[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom, Mike -
a semi-related story.
I met Ted Danson once. He'd had his very successful run with Cheers (and many other things) by that point, and was working on his latest television series, Ink. [They were half way through what would prove to be the first and only season.] I was a friend of a friend of a friend, but had done nothing at all in film/television. We were introduced on the set and we chatted a bit; he was very friendly. And then he asked me: 'Have you watched the show?' And when I told him I had, he said 'Okay, tell me honestly -- what do you think?' And when I proceeded to tell him what I thought he listened attentively, without interruption. And then he asked 'How do you think we can make it better?' I was genuinely taken aback -- he seemed to be asking in all sincerity and in good faith. He'd probably forgotten more about what makes for good sitcoms that I'll ever know, and was a big television star then, but he was openly and honestly asking a young unknown writer for his open and honest opinions. So when I saw that clip, it didn't surprise me; from my experience with him, he walks the talk.

reminds me of the old joke about a truck being caught under a bridge.  While everyone was figuring out how to raise the bridge, a small child, from his lower vantage point, tells them to let the air out of the tires.  So, Ted is smart enough to know the end user might have a completely different perspective from those in the bubble of creation.  Sort of like asking golfers what they think, rather than rely on a few hundred gca nerds on some website.......


Tom D,


Not sure the analogy works exactly for this thread, except maybe for continuing to add ornamentation to a hole design when none is needed. 


Combining both ideas above, I can think of a few holes where experience tells me it just isn't working as intended and I need to drop any preconceived idea of using that as a template strategy.  One is the double/triple fw holes, which rarely work as well as I had imagined for a couple of reasons.  I dropped island greens after building one at clients request, because walking on in such a limited area causes too much wear at a public course.  And, more recently, just the idea of a lot of flashy bunkering because it looks cool, after seeing what they cost on most courses to maintain, among others.


Given most people more easily discuss what they don't like, maybe a thread on design ideas that really don't work in practice as well as they look on paper would be a better thread, LOL.

[Jeff Schley]

Tom, Mike -
a semi-related story.
I met Ted Danson once. He'd had his very successful run with Cheers (and many other things) by that point, and was working on his latest television series, Ink. [They were half way through what would prove to be the first and only season.] I was a friend of a friend of a friend, but had done nothing at all in film/television. We were introduced on the set and we chatted a bit; he was very friendly. And then he asked me: 'Have you watched the show?' And when I told him I had, he said 'Okay, tell me honestly -- what do you think?' And when I proceeded to tell him what I thought he listened attentively, without interruption. And then he asked 'How do you think we can make it better?' I was genuinely taken aback -- he seemed to be asking in all sincerity and in good faith. He'd probably forgotten more about what makes for good sitcoms that I'll ever know, and was a big television star then, but he was openly and honestly asking a young unknown writer for his open and honest opinions. So when I saw that clip, it didn't surprise me; from my experience with him, he walks the talk.

Peter, that is a great insight into and endless pursuit of excellence. When I was coaching college football I would travel around the country and talk football with many college coaches. My very first year coaching I was coaching I had a friend connect with me Tom Mcmahon, who was the secondary coach at Notre Dame at the time for Lou Holtz and later Bob Davie. I called him and he told me to come on such and such day for lunch and we could talk. I arrive at the ND football office late because I had forgotten they were 1 hour ahead of Chicago time. He comes out saying I thought we were meeting at 11 and it was almost 12. Clearly embarrassed, he said don't worry about it and we could grab a quick bite but he had another meeting at 1 he had to get back for.

We go to a local mexican place in South Bend and talk football coaching and what I could do to help my career ect. We go back to his office and says hey why don't you stick around, I'm going to meet with another coach from the Univ. of Indiana. I said sure and was very excited. I follow him into the conference room and introduce myself to the UI coach and he says, "Jeff, nice to meet you, I'm John Harbaugh."  Now at the time I had no idea who John Harbaugh was, but I did know his brother Jim who was the Bears QB previously.  He was so humble and had just taken the U of I defensive backs job and hadn't coached that position before, thus came to talk to TM who was universally seen as one of the best in the country.


