Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture => Topic started by: MCirba on March 20, 2015, 09:34:13 AM
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After WWII, and particularly after the rise and popularity of Arnold Palmer who truly grew the game with the common man, a golf course construction boom took place. It was largely led by men like Robert Trent Jones and Dick Wilson on a national level, but there were any number of more regional architects who created many courses in their respective areas such as Edmund Ault, William Mitchell, Billy Bell, et.al, but one of the most prominent in the northeast was the late Geoffrey Cornish, who over the years partnered with William Robinson, Brian Silva, Mark Mungeam, and others.
I grew up playing a number of Cornish's courses in the northeast and they had their pros and cons like most. Recently I came across two articles written by Cornish and Robinson from 1967 that I found very interesting in retrospect to better understand his thinking which better explained some of his design decisions I found questionable, but also to see how it differs from much of what we discuss here as "ideal".
I'm not sure these will load as I have them listed here but they are easily findable if they don't. I hope you find them as interesting as I did.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=22&ved=0CCQQFjABOBQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Farchive.lib.msu.edu%2Ftic%2Fgolfd%2Farticle%2F1967jun36.pdf&ei=lR0MVbSCFILnsAT56oHYCA&usg=AFQjCNHhzYLziTQld7Oq3rhrt5WNCmVTnw&bvm=bv.88528373,d.cWc
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=21&ved=0CB8QFjAAOBQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Farchive.lib.msu.edu%2Ftic%2Fgolfd%2Farticle%2F1967apr36.pdf&ei=lR0MVbSCFILnsAT56oHYCA&usg=AFQjCNHhsrYadMWYfq82IZo5f7aHdv6hvQ&bvm=bv.88528373,d.cWc
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Here is the first article in larger size:
(http://xchem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/misc/1967jun36_p1.jpg)
(http://xchem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/misc/1967jun36_p2.jpg)
(http://xchem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/misc/1967jun36_p3.jpg)
(http://xchem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/misc/1967jun36_p4.jpg)
(http://xchem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/misc/1967jun36_p5.jpg)
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Thanks for the assist, Joe!
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Interesting that he notes eliminating all the bunkers from a golf course has been tried by some committees.
I wonder where?
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Wonderful, thanks gents. They knew it all back then (and I don't know why that should surprise me): the relationship of soil types and drainage and air movement and judicious tree planting etc, all in support of having the "outstanding" courses that golfers expected/expect -- with "inspired" designs and "magnificent and beautiful" settings mentioned almost as a given.
Peter
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The other article:
(http://xchem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/misc/1967apr36_p1.jpg)
(http://xchem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/misc/1967apr36_p2.jpg)
(http://xchem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/misc/1967apr36_p3.jpg)
(http://xchem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/misc/1967apr36_p4.jpg)
(http://xchem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/misc/1967apr36_p5.jpg)
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I will go out on a limb (a fairly strong limb) and argue that maintenance costs for a golf course are one of single biggest influences on design. EVERY course is concerned about maintenance, but NOT EVERY course is concerned about maintenance “costs”. If an architect is lucky enough to get a project where they don’t have to worry about the cost of maintenance this presents huge design advantages over projects where they do because their design options are almost limitless. And yes all architects on all projects need to be sure that what they design is “maintainable” at any cost, but some don’t have to worry how much that cost will be. There are huge design advantages if you don’t have to worry about green size or green side hazard placement or worry about hand mowing or triplex mowing or tee size or the number of bunkers or whether the bunkers can be hand raked or must be machine raked or how much fairway acreage they have or how much water they can use or how much irrigation they can install (or how much turf must be irrigated) or how many trees they can add (or remove), …, and the list goes on and on.
Maintenance costs are a BIG factor for the far majority of golf courses and architects that have to deal with tightening budgets (and most are tightening) have to incorporate this into their design considerations. If you beg to disagree, think of it this way, do you think Michael Pascucci told Tom and Jack to be weary of what it was going to cost to maintain Sebonack once it was finished? I don’t think so.
