Anarchist's Guide to Golf Course Architecture

More Einstein on Golf Course Architecture

2012-01-02T17:22:00.001-07:00

Einstein, if he had played golf, would have ended up a designer...and what would he have thought of modern design?

My partner in the Golf Course Design business, Richard Zokol, sent me this Einstein quote after he had read my EINSTEIN and GOLF COURSE ARCHITECTURE post, "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." As it turns out we were both reading Einstein quotes at the same time. Zokol works hard to keep his intuitive side running roughshod over his logical side...and as for me, I live in both worlds.

The intuitive mind in golf course architecture has seen a rebirth in the last fifteen years or so. But let's be very clear, the sacred gift (intuitive mind) can use a healthy dose of the faithful servant (rational mind) if any design is going to be truly good. The problem with modern golf course architecture is that design and renovation have become far more rational and conventional than intuitive and original.

The intuitive mind should be the overwhelming force in any design with the rational mind reviewing the decisions and concepts to insure that they have captured the goals of the design. I have opined in my TREATISE ON GOLF COURSE ARCHITECTURE about this subject:

There is a difference between things, whether it be art, music, movies, man made landscapes, building architecture, and even golf course architecture that garner attention for short periods of time and others which become classics. What causes us to like something forever versus becoming enthralled for a short period of time and then losing interest? Why is it that some golf courses capture our attention to the point that we could play the same golf course over and over again and never tire of it, while other courses initially grab our attention but seem somewhat shallow in the long run?

Perhaps it is a nature based originality that sets one golf course apart from another, that allows it to be considered a "classic". When those other courses, that are formulaic and impose preset artificial conditions and constraints upon any piece of ground that they are built upon, are considered in the long run as less than "classic", is it really any wonder? Can golf architecture avoid falling into formulaic convention? Through the Anarchy of nature it can.

We are all slaves to convention at some level. We constantly hear and talk about thinking out of the box. Golf architecture suffers from all of the same problems when it comes to shaking off convention and thinking out of the box.

To me the intuitive mind that Einstein talks about is the ultimate definition of being one with nature and all of its variability and anomalies. And the rational mind is all too often the convention that sneaks into our psyche and causes us to lose our creative fortitude to embrace our intuitive mind.

The lack of intuitive design in today's golf course architecture is mind numbing and the playability of modern golf continues to have a sameness to it, no matter what aesthetic treatment is utilized. It has become popular today to push some tees back, scallop bunker edges using native/fescues or to create maintained steep grass bunker banks and flat sand bottoms. Oh yeah, don't forget the runoff areas, it's considered cutting edge strategy to add short grass areas around greens that only take the ball away from the putting surfaces. And that's it, yep, no interest in enhanced and varied strategic options, just more of the same; the sacred gift of intuition is no where to be found and the faithful servant, rational mind, continues to be honored.

So, designers in general redo bunkers and push some tees back while improving aesthetics. Their rational minds won't even let them think about a paradigm shift in strategy through enhanced and varied playability options and strategies. The problem with this standard approach is that these courses continue to offer limited shot options and strategies which make golf less interesting and less playable. The "gift" is still missing, even when the courses look as if they should offer options in playability, they don't because they still require the air game on most approach shots and repetitive strategy off of the tee hole after hole and course after course...

Einstein believed that the intuitive or the right brain, was critical in achieving great things and that the rational or right brain, while necessary, had to be utilized in conjunction with intuition to avoid the mundane. Is today's golf course architecture more intuitive or rational?

Einstein and Golf Course Architecture

2011-12-28T11:11:00.000-07:00

Albert Einstein undoubtedly could have taught all golf course designers a thing or two about golf course design.

Take this quote for instance, "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." We could make this more apropos to golf with a slight change, "Any intelligent golf course designer can make their courses expensive, more difficult, and less golfer friendly. It takes a tough of genius or common sense to move in the opposite direction."

Haven't the "fools" been part of the game's demise. With golf courses growing increasingly difficult to play, and more expensive to build and maintain; we have created an uneconomically sustainable model. And it was owner's and golf course architect's egos driving us straight into this golf participation contraction and depression.

Now, Einstein hit it out of the park with this one. Einstein sums up our industry's arrogance, "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." We were stupid as an industry and we showed no restraint. We thought that we could just keep building less playable and more expensive courses and things would be OK; they weren't and they aren't.

Going forward, it is incumbent upon all of us to do what golf course designer Einstein, would have done; spend less, and insure that our golf courses are immensely playable for average and newer golfers, while remaining challenging for better players. Einstein would surely be a proponent of smaller clubhouses, less amenities, and a focus on golf...it really does take a genius.

Minimalist Golf Course Architecture Movement- State of the Union

2011-12-02T23:38:00.001-07:00

The last decade has seen a tremendous shift in golf course architecture. In a "back to future" sort of movement, more natural and sustainable types of golf courses sporting strategic and playability options have become not only accepted but also desired and expected. The movement has been termed Minimalism. The true Minimalists, Coore and Crenshaw, Doak, Hanse, and a couple of handfuls of others, have been at it a lot longer than just the last decade. They have brought a style of golf course design back from golf's origins to the forefront of modern golf design. Golfers along with golf developers embraced these courses with their typically lower construction and maintenance costs. And as market acceptance of Minimalism has grown, every Golf Course Architect/Designer on the planet is trying to jump on board.

No man involved on this bunker. Pure minimalism

It has been and continues to be interesting to watch many Golf Course Architects embrace or at least attempt to embrace the new Minimalist Movement in Golf Course Design. These conventional Designers seem to have fallen short of making the transition. More often than not, they just morph into another form of convention and sameness. Putting uniform rough edges and longer grasses on bunkers and earth forms seems to be the standard approach, but the forms are the same as they have always been. Green shapes, contours and sizes don't change, nor do the fairway widths, contours, and grassing lines, nor do the bunkering schemes and certainly the playability and strategic options don't seem to have changed. It's as if, just a little bit of window dressing is all that it takes to make the leap. These wannabe Minimalists should spend more time studying nature and varied golf strategies, and a lot more time on site during construction if they want to join the ranks of the Minimalists.

Minimalist features and earth forms must originate from nature not man. Man or in this case the Designers must learn to mimic nature while offerring varied strategic options if they want to join the movement. And as for those with more analytical minds and souls, they may never be able to make the leap. Minimalists are artists at heart. They have an innate ability to imitate and manipulate nature to create inspiring golf. Great golf courses are a derivative of nature first and man second. Until conventional Designers understand this they really don't have a chance of becoming Minimalists.

It isn't very hard to imagine some of this erosion being incorporated into a course

And as much as we see the wannabe Minimalists struggle to produce natural, unique golf, we also see the struggles of that original group of Minimalist pioneers. Because even the true Minimalists need to guard against falling into their own sense of commercialism, comfort and convention to insure that their courses don't have a sameness and repetitiveness or even, dare I say, become caricatures of great golf courses. These same pioneers must remember that embracing the ground game was the beginning of the movement and more and more, we see them drifting away from the ground game to embrace "cheap" aesthetics. Is a Minimalist true to them self when they create virtually all of their green sites perched on benches? It still looks like Minimalism but it surely doesn't play like it when the ground game options have been eliminated and the air game is the only option. Maybe all of us should look in the mirror once in a while and remember that playability must remain at the forefront of Minimalism.

Perhaps all Golf Course Architects and Designers should be required to periodically renew and refresh our minds and bodies through the study of nature, oh yeah, and maybe a trip to the Old Course.

There are natural forms and shapes are all around us, all we have to do is look. These images presented herein are examples of feature inspiration that I saw in Western North Dakota and South Dakota. It isn't hard to imagine golf and links golf that embrace great and varied strategic and playability options on this ranch land or to use these concepts as inspiration on another piece of ground.

Natural forms are tough to create when the study and focus of golf course architecture is often only about other courses

It's all right there; everywhere we look, the shapes, forms, and imperfection of nature are evident. All we have to do is look.

Libertarian Philosophies in Golf Course Architecture

2011-07-11T11:20:00.003-06:00

I want to propose and coin a "new" concept in golf course design...Libertarian Golf Course Architecture. Libertarian Golf Course Architecture encourages or possibly even demands that golfers make a choice and generally have choices and options in how they can play holes and golf shots. This design philosophy may be much closer to the origins of golf than any other philosophy presently in play. The Libertarian Golf Course Architecture philosophy allows golfers to have free will and play the golf hole with varying strategies and the golf shots that can be played in different fashions. Golfers should be allowed to play as bravely, aggressively, safely, smartly, or for that matter, idiotically as they choose to. It isn't our job as designers to deprive the golfer of his choices or options, only to present them as an organic puzzle for the golfer to solve.

Too often in golf, the golfer is forced to play the hole and entire golf courses in a certain manner. Could that be Totalitarian Golf Course Architecture? Perhaps Pete Dye could be likened to the Mussolini of golf course designers based upon his propensity to impose his will on the golfers...kind of like being the benevolent dictator of golf course design. He is going to tell you exactly where to hit the ball and what shots you must hit to have a chance at success on his courses. Shot after shot, your options are very limited.

And while some might not unreasonably suggest that Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw are more like, well, Haight-Ashbury in the 60s with a little Ken Kesey thrown in for good measure. We could view them as the flower children or the counter culture of golf course design but I think that they are that and just so much more than that. What Bill and Ben are, is perhaps the first modern designers to embrace Libertarian Golf Course Architecture coupled with an organic process and understanding of golf. They just understand earth forms and their relationship to nature and how that interacts with golf and the golf experience.

On the positive side of Golf Architecture, there are a growing number of golf course architects that trend towards these Libertarian Golf Design Philosophies. They encourage you to have strategic options and the ability to play a hole differently based upon your own assessment of the conditions, course and your game at the moment. Coore and Crenshaw, Doak et al. Gil Hanse, and a few of the lesser knowns, including Zokol and me (Suny, Zokol Golf Design) all like to give golfers options, even if the golfer doesn't initially realize it.

Zokol and I believe that in order for a golf course to be compelling, that a more libertarian philosophy of golf course architecture must be employed with just a touch of a laissez-faire approach to strategy. Call it freedom of choice in strategy and shot selection or Libertarian Golf Course Architecture.

More thoughts on Golf Course Architecture, Just click here

Root Development on Non-USGA Greens

2011-05-10T21:40:00.000-06:00

In the past, I have railed against the USGA green construction method (USGA Greens and The Emperor's New Clothes) as being a mistake and founded on poor assumptions. The reason for this is simply that I have never believed that their construction method would grow better grass or provide better putting qualities than some other methods. Additionally, USGA greens will cost more to build and maintain, while possibly leading to more leaching of nutrients and pesticides into drainage-ways than some other construction methods.

The pictures below were sent to me from Sagebrush Golf & Sporting Club's Superintendent, Norley Calder. Sagebrush is a Whitman, Zokol, Suny design, built with a non-USGA green construction method that I developed to achieve a superior low maintenance, low input putting surface. Norley has these greens running at 11.5 feet on a daily basis with a single cut and no rolling while being irrigated once every 7-10 days during the hottest summer weather. Sagebrush's green roots may be one and a half feet deep and these non-USGA greens may be the best putting surfaces in all of Canada.

Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club Spring 2011

How deep do these roots go?

USGA greens typically have their deepest and densest roots in their first full year and by year two, the root depth is reduced to seven or eight inches maximum with much less mass. Conversely, greens built with sound agronomic principals get better with age and rooting gets better from year to year, not worse. Pictures don't lie and neither do roots!

Sagebrush Post at Now on the Tee

2011-03-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

Now On The Tee blogger, Matt Bosela, has yet another great post on one of his trips to Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club last year. Matt has taken some great photos of the course before and here are some more.

Now On The Tee- Sagebrush Post link

#5 Bunker

#9 Green

#14 Second Shot

Below are pictures of Matt's group playing the second hole at Sagebrush. In the first picture you can see that his playing partner's approach shot has a very challenging angle and that he must carry the ball to most pin positions. In the lower picture, Matt must have hit the ball into the right side of the landing area's valley and got the better kick and better angle for his approach shot. The shot from there can be played on the ground or in the air. If the pin is anywhere on the back or left side of the green, then the ideal approach is from even further right than where Matt's ball ended up after rolling out 60 or 70 yards.

Aerial Attack

Ground Attack

More great Sagebrush posts from Now On The Tee

Now On The Tee- Sagebrush part 1

Mow On The Tee- Sagebrush part 2

Chirkinian Passes

2011-03-05T10:02:00.002-07:00

Anybody that ever spent any time with Frank Chirkinian came away with one thought...he was special. Special in a sense in that the word "icon" which, is used all too frequently these days, seems totally inadequate in describing what Frank Chirkinian was; he was a giant in the golf and TV industry. He passed away yesterday. His brilliance and his acerbic wit and cutting remarks, all offered with blunt honestly, will be missed by many. Each week when you see a scoreboard on TV, think of Frank; he was the one that gave us scoring as a plus or minus against par. Up until that point, golf was scored solely by gross score, pretty tough to understand what was going on while golfers were still on the course. The TV camera in the blimp, yes, that was Frank too.

