Speaker 1: What are CB McDonald's template holes, often called ideal holes?
Speaker 1: Where did they come from? And why do they seem
Speaker 1: so important to understanding golf architecture. That's what I'm talking
Speaker 1: about today with PJ Clark in this installment of our
Speaker 1: Golf Architecture one oh one series. I'm Garrett Morrison and
Speaker 1: this is designing golf. All right, PJ, how's it going.
Speaker 2: I'm doing good. I'm excited for this one.
Speaker 3: This was this was by my own requests, so I'm
Speaker 3: really fired up here.
Speaker 1: Yes, we'll talk about why you requested it because I'm curious.
Speaker 1: But it's good to have It's good to have class
Speaker 1: back in session. It's been a while since we've done
Speaker 1: one of these.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, I'm excited and this is this is
Speaker 3: uh probably the number one topic I would assume I
Speaker 3: needed to learn based on what we do here and
Speaker 3: when we started this.
Speaker 2: So I'm happy to be I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1: That's that's interesting. So hopefully I'll inform you in the
Speaker 1: way that you want to be informed. But I guess
Speaker 1: you've heard plenty of references to C. B. MacDonald and
Speaker 1: SETH Rayner and their and their template holes and our
Speaker 1: goal here is to kind of demystify that. First, though,
Speaker 1: I want to quickly clarify something that we covered in
Speaker 1: our last Golf Architecture one oh one episode, and that
Speaker 1: was the topic of the episode. Was Alistair Mackenzie's thirteen
Speaker 1: essential Features of an Ideal golf Course or his thirteen principles.
Speaker 1: The confusion in that podcast, I think came with principal
Speaker 1: number six, the principle that said there should be a
Speaker 1: minimum of blindness for approach shots. Now, what mackenzie means
Speaker 1: here is that there should not be many blind approach shots.
Speaker 1: I believe you thought he was saying that approach shots
Speaker 1: should be at the minimum blind.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is exactly how I read that.
Speaker 1: I did not pick up on this during the podcast.
Speaker 1: I wasn't I was I was failing in my job
Speaker 1: as a teacher. I wasn't listening properly, and so I
Speaker 1: was just kind of proceeding with my understanding of it
Speaker 1: without really noticing that you have interpreted it different.
Speaker 3: Now I'm I'm pro number six instead of very anti
Speaker 3: number six. I want to make that clear for now
Speaker 3: that I've learned the flip side.
Speaker 1: That was a whoops. These things happened these things. I mean, jeez,
Speaker 1: looking back on my teaching career, the things that I
Speaker 1: would just like give lectures on and then discover afterwards
Speaker 1: that my students had some basic misunderstanding that rendered my
Speaker 1: entire lecture irrelevant. That happened over and over again. And
Speaker 1: this is an example of that very understandable that you
Speaker 1: would interpret the text in that way. Really Like, when
Speaker 1: I looked at it, I was like, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: can totally see how he got there. And I should
Speaker 1: have clarified that Mackenzie meant not many blind approach shots.
Speaker 1: Pleased he did.
Speaker 3: Not like the doctor was something about something. I should
Speaker 3: have realized that if I was so confused that it
Speaker 3: was me who was wrong and not the doctor.
Speaker 1: Now that makes that's right. Trust the doctor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, blindly, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: It would have if we had read more of Mackenzie's
Speaker 1: writing than just the thirteen Principles, I think it would
Speaker 1: have been clear because elsewhere he kind of elaborates on
Speaker 1: this principle and talks about why he doesn't want many
Speaker 1: blind approach shots and all that kind of stuff. It
Speaker 1: was just more common in Mackenzie's day that approach shots
Speaker 1: would be blind because of course earth moving equipment wasn't
Speaker 1: what it is today, and so they kind of dealt
Speaker 1: with the lay of the land.
Speaker 3: That makes sense that I could I could see how
Speaker 3: you know, if you just dealt the hand on the
Speaker 3: side of a hill, then it's kind of kind of
Speaker 3: what you have to work with there.
Speaker 1: Now, the funny thing is, blind approach shots have come
Speaker 1: back into fashion. I mean, it's it's some it's a
Speaker 1: feature of ancient architecture that people now find charming because
Speaker 1: it's somewhat rare. Blind approachots really fell out of fashion
Speaker 1: in the middle of the twentieth century, and and so
Speaker 1: because they became rare, I think people have started to
Speaker 1: gain a kind of affection for them. But in any case,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to wrap that up, and there we
Speaker 1: got a couple of comments and I was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I missed this one. Sorry, So let's get to our
Speaker 1: topic for the day. Charles Blair McDonald's. Charles Blair McDonald's McDonald's.
Speaker 1: That would be another that'd be maybe a more Scottish version. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: who knows. Maybe there is a Charles Blair McDonald out there,
Speaker 1: his ideal holes or template holes. And this is I
Speaker 1: think actually very related to our discussion of Mackenzie's thirteen Principles,
Speaker 1: and that's because McKenzie and McDonald were essentially asking the
Speaker 1: same question, how do you design the ideal golf course.
Speaker 1: McKenzie's answer to that question was this list of principles.
Speaker 1: McDonald's answer was his notion of ideal holes. So the
Speaker 1: ideal holes are whole designs or concepts that you see
Speaker 1: used over and over on the courses of C. B.
Speaker 1: McDonald and his collaborator slash protege Seth Rayner McDonald and
Speaker 1: or Rayner sometimes together, right, they collaborated a lot, but
Speaker 1: sometimes just Rayner As a solo architect. They were responsible
Speaker 1: for many of the best regarded golf courses built during
Speaker 1: the Golden Age of golf architecture in America, which stretched
Speaker 1: from approximately nineteen ten to the late nineteen thirties. McDonald's
Speaker 1: best known designs include National Golf Links of America, The Ledo,
Speaker 1: Piping Rock, Sleepy Hollow, the Creek mid Ocean in Bermuda,
Speaker 1: and Saint Louis Country Club. Seth Rayner had a much
Speaker 1: bigger portfolio, right, McDonald's body of work is fairly small,
Speaker 1: so some of Rayner's highlights would include Fisher's Island, Chicago
Speaker 1: Golf Club, Shore Acres, Camargo, Yamen's Hall, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And Rayner also served as the associate what we would
Speaker 1: now call the lead associate or construction manager or whatever
Speaker 1: on all of McDonald's major projects. A distinctive feature of
Speaker 1: McDonald and Rayner's courses is the presence of the so
Speaker 1: called template holes. These particular design concepts usually based on
Speaker 1: models from famous British links courses and adapted to whatever
Speaker 1: piece of ground McDonald and Rayner we're working with. Some
Speaker 1: of the better known template holes include the Radan, the
Speaker 1: road hole, the Eden, the Cape, the Beertz, the short,
Speaker 1: the Alps, so on and so forth. I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: heard these referred to casually in podcasts and been like, Okay,
Speaker 1: what are we talking about here?
