Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast
Speaker 1: and to the first installment of the School of Golf Architecture.
Speaker 1: I'll explain what that is in a minute, but first,
Speaker 1: this episode is brought to you by our friends at
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Speaker 1: and help support what we're doing here, all right, the
Speaker 1: School of Golf Architecture. I'll introduce the idea for this
Speaker 1: series in full once this episode gets underway, but basically,
Speaker 1: it's an introduction to golf course design, where I'm kind
Speaker 1: of standing in as the student heading out into the
Speaker 1: world and talking to some experts like today's guest Blake Conan,
Speaker 1: and just trying to learn as much as I can
Speaker 1: from them about this fascinating subject and delivering the results
Speaker 1: to you. Today's episode is about the idea of place
Speaker 1: in golf architecture, and let's just get to it right.
Speaker 2: It requires a different technique.
Speaker 1: What you need to do is actually square the face
Speaker 1: so it'll dig down underneath that bad lie and propel
Speaker 1: that ball right out onto the green.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing. Playing out of a buried line of
Speaker 2: bunker is completely different than playing out of a night
Speaker 2: and clean lion of green side buker.
Speaker 1: You need to be aggressive on any show weather it's
Speaker 1: sitting cleanly for it.
Speaker 2: Frida Egg, well, we've all faiked it.
Speaker 1: Regretted Frida Egg not to be cleared though it's actually
Speaker 1: a pretty easy shot to hit. So a little backstory.
Speaker 1: Three years ago, Andy wrote a series for the Friday
Speaker 1: Egg website called Golf Course Architecture one oh one. There
Speaker 1: are really fun articles and a lot of people seem
Speaker 1: to enjoy them and find them helpful. So recently we've
Speaker 1: been brainstorming ways to update them or to revisit their
Speaker 1: ideas from a different angle. Right on cue, we received
Speaker 1: a direct message on Twitter from the very smart Jamie Kennedy,
Speaker 1: who works for Golf TV. Basically, Jamie said, hey, you
Speaker 1: guys should do short episodes of the podcast explaining the
Speaker 1: basics of golf architecture, and right away we thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: we probably should, so thanks Jamie. From there, we came
Speaker 1: up with what we're going to call The School of
Speaker 1: Golf Architecture. It'll be an occasional series and the installments
Speaker 1: will cover one top for twenty five to forty minutes.
Speaker 1: Each episode will include an interview with an expert, along
Speaker 1: with opening and closing thoughts. For me, they'll be more
Speaker 1: produced than the typical Frida Egg interview, but less produced
Speaker 1: than Frida Egg stories, and we're hoping that they'll be
Speaker 1: accessible enough for people who don't know much about golf architecture,
Speaker 1: but also offbeat and geeky enough for people who know
Speaker 1: a lot. It's a balancing act, but I think we
Speaker 1: can pull it off. In addition to the audio, we'll
Speaker 1: be posting companion articles on the Friday Egg website. That
Speaker 1: cover the same topics, but with some visual accompaniment, so
Speaker 1: make sure to check those out as well. Usually, if
Speaker 1: you're giving an introduction to golf architecture, you begin with
Speaker 1: a discussion of land, soil types, climate, topography, location. These
Speaker 1: are definitely important things to understand, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: start in a slightly different way. In this first episode.
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk about a related but somewhat separate
Speaker 1: concept and golf course design, the concept of place. You
Speaker 1: may think you know what a place is. Everyone knows
Speaker 1: what a place is, But when you really try to
Speaker 1: define it, or to distinguish it from space, that's where
Speaker 1: things get tricky. For now, though, let's keep it simple.
Speaker 1: We can define a place as a segment of space
Speaker 1: where life occurs. So golf courses, among other things, are places.
Speaker 1: They're built and traversed by humans, and as a result,
Speaker 1: they take on a kind of identity or what we
Speaker 1: often call a sense of place. That phrase, a sense
Speaker 1: of place has grown a bit stale in contemporary usage.