Maintenance costs/budgets play a big role in renovations/restorations as well. Design features tend to “shrink” over time. Bunkers get smaller, greens get smaller, fairways get narrower, tees shrink,… Restoring most of these features tends to add to maintenance costs (not always but often) as bigger bunkers means more sand (and with classic bunkers often hand raking), larger greens means more maintenance, fairway grass is more expensive to maintain than rough,…and so on.
Managing design with maintenance costs presents a huge challenge for most architects!
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Interesting that he notes eliminating all the bunkers from a golf course has been tried by some committees.
I wonder where?
Not just by committees. Pete Dye's mentor, Bill Diddel, made an effort to make interesting golf courses without bunkers.
The highest percent of his work is in Indiana, his home state.
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Slag Bandoon told me he found reference to William Robinson working on my home course. I know there is an architect's report suggesting adding trees behind greens to aid depth perception. I find mention of the use of trees for depth perception in the first article.
My problem with that. Our ninth used to play uphill to a skyline. Trees were added behind the green. No more skyline green.
Our clubhouse dining room used to look out over the ninth green to a great view of Mt. Hood. Added trees = no view. :'(
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Slag Bandoon told me he found reference to William Robinson working on my home course. I know there is an architect's report suggesting adding trees behind greens to aid depth perception. I find mention of the use of trees for depth perception in the first article.
My problem with that. Our ninth used to play uphill to a skyline. Trees were added behind the green. No more skyline green.
Our clubhouse dining room used to look out over the ninth green to a great view of Mt. Hood. Added trees = no view. :'(
Yea, but I bet they are very pretty trees.
;)
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Mark,
I won't BEG to differ, but maybe if you'll allow another perspective; I think the premise that a less limited design budget leads to more designing by the architectural team is likely to be true. The premise that more designing equates to a better golf course is arguable.
Designing for maintenance is a priority for most in the business. However, golf courses are not always maintained as it was originally designed, so I don't know if you can pin all maintenance costs on design.
Question; would architects be able to design bigger greens if we didn't have green speeds, and the associated costs, as they are today? How about bunkers? Would designers build larger(or more) bunkers if they weren't filled w/ expensive sand(and liners) and meticulously hand raked every day?
I agree with your comments in general. Until the industry/ golfing contingency decides to change it's priorities, we'll get less golf course...albeit a pretty one.
Joe
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A third perspective, that of an outsider: an architect (like a tv commercial director, to name one analogous art-craft) will make every choice and decision that the client will let him get away with, and will make those choices/decisions based on a variety of reasons, both personal and professional, both conscious and unconscious, and for ends that are either/both worthy and noble or self-seeking and short-sighted ones. How a course will be maintained years and decades after he has done his work (just as whether or not a tv ad actually sells more product) is not something I imagine most architects have been unduly worried about.
Peter
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Joe,
As you know, a good superintendent can tell you how much it cost to maintain his greens by the square footage. It is almost a straight formula. Same for bunker square footage and fairway acreage. An architect also has a ton more latitude with his green complexes if they are hand mowed vs. triplexed. Green speeds matter but so does number of rounds, climate,...
Peter,
Most architects had better worry about how their course/restoration/renovation work will be maintained after it is finished (I know I sure do). We often provide a recommended maintenance plan with our designs and always work extremely close with the Super and grounds committee. Maintenance and design go hand in hand and most architects I would think and hope want to remain proud of their work long after it is first finished. Colt was one of if not the first architect to provide maintenance plans with his designs including where to plant trees,..etc. He definitely was concerned about how his courses would look years down the road.
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Superintendents having some input during the design/construction process is a good thing. Communicating the resource availability and general maintenance plan to the architect during design is a good thing.
No offense to any architects, but I haven't meet one who I'd want writing my maintenance plan. Tell me what you want, how you want it to play, what you want to see, fine. Tell me how to do it? Nope. I know more about that than you do.
There is also part of me that thinks a Superintendent ought to just find a way to maintain whatever the architect wants to build. I know that sounds controversial, and some fool is sure to bring up some extreme design idea as a justification for countering me, but I don't see many modern architects doing much of anything in an extreme way, except designing for maintenance in an extreme way.