Speaker 2: That's exactly how we got here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so that's our subject for this episode. Now
Speaker 1: we won't cover a lot of particular template holes. That
Speaker 1: may come as a disappointment, but that I mean, we're
Speaker 1: mostly in an audio medium here. We'll also publish this
Speaker 1: on YouTube with some visual and for an audio medium,
Speaker 1: I figured that just talking about specific template holes might
Speaker 1: be a little tough because we just have to talk
Speaker 1: their features out. But what I hope we can do
Speaker 1: here is kind of establish a basis for understanding all
Speaker 1: template holes, and then we can dig into whatever particular
Speaker 1: ones you're curious about. Now, as you mentioned, PJ, you
Speaker 1: actually requested that we talk about this subject. Why were
Speaker 1: you interested in it?
Speaker 3: I feel like it comes up a lot just in
Speaker 3: random podcasts here or there, or you know, we did
Speaker 3: the rain or Man merch collection and cameras talking about
Speaker 3: how he had to draw all the template holes, and
Speaker 3: I was like, I know, that's the thing I'm supposed
Speaker 3: to know at some point, but I have no idea
Speaker 3: what you're talking about. So I got to a point
Speaker 3: I forget what entirely prompted me. But he got to
Speaker 3: a point where I was like, I have no idea
Speaker 3: what we're talking about anymore. So I needed to humbly
Speaker 3: request to get taught what every year about to teach me?
Speaker 1: Right now, let's go back to square one.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of like a code language. And
Speaker 1: this is one thing that can make golf architecture an
Speaker 1: intimidating subject is that you're dropped into it, and people
Speaker 1: are speaking a different language that includes words like radan
Speaker 1: and Eden and shorthole and alps, and it's if you
Speaker 1: don't understand the language, then it can feel a bit alienating.
Speaker 1: And hopefully that's that's what we're breaking down a bit
Speaker 1: here in the Golf Architecture one oh one series. I
Speaker 1: want to assure you there's nothing complicated about understanding these
Speaker 1: template holes. Most of them are are pretty simple to understand,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people who casually refer to them
Speaker 1: in conversation don't don't actually know the design concepts. That
Speaker 1: that's good. That makes me feel bad.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: In order to really have mastery of the subject, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you do need to dig a little bit deeper, but
Speaker 1: in order to have just a framework for the conversation,
Speaker 1: I think we can do that pretty quickly. So let's
Speaker 1: start with some background, a little bit of history. Who
Speaker 1: McDonald was, how he came up with this idea. This
Speaker 1: is actually I love this story. This is one of
Speaker 1: my one of my favorite stories to tell about golf architecture.
Speaker 1: I think it it represents so much of what the
Speaker 1: early development of golf course design as a discipline and
Speaker 1: a field of study was and so I just I
Speaker 1: just really like going through this As part of the
Speaker 1: reason I was excited about this episode. So C B McDonald,
Speaker 1: wealthy Chicago kid who ended up attending the University of
Speaker 1: Saint Andrew's in the early eighteen seventies. Saint Andrews, Scotland
Speaker 1: was and is the international home of golf. So no surprise, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. I often mention this, I wish I
Speaker 1: went to the University of Saint Andrews. Speaking of being
Speaker 1: a teacher, one of my one of my advises when
Speaker 1: when I was a high school teacher went to the
Speaker 1: University of Saint Andrews and I sat down with him
Speaker 1: before he accepted the offer of admission, and I was like, listen,
Speaker 1: do you play golf? And he said no, And I said,
Speaker 1: you had better learn golf.
Speaker 2: How do you kill?
Speaker 3: How do you even end up in that situation? Like
Speaker 3: what prompts you to go to the University of St Andrews.
Speaker 1: If you're not, you know, it's a great university, Like,
Speaker 1: first of all, really really wonderful university. If you're if
Speaker 1: you're in Great Britain, it's it's it's like going to
Speaker 1: I guess an Ivy League university. So they have great academics.
Speaker 1: But I think if you go to the University of St.
Speaker 1: Andrews and don't play golf that oh.
Speaker 3: Man, Yeah, it's still combination.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In any case, McDonald did it right. He he
Speaker 1: really learned a game while he was there. He met
Speaker 1: and played with old Tom Morris and young Tom Morris.
Speaker 1: A good time to be there in the eighteen seventies,
Speaker 1: and he became a very capable player, ultimately one of
Speaker 1: the better players in the US when he returned. So
Speaker 1: he got back to the US in the mid eighteen
Speaker 1: seventies and he was disappointed to find that the game
Speaker 1: basically didn't exist in the country at that time. So
Speaker 1: he didn't play much golf for the next fifteen years
Speaker 1: or so, and whatever golf courses appeared during this period were,
Speaker 1: in his mind, a very low quality. They just didn't
Speaker 1: get anywhere close to what he saw in Saint Andrews.
Speaker 1: At the time. Saint Andrews was basically what it is today,
Speaker 1: a great, great golf course. You can imagine going from
Speaker 1: there to the kind of rudimentary golf courses that we
Speaker 1: had in America at the time, and it was a
Speaker 1: big difference. So when MacDonald caught the golf bug again
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen eighties, one of his primary goals
Speaker 1: became to create the first truly great American golf course.
Speaker 1: During this period, he established Chicago Golf Club, but the
Speaker 1: early versions of that course were not on the level
Speaker 1: of today's Chicago Golf Club, which was primarily designed by
Speaker 1: Seth Rayner in the nineteen twenties. Nonetheless, Chicago Golf Club
Speaker 1: was a major early American club, and McDonald became a
Speaker 1: major figure in the development of American golf.
Speaker 3: So is this is this just like you know, everybody
Speaker 3: makes a joke like I'm gonna go write the Great
Speaker 3: American novel like this, this is somebody just decided to
Speaker 3: go build a golf course one.
Speaker 1: Day, That's right. So he wanted to write the great
Speaker 1: American novel, that's right. He had that ambition, make make
Speaker 1: the great American movie, make the great American album. That
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, this ambition is cross disciplinary for sure,
Speaker 1: goes across art forms, and this was McDonald's version of it.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, he had this desire. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of biography here that I won't get into, but McDonald
Speaker 1: did become instrumental in the founding of the USGA and
Speaker 1: the origins of the us and so there's interesting stuff
Speaker 1: there too, but I'll skip forward to the golf course
Speaker 1: design story. In nineteen oh one, McDonald was reading Golf Illustrated,
Speaker 1: probably the most popular golf only publication of the time
Speaker 1: published in the UK, and he came across a debate
Speaker 1: in the pages of Golf Illustrated between some leading golfers
Speaker 1: of the time about what the greatest holes in the
Speaker 1: world were, and by world, I mean great Britain was
Speaker 1: essentially their frame of reference and where most of the
Speaker 1: best golf courses were. So to my knowledge, this is
Speaker 1: the first time a discussion of this type happened in print,
Speaker 1: which is really saying something because this is a very
Speaker 1: common thing now right people talking about the best courses
Speaker 1: and the best holes. So try to imagine a world
Speaker 1: in which this hadn't happened before.