Speaker 1: You'll see it in ads and travel brochures, but it's
Speaker 1: rooted in a notion that has been with us since
Speaker 1: ancient civilization. I'm talking about genius loci, which in Roman
Speaker 1: mythology referred to the guardian spirit of a place. In
Speaker 1: the modern world, the term genius loci has evolved into
Speaker 1: a general way of describing a location's prevailing atmosphere, its
Speaker 1: unique feel, which is derived no not only from its
Speaker 1: sites and sounds and smells, but also from its community,
Speaker 1: its history, and its everyday uses. Okay, so all of
Speaker 1: this might be starting to sound a little bit abstract
Speaker 1: and academic, but it's really just an attempt to put
Speaker 1: words to an experience that's instinctive, even visceral, and it's
Speaker 1: one that you're probably familiar with. Think of what it's
Speaker 1: like to go back to your childhood home, or to
Speaker 1: the main street in your college town, or even to
Speaker 1: the golf course where you learn the game. That feeling
Speaker 1: you get can be understood as your attachment to the
Speaker 1: spirit of that place. How does all of this relate
Speaker 1: to golf architecture. Well, my favorite courses tend to be
Speaker 1: the ones that are especially good at cultivating those attachments
Speaker 1: between a golfer and the genius low Side. How they
Speaker 1: do this is far more art than science, but you
Speaker 1: know it when you feel it. Some of the courses
Speaker 1: where you feel it are highly ranked prairie dunes, sand Hills,
Speaker 1: Cyprus Point, while others are just local facilities that have
Speaker 1: a true and lived in sense of place. May be
Speaker 1: exactly because they were built in simple ways Pacific Grove
Speaker 1: in California, or Grindstone Neck in Maine, or any number
Speaker 1: of home made links courses in Great Britain and Ireland.
Speaker 1: These courses may not excel in all of the criteria
Speaker 1: that we've grown accustomed to using when we assess golf architecture,
Speaker 1: but we need a vocabulary to talk about why they're
Speaker 1: so alluring. For me, that's the vocabulary of plays based design.
Speaker 1: The term plays based design comes to us from the
Speaker 1: field of landscape architecture, but I found out about it
Speaker 1: from Blake Conan, a Nebraska based golf architect and builder
Speaker 1: who owns the firm Dundee Golf and has worked with
Speaker 1: Tom Doak and Todd Eckenrode. Here's how he puts it
Speaker 1: on his website. Plays Based design explores the connection between
Speaker 1: the natural and built environments and finds ways to integrate
Speaker 1: the two together. It requires immersing oneself into the setting,
Speaker 1: studying its surrounding landforms, soil, existing vegetation, culture, community history
Speaker 1: to reveal the site's maximum potential. So to learn more
Speaker 1: about these ideas and generally about how the concept of
Speaker 1: place figures into golf architecture, I gave Bake a call.
Speaker 1: Here's that conversation. You know, I'm sure these concepts overlap,
Speaker 1: but what for you is the difference between a golf
Speaker 1: course's land and a golf course's place.
Speaker 2: Well, the land just seems to be the physical attributes
Speaker 2: of it, right, like the site structure. So you're talking
Speaker 2: about you know, vegetation, topography, hydrology. You know, once you
Speaker 2: start defining it as a place, it's you take into
Speaker 2: more considerations of well, what's what's the built environment around there,
Speaker 2: what's you know, what's the culture, what's its history?
Speaker 1: How is it different when you start to consider the
Speaker 1: human element of a piece of land, Because if that's
Speaker 1: the difference between a piece of land and a place,
Speaker 1: what are those things that you would look at beyond
Speaker 1: just the physical attributes of the land if you were
Speaker 1: assessing a site.
Speaker 2: I think the first thing, even if it's not humans,
Speaker 2: if it's just animals that occupy it, you know, that
Speaker 2: could be a place and one of the cool things
Speaker 2: to start to look at is circulation and just how
Speaker 2: to humans or how to animals, how have they moved
Speaker 2: around on this site before? I know, like Bill cor
Speaker 2: has talked about that a lot where he tries to
Speaker 2: find little rabbit tracks or sheep tracks to inform his routing, like,
Speaker 2: because if they've already figured out the easiest way to
Speaker 2: get around this place, then you know, that should certainly
Speaker 2: inform my decision of how I want the golf course
Speaker 2: to function and circulate. And then you know, the built
Speaker 2: environment's a whole that adds another layer of complexity with
Speaker 2: people then living there and how do they use that
Speaker 2: space in daily life.
Speaker 1: Part of what I'm thinking about right now, based on
Speaker 1: what you're saying, is how certain golf properties are not
Speaker 1: just completely natural. Sometimes they have the mark of human
Speaker 1: intervention in them. I'm thinking of sites like Chambers Bay,
Speaker 1: which used to be an old mine and elements of
Speaker 1: that are still incorporated into the design that's there, or
Speaker 1: at stream Song, where I believe the story is a
Speaker 1: bunch of people had already moved around the land there.
Speaker 1: But instead of trying to deny that those human interventions happened,
Speaker 1: the designs of those two courses stream Song and Chambers
Speaker 1: Bay kind of embrace it. Is that something that you
Speaker 1: like to see in courses?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, you know, And I think what that is
Speaker 2: is it's starting to embrace the historical, the history and
Speaker 2: the culture of the place, right how it was used,
Speaker 2: how people before you used it. So I think that's
Speaker 2: great to try to melt that with its new use,
Speaker 2: and particularly think of inventive ways to use that, like
Speaker 2: those big cement structures at Chambers Bay, you know, I
Speaker 2: think they're off the right of the eighteenth hole or
Speaker 2: seventeenth hole, the railroad track that runs by it. You know,
Speaker 2: all that stuff adds character and then it also doesn't
Speaker 2: wipe out the previous history and culture of the place.
