the work; it's like Max Behr and RT Jones squished up together.
Peter
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Tom,
There is no question in my mind that Superintendents would embrace a more sustainable approach to golf maintenance now if they knew their jobs were not linked to the current level of expectations.
Members need to understand that the ball will still roll exactly the same even if the greens occasionally look a little less than perfect in appearance. They need to realize a quality surface is about roll, not colour or uniformity.
They need to understand that while this change in approach sounds like a lot of change, the reality is that they will barely notice the difference.
Change will come in Canada through legislation. My fight right now is getting the authorities to allow me enough tree removal to make a lower input style of maintenance possible. Yes tree removal is legislated in many areas here ...
Ian,I think you're spot on about Supers.In my experience,they are only going to espouse sustainability if their Board or Green Chairman backs them up with the membership.Who can blame them not wanting to get crossways with their employers?
If clubs would just get out of the way,Supers would generally deliver a better golf course--and probably with savings in the maintenance budget.
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Tom,
There is no question in my mind that Superintendents would embrace a more sustainable approach to golf maintenance now if they knew their jobs were not linked to the current level of expectations.
Members need to understand that the ball will still roll exactly the same even if the greens occasionally look a little less than perfect in appearance. They need to realize a quality surface is about roll, not colour or uniformity.
They need to understand that while this change in approach sounds like a lot of change, the reality is that they will barely notice the difference.
Change will come in Canada through legislation. My fight right now is getting the authorities to allow me enough tree removal to make a lower input style of maintenance possible. Yes tree removal is legislated in many areas here ...
Ian,I think you're spot on about Supers.In my experience,they are only going to espouse sustainability if their Board or Green Chairman backs them up with the membership.Who can blame them not wanting to get crossways with their employers?
If clubs would just get out of the way,Supers would generally deliver a better golf course--and probably with savings in the maintenance budget.
JMEvensky:
Sadly, I think Ian is right, it's more likely that memberships are going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming to sustainability, via legislation ... and honestly, I don't even see that legislation on the horizon, in the current U.S. political and economic climate.
I agree that many superintendents would do much better on that score if they were just left to their own devices, and backed up by their green committees and board. However, often they pretend that what they're doing is sustainable when they know they could do better, because they need to keep up appearances and they know their bosses don't have their backs.
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Do any of you have experience with Audobon International and their Audobon Cooperative Sanctuary Program (ACSP) program for golf courses?
http://acspgolf.auduboninternational.org/ (http://acspgolf.auduboninternational.org/)
Does bringing in an outfit with the strong brand of Audobon help move the needle on sustainability with the membership?
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In the golf world, defining sustainability is part of the problem.
Most seem to associate sustainability with environmentalism, and environmetalism with reduced course conditions...less chemical, less water, more native areas, wildlife habitat…etc
But, from what I remember about the roots of sustainability, its about the people and the economics as well. Running a business that is sustainable means the economics work.
Sustainability means employment is sustainable and employees make a living wage, reducing turnover and increasing productivity through long-term retention of qualified people.
I think we always run to the ecology/environmental side of things in golf out of the desire to be viewed as “green”. However, IMO, sustainability driven business practices are just as important and should be talked about every bit as much as the environmental side of things.
Using less chemical is great. Using less of everything is better. Using sustainability as a guide is good business.
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To quote John Lennon (and Ferris Bueller quoting John Lennon):
"A person shouldn't believe in an 'ism', they should believe in themselves"
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I agree that many superintendents would do much better on that score if they were just left to their own devices, and backed up by their green committees and board. However, often they pretend that what they're doing is sustainable when they know they could do better, because they need to keep up appearances and they know their bosses don't have their backs.
Agreed.Even if a Super knows his back is covered today,there's no guarantee that it will be tomorrow.The new boss may not be the same as the old boss.
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No architect in their right mind is going to step up and say "I waste my client's money by doing much more than in necessary to build good golf course," especially not in this economy. They are all going to claim to be minimalists (whether by choice or by necessity) and that are all going to claim that they merely did what they had to do in order to create a solid product. To understand the difference in varying approaches one might consider the role of nature in golf and ask why designers bother striving to make a course fit into its natural surrounds at all?
To build on what Tom Doak wrote in post 25 about going back to "the old method" of building golf course, I would suggest that generally nature does a much better job of building golf courses than does man. The best architects realize this and are better able to plan their courses to better utilize all that nature has given, and to understand that they really don't have to do nearly as much as they think they might.
As for the terminology, I don't much like either, but think perhaps one way to distinguish the two terms is to view minimalism as focused on the process, whereas naturalism is more a description of the result.
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The effect of this post didn't immediately lead me to decide whether minimalist or naturalism best described the gca so often debated here.
Reading the comments prompted me to think about the basic human need to answer the question, "What is this thing?"
From there my thoughts ran to the multitudes of names for snow in northern latitudes, picture books for beginning readers, the old saw, "If it quacks like a duck…" and so on. None of those idle thoughts got me any closer to the topic.
Minimalism? Naturalism? Riffing off Tom Doak's reply about being influenced by the way the ODGs designed and constructed courses, I thinkt Old School would be appropriate. Or to spiff it up a bit and borrow from the humanities, Neo-Classical as a nice ring to it.
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A number of years ago I was considering the interrelationship of product and process, and came up with this oversimplyfied graph, although I think I used different terms then:
Artificial Aesthetic
/\
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
Minimal Extensive
<--------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
Alteration Alteration
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
\/
Natural Aesthetic
The idea was to try and place courses where they fit on the graph, to see what could be learned. It didn't gain much traction then and I doubt it will now, but I'll speculate that were we to chart world's best courses, most of the old greats would end up somewhere in the bottom left quadrant. Sort of an extension of the land suitable for golf approach.
Modern courses might present a bit more of a challenge, though, depending upon our understanding of the terms. Where would we place a course like Shadow Creek? Definitely Extensive Alteration, but could we consider it a natural aesthetic if it does not at all fit in its environment?
How about a course like Rock Creek, which (for the most part) uses natural contours and fits about as well as it could into its natural environment, yet it required dealing with boulders which covered much of the site?
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Tom - thanks much for your answer in post No. 24. It fits with the picture you described in another thread about the dominant trend in gca in the late 70s and early 80s, when Pete Dye was the go-to guy for turning poor sites into good courses. (I also liked the image of you and Jim having a discussion with Jack N; Jack seems to me a smart fellow, and a direct thinker/talker: his question as to why 'do less' is in fact a good and valid one). At the risk of getting simplistic/boring, another question: can you identify a point in your career wihen the foundational approach you'd decided to take (minimal earth moving) had added to it a second 'layer', i.e. the layer of naturalism (e.g. blending the edges between the found and the made/the natural and the artificial, so that in theory at least the golfer has unlimited options as to how to play the hole, instead of one or more options obviously prescribed by the architect.)? Did you find it a two-step approach, or instead did you find that the latter, N, was inherent in the former, M?
Thanks, I'm really enjoying this practical-philosophical take on the work; it's like Max Behr and RT Jones squished up together.
Peter
Peter:
I would say that four of my associates -- Tom Mead, Jim Urbina, Bruce Hepner, and Brian Slawnik -- all had a hand in moving me from minimalism to naturalism, in different ways. But I think it took me until we worked on Pacific Dunes to put it all together. Working in the dunes took me back to thinking about how the links courses I saw in Britain melded everything together, as opposed to the Golden Age courses here in the U.S. which had served as more of a model for our courses up to then.
I'm still getting to the point of really understanding the sustainable part, and Tom Mead has been a big help with that. A lot of sustainability is just a matter of practicality, which is sorely lacking in how many modern courses are built. [i.e., Let's ship sand from Ohio down here to Florida!] But that practicality has effects throughout the rest of the project, and I've always understood that. If you don't tear up an area in the construction process, you don't have to irrigate it or re-landscape it or fertilize it -- but you've also preserved the ecology and the microorganisms in the soil, and you've saved another place from being mined, and you've saved the fuel to move the materials from A to B, and the damage that traffic would cause on your site. It's like a domino effect, except we are winding the tape backward and setting the dominoes back up instead of knocking them over in the modern approach.
Sadly, I have yet to have a single client who really appreciates this aspect of what we do, except as how it impacts the bottom line.
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Thanks Tom, much appreciated: on a personal level (for me, I mean) I value learning about how your creative processes and goals have evolved for you over time, and how the input of others played a role in that; on a gca/gca.com level, your posts of the last few days and weeks have helped establish a kind of time-line (and a professional narrative) from the early 80s to now that makes it much clearer to me the practical requirements and artistic goals that first set you on the path, the building approach/process which you then utilized, and the aesthetic that evolved over time. I don't know if you'eve ever written it all down like that before -- and maybe you shouldn't!! And don't worry, neither do I have any plans to set your "narrative" down in stone :)
Peter
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David,
I really like your use of Quadrants here. Using the mathematical model to number them....