It was great to witness two great coaches talk ball from an expert TM to a newbie at the position JH. After 4 hours TM turns to me and says, "Jeff what do you think of my defensive back drills?"  I tell him my favorite one and why. He says, "Do you think I can make anything better or am I missing something?" I honestly thought he was joking, as here i am a first year coach and a nobody to him or the profession at the time and he is asking me for advice?  He called it the endless pursuit of excellence.


Afterwards JH gave me his card and said he would be happy to connect me with their WR coach at UofI as that is what I was going to be coaching that next year at a small uni in Texas. I called and he in fact did connect me with their WR coach. Two years later out of the blue I get a letter from someone at the Philadelphia Eagles when I was at UCLA. It is a hand written letter from JH who wanted to congratulate me on our success that year and if I had any special teams schemes I thought could help him! Humble man and here he is today with no surprise to have risen to the top of the coaching profession.

[Peter Pallotta]

Great story, Jeff.
I failed at a creative project recently, in large part because I didn't ask for help/advice.
I don't think it was a lack of humility, at least I hope not. I think it was because I felt embarrassed to ask because I believed I was *supposed to know*, ie that if I was good at my job I'd 'have all the answers'.
Too late did I remember some words I heard years earlier:
'Sometimes neither the professional nor the amateur knows the answer; the difference is that the professional knows enough to ask'

[Kalen Braley]

Perhaps this is just a nuanced point, but isn't the primary reason you hire a professional is for all the accumulated knowledge they would bring to a project?  Certainly templates (aka successful holes) and past work would be a critical part of that past experience.

But I wouldn't think that would exclude said professional from being able to find/add wrinkles and differences otherwise to offer a unique proposal and eventual high quality finished product.

[Tommy Williamsen]

Tommy,
Sad to say I have not seen Ballyhack but it on my must play list.  I know you have seen a lot of golf courses.  Are you sure Ballyhack's holes are all original and not patterned in some way off others?  The 3rd for example sure looks like a Redanish par three to me but again I have not played it just seen photos.  The terraced fairway 4th is not that uncommon but again I need to get out to see it.

Mark, three looks like a redan but it does not play like one. The front right of the green plays like a false front. The shot over the bunker is a little bowl. You really need to fly the shot to the section of the green you want, although some shots to the back pins will tend to roll left.


The terrain makes number four different. I don't know anyone who tries to hit the ball to the right fairway. It is narrow. What it does is keep the ball in play on shots from the tee that drift right. It is in essence a safety net. Longer hitters can knock their tee shots over the bump and have their shots roll down. The second shot is to a green is over a waste area to a three tiered green.

[Tom_Doak]

Part of this thread was to see how defensive some posts might get about the idea of “copying or repeating” design concepts.  No artist wants to hear that they are just duplicating past work so I understand the sensitivity.  In that regard, I wonder what Pete Dye would have said about the PGA West/TPC at Sawgrass thread?  Knowing him he wouldn’t care as he knows what he built and what both courses were designed to accomplish. I tried to defend him, not that he needed it, in that thread in that I really don’t think he sold out at all and that the two courses while having some very similar “template” type holes are still very different in my eyes.  I am not sure if Tom Doak liked or didn't like my analogy but you could call those two courses the same beautiful woman dressed up a little differently.  The two courses are set on very different sites with very different surrounds very far away from one another.   I am very much ok with that.  As I also said very few golfers would ever figure the similarities because only a handful will ever play both courses and even then few will recognize the similar holes.  I pointed out the example at Cherry Hills where Flynn used three template holes from Pine Valley and it was not even known at the club even by Pine Valley members that he did this.  Why not let more golfers get to experience that same beautiful woman (Tom Doak called that a lame idea). If I started a thread that Raynor was not one of the greatest architects because he had no artistic talent and just replicated/forced golf holes on the land, this site would have blown up in outrage.  Many would have vigorously defended his use of “the same” golf holes over and over. But when the concept of replicating golf holes in general comes up suggesting many others also do it in some fashion, some freak out that this is not true and not happening and would show no creativity if it were true.  Clearly the details of how two similar holes are finished off are what separates the good from the great.  I have said that many times here and that it often takes more than one quick look around a golf course to determine just how good some of the greatest golf courses really are.  The best designs need to be studied to be learned.  That is in part why sometimes new courses in the Top 100 rankings spike high and then sputter out after people study them a little more and realize there was maybe more sizzle than substance.   It can be the other way around as well. So the takeaway from this thread if anyone wants one is that it helps to look closer at individual golf holes and try to identify what are sometimes subtle details that separate one from the other even though they might essentially be built on the same template.  You might be surprised what you see.  By the way, I wonder if Raynor would say he never built the same hole twice    Technically speaking, he never did but he was damn good at the details.