Speaker 2: Like an example that I'm sure everybody knows of on
Speaker 2: a golf course is an old quarry. Most golf architects
Speaker 2: throughout time, I think, have tried to utilize a quarry,
Speaker 2: and they're routing if one existed previously, whether it's having
Speaker 2: a tee or on it, or routing over it or
Speaker 2: through it or in it. That is very much an
Speaker 2: idea that everybody wants to stick with and try to
Speaker 2: figure out a way to use because it's cool. It
Speaker 2: creates variety on the site, and it's doing exactly what
Speaker 2: we're talking about. You're respecting the previous history of what
Speaker 2: was there, even though it was man made or manipulated,
Speaker 2: trying to find a cool, unique use for it.
Speaker 1: Let's go back a couple of steps here. Say you
Speaker 1: were looking at a property that had potential for golf.
Speaker 1: What would be your process for coming up with a
Speaker 1: set of characteristics of the place to respect as you
Speaker 1: were building the golf course.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of that is spending time on
Speaker 2: site and you know, doing your site analysis. If you're
Speaker 2: trying to learn more about the place, it ultimately means
Speaker 2: you've got to spend a little more time not only
Speaker 2: on site trying to find the cool things about it,
Speaker 2: the way the way water works, the way it reacts
Speaker 2: during storms, things like that, but then also what's the
Speaker 2: surrounding area, like what are the off site influences, Who
Speaker 2: are the people that have used this space before, what
Speaker 2: are the you know, the towns or the people around it.
Speaker 2: Getting to know those areas.
Speaker 1: Part of the process that you're proposing is not just
Speaker 1: being focused completely on the terrain, but also investigating the
Speaker 1: community and the history around the land, and I find
Speaker 1: that really interesting. How would you go about doing that?
Speaker 1: Would you look into archives, would you spend some time
Speaker 1: in the community itself, would you talk to people? Is
Speaker 1: that part of the site analysis process for you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly, I mean you would want to You would
Speaker 2: want to find as much history on the place as possible.
Speaker 2: You know, you could find out that two hundred years
Speaker 2: ago it served as something completely different. You know, there
Speaker 2: might have been like, say, a Civil War battle there
Speaker 2: and nobody knew, or it was like indigenous settlements, and
Speaker 2: then you can start rooting around in the woods and
Speaker 2: trying to find stuff that may inform your design. And
Speaker 2: I think what that also does is helps you. It
Speaker 2: just helps you get attached to the place in a
Speaker 2: way of finding the more subtle details of it, and
Speaker 2: then you could figure out how to circulate around there
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Why do you think it's important to do that kind
Speaker 1: of work? How does it manifest itself in the final
Speaker 1: product of whatever you design?
Speaker 2: How do you mean like the what's the outcome or
Speaker 2: from doing all that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's what's the advantage? So you know, there's the
Speaker 1: option of just designing a golf course based on a
Speaker 1: topo map, in an office versus spending a ton of
Speaker 1: time on site doing a kind of ethnography even of
Speaker 1: the surrounding community and history. It just seems like a
Speaker 1: much more in depth process. What are the kind of
Speaker 1: fruits of that labor that you see as the golf
Speaker 1: course gets designed. What's the goal of going to that
Speaker 1: extra effort.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the goal is to get all those
Speaker 2: little details right and at the at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, make it feel as much like the place
Speaker 2: that it is as you can. Once you start studying
Speaker 2: wind patterns, you figure out where areas one of a road,
Speaker 2: like where would a sand pattern actually get exposed on
Speaker 2: that land? Are we actually putting in at a place
Speaker 2: where it's just going to go crazy and sand's gonna
Speaker 2: blow everywhere and this thing's gonna expand five times at
Speaker 2: size in a matter of three seasons, or is mother
Speaker 2: nature going to continually try to grasp that over So
Speaker 2: I think once you get to know more about the
Speaker 2: details of that stuff, how how mother nature wants to
Speaker 2: manipulate that place and how it wants to form that land,
Speaker 2: you know that can start to inform design decisions of
Speaker 2: like bunkers facing southwest want to be flashed high and
Speaker 2: bunkers facing northeast need to be you know, tucked down
Speaker 2: low because the wind is going to do this. You
Speaker 2: could start to see weird landforms in areas that you
Speaker 2: weren't using for golf and incorporate them more into the
Speaker 2: site to try to give it that feel of the
Speaker 2: place and accentuate that a little bit. I'm thinking of
Speaker 2: like at Memorial Park down in Houston, there was this
Speaker 2: cool ravine that Tom found and cleared out and routed
Speaker 2: the second hole a par three over, and the landforms
Speaker 2: in there were awesome, just because such steep land, you
Speaker 2: get such fast water moving through there, and then these
Speaker 2: tree routes basically have to grip onto the side of
Speaker 2: a steep slope and they create these weird little knobs
Speaker 2: at formations. So I think Don and his crew were
Speaker 2: really informed by that when they were doing a lot
Speaker 2: of the ravine work, and we were informed by that
Speaker 2: when building holes near the ravine. It's like, well, we
Speaker 2: could sort of borrow from these landforms that have been
Speaker 2: covered up for fifty years and try to incorporate them
Speaker 2: into the golf and that helps sell the golf course
Speaker 2: as being a part of this place even.