(http://image.tutorvista.com/cms/images/38/graphing-quadrants.jpg)
I would think the most desirable courses, at least from a GCA perspective, would be in the bottom left hand corner of Quadrant III, and the least desirable in the top right hand corner of Quadrant I.
However, courses that are in Quadrant IV are still going to be pretty good in my book too, and is really what I think defines "Naturalism" on this site. A nice natural aesthetic, even if means moving a fair amount of dirt to accomplish that.
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David,
However, courses that are in Quadrant IV are still going to be pretty good in my book too, and is really what I think defines "Naturalism" on this site. A nice natural aesthetic, even if means moving a fair amount of dirt to accomplish that.
Maybe, but I am not so sure. I don't think that it is all that easy to fake natural in a manner that produces compelling golf. I can think of a few holes that look natural despite major earth moving (I'm not saying where) but what are some courses where excessive dirt was moved to create what looked to be a completely natural environment?
Also, I'd expect to find some quality courses in what you label as the 2nd quadrant, where the terrain was largely taken to be the way it was, but where the site didn't look all that natural to begin with or where no effort was made to look natural even with the minimal changes made. Perhaps some of the old links courses might qualify, with their use of RR ties, RR's, sheds, walls, and such. Or perhaps US example might be Garden City.
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Now this is a thread to be printed and cherished. Philosophical, practical and insightful.
Thank you gentlemen, yours in frugality,
Colin
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David,
As it pertains to Quadrant IV, it would seem the Rawls course would qualify here. A lot of dirt was moved from what started off as a nearly flat site....and it was turned into a naturalistic golf course. I haven't seen it in person, but this is what I understand from what I've read and seen in person. Others might claim a course like Chambers Bay could qualify...but with an active quarry right next to it, and the massive quarry wall to the east, its seems fairly easy to deduce that its not a natural occurring piece of land. Ditto perhaps for a place like Shadow Creek...if they were blind folded on the way to the course and didn't know they were in the middle of the desert. ;)
As for Quadrant II, nothing is really coming to mind in terms of a course where little earth was moved, yet it still looks fairly artificial in appearance.
P.S. Would Bandon Dunes be considered a QIII course? Dream Golf seemed to indicate a lot of dirt was moved...
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Seems to me that perhaps minimalism is simply one technique to get to naturalism.
Can you get to naturalism, without minimilism? Say you cut down a dune to open a view of the Eye of Ireland and a picturesque coast. That's not mimimalist, but by opening up the natural beauty of the property, could it be described as naturalist? I would think so.
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Steve,
And therein lies the quandry, doesn't it?
In past discussions here, and in general, no one seems to care what problems the architect faced if they don't like the course. Its sort of implied you do what you have to do.
It would seem the same thing applies to the approach taken to get good results, at least to me. How many golfers will know those trees were cut down, if they enjoy the view. Done correctly, how many golfers will know a hill was cut for vision? How many will really notice the tie ins Tom Doak is so concerned about? (Of course, the old schoolteachers always said "If I reached just one student.......)
And, there is room for different styles, approaches and aesthetics. I imagine it would take a pretty hard core minimalist fan to not appreciate Fazio's effort at Shadow Creek, for instance. It's well done. You know its not natural, you know its not minimalistic, its sort of a mix of imitating nature the way Disney or Vegas imitates life, a cartoon charicature, but it works. Especially for Vegas, showing how cultural context might affect our opinions, too.
On the other side is the case of either Torrey Pines or Sand Pines. Somehow, and particularly after Bandon, we "feel" a seaside course ought to be sort of linksy, not a standard course on a great site. Just saying that overall approach does matter, too, in many cases.
In the end, I agree with Tom Doak. While interesting, trying to put courses in quadrants, or neat labels is always frustrating. In a way, I would say that if a label like minimalism emerges and sticks, it might be a pretty good label and its futile to try to change it, even if not "perfect." Lets worry about the label for the next big style, whatever that might be.
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How about Streamsong? How many million CYs were moved for the mining? Does those count if they were the canvas before the golf course started? Are they natural?
While these exercises are interesting, this one doesn't seem to shed much light on JNs comments, "who cares"? Until you add an axis for "fun" vs. "un-fun", what do you learn? If there's a correlation between Quadrant III and fun, you've learned something. If there's a negative correlation b/w Quadrant I and fun, you've learned something else. However since there are surely courses in every Quadrant that rate highly on fun, the limits of this type of analysis become apparent.
Would GCA.com people prefer Quadrant III? I bet if you went to a hyper-natural, hyper-minimalist course, aka a cow pasture where the only dirt moved was the dirt removed to cut a cup, it would receive few stars. Then again, for a few here, that might be a course adored.
The quadrant analyses are interesting in another way. Say you take a subset of course, like your favorites, the worlds Top 100, Jeff Brauer's course, what have you, and plot them out on two dimensions. Now you can learn something, or maybe discover an insight you hadn't considered.
You might do the same on other dimensions as well. Plot your favorite courses on fun x accessibility. Architects renown X price. Strategic interest X difficulty. Maybe you'll learn something about what you, or rafters, or architects, value relative to other concerns.
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Kalen, I haven't seen the Rawls course, but sounds like it would fit in your Quadrant IV. The only question to me is whether it could be considered a truly great course. As I haven't seen it, I don't know.
Similarly another attempt at such a course was the Lido, which was entirely artificial but arguably was meant to imitate what might ideally have existed in a similar setting. CBM viewed it as his chance to play "Creator" but ultimately even CBM recognized and acknowledged that attempts to match nature fall short.
A certain architect once told me that you couldn't have a truly world class golf course without a truly world class site and I have always believed him, although a few courses have caused me to question this somewhat.
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While these exercises are interesting, this one doesn't seem to shed much light on JNs comments, "who cares"? Until you add an axis for "fun" vs. "un-fun", what do you learn? If there's a correlation between Quadrant III and fun, you've learned something. If there's a negative correlation b/w Quadrant I and fun, you've learned something else. However since there are surely courses in every Quadrant that rate highly on fun, the limits of this type of analysis become apparent.
In my opinion, the reason we should care is that nature historically has done a much better job of designing golf courses than has man. This is the practical and non-aesthetic reason for trying to emulate nature when leaving nature alone proves impossible. So doing makes for better golf. Not even tie ins between nature and man are purely aesthetic. They make for better golf.
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In my opinion, the reason we should care is that nature historically has done a much better job of designing golf courses than has man.
David,
I have a problem with this since man or woman always decides what part of nature to keep and what part of nature he or she manipulates. Much of the places we love "appear" untouched by the hand of man or woman but the truth is even the old course has been altered more than most on this site would dare to believe.
Nature supplies more variety and much more intresting shapes than man or woman can possibly create but the designer has always played a role in what you experience.
I think many confuse looking natural with being original.
The architect is simply not getting enough credit from you.
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Andrew, I hear what you are saying and agree that there is nothing close to a purely natural golf course. That said, on the continuum between purely natural and purely artificial the best courses and best features tend toward natural. And where better courses are not natural, those courses tend toward a close emulation of the natural. I don't see either of these things as coincidence. As you said, nature supplies more variety and much more interesting shapes. Our imagination pales in comparison.
I agree that some confuse natural looking with naturally occurring. But I would posit that this is much more likely in a situation where the designer has for the most part gone with the land to the fullest extend possible, and where the designer or builder has seamlessly "tied-in" the work into that which is actually natural. (Or perhaps where the designer made no efforts to hide the artifice so as to distinguish it from that which is naturally occurring.) I won't give away any trade secrets but I have seen some places where so-called "minimalists" have moved tremendous amounts of dirt to make certain things work. It fit so well with everything there it was really is difficult to notice, and my guess is that it very much helped that the movement was limited to certain very problematic areas.
As for whether the architect gets enough credit from me, I guess it would depend upon the architect. I have tremendous respect for certain architects, but often it is more for their exercise of restraint rather than their efforts to play creator.
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In my opinion, the reason we should care is that nature historically has done a much better job of designing golf courses than has man.
David,
I have a problem with this since man or woman always decides what part of nature to keep and what part of nature he or she manipulates. Much of the places we love "appear" untouched by the hand of man or woman but the truth is even the old course has been altered more than most on this site would dare to believe.
Nature supplies more variety and much more intresting shapes than man or woman can possibly create but the designer has always played a role in what you experience.
I think many confuse looking natural with being original.
The architect is simply not getting enough credit from you.