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Some really interesting discussion and I appreciate everyone's input.
One of the things I found very controversially different than modern thinking was Cornish's thoughts about "above ground" bunkers. As mentioned, I used to play a number of his courses and the bunkering, while sometimes visually appealing, had a functional aspect that was somewhat off-putting. As indicated in the articles, he'd build a mound, and then carve a bunker into it. In some/many cases, that would mean a player who was in a bunker would actually be elevated above the surrounding fairway and/or green.
Similarly, his contention that greenside bunkers be kept at least 12 feet away from the edges of his greens meant in reality that most of them truly didn't come into play. One of his courses I played in high school had 72 bunkers, yet I rarely remember being in any of them.
This is not meant in any way to criticize Mr. Cornish, who was one of the great and most admired figures in golf course architecture, but to examine the appropriate calibration between great architecture and affordable maintainability.
I think "sustainability" is going to be the watchword of golf in the 21st century so this is an area I think we can help examine and even intelligently shape with the folks who participate on this site.
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...
One of the things I found very controversially different than modern thinking was Cornish's thoughts about "above ground" bunkers. ...
Here's an "above ground" bunker for you.
(http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff114/seanrobertarble/ST%20ENODOC/StEnodoc-Padstow4-8-14037_zps84bd78ec.jpg) (http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff114/seanrobertarble/ST%20ENODOC/StEnodoc-Padstow4-8-14037_zps84bd78ec.jpg)
I think you will find Mr. Doak does lots of "above ground" bunkers. He just doesn't build the "above ground" to do it. ;)
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Don,
I totally agree with you; if I were the super at a course, I wouldn't want the architect independently writing a maintenance plan for me. But what if the architect worked with you to jointly prepare that plan and helped you get it approved/accepted by the club/your grounds committee? Then you might be pretty happy knowing you will get what you need to maintain the golf course as the architect intended. That is what we try to do. Win win ;)
Mark
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Mike,
I'm sure that you won't be surprised that I'm going to offer a contrarian view. ;D
I'm familiar with several courses where GC's alterations drove the maintanance budgets higher.
Straight fairways were scalloped in random patterns, trees were planted in abundance to reroute the playing corridors to match the new fairway lines, and all of these things added to the budget.
Maybe it's a "do as I say and not as I do" situation.
But, presenting a stable budget or lowering the budget was never a consideration with the alterations.
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Don,
I totally agree with you; if I were the super at a course, I wouldn't want the architect independently writing a maintenance plan for me. But what if the architect worked with you to jointly prepare that plan and helped you get it approved/accepted by the club/your grounds committee? Then you might be pretty happy knowing you will get what you need to maintain the golf course as the architect intended. That is what we try to do. Win win ;)
Mark
Mark,
Collaboration can be good, and helping a team member be successful is admirable, but architects taking credit for developing maintenance plans is more sales talk than substance.
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Don,
It has nothing to do with taking credit. It has everything to do with helping the super get what he needs to be successful. Some supers need the help and support and others don't (you might be one who doesn't and that is fine). Many stuuggle to convince their members/golfers what it takes to properly maintain their golf course. If they can get help with this they love it. I have a superintendent on my team who who works great with his peers and assists me as needed. The whole goal is to present a properly conditioned design.
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So many contrarian views.
The timing and substance in this article, imo, is one of the Banana peels on the slippery slope that golf course architecture went down, during the dark ages. Formulaic reasoning and pampering the player, while ignoring the golfer/sportsman.
The subsequent Chicago school's influence, is still deeply imbedded in the modern PLAYER's pathos.
There really are so few courses that get it just right. Kingsley Club for example, is one of the few that likely violated everyone of those formulaic rules mentioned..
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Good point with Kingsley Adam.
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Mike,
My first golf course superintendent seminars were in the early 80's. There were entire panels of speakers on tree planting and developing tree nurseries. I don't recall one of those speakers ever mentioning such principles as understanding the architects original intent, the effects that shade has on putting greens, avoiding the use of softwood trees or exotic species. The USGA Green Section gave a talk on reducing fairway acreage to allow for catching clippings with triplex greens mowers or the triplex banks mowers that could be converted to mow at fairway height.