Speaker 1: More, and in that case, you were restoring the sense
Speaker 1: of place to a golf course that had perhaps over
Speaker 1: the past few decades lost.
Speaker 2: It certainly, yeah, at least exposing what was lost exactly.
Speaker 1: So a lot of what we're talking about philosophically is
Speaker 1: rooted in the concept of place based design, which comes
Speaker 1: from landscape architecture and has been practiced obviously in fields
Speaker 1: outside of golf architecture. So tell me a little more
Speaker 1: about the concept of place based design, where it comes from,
Speaker 1: how you learned about it, what it means to you.
Speaker 2: So, place based design is sort of what we've been
Speaker 2: talking about. It's designing with and around characteristics that make
Speaker 2: a place special and unique. You know, not only the
Speaker 2: structure of the site, but the native ecosystem, the culture,
Speaker 2: just local experiences, and design decisions then reflect that analysis.
Speaker 2: The way I learned about place based design was in
Speaker 2: landscape architecture school. You start to study old landscape architects,
Speaker 2: and one that really caught my eye was a Danish
Speaker 2: immigrant named Jens Jensen who was from Chicago. Came to
Speaker 2: Chicago in the early twentieth century, sort of on the
Speaker 2: heels of the First World's that Chicago had the Columbian Exposition.
Speaker 2: You know, classical architecture was all the rage, like the
Speaker 2: Beaux Arts French style of landscape architecture was really popular,
Speaker 2: really formalized landscape architecture. And this guy came in and
Speaker 2: was just sort of blown away by the diversity of
Speaker 2: the Illinois landscape, and he proposed this idea that design
Speaker 2: should be harmonious with nature and its ecological processes. He
Speaker 2: wanted to sort of incorporate a place based design at
Speaker 2: a time when it was sort of unpopular. You know.
Speaker 2: Now he's responsible. He became the parks commissioner for Chicago,
Speaker 2: so he's responsible for all those small parks in the
Speaker 2: city that maybe Andy's familiar with. He's also responsible for
Speaker 2: identifying all the state parks, including the dunes parks. He
Speaker 2: found some really cool dunes land so he preserved those
Speaker 2: and they've become state parks. So he just had he
Speaker 2: had this process as a landscape architect where he wanted
Speaker 2: to I've got his five points of his sort of
Speaker 2: five key points. He wanted to understand local culture, use
Speaker 2: native plants and local materials, create space and view, mingle
Speaker 2: light and shadow, and he preferred organic forms in large
Speaker 2: scale landscapes. I was like, well, a ton of that
Speaker 2: stuff is useful in golf course architecture as well.
Speaker 1: What did some of this work look like in its
Speaker 1: finished form for the parks and the urban architecture and
Speaker 1: whatever he was doing.
Speaker 2: I think a big park of his is Columbus Park
Speaker 2: in Chicago. One of the things that he was really
Speaker 2: known for in the way that he tried to create
Speaker 2: more of this play spased design. He would have these
Speaker 2: these circle pits where people could sit around, like communities
Speaker 2: could come together and have a space within the park
Speaker 2: to meet, which only then reinforce and emphasized this idea
Speaker 2: of community. And then they very much. It was like,
Speaker 2: you've got lots of green space, You've got these organic
Speaker 2: shapes in the park, a variety of spaces and areas
Speaker 2: to do different activities, and then just being aware to
Speaker 2: always use native plants to reinforce this idea of here
Speaker 2: is what Illinois always has been, even though right now
Speaker 2: you're surrounded by a bunch of buildings and plethora built environment,
Speaker 2: like you can come to this park and all the
Speaker 2: stuff here is native to the place where you are,
Speaker 2: so trying to maybe reconnect you to the land a
Speaker 2: little bit.
Speaker 1: And so as you were learning about this kind of
Speaker 1: work in landscape architecture school, did a bell sort of
Speaker 1: go off for you at some point and you thought, hey,
Speaker 1: this is really what should be done in golf course architecture.
Speaker 2: No it wasn't. I mean, it wasn't really a bell.