Ian
I agree, Using naturally occurring or left over man-made stuff (walls etc) is architecture if the archie decides to include it in the design. We can debate all day about what is better, either nature or man-made, but what is important is the archie makes the decisions. It always bugs me when folks say TOC's creator is god. No, a lot of work went into creating what we see today and that has everything to do with people.
Ciao
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David,
I'm with Ian and Sean on the basic premise that man makes golf courses, not nature. Even the most basic of the early courses wear the mark af Man, from site selection to the decision to cut a hole here, here, and here. If you call that the extreme of both naturalism, and minimalism, you can start working out along each continuum to locate different practices and results.
I'm curious as to what makes up a result that scores high on artificial?
Is it the presence of cart paths?
Artificial mowing lines?
Push up greens?
Retaining walls?
Rakes?
Houses?
Waterfalls?
Flower arrangements?
Hard to think of anything more artificial than binding a course in a ribbon of concrete, but as Tom pointed out, 2 of the worlds top 30 (or 50) courses do so.
As for artificial landforms, take the recently discussed Short. Yale's 5th is a rectangular push up green surrounded by a sand moat. Clearly, land shaped for purpose, but widely regarded as good architecture, and quite fun for the game.
From an architects standpoint, it may be the greatest feat to build a course that maximizes both naturalism and process? To move a great amount of earth with the result having the appearance that none was moved is agree at testament to the architect's skill. Assuming, of course, that the course is fun to play.
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From an architects standpoint, it may be the greatest feat to build a course that maximizes both naturalism and process? To move a great amount of earth with the result having the appearance that none was moved is agree at testament to the architect's skill. Assuming, of course, that the course is fun to play.
This is the money quote, and why I think that "minimalism" is still a good term.
At the end of the day, you either agree with that quote, or disagree with it strongly. I disagree with it strongly; I think the greatest testament to the architect's skill is to figure out a great course without having to move a thing -- even though it can almost never be done. And I am 100% positive that Bill Coore [and Ben Crenshaw] would agree with my vote.
If you believe that, you're a minimalist. How many other architects really believe it?
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At the end of the day, you either agree with that quote, or disagree with it strongly. I disagree with it strongly; I think the greatest testament to the architect's skill is to figure out a great course without having to move a thing -- even though it can almost never be done. And I am 100% positive that Bill Coore [and Ben Crenshaw] would agree with my vote.
If you believe that, you're a minimalist. How many other architects really believe it?
The architects that charge a fee based on construction documents and % of construction don't. :)
In truth that would be one valuable routing.
Why isn't David's quote a subset of yours?
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Tom D- It would seem that much the real skill would be realizing where to draw the line and exercise restraint. I would think that any good piece of property would inherently have a bunch of great golf holes already there, ready to be discovered in the proper routing. The minimalists seem to have the talent and are willing to devote the considerable time to finding these treasured holes. The Maximalists will either not have the talent or time to do the same and will instead create their own blank canvas in which to paint.
The tricky part (again, part of skill) would seem to be to know when you've changed just enough to achieve a great golf course but not too much to cross that blurry lne in pursuit of a "greater" golf course.
Not sure if those thoughts came out clearly ???
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If you haven't read it in a while and are following this thread there are 2 essays (among many others) on the Renaissance Golf website that are good to revisit from time to time...
The Minimalist Manifesto ... http://dev.brightbridge.net/RGD/selected_essays/play_it_as_it_lies/ (http://dev.brightbridge.net/RGD/selected_essays/play_it_as_it_lies/) and Minimalism Defined... http://dev.brightbridge.net/RGD/thoughts/minimalism_defined/ (http://dev.brightbridge.net/RGD/thoughts/minimalism_defined/)
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From the "Play it as it Lies" essay:
A variety of stances in the fairway is a key challenge of golf, and Nature is much better at providing this variety than the hand of man.
This quote epitomizes to me the money behind the money quote, in the idea that as a craftsman, if the architect has to manufacture a hole, if what is left behind is as though Nature in all her mysteries shaped the land, that is a mark of greatness.
Tom, is that consistent with your approach at the Rawl's course, where from how they describe it on their site, the course was spun from whole cloth to transform a cotton field into plains tumbling into valleys and canyons?
Going back to Ian's question, is the result Minimalist if the result's qualities are Naturalistic, even if the process is invasive?
Chris, I agree that where this gets interesting is when you chart, a la David's Ascii-graph, Minimalist-Maximilist X Bad-Great. If you are trying to maximize Minimalism and Greatness at the same time, that would push you towards the upper left corner of the second quadrant. What do you do when hit that barrier that says you can't get more Great without being less Minimal? Do you stop? Do you, as JN suggests, maximize the Great, (why wouldn't you?)? Or, as Tom suggests in the Minimalist Manifesto, just ignore the process question and encapsulate dirt moving in pursuit of a Minimalist outcome as Minimalist by definition?
The minimalist's objective is to route as many holes as possible whose main features already exist in the landscape, and accent their strategies without overkilling the number of hazards. Sometimes, though, the best solution for the course as a whole may require major earthmoving on a handful of holes to connect the others. That's minimalism, too.
Try this thought:
What if some crazy rich eccentric decided to build an exact, and I mean EXACT, replica of TOC out in at his desert retreat. Laser mapping tools are brought in to capture an exact model of every wrinkle and fold. No expense is spared to duplicate that model on site, including adding giant thermal pumps in massive lakes to create shifting winds, and massive sprayers to simulate rain.
Is the result Minimalist? Naturalistic? Artificial? Great?
Whatever it is, it would certainly seem weird to call it Great, even if the golf values were every bit the same as the golf values at the TOC. Why? Because the greatness is not born out of the place. Again, from the Minimalist Manifesto:
If you want to judge whether a particular designer is really comfortable in the minimalist style, ask him what he does when a hole has no natural feature to build upon. The real minimalist will respond that he's never faced that situation -- he'll always find something, whether it's the length of the hole, or a small hump, existing vegetation, or simply the direction of the prevailing wind -- and expand upon that to create an interesting golf hole.
Replicating TOC violates the essential spirit of Minimalism, it would seem, by failing to first honor the gifts of the space, to accentuate what makes the site unique, to acknowledge the site's sense of place.
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From the "Play it as it Lies" essay:
A variety of stances in the fairway is a key challenge of golf, and Nature is much better at providing this variety than the hand of man.
This quote epitomizes to me the money behind the money quote, in the idea that as a craftsman, if the architect has to manufacture a hole, if what is left behind is as though Nature in all her mysteries shaped the land, that is a mark of greatness.
Tom, is that consistent with your approach at the Rawl's course, where from how they describe it on their site, the course was spun from whole cloth to transform a cotton field into plains tumbling into valleys and canyons?
Going back to Ian's question, is the result Minimalist if the result's qualities are Naturalistic, even if the process is invasive?
Chris, I agree that where this gets interesting is when you chart, a la David's Ascii-graph, Minimalist-Maximilist X Bad-Great. If you are trying to maximize Minimalism and Greatness at the same time, that would push you towards the upper left corner of the second quadrant. What do you do when hit that barrier that says you can't get more Great without being less Minimal? Do you stop? Do you, as JN suggests, maximize the Great, (why wouldn't you?)? Or, as Tom suggests in the Minimalist Manifesto, just ignore the process question and encapsulate dirt moving in pursuit of a Minimalist outcome as Minimalist by definition?
The minimalist's objective is to route as many holes as possible whose main features already exist in the landscape, and accent their strategies without overkilling the number of hazards. Sometimes, though, the best solution for the course as a whole may require major earthmoving on a handful of holes to connect the others. That's minimalism, too.
Try this thought:
What if some crazy rich eccentric decided to build an exact, and I mean EXACT, replica of TOC out in at his desert retreat. Laser mapping tools are brought in to capture an exact model of every wrinkle and fold. No expense is spared to duplicate that model on site, including adding giant thermal pumps in massive lakes to create shifting winds, and massive sprayers to simulate rain.
Is the result Minimalist? Naturalistic? Artificial? Great?
Whatever it is, it would certainly seem weird to call it Great, even if the golf values were every bit the same as the golf values at the TOC. Why? Because the greatness is not born out of the place. Again, from the Minimalist Manifesto:
If you want to judge whether a particular designer is really comfortable in the minimalist style, ask him what he does when a hole has no natural feature to build upon. The real minimalist will respond that he's never faced that situation -- he'll always find something, whether it's the length of the hole, or a small hump, existing vegetation, or simply the direction of the prevailing wind -- and expand upon that to create an interesting golf hole.
Replicating TOC violates the essential spirit of Minimalism, it would seem, by failing to first honor the gifts of the space, to accentuate what makes the site unique, to acknowledge the site's sense of place.