Many in the golf business got to know Frank through his role at CBS and were aware of his creative intellect and vision. My relationship with Frank was different. Frank was an Armenian from Philly, as I am, knew my Father and Mother well and grew up with my Aunts, Uncles, and other assorted relatives before he became the TV broadcast pioneer.

For six years beginning in 1986, I spent a week with Frank at Castle Pines, where I was the Golf Course Superintendent for the "International" PGA Tour event. My wife and I always looked forward to that week and especially for the chance to get together with Frank for dinner and some lively discourse. During the broadcast of one of the tournaments, I received what may be the record for most "on air pops" (mentions during the broadcast) for a Superintendent during a PGA tournament. The course played pretty well and the greens were regarded as some of the best, but I always felt that Frank was taking care of me. Underneath his crusty exterior there was this huge heart.

Looking back at those years and being able to spend time with and observe Frank, his intensity, intellect, and genius reminds me just how fortunate I was in knowing Frank.

And just one last thought- What would the PGA Tour have been like if they had hired Frank Chirkinian as Commissioner?

Golf Architecture's Forgotten Course of Study- Golfers

2011-01-30T16:29:00.000-07:00

Golf Course Architects are missing the single-most important facet of golf course design- golfers. Golf Course Architects have typically had a defined course of study that includes studying landscape architecture, reading books by and about golf architects and golf course architecture, along with playing and or studying great golf courses. And we can all talk about strategy, angles, length, and all of the other aspects of design that people tend to focus on but what they are missing and why they often struggle to create golf courses that are immensely interesting and playable for golfers of all skill levels is that they have not studied golfers and how they play golf. Since we are designing courses for all golfers, wouldn't it make sense to study how golfers of varying skill levels play the game? Shouldn't this be the first thing that we study as opposed to being the last, if at all?

In the past I have written about the 40,000+ Hours on Great Golf Courses, which is about how much time I've spent on great golf courses. During those 40,000 or so hours, I suspect that I have seen more golf shots played by more types of golfers than the vast majority of Golf Course Architects. Studying how golfers play the game, may be more important than any other single course of study in Golf Course Architecture and yet, it has been virtually ignored by most students of golf course architecture. Can you imagine a traffic engineer designing roads without studying how people drive cars? It seems unlikely, although I think that we have all been in traffic jams where it seems as if the traffic engineer hadn't studied how people drive. And for that matter, we've probably all played too many golf courses where it seemed as if the Golf Course Architect hadn't studied how golfers play the game. Quite often, Architects have to come back and "fix" their golf courses within a year or two of the course opening. I wrote about that in Golf Architecture's Definition of Insanity. Perhaps if those Architects studied golfers and how they play the game of golf, they wouldn't have to "fix" their newly built courses.

In my Anarchist's Philosophy of Golf Course Architecture, I have been critical of modern golf course architecture as being formulaic, stuck in convention, and flawed based on being significantly or primarily based on the study of the great golf courses and golden era architects. It is one of my contentions that golf course architects should study nature first, golf course architecture second and lastly and perhaps most importantly, how people of all skill levels play golf.

When Golf Course Architects begin studying how golfers play the game, they will become better at designing and restoring golf courses.

A Mobile Device Application for Shade Studies

2011-01-13T21:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the new world.

Applications for mobile devices are coming to turf and there is one out now, that while not a "Turf" application, will be a tremendous tool for turf managers.

The application is called Celeste Lite and is available for free. This application will allow you to track the sun's movement for any day of the year. Knowing where the sun is and isn't for that matter, just became very inexpensive and very easy. The guess work has been removed and everyone can afford to do their own shade studies now.

Use it well!

Golf Course Setup and Major Championships

2010-10-31T16:52:00.002-06:00

Golf's governing bodies continue to struggle with setting up the venues for Major Championships. At times this is an embarrassment to our sport and in 2010 it was more of the same, with questionable setups at three of the four Majors.

After the 2010 US Open, people were talking about how the USGA had gotten better at setting up Championships. Well isn't that a left handed compliment? It has gotten better but is it good? The 14th hole at Pebble was certainly interesting. And the players seemed to be just fine with St. Andrews, even if, according to Frank Nobilo, of the Golf Channel, the R&A didn't mow the greens on Saturday. And then we certainly had an interesting PGA Championship.

Conversely, Augusta seems to be able to come up with a pretty good setup year after year. Augusta has an advantage. Augusta's Committee knows their golf course better than any organization knows any of the venues that they visit once a decade or so. Can you imagine Augusta having a poor setup like some of the other majors?

Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing mystical about setting up a golf course, there is no crystal ball, no mind altering drugs required or sports psychologists to consult. It just is not that difficult. Golf is different than other sports, in that the playing field is different from venue to venue and for that matter from day to day and therein lies the problem. Variables that influence the setup include; architecture, slopes, soils, grass species, climate, sand, thatch, etc. Officials of golf's governing bodies have a challenge that is unique in sports; preparing a field of play that has the potential for infinite variability. I don't envy their charge but I do question their process, and their personnel's experience/expertise. How can that be? Perhaps these people do setups for several lesser events each year. That really is not much experience considering that the Assistant Superintendent at your favorite golf course does setup every day and hundreds of times a year.

To setup a golf course for a Championship, one must determine the pin positions, tee locations, green speed, rough height, fairway widths, and irrigation. That's about it, yes there is more but understanding the basics can lead to a successful Major Championship setup. Architecture, grasses, weather, and intended playability are to be reflected in the setup, yes, but they can't be adjusted by man or committee the week of the event.

Haven't we all played in a tournament where the Pro, Superintendent, Committee Chair, or someone from a golf organization did a setup that was inappropriate, usually with every tough pin placement and green speeds that were just too much. Many newcomers to course setup don't have an understanding of setup or a feel for it and just look for difficult pin positions without regards to the ebb and flow of the golf course. In a four day event, a golf course can have similar levels of challenge while being very different each day or dare I say, provide a variable level of challenge from day to day. During a Championship, could that help identify the best player?

How is it that the PGA Tour, week in and week out, has great setups on their events? Slugger White, the PGA Tour's Tournament Director and Rules Official, seems to be able to figure things out pretty well every week and yet the governing bodies of golf have struggled at an alarming rate. Maybe the Majors should bring in Slugger to teach them how to do setup. When is the last time that we saw a PGA Tour event choose pin positions that were inappropriate for the green's speed or have greens that were bumpy because the week before an event a well intentioned official decided to turn the water off causing greens to get so bad that the the TV broadcast tried to minimize their close ups of the balls rolling on the greens? I can't remember one.

Golf's Championships, its Majors, have course setups dictated by people that do setup a few times a year and really have little experience doing setup. You've got to love these organizations. When I was a young man, the stimpmeter was being touted by the USGA as the tool to achieve consistency from green to green on a particular golf course. And now, they are routinely talking about and possibly creating different speeds from green to green and maybe even on the same green. One green is softer and slower than another. Is that consistency or is that a flaw in the setup of the golf course? Green speed should be based upon the the most severe green or desired pin placement on the golf course on that day of play. Pick that one pin placement that you really want to use and determine the speed that works. That should be the speed for the rest of the greens. This can be determined years in advance of an event. This panic management of the USGA, R&A, and PGA of America rolling into town the week before a Championship and making these decisions on the fly is just bizarre.

You may now be asking yourself, how I can say these things. Good question. The answer is that I was a Superintendent for 6 PGA Tour events, one PGA Championship, an Assistant Superintendent for a US Open, and on the greens crew for an Amateur. I have done golf course set up literally hundreds of times on Top 100 golf courses and overseen it thousands of times. I half kidded with a friend of mine recently who has been closely affiliated with golf's governing body that while I was still in my teens, that I had done more setup than anyone in any of these organizations. It may have been a little bit of a stretch or worse yet, maybe not.

But let's not stop with greens. What about the fairway narrowing and straightening? I don't know about the R&A but I do know that the PGA of America and the USGA routinely narrow fairways down and straighten them for their Championships. In doing so, they do make the golf courses tougher. But they also create less strategic options for the golfer and less to think about on tee shots. Does this identify the best golfer? It seems to minimize strategic options and dictate one way to play each hole. This could just be a philosophical approach to identifying the best golfer that I disagree with. I believe that the player can be challenged both with accuracy and options to more fully and completely test their mind and mettle.

Roughs for Championships are another area that the Majors just seem to struggle with. Different grasses and different weather conditions require different heights of cuts to provide a proper challenge. The typical problem that we see with roughs is when Bluegrass or other cool season grasses are allowed to grow too high. The roughs quite often are trimmed up on Tuesday and Wednesday to about 4 inches and then left to grow for the remainder of the Championship. What happens is that bluegrass starts to fall over when it gets much longer than 4 inches. So we end up with roughs where some balls are in grass that is laying over against the grain and other balls are laying on top of grass that is laying down in the direction of play. Two bad shots, one player chunks their ball out with a short iron and the other has a hot lie that they can hit any club they want. If the grass had been trimmed to whatever that "right" height is, both players and most of the rest of the field that day would have had similar conditions when in the rough. This happens every time that the roughs gets too long. The key is that there is a height that can be determined and managed to provide really good rough for championships.

Once a venue is picked, it is incumbent on the Association holding the Championship to plan for course setup. A digital level, available for $75 at hardware stores, and a couple of days on site could alleviate the embarrassment of poor pin placements and speed setup of Championships. Measure the slope of each pin placement that is desired and determine which is the steepest. Then mow that green and measure the speed. Is the pin accessible? If so mow it again and see if it still works. If it does roll the green and repeat. At some point the pin won't work. The last speed that worked is the speed the greens can be on the day that that pin placement is used. On other days another pin placement on the same green or another green will determine what the "right" speed for that day can be. And heaven forbid that we can look at the % slope of the green with a digital level and know what speeds work for what slopes. As far as adjusting greens speeds, it really isn't tough. Most Superintendents have a pretty good handle on that and can provide any desired speed. Perhaps these organizations could let the Superintendent know what speed the greens should be a year in advance instead of on Wednesday afternoon of the Championship or worse yet on Saturday or Sunday morning of the Championship.

I have measured the slopes of iffy pin placements and have a pretty good idea of what speeds work on different slopes. Perhaps these Organizations that run major championships could do a little research and know that a pin placement on a 4%, 3.5%, 3%, 2.5% slopes can have maximum green speeds of x feet on the stimpmeter. Nope, I'm not telling, I've done my work, but for $75 and an afternoon, anybody that works for one of these Organizations that is involved in course setup can figure it out. It doesn't seem like something that you discover during a Major Championship after your mistakes have marred the competition.

Let me suggest something that I have done before. A year before the event, the golf course should do a run-through of course setup. This can be a special treat for golfers at these Championship venues and allow all parties to get comfortable with the setup. This will help everyone work out the little things or at least identify the issues with plenty of time to address them.

Perhaps some of our friends that control Golf's Major Championships will read this and use some of these ideas to minimize the risk of further embarrassment for golf. Or maybe, just maybe they don't care as long as revenues aren't affected.

Suny's Philosophy of Golf Course Architecture

Golf Architecture's 18 Commandments

2010-09-29T16:48:00.000-06:00

Thou shall build golf courses that are enjoyable for average golfers and intriguing to better golfers
You shall not force every golf course to be a par 72
Thou shall not make every Par 3 hole play downhill
Thou shall avoid using the same percent slope on every feature, it's unnatural and nature isn't perfect
You shall not move more soil than necessary
Thou shall not copy golf holes or template holes
Thou shall foster and accommodate the ground game
Thou shall consider desired green speeds when designing green contours
You shall not make all of your golf courses look alike
Thou shall not force the same strategy on every hole
Thou shall embrace originality in design
Thou shall not use water features excessively and artificially
Remember, forward tees need better angles and more elevation, back tees don't have to be elevated
Honor the owner by being on site more and spending money as if it were your own
Thou shall consider green construction methods that work better and cost less than USGA specs
Remember that man made features should appear natural and reflect the surroundings
Thou shall not worship Big Name Architects
Thou shalt not worship Golden Era Architects

Golf Architecture- Majors and The R&A, USGA, and PGA of America

2010-07-22T21:41:00.008-06:00

The best golf courses in the world are routinely asked to make architectural changes to their courses in order to get a Major Championship. It isn't hard to see why a club would succumb to this pressure. After all, golf history and tradition are driving factors in hosting a Major and then of course there are the revenues and prestige for the clubs and courses.

What gives the R&A, USGA, and PGA of America standing, from a Golf Course Architectural standpoint, to change great golf courses? Is anyone in any of these august or semi-august organizations any more qualified to make changes to great golf courses than any group of golfers in the grille or bar after a round of golf? I don't think so. Are these organizations so arrogant as to think that they know how to make the greatest golf courses in the world better than they are?