Speaker 2: It was just like, man, this is the term that
Speaker 2: people should be using, Like, minimalism is the term that
Speaker 2: was applied to this movement that Tom and Bill sort
Speaker 2: of started, right But to me, it's like, I also
Speaker 2: have an art background, and minimalism is not the best
Speaker 2: term for what that is. Minimalism is is it's like
Speaker 2: a highly purified form of art. It condenses it down
Speaker 2: to its essential elements, very little ornamentation, simple design. It's
Speaker 2: often geometric and repetitive. So when I started learning more
Speaker 2: about plays based design, and you know, reading about Jens
Speaker 2: Jensen or Aldo Leopold or Robert Barvin or people like that,
Speaker 2: it's like, man, this is you know, it's not reinventing
Speaker 2: the wheel. It's just a better thing to describe the
Speaker 2: way people have been designing courses since the Golden Age.
Speaker 1: If you think about it, a lot of the work
Speaker 1: that's called minimalism in golf architecture is really anything, but
Speaker 1: not just in the sense of the intervention in the landscape,
Speaker 1: but just in the in the style that you often
Speaker 1: see in these courses that are called minimalists. They're they're
Speaker 1: very kind of complex and filigreed and and have a
Speaker 1: concentration of detail.
Speaker 2: You know, Minimalism may even be just that weird Victorian
Speaker 2: style where it's like there's a bunker one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty yards, a cross bunker one hundred and fifty yards
Speaker 2: off the tee, three hundred yards off the tea, and
Speaker 2: then one right in front of the green. It's like,
Speaker 2: we never change that pattern. Everything's just repetitive and simple
Speaker 2: and very black and white, like if you do not
Speaker 2: do this, then you will be penalized by this. And yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like once you started entering that variety and complexity
Speaker 2: and strategy into golf is when it changed. And so
Speaker 2: to me, it's like place based design encapsulates that perfectly.
Speaker 1: Right, So, what are some ways in which you can
Speaker 1: make sure that the course you're building is respecting the
Speaker 1: spirit of the place that it sits in.
Speaker 2: I think it's what a lot of people who are
Speaker 2: good at routing golf courses and designing golf courses. Do
Speaker 2: you know you're trying to provide variety, You're trying to
Speaker 2: start to play with how people interact with that space.
Speaker 2: You're respecting the natural hydrology, so you're not you know,
Speaker 2: you're not just putting a green anywhere and then building
Speaker 2: a bunch of catch basins around it, because you're just saying,
Speaker 2: screw it to the natural hydrology. It's like you're working
Speaker 2: with the land in a way that it can function
Speaker 2: as it always has, but then still just be used
Speaker 2: for this fun little game we like to play.
Speaker 1: And to come at this from a different direction, What
Speaker 1: are some ways in which golf architecture can violate a
Speaker 1: sense of place?
Speaker 2: My main one has always been Shadow Creek in Las Vegas,
Speaker 2: just because it's so not of desert golf. It's basically
Speaker 2: like somebody took a helicopter and imported parkland golf of
Speaker 2: like even some weird form of southwestern mountain golf into it,
Speaker 2: you know, And ultimately what that does is it's going
Speaker 2: to drive up maintenance costs in the long run, like
Speaker 2: if nothing else, and only thinking of it economically, like
Speaker 2: it's just going to be so much more to maintain
Speaker 2: every year if you're constantly trying to put a square
Speaker 2: peg in a round hole. You know, if you're if
Speaker 2: you're starting to work with the place and appreciate what
Speaker 2: that place is and designing around it, it's going to
Speaker 2: be much more. It's going to be much easier to maintain.
Speaker 2: You know. One of the things, it's like, I really
Speaker 2: enjoyed Kingsbarns, and I think the golf there is excellent
Speaker 2: and the way that the golf holes play, But to me,
Speaker 2: that's a place where it's like several of those holes
Speaker 2: we're just on pretty flat ag land, not even gently rolling,
Speaker 2: and so trying to create a links theesetic throughout in
Speaker 2: top soil just didn't work for me as far as
Speaker 2: creating a sense of place. It just like it's always
Speaker 2: felt a little weird to me because of that, where
Speaker 2: I think maybe let the three or four links holes
Speaker 2: they have down near the water be the Lynx holes,
Speaker 2: and then you could try to do something different that
Speaker 2: nobody's really executed before on that ag land. Not to
Speaker 2: say you need to do it in a McDonald or
Speaker 2: Rainer style, but I think coming at it from a
Speaker 2: point of view of like, you know what, we're not
Speaker 2: going to try to just blow everything up and recreate
Speaker 2: these full links because the Scots aren't gonna buy it.
Speaker 2: It's not believable in that place, and it also doesn't
Speaker 2: speak to what that land was before.