Mark:


It is much easier to not be defensive about someone twisting your words and work out of context, when you have no work to defend.


I refused to answer your OP question because you almost immediately redefined "using templates" as building any hole that resembled anything built before.  Everyone recognizes that it is very rare to come across a hole truly unlike the other 500,000 golf holes currently on planet Earth, but there is a huge difference between trying to be creative and repeating the same themes on every course, or even on almost every course.


After that, I would sort the idea of using templates today into three categories:


1.  There are many young architects who introduce templates like the Redan and Biarritz in their work.  Some seem to be trying to find new ways to riff on them, while others seem to include them as talking points to establish their credibility as someone who knows about the history of design.  Many great designers have done just this at some early stage of their careers -- I mentioned Pete Dye at Crooked Stick earlier.


2.  There are many well established architects whose work repeats itself, not on every project like Raynor, but often enough.  There are obvious commercial reasons for this -- the client has declared he liked those ideas on a previous course, and of course it's way less time consuming to "plug and play" when you are building a bunch of courses in a year and don't have much time to be on site.  I'm not sure whether it was Pete Dye or Jack Nicklaus who first introduced the idea of having long 9th & 18th holes play up either side of a large pond, but I must have seen that twenty times in the 1980's and 90's.


3.  There are a few architects who are more stubborn, and won't use the same idea too many times, even if it was theirs to begin with.  In this regard, it's very hard to compare a guy who's built five courses with guys who have built 50 or 150, but at the end of the day it's about attitude, which is why I mentioned the phrase artistic temperament.  Some guys are happy to wonder aloud why we don't use some oft-repeated idea even more often, and some guys want to shoot those guys in a duel. 




But there is hardly anyone who never borrows an idea from somewhere else and adapts it to their own project.  There were a few of them back in the early days -- guys like Fownes and Crump -- but there were a lot fewer good courses to copy back then.  And they had to quit at one course to be sure not to repeat themselves.

[Ira Fishman]

Mark,


Once again, I am befuddled and baffled by the point of your thread. It sets up a straw man. Of course every architect, artist, composer, writer, etc repeats themes. Even Ken Kesey, Banksy, and Maya Lin who are as original as they come.


So what?


Ross designed hundreds of courses. More than you or anyone on this site. So did Colt.


I truly hope that someday you are given a piece of land so that you can design a course. Steal whatever you want from all of the architects that you have studied. Call me when it is finished, and I will be there for the first tee time.


Ira

[Mark_Fine]

Tom,
Please don’t make such false statements about having no work to defend.  Just because I have built no 18 hole courses from scratch doesn’t mean I haven’t built any golf holes.  I listed a couple dozen courses on another thread that you are happy to check out any time and critique what I did there all you want.   


I gave the best definition I could of a template.  I left it open for others to define as they so choose.   A shame you can’t be a little more like Gil Hanse.  Gil has done nothing but try to help someone like me who got into this very tough business in a unique way succeed. You just do the opposite.  So be it. 


Tommy,
I trust your opinion as I said I have not played there so I really don’t know.  Just saw some photos which is not the way to judge a golf course. 


Ira,
The tread came from the PGA West thread where Pete Dye was accused of replicating TPC Sawgrass.  I just asked who else did the same thing?  On the other thread I gave you a whole list of courses I worked on to go play. 