David:
I would not call The Rawls Course minimalist, and I'm not sure I would call it naturalist, either. It's simply the result of taking a minimalist architect to a dead-flat site and telling him to create something from scratch. We did try to create a landscape for the course that included a lot of random elements, but it's impossible for me to judge how well we managed to pull that off.
As to your last example, I've argued with Ran about it on more than one occasion, but to me, a great course has to have something about it that is really unique. Usually, that is derived from the site it inhabits, as it's difficult to keep inventing new design styles for each new project.
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Tom D- It would seem that much the real skill would be realizing where to draw the line and exercise restraint. I would think that any good piece of property would inherently have a bunch of great golf holes already there, ready to be discovered in the proper routing. The minimalists seem to have the talent and are willing to devote the considerable time to finding these treasured holes. The Maximalists will either not have the talent or time to do the same and will instead create their own blank canvas in which to paint.
The tricky part (again, part of skill) would seem to be to know when you've changed just enough to achieve a great golf course but not too much to cross that blurry lne in pursuit of a "greater" golf course.
Not sure if those thoughts came out clearly ???
Chris:
That came out perfectly, to my reading. You are pretty much always going to have to change something on the site in order to make a great golf course -- Mr. Nicklaus' question was essentially, once you've started that, why choose to stop somewhere else on minimalist grounds, if you really think you could make the course better by doing more?
The problem with that approach is that, if left to their own devices, many architects would just keep changing the ground on every hole until their golf courses all looked about the same. That's one reason I have an issue with golf course rankings in general -- if you try to define what "perfect" is, then you are telling everyone they should keep changing things to work toward a particular goal. And in that respect, I would tend to agree with Mike Young's view that the ODG architects didn't really have everything down as pat as their fans today believe -- their genius was precisely that though they didn't know exactly where they were going in pursuit of greatness, they made some great choices about when to stop.
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Tom - I think opening that door absolves the architect from having to think outside his comfort zone (i.e. the kinds of holes he tends to like and has had success with in the past.) With writers or musicians or painters, staying within one's comfort zone may produce repetitive and boring work, but it may also produce works of greatness (since the subject/themes are completely of the artist's own choosing, and so he may one day choose particularly well and thus bring to bear his well-worn craft on a powerful theme/narrative). In gca, on the other hand, not leaving one's comfort zone can only mean one thing -- that the resulting course can't possibly spring up from, or best utilize, the site at hand (a site which in most cases is not of the architect's choice). Since each new site is, by definition, a brand new experience/canvas for that architect, the site actually does take the architect outside the realm of the known/familiar/comfortable -- unless, that is, he immediately chooses to open the door to radically re-shaping the site into a much more familar form. The ODGs for the most part didn't have that choice, and rarely opened that door; and the results are that sometimes ,yes, the canvas proved too much of a challenge, too far outside their comfort zone -- but that, at many other times, they accepted and rose to the challenge and thus produced greatness.
Peter
PS - I've read here that Mr. Nicklaus' styles/courses have evolved over time, and that even in the last few years he's been doing some work that, for him, is quite different. I think that's a testament to the man -- for someone in his 70s who has worked in the profession for so long and with so much success to even be willing to go outside his comfort zone is admirable, and the sign of a top-flight professional.
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"...but to me, a great course has to have something about it that is really unique. Usually, that is derived from the site it inhabits, as it's difficult to keep inventing new design styles for each new project."
Tom, this to me is the money quote even if I can't quite get my head around it. Do you really mean a great course has to be unique in some way? Perhaps you are right and your idea of unique drills in deeper to details than I would consider. Could you please explain this concept further? For instance, you clearly think Muirfield is great so you must think it has unique qualities. Use Muirfield in your explanation if possible.
Ciao
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Tom Doak,
Not sure minimalistic process has anything to do with rankings, and of course, there were no real rankings (although there were some best of lists even back then, by esteemed golf writers) so the ODG just did what they thought was best for their golf courses, no?
I think "perfect" varies from site to site, and the potential to reach it varies from near impossible on some, to nearly attainable on others. (In other words, agreeing with the notion that you need a great site to have a great golf course.
Chris,
Some would say a very good golf course on a very average site is the real test of an architects skill, but I agree in most cases, knowing when a bit more is too much is always a big key to great design.
As per above, there really are no perfect routings. On most sites, there could be a dozen different good ones. How to choose? TD might choose on the basis of which one minimizes work. Someone else might favor a routing with the most spectacular "signature hole" while accepting that there is more work to do on perhaps five other holes. Someone else might choose one based on it being the safest, the longest, or the shortest to walk from green to tee. Obviously, most routings have most of those things, but the final choice between similar or nearly equal but different routings comes down to what the architect favors.
Once set with the routing (save perhaps minor tweaks, although from time to time you read about big changes later) the same process starts all over again in feature design, with different criteria. I suppose the minimalistic grading work for any green site, for example includes:
1. Grading to:
Level (decrease or increasing the natural slope) of most of the green area to 1.5-3% (or whatever....)
Raise or Lower for Vision
Cut off up hill drainage from crossing the green
Create ADA ramp for access as required by law
Tie any surrounds back into existing grade.
From here, I suppose even Bill, Ben and Tom would agree that if you were going to do that much, you would grade to add bunkers or other hazards (mounds, banks, bumps, slopes) for strategic interest, trying to use what was there, but modifying for better golf. Ditto for the actual green surface. Minimalism might be creating the functional green, but why not add interesting contours while grading the sub grade and/or coring for a sand base?
The real difference, I surmise betweeen TD and JN would be what would influence the above changes or more work. TD might be more influenced by the nature of the surrounding grade while JN might be more influenced by how the wind affects a shot, or the fact that the last approach favored a fade, and this one might need to favor a draw, etc.
So, in a way, minimalism is a state of mind, a belief in what is more important. The question for my "theoretical example" is what makes for a better golf course? Follow the land, or create the shots? In many cases, shot balance can be created, and there is no such thing as "perfect shot balance" nor the need for a course to balance left and right shots, etc. (although Pete Dye always tried to do this, and most other gca's try, if not as hard)
Like I said before, minimalism MUST be the best description of the subtle differences these guys do, because it came out of someone's mouth, and it has stuck for 10 years or more.
Fascinating subject.....as usual, no clear answer.
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Like I said before, minimalism MUST be the best description of the subtle differences these guys do, because it came out of someone's mouth, and it has stuck for 10 years or more.
Michael Jackson called "himself" The King of Pop. It was repeated after by the man who interviewed him during another interview. Others simply added the tag line to their own copy since it was what they heard. Eventually the label Jackson choose stuck. I prefer Wacko Jacko myself...
I would love to find out the origins of the the label.
Anyone know who coined the phrase and when?
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No...I don't think you can...they are hardly synonymous. I would leave them alone and let each evolve on their own. There's room IMO.
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Like I said before, minimalism MUST be the best description of the subtle differences these guys do, because it came out of someone's mouth, and it has stuck for 10 years or more.
Michael Jackson called "himself" The King of Pop. It was repeated after by the man who interviewed him during another interview. Others simply added the tag line to their own copy since it was what they heard. Eventually the label Jackson choose stuck. I prefer Wacko Jacko myself...
I would love to find out the origins of the the label.
Anyone know who coined the phrase and when?
The origin of the minimalist label? I thought everyone knew that. It was in a piece that Ron Whitten wrote for GOLF WORLD. I've still got it in my office, but I'm on the road for a few days so I can't tell you the date right now; I think it was from 1994 or possibly 1995. It was written while Coore and Crenshaw were building Sand Hills, I think. The picture on the cover of the magazine was of Stonewall ... which gave me a good laugh, because they used a picture of the hole where I had to move the MOST dirt I'd ever moved, on the 8th hole which we'd inherited from Tom Fazio's routing. :)
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"...but to me, a great course has to have something about it that is really unique. Usually, that is derived from the site it inhabits, as it's difficult to keep inventing new design styles for each new project."
Tom, this to me is the money quote even if I can't quite get my head around it. Do you really mean a great course has to be unique in some way? Perhaps you are right and your idea of unique drills in deeper to details than I would consider. Could you please explain this concept further? For instance, you clearly think Muirfield is great so you must think it has unique qualities. Use Muirfield in your explanation if possible.
Ciao
Sean:
Yes, I believe that the best courses each have a character of their own. [Uniqueness is the ideal, but that's a pretty high bar -- and if you succeed at it someone else will just immediately try to copy what you did, anyway.] Just think about Pine Valley, Augusta, and St. Andrews ... can you think of three golf courses that are more different than those?
I think Muirfield achieves this, between the placement and quality of its bunkering, the variation of its routing in terms of direction which beats most other links hands down, and the views that you get across the Firth of Forth from the tilted plane of its site. There isn't another links that feels much like it.