Speaker 3: This is kind of kind of crazy, just trying to,
Speaker 3: you know, starting the take industry, for lack of a
Speaker 3: better term, from nothing. That's really it's an interesting concept
Speaker 3: to think about.
Speaker 1: God, it's fascinating to read because that's exactly it. The
Speaker 1: first hot takes about golf architecture. It's like nobody had
Speaker 1: ever done it before. And these guys, you know, Harry Varden,
Speaker 1: Jage Taylor, James Braid, Willie Park Junior, John Lowe, Horace Hutchinson,
Speaker 1: these were the first, you know, take.
Speaker 2: Masters sitting there like, what have I done?
Speaker 1: Yeah? If they if they now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the end of Oppenheimer just staring blankly into
Speaker 3: the camera. It's a tough scene for those guys.
Speaker 1: So the golfers who participated in this debate were the
Speaker 1: heavies of the game at the time, very impressive names.
Speaker 1: The ones that I mentioned these were, you know, Open
Speaker 1: championship winners and just significant figures, and so their word
Speaker 1: carried weight and McDonald was fascinated by what they were writing.
Speaker 1: And it turned out that a certain number of holes
Speaker 1: kind of rose to the top. It got mentioned by
Speaker 1: a lot of different people as being the best of
Speaker 1: their kind. They talked about the best one shotters, two shotters,
Speaker 1: and three shotters. So par three's, par four's, par five's.
Speaker 1: The best one shotters, according to this panel, turned out
Speaker 1: to be the Eden, the eleventh hole at Saint Andrews,
Speaker 1: The were Dan, the fifteenth hole at North Barrick, the Alps,
Speaker 1: the seventeenth hole at Prestwick, the road hole seventeen at
Speaker 1: Saint Andrews, the long hole fourteen at Saint Andrews. I
Speaker 1: ended up going through the two shotters and three shotters.
Speaker 1: They're actually without mentioning it, but the road hole at
Speaker 1: the time now considered a par four, right, it's categorized
Speaker 1: as a par four. At the time it was considered
Speaker 1: more of a par five. They didn't call it a
Speaker 1: par five, but it was it was thought that you
Speaker 1: would spend three shots in getting to that green. And
Speaker 1: so those are the holes that came up, and these
Speaker 1: remain some of the most as holes in the UK.
Speaker 1: Prestwick is on the west coast of Scotland and that
Speaker 1: was that was an early old Tom Morris course. You've
Speaker 1: probably heard Andy mentioned North Barrack, Great Scottish Links Course,
Speaker 1: and then of course the old course at St Andrew's
Speaker 1: still very much on the open rota and at the
Speaker 1: top of everybody's minds. All of these holes, the ones
Speaker 1: that were mentioned in this debate in this magazine in
Speaker 1: nineteen oh one, eventually became template holes. There were more
Speaker 1: template holes than those, but this was kind of the
Speaker 1: starting point. This was the first, you know, body of
Speaker 1: whole designs that McDonald started working with. So this whole
Speaker 1: discussion and Golf illustrated it. It kind of prompted a
Speaker 1: brain wave for McDonald. He said to himself, surely if
Speaker 1: you build a course with eighteen of these ideal holes,
Speaker 1: then you would have an ideal golf course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a guy with good take or it.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 2: That's that's pretty good. I like that a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like I like how his mind works. He's like,
Speaker 1: nobody's ever thought of this.
Speaker 3: And nobody could get mad because everybody agrees to the best.
Speaker 3: So that's right, that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna kind of replicate
Speaker 1: these designs and then everybody will have to acknowledge, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, you have a red dan, you have an alps,
Speaker 1: you have a road hole.
Speaker 3: That's that great American novel way of thinking. Right there,
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna copy everybody else. Nobody's gonna get mad.
Speaker 1: Right, I'll just borrow a character from Melville and you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit of pros from Fitzgerald, and there you go.
Speaker 1: In any case, he spent the next decade or so
Speaker 1: researching the best holes of Great Britain. So he took
Speaker 1: multiple trips. He sent friends on trips to do research
Speaker 1: for him and to take measurements and to really nail
Speaker 1: these down. And he quickly discovered that replicating the holes
Speaker 1: with any real precision would be impossible because of course
Speaker 1: you would be working with a different piece of land,
Speaker 1: and many of these holes were just lay of the
Speaker 1: land holes. They were not manufactured. They derived their features
Speaker 1: from the topography, and so McDonald said, well, if I
Speaker 1: don't have this topography, then then I guess I can't
Speaker 1: exactly replicate them. So ultimately he decided to go for
Speaker 1: looser interpretations, basically extracting the strategic essence of these holes,
Speaker 1: boiling them down to their basic features, rather than copying them.
Speaker 1: And I think that it was in this process that
Speaker 1: McDonald came to understand golf course design on as deep
Speaker 1: and sophisticated a level as any architect of the Golden Age.
Speaker 1: It was when he started to try to interpret these
Speaker 1: holes and actually find out why they were great instead
Speaker 1: of just replicating them, that he became a great golf
Speaker 1: architecture mind, because you know, he essentially discovered for himself
Speaker 1: the strategic school of golf architecture, which we talked about
Speaker 1: in the in the first one oh one episode. So
Speaker 1: while he was doing this, he was also searching far
Speaker 1: and wide for a piece of land for his great
Speaker 1: American golf course. He looked at Maine, he looked, he
Speaker 1: was looking up and down the East coast, and he
Speaker 1: eventually settled on a piece of land right next to
Speaker 1: Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Long Island, in Pj's domain.
Speaker 1: So eventually found found his found.
Speaker 2: A lot of people find things in Southampton, so it makes.
Speaker 1: Sense, Yeah, find their summer house, you know. So uh,
Speaker 1: this would ultimately become, of course, the National Golf Links
Speaker 1: of America, which opened in nineteen eleven and received immediate
Speaker 1: rapturous praise. People went and played this course and were
Speaker 1: blown away by it. It was it was like nothing
Speaker 1: else that had been created in the States at the time.
Speaker 1: It was a next level golf course in every way.
Speaker 1: That's a very surface level account of the creation of
Speaker 1: National Golf Links that I just gave. I've done a
Speaker 1: deeper dive into that history with Chris Millard, who wrote
Speaker 1: the most recent historical book on National Golf Links. This
Speaker 1: is a Friday Podcast episode from about a year and
Speaker 1: a half ago called Great Courses National Golf Links, So
Speaker 1: check that out if you want more detail. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't just the ideal holes that made National Golf Links different.
Speaker 1: It was also the construction, the agronomy like in every way,
Speaker 1: and the amount of money that went into it like nothing.
Speaker 1: I don't think anything close to this amount of money
Speaker 1: had ever been spent on constructing a golf course before
Speaker 1: he got all the basically the richest people on the
Speaker 1: East Coast to pitch in for his great American golf course.
Speaker 1: He was a remarkable, remarkable mover and shaker McDonald and
Speaker 1: so National Golf Links turned out really well well, And
Speaker 1: of course it did represent the debut of McDonald's ideal holes.