[Michael Blake]

Deleted

[Ira Fishman]

Tom,
Please don’t make such false statements about having no work to defend.  Just because I have built no 18 hole courses from scratch doesn’t mean I haven’t built any golf holes.  I listed a couple dozen courses on another thread that you are happy to check out any time and critique what I did there all you want.   


I gave the best definition I could of a template.  I left it open for others to define as they so choose.   A shame you can’t be a little more like Gil Hanse.  Gil has done nothing but try to help someone like me who got into this very tough business in a unique way succeed. You just do the opposite.  So be it. 


Tommy,
I trust your opinion as I said I have not played there so I really don’t know.  Just saw some photos which is not the way to judge a golf course. 


Ira,
The tread came from the PGA West thread where Pete Dye was accused of replicating TPC Sawgrass.  I just asked who else did the same thing?  On the other thread I gave you a whole list of courses I worked on to go play.

Mark,


I did not ask what prompted the thread. I asked what is the point of it. As best I can tell, the point is that no architect is wholly original. And once again, I ask, so what? I listed three unusually creative people who even with their unique vision repeated themselves and two prolific golf course architects. Who cares? Why does it matter?


All that matters is what is on the page, or canvas, or ground. If it is great, it is great.


Regarding your work, I did not ask this time for the specifics. I merely noted that I hope that you have the opportunity to design a course that you want to design. If it is great, it is great regardless of borrowing some holes.


Ira

[Mark_Fine]

Ira,
In your first post you said, “steal whatever you want from all of the architects that you have studied.”  Why did you call it stealing?  If that is the case, isn’t CB Macdonald the biggest thief of all?  He went over to the British Isles, studied all those great golf courses, took the best of what he saw and then built courses based on the best ideas he uncovered.  Is that stealing?  He then not only touted that he got all those ideas from the best courses, but as he used them he claimed he improved upon what he found.  Whether he was right or wrong, bit arrogant wouldn’t you say? 

Did Flynn steal ideas from Pine Valley or did he just feel they were such great holes that he should try to build similar versions on his own designs when and where it made sense?  The originals will always still be the originals.  That no one can take away.  The Redan concept has been used a zillion times but the original at North Berwick is still the original.  Most think is has been improved upon not only at The National but also at Somerset Hills by Tillinghast. 

I happen to think the thread had interest and merit.  There was even debate about what a template is which is part of the point of these discussions.  Macdonald had 21 of them.  Do you know what they were?  According to Jeff, Pete Dye had 21 templates that he worked from as well.  That should be interesting to anyone studying GCA.  If it doesn’t interest you, no worries, just pass on the thread.

I’d still like you to come see some of my projects.  The closest ones for you are probably Brookside or Copake or Bethlehem.  They are all fairly major renovations which is what I assume you would want to see.   Just don’t expect to see a Top 100 golf course but you will find a much improved one from what was there and for me that was the main objective.  Copake, however, is pretty special though most don’t know about it. 

[Mark_Fine]

Mike N,
Finally had a chance to listen to that Ted Danson clip.  It was great!  Thanks for posting.


I stated a Tom Peters quote sometime ago on a thread that I used often in running my earlier semiconductor materials businesses and I got a lot of grief for it from some here.  The quote was, "If it's not broke, you didn't look hard enough. Fix it anyway." Some here thought that in no way applied to GCA.  In many ways, it is the same thing Danson is saying.  Don't assume what you have done or are doing is or was great, start clean (back to zero) and do something new and better.  I think that is a great strategy and mindset.  We have LEDs right now because people thought the incandescent light bulb was broken.  But you can accomplish great things multiple ways.  You can start from zero with a clean slate and make something completely new and hopefully great.  Or you can start with something like a template in GCA (or an existing hole of some kind) and figure out creative ways to make it even better.  That is what Tillinghast did at #2 at Somerset Hills.  He took an existing design concept, decided it wasn't good enough as is, and he made it better.  Nothing wrong with that. 