Speaker 1: You've seen that in a few recent high profile Scottish
Speaker 1: courses in fact, where the design isn't exactly corresponding to
Speaker 1: what the place was because some of the new properties
Speaker 1: that are available are not your classic dunesland properties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't and it's like I get it, the SSSI.
Speaker 2: You can't build on links anymore. And they're the hardest
Speaker 2: thing to recreate because they've just weathered through wind and
Speaker 2: waves and nature for thousands or millions of years and
Speaker 2: formed these cool, delicate little rimples. It's like it's sort
Speaker 2: of impossible to recreate. And that's why the Links courses
Speaker 2: are so good. It's because they were, you know, divinely created.
Speaker 2: The hand of man isn't good enough to recreate that stuff.
Speaker 2: So I would almost want to approach it from a
Speaker 2: completely different way and try to give the scott something
Speaker 2: that they've never had before, rather than constantly trying to
Speaker 2: recreate links land that I know, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: recreate it, as well as the four links courses that
Speaker 2: are within a twenty mile drive of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, are there circumstances in which you think it's proper
Speaker 1: or or advisable even to leave behind a certain properties
Speaker 1: spirit of place to kick out its genius lows? I say,
Speaker 1: you see you later. We're going to try to create
Speaker 1: something new here. We're going to try to create a rich,
Speaker 1: artificial environment that has its own spirit of place, that
Speaker 1: is made by the hand of man. Some who like
Speaker 1: Shadow Creek would say that's exactly what it does. It
Speaker 1: took an incredibly unpromising property for golf right flat desert
Speaker 1: basically and built an entirely new environment out of nothing. Now,
Speaker 1: I guess the question is whether you like that environment
Speaker 1: or not, or think it's responsible or not to take
Speaker 1: on that kind of project. But you know, do you
Speaker 1: think there are circumstances in which that sort of approach
Speaker 1: is the best approach?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely. You know there are a number of examples
Speaker 2: where a designer or an architect has taken a crummy
Speaker 2: piece of land and done something pretty cool with it,
Speaker 2: like Trinity Forest. You know, you wouldn't want to preserve
Speaker 2: the sense of place there that it was a landfill.
Speaker 2: You may want to look to what the land was
Speaker 2: before it was even a landfill and see if there's
Speaker 2: some cool historical significance that you could try to recapture
Speaker 2: or bring back. Modern design and modern equipment has definitely
Speaker 2: given people the option to take worse piece of worse
Speaker 2: pieces of land and do something cool with them. You know,
Speaker 2: I still disagree that you needed to put pine trees
Speaker 2: in the desert it you probably could have met somebody
Speaker 2: halfway with it, made a cool like desert landscape golf course.
Speaker 1: Shadow Barancas instead of Shadow Creek.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So I still I still disagree with that place.
Speaker 2: But I also like, I'm young, and I'm an idiot,
Speaker 2: and I've never done it before, so I also understand
Speaker 2: that there's still a lot more to learn as well.
Speaker 2: And the ability to manipulate a site in a way
Speaker 2: that can give people an interesting golf course to play
Speaker 2: is is cool.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like the more the more we can just try
Speaker 2: to compromise on that. I think it's like, yeah, you
Speaker 2: might have to do something with a dead, fat piece
Speaker 2: of land, like like Tom at the Rawles course. In
Speaker 2: Texas to make it interesting and to provide the game
Speaker 2: of golf to that college in that town. That's great.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't want to take that away.
Speaker 1: I mean, it takes a tremendous amount of skill to
Speaker 1: build something that is not inherent to the landscape. I mean,
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of skill to build a course
Speaker 1: that respects the landscape as well and is place based
Speaker 1: in its approach. But if you're going to create something
Speaker 1: artificial in order to make it good and compelling, you
Speaker 1: really have to have mastery, right, and you really have
Speaker 1: to have artistic ability. And when I look at a
Speaker 1: course like the ones that Mike Strants built. A lot
Speaker 1: of those courses, including NPCC Shore, which is in a
Speaker 1: beautiful place. I don't know if the property is all
Speaker 1: that amazing, especially compared to what's just down the road,
Speaker 1: but that course doesn't really feel like Monterey necessarily. It
Speaker 1: is something different. But I find it udibly interesting to
Speaker 1: look at. And part of that, I think is that
Speaker 1: Strants was a boundary pushing artist as well as a
Speaker 1: golf architect. And what he did there, what he created there,
Speaker 1: the artificial elements there are compelling and have their own
Speaker 1: kind of sense of place, even if it isn't the
Speaker 1: original spirit of that landscape. Can you think of any
Speaker 1: examples like that that you've seen of courses that are
Speaker 1: able to pull off that feet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think NBC is a good example.