Speaker 1: The National had great renditions of the Radan, the Alps,
Speaker 1: the road Hole, the Eden. It was all there. It
Speaker 1: was a fully formed statement of a golf course. And
Speaker 1: McDonald meant NGLA to be his one true master work, right,
Speaker 1: his example for all of American golf. He didn't really
Speaker 1: intend to build other golf courses. He was kind of like,
Speaker 1: I'm done.
Speaker 3: I mean, if if you build something in it immediately
Speaker 3: gets you know rapturous praise. As you said, I could.
Speaker 3: I could see how you want to just go out
Speaker 3: on top.
Speaker 2: I get that absolutely.
Speaker 1: And you know, he has this in common with a
Speaker 1: lot of great artists too, who want to create their
Speaker 1: one great thing and then it's like, Okay, that's what
Speaker 1: I devoted my life to and I'm done. But it
Speaker 1: didn't really turn out that way, because, of course people
Speaker 1: kept asking him to design more golf courses for them.
Speaker 1: All of his rich friend were like, Hey, this looks cool,
Speaker 1: I'd like one, and so he did design a few others,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, he passed off his commissions
Speaker 1: or his potential commissions to Seth Rayner, and Rayner was
Speaker 1: really the one who spread the idea of ideal holes broadly.
Speaker 1: Rayner became the Johnny Appleseed of this approach to golf
Speaker 1: course design and a big reason why why we know
Speaker 1: template holes today. And so that's the background of the
Speaker 1: ideal holes. Before we get into some examples of templates,
Speaker 1: and before we have maybe a little bit of discussion
Speaker 1: about the virtues of ideal holes as an approach to
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Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about a couple examples of templates. PJ.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to have you put on your sort
Speaker 1: of visualizing hat now if we can. I know this
Speaker 1: can sometimes be tricky. For the YouTube version of this
Speaker 1: episode will maybe incorporate a couple of images of these
Speaker 1: holes to help out people who consume the podcast that way.
Speaker 1: But the first one I want to talk about is
Speaker 1: the redan. Where else would be.
Speaker 3: Like this is the number one, This is the number
Speaker 3: one that I gets mentioned by you guys all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's a very common type of hole. It is.
Speaker 1: It's spread like wildfire. Everybody, everybody has a radan. So
Speaker 1: this is based on the fifteenth hole at North Barrick.
Speaker 1: The key elements one. The green is kind of oriented
Speaker 1: on a forty five degree angle on a diagonal in
Speaker 1: relation to the t usually from short right to long
Speaker 1: left right. Okay, so it's set on a diagonal where
Speaker 1: if you're a right hander you kind of want to
Speaker 1: work a draw into there. The green is tilted from
Speaker 1: front to back okay, so from the front right to
Speaker 1: the back left section it's tilted away from the tee.
Speaker 1: A deep, often flashed up bunker guards the front left
Speaker 1: side of the green, so kind of in front of
Speaker 1: the green, sitting on that same diagonal as the green.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's another bunker, even deeper one perhaps guarding the
Speaker 1: back right side of the green, so if you go
Speaker 1: over you'll end up there. Now, the original version at
Speaker 1: North Barrick has a pair of bunkers cut into a
Speaker 1: rise about fifty yards short of the green. This is
Speaker 1: I think actually where the name or Dan came from.
Speaker 1: Because Dan, and I'm sure people will correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong. I didn't actually confirm this before I came
Speaker 1: on the podcast. But Dan, I believe, is a term
Speaker 1: for a military fortification. And my sense is that this
Speaker 1: feature at North Barrick, this like kind of dune like rise,
Speaker 1: that these bunkers are cut into fifty yards short of
Speaker 1: the green, kind of blocking the view of the green
Speaker 1: to an extent, is where that idea of a fortification
Speaker 1: came from, and where the notion of her Dan came from.
Speaker 1: But MacDonald and Rayner's dance often did not have this feature.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they did, often they didn't didn't because again, it
Speaker 1: would require some topography to do that, you would need
Speaker 1: a rise. So the essential elements of a modern radan
Speaker 1: tend to be that orientation of the green on a diagonal,
Speaker 1: and the fact that it runs front to back, and
Speaker 1: that often there's like a kicker slope, what's called a
Speaker 1: kicker slope, a little kind of backboard at the front
Speaker 1: right portion of the green where you can hit your
Speaker 1: ball into it and it kind of deflects the ball
Speaker 1: filters it back to the back left portion of the green,
Speaker 1: so it's like a ramp, right. I think this hole
Speaker 1: is at its most strategically interesting when the pin is
Speaker 1: in the back, and that's because you can choose between
Speaker 1: going straight at the pin over that big bunker in
Speaker 1: front of the green, or you can play it along
Speaker 1: the ground through the opening to the green on the right,
Speaker 1: maybe kind of sling a low draw in there, go
Speaker 1: through the opening to the green and let the ball
Speaker 1: release along that downslope, the front to back slope back
Speaker 1: to the pin. That's the kind of clever way to
Speaker 1: play the hole. You don't have to make the big
Speaker 1: carry and you can kind of work it around. So
Speaker 1: you have options here, right, which is the soul of
Speaker 1: strategic golf options and the attendant risks and rewards. So
Speaker 1: the reason you've heard this term is that this is
Speaker 1: like the most replicated par three design in the history
Speaker 1: of golf. It is often done poorly or just partially right.
Speaker 1: The most commonly missing feature is that front to back
Speaker 1: slope because people don't usually like building holes where the
Speaker 1: green runs away from the player. But the problem is
Speaker 1: when you don't have that, you kind of lose the
Speaker 1: ability to work the ball to a back pin through
Speaker 1: that kind of clever, low running shot that I talked about.
Speaker 1: And so often people will just refer to any hole
Speaker 1: with a diagonally set green as a re dan, But personally,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a dan at all unless you
Speaker 1: have that element of a kicker slope and a front
Speaker 1: to back slope to get the ball to a backpin
Speaker 1: through other methods than just going straight at it. I
Speaker 1: think if you don't have that, you really don't have
Speaker 1: her a dan. Reverse or dance became common as well.
Speaker 1: When people say reverse ra dan, they just mean the
Speaker 1: exact same design, but the green is set on a
Speaker 1: diagonal that would seem to accept a fade from a
Speaker 1: right handed player. This maybe isn't as common because when
Speaker 1: you know most people are right hand. Not to disrespect
Speaker 1: the lefties out there, sorry that ra dans aren't as
Speaker 1: fun for you, but uh, when you're hitting a fade,
Speaker 1: your ball stops quicker if you're a right hander and
Speaker 1: if you're a left hander, but your fing goes the
Speaker 1: other direction right hand or hitting a draw to a
Speaker 1: traditional radan, the ball is going to have less spin
Speaker 1: and it's going to have that element of being able
Speaker 1: to run along the ground, and that's why right to
Speaker 1: left radans are more common. Does that all make sense?
Speaker 1: Were you able to visualize that and stay with me
Speaker 1: any questions?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So A, I think it makes sense.