[Paul Rudovsky]

1.  Our minds are very interesting devices...and they need ways to catalogue things and store them so that we can hopefully retrieve them later.


2.  Very often our minds do things that are subconscious to us (but may later be interpreted by others as being conscious decisions).  That doesn't necessarily mean they were conscious decisions when they were made...it may just be the observer's observation (sometime accurate, sometimes purely imagined).


3.  there are only so many ways land can move (or be moved in the case of "manufactured" courses)...whether those movements were created by a glacier, a higher being, or man.


Putting the above three thoughts together, I think we all store "alike" golf hole images in our minds in "folders" in order to catalogue them and remember them later...at many times the architect may have designed the hole without ever (consciously) thinking about similar holes...or at least the holes the later observer would think of).  Note...I am assuming 100% honesty be all in this statement...no intent to deceive or "hide" the similarity.


For example...I first saw North Berwick in 1981 and first played it in 1983.  By then I had played NGLA about 6-8 times, Maidstone about 3 times, and Seminole probably 2x.  From day one in 1981 or 1983 I have always felt that:


--#1 at NGLA is strikingly similar to #1 at North Berwick;
--#13 at Maidstone is strikingly similar to #9 air North Berwick;
--#5, 17, and 18 at Seminole are strikingly similar to #6, #10, and #11 at North Berwick (in fact when I first played #10 and 11 at NB, I was 200% sure I had been there before!).


It wasn't until I read some of the posts on this thread that I realized that even if the above observations are correct, it does not necessarily mean that CBM, Park, and Ross "copied" (either consciously or subconsciously) NB, it could simply be a function of #3 above, and/or my view of the similarities as the "observer".


I also am not so naive to think that there is no such thing as a blatant copy.  My point is, sometimes the "copy" can be just in "the eyes of the beholder."


 

[Mark_Fine]

Paul,
Great comments.  I don't think any architect truly cuts and pastes or attempts to duplicate exact copies.  Even the post about Nicklaus using three greens from Sebonack; I highly doubt he would copy exact but maybe I am wrong. 

I do think the better the site the less chance or reason for any kind of duplication.  I don't think C&C were looking at any templates when they first walked around the Sand Hills site.  But I do think they might have been thinking about other great golf holes or design concepts that they either built themselves or studied elsewhere.  I sure don't think they were saying to themselves, "everything we do here has to be original and unlike anything we have ever seen before".  The site was so good that golf holes just showed themselves but that is not always the case on most properties. 

True "copying" is one thing, but using a template or some kind of hole concept shouldn't have such a negative connotation. 

So if want to agree that most architects "don't use templates" do most at least have some design or style preferences?

When Laurie and I were in Vienna two years ago we got to see an art exhibition on display by Keith Haring.  It was especially interesting because my wife worked with Keith’s father.  I don’t know about you guys but even I could pick out a piece of art done by Keith Haring.  I am also convinced I could wager a good guess that if I saw three golf courses I could identify which one was designed by Jim Engh, Tom Fazio and by Pete Dye.  I don’t have a problem with that just like I don’t have a problem with Keith Haring having a definitive artistic preference.  If all creative artists (architects) started back at zero when they look at a new site why is this often the case? 

[Tim Martin]

The mind’s eye is more acute for some than others.  Certain people can remember every hole and feature after only playing a course one time while others need to see it more than once in varying degrees to absorb the same amount of information. It would seem that the architect with the more accessible mind’s eye has an advantage.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Paul, I think those are very astute comments in point no. 1.  And, that said, I understand why Tom Doak fights against that very human nature as a potential detriment to design.  In reality, there would be some benefit to cleaning out the mind before every design, at least symbolically.  In reality, it probably isn't possible.  That clean slate of thinking has been a prevalent theme around here since I have been here (1999)  In one early post, TE Paul postulated that.  My response was a post purporting to document my design process.  After the word "Begin" I left over 100 blank lines before I typed the word "finish."  I got a lot of emails from other gca's who were rolling on the floor laughing.