Speaker 2: And you bring up Mike Strands, and the thing that's
Speaker 2: so cool about him is how intentional he was. I
Speaker 2: think if you don't have something great to work with,
Speaker 2: or if your neighbors are Pebble Beach and Cypress Point,
Speaker 2: maybe you've got a little bit more of a chip
Speaker 2: on your shoulder to try to differentiate yourself. But it's
Speaker 2: that idea of being intentional rather than, you know, trying
Speaker 2: to recreate the dunes. I'm not going to be able
Speaker 2: to do it as well as Cypress Point does it naturally.
Speaker 2: So it's like I'll just be very intentional that instead
Speaker 2: of trying to honor what this place was, I'm just
Speaker 2: going to make myself a part of its story. And
Speaker 2: that is very cool as well. You know, I think
Speaker 2: National Golf Links moved a ton of earth when they
Speaker 2: were constructing, and a lot of things about it are
Speaker 2: very intentional and they're not trying to hide it either.
Speaker 2: So I think that's where you start to see that
Speaker 2: compromise come in.
Speaker 1: Yeah. All right, So just to wrap things up here,
Speaker 1: we've mentioned a few courses as examples so far, but
Speaker 1: what are some golf courses that really come to mind
Speaker 1: when you think of plays based design done well?
Speaker 2: You know, it's not coincidentally. I think it's a lot
Speaker 2: of the great golf courses in the world are center
Speaker 2: around this idea of plays based design. Whether they knew
Speaker 2: anything about that concept or had thought about it, they
Speaker 2: just worked in a way that was consistent with the
Speaker 2: ideas that we've basically described. Now, places like Cyprus Point
Speaker 2: or National Golf Links or Royal Melbourne or sand Hills,
Speaker 2: you know, they're all sort of of their place. And
Speaker 2: I guess I'm I'm sort of limiting that to golf
Speaker 2: courses that were built by man because so many of
Speaker 2: the Link's golf courses, probably all of them are just there.
Speaker 2: They're naturally of their place because they the most design
Speaker 2: input that was put into a lot of them were
Speaker 2: just the locals gathering around and agreeing on the number
Speaker 2: of holes to play or which route to play them,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe doing a little tweak to agree here there,
Speaker 2: or making sure a bunker stays the same. But it's like,
Speaker 2: for the most part, links courses are all of their place,
Speaker 2: and it's why they're so interesting to study to this
Speaker 2: day because they were designed five hundred years ago by
Speaker 2: mother Nature. Yet through all the advances and technology, they've
Speaker 2: still lasted the test of time. You know, we've done
Speaker 2: a good job in the United States since guys like
Speaker 2: McDonald and Travis and Herbert Leeds, all these old great
Speaker 2: amateur golfers were informed by the principles of links courses
Speaker 2: and then just became good at executing them on the
Speaker 2: pieces of land that we had in the United States.
Speaker 2: Pine Valley is another great one. Something like Somerset Hills
Speaker 2: is very much just of the place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even though Somerset Hills has some of those what
Speaker 1: people would consider artificial shapes on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, it's like there's old grassover roads going through there.
Speaker 2: You know. Garden City is the same way, where it's
Speaker 2: like there's a lot of these intentional design features, but
Speaker 2: you're very much using what the place was and incorporating
Speaker 2: that indie your design, Like, well, we're not going to
Speaker 2: take the time to fill in this road, Let's just
Speaker 2: make the road a cross hazard for this hole and
Speaker 2: we'll call it good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean allied to this concept of plays
Speaker 1: based design is the idea of vernacular architecture, and I
Speaker 1: think that's part of what you were talking about before,
Speaker 1: with links courses designed by their communities, essentially by amateur
Speaker 1: designers that have a true and lived in spirit of
Speaker 1: place because they were built locally, using local materials i e.
Speaker 1: The land, and not doing much to it.
Speaker 2: And that's what I want to go. I want to
Speaker 2: continue always to go over to the British Isles and
Speaker 2: study the Links courses over there. But I'm also sort
Speaker 2: of curious about this idea that the nature of the
Speaker 2: people in these different towns gave a different character to
Speaker 2: the golf course. So, you know, we're the hardened people
Speaker 2: of Northern Scotland. Were they creating, you know, more difficult
Speaker 2: courses and they would go to the pub every night
Speaker 2: and they would have a beer and figure out a
Speaker 2: way to be more masochistic. And then while some people
Speaker 2: in Ireland maybe they're more witty or clever or playful
Speaker 2: group and so they create more playful routings. I think
Speaker 2: that's part of the reason why, like learning about the
Speaker 2: people and learning about the culture is interesting. You can
Speaker 2: sort of get to know who these people are and
Speaker 2: what place they are, and place obviously informs who people are,
Speaker 2: so just always trying to connect those things and study them.