My first superintendent position was in 1985 at a club built in 1912 - we never did find out who the architect was but I suspect it was Chick Evans because his name was signed in the club guestbook on opening day. Anyways, the club had about 40 acres of strait edge un-irrigated bluegrass fairways and flat sand trench bunkers around the greens. I went right to work edging out the bunkers into nice curvilinear flashed shapes, contour mowing the fairways down to 25 acres and planting lollipop trees in the scallops. Ultimately I convinced the club into irrigating the fairways and dropping the height of cut to promote Poa/bent.
The role of the superintendent in those days was to put curvilinear lines on golf courses and plant the shit of them with trees. That's what we did.
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The subsequent Chicago school's influence, is still deeply imbedded in the modern PLAYER's pathos.
What is "Chicago school's influence"?
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It's what I call what would be almost every project that I have ever played of a Killian & Nugent pedigree. Designs that have features that TRY to speed play of the masses. i.e. Rear (and sidewall) Containment mounding, flatter greens ...etc.
I've never laughed so hard as when I walked up the closing hole on "The Port" at Harborside. After years of emulating many of their courses, It was confirmation of how, in golf course architecture, one's earliest formed opinions can be so ignorant.
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Mike and Joe,
Thanks for posting. I had that article in the files years ago, lost it, and its nice to have it back as a record.
Adam,
In saying "still embedded in the modern PLAYER's pathos" are you discussing the "fairness" aspect for top players, or the general idea of what an American golf course ought to look like by the average Joe Six pack? Obviously, designing for fairness, play value, etc. is a completely different issue than designing for ease of maintenance.
When I started at KN in 1977, they often referred to Cornish and Graves writings, including something called the design triangle. It was a graphic attempt at showing the balance of design needs between playability, aesthetics and maintenance. They would present it to each client, and let the client tell them if it was to be an equilateral triangle, or lean on side or the other. Their inclination, the times, the client types, whatever, had more of their triangles lean towards maintenance.
The kinds of things they (and anyone really) had to consider to make a course maintainable included:
All machine mowing:
Max 3 to 1 slopes, 4-6 to 1 preferred.
Sand bunkers at least 8 feet from green to allow triplex green mower to turn on collar
Sand bunkers - tune shapes to turning radius of both mechanical bunker rakes (about 9 feet) and outside bank mowers (similar, with a few twists once they came out with mowers that could back up, etc.)
Well, there are more, of course but I won't bore you. Suffice to say, tuning the design to then maintenance equipment available certainly did lead to a formula for design followed by most of the era. We were lucky to have Pete Dye come along and say "come up with new maintenance equipment to maintain my designs, rather than me design to suit your maintenance equipment." And, design was better for it.
I understand that this site is mostly dedicated to discussing the top 1% of courses (arguing whether some course should be 85 or 43, for instance) but in the real world of America's 16,000 golf courses, which have always struggled to make a go of it, designing for maintenance was, is and will be a big issue. I believe the next generation of designs below the top will return to this type of thinking, and perhaps the 1985-2005 period of the "upscale public" and "remote destination resorts" will be an anomaly. Sort of golf's version of everyone being a genius in a bull market.
Obviously, we won't go exactly back to that 1950's landscape architecture version of golf design, but form still needs to follow function, and truthfully, these guys designed for the conditions they had in front of them, not to emulate Scottish links, etc., in the new world. I don't think their design responses were out of line at all, even as easy as it is to sit here 40 years later and critique on the internet. The times simply wouldn't have supported the upscale course in those days (and the market isn't black and white, but it wouldn't support more than a few of them in select markets)
Or put another way, we will stop striving to make every course a new top 100 candidate, which was probably more folly than trying to design affordable, maintainable courses prior to 1985 or so.
Or put yet another way, too many designs (again, for those upscale publics) probably let the triangle tip too far towards aesthetics and the photo wow factor than was or is currently justified economically for most courses.