Today, the most common reason for the architectural changes demanded by these associations is because the golf ball travels much further than it did in the past. So in order to balance their inability and lack of intestinal fortitude to control the distance the golf ball travels in Championships, the great protectors of the game of golf, demand that changes be made to the great golf courses. Shame on them. Maybe St. Andrews should make a local rule for the The Open and tell the R&A how far the ball can go. Maybe Pebble Beach and St Andrew's should have accepted their Opens with the caveat that the distance the ball travels will be the same as it was in say 1972 or 1982. Is that asking too much? Don't these great golf courses have the right to have their golf courses protected from the latest Wham-O Super Ball?

But it's worse than that, even before these organizations lost control of the distance the ball travels, they were making changes to great golf courses. I don't know how far back it goes but I know that it goes back at least to the 1960s with Joe Dey at the USGA making changes for US Opens at two golf courses I know pretty well. Changes were made, that in my opinion did not make the golf holes or courses better, just more one dimensional. What, other than potential revenues to host courses, gives these organizations the right to make architectural changes to great golf courses?

What will it take for the World's Greatest Golf Courses to say enough; if you want to play our golf courses, you'll play it as it is? If you, the governing bodies of golf, have allowed technology to get out of hand, deal with it yourselves and leave our golf courses alone.

Runoff Areas- Rewriting Golf Course Architecture History

2010-07-07T22:06:00.009-06:00

In the last couple of weeks we have seen runoff areas featured at Pebble Beach during the US Open and at Aronimink for a PGA Tour event. Some modern golf course architects and so called restoration experts have convinced golf's oligarchy that runoff areas are historically accurate and were prevalent features for some golf course designers of the "Golden Era" of architecture.

In the 1920s and the 1930s there were no runoff areas on golf courses. It's just that simple, the revisionist golf course architecture history is purely a fabrication. How do I know this? Good question and the answer will appear self evident. Fairway mowing heights in the 20s and 30s were generally between 1 and 1.5 inches or about the same as today's intermediate rough height. Does a ball roll very far in intermediate rough? No, it settles down very quickly. It really is that simple, the great designers of the 20s and 30s could have wanted to have runoff areas but the mowing heights didn't allow it to happen. Greens in the 20s and 30s were maintained at 3/16 to 1/4 of an inch or about the same as the most closely cropped runoff areas of today.

Now mind you, I really like short grass around putting surfaces, although I have difficulty understanding why most modern designers only utilize short grass to take the ball away from the green. It seems as if a balance of run-on areas and runoff areas would be more interesting golf architecture but that's another blog for another time.

Having worked at Aronimink some thirty plus years ago, I really enjoyed seeing the golf course on TV. I did golf course setup there for three years and knew the golf course fairly well. I thought the changes were an improvement to the golf course but to call them historically correct in regard to playability is just flat wrong.

Below are two articles from the 1930s that talk about fairway mowing heights. We might assume that in the 1920s the mowing heights were even higher.

1933. The Bulletin of the United States Golf Association Green Section. May. 13(3): p. 86-87.

Cutting height for fairway turf.—What is the proper height for
cutting fairways in midsummer? At that time of the year our fair-
ways are often badly burned from drought, and the clay loam on
which they are built becomes hard and baked. Our practice has been
to cut the fairways at 3/4 inch in spring and 1 inch in summer. (New
York)

ANSWER.—Recent work which we have conducted concerning the
best height of cut for fairways, Kentucky bluegrass fairways in par-
ticular, has indicated that for the best growth of grass the Kentucky
bluegrass should be cut not closer than 1&1/2 inches. This is a little
high, no doubt, for fairway purposes unless the fairways can be
cut frequently enough to prevent the grass from growing much
taller. It would be found that if the grass could be left that long it
would be conducive to a much thicker turf, and hence the ball might
easily present a better lie than it would on turf cut at 3/4 inch but
much thinner. We would suggest that you commence to cut the turf
in the early spring at 1&1/2 inches and continue through the summer
with the 1-inch cut, and if necessary during the early fall, when blue-
grass is growing vigorously. However we would allow the grass to
go into the winter on a long cut; in other words, as the end of the
fall growing season approaches we would allow the grass to grow to
1&1/2 inches. This gives the grass more of an opportunity to store up
plant food to be carried through the winter and to obtain a good start
in the early spring.

Spring 1938

Fairway Mowing Height
Q.—Shall we set our mowers as close as one
inch for cutting fairways and lawns? (Ohio.)

A.—In general we find that bluegrass and
fescue on fairways have been cut too close. Our
recommendation is that mowers be set as high
as the golfers will permit. The higher the fair-
way grass is cut, the better it will withstand
adverse conditions. There naturally is a limit
to the height that can be tolerated on fairways.
Since this height is below that which is best
from the standpoint of the grass, we make no
specific recommendation as to height but simply
urge that the mowers be raised as far as the
players will allow, realizing that this will be
decidedly different on various golf courses. Our
experience has been that as the mowers are gradu-
ally raised, the players will tolerate longer grass
and will actually find that the playing conditions
will be greatly improved even though the roll
of the ball will be less.

Art and Golf Course Architecture

2010-06-18T10:14:00.002-06:00

There is a relationship between art and golf course architecture that is unmistakable. What I have come to understand is that representations of golf course architecture in the form of drawings, sketches, paintings, and clay models must take liberties with reality to convey the sense of what is or what will be.

This is my first solo effort at paint markers since my daughter taught me how to do it while we worked on a painting/drawing two days ago. Trust me, she still did plenty of coaching. I look at this medium as just one more method of conveying the message that we (Suny, Zokol Golf Design) just do things differently. We are intuitive golf course designers.

Sagebrush Golf & Sporting Club # 5

An amusing aside, this is where Rod Whitman taught me how to run a dozer. He took two minutes to show me the controls and sent me over the cliff, literally. Perhaps he thought that I wouldn't come back....I did.

Another Medium to Express Golf Course Architecture

2010-06-16T19:39:00.002-06:00

My daughter is teaching me how to paint with markers. We worked on this together. I think I helped and she insisted that I also sign it. If you have been following the blog, you know that I started drawing this year after 40 years of not drawing. It's a way for Suny, Zokol Golf Design to convey our design ideas. And by the way, Zokol also can draw and sculpt. I don't see this as art in the sense that it isn't Josh Smith but it does work to convey a sense of the vision. We feel that drawings, clay models, and paintings convey our ideas better than Photoshop, CAD and topographical maps. Is this a sign of our Luddite tendencies? Maybe we are advocates of Neo-Luddist Golf Course Architecture.

#4 Green and Nicola Lake

Maren and Armen Suny

Intuitive Golf Course Architecture

2010-06-11T18:43:00.005-06:00

Intuitive Golf Course Architecture is how the great courses of the Golden Age of Design were built. Intuitive Golf Architecture validated by logic, produces special golf courses. These golf courses "feel" better than the conventional, paint by numbers, formulaic courses that are driven by rigid strategic parameters.

Deepak Chopra stated that, "Logic relies on reasoning, it relies on cause and effect relationships, its more or less linear. Intuition goes into a deeper part of yourself, which is your soul. Therefore intuition is a form of intelligence that is contextual, it takes everything into account, it is nurturing, it doesn't have a win lose orientation. It literally eavesdrops on the mind of the universe."

Zokol and I (Suny, Zokol Golf Design) are, in our souls, Intuitive Golf Course Designers. We are "feel" guys that look at land and the golf course in context with the surroundings and postulate the potential playability of what feels right. Playability is a byproduct of this intuitive connection process and is never overlooked. Quirkiness is not a disqualification by any means and originality is absolutely a plus.

Recently, while working with a client on reno/restoration of a property, we were slightly perplexed over starting the project on arguably one of the more architecturally challenged holes. At the green we eliminated the symmetry of bunkering and created a green/surrounds that is dissimilar to anything either of us remembers seeing or hearing about. We believe that it may be original; originality was not the intent but the byproduct of our intuition. The design captured the overall sense, feel and historic era of the property. The design concept was hashed out on site with clay models and followed up with hand drawn sketches, a step back to the process of the Golden Age when plasticine models were often the norm. We believe in creative collaboration along with open, frank discourse and seek it from others. Creative discourse is critical to our design process and some ideas that seem to be just too extreme may have unique and interesting aspects that can and often do enhance the end results.

Does it seem as if the conventional/analytical designers who start with preconceived notions are open to creative input through discourse? Do their golf courses suffer for it? Are golfers slighted by the one-dimensional aspect of logic/fear/reason/linear based golf course design? Do their golf courses ever reach down into your soul? Are they compelling? Is it possible to apply intuition to a logic-based design? Is that why some designer's courses look the same no matter what the surroundings?

Zokol and I believe that Intuitive Golf Course Design validated by logic and reason produces golf courses that are superior in every way.

A sketch of a current project from the left side of the green complex.

USGA Recognizes Sagebrush for "Firm and Fast"

2010-05-13T10:39:00.008-06:00

USGA Video on Sagebrush

In the video link above from the 2010 Golf Industry Show, the USGA identified Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club as an example of "Firm and Fast" golf course conditioning. Richard Zokol, PGA Tour player, club founder, and designer, had the foresight and vision to create Sagebrush five years ago. His goal was to create links playability in the mountains of British Columbia. The golf course was designed to be playable, engaging and aesthetically appealing, all while embracing the ground game. We are all proud of the golf course (Golf Digest's Best New Canadian Course for 2009) and the way that Superintendent or rather, Keeper of the Green, Norley Calder has implemented the maintenance strategies to provide these conditions.

Contrary to popular belief, Firm and Fast conditions can be created on any soil type unless the region is subject to unusually high rainfall. Sagebrush is built on a silty soil. The construction was crafted based upon the maintenance regimes that were going to be required to provide the playability goals.

Golf Architecture's Uphill Battle

2010-05-06T22:07:00.004-06:00

Has anyone noticed that there is a shortage of uphill Par 3s on modern Golf Courses? Today's designers will do just about anything while routing a golf course to avoid an uphill Par 3. Maybe you don't get to wear a plaid sport coat if you make uphill Par 3s or it could be that CAD programs used for golf design have a virus that is triggered by uphill 3s.

Modern designers venture onto level ground to design a Par 3 with little trepidation and literally salivate when they see that downhill ground for a lovely Par 3. And let's face it, really, how tough is it, to design a pretty downhill Par 3 and instill it with some kind of interesting strategy? Not exactly nuclear physics is it? But when it comes to the uphill Par 3, there just aren't many new ones out there. Of course, they can't be severely uphill but they can go up a moderate slope and create some real interest and a unique challenge.

Just look at the golf courses built in the last thirty years and at the plethora of downhill Par 3s. Some golf courses have 3 or 4 downhill Par 3s with another that may be level. At some point, the sameness of too many downhill Par 3s on these courses starts to become boring, no matter how good the architecture is and how aesthetically pleasing they are. It's just more of the same. Where are the great modern uphill Par 3s? Golf historians may look back at this era of architecture with disdain for its propensity to avoid uphill Par 3s.

In routing courses, designers often use the Par 3 as a "connector" between Par 4s and 5s. It's easy to use the Par 3 in those sticky parts of a routing and it is especially helpful when there is a significant sharp downhill grade change. These kinds of sharp downhill grade changes are much more difficult to deal with on Par 4s and 5s. Its easy and it makes sense to use a downhill Par 3 for continuity in the routing. Most modern golf architecture utilizes a golf car between holes to deal with uphill elevation changes and would never consider a Par 3 as a "connector" to go uphill, even when there may be a great opportunity for an interesting and original uphill Par 3.

Uphill Par 3s may be the most challenging design element in Golf Course Architecture and from a golfer's perspective; they are the most perplexing of holes and can really test one's mettle. We're dealing with a one shotter with much less visibility than we are used to or feel comfortable with. It is one of the more interesting challenges that one can have on a tee and maybe even a bit similar to the blind tee shot where you just know that there is fairway where you hit your ball, but you're really not positive.

Tackling the uphill Par 3 is perhaps one of the more, if not the most interesting and challenging aspects of golf course design. Creativity and a measure of intestinal fortitude are mandatory for those that venture into that uphill battle. Try explaining the benefits of the uphill Par 3 to a client sometime. But the end result is absolutely worth it. Think about those times that you've stood on the tee of an uphill Par 3 and what was going through your head before the shot and even as you approached the green after hitting what you believed to be the perfect tee shot.

Another Sketch

The Masters, My one and only trip to Augusta

2010-04-06T22:58:00.001-06:00

In 1989 or maybe 1990, I was fortunate enough to get to go to Augusta for the Masters. I had a wonderful experience and was fortunate enough to do some things that the average fan wouldn't ever get to do. The golf course was far different than I had expected. It was an amazing piece of ground and in those years it was far more open than I had expected. And those greens had more slope than any greens I had ever seen.
Congregating under the oak tree my first morning there, was a true delight as I got to see old friends and spend some time with the who's who of golf. Joe Duich, the breeder of Penncross and all of the A and G bentgrass varieties, who was my advisor at Penn State, drove by in a golf cart and saw me. Joe had been an agronomic consultant to Augusta for a decade or two. He asked if I wanted to go with him to measure the green speeds. So my first day ever at Augusta, I jumped on a golf cart and went out to stimp greens. As we were driving out we drove by Will Nicholson, past president of the USGA and Head of the rules committee for the Masters as he was walking out. I waved and said good morning to him.