Speaker 3: I'm now trying to like because it's pretty common, think
Speaker 3: of like holes that I might have seen at some
Speaker 3: point that would that would fit this. I think, I mean,
Speaker 3: I I it definitely makes sense, and I actually appreciate
Speaker 3: the idea of I get why maybe a modern day architect,
Speaker 3: if you're building a hole like now with the you know,
Speaker 3: incessant need for a whole in one or give people
Speaker 3: a chance that you want to have people see it
Speaker 3: roll in back towards you versus a feeder pin away.
Speaker 3: But I actually I like the idea of the feeter
Speaker 3: pin away and having it kind of slope downward to
Speaker 3: me as a player, I feel like that would be
Speaker 3: more fun than having it run further and kind of
Speaker 3: work the ball versus just you know, hit it straight
Speaker 3: up in the air and have it roll back down
Speaker 3: towards you kind of thing.
Speaker 1: That's where the fun comes from seeing the ball go
Speaker 1: along the ground. It's the most fun thing to do
Speaker 1: in golf, and the most fun thing to watch in
Speaker 1: golf is what the ball does after it hits the ground.
Speaker 1: And when you have a green going away from you,
Speaker 1: it behaves a lot like firmness because it accelerates the
Speaker 1: ball as it goes along the ground, and you really
Speaker 1: have to consider what to do. Are you going to
Speaker 1: try to stop it or are you going to just
Speaker 1: accept that the slope is going to do what it
Speaker 1: does to your ball and use that. And that's the
Speaker 1: central question of a proper radan. Now you'll see a
Speaker 1: lot of as I said before, or diagonally set greens
Speaker 1: out there in the world of golf, and somebody might
Speaker 1: refer to them as a radan, but it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not really unless unless you can work the ball along
Speaker 1: the ground. I recommend that you don't correct people when
Speaker 1: when they not that you would do this. It's not
Speaker 1: really your personality.
Speaker 3: Now I feel like I just not along and yeah, right,
Speaker 3: but in my head, but I get up to that green,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be like, oh, is there slope here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I can't count. It doesn't doesn't count.
Speaker 1: That doesn't I'm not going to check that off my list. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: really like true radans are a little more rare than
Speaker 1: than people think. You know, diagonal greens with a bunker
Speaker 1: in front, you know, you'll see that all the time.
Speaker 1: But a real radan with like a kicker slope and
Speaker 1: the ability to to work the ball in that way,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's it's fairly rare because you know,
Speaker 1: front to back sloping greens are are fairly rare these days. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's the that's the radan template. That's always very helpful.
Speaker 3: I feel like I needed that one. If I was
Speaker 3: leaving here with something I think I've checked that buy.
Speaker 1: That wasn't essential. I'll talk to you about one other,
Speaker 1: and then if there's if there's another one that you
Speaker 1: want to talk about, we can we can kind of
Speaker 1: improvise that as well. But the next one I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about is the Alps. Okay, I
Speaker 1: like this name. First of all, this is based on
Speaker 1: the seventeenth hole at Prestwick, So it's not a course
Speaker 1: that people are super familiar with these days unless they've
Speaker 1: actually played it. Because it's not a course that shows
Speaker 1: up on TV. But this was the original Open Championship
Speaker 1: course back when the Open was thirty six holes. Prestwick
Speaker 1: was twelve holes and they would play the course three times. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the Open.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Eventually Prestwick got expanded to eighteen holes and the Alps
Speaker 1: became the seventeenth hole on that course. But some version
Speaker 1: of the Alps was always was always there on the course.
Speaker 1: The key element of this hole, and I know this
Speaker 1: is going to challenge you because of what we've discussed
Speaker 1: with regard to blind holes. There's a huge dune directly
Speaker 1: in front of the green, and then typically there's a
Speaker 1: bunker between the bottom of the far side of that
Speaker 1: dune and the green. So you not only are hitting
Speaker 1: over a dune to get to the green, but there's
Speaker 1: a bunker on the other side of it. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: got to get over. You got to really make the carry.
Speaker 1: This is you know, this is not what i'd call
Speaker 1: the strategic school of golf architecture. This is pretty penal,
Speaker 1: at least in its original essence. You know, just this
Speaker 1: feature of the hole, it's fairly penal because you've got
Speaker 1: to bake a big aerial carry. The fun of it
Speaker 1: is hitting your shot and then getting up and seeing
Speaker 1: the result. You know, if you have a fun attitude
Speaker 1: about it, then you're like, all right, my in the bunker,
Speaker 1: My in the dune, My on the green. You never
Speaker 1: know until you get there, so completely blind approach, and
Speaker 1: often the green will be sitting in a hollow, a
Speaker 1: kind of punch bowl often what we refer to as
Speaker 1: a punch You may hear that term a lot too,
Speaker 1: a punch bowl green. This is an example of it's
Speaker 1: not always a pure punch bowl green, but it's sitting
Speaker 1: in a hollow there. And so if that means if
Speaker 1: you get over the dune and get over the bunker,
Speaker 1: then the green is kind of friendly to you because
Speaker 1: if you're on the right side of it, well, it's
Speaker 1: going to slope down to the middle. If you're on
Speaker 1: the left side, it's going to slip down the middle.
Speaker 1: If you're long, it's going to you just don't want
Speaker 1: to be short, and so if you make the carry,
Speaker 1: then your hole, you your ball is probably going to
Speaker 1: end up close to the hole. The key wrinkle that
Speaker 1: McDonald and Rayner introduced to many of their versions that
Speaker 1: I think is brilliant is that they would have this
Speaker 1: dune or this rise in front of the green, they
Speaker 1: would have the kind of low set green in a hollow,
Speaker 1: But then they would offer you an option from the
Speaker 1: tee to get a view of the green. Potentially, if
Speaker 1: you hit a long, risky drive up a particular side
Speaker 1: of the hole, then from that position you might be
Speaker 1: able to see around the dune to the green. If
Speaker 1: you hit your t shop especially well and positioned it.
Speaker 1: You know, perhaps there are some bunkers guarding this position
Speaker 1: in the fairway. But if you take that.
Speaker 3: Ask, now we're back to angles. Angles is gonna be
Speaker 3: a whole different episode. But now we're back to angles.
Speaker 1: Or back to angles. This angle is vision related because
Speaker 1: if you take the risk, then you can see the
Speaker 1: green on your approach. And that's nice because the whole
Speaker 1: thing about that blind approach is that it's uncomfortable. You
Speaker 1: don't know maybe where to aim, You don't know, you
Speaker 1: don't really have a true intuitive sense of how far
Speaker 1: to hit your ball. But McDonald and Rayner, in their
Speaker 1: versions of the Alps often did give you this option
Speaker 1: to see the green if you took a risk. So
Speaker 1: that's the Alps hole reactions to that.
Speaker 2: I like the idea of the punch bowl green.
Speaker 3: I think I I was gonna add that that was
Speaker 3: one of my follow up questions, so that a punch
Speaker 3: bowl is not a template or is a template or
Speaker 3: is that just like a design characteristic rather.