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I am surprised that no one has mentioned Robert Bruce Harris in this discussion. Harris, the first President of the ASGCA, was trained as a landscape architect and began designing courses in the 1920's. Harris bought a number of failing courses and operated them as public facilities . As such, he was quite aware of the expense of maintenance and modeled much of his design philosophy around maintenance issues. Accordingly, bunkers were usually placed (or moved) at least one gang mower away from the edges of greens. Shaping emphasized the ability to use machinery for maintenance. The best example was one of the old courses at the Indian Lakes complex near Medinah, since remodeled. The greens and bunkers were all circular so the a riding mower or sand pro could perform the cutting and raking in minimal time. Incidentally, both Killian and Nugent started with Harris.
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Jeff and Shelly,
Two terrific posts and really getting to the heart of the matter of what I think the Cornish/Robinson articles were trying to emphasize. Those times were indeed different than today but to use a term I hate, I believe the "paradigm" is going back to courses that are affordable, maintainable, easily (re: faster) navigated, and more user-friendly; in a word, "sustainable".
The fact that the Cornish courses I grew up playing still exist in much their same form some 40-50 years after they were built provides evidence of their functional value.
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Thanks Mike, Jeff's post was far more informative than mine and I am pleased to be placed in such good company. Your point about shifting priorities is well taken but it raises a more interesting question. Putting aside temporary changes in taste or economics, how does one balance the need for efficiency in maintenance with aesthetic and strategic considerations? How much does the anticipated income of a club and the attendant maintenance budget impact on the ability of the architect to create interesting features. For example, many of the Good Doctor's artistic bunkers do not fit the "easy maintenance " model. Do we deprive ourselves of that artistic expression. The same goes for Thompson and others. But MacKenzie tended to build fewer bunkers than many others so I suppose he gets points for that.
Straight line fairways are easier to mow. Did you ever see nature draw a straight line? So how much naturalness do we sacrifice? Bunkers placed closer to greens create different challenges but make for more difficult maintenance issues than Harris' model.
As stated,the issue is how does one balance the competing concerns while creating an interesting challenge that, as it evolves over time, continues to hold the interest of the player? I suspect this varies from site to site and from owner to owner. If one can keep maintenance costs down without reducing the interest of the course, then one has reached the ideal. But how and where one allows for trade offs is a real challenge. Of course, some architects on some projects never make a trade. It will be intereting to see whether there is any long term impact.
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A few more random thoughts on the subject.....
Years ago, I heard a pro (not a tour pro, but obviously influenced by one) stop a superintendent who was talking about easy to maintain features. He said, "Please insert the word "properly" to every sentence you say about maintenance, as it needs to be "easy to maintain PROPERLY." On one hand, he had a point. On another, his definition of "properly" was getting closer to Augusta standards he thought should be implemented everywhere.
I think there is STILL debate on the meaning of easy and properly, not to mention inserting "what per cent of the time" in the equation. No footprints in bunkers....weekends, 5 days a week, six days a week?" No fried egg lies? (which may require expensive sand or someone out there wetting it down every day)
It is just an example of how the tour pros in design and better players sort of used language to shift the debate on maintenance from what it had been, for better or worse (and probably parts of both)
Secondly, Ron Whitten put together a pamphlet on the supposed Chicago School for ASGCA several years back, with a collection of articles from Bendelow through Langford, to Harris. Harris wrote a few articles strongly advocating that we no longer should emulate Scotland, as in "I think its high time we stopped imitating the old traditional golf course design, and build golf courses to satisfy our own player demands, pocketbooks, our maintenance, and our own peculiar American and topographical conditions. Unfazed by tradition, we can develop golf of the highest architectural standard which will be far better suited to Americans and modern American machinery."
In another post war article, he mentions streamlining, which I am convinced came from the railroad passenger trains of the time, which were converting from "standard" passenger cars (usually painted dark green with black roofs) to stainless steel cars with rounded shapes.
I also believe that they believed in most fields that the world should be designed differently, in essence making a whole new world to sort of rid themselves of the pre war ideas, given how bad that turned out. Modernization was certainly the byword in many of these articles.
Harris also endorsed the elevated trap, similar to Cornish, and there are other similarities in the writings.