The next day I was given a tour of the CBS compound and command center by Frank Chirkinian of CBS. If you know how small the world is, would you be surprised that Frank knew my parents long before I was ever born. I had gotten to know Frank at Castle Pines where CBS Golf did our tournament. For those of you that don't know it, Frank invented scoring as we are accustomed to it today as a plus or minus to par including the red and black colors. Prior to Frank's brilliant adaptation, only gross scores were given during broadcasts. Pretty tough to follow that. Oh and I'm fairly sure that Frank put the first camera in a blimp and created the TV tower.

That afternoon I went to one of the cabins to see Charlie Coe. Charlie, the great amateur, was a long time Augusta member and owns virtually every amateur record at the Masters, including a second place finish in 1961. Charlie was a frequent lunch partner of mine while I was at Castle Pines along with the Pro, Keith Schneider. Charlie taught me so much about golf course set up, a lot of which he learned at the Masters. We won't go into Charlie's working on my golf swing or lack thereof.

So, my first and only trip to Augusta and The Masters was just a little bit different than most people's. My overwhelming impressions of the trip were that while the golf course had always looked heavily treed on TV, in those days, it was fairly wide open and that the slope on the greens was the most that I had ever seen on a great golf course.

I still watch The Masters but I long for the days when it was the Championship that could be won with recovery shots. Maybe some day they'll get the chain saws out and let the spectacular recoveries once again help determine the winner.

Market Your Course Designer- Score Golf, Rick Young

2010-03-21T18:43:00.004-06:00

Score Golf Market Your Course Designer by Rick Young

The Blog Post link above is an interesting article by Rick Young, which I have a different opinion on. Rick quotes Terry McAndrew's Web Street Golf Daily Pulse. Golf Daily Pulse cites marketing data from The Golf Research Group's research suggesting that Top 10 golf designer's projects are more successful than other designers based upon golf course valuation.

Those of you that have been following this blog understand that I tend to do my own thinking. Below is my response to Rick Young's article.

Rick,

Thanks for bringing up an extremely interesting topic. If this was 2006, it would be tough to disagree with McAndrew and the research from Golf Research Group other than to point out the great success of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, which broke all of the rules about top architects or at least prolific ones.

Your article refers to research that many golf course and golf residential community developers have based their decisions upon for the last two decades. It seemed simple, hire a high profile architect and expect increased sales, absorption rates, and home/lot prices. Expense increases for golf architect design fees, course construction costs, and course maintenance costs were factored into premiums charged for lots, memberships and dues or green fees. For the 10-15 years prior to 2008, it worked when the projects had sound fundamentals.

Mr. McAndrew might want to ask Golf Research Group or some other accredited golf/residential researcher for a more current study, say 2007 through 2010. It seems doubtful that having a high profile architect has kept projects and developments from foreclosure and bankruptcy during this time frame. Especially when high profile architects' projects typically require larger capital and operating budgets. As for the increase in home values in these communities, it would be once again prudent to look at 2007 through 2010, when residential home values in some communities with high profile architects crashed, with homes and lots selling, if they sell at all, for 25-30% of their peak value.

Going forward, look for a paradigm shift in the golf course development business. Developers of golf courses and golf communities will be evaluating golf business models for profitability and sustainability and looking for architects that understand the golf business as well as design. Developers and course operators will continue to market in conventional ways as well as through the new mediums. Marketing that includes the golf course architect can be a significant benefit but the name alone cannot sustain momentum and insure success, the golf course has to be interesting, immensely playable, memorable, aesthetically appealing, and fun.

Golf's old beliefs and ways have to adapt to changing conditions. Big name architects will have to provide more than just improved marketing value. They will need to provide great golf courses that cost less to build and maintain, and those big design fees...they are now negotiable.

Armen Suny

Suny Zokol Golf Design, LTD

Is Golf Business an Oxymoron or a Regular Moron in Golf Attire?

2010-03-19T17:35:00.006-06:00

It's easy to look back at golf's build-up prior to the collapse and wonder what were they thinking. How did the golf business get to this point? Obviously, this recession has affected businesses across the board and there will be no bailouts for golf. But there is more to Golf's economic free fall than easy financing and a market downturn.

People got into the golf business because times were good and the golf business is sexy. Sexy, you may be shaking your head but think about this, you are at a cocktail party and there is one fellow that owns at mini-storage warehouse that is extremely profitable and another fellow that owns a golf course that loses a million a year, which fellow will get chatted up the most? A golf course and or development owner will really draw a crowd if he has used a "big name" to design the course. So, we have people that got into the business, that may have had only a cursory understanding of the golf business based upon playing the game and possibly having been on the board at their club and we wonder why our industry crashed.

Of course, in the 90s it seemed as if it was impossible to develop a residential community that didn't have a golf course. Golf courses were the answer to increased absorption and prices for real estate. One minor detail, the golf business models were unsustainable in good times let alone in a downturn. Wall Street's unsuccessful foray into golf, yet again, is just another example of golf's appeal to well healed investors.

The golf business is going through a painful correction, that may ultimately be good for golf, golfers and the golf business.

Examples of some decisions that, with hindsight, the industry would rethink:

Just about any money spent on Clubhouse expansions, the debt and operating losses are dragging everyone down.

Huge golf course maintenance crews and budgets, hand mowing tees, approaches, and runoff areas, triplexes for fairways and even roughs. Will we see the return of the gang mower on roughs and even fairways?

30 year deposits versus initiation fees, this scheme sounded great because deposits were not treated as ordinary income. Times change, when these clubs sell does anyone want to assume this liability? The answer is painful...bankruptcy.

Spas at clubs, so that you can get a rub down after a quick 18, do you think this makes sense?

Fine dining at private and daily fee courses. Do I need to even comment on this one?

Those of you/us that will be around for the next golf boom should be taking notes about what the industry did wrong and the attributes of the courses/clubs/developments that survived or even prospered through the tough times. There are lessons to be learned because golf really is a business.

Richard Zokol Interview- Toronto Golf Show on Golf Course Design

2010-03-14T20:42:00.000-06:00

http://videos.scoregolf.com/SG-Daily/Pro-Spective-Richard-Zokol/0_gixthkwr

Richard Zokol, 2-time winner and 25 year PGA Tour veteran, has some prescient thoughts on what's wrong with golf and where Golf and Golf Course Design are headed. To view the Zokol interview, click on the link above.

Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club

Golf Digest's Best New Course

Canada for 2009

Zokol is a partner in Suny Zokol Golf Design.

40,000+ hours on Great Golf Courses

2010-03-11T22:50:00.000-07:00

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called "Outliers". One of his contentions in the book is that to become competent in any given vocation or profession that you must spend 10,000 hours in your chosen field. I must be slower than most people because it took me over 40,000 hours spent on great golf courses before I became comfortable with my own instincts about Golf Course Design.

There are those in the Golf Design business that talk about how they have "studied" and are "students" of the great golf courses. Their studies have consisted of reading about the course, the architect, looking at pictures, possibly plans, and a single or several trips to the hallowed ground to play golf. It has always struck me as sincere although incomplete and naive to assume that one can garner much more than the gross strategy and a general sense of a great course in such a short period of time and course of study.

Consider some additional methods to learn more about golf course architecture from a different angle. It takes time at great courses:

*Spend one week on the same course, a month, a year
*Do golf course setup, you may call it changing cups but when done well, its daily design
*Watch thousands of variously skilled golfers play the same course and holes
*Look at the golf course forward and backward day after day
*Look across golf holes and at areas between and around holes and how they relate
*See the course before the sun comes up, at sunrise, sunset, or after dark, in the moonlight
*Look at contours from shadows created by headlights, you won't believe what's there
*Watch a downpour, where the water flows, and how fast
*See how the snow settles on the course and melts
*Watch the golf course during a wind storm, see what blows where
*See shadows at different times of the day and year
*Look at the golf course as the leaves fall from the trees and the how the shade changes
*Smell the dirt, good soils smell better than bad soils
*Look at the course when its completely dormant or browned off for over-seeding
*Shovel up bunker washouts, fix bunkers on the spot with hand tools and without a master-plan
*Watch tens of thousands of golf shots hit, land, and roll on every part of the course
*Roll balls on every green repeatedly every day and watch the ball roll, exposing all of the contours
*Learn from the people that were responsible for protecting the integrity of these courses, if any are left
*Playing shouldn't be ignored but if you are a skilled player try some shots from where less skilled players may have to play from

Hopefully, it won't take others the 40,000 hours at great golf courses that it took me to feel comfortable with golf course design. But surely, it takes more than a few rounds to learn about a great golf course. Spending significant time on great golf courses has exposed me to many of their subtleties and nuances, while developing a very different and varied perspective on golf course architecture.

Italian Grape Hoes

2010-03-03T21:40:00.004-07:00

Quite a few people have asked me the significance of using Italian Grape Hoes to finish bunkers. Its a little bit like the old adage: if you have to ask how much something costs you can't afford it. With the Italian Grape Hoe, if you have to ask why its a better tool to finish bunkers with, then you have never used one.

The Italian Grape Hoe (IGH) has a heavy sharp blade 7-8 inches wide, depending on the manufacturer, and 10 inches high. It typically comes with a handle that is 5 feet long.

With the IGH, when finishing, renovating or edging bunkers, one always works from within the bunker. One simply chops down and pulls back a chunk of what ever material is being worked. It is at least twice as fast as using a shovel. As you can tell by the photo above, the IGH has a curved head, so it allows you to easily create the "right" angle on the edges of the bunkers, even when working on steep faces.

The first time that I saw or used an Italian Grape Hoe was at Merion Golf Club in 1980 when we did a lot of renovation/restoration work on the bunkers prior to the Open. Apparently, they had been using them since Flynn was the Head Greenkeeper and Joe Valentine was the Construction Foreman. When Flynn left, Joe Valentine took over as Head Greenkeeper and then Richie Valentine took over as Superintendent. I was Richie's Assistant in 1980 and 81.

In a future post, I'll describe "chunking" to make repairs and create features in bunkers, another original technique from the early days that was handed down to Valentine and from him to me.

Golf Architecture's Definition of Insanity

2010-02-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

Is anyone other than me shocked and amazed at the number of and extent of changes made to new golf courses and renovations shortly after they open? Many golf course architects just keep making changes, trying to get things right. They appear to be practicing golf architecture. How many times does it take to get it right? As a golf course superintendent I spent a lot of time fixing suspect golf architecture. As a golf course architect I spend a lot of time making sure that we get it right the first time.

Perhaps owners and clubs should ask architects vying for design and renovation work, how many changes and how extensive those changes have been on completed projects. Recently I spent some time on a relatively new course by a "name" architect. After the golf course opened, numerous changes were made and more planned.

We've all heard the definition of insanity- Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Golf Architecture's definition of insanity is- Hiring the same Architects over and over again and expecting a different result- getting it "right" the first time.

Another Drawing

Great Golf Courses are a Derivative of Nature First and Man Second!

2010-02-19T18:00:00.000-07:00

Great golf courses are a derivative of nature first and man second. That some may choose to study man first and nature secondly and possibly not at all is short sighted. Even courses that are entirely man-made should mimic nature first.

The Excerpt below is from Anarchist's Guide to Golf Course Architecture- Philosophy of Golf Course Architecture

Probably the most bizarre facet of the study of golf course design to me is that most people start with poor assumptions. The typical route for today’s designers and the budding new designers is to study all of the great Architects and golf courses or even perhaps write and comment about it. People spend years and lifetimes doing this. Maybe if you were designing buildings this would make sense, go look at the great buildings of the world. The buildings were all designed and built solely by man. But when it comes to golf courses, I consider it an inadequate course of study. The great golf courses of old were largely produced by nature and the great new ones emulate the great old ones, so whether or not the land was great, the golf holes are created to have that look, feel, and playability. This course of study, learning all there is to know about the great golf courses, is certainly understandable and it is viewed by virtually everyone but me as the proper course of action to “learn” about golf course design. You too can take the pilgrimage to the Mecca of golf and become enlightened. That’s all you need, a ticket and some time and you too can learn all there is to know.

What we are missing is that Mother Nature by and far built those great courses, not man. The only thing that I don’t like at those great old golf courses is the artificial edifice of man and that occurs mostly in unnatural looking man made fixes of bunker edges. If we want great golf courses, maybe we should go back to studying nature, natural landforms, and erosions caused by wind, water, and animals. At the heart of it all isn’t that what we seek to do? Aren’t we trying to find or create golf as it was discovered in nature? Studying great designers and courses as an adjunct to studying nature makes sense, but we need to spend more time studying nature first and then those designers that came before us. Otherwise the only thing that will have changed is that we will have a new “look” and “playability” that at some point becomes conventional. We have a chance to fight our inborn tendencies to go with the herd or I guess to put it in the Scottish golf vernacular the flock and if we can, then we will keep new golf courses less predictable and more natural than ever. If not, maybe we are sheople. Just say and do what the rest of the flock does.