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Tom - I think opening that door absolves the architect from having to think outside his comfort zone (i.e. the kinds of holes he tends to like and has had success with in the past.) With writers or musicians or painters, staying within one's comfort zone may produce repetitive and boring work, but it may also produce works of greatness (since the subject/themes are completely of the artist's own choosing, and so he may one day choose particularly well and thus bring to bear his well-worn craft on a powerful theme/narrative). In gca, on the other hand, not leaving one's comfort zone can only mean one thing -- that the resulting course can't possibly spring up from, or best utilize, the site at hand (a site which in most cases is not of the architect's choice). Since each new site is, by definition, a brand new experience/canvas for that architect, the site actually does take the architect outside the realm of the known/familiar/comfortable -- unless, that is, he immediately chooses to open the door to radically re-shaping the site into a much more familar form. The ODGs for the most part didn't have that choice, and rarely opened that door; and the results are that sometimes ,yes, the canvas proved too much of a challenge, too far outside their comfort zone -- but that, at many other times, they accepted and rose to the challenge and thus produced greatness.
Peter
PS - I've read here that Mr. Nicklaus' styles/courses have evolved over time, and that even in the last few years he's been doing some work that, for him, is quite different. I think that's a testament to the man -- for someone in his 70s who has worked in the profession for so long and with so much success to even be willing to go outside his comfort zone is admirable, and the sign of a top-flight professional.
Peter:
I had to think about what you wrote for a little while, but you are right. For Jack Nicklaus, going outside his comfort zone meant doing less sometimes, and he has tried ... although I think he still struggles with it, philosophically.
For me, it was precisely the opposite. Going out of my comfort zone meant being open to doing a bit MORE on a couple of holes, to make the whole course work out better. I didn't really have the confidence to do that until after Pacific Dunes, and I still struggle with it philosophically on a project like The Rawls Course, where 100% of everything has to be created. [That's just not my cup of tea, just like I can't imagine Jack would ever do a course where he moved NOTHING.] But, gaining the confidence to do MORE when more was really beneficial, was a huge step forward for me. The fourth hole at Tumble Creek is one example where making a big change on a single hole made six holes around it fit perfectly; the seventh at Old Macdonald is another; and there are several examples of it at Ballyneal. Streamsong will have a couple, as well.
These are not examples of just fighting grade to make a hole work -- they are bigger leaps of faith, to gain something larger for the course as a whole, ironically because they saved us from having to fight grade on some of the surrounding holes.
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What a great thread. I've spent a couple days digesting it and trying to collect my opinions into a coherent idea and I haven't been able to. I am--and have been for a couple years now--dealing with issues of reconciliation between what I consider competing ideals.
--How can someone espouse the ideals of minimalism/naturalism and think CB Macdonald or Seth Raynor were "right" about their theories?
--Why doesn't anyone ever talk about the gradual but highly apparent assimilation or softening of features on older golf courses? This must be part of the reason that many golden age courses blend so well. Right? The ODG's get too much credit for the maturity of their golf courses.
--Why did minimalism--as it is popularly known--become pigeonholed into a particular aesthetic? That's not what it is about at all!
--Does a man enjoy discovering something wonderful or is he more interested in experiencing something wonderful? By the way, I'm becoming more cynical about this question and think its answer will define golf architecture's future.
--Most importantly, is the golf ball's reaction to the land more important than the manner in which the land was crafted? Again, the answer for the vast majority of golfers scares me for the future of my idea of golf.
I am in the process of finalizing my thesis in my masters program. When I saw Tom write the quote below in post #43, it encapsulated what I am trying to do. Interestingly, I can't find a single professor that is willing to commit to it as a good idea. Even worse, I am having a very hard time being innovative enough in finding a way to quantitatively analyze the idea of minimalism. This is the crux of minimalism's ambiguity and is why I consider it NOT in the mainstream, which is opposite to Ian's opinion that it is. I don't think anyone has been able to elegantly and simply identify why it is better to build a golf course in the manner quoted below. This saddens me, because in my mind, it should be self-evident that caring about the land and only being as intrusive as is necessary to build a fun golf hole is the right way to do it. The opposite school of thought seems like hacking off an arm because you have a splinter in your index finger.
I'm still getting to the point of really understanding the sustainable part...A lot of sustainability is just a matter of practicality, which is sorely lacking in how many modern courses are built...But that practicality has effects throughout the rest of the project, and I've always understood that. If you don't tear up an area in the construction process, you don't have to irrigate it or re-landscape it or fertilize it -- but you've also preserved the ecology and the microorganisms in the soil, and you've saved another place from being mined, and you've saved the fuel to move the materials from A to B, and the damage that traffic would cause on your site. It's like a domino effect, except we are winding the tape backward and setting the dominoes back up instead of knocking them over in the modern approach.
Sadly, I have yet to have a single client who really appreciates this aspect of what we do, except as how it impacts the bottom line.
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In my early years I always assumed that the more dirt you moved on the golf course the better the outcome.
Then I read a quote in one of my favorite golf books about 20 years ago and it really changed my outlook on golf course design.
It reads something like this.
"When we build golf courses we are remodeling the face of nature, and it should be remembered that the greatest and fairest things are done by nature and the lesser by art"
Robert Hunter
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Ben,
How about taking the minimalist and sustainable GCA story and framing it through economic history? Look at the early links, the golden age boom years, the great depression, advances in engineering and technology, the dark ages, bubble real estate courses, the ascendance of the Minimalists etc. and how these eras helped or hindered minimalist and sustainable tendencies. The interesting question is whether or not it is perhaps through today's economic realities, rather than a liberal environmental lobby or a niche aesthetic movement that we may come full circle and these issues might be accepted by the mainstream golfing constituency as the status quo (i.e the money talks/bullsh*t walks thesis). If you can build a golf course for less money and the result is a course that's less expensive and more fun to play, as well as having a smaller environmental footprint, it's a win/win. And you can spiv your way into a joint degree in Economics as well! ;)
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Jud,
Of course, there has always been a spectrum of courses built in any era. And at the high end, it really doesn't matter as much what the cost to build is. And, the middle 80% have always been minimalists, functionalists, or whatever. The label minimalism only matters at the top end, where marketing your course or marketing your name as an architect serves a big purpose, which is to generate more interest, more money, etc.
Maybe its just a marketing tag, more than most.
As TD says, he is willing to make big changes to one hole to minimize changes to another five, a situation I can recall many times over in my career. So, most would still call him a minimalist, or that a minimalist approach. But I can see JN making one big change to leave another six and he wouldn't get the same response, at least here. It goes from "Oh, TD moved earth on only one hole" to "Can you believe JN had to move earth on one hole?" So, its marketing.
I only hinted at the difference in approaches that define the two, and TD could sure elaborate more, if he cared to. I think most architects (save Fazio, Dye and a few others) on most good sites route to follow the land, and most come up with 10-15 holes that need little alteration other than building greens, tees and bunkers. Of course, some may level cross slopes on the fw more or less, etc. cut off more drainage, more or less, etc.
The more I think about it the more I think minimalism is more how the gca does his features. Does he start by following the land and work "good golf" in it, but rarely at the expense of moving the minimum earth, or does he think in terms of certain golf shots, and cares less about the natural ground? In the end, two gca's could be given the same site, routing, etc. and still build very diffrent golf courses, like Doak inheriting a Faz routing at Stonewall or him collaborating with JN at Sebonic.
And to be honest, either type of architect has to think about both anyway, and in the end, a great design solution balances the give and take somewhere in the middle. After all, design/landscape architecture is modifying the natural environment for a specific use. Leaving it as is is called a nature preserve! So, its a matter of deciding what is more important to you as gca, but in the end, you do have to provide a playable golf course that drains, etc. and do what you have to do.
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Jeff, do you find a paradox that many of the principles abhorred in "Dark ages" designs were, in fact the same "Minimalist" principles now being lauded?
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Jeff,
You do bring up a valid point that the vast majority of the discussion here is about a small sliver of courses. However, one does have to consider how that top echelon impacts the entire food chain.
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Jeff, do you find a paradox that many of the principles abhorred in "Dark ages" designs were, in fact the same "Minimalist" principles now being lauded?
Tim,
Completely disagree on this one.