Speaker 1: It's a good question. I think I would consider it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of in between. There are certain templates, so
Speaker 1: called templates, that are just green designs, and those would
Speaker 1: include maybe the double plateau hole. Really, what the double
Speaker 1: plateau is is a green with two plateaus and then
Speaker 1: a channel between them, and then a lower section like
Speaker 1: a three section green, where you have these two high
Speaker 1: sections where you can put pins, and then one low
Speaker 1: section where you can put a pin, and then a
Speaker 1: little trough between the plateaus. That's a double plateau green,
Speaker 1: but it's not really specific as to what the other
Speaker 1: features of a whole of the hole would be. You know,
Speaker 1: often a double plateau green is paired with a principal's
Speaker 1: nose bunker complex, which is based on a bunker complex
Speaker 1: on the sixteenth Hole at Saint Andrew's where you have
Speaker 1: kind of a couple of bunkers cut into a small
Speaker 1: mound or dune, and if you look at it from above,
Speaker 1: it looks like a nose with two nostrils, right, the
Speaker 1: bunkers the two nostrils. Silly, but you don't really see
Speaker 1: it that way from the from the ground. If you
Speaker 1: look at it from the air then in any case,
Speaker 1: so these these some of these motifs, like the double
Speaker 1: plateau green and the Principal's nose bunker complex are kind
Speaker 1: of free floating, so it's not like a whole integrated
Speaker 1: hole design. And I guess I would consider the punch
Speaker 1: bowl one of those, but there are holes on courses
Speaker 1: designed by MacDonald and Rayner with the name punch bowl,
Speaker 1: and and so it can get a little bit confusing
Speaker 1: that way. I think the best way to understand templates, though,
Speaker 1: is that they're not always strict. The par three templates,
Speaker 1: the typical par three templates, the radan, the beerz, the
Speaker 1: short hole, and the edenhole. You'll see those over and
Speaker 1: over and over in kind of similar configurations. The topography
Speaker 1: will be different and the layer it will be.
Speaker 2: On a par three, right, it's kind of it is
Speaker 2: what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Whereas on the par four's and par fives
Speaker 1: often elements will be remixed, rearranged, different, different things will
Speaker 1: be used in different places, and so I think I
Speaker 1: would consider the term punch bowl to be part of
Speaker 1: that network of motifs that are sometimes used in some
Speaker 1: places and sometimes in other places.
Speaker 3: Okay, that makes sense, I mean, I mean back to
Speaker 3: back to the template itself. Then I like the idea
Speaker 3: of the reward of carrying this this dune you get
Speaker 3: a feeder green. That that makes sense to me in
Speaker 3: my binary yes or no one ones and zeros. If
Speaker 3: I carry this, I deserve to be rewarded. And I
Speaker 3: also I like the I like the idea of taking
Speaker 3: an angle and getting to see past the bunker. So
Speaker 3: I I I think I'm visualizing it correctly, and I
Speaker 3: I like the idea of it on paper a lot.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's good, but you're uncomfortable with blind approach shots, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is understandable.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I I think I would be infuriated, like standing
Speaker 3: in the fair way looking at it. But if you
Speaker 3: told me, like, hey, all you have to do is
Speaker 3: hit this number and it's going to feed down, I'd
Speaker 3: be like, Okay, at least I'll try that. Like that,
Speaker 3: that makes sense. I deserve to be rewarded in some
Speaker 3: some circumstance there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely so you would. You would be frustrated
Speaker 1: by the Maiden hole, which as a whole was a
Speaker 1: hole at Royal Saint George's where you where it was
Speaker 1: a par three but basically an Alps whole because you
Speaker 1: are standing on the tee and just hitting over a
Speaker 1: dune to a semi kind of punch bowl green on
Speaker 1: the other side. That was the Maiden hole. Now, confusingly enough,
Speaker 1: McDonald and Rayner developed on some of their courses a
Speaker 1: maiden template. It didn't really have anything. It was more
Speaker 1: of a green design than a replica of the Saint
Speaker 1: George's Maiden hole. And so that that kind of introduces
Speaker 1: a key idea of Rainer and McDonald's templates that sometimes
Speaker 1: the hole, sometimes the ideal holes are based on models
Speaker 1: that are either unknown or are so different from what
Speaker 1: McDonald and Rayner ended up creating that it's hard to
Speaker 1: see the connection. I yeah, So when people talk about
Speaker 1: template hole, it's really not a strict one to one
Speaker 1: relationship between the model and what ultimately got built. On
Speaker 1: many of McDonald and Rayner's courses, sometimes there was some
Speaker 1: real interpretation reinterpretation going on, and sometimes there was just
Speaker 1: a complete departure from the original model, and you just like,
Speaker 1: it's a mystery what was going through their minds And
Speaker 1: nobody really knows how they came up with what they
Speaker 1: came up with, and so there was there was, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of creativity in this process of developing
Speaker 1: ideal holes, and we're still coming to terms with what
Speaker 1: exactly they did. There are some unknowns here. Basically, are
Speaker 1: there any other template holes terms that you would that
Speaker 1: you're curious to have identified?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I have.
Speaker 3: I have two ways I want to take this. So
Speaker 3: on the are there any other holes? How does a
Speaker 3: road hole work when it's.
Speaker 2: Not the road hole?
Speaker 3: Because I understand what it looks like there, but I
Speaker 3: how do you take that out of that context and
Speaker 3: there's no hotel and you're not you know, you're removing
Speaker 3: all circumstantial, you know, outside influences.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, first of all, that when McDonald first
Speaker 1: there's no Old Course hotel. Yeah it was, it was
Speaker 1: something different. But but yes, that's a great question because
Speaker 1: the road hole uses certain unique features of the Saint
Speaker 1: Andrew's city scape to create its strategy, one of which
Speaker 1: is that little corner with you know that now the
Speaker 1: Old Course hotel, but there's always been some amount of
Speaker 1: building or human settlement there that players are kind of
Speaker 1: hitting over. And then there's the road, of course, on
Speaker 1: that backside of the green. This is an example of
Speaker 1: where McDonald may have looked at the original version of
Speaker 1: the hole said, clearly, this needs to be one of
Speaker 1: the ideal holes, because everybody agrees that it's the greatest
Speaker 1: three shot hole or two shot hole or whatever you
Speaker 1: wanted to consider it in the world. We've got to
Speaker 1: have some version of this, but we can't replicate exactly
Speaker 1: the features that it has in its landscape. And so
Speaker 1: I think what McDonald and Rayner ended up doing in
Speaker 1: their versions was boiling the hole down to its strategic fundamentals,
Speaker 1: its angles. Essentially, if you think about what the road
Speaker 1: Hole really is, beyond just the particularities of the hotel
Speaker 1: and the road, it is a sharply dog legging right
Speaker 1: hole with an intimidating hazard on the inside of the
Speaker 1: dog leg and plenty of room to play on the
Speaker 1: outside of the dog leg. But then a green oriented
Speaker 1: from right to left along that redan diagonal, but designed
Speaker 1: completely differently from a ridan with a super deep, terrifying
Speaker 1: bunker embedded into that green on its left side, and
Speaker 1: then a hazard, a kind of straight line hazard on
Speaker 1: the outside on the other side. And so the conundrum
Speaker 1: you find is that if you bail out away from
Speaker 1: the hazard on the inside of the dog leg, then
Speaker 1: you're facing approach and approach where you're hitting over that
Speaker 1: terrifying pop punker and toward the road on the other side.