Tim,


TD will roll his eyes and may be the best exception to the rule, but for the most part, when a gca says he can remember every detail of every hole he has ever played, yes, that's just marketing.  When you are a tour pro, with no design experience, saying you have played and remembered the best holes in the world is about the only thing you can bring as a "qualification."  Oh, that, and "having played in numerous pro ams, no one knows the average golfer better than I do."


I know because on second plays, I usually find things that weren't as I remembered.  And, around here at least, one sign of a good golf hole is one that doesn't reveal itself fully the first time.  (Yes, pros play it 2-4 times, and could absorb its subtleties)  I would also put my 50 years as an average golfer against having played with a few hundred of them over the years as a better qualification, but hey, Tour Pros get away with it.

[Peter Pallotta]

I wish I could remember who said it (maybe Rilke) and could be sure that I'm getting the quote right:

"Always do that which is difficult for you, so that the difficult may one day become habitual and the habitual, beautiful".

If it was Rilke who said it, he was probably talking to a young poet, about writing poetry. But I think it applies to all endeavours, not only creative ones like gca, and to all of life too -- it's the hard work [I think - I wouldn't know] of not doing what comes easiest to us, of challenging our first/most natural responses and reactions, and (to Paul's point) of making the unconscious, conscious.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Peter, so true, but it does apply.  Back when I had a staff of 6, it was clear that each had their own specialty, whether routing, grading, drainage, renderings and did all they could to get assigned to that responsibility  Like most managers, I believed in cross training so if one guy was sick the office wasn't just screwed.   Also, made it harder for them to argue that if they quit, the office would go to hell, and they needed that super big raise.


I'll never forget our early CAD systems.  ACAD came out pretty early with the ability to connect to the internet.  My staff wondered why they would do that (not seeing the future, obviously).  My response of, "So I can send your job to India if I wanted to" was a real shocker to them......


BTW, I have offers from Indian to do my CAD all the time, for as little as $8 per hour.  But, few use my chosen software, and none really know golf.  That, and the Patriot in my has me use former gca's as contract drafters as 5-6X that hourly rate.

[Tim Martin]

Paul, I think those are very astute comments in point no. 1.  And, that said, I understand why Tom Doak fights against that very human nature as a potential detriment to design.  In reality, there would be some benefit to cleaning out the mind before every design, at least symbolically.  In reality, it probably isn't possible.  That clean slate of thinking has been a prevalent theme around here since I have been here (1999)  In one early post, TE Paul postulated that.  My response was a post purporting to document my design process.  After the word "Begin" I left over 100 blank lines before I typed the word "finish."  I got a lot of emails from other gca's who were rolling on the floor laughing.


Tim,


TD will roll his eyes and may be the best exception to the rule, but for the most part, when a gca says he can remember every detail of every hole he has ever played, yes, that's just marketing.  When you are a tour pro, with no design experience, saying you have played and remembered the best holes in the world is about the only thing you can bring as a "qualification."  Oh, that, and "having played in numerous pro ams, no one knows the average golfer better than I do."


I know because on second plays, I usually find things that weren't as I remembered.  And, around here at least, one sign of a good golf hole is one that doesn't reveal itself fully the first time.  (Yes, pros play it 2-4 times, and could absorb its subtleties)  I would also put my 50 years as an average golfer against having played with a few hundred of them over the years as a better qualification, but hey, Tour Pros get away with it.

Jeff-I wasn’t really thinking of it in marketing terms but rather by expanding someone’s depth of experiential knowledge. Regardless of how good someone is at remembering they have to see it at least once to have that recall experience.

[Tom_Doak]

Paul, I think those are very astute comments in point no. 1.  And, that said, I understand why Tom Doak fights against that very human nature as a potential detriment to design.  In reality, there would be some benefit to cleaning out the mind before every design, at least symbolically.  In reality, it probably isn't possible.  That clean slate of thinking has been a prevalent theme around here since I have been here (1999)  In one early post, TE Paul postulated that.  My response was a post purporting to document my design process.  After the word "Begin" I left over 100 blank lines before I typed the word "finish."  I got a lot of emails from other gca's who were rolling on the floor laughing.