This piece by Max Behr talks about the Dark Ages of design:
"The concern of the architect should be positive and have solely to do with what a golfer should do. His mission is not that or a moralist, the principle word of whose vocabulary is DON”T. The golfer should not be made to feel that he must renounce, that the primary object for him is to conquer his faults. It is not for the architect to inform him he played badly. That is for the professional. No, the mission of the architect is that of a leader. By the development of his hazards he exhorts the golfer to do his best, enticing him at times ‘to shoot the bones for the whole works.’ Thus he instills the golfer a spirit of conquest by presenting him with definite objectives upon which he must concentrate. It is for the golfer to stamp his law upon the ground. It is no way the business of the architect to stamp his law upon the golfer. But thus it is in most cases. The penal school of golf spells death to that spirit of independence, life and freedom which we are all seeking, and which we should find in all places of our recreation.”
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Jud,
No doubt. Floyd Farley, Don Herfort, etc. etc. etc. were creating minimalistic courses across the Midwest for years. Before that, it was Tom Bendelow, etc. Maybe we should call those funtionalists, but the real news was that TD, CC and a few others created these kind of courses in the belief and hope that they could compete in the high end of the course spectrum.
Actually, they kinda didn't, at least with the traditional developer, at least for a while. It took a new kind of developer, like Mike Keiser doing a new type of course - destination golf (well, new take on an older concept) to give this style its voice. I recall a quote something like Sandhills was the perfect site for CC, and their style might not work on other sites that aren't as good. I am not sure, but I think Bill C said that himself. (If not, I am sure someone will tell me!)
Anyone know how many housing courses TD, CC and others did? BTW, I think we could include GNorman in the minimalist class, could we not? Most of his courses move very little earth, at least the ones I have seen. I think much of his work is housing/minimalist - cost, style and name got him hired.
Tim,
Not sure what you mean there......
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Ian,
Interesting quote and it makes me think that perhaps the term you are looking for isn't naturalism, its traditionalism - CC for example openly do things a certain way because the ODG did them that way.
Interesting in that in design school we are taught to define a problem and solve it. There are sure areas where today's challenges are different than the old days, and we should probably approach things differently.
It would seem that CC simply chose to apply that style to their routings, whereas a JN, for example, had applied a different style - cone shaped mounds at Grand Cypress or Scottish style, etc. Heck, for whatever reason, they could have applied the TOC style, the Dick Wilson style or some new style no one had ever saw or heard of. But, every architect looks around and applies what they think worked best, and figure their own take on it will make them unique, no?
Now, the whole style question intrigues me. In essence, the early americans were doing things completely differently than it looked in Scotland, as they adapted to new climates in America. Could minimalism really be nostalgism, as we adopt a design style from an earlier time that connotes a better feeling to us?
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I think these last few posts, certainly show that there were plenty of Quadrant II courses (high minimalism, high artificial) back in the day when they built cops, tear drops, square bunkers and greens, etc.
Sure they were still very minimalist, but many of them certainly weren't anywhere close to being naturalistic.
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Kalen,
Is a Raynor course in that quadrant? Can a course with greens built up 10 feet be minimalistic? Not sure, and BTW, the "traditionalism" term accounts for both, with a Brian Silva and others mimicking Raynor, while others mimic Ross, mac, etc. all with their own new twists of course.
BTW, the other thing that this discussion really ignores is the 80-100 years of changes to those old courses. Given surrounding subdivisions, etc. is it wise to not grade fw to control drainage because the old guys didn't, knowing that was often corrected later with tiles, pipes, etc? Its certainly cheaper to do it right up front, but its not minimalism!
That would be more like traditional with a (modern) twist......
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After following all of this closely over the last few days it seems to me that what makes the biggest difference in all of this is: confidence in the routing.
The rest appears to me to be a product of the individual designers process: the tools they use on a given site, the approach to details and finish work, and the language used to explain the whole thing.
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Kalen,
Is a Raynor course in that quadrant? Can a course with greens built up 10 feet be minimalistic? Not sure, and BTW, the "traditionalism" term accounts for both, with a Brian Silva and others mimicking Raynor, while others mimic Ross, mac, etc. all with their own new twists of course.
BTW, the other thing that this discussion really ignores is the 80-100 years of changes to those old courses. Given surrounding subdivisions, etc. is it wise to not grade fw to control drainage because the old guys didn't, knowing that was often corrected later with tiles, pipes, etc? Its certainly cheaper to do it right up front, but its not minimalism!
That would be more like traditional with a (modern) twist......
Jeff,
I would guess there were also some that were in Quadrant I as well, in addition to Quadrant IV courses.
But I'm also guessing even a green that was built up 10 feet, still results in a lot less dirt moved when compared to today's modern standards when entire fairways are moved/shaped.
My only point was that a lot of those early courses certainly don't appear naturalistic based on the features put in the ground that seem to be rarely used today. And it makes sense in the context of not having the ability to move significant amounts of dirt, so they only moved smaller amounts of dirt where it really counted. Specifically, in LZs that most players will be near and in and around the greens.
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Kalen,
I understand your basic point. Part of it is the landscape architecture thought that squares = built, and curves = natural. Not sure how the early designers, even if amateurs, ever got into geometrics.
I agree that the basic premise of the Golden Age was to route so that the only earthmoving required was to build greens, tees, and bunkers where required/desired. Using horses and finally smaller dozers, they sure didn't move as much, in general, mostly because the economics weren't there to do that.
Over time, pipe and drainage became more manageable cost wise (but not until the late 1980's) and designers began using that technology. There is an old saw about the cost of drainage equaling the cost of earthmoving, being a good test of efficient design in terms of drainage (Bridge engineers always say the cost of piers ought to be similar to the cost of the span) and that dynamic changed with the advent of plastic pipe that was easily installed, yet durable. (So, maybe we can blame all of modern architecture on the movie the Graduate....one word son, plastics!)
That said, I believe even most minimalist gca's understand the importance of drainage and don't merely copy the old way, in cases where the new way is necessary or better for that situation. Drainage is drainage, and so important to get right, and there is less tolerance for a wet course than in yesteryear, no doubt.
So, it may not have come full circle, but full upward helix.
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Jeff,
Interesting comments on the big shift.
I half wonder if back during the pre-golden age that "Artificial" wasn't the "in-look" for tees, greens, and bunkers. I would compare it to the 50s and 60s when America was building minimal, cold, concrete exterior, squared off, drabbish looking stuff, which everyone seemed to love at the time because it was the new fad.
Perhaps square/artificial was "in" as a symbol/extension of mankind conquering the environment, being master of his domain, and imposing his will as desired.
And then the Golden Age of design was the resulting shift away from that time period, when emphasis was once again placed back on a natural aesthetic.
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Kalen, I think there was some of that "man vs nature" kind of stuff going on. And, in the 1950's, I recall RB Harris and others writing of "streamlined golf course" much like the streamlined trains and jet plans so prevalent in that era and capturing imagination of Americans. So, the big picture does influence design styles.
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Above Peter had an interesting observation that Nicklaus' willingness to change his approach may indicate he is a "top flight professional." That may well be the case with Nicklaus, but I am left wondering if the change in approach of many mainstream architects isn't more a result of a rebranding and repositioning as a result of the economy and the success that some architects like Doak, CC, and Hanse have had with minimalism. These guys have been on a real roll, and now suddenly everyone is a minimalist, and lots of frilly or rough edged bunkers have popped up on courses by designers who in the past were the antithesis of minimalism, as if adopting the "natural" look somehow qualifies them as minimalist? I am not buying it.
And even here on the website we have seen quite a bit of this lately. I was amazed that some argued that the approaches of various Olympic course finalists were really not all that different, as if the approach and product of the respective teams of Tom Doak and Gil Hanse over the past few decades are pretty much interchangeable with the approach and product of Palmer and Player! And now we see this push to incorporate the vast majority of designers into minimalism with this notion that every designer who doesn't work with an unlimited budget has been practicing minimalism by necessity or minimalism by budget? Isn't that a bit like rebranding those who cannot get laid despite their best efforts as celibate by necessity?
Call me a cynic (I've been called worse) but I for one am not buying this notion of minimalism by necessity or minimalism by budget. If clients won't pay a designer to screw up a natural site as much has the designer might like, then that designer is a minimalist? I don't think so. While huge budget projects might get all the attention, others have proven that it doesn't take all that much money to strip the inherent natural qualities out a site and create just another decent but forgettable course. Building mainstream spec. greens that have nothing to do with the lay of the land is one way of accomplishing this. Selective grading or filling of a few potentially interesting natural features that don't fit the mold is another. Elevating all the tees or being a slave to absolute visibility might sometimes be another. Go back all the way to the first dark age and you find examples of designers and/or builders stripping the interest and quirk out of golf courses by flattening green sites, building cross hazards at set intervals, and lining the sides of fairways with traps. These were not minimalists even given the relative low cost, as their goal was to force the randomness out of nature and to try and make golf something more uniform.
