Risk is not only about how much dirt to move, its also about how little. I firmly believe that we can build very good golf courses without all the over the top golfy features most have come to associate with "quality architecture". Building something different is taking a risk. Building something where you are not swayed by all the "experts" to make it look golfy and play like some famous hole from another course. That's taking risk. Laying a course along the ground with just a few stakes to mark tees and greens and then doing all you possibly can to do as little as possible, that's taking a risk. Anyone can build a copy, build me a nice course for less then 2 million that a working guy can play for 30 bucks and an owner can operate for a modest profit and you've got my attention.
Don:
Thanks for this post. It reminds me of what I was thinking 25 years ago, when we were starting on High Pointe. I did not know exactly what my "style" was going to be, but I thought it was a beautiful piece of land, and my mantra was that I would prefer to err on the side of doing too little, instead of doing too much.
It is very hard to keep to that ethos in this business. 99% of people who come out to see what we're building [and 99% of my clients, too, even though I've been pretty selective about them] will suggest something MORE -- a bunker here or a green contour there or another tee. Hardly anybody ever suggests doing something less; off the top of my head, Mike Keiser and Ben Crenshaw are the only guys I can think of who suggested taking a bunker out.
It's the American way: the more the client is paying you, the more he thinks you ought to be doing something! And that's compounded by the fact that the bigger you get and the more talent you have around you, the more guys there are to suggest things, and the more confidence you have that you can pull them off. I was just getting updated by Eric last night on the progress in Florida, and he told me that he thinks the best hole on the course now is #13 ... the short 4 where we had to whittle away a block of about 20 feet of sand in the fairway [20 feet times 50 yards wide times 100 yards long!] in order to turn a "nothingburger" [Jim Urbina term] transition hole into something special. The hole was only half done the last time I saw it, so it's hard for me to believe Eric yet, but I do know that there was no simple, minimalist way that hole was going to stand proudly with all the holes that surrounded it, and I knew that putting Eric and Brian on it for two weeks with a reasonable idea was probably going to result in something pretty good. [Besides, Bill Coore needed all that dirt for his 14th tee, and it was better than building another pond to get it.]
It was easier to stick to my old ethos at High Pointe, where nearly all of the shaping was done with a D-3, and if I wanted to do something more I had to get on that little dozer and do it myself. Those two nasty crowned greens (#3 and #14) were like nothing I've built since, and I've never wanted to copy that 13th green, which was truly one of a kind. That's why it's such a bummer for me the place is going back to nature ... I can't imagine a current client being happy with some of it, but I sure was.