Tim,

TD will roll his eyes and may be the best exception to the rule, but for the most part, when a gca says he can remember every detail of every hole he has ever played, yes, that's just marketing. 

My memory is famously over-rated, especially at this point in my life!  There are a bunch of courses where I could tell you which way your putt breaks if you called me on the phone, but a bunch more where I only remember one or two holes that were striking, and have long since forgotten the rest because they didn't do anything for me.


When we worked with Jack Nicklaus on Sebonack, I did not think he would learn anything new from us, but that we might remind him of some things that he hadn't done in ages, because his work had become so self-referential.  Sure enough, on the very first green we shaped [#6], Jack took one look and said, "Internal contours!  I haven't seen those in a long time."  Of course he had played Perry Maxwell courses and Alister MacKenzie courses so he had seen them, he just hadn't thought about them when designing his own courses, and now he does.


That's why I still travel, to remind myself that there are thousands of different ideas and I don't need to be limited to 21 templates.  It isn't a clean slate but an overflowing toy box.  You just have to remember a lot of the different pieces so you can sort through which of them might apply when you have to build a par-4 hole in an awkward spot.

[Jeff_Brauer]

This site needs a thumbs up button......

[Paul Rudovsky]

Guts---than for comments and this whole post is very thought provoking.


BUT, I didn't get my real question answered...does anyone else see what I saw regarding holes 1, 6, 9, 10 and 11 at NB and the holes I emotional at NGLA, Seminole and Maidstone?  Or am I just crazy....or both?

[Mark_Fine]

Tom,
Maybe the word templates is indeed a bad word to use.  It implies to too many that anyone using a "template" is just copying.  I look at a template as more of a basic foundation and from there you "go to your toolbox of ideas" to make it as unique and interesting as possible. 

What you said in your last post:

"That's why I still travel, to remind myself that there are thousands of different ideas and I don't need to be limited to 21 templates.  It isn't a clean slate but an overflowing toy box". 

You may or may not agree but I believe that travel and seeing so many different and great golf courses has helped me as much as anything to have a chance to succeed in this business.  I am still pretty good at recalling as you stated some of those thousands of different ideas out there from some of the greatest golf courses on the planet.  Isn't that just what Macdonald did and Pete Dye did, study the great golf courses and then try to apply much of what they learned?  I also have an engineering degree as well as one in marketing/business so that helps as well.  When I co-authored that book with Forrest it really helped that I had seen most of the golf courses we wrote about.  I don't know what you think of our book but there is some pretty good information in there.  It is far from perfect and some things are subject to our best interpretation but most who have read it like it and have learned from it.

I hope someday to get the chance to build my own 18 hole course and display what I have learned along with my own ideas as well.  In the meantime, I have to stick with the niche I set out to focus on which is helping existing golf courses.  I am having fun with that as well even if most of the time I am boxed in with what I am allowed to do.

Paul,
I see that kind of comparison all the time which was in part why I started this thread. 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Part of the differences in the way Tom and I think were summarized a few years back talking about the placement of fw hazards.  I used my "three basic challenges - carry, skirt, lay up " theory (and also a few others, like curved tee shots)  Tom replied something like just placing one hazard in the right location causes golfers to think, and then went on to list 11 different ways golfers could challenge that hazard.  Personally, I just leave it to the golfer to outthink himself without going into that much detail!


Paul, If I did recognize those similarities at one time, I must have forgotten!  Ditto for Tom Doak......

[Tim_Weiman]

Guts---than for comments and this whole post is very thought provoking.


BUT, I didn't get my real question answered...does anyone else see what I saw regarding holes 1, 6, 9, 10 and 11 at NB and the holes I emotional at NGLA, Seminole and Maidstone?  Or am I just crazy....or both?

Paul,


I don’t get your comparison of #1 at NGLA and North Berwick. To me the 1st hole at NGLA screams “you better be serious, there is some great golf ahead”. The 1st at North Berwick makes an even more grand announcement: “you have arrived at heaven”.


But, maybe it is me that is crazy!

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