Speaker 1: You are going to end up either in the pop
Speaker 1: bunker or on the road, neither of which is good.
Speaker 1: And maybe you'll maybe you have some space to bail
Speaker 1: out on one side or the other. You could play
Speaker 1: short of the green. Some people even provocatively play long
Speaker 1: of the green on the road hole, but that is
Speaker 1: the strategic essence of the whole. Unless you challenge the
Speaker 1: inside of the dog leg, you're going to face an
Speaker 1: enormously difficult second shot. And that is what McDonald and
Speaker 1: Rayner extracted from the road hole. So ultimately what they
Speaker 1: did was in st out of the road, they often
Speaker 1: just put a bunker on the other side there to
Speaker 1: stand in for the road, kind of a linear bunker,
Speaker 1: basically in the same position and in the same orientation
Speaker 1: as the road, and then maybe they'd find something else
Speaker 1: for the inside of the dog lake, maybe some trees,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe some water, you know, things varied, or maybe
Speaker 1: just some bunkers to again stand in for that hazard
Speaker 1: that you would want to avoid on the inside of
Speaker 1: the dog lake.
Speaker 3: So that was my follow up question was does it
Speaker 3: need to be like a boundary, like do you have
Speaker 3: to have a like a literal like road or out
Speaker 3: of play or whatever, like does this have to be
Speaker 3: pushed up against the edge of a property or like
Speaker 3: what are you throwing on that side to that end there?
Speaker 1: You could definitely argue that in order to recreate the
Speaker 1: tension of the road hole, you need a boundary because
Speaker 1: you really need those hazards on that outside of the
Speaker 1: green and the inside of the dog leg to be
Speaker 1: absolutely just the things that you know you need to
Speaker 1: avoid at all costs. So I think some people would
Speaker 1: argue that, yes, it needs to be an out of
Speaker 1: bounds kind of situation. But the fact is that if
Speaker 1: you look at McDonald and Rainer's versions of the road hole,
Speaker 1: they usually didn't have that because they didn't usually have
Speaker 1: a boundary line with the right dimensions to create that,
Speaker 1: so they needed to create it in another way. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that in general, the road Hole, to my mind,
Speaker 1: this is just my opinion, is not always the most
Speaker 1: successful McDonald and Rainer template. I think precisely because of
Speaker 1: this reason, because usually it's not a boundary and some
Speaker 1: of the character of the hole is lost as a result.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen a version of the
Speaker 1: road Hole that exceeds the original.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Whereas whereas.
Speaker 1: Some other templates, in many cases the renditions by MacDonald
Speaker 1: and Rayner were better, and I don't think that's the
Speaker 1: case with the road Hole. Is the original so good?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like it would be hard to beat
Speaker 3: that actually having the road and the bunker, you know,
Speaker 3: how you can put you know, a penal bunker in
Speaker 3: that position, but are you getting it to be that
Speaker 3: exact bunker? And how bad that is in that slope?
Speaker 3: I you know, I feel like it's hard to replicate anywhere.
Speaker 1: This is always the problem with influences in art, because
Speaker 1: if you're just trying to replicate something that you really love,
Speaker 1: a really great work of art, you're always going to
Speaker 1: fall a little short because it's not the original. And
Speaker 1: even if you try to tweak or improve some elements
Speaker 1: of it, the original is going to have something about
Speaker 1: it that is just better. And so in order to
Speaker 1: exceed your influences or be as great as your influences,
Speaker 1: you need to transform them in the process of making
Speaker 1: new art. And I think that's why the McDonald and
Speaker 1: Rainer templates that are really different from their models tend
Speaker 1: to be the better ones.
Speaker 3: So that's that's kind of the second half of my
Speaker 3: two ways that I wanted to take this. I wanted
Speaker 3: to figure out what the road hole was when you
Speaker 3: remove all context of the actual road hole. Now my
Speaker 3: question to you is, do you think, in your opinion,
Speaker 3: however you want to take this, like, are the template
Speaker 3: holes good?
Speaker 1: Like this is a question I had for you as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even obviously they are to some extent that they're
Speaker 3: still being used one hundred and twenty years after this
Speaker 3: all started, But like, would you prefer to have these
Speaker 3: continually be used into the future or is it time
Speaker 3: to kind of move on and figure out something new?
Speaker 1: Wonderful question? Let me throw it back at you briefly
Speaker 1: before I give my thoughts on it. Do you think
Speaker 1: the template holes are unoriginal? That's the first question. Do
Speaker 1: you think their lack of originality is a problem?
Speaker 3: I don't think it's a problem because, like you said,
Speaker 3: like you're never getting the same land, and it's not
Speaker 3: going to be kind of cookie cutter, like every single
Speaker 3: time you build it is going to be the exact
Speaker 3: same thing. I like having aspects of recurring motifs, like
Speaker 3: you said, throughout an architect's kind of portfolio. I think
Speaker 3: that makes sense. That's kind of like any kind of art,
Speaker 3: that you're going to have kind of recurring themes or
Speaker 3: identifiable characteristics. But you know, I think, especially when you're
Speaker 3: talking about the you know, amount of land that now
Speaker 3: some of these courses are taking up, like if you
Speaker 3: have the opportunity to get creative, I wouldn't necessarily be
Speaker 3: against that either.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, no, I think you've thought through that really well.
Speaker 1: For me, what you said at the beginning that the
Speaker 1: land differentiates template holes from each other is the key
Speaker 1: thing to understand about McDonald and Rayner's own courses. I
Speaker 1: think when you look at these courses from a Google
Speaker 1: Earth view, you might say they're just doing the same
Speaker 1: holes over and over again. But when you play them,
Speaker 1: that kind of flies out of your mind. Because each
Speaker 1: McDonald and Rainer course, especially their best ones, especially National
Speaker 1: Golf Links or the leado As recreated in the Sand Valley,
Speaker 1: or Rainer's best courses like the course at Yale or
Speaker 1: Yamen's Hall or Chicago Golf Club. When you actually play
Speaker 1: these courses, they feel so specific and original to their
Speaker 1: piece of land. I think especially Rainer's genius because he
Speaker 1: designed so many more courses than McDonald, But Rayner's genius
Speaker 1: was finding different ways to adapt these template ideas to
Speaker 1: different pieces of land is really an interesting exercise, and
Speaker 1: he managed to come up with courses that just feel
Speaker 1: totally original time after time, totally unique. And that was
Speaker 1: something that goes beyond just theorizing the ideal holes. It
Speaker 1: drew on the skills of routing and you know, just
Speaker 1: finding opportunities in the land that you know were field skills.