Design Considerations- Greens' Contour Changes from Maintenance Practices

2010-02-12T18:52:00.003-07:00

There is a common maintenance procedure that can and does significantly alter the putting surfaces' contours and raise the overall elevation in relation to the green surrounds. The frequent topdressing of greens to improve putting qualities was popularized in the 1980s and continues today. Frequent topdressing can easily add one quarter inch or more of sand to greens on an annual basis. So in 20 years, putting greens may be 5 inches higher. This significant build up is not noticed because it is fairly uniform over the entire green, applied gradually and therefore virtually undetectable. Any assumption that through core aeration, a lot of material is removed would be inaccurate. In order for the greens to be acceptable putting surfaces and for agronomic considerations, after core aeration, the holes are completely filled and it takes a little extra sand to be insure that the holes are filled.

Topdressing Math, an old grass guy like me can still do the math!

125 tons of topdressing sand annually = approximately 2,500 cubic feet of sand
2.500 cubic feet divided by 120,000 square feet of greens = 0.02 inches of sand = 0.25 inches of sand annually.
20 years of topdressing would add 5 inches of sand over the existing surface

This kind of accumulation is evident on many great old golf courses' push-up greens. Are we so cavalier with the great masters' works?

What impact does this unintended altering of contours and raising of greens up 5 inches every 20 years have on the design and playability of the golf course? The tie-ins to the surrounds may not play as designed and intended. In order to protect the playability of the fairway/green and surrounds/green interfaces, it may be necessary to start topdressing out into the approaches and the surrounds. It may also be prudent to start cutting back our topdressing volume on an annual basis and use less nitrogen and more growth regulators to maintain the putting qualities.

Vigorous monitoring of this issue will be a requirement going forward in order to protect the integrity of the golf course. Changes in maintenance practices can minimize the effects of these changes and renovations can restore the intended design/playability the golf course.

USGA Greens and The Emperor's New Clothes

2010-02-06T22:01:00.003-07:00

USGA Greens and The Emperor's New Clothes
February 2010
Armen Suny

In Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale, two weavers promise the Emperor a set of clothes that only the privileged or enlightened can see. There is a child that cries out “But he isn’t wearing anything at all.”

For decades now the USGA with its naked greens construction method has bullied courses and Architects into the most expensive green construction method in common use with no empirical evidence that its method is better. We are supposed to blindly go along with their green construction method despite the fact that with their tens of millions of dollars spent on research that they have not adequately investigated alternative green construction methods. Yes there have been studies but as we all know, research has become highly politicized and results can unfortunately be based upon funding and future funding.

Typical USGA Greens construction can cost anywhere from three to six dollars per square foot more than other construction methods. If we use five dollars for the sake of our discussion and assume 120,000 square feet of greens, they will add $600,000 to the cost of construction. If we use typical “ball park” golf development/operations numbers, each $100,000 of construction cost equates to $1 of greens fees. So the USGA's pressure on Architects and the golfing public has caused an average increase in green fees of $6 per round. Is this good for golf? The USGA will put forth the suggestion that other green construction methods are unproven and more costly to maintain. It simply is untrue. If USGA greens are truly superior and the only way to insure success, why don't the USGA's favorite venues for US Opens all have USGA greens?

The USGA is just like the two weavers in Andersen’s tale. The USGA green is just like the Emperor’s new clothes and I am like the child, only my cry is, “But it makes no agronomic sense and cost too much to build.” The USGA has stood by its guns with each version of its latest recasting of the specifications. Let me ask the question, what percentage of USGA greens have been rebuilt? Is the IRS correct in letting us depreciate USGA greens over 30 years? They won’t let us depreciate a push-up green. Can one green construction method be right for the entire world? It may not be right for anything! The USGA keeps telling us that the Emperor’s clothes are beautiful and that furthermore if we disagree that we are heretics and bad for the monarchy of golf.

Dr. Michael Hurdzan and I have had discussions for years about his righteous attempts to look at other green construction methods. His has been a lone voice in the industry to challenge the USGA green. What Mike and I have disagreed on was sterile green mixes as a growing medium. He is an advocate of straight sand California type greens and I am an advocate of green construction methods tailored to the specific agronomic conditions and always adding life and nutrient reserves to soil mixes.

Let me explain to you, that I grew up growing grass on push up greens in the Philadelphia area at Aronimink, Merion, and Rolling Green. And that then I had push up greens at Cherry Hills, inferior USGA Greens at Castle Pines, and USGA greens at Shadow Creek. I’ve grown grass in lots of different places on lots of different soil and construction types. I generally found that if your water was good and you had lots of sun and air movement that virtually any green construction method was acceptable.

As a turf consultant I used to enjoy taking Superintendents to one of their better USGA greens and looking at the collar on the far side of the green that got very little traffic and then looking at the adjacent men’s tee that got a lot of traffic. Invariably the highly trafficked tee turf, that often had the same grass, mowing height, and schedule as the green collar was in far better condition even though it was typically built with less grade, often no drainage, and only 4-6 inches of sand. The tee construction cost 25% of the green construction and was in better shape. I used to ask Superintendents if maybe we should start building the greens like the tees so that they would be in better shape and cost less to build. They would usually pause and then start regurgitating what they had learned in school. Maybe we should teach deductive reasoning as a turf course.

What I am about to expound upon is part conjecture and all opinion on my part. The concept behind the USGA green was to build a green that could be saturated from a rain event or by over irrigation from man and still provided an acceptable putting surface. They also wanted a green that could be irrigated with low quality water and still support turf life.

So logically, they piled some sandy materials on top of gravel and assumed that things would drain. Well it didn’t work. The sand on top of the gravel crated a false water table, later renamed a perched water table because it sounded better. So instead of going back to the drawing board, to create a construction method that would drain and not create a false water table, these scientists started touting the virtues of a “perched” water table and how this was the ideal method of growing grass.

Now, nowhere have I ever seen their proof for this statement that we have all come to regard as the “Holy Grail” of green construction. A false water table is not the ideal method of growing grass. In all of agriculture, other than rice patties, I am unaware of any other growth system in agriculture that relies on a false water table.

Many Superintendents have come to realize that in order for a USGA green to drain, that you have to fill up much of the big pore spaces of the sand with water until the weight of the water and gravity cause the false water table to be broken. At that time the green will start to drain and the pore spaces will be filled with atmosphere.

Now we have many courses hooking up vacuum systems to their USGA greens to break the perched water table and pull the water out of the green. So we designed and constructed a green that with a perched water table and then because we don’t want the water there we vacuum it out. Does my earlier statement about a deductive reasoning class being a requirement in a turf education start sounding more reasonable? Ben Franklin is quoted as saying “Common sense is uncommon.” He spent his time in Philadelphia too…maybe its something in the water there.

The solution to this one solution fits all USGA green is to utilize our agronomic skills and design site and condition specific green construction methods. The highest level of green construction would be utilized to grow bentgrass greens in the humid south with bad water. This is the most demanding situation that can be arrived at. What method would be utilized for this difficult situation? I would propose that the high performance push up green construction method be used.

High Performance Push Up Green Method

Core Out Green to 8-10 inches below grade

Rough up or rip subsurface

Install drainage, Herringbone and smile drains in all runoff areas

Fill Drainage trenches with pea gravel

Install green mix or sand, amendments can be tilled in.

This method of construction will perform very well under adverse conditions. The tighter the subsoil, the more rainfall received and the poorer the water quality the closer the drainage spacing.

Lesser environmental demands will require less intense construction methods. I have built greens nurseries on native soils and then topdressed them. They always performed better than the USGA greens. I have seen greens built on native soils which were ripped and then capped with a few inches of sand that have out performed USGA greens in the same region. Every agronomic situation is different but in my opinion none of them need USGA greens.

Green mixes need to have life in them. The sterile environment that the USGA has dictated for too long is just bad agronomics. It is reductionism and the application of an engineering solution that is silent and even disdainful of the life that soil must have to be productive. It is hydroponics. We create a sterile soil with no nutritional reserves and then wonder why we have odd patch diseases for the first three years. If we add life and nutritional reserves to greens mixes through the incorporation of composts, natural organic fertilizers and inoculants, we will have healthier turf and need less pesticides.

Has anybody ever considered the pollutants in the leachates from USGA greens compared to pushup greens? We should voluntarily mandate that we won’t put this contaminated leachate into drainage ways.

Now that you’ve read this, shouldn’t the Emperor put on some clothes? Shouldn’t we as responsible professionals use our expertise and experience to design region and site specific green construction methods that perform better, cost less to build, and pollute less? Perhaps the USGA can worry about square grooves and leave the greens construction methods to us. We won’t cause the average golf round to cost $6 more per round.

Golf Sketches and Clay Models versus Photoshop and Topos

2010-02-04T22:15:00.008-07:00

Digitally manipulated photos, to me appear to be emotionless and soulless representations of golf. It may be an indication of the left brain dominated thought process typical of engineers versus the right brain dominated thought process of the artist.

I have started sketching some concepts for a potential client and even some existing golf holes like the picture in the prior post of Sagebrush. Drawing is something that I haven't done in the last 40 years. I have been trying to draw 15 minutes or so each day for the last few weeks.

The clay model is another excellent tool to convey an idea of what the golf should or could look like. This can be accomplished quickly and everyone from the client to the shaper, if you aren't doing it yourself, will understand what the form will look like. This is also a tremendous tool for renovations so that the client fully understands the changes as they really will be, versus looking at pretty green grass Photshopped pictures that don't convey the entire concept or worse yet, lack thereof.

The image above is the model that the 13th at Sagebrush was built from. During the shaping when we went back to the tee, it was apparent that we should get rid of the pot bunker in front and make the right bunker larger to keep the front of the green open and encourage the golfer to try and drive this reachable par 4.

Sketch of the 16th at Sagebrush

2010-01-29T10:20:00.003-07:00

This is a sketch of the half acre green at Sagebrush. There are 5 greens at Sagebrush that are between 13,000 and 22,000 square feet in size. The 18 greens have a total of 198,500 square feet and may be the largest set of creeping bentgrass greens in North America. The intended firm and fast playability of the golf course and the scale of the property was such that the land screamed for large greens in most areas.

The greens were constructed in an unorthodox method, what may be termed as high tech push up greens or high performance modified greens. Compost and other nutrients were tilled into the soils prior to the finish grade. The greens were all built to accommodate our daily green speeds of 11-11.5 feet and have all pin positions available. The large greens each have two sprinklers in the middles of the greens.

Robert Thompson on Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club

2010-01-15T11:48:00.006-07:00

“It is rare to find a golf club with a vision as well defined as that of Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club. But at the heart of every great golf club is a remarkable golf course and what designer Rod Whitman, Richard Zokol and Armen Suny have created in the interior of British Columbia is, to my way of thinking, a step above anything built in Canada over the last thirty years.”
- Robert Thompson, Golf Columnist

Structural Bunkers

2010-01-05T14:13:00.003-07:00

Many of you have never heard the term structural bunker. There apparently are no references to it in any golf writings.

The basic types of bunkers are directional, penal, and saving. Any of the bunker types could be strategic or structural. The strategic bunker is obvious and needs little discussion but the structural bunker is another story. Structural bunkers, which are virtually unknown and ignored are used to deal with elevation changes and to minimize earth moving. Any one bunker can be combinations of different bunker types. One bunker can tell you where to hit the ball, directional, save you from running away into trouble, saving, and then after you are in it penalize you with a difficult shot. It can also be structural in that it handled a change in elevation during the construction process instead of requiring more fill or a wall of some sort.

This is a picture of Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club's 3rd hole. The big fairway bunker on the left was utilized strategically to cause the golfer to think about the dangers on the left side of the hole. It is also the support for a 15 foot fill. As natural looking as it is, its completely man made and allowed us to minimize the fill required to deal with the hole's significant right to left slope. If a structural bunker had not been used the required fill and tie-in would have been substantial and a bit of a force. The look and story from the tee would have been very different. This was a balanced cut and fill. The bunker generated the fill required to achieve the elevation change. This is an aesthetically appealing, golfer friendly, cost effective, solution to one of golf course architecture's challenges.

Firm and Fast Golf

2009-12-30T20:58:00.006-07:00

Firm and Fast golfing conditions are something that I started providing in 1982 at Rolling Green Golf Club outside of Philadelphia and through the 80s and early 90s in the Western United States at Cherry Hills and Castle Pines. I have experience with both cool and warm season grasses. This discussion is germane to both. Some of you may remember that some players in the 1985 PGA Championship at Cherry Hills thought that the golf course was too firm. The members didn't have much sympathy since other than the greens being a little faster, the firmness of the greens and fairways and the speed of the 0.25 inch fairways (6+ on the stimpmeter) was the same as the members played all summer and fall.

There are two very divergent methods of providing firm and fast. Both methods we shall assume need solid fundamental agronomics when it comes to soil management, cultivation/topdressing, mowing etc. Responsible turf managers are going more and more towards sustainable practices utilizing microbe friendly soil management programs with more compost, natural organic fertilizers, and microbe friendly mined and synthetic products. Balancing soil nutrition through base saturation is a must. The divergence really comes down to irrigation philosophies.