Speaker 2: I think it would be interesting for links courses because
Speaker 2: you know, Robert Hunter, I was just I just got
Speaker 2: done reading the links for that golf Club Atlist book Club,
Speaker 2: and it was interesting because he talked about the ability
Speaker 2: to identify players who are from different links courses just
Speaker 2: by the way they played golf. He said, guys who
Speaker 2: came from Sandwich always produced good drivers of the ball.
Speaker 2: Guys who played at Saint Andrews were always great at
Speaker 2: the pitch and run. Prestwick players had light hands for
Speaker 2: delicate pitches. Deal players were excellent putters from off the green.
Speaker 2: Like it's so interesting that they could play in a
Speaker 2: competition at one course and be like, oh, that guy
Speaker 2: must be from Deal because he's always got good weights
Speaker 2: on it, good weight on his putts from off the green.
Speaker 2: It's like stuff like that just interests me and that
Speaker 2: speaks more to the place than anything. Really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's localism, right, which is something that's been lost
Speaker 1: in a big way since the early days of golf
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen hundreds, I mean sorry, in the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds through the early nineteen hundreds, the world
Speaker 1: was so much more local than it is now and
Speaker 1: part of the result of increased transportation and communication globalization.
Speaker 1: All that stuff is a kind of standardization of a
Speaker 1: lot of things, including it sounds like golf and golf courses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head too.
Speaker 2: Like place based design just just helps you stay away
Speaker 2: from any standardization. You want it to be as unique
Speaker 2: as it possibly can be and be of that place.
Speaker 2: And it's like, you're right. The more connected we become,
Speaker 2: the more standardized everything everything becomes, and you don't want
Speaker 2: one hundred years from now, every golf course to play
Speaker 2: the same way.
Speaker 1: I really liked where Blake and I got at the
Speaker 1: end of that conversation. Basically, what he helped me realize
Speaker 1: was that golfer can texture could be a kind of
Speaker 1: countercultural force in the modern world. What I mean by
Speaker 1: that is, you know, in the twentieth century, building design
Speaker 1: and urban planning became more standardized. We've gotten away from
Speaker 1: the vernacular architecture of earlier periods of history, where local
Speaker 1: materials and local modes of construction were all that was
Speaker 1: available to most communities. The result is that what we
Speaker 1: build today tends to function more predictably and more safely,
Speaker 1: but it often lacks a local and distinctive sense of place.
Speaker 1: Just think of like malls in big box stores. Those
Speaker 1: look and feel more or less the same whether they're
Speaker 1: in Maine or New Mexico. So golf courses could serve
Speaker 1: as a contrast to those kinds of places, especially if
Speaker 1: they're designed with a place based approach. They could remind
Speaker 1: people of the indigenous terrain of a region, like Jens
Speaker 1: Jensen's parks do in Chicago, or they could just feel unique.
Speaker 1: They could provide a break in the sameness of most
Speaker 1: urban and suburban landscapes. That's a powerful thing that golf
Speaker 1: courses can do, and that some older, more vernacular courses
Speaker 1: do without even really trying. So I'm a fan of
Speaker 1: play based design, not only as a practice, but also
Speaker 1: as a piece of vocabulary. I think it is, as
Speaker 1: Blake said, a better and more accurate way of describing
Speaker 1: what we've been calling minimalism in golf architecture. I also
Speaker 1: like that it's borrowed from another field, even if it's
Speaker 1: an overlapping field. In landscape architecture, golf can be pretty insular,
Speaker 1: so it's encouraging to see a young designer like Blake
Speaker 1: drawing inspiration from other disciplines. Now, the way I'll usually
Speaker 1: wrap up these School of Golf Architecture episodes is by
Speaker 1: teasing out a question that the interview encouraged me to
Speaker 1: think more about. For this one, it's whether or to
Speaker 1: what extent place based design can be artificial. I think
Speaker 1: I'd hold to my position that it can be, but
Speaker 1: the architect had better be really good, really artistics persuasive.
Speaker 1: I mentioned Mike Strants as a designer who gave artificial
Speaker 1: environments their own senses of place, but Pete Die at
Speaker 1: his best could do that as well. The fact remains, though,
Speaker 1: that for me, a course that sits lightly on a
Speaker 1: great property and derives its sense of place from the
Speaker 1: natural environment that's tough to be. Conversely, the courses that
Speaker 1: don't resonate with me tend to be the ones that
Speaker 1: are artificial and that fail to do anything super interesting
Speaker 1: with their artificiality. And I think that's because, again, just
Speaker 1: for me, it's very rare that an architect can compete
Speaker 1: with mother nature. But of course i'd love to know
Speaker 1: what you think. You can find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: g Ford Golf and the general Frida Egg account at
Speaker 1: the frieda Egg with underscores between each word. Let's keep
Speaker 1: the discussion going