And this I think is where I think we come full circle, back to the original post and the link (if any) between minimalism and naturalism-- not necessarily aesthetic naturalism but functional naturalism. Minimalists sincerely believe that doing less rather than more oftentimes produces the best golf courses regardless of budget. I think they have hit on the practical and functional reason why we value the natural (even the imitation of the natural) in golf --the natural often produces a better product. If you are a minimalist by necessity - if you would do more with a bigger budget - then you aren't really a minimalist at all, are you? And won't the product necessarily reflect this different belief system no matter what the budget?
To be frank (as if I am ever not) there is something offensive about this notion of self described minimalists by necessity glomming onto the minimalist movement and attempting to blur the real differences between approaches. As I see it, those who pioneered the modern minimalist approach (on some of their courses at least) are leading to a rethinking of how courses ought to be built, from site selection, to routing, to grading, drainage, to green and feature construction, etc. To solely focus on the size of the budget and to lump the "80%" of mainstream architects in with them oversimplifies and unfairly diminishes what they have accomplished and what they continue to accomplish.
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And now we see this push to incorporate the vast majority of designers into minimalism with this notion that every designer who doesn't work with an unlimited budget has been practicing minimalism by necessity or minimalism by budget? Isn't that a bit like rebranding those who cannot get laid despite their best efforts as celibate by necessity?
Whew -- I am glad I was a leader of the minimalist movement, instead of the alternative! :)
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Maybe its just a marketing tag, more than most.
As TD says, he is willing to make big changes to one hole to minimize changes to another five, a situation I can recall many times over in my career. So, most would still call him a minimalist, or that a minimalist approach. But I can see JN making one big change to leave another six and he wouldn't get the same response, at least here. It goes from "Oh, TD moved earth on only one hole" to "Can you believe JN had to move earth on one hole?" So, its marketing.
I only hinted at the difference in approaches that define the two, and TD could sure elaborate more, if he cared to.
Okay, I care to elaborate.
It's not just marketing. Jaeger got it right. It's routing.
A lot of architects just aren't that good at routing. They came up in an era where it was assumed that earthmoving would fix everything, and the site wasn't going to be very good anyway, so why bother? So they never learned to work on the routing to make the most advantage of the ground. Do you really think they have all suddenly learned to be great at routing in the past five years, now that the tide has changed? I don't. They are just building frilly-edged bunkers and calling themselves minimalists, the same way they built mounds 25 years ago and called it "Scottish".
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Do you really think they have all suddenly learned to be great at routing in the past five years, now that the tide has changed? I don't. They are just building frilly-edged bunkers and calling themselves minimalists, the same way they built mounds 25 years ago and called it "Scottish".
Thank you Tom.
It certainly takes longer than 5 years to learn how to be a great router - and it has to be ones goal.
The new routings that I've seen this year aren't much better than the industries older ones.
Cheers
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The better the routing the better the golf holes and cohesiveness of the golf course
The better the routing the easier to drain and irrigate
The better the routing the easier to maintain
The better the routing the cheaper to construct
The better the routing the shorter the walk and the faster the pace of play
The better the routing the more sustainable including economics - price and profit
I don't think it is the price of plastic or a bunch of cookie cutter frilly edged bunkers
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Mike
Curious, why 5 years ?
Niall
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Above Peter had an interesting observation that Nicklaus' willingness to change his approach may indicate he is a "top flight professional." That may well be the case with Nicklaus, but I am left wondering if the change in approach of many mainstream architects isn't more a result of a rebranding and repositioning as a result of the economy and the success that some architects like Doak, CC, and Hanse have had with minimalism. These guys have been on a real roll, and now suddenly everyone is a minimalist, and lots of frilly or rough edged bunkers have popped up on courses by designers who in the past were the antithesis of minimalism, as if adopting the "natural" look somehow qualifies them as minimalist? I am not buying it.
And even here on the website we have seen quite a bit of this lately. I was amazed that some argued that the approaches of various Olympic course finalists were really not all that different, as if the approach and product of the respective teams of Tom Doak and Gil Hanse over the past few decades are pretty much interchangeable with the approach and product of Palmer and Player! And now we see this push to incorporate the vast majority of designers into minimalism with this notion that every designer who doesn't work with an unlimited budget has been practicing minimalism by necessity or minimalism by budget? Isn't that a bit like rebranding those who cannot get laid despite their best efforts as celibate by necessity?
Call me a cynic (I've been called worse) but I for one am not buying this notion of minimalism by necessity or minimalism by budget. If clients won't pay a designer to screw up a natural site as much has the designer might like, then that designer is a minimalist? I don't think so. While huge budget projects might get all the attention, others have proven that it doesn't take all that much money to strip the inherent natural qualities out a site and create just another decent but forgettable course. Building mainstream spec. greens that have nothing to do with the lay of the land is one way of accomplishing this. Selective grading or filling of a few potentially interesting natural features that don't fit the mold is another. Elevating all the tees or being a slave to absolute visibility might sometimes be another. Go back all the way to the first dark age and you find examples of designers and/or builders stripping the interest and quirk out of golf courses by flattening green sites, building cross hazards at set intervals, and lining the sides of fairways with traps. These were not minimalists even given the relative low cost, as their goal was to force the randomness out of nature and to try and make golf something more uniform.
And this I think is where I think we come full circle, back to the original post and the link (if any) between minimalism and naturalism-- not necessarily aesthetic naturalism but functional naturalism. Minimalists sincerely believe that doing less rather than more oftentimes produces the best golf courses regardless of budget. I think they have hit on the practical and functional reason why we value the natural (even the imitation of the natural) in golf --the natural often produces a better product. If you are a minimalist by necessity - if you would do more with a bigger budget - then you aren't really a minimalist at all, are you? And won't the product necessarily reflect this different belief system no matter what the budget?
To be frank (as if I am ever not) there is something offensive about this notion of self described minimalists by necessity glomming onto the minimalist movement and attempting to blur the real differences between approaches. As I see it, those who pioneered the modern minimalist approach (on some of their courses at least) are leading to a rethinking of how courses ought to be built, from site selection, to routing, to grading, drainage, to green and feature construction, etc. To solely focus on the size of the budget and to lump the "80%" of mainstream architects in with them oversimplifies and unfairly diminishes what they have accomplished and what they continue to accomplish.
BINGO
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Ian, Jeff - I was referring to courses buit in the 60's (wasn't Behr gone by then?). Courses where the only grading was done for greens, tees, and bunkers or to to maybe fill in a wet depressed area. Fairways were left as is for the most part. Instead of building ridges and mounds for separation, trees were planted. While these courses were essentiay done with a minimum of earthwork (frugal?) the resut was a lot of courses that lack interest (to me at least) if they weren't done on exceptional pieces of property.
Nail, 5 years? we depends on how many you do over a period of time and have the opportunity to witness the end result and ascertain where you succeeded and where you could have done better. "Experience is a dear school, but ony fools will learn". (something my mom used to say).
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Mike
Curious, why 5 years ?
Niall
Practice &
Very few contemporaries to learn from
Tom has studied a lot of old great routings, not just the bunkers
The firms that Tom is referring to have long ingrained habits with minimal opportunities to try new processes
I don't think many firms are going to ask Tom or Bill to tutor them
Tom has described the routing process as a significant engineering problem, as well as an artistic one.
Not many can do both.
This field has a very high bar for entry with very few opportunities to route a golf course and see how it turns out.
Cheers
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Good thread. It has clarified for me what 'minimalist' gca means.
A course that appears to be 'natural' is not sufficient. It matters how it got there. Minimal earth moving is essential, in part because of environmental and sustainability benefits, and in part because it tends to result in features that are more under-stated, less flashy. A look that takes more courage to build than the eye candy stuff.
All of which puts tremendous pressure on the routing of the course. On a minimalist course, errors in routing can't be fixed ex post by moving a lot of dirt or building new features. Because to do so would mean it's no longer, by definition, a minimalist course.
In short, it's harder to build a minimalist course than a merely natural course.
Bob
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"To be frank (as if I am ever not) there is something offensive about this notion of self described minimalists by necessity glomming onto the minimalist movement and attempting to blur the real differences between approaches. As I see it, those who pioneered the modern minimalist approach (on some of their courses at least) are leading to a rethinking of how courses ought to be built, from site selection, to routing, to grading, drainage, to green and feature construction, etc. To solely focus on the size of the budget and to lump the "80%" of mainstream architects in with them oversimplifies and unfairly diminishes what they have accomplished and what they continue to accomplish."
Mike
Thanks for responding to my earlier post. I'm also curious as to the differences in design practice between a minimalist gca and an "ordinary" gca eg. a gca who tends to get the low budget, value for money commissions as opposed to the big budget jobs where normal value engineering principles are perhaps of secondary importance. The quote above is from David's post. He see's a distinction between what a minimalist does compared to an "ordinary" gca (horrible phrase I know), from the initial routing right through to the features design.