There are those that provide firm and fast by applying a little bit of water each day when it is hot and maybe even syringing on cool season grasses. And then there are those that irrigate deeply and infrequently. Count me in that second group. There was a year in Philadelphia that I watered fairways 11 times in one season. Others watered 11 times in one week. It wasn't a wet year. Can both methods provide firm and fast conditions? Sure, a talented committed Superintendent can provide firm and fast conditions either way.

The big difference is that deep and infrequent irrigation is more natural and provides for healthier turf. How can this be? Have you ever noticed that the day after a heavy rain that the golf course is starting to firm up and that two, three, and four days after the rain the golf course is really getting firm and by that I mean thirty, forty, fifty yards of roll. And soil types don't have to be sandy, this works on clay, silt and sand. The only thing that varies is the amount of water applied and the frequency.

Deep and infrequent irrigation mimics a heavy rainfall. It connects the surface moisture with the subsurface moisture. This allows the tension of the the pull from the soil particles and gravity to allow water to be pulled down and allow the surface to dry from evaporation, transpiration, soil tension, and gravity as opposed to the light frequent irrigation in which the surface dries mostly by evaporation and transpiration. The other thing that occurs with deep and infrequent irrigation is that as water is pulled down by tension and gravity deeper into the soils, air is pulled into and through the turf canopy and soil to replace water going deeper. Plants and soils that receive more atmospheric/soil gas exchange will be healthier and deeper rooted.

The deep and infrequent irrigation philosophy and technique creates a soil that is at field capacity for a shorter period of time over the long run. Irrigation every day typically takes the soil to field capacity each day as it replaces what was lost the previous 24 hours. Field capacity in an ideal soil is when half of the pore spaces are filled with water and half with air. Field capacity is also when soil is at its maximum potential for compaction. The more frequent the soil surface is at field capacity the more prone the soil is to compaction. Another and less noticeable difference between deep and infrequent and shallow and frequent irrigation is that gas transfer through water is much less than through soils. If soils are irrigated every day there will be less gases transferring between the soil and the atmosphere. Soil microbes, especially the good ones, need oxygen; they get oxygen from the atmosphere. If the soil surface is being sealed with water for a period of time every day until it transpires or evaporates, the transfer of gases has been reduced. Less atmospheric gases in the soils means less healthy soils.

Shallow frequent subsistence irrigation can produce firm conditions when talented Superintendents monitor it and manipulate it to the edge. The golf course will be a little moist each morning. It isn't natural, it isn't the way grasses developed, it does create ideal conditions for compaction, it does make an ideal irrigation technique for Poa annua seed germination, it does tend to produce more shallow rooted plants, moist soils transfer heat more rapidly than dry soils, and it may cause the need for syringing during golf. This philosophy cannot be used in high salt/sodic soils or irrigation waters without a deep flushing periodically.

Deep and infrequent irrigation requires that soils be receptive to irrigations of one half to three quarters of an inch in one evening. The golf course will probably be wet the first morning. But from that point forward the ground will get firmer and firmer for days with another irrigation being needed when the root zone is about 40% depleted of moisture. Wetting agents can help reduce the wet morning period of the first day after an irrigation. Deep and infrequent irrigation minimizes the germination of weed seeds including Poa annua because the soil surface isn't re-moistened every day. If you were trying to get Poa annua seeds to germinate, you would irrigate every day and maybe throw in a syringe.

It really all comes down to a commitment to provide firm fast conditions, the way golf was intended to be played. You can clearly come to the conclusion that I believe that deep and infrequent irrigation is the best way to get there. But just get there, however you do it, just do it. Firm and Fast is good for golf and for some odd reason, it seems as if the Firm and Fast crowd, especially the deep and infrequent ones always tend to have less fertilizer and chemical input for some reason.

The site will take you to a great article written by Ed Miller. Ed was the Assistant Superintendent at Cherry Hills and then went on to Desert Forest, Pebble Beach, Desert Highlands, and then ran all of Carefree Resorts' properties before building and owning courses in Texas. You get the idea. Ed clearly expressed the deep and infrequent philosophy in this USGA Green Section publication. Click on the link below and go to page 11 in the March/April issue.

Green Section 1988 March/April Go to page 11

Anarchist's Guide to Golf Course Architecture

2009-10-13T21:43:00.010-06:00

This essay is a compilation of thoughts that were just bursting to get out of my head. Any of you that know me will understand that. Those that don’t know, may find this interesting and a different take on conventional thoughts regarding golf design.

I remember years ago, probably the early 90s being at the Wigwam Resort in the Phoenix area. I was doing an agronomic consultation. They have three courses there. Two were Jones courses with these bizarre green complexes that reminded me of ski jumps. They were just huge piles of dirt that were ramped up to a putting surface on an otherwise flat piece of desert. The tees were runway like. I just felt uncomfortable looking at these obviously man made earth forms. And then they took me over to the other course and as I went around this course I actually sighed in relief. It just felt good. Now this was the golf course on the left over piece of ground that Red Lawrence got to work with. Jones got his pick of the ground and Red got what was left. The golf course wasn’t spectacular but it “felt” good. There was a subtle land form that ran through a good portion of the property that had to have been built by Red but it sure looked as if it had always been there. This wasn’t Desert Forest, it was a short 18 holes and the folks at the resort treated it as an inferior golf course but it looked as if nature built it and it felt good.

What is it that makes us feel good on some golf courses? What is it that stirs us emotionally on some properties? Yeah, I know that we all feel good when we play well but I’m talking about something much more primordial. Have you walked in to some homes and just felt the warmth of the surroundings. You just feel at home immediately. Other times you can walk into the most expensive home around and not have that same welcoming feeling. What causes that? There is something in our humankind that at its most basic level perceives harmony. On the golf course I believe that this is caused by golf course features and shaping that are reflective upon their surroundings. Yes you can create your own world like Fazio did so brilliantly at Shadow Creek where he sells you on the surrounding landscape. But I’m talking about the real world where the golf course is part of the existing landscape. Nature has one guaranteed quality that you can always count on…chaos. Nature is never perfect and is very random. When things are too perfect or too similar or fail to reflect surrounding topography and landscape, people at their most basic level “feel” that something is not right. This feeling is most often not a conscious thought but just a sense. Do you have a golf course that you just like and you can’t really identify why you feel that way? I’ll tell you what; I feel that way more often on old golf courses than on new ones.

There is a difference between things, whether it be art, music, movies, man made landscapes, building architecture, and even golf course architecture that garner attention for short periods of time and others which become classics. What causes us to like something forever versus becoming enthralled for a short period of time and then losing interest? Why is it that some golf courses capture our attention to the point that we could play the same golf course over and over again and never tire of it, while other courses initially grab our attention but seem somewhat shallow in the long run?

Perhaps it is a nature based originality that sets one golf course apart from another, that allows it to be considered a "classic". When those other courses, that are formulaic and impose preset artificial conditions and constraints upon any piece of ground that they are built upon, are considered in the long run as less than "classic", is it really any wonder? Can golf architecture avoid falling into formulaic convention? Through the Anarchy of nature it can.

We are all slaves to convention at some level. We constantly hear and talk about thinking out of the box. Golf architecture suffers from all of the same problems when it comes to shaking off convention and thinking out of the box.

Remember when Pete Dye shook up the golf world with his unconventional design concepts. Do you still think of Pete Dye as unconventional today? No? What happened? Did Dye settle into a certain level of comfort with what he was doing. There is nothing wrong with that and the market, based on his popularity obviously likes what he has produced. Who are today’s pioneers of golf design’s new frontiers. To my mind the unconventional out of the box thinkers are; Coore/Crenshaw, Doak/Urbina, Gil Hanse and a few others.

Will this group succumb to their own sort of convention? Are we seeing the earliest signs of that already? And even if we are, the work is so outstanding in general, do we care? Do they care or are they even aware that their own version of convention is sneaking up on them? Perhaps their convention is so good that they shouldn’t keep searching. It’s my contention that there is an intellectual incest in the study of golf design through the study of other golf design.

This tendency to settle into some sort of convention in golf course design is as human as it gets. We are after all creatures of habit. I believe that golf needs to resist the temptation to settle into any version of design convention. How that can be done is both simple and difficult at the same time. What the human animal feels comfortable with is nature and then the human sets about being industrious and “fixing” nature to accommodate his desire for a sense of order. Maybe when it comes to golf design we should just let nature win. Do you think that Coore and Crenshaw like some of the bunkers at Sand Hills better today than when they built them? Do you think that Mother Nature improved them? How about everything at Bandon? The great bunker lips that Merion had in the old days were created by 70 years of bunker shots blasting sand up on the faces. Should we learn something from all of this?

Probably the most bizarre facet of the study of golf course design to me is that most people start with poor assumptions. The typical route for today’s designers and the budding new designers is to study all of the great Architects and golf courses or even perhaps write and comment about it. People spend years and lifetimes doing this. Maybe if you were designing buildings this would make sense, go look at the great buildings of the world. The buildings were all designed and built solely by man. But when it comes to golf courses, I consider it an inadequate course of study. The great golf courses of old were largely produced by nature and the great new ones emulate the great old ones, so whether or not the land was great the golf holes are created to have that look, feel and playability. This course of study, learning all there is to know about the great golf courses, is certainly understandable and it is viewed by virtually everyone but me as the proper course of action to “learn” about golf course design. You too can take the pilgrimage to the Mecca of golf and become enlightened. That’s all you need, a ticket and some time and you too can learn all there is to know.

What we are missing is that Mother Nature by and far built those great courses not man. The only thing that I don’t like at those great old golf courses is the artificial edifice of man and that occurs mostly in unnatural looking man made fixes of bunker edges. If we want great golf courses, maybe we should go back to studying nature, natural landforms, and erosions caused by wind, water, and animals. At the heart of it all isn’t that what we seek to do? Aren’t we trying to find or create golf as it was discovered in nature? Studying great designers and courses as an adjunct to studying nature makes sense, but we need to spend more time studying nature first and then those designers that came before us. Otherwise the only thing that will have changed is that we will have a new “look” and “playability” that at some point becomes conventional. We have a chance to fight our inborn tendencies to go with the herd or I guess to put it in the Scottish golf vernacular the flock and if we can, then we will keep new golf courses less predictable and more natural than ever. If not, maybe we are sheople. Just say and do what the rest of the flock does.

The late, great Richie Valentine, who I worked for at Merion said to me “If you want to make something look natural then you have to have your smartest guy or your dumbest guy do it, everybody else will just screw it up.” Richie was a great communicator and the point to this quote, one of his many memorable quotes, was that the very talented person can mimic nature with the full knowledge of what they were doing and the less sophisticated person would inadvertently copy nature. What Richie worried about was the over thinking of design issues by the average person. He was far more of a feel guy than an analytical guy.

Richie was a very talented designer in his own right. He was the third Superintendent at Merion. William Flynn was the construction superintendent and first greenkeeper and then Richie’s father Joe Valentine who had been the construction foreman took over as greenkeeper. Those of you that know the history of Merion know of the close relationship between Flynn and Joe Valentine. Richie regaled me of tales about Hugh Wilson and Joe Valentine sighting bunkers at Merion. Joe used to have his men hold up sheets of canvas to position the bunkers faces. Richie would take me over to see Eb Steineger at Pine Valley and I would have the opportunity to listen to Eb’s stories about hauling seaweed up from the Jersey shore to put on fairways to create a decent growing medium. Eb would talk about the bunkers and the planting of the bunkers with the Scotch Broom and the planting of the Scrub Pines.

What I know about golf architecture, I learned by accident. Sometimes I think that osmosis may be the best method of studying golf course architecture. It should be less about formulas, what has been done at other courses, reading books about architecture and more about the feel of the land and the believing that the utter chaos and anarchy of nature is an asset to producing, finding and creating golf that is unique and interesting. Having been a golfer (never very good) since I was eight years old and working in and around great golf courses for 35 plus years, I believe that I have an understanding or better yet a “feel” of how to take the random chaos of nature and come up with a golf course that golfers can enjoy day in and day out and that I can live and work with on a daily basis. On top of that, I believe that collaboration and struggle with both man and nature achieves superior results.

A little background on me may be helpful. I’m a Greenkeeper/Superintendent by training and practiced that profession at the highest level in the States. I have been other things in golf as well including PGA Tournament Director, General Manager, Real Estate Developer, Recruiter, Consultant, Designer and probably a few more that I can’t or don’t want to recall. I have been known as an innovator and a rebel. I just can’t stop thinking about how to make things better, mind you it hasn’t always worked out but most of the time it did and as you can see I am vocal about my beliefs.