Speaker 1: They were on the ground skills that McDonald and Rayner
Speaker 1: had in doing this. So their genius goes way way
Speaker 1: beyond just coming up with the ideal holes. Now, I
Speaker 1: think it's true that occasionally I wish that Rayner would
Speaker 1: have used different Part three ideas. That's really where this
Speaker 1: kind of starts to become a bit repetitive. And whenever
Speaker 1: Rainer incorporates a new kind of par three into his
Speaker 1: set of part three's on a particular course, I get
Speaker 1: really exciting. WHOA, yeah, I haven't seen this before. That's
Speaker 1: where it becomes exciting. And also something to bear in
Speaker 1: mind is that on every McDonald and Rainer course there
Speaker 1: are holes that they didn't replicate elsewhere. It's not one
Speaker 1: hundred percent template holes. On any McDonald and Rayner course,
Speaker 1: there are always kind of one of one holes, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it's those ones that really jump out at you
Speaker 1: for a variety of reasons. And maybe that does indicate
Speaker 1: a new direction for golf architecture after McDonald and Rayner,
Speaker 1: that that pursuing these original ideas moving beyond the templates
Speaker 1: was the way to go. At the same time, I
Speaker 1: do appreciate the way that the ideal holes were adapted
Speaker 1: to each landscape of each course, and I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: wish that they did that. They did things differently. Now.
Speaker 1: I think it's a separate question should modern architects use
Speaker 1: template holes. What's your thought about that.
Speaker 3: I think there's probably a line, a really fickle line,
Speaker 3: between use and overuse. I wouldn't say don't do it,
Speaker 3: but I would caution against overdoing it. I don't know
Speaker 3: exactly where that line is. Like you said, like the
Speaker 3: dan comes up a lot, you want to do one
Speaker 3: of those like cool, but maybe don't like put all
Speaker 3: of them out there, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Right? And there are some modern courses that use all
Speaker 1: template holes. Old McDonald at Bandon Dune's is an example,
Speaker 1: and Gil Hants recently did one in Florida called Kinsale.
Speaker 1: And these courses are good Old McDonald I love, But
Speaker 1: what old McDonald did is that it took the template
Speaker 1: holes and did something new with them. That course doesn't
Speaker 1: look like a McDonald and Rainer course. The aesthetics are
Speaker 1: totally different. The way the bunkers greens are built is
Speaker 1: totally different. It looks much more like Saint Andrew's than
Speaker 1: it does like National Golf Links. And that was the
Speaker 1: new idea that Tom Duck introduced. So in my opinion,
Speaker 1: I'm with you. Don't overdo it, first of all, because
Speaker 1: they've already been done really well. And if you're gonna
Speaker 1: do it, find a new spin, find a new slant.
Speaker 2: Find a new slant. These are perfectly normal collers. Find
Speaker 2: find a new.
Speaker 1: Slat, perfectly normal template holes. Yeah, find find your new
Speaker 1: slant and do it in that way. But to an extent,
Speaker 1: the purpose of McDonald and Rayner's template holes has has
Speaker 1: gone because their original purpose was to introduce great design
Speaker 1: ideas to America. They did that. Yeah, And now that
Speaker 1: they've done that, I guess it's time for us all
Speaker 1: to move on. And then, besides that, another question that's
Speaker 1: ra by McDonald and Rayner's project here recreating the ideal holes,
Speaker 1: a bigger question about the entire idea of it is
Speaker 1: whether a course with the eighteen best holes is necessarily
Speaker 1: the best golf course. That was McDonald's theory at the beginning.
Speaker 1: If I create eighteen ideal holes, I will have the
Speaker 1: ideal golf course for a variety of reasons. I don't
Speaker 1: think I agree.
Speaker 3: No, I feel like you need what's making the holes great.
Speaker 3: I've never been to say Andrews, but I think part
Speaker 3: of what makes the road hole great, for example, is
Speaker 3: the context of it and having it be, you know,
Speaker 3: late in the round where it's positioned in the routing,
Speaker 3: having the road, having the now hotel like, all of
Speaker 3: that is what makes the whole legendary. And if you
Speaker 3: remove literally all of that, then it's just like a
Speaker 3: nice gulfer.
Speaker 1: Think you're exactly right. The wonder of Saint Andrew's is
Speaker 1: the journey out to the estuary and back to town.
Speaker 1: That's what's so great about I mean, that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that's so great about that golf course that
Speaker 1: that accounts for a lot of its emotional impact on players.
Speaker 1: That you kind of you kind of go on an
Speaker 1: adventure away from town and then for the last several holes,
Speaker 1: the town gets bigger and bigger in your frame of
Speaker 1: view until you're finally right in it. And part of
Speaker 1: the magic of the road hole is that it directly
Speaker 1: engages with the town. The town is like part of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, And this is what you've been building towards
Speaker 1: throughout the whole round. You went away from it, now
Speaker 1: you're coming back to it, and so that is that
Speaker 1: is a big part of why the road hole is
Speaker 1: so cool. And and when you take it out of
Speaker 1: context and you and you make it the fourth hole
Speaker 1: on a golf course and you and you don't have
Speaker 1: those elements of the town there, then what you have
Speaker 1: is the strategy, which is really cool, but it is different.
Speaker 1: And that's why that's why responding to the particular piece
Speaker 1: of land that you have in designing a golf course
Speaker 1: is probably always the best method. Now, if you don't
Speaker 1: have anything in that piece of land that's interesting, then
Speaker 1: you can consider what to do from there. But if
Speaker 1: you have a piece of land with great features in it,
Speaker 1: then the first job is to use those features well.
Speaker 1: And that's what the old course does, and by the way,
Speaker 1: that's what so many of McDonald and Rayner's best courses
Speaker 1: do as well. In addition to having these template holes,
Speaker 1: they also use the land extremely well. They don't miss
Speaker 1: any opportunities. Does that make you feel more comfortable with
Speaker 1: the template holes now, PJ? There are many more specific
Speaker 1: instances to talk about, but I hope that that's gotten
Speaker 1: you to a point where at least the discussion as
Speaker 1: a whole makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well again, I wanted to leave here with knowing
Speaker 2: whatever Dan was. I think I'm hammered.
Speaker 3: I got that one locked down, so mission accomplished. All
Speaker 3: of this other historical context is great gravy, but I'm
Speaker 3: leaving here with something I love it.
Speaker 1: PJ. Always a pleasure to talk to you about golf architecture.
Speaker 1: One oh one. We'll do it again soon, and please
Speaker 1: let me know if there's another topic that you want
Speaker 1: to dig into.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll have to think about it, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: Give me a couple of weeks of hearing you guys
Speaker 3: talk about something and something will pop it in my brain.
Speaker 1: I'm sure exactly. This episode of Designing Golf was produced
Speaker 1: by our guest PJ Clark. Thank you PJ for everything
Speaker 1: you do online. Now, if you've been enjoying Designing Golf,
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Speaker 1: Championship and the US Open is quickly approaching. So we're
Speaker 1: going to do some fun things on designing golf that
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Speaker 1: to stick with us for that thank you for listening,
Speaker 1: and we'll be back again soon with another episode.