As to Shelly's question, it does vary from site to site, and in some cases, you can't have great aesthetics and easy maintenance. While Harris is panned for his clamshell bunkers, Maxwell used basically the same style, for the same reasons, later in his career and seemed to create some well thought of courses. In essence, the depression forced Maxwell, Harris and even Mac himself, to abandon the Mac style puzzle piece bunkers to ease maintenance.
Maybe its not so bad. In essence, most bunkers should be judged by their placement over their appearance, no?
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Jeff, I left out the maintenance aspect because I can't quantify that aspect beyond easing bunker maintenance and overwatering. Both are arguably related to the "fairness" umbrella, as just a way to ease the task at hand, by mitigating the ball's desire to roll out.
I'm truly saddened by the reality of living here on pure sand, and seeing every single public course soften their turf, and grown Parkland like rough, to the point of narcolepsy inducing golf.
Appeasing the modern players preference for favorable results versus the thrill of actually figuring out all the forces that act on each shot was at the heart of my opinion posted.
Mirroring society's lack of individual responsibility, playing golf no longer requires the player to keep pace because there is, for the most part, no longer consideration for others.
edit; As far as Whitten's conclusion about getting away from Scottish designs, imo, the loss was greater than just the features, or, style, the loss was how the sport was watered down, appeasing the need to stroke the ego of the player, rather than teach him/her humility through the unexpected outcomes.
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Jeff,
Interesting and insightful although I'd argue that there is more to bunkers than placement. I can tell you that Cornish's elevated bunkers played much, much differently than deep and steep ones; some you could easily putt out of.
Adam,
Those are interesting points and it might be interesting to think about this discussion in terms of pace of play as well as maintenance costs in the old country on courses that are generally designed neither for maintenance nor beauty. At least at on the links courses, however, they do benefit from sandy soil and I'd argue that a faster course means a faster game.
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''As far as Whitten's conclusion about getting away from Scottish designs, imo, the loss was greater than just the features, or, style, the loss was how the sport was watered down, appeasing the need to stroke the ego of the player, rather than teach him/her humility through the unexpected outcomes.''
Well said Adam. I was curious as to if Maxwell incorporated more bunkers in his solo designs than the good Dr? Also if you take a Ross course with 100+ bunkers on it and compare it to a good Dr course with 50 or so bunkers, can one make a case that a good Dr course is cheaper to maint? If one is trying to keep maint. costs down I prefer less bunkers, but ones that are real bunkers (which are to be avoided). If bunkers are only raked weekly instead of daily maint. cost would go down without the need for template bunker schemes.
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Adam,
To be fair, Ron Whitten made no conclusions....I was quoting RB Harris directly from the articles that Whitten had collected. Sorry if I gave that impression.
As to your general point, I guess I can't stress enough remembering KN (who worked for Harris) thinking all (or most) of the great courses were designed, we had as many as needed, and we needed more courses easy enough for the hacks to play. Short version, not every course starts with the intention of good architecture, but mostly functional architecture.
As to easing maintenance, besides watering, it really was about tuning all grades to then current mechanized equipment and their turning radius, maximum or productive slopes mowing ability, etc.
Mike,
I agree those elevated bunkers play differently than a deep pit. Again, I believe in their minds, that was the point, to make it easier as well as more visible. I guess the combo of intent and results speak for themselves and we can see the final product.
But, an interesting deeper issue to discuss. In that time frame, was it more important to give the burgeoning golf population accessible, affordable golf with some compromised to the original game, or was it more important to try to preserve the old, harder game? Again, the results speak, and the leaders of golf in the post WWII ear chose accessibility and affordability over some "purer" version of golf.
Given a generation that also went for TV dinners and McDonald's as their version of everyday food, it speaks to the entire mindset of most Americans at that time. Highly processed foods, highly processed golf, both pretty far from their natural, organic state. A big bump in the appliances, cars, and other creature comforts, probably a period of accelerated change in that area.
BTW, if you ask non Americans to sum up Post WWII culture in one word, it would most often be "convenience." All I am really saying is, against that backdrop, the choices made are pretty understandable.