Random chaos is the way of nature. Is it a shock that some of our best golf courses evolved and were simply discovered or that the first individuals that designed golf courses had no design background? Did their alcoholic over indulgences have anything to do with the fact that they were without formulas or at least much looser with their preconceptions? They were men of the earth and nature. Isn’t it interesting that some of their first efforts were some of their best? Why is that? Maybe they were still naïve to design principals and set ideas and had less of the “learned” man in them. I know that there are those out there that will see my comments as heresy. We have probably all looked at that one golf architecture website one too many times. And as far as that goes, I think that we should come up with a 12 step program to help the golf course architecture junkies get off of the juice and return to society as productive members. I could probably teach them to mow greens or maybe rake bunkers. Perhaps with their love of design they could rock rake by hand. Their time spent doing that would be far better for golf than their time spent with the adnausum discussions of golf course design. Really, do you think that the original designers, if man did do the design, spent as much time thinking about it as you do talking about it and trying to understand the designer’s subtle nuances? It reminds me a little of listening to some pseudo intellectual art critic who can’t paint, sculpt or create, prognosticate on the artist’s motives with a piece of modern art. Let’s weave that back to my original contention; the subconscious is a better designer than the conscious. Nature and anarchy are easier mimicked subconsciously. Mind you there still needs to be a reality check to make sure that the playability is there but by and large the great golf courses that we all love were done more by the “feel” of the land then the formula of golf design.

This is what I believe; forms, shapes, and scale should be organic and come more from subliminal thinking and less from conscious thought. It should feel right and then check to make sure that the playability is right for the golfer. Let me try another tact for you so that you can understand this. When you had your best round of golf were you thinking about the mechanics of your golf swing or were you in the zone? So when the designers produced their best designs, do you think that they were thinking about the mechanics and formulas of design or were they in the zone? They were in the zone and the creativity was free flowing and we all get to benefit from that special happening by getting great golf.

Let me ask a crazy question, why does almost every golf course built in the last 40 years have approximately 120,000 square feet of putting surface and greens that run in size from 5,000- 6,800 square feet. Would nature and sheep provide green sites only in those sizes? Maybe there was an edict from the powers that be regarding how many square feet of putting greens we are allowed to have on a golf course. Will the USGA the R&A the ASGCA or any of the other groups that identify themselves with letters condemn a golf course that doesn’t fit their idea of what is acceptable? What if we had greens that varied in sizes from 4,500- 20,000 square feet? Whitman, Zokol and I did it at Sagebrush in 07. Urbina and Doak did it at Old MacDonald in 08. Zokol and I had to drag Whitman into it and I’m going to guess that Urbina had to drag Doak into it as well. Whitman thought that we were nuts at first but he eventually got into it. Big greens can have big contours that haven’t been possible with today’s green speeds on “regular” size greens.

What about those green shapes? Have you seen enough oval shaped greens? Do you know how all of those great old golf courses got oval shaped greens? They got them from years of mowing. If one is not vigilant about it, greens will lose their interesting shapes after just a few years of mowing. At virtually every golf course I have ever been on, I look at the green complex and can see the old green. Quite often, the green is two thirds or three quarters of its original size and almost always, great pin placements were lost and visual interest diminished. This must be another edict from the golfing gods; all “modern” greens should be oval shaped. Designers are defaulting to green shapes from other golf courses and those shapes have been dumbed down by decades of mowing. Greens should be all different kinds of organic shapes based upon the site, scale and contours. Yes, shot value shouldn’t be completely ignored but it should not be the overwhelming concept behind a green size. Gee, let’s see short par 4, how about a small green. Long par 4 how about a bigger green? Oh wait a short par 3, how about a real small green? Do you want more? A mid length par 4 would get a mid size green. Need I go on with the mundane? Can we just break this type of conventional thinking? You know that I am not against all conventional thinking, some things I am willing to go along with, like 18 holes for a golf course.

These varied green sizes could be completely random, based upon what nature gave us. Logic/conventional/formulaic thought in golf course design would suggest that these smaller greens would almost always be associated with shorter shots i.e. a short par 3, 4 or 5. Let’s think about that, what if there is a beautiful 120 yard Par 3 just sitting on a piece of property and there happens to be a natural green site that is 14,000 square feet. Should convention dictate what occurs or should nature. If we let nature dictate what happens we would end up with a golf hole unlike anything that man ever designed. This would be allowing the anarchy of nature to persist through the design of a golf course. What if we had a site that was void of any real topography and we created that same scenario? It certainly would be unconventional, dare I say even natural in an unnatural way.

The next step is to take that anarchy and apply it to man made golf courses. Can we take that step? Can we have a blank slate and make a “crazy” decision? If we want to mimic nature we must allow ourselves to break the shackles of convention. Even those in the so called minimalist/naturalist movement falls into some kind of convention and it seems more difficult to resist as their successes stack up. Many of you know that as a Superintendent, I was a huge proponent of deep and infrequent irrigation. We were trying to mimic rain events with irrigation. The madness had me at one point thinking that we should irrigate randomly, a deep rain one day and a few days later a rain shower, all done with sprinklers. Ultimately, I did change my mind on that one. I could only take the anarchy in golf course maintenance just so far. Would a new completely man mad golf course ever have a par other than 72? Would there ever be back-to-back par 3s or par 5s?

Would there ever not be returning 9s? Could the 9th hole be a par 3? There are many of these questions. If you turned any of today’s great designers loose on a great piece of land, they more than likely could answer yes to all of the questions above. If they found great holes they would capitalize on them, But what if you took the same designers and gave them the blank slate, a completely man made golf course to design, what do you think the answers to the questions above would be? I don’t think any of them would make the “crazy” decision.

Green contours are always interesting to look at. It is disheartening for me to look at contours on greens, when the vast majority of the contours are completely disconnected physically and aesthetically from the rest of the property. Contours that flow from outside the green and then through greens, I consider tie-in contours. This is what creates that seamless natural looking green that makes you feel comfortable. It feels and looks natural. The key to these “tie-in contours” is that in general, the features that they are blended into are tied-in or connected to naturally occurring or natural looking features that may run on varying distances from the green. The disconnected contours on the putting greens work only when they appear random and are similar in shape to naturally occurring or natural appearing bumps and hollows that exist on the golf course, adjacent properties and vistas. This allows us to “sell” the contours as being natural. “Selling” is causing the eye not to stop at a feature because it appears out of place. I love to listen to the “experts” talk about the subtle breaks in greens on classic golf courses. Do you really want to know where those subtle breaks came from? They came from years of sand blasting out of bunkers. They came from years of repairs to dead turf; they came from years of topdressing where higher amounts always accumulate in certain portions of a green. That’s right the green contours evolved and are usually better for it.

What’s with all of these roll off areas around greens? Has anyone ever heard of a roll on area? I get little tired of this latest fad of roll off areas and would prefer that there were a mix of roll off and roll on areas. And maybe just maybe some of the roll off areas could be on-grade as opposed to straight downhill. Some variation in roll off and roll on slopes would be natural and more interesting to play.

As we discussed “selling” contours. It makes me think about the dissonance of nature. If you want to make a fill or man made slope look natural, put some warts on it. Look around, how many times do you see perfect slopes in nature? Usually there is a blemish of some sort. Perfectly angled slopes always fail to register as caused by nature; man’s heavy hand is evident. Have you ever seen ranch land where the cattle and wildlife have left trails across the side slopes over the years? We can put these back in after moving earth. We can seed native roughs with patches of different grasses to cause what happens in nature over 100s and thousands of years. On a parkland type golf course, can we manufacture the look and feel of the meadow? Can we take the stream that runs through the property and make it look as if the golf course has been affected by the streams movement and silting for hundreds of years. If we do these kinds of things, will golf appear and feel more natural.

Let’s talk about bunkers. Richard (Dick) Zokol, my partner in the design business, Suny Zokol Golf Design, brought to my attention something that nobody else seems to pay attention to. Dick believes that the bunker floors should be uneven, not smooth bowls. He also believes that the amount and degree of unevenness should be based on the look and feel of the surrounding terrain along with the bunker style. This also presents us with a whole new set of challenges in playing bunker shots. Flat and bowl shaped bottomed bunkers in most cases are very artificial looking. Have you seen enough flat bottom bunkers with the exact same percent slope on the grass faces throughout the entire golf course? That hardly seems natural.

And what’s wrong with a bunker that you can putt out of once in a while, if it happens to work out that way. Isn’t part of the fun of golf having options to hit different and strange golf shots. If I have a chance to putt out of a bunker, I’ll try it. Why is a fairway bunker not played as through the green? Wouldn't this be better for most golfers and wouldn't it also eliminate the need to perfectly edge bunkers so as to clearly define whether a ball is in a hazard or not?

Bunker shapes and edges are some of the most unnatural forms on the golf course. There is little if any resemblance to anything natural. My language regarding bunkers is different. I see bunkers in positive and negative spaces. A positive space is a grass edge, tongue, or whatever you choose to call it coming into a bunker. A negative space is sand going out into the grass areas. It boggles my mind that bunkers that are supposedly based on naturally occurring erosions look nothing like erosions. Do you ever see negative spaces in bunkers, where sand areas go out into grass areas? I always look at erosions when I’m driving someplace or when I’m walking a property. As a child, I spent a lot of time playing in the creeks and streams of Southeast Pennsylvania. This is part of the osmosis that I talk about, because I wasn’t there, purposefully studying erosions. These impressions from childhood are part and parcel of my thought processes regarding natural forms. The first time I saw Merion was when I was 10 years old and had chased a creek down to Darby Creek, a tributary of the Delaware River, crossed it and chased another creek up hill and came out on what I later learned was the West Course at Merion. Those of you that know the course realize that I entered the property at the 6th hole. I was catching salamanders and crawfish, building dams, finding golf balls, and coming home late, wet and dirty and oh yeah very happy.

Natural erosions have more of what I call negative space (sand or erosions going out into grass areas) and less positive space (grass going into sand or erosion areas). Manmade bunkers on the other hand look nothing like naturally occurring erosions and have virtually no mid to small sized negative spaces. Walk along a natural erosion area someday, look at it. Erosions start low and travel uphill. That is why bunkers, even those that have the long grasses around them don’t always appear natural, you will see the spaces I talk about if you start to look around and walk along arroyos, streams and rivers. Wind erosion areas are very similar except that the wind sometimes overcomes gravity and the erosion can move sand or soil sideways or even uphill. Bunker style should mimic earth forms and erosions on the site and the surrounding area. I especially cannot comprehend how on a rugged, naturalist golf course conventionally shaped bunkers are given some long grass and we’re supposed to buy into the fact that they are natural looking. It’s kind of like giving the straight A, honor student long hair and calling him a hippie or whatever the kids call them now. Simply changing the window dressing on a form does not change its nature.

Now all of this talk about bunkers would lead one to believe that in our world all bunkers are wild. That would be a misunderstanding. Bunker form, shape, and style must be done in context with the rest of the golf course and the surrounding land. A flat parkland golf course would have an entirely different style than a rugged piece of links land but both can be consistent with the surrounding land. But even on a parkland country club course, it is completely unnatural for all of the bunker edges to have the identical edge slopes. I just saw one of our favorite architects do just that. He took a great golf course and missed the mark on a bunker renovation. The bottom edge of all of the bunkers had the exact same look. Does nature ever do this? Did any of the great designers ever do this? It sometimes looks as if the bunker edge machine went around the bunkers and formed these uniform edges, absolutely manmade.

Bunker placements are always interesting. Perhaps on that great piece of ground, Mother Nature has provided all of the bunker locations and we just try to make them work, perhaps not. When Mother Nature didn’t place the bunkers for us we have decisions to be made. I was taught by Valentine and he by his father and he by Flynn and Wilson, that there are different kinds of bunkers. The basic types of bunkers are directional, penal, and saving. Any of the bunker types could be strategic or structural. The strategic bunker is obvious and needs little discussion but the structural bunker is another story. Structural bunkers are used to deal with elevation changes and to minimize earth moving. Any one bunker can be combinations of different bunker types. One bunker can tell you where to hit the ball, directional, save you from running away into trouble, saving, and then after you are in it penalize you with a difficult shot.

Fairways are another area where most succumb to conventionality. Why are fairways a fairly uniform width? Is there a rule that there should be about 30 acres of fairways on a golf course? I’ve never heard a regular golfer complain, “ Oh, the fairways at that course are just too wide.” Fairway shapes can be utterly bizarre. The odd uniformity of scallops and sweeping curves of today’s fairways may be an improvement over yesterday’s runway like affairs but they are anything but natural looking. Natural looking fairways are more akin to mountain valleys, the interface of forestland with grasslands, with the valleys between the dunes. There are lots of natural scenarios to discover forms and shapes for fairway shapes. Again this is a feel not a formula. But we must always do our reality check to insure that our natural fairway contours work for golf. For instance, if we have the ability to add some fairway area short and right off of the tee, wouldn’t most golfers benefit?

On a great piece of raw land the fairways may identify themselves. What about on a lesser site? Can we make design decisions that defy convention? Can we create fairways that just happen to appear organic and quirky? We can as long as we are not tethered to convention. As long as we are willing to throw the design book away we can.

What about fairway elevation contours? I know that some times we need drainage basins in the fairways but can’t we design golf holes that don’t drain onto the fairways every time. Yes, once in a while you will see a sinkhole in nature but 2 or 3 on every fairway because this is golf design’s default position seems uninspired and unnatural.