Do you think that's valid ? Would both camps not tend to use the same landscape design principles and that perhaps where the main difference would be is the feature design ie. greens, bunkers and tees. Thoughts ?
Niall
edit: I should say that is my interpretation of David's post
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The concept of minimalism is really a question of balance and what that balance is is largely determined by the site. We laud what some archies are doing today, but they have the good sense to realize the wheel doesn't need to be re-invented. The modern minimalism approach isn't much different to what guys like Colt, Park Jr and Fowler did all those years ago. Where I think things are slightly different then is budgets were generally much smaller for Colt and the gang so their balance tends more toward less shaping, bunkering and general detail than the new gang. Perhaps the focus of the ODGs was more macro on the hole concept while the New guys have the budgetary luxury to place added emphasis on the micro. Bottom line, the New Guys give us more eye candy and maybe a better overall cohesiveness including more interesting greens (not sites though). But the other bottom line is the New Guys have learned and smartly stolen a ton from the ODGs.
Ciao
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David,
You're a cynic.....but I actually agree with you, as I said a few posts after my initial one. No doubt the gca who told me he was a minimalist by choice was "glomming on" or simply lamenting that he was not part of a popular movement in his profession. The news is that minimalism could be used at high end projects in place of what was taking place prior. And, just as most of us went for "the look" of the 90's, many are now going for the minimalist look.
To all,
I am actually kinda dissapointed. Really, if there was one entity the world would look to to be able to define minimalism, I suspect this place is it, but we are still kind of vague!
TD and Mike,
I don't disagree on the routing aspect. That said, I would put my routing ability against anyone's. I think most of the archies who participate here would do it, too, no? I just wonder if statistically, we could figure out whose routings minimize earth moving, areas where fw needed to be graded, reduce walks, allow for drainage, etc, as per Mike's list.
It would even be fascinating to look at say, Faz, and try to determine which courses he followed the land and which ones he ignored it to fix later with earthmoving. My gut would be that there were more follow the land routings than not, but that Faz still chose to improve nature a little bit with his feature shaping. At one point, given Faz does pretty naturalistic greens (IMHO) I was always amazed at how much earthmoving he did in fw, and how little he did around most greens! His greens were very traditionalist at his peak.
Net, net, its pretty hard to judge whose routing work is best, because we will never know the other options (except maybe in open competitions), and each architect might follow the land, and then build non minimalistic features. Or make different value judgements as to what the minimum amound of work is.
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I am actually kinda dissapointed. Really, if there was one entity the world would look to to be able to define minimalism, I suspect this place is it, but we are still kind of vague!
Minimalism: Leaving well enough alone.
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Jeff
I thought Bob's post was pretty solid, including all of Tom's and many others.
Do you think everyones routing abilities are approximately the same?
It sounds as if you are describing a level of professionalism, as if routing was a single criteria like sizing pipe.
Tom inherited a routing from Fazio he was not fond of and it required major fixes to make work.
The Nicklaus group mangled the routing at Sebonack until enough people convinced the owner to hire Tom.
He rerouted the course in a 1/2 day?
I have a routing study I did from afar that I can compare to 3 other architects - there is a huge difference between them.
Cheers
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TD and Mike,
I don't disagree on the routing aspect. That said, I would put my routing ability against anyone's. I think most of the archies who participate here would do it, too, no? I just wonder if statistically, we could figure out whose routings minimize earth moving, areas where fw needed to be graded, reduce walks, allow for drainage, etc, as per Mike's list.
It would even be fascinating to look at say, Faz, and try to determine which courses he followed the land and which ones he ignored it to fix later with earthmoving. My gut would be that there were more follow the land routings than not, but that Faz still chose to improve nature a little bit with his feature shaping. At one point, given Faz does pretty naturalistic greens (IMHO) I was always amazed at how much earthmoving he did in fw, and how little he did around most greens! His greens were very traditionalist at his peak.
Net, net, its pretty hard to judge whose routing work is best, because we will never know the other options (except maybe in open competitions), and each architect might follow the land, and then build non minimalistic features. Or make different value judgements as to what the minimum amound of work is.
Jeff:
I will leave it to you to analyze Tom Fazio's routings. I don't think he is the worst of the big names at routing courses, by any means; I just couldn't agree with his priorities, which for several years seemed to revolve more around hiding the cart paths, than around the golf holes they served.
One of the most fascinating things about this business for me is how differently we all solve the puzzle of routing the golf holes. When I've seen others' routings for sites I'm familiar with, it just blows me away how different they all are. If you don't want to make value judgments about who's "better", that's fine, but to insist that we're all the same [except for some nameless guys who aren't as good] seems really strange to me.
I wish they had published all the entries for the Olympic competition. Even with the clubhouse site fairly fixed by constraints, I know that Gil's plan was pretty different from my own, and I suspect that most of the other submissions were way different than either of ours.
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Tom,
We are all different in routing abilities, sometimes I think this board over generalizes about Rees, Faz, etc. and figure they don't even try to look for natural golf holes. I have seen a few Faz routings that apparently didn't, but many more than follow the land quite nicely. And as you note, there are those that follow the land, but then grade the fw for cart path access, hiding, etc. From a minimalist POV, it was a waste of routing skill.
I have usually found that most architects find a few similar holes and then a lot that are a whole lot different. As you say, its a matter of priorities among architects. The usual differences are things like favoring hilltops for tees, or ignoring the green to tee walks in favor of putting tees on hilltops, etc.
I think some of the most shocking conversations I have had with architects included statements like "I allocate 3 full days for routing" (not enough IMHO) and "I always end up with a few bad holes, you just can't avoid it" (which usually follows the first statement) Just giving up with a few bad holes rather than working to fix it, changing your priorities (like going to a par 69-71 rather than 72) and just trying new options seem rather foreign to me, but some architects do it.
I was a bit surprised to see some of Gil's practice holes down by the water, but then, I don't know the site all that well either. I would bet that most routings figured a way to put more of the championship course down in that area, but again, I don't know.
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It's been fascinating to see how this thread progressed into a really informative exchange of views. Thanks for all the good stuff on this one.
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I agree, love this thread, much to ponder in every post.
Earlier on, I posted a quote from John Lennon: "a person shouldn't believe in an 'ism', they should believe in the themselves'. It sounds a bit flippant, but I think it gets right to the heart of the matter, particularly in regard to architects paying lip-service to minimalism. An 'ism' is a set mode of thought, idealogy or philosophy. And that's fine, as a label. The self-belief being alluded to in the quote has nothing to do with arrogance or conceit; it's about introspection and a search for truth. If a person - by thought, study, imagination and dedication - comes to hold a set of values that they believe to be true, that is something of genuine worth. If enough others believe it (or others believe it enough) then it may become an 'ism'. There's nothing wrong in a person believing in an 'ism', as long as they went throught the same introspection and came to the same (or similar) conclusions to the originators.
I think minimalism can be defined as 'an elegant solution to a problem' or 'elegant problem-solving'. It's a great word, elegance. Implicit in it's meaning is simplicity, beauty and function. The 'problem' faced by gca is routing 18 holes over a piece of land. A minimalist solution to this problem is one that is simple (minimal construction/disturbance), beautiful (in harmony with nature) and functional (it's a golf course - it has to be fun :))
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I agree, love this thread, much to ponder in every post.
Earlier on, I posted a quote from John Lennon: "a person shouldn't believe in an 'ism', they should believe in the themselves'. It sounds a bit flippant, but I think it gets right to the heart of the matter, particularly in regard to architects paying lip-service to minimalism. An 'ism' is a set mode of thought, idealogy or philosophy. And that's fine, as a label. The self-belief being alluded to in the quote has nothing to do with arrogance or conceit; it's about introspection and a search for truth. If a person - by thought, study, imagination and dedication - comes to hold a set of values that they believe to be true, that is something of genuine worth. If enough others believe it (or others believe it enough) then it may become an 'ism'. There's nothing wrong in a person believing in an 'ism', as long as they went throught the same introspection and came to the same (or similar) conclusions to the originators.
I think minimalism can be defined as 'an elegant solution to a problem' or 'elegant problem-solving'. It's a great word, elegance. Implicit in it's meaning is simplicity, beauty and function. The 'problem' faced by gca is routing 18 holes over a piece of land. A minimalist solution to this problem is one that is simple (minimal construction/disturbance), beautiful (in harmony with nature) and functional (it's a golf course - it has to be fun :))
Steve:
Great post. My only addition to your thoughts would be to say that I think beauty and function are intrinsically linked. There's beauty in a design that creates strategy, or choices, or whatever we're calling it these days.
Sven