How about grasses for fairways? It is great to see some fine fescue based fairways. Why do we only use grasses for fairways? A mixture of white yarrow and fine fescues will produce a very playable lower maintenance fairway the plays exceptionally well. The great plus is that the fairways will need much less water and fertilizer and the yarrow won’t get any turf diseases. This is not just politically correct green talk but this really would reduce water, fertilizer, and pesticide use in cool season regions. And yarrow is perfect on bunker edges. When I discussed yarrow with Dr. Joe Duich from Penn State, it was like the old days, he told me that he was going to teach me something. Joe told me that Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh were lawn bowling on a yarrow lawn as the Spanish Armada sailed into the harbor. I don’t think Joe was there but he recalled reading about it somewhere

What is an approach? Why do we have this thing between the fairway and the green? Is this where the sins of bad design are dealt with? I think that the fairway should transition into the green seamlessly and we should never again think about an approach.

Dick Zokol taught me a lot about tees. Dick convinced me that tees should not be on the same plane. He believes that we should give golfers the option of different lies on the tee. The golfer should have the option of a draw or fade lie.

Staying with tees for a little while here. Did you ever wonder why golf courses are designed from the championship tees when only a tiny percentage of golfers play from those tees? We should design golf courses from the regular tees and put the back tees wherever they fit. And here is another thing, why is the back tee always the most elevated tee? Doesn’t the lesser golfer need more advantages? Yes I know if the tees are in a straight line you have to be able to see over the tees in front but you do know that you don’t have to line tees up in a straight line. Tees can be shifted left and right as well as forward and backward. You can challenge the better golfer with a less elevated tee and a tougher angle while the lesser skilled player can have a more elevated tee and less challenging angle of play. When was the last time you saw a tee that didn’t look as if it could have been placed by a helicopter from any other golf course? Do we spend anytime thinking about how tee earth forms are?

I’ll tell you one of golf’s dirty little secrets here. In 1984, I was the Superintendent at Cherry Hills. We were getting ready for the 85 PGA Championship. I was 25 years old when they hired me for the job. We reclaimed about 10,000 square feet of putting surface and rebuilt a bunch of bunkers. Master Plans were not in vogue in those days, so we just fixed what needed to be fixed without asking permission. On the 7th hole they wanted a new back tee and the member tee wasn’t good. So we built a new back tee and rebuilt the white tee. The hole if you know it is a dogleg left and the landing area falls from the left side to the right side. Now what I did was slope the white/member tee 1% from right to left. This would “help” the member keep the ball in play. The new back tee however got the opposite treatment, it sloped from left to right 1% causing the ball to leak to the right. This was another Valentine treatment from Merion.

Is there some reason that the majority of tees built in the modern era are either flat or slope from the front to back 1%?

How about those practice facilities. Have you ever been on one that felt like a fairway? Shouldn’t the practice tee be more like a fairway and more like a fairway from a consistency of soil, turf and varied contours? The objective from my standpoint of a practice facility is to prepare the golfer for their round of golf. The best way of doing this is to provide the golfer with a practice area that will allow the golfer to hit off a surface that is identical to the fairway. This way the club and ball will respond properly as opposed to having a flat sand based tee when the fairways are soil based and have contours. The teeing area should have varied terrain from relatively flat to mimic tees on the golf course to left side hill, right side hill, uphill and downhill. This would allow the golfer to practice all kinds of shots. Now I understand that this would make golfers crazy so perhaps we can have a regular relatively flat practice tee with the sides of the practice tee gently sloped to mimic some of the slopes to be found on the golf course Furthermore wouldn’t it be nice to see the practice area look like a golf hole where the fairway runs right into the teeing ground.

Practice greens should be relatively flat not contoured like a Lays potato chip and should allow the golfer to learn the speed of the greens prior to play. Having one edge of the green with a typical slope found on the golf course would allow the player after they had the speed figured out to see how the ball comes off of the slopes.

Forced strategy, hole after hole on a golf course is just a bit much for me. I just love it when designers tell me how the golfer is going to have to play the hole. It’s as if you must hit these perfect shots to be able to play the hole properly. What if there is more than one way to play the hole? Wouldn’t that be a good thing? The golfer stands on the tee and has to make a decision as to what to do. How about an approach shot that can be flown or bumped or for that matter putted? Don’t these kinds of decisions make the game more intriguing? What about the angles that we hear mentioned so much, do you think that many designers will find a way to make a naturally straight hole angled? Angles are great when they present themselves but to be face hole after hole of forced angles off of every tee seems just a bit too contrived. A mix of varying angles and relatively straight golf holes will be far more interesting a variety than forced angles on every hole. There are more subtle strategies.

Let’s discuss strategy some more and I’ll give you something to think about. Have you ever studied the strategy of the same golf course hole by hole on a daily basis for years? No of course not, but I have and so has anyone that ever did course setup, also known inadequately as changing cups. On a daily basis, course setup, the placing of tee markers and pin locations has the biggest impact on golf course strategy after the golf course is built. How many modern designers ever studied strategy in this kind of detail? Imagine getting to do course setup at great golf courses every day. Would you get a feel for the golf course that others would never get and begin to understand just how it ought to play on any given day? A golf course’s personality will be revealed to those that spend the most time with it. There is an ebb and flow to golf course setup, that becomes as much intuitive as cerebral. You can literally change the strategy of the golf course every day. The personality of the golf course can be gentle and, even-handed or spirited and challenging or on some days, just a little bit evil and diabolical. Would an understanding of golf courses in this fashion give one insight into golf design? It seems likely doesn’t it? Maybe those that want to design golf courses should also work at the great ones to really understand them. Some tour players understand the golf courses that they play every year. They get a feel for them and learn their personalities. The tour players necessarily have to be quick learners. Seeing the sun rise over the dew every day at a great golf course is probably better than reading about that golf course in a book or studying pictures of it that you took on your one trip for a round of golf there.

Earth forms on golf courses can start an entire new debate. I grew up on golf courses built in the teens and 20s. They didn’t move much earth and sites were selected based on good topography. Today many golf courses are built because there is a market for golf as a component of a real estate development. The sites are selected more based upon their location than the quality of the topography. How can anarchy affect golf in these areas? When I worked at Merion Golf Club I used to look at the land and how golf just appeared so naturally congruent with the land. Why can’t we, with all of our CAD programs and earthmoving equipment create a new golf course on an uninspired piece of land that just happens to fit the land instead of being a series of 18 separate short stories when it could have been a great novel with 18 chapters.

Fazio and Banfield did a pretty good job at Shadow Creek, where I was the General Manager in the 90s. There are groups of holes there that are tied into the same earth forms but what I’m talking about is a global earth form that cannot be detected from natural. Can you imagine what it would be like today if someone took a raw piece of ground and graded it so that the entire property tied into the surrounding land and drained naturally and accommodated 18 holes of great naturally occurring golf. Wouldn’t this be nicer that 18 separate golf corridors of golf vignettes, no matter how good they are? Part of our love of golf is the odd balance of nature that we feel when we are outside. That balance is for nature to be natural.

The routing of the golf course is the single most important design element that there is. The process on a great piece of land is just plain fun. I still marvel at what Coore and Crenshaw did at Sand Hills. Can you imagine how stupid I feel when I was supposed to meet Ben on site to look around before they got going and never made it. Oh well, but I finally did get there and was just so impressed with their routing and how they had the fortitude to pop out of the valleys and take the golf high onto the top of the dunes a couple of times. Everybody else at that time would have chased the valleys exclusively and never popped the golf up high, including me. I thought that the routing was inspired. Similarly I found Doak’s routing at Ballyneal just so interesting when he made some very different decisions that were quirky in nature and add a sense of anarchy and appeal to the golf.

We might as well talk about golf course renovation too. For some nostalgic reason people have decided that there was one particular time when their golf course was perfect. I think at Merion they decided that it was sometime in the 30s. So they took the course back and did the bunkers and bunker green interfaces just like 30s. It is some form of madness. Golf courses are living, breathing and always changing organisms they are not stagnant. There is no perfect time period or era, unless some prior well intentioned green committee really screwed things up. Many changes made to golf courses were made because they didn’t play well. Aren’t we sometimes today adjusting fairway bunkers or tees to reflect the effects of new equipment. Is this good? Is this reasonable? Should we come back in 50 or 70 years and put the golf course back to the time we deem it was perfect? Flynn advocated playing the golf course for a while before placing all of the fairway bunkers. Do you think someone that thought like that would be opposed to moving bunkers now that we hit the ball farther? Do you think that he would believe that going back to some mythical perfect time would make any sense at all when the bunker placements and fairway landing areas may be obsolete?

Trees on golf courses can cause Civil War type divides in clubs. People just don’t understand tree planting/removal strategies. First of all grass needs sunlight and air movement. That being settled we can move on to design issues and for that matter let’s go backwards and start with the latest craze of buzz cutting golf course popularized at Oakmont. Members can, I suppose, do whatever they want to their course but a site that is surrounded by and if left fallow would become treed should probably have some trees on it.

So let’s look at reasonable tree plantings that can create a sense of forests but accommodate and perhaps enhance golf and the golf experience. Linear tree plantings are never, ever good, period end of story. I suppose that there is one exception and that would be on those old golf courses that are just so tight that without trees they might not accommodate modern golf. What is good, is the use of clusters of trees that give a sense of forest but are positioned to achieve strategic and aesthetic goals. We don’t need to talk about the aesthetic goals of tree planting. We all know how pretty trees can be in a landscape and how they can help frame a golf hole and steer a golf shot. Just watch a player going through their pre-shot routine when there are a lot of trees or a big bunker on one side of a hole as they are wiggling and waggling you will see that inevitable shift of stance away from the visual hazard of the trees or bunker. So we know that just as bunkers can be strategic and directional and saving and penal, so can trees. The tree can steer your shot. It can knock an errant shot down and keep it in play. Or it can be a hazard when you are behind it.

So how do we plant or for that matter remove trees to better golf. First let’s agree that when possible that clusters of trees are always better than rows of trees. Let’s also agree that tree plantings and hazards that are penal can be placed in positions so that the better golfers may be more affected than lesser golfers. For instance a tree planting at 275 off of the regular tee on the left side of the fairway is going to affect more good golfers strategically than a tree planting 250 yards off of the regular tee on the right side of the fairway. So the distance of the planting from the regular tee is critical and the side of the planting to anyone that has ever seen me play golf is obvious as well. But what if we have a cluster of trees at 200 yards from the regular tee on the right side of a hole and there is OB on the right side of the hole. Have we helped the average golfer and done nothing that would typically affect the better golfer?

And by the way, every green doesn't have to have trees in back of it to give depth perception, it's just so predictable and cliche. Part of the game and challenge of golf is being able to adjust to different situations. When every green is framed and backed by trees, there is a sameness and an overt redundancy to the course.

You may get tired of my references to Merion but acre for acre it may be the best golf course in the world and most of what I learned about golf came from there. Merion appears to have a lot of trees but it is not tree lined in general. Yes there are trees along the road and property boarders that are linear plantings but other than that the interior of the course doesn’t have linear plantings. My point here is that one day Richie Valentine and I were standing on the 11th Tee, where Bobby Jones closed out the Grand Slam, and Richie starts telling me about his father’s tree planting scheme on the right side of the hole between 10 and 11. His father planted White Pines closest to the tee and then Austrian Pines going down the fairway and lastly Scotch Pines. If you know anything about these trees you may start to understand the kind of foresight that this Italian immigrant had. The White Pines grow the taller than the Austrian Pines which grow taller than the scotch Pines. So when you are on the tee the trees' heights steer you and visually help you to keep your ball further left and on this hole with its blind tee shot that is indeed helpful. Have you ever heard of that kind of thought put into a tree planting? Nope I didn’t think so. And the next time that you are on the 11th tee at Merion check out the memorial plaque commemorating Jones victory and Grand Slam. Note that his name Robert Tyre Jones is on a raised section of the plaque. The plaque is raised because there was a minor problem with the middle name on the original engraving. Do you want to guess what name the raised plaque went over?

Have you ever compared the practice of medicine to the practice of golf course architecture? Have you ever had a Doctor that kept trying things on you hoping to get the treatment right? I continue to be shocked and amazed at the amount of changes made to new golf courses and renovations following their completion. The golf architects just keep making changes, trying to get things right. They are practicing golf architecture. How many times does it take to get it right? As a superintendent I spent a lot of time fixing suspect golf architecture. As an architect I spend a lot of time making sure that we get it right the first time.

Its interesting to consider that most of the "Golden Era" architects were greenkeepers. People that spend their formative years exposed to nature and golf on a daily basis have a "feel" for nature and golf that is ingrained. My background of growing up maintaining, renovating and restoring great golf courses and preparing them for Major Championships and PGA Tour events has given me a working knowledge of golf course architecture different than if my exposure to great golf courses had come only from researching and playing a few rounds of golf on great courses.

My comments on the hallowed subject of golf architecture may cause some consternation, distress, and disagreement from my peers but just remember that I have spent more hours on great golf courses under all kinds of light and weather conditions than anyone I am aware of who designs golf courses. In this essay, I have put into writing exactly what I think and believe. And my love of golf and golf courses continues.