Golf course architecture
This morning, Bill Kittleman, one of our design partners and the head pro at Merion from 1963-'96, came out to the 15th green to discuss the finishing touches of our restoration work there. It's always fun being with Bill because his experiences at Merion made him a very wise man with a great eye. One time Bill was helping us on another project here in Philadelphia. The maintenance crew had left early and had taken their equipment with them. Bill, noticing an imperfection along the edge of a bunker, grabbed a stick on the ground and started chopping away at it. After a few minutes he stopped, took a long draw on his cigar and said, "Look at us. We're just a bunch of [bleeping] cave men hacking away out here." Ever since, we've referred to the fine-tuning we do with rakes and shovels—and sometimes our bare hands or soles of our shoes—as "cave-man construction." It's part nonsense, part truth. Some architects really do get down and dirty like that.
I WAS A BABY CAVE MAN. At age 11, my brothers and I built golf holes in the dirt in the back yard of our home in Babylon, Long Island. We didn't just build golf holes, but really intricate dams and levees, using a garden hose. Eventually I got a master's degree in landscape architecture at Cornell and got into course design while I was there. But it all started in my back yard.
EIGHTSOMES, PLAYING BAREFOOT AND LISTENING TO MUSIC. Grandparents playing alongside toddlers. Near-beginners jumping up and down when they hit a green in regulation for the first time. Experienced players playing with only one or two clubs, drinks in hand, laughing, with no pencil touching a scorecard. That's what happens at The Cradle, the nine-hole par-3 course at Pinehurst that opened last year. It might be the most successful of all our designs because we accomplished exactly what we set out to do—grow the game and make it fun. When the U.S. Open returns to Pinehurst No. 2 in 2024, The Cradle will be used as the practice range. But the hope is to shut down the range for a few hours and send the players out there with their children or kids from the community. Similar to the Par-3 Contest at the Masters. How cool would that be?
THE NEXT TIME YOU DESIGN A FEW HOLES IN YOUR HEAD, or imagine how a couple at your course might be redesigned, start with the notion that water flows downhill. Drainage is always first and foremost. Think of the water principle, and your design will get much better because you'll be doing it in the context of solving a problem. And it will provide clues as to why that crazy architect did what he did, and you might decide he wasn't so crazy after all.
GOLFERS LOVE PAR 3S, and architects know it, so we tend to hoard them for later in the front and back nines. We try to put them later, too, because they take the longest to play, and you don't want a backup on a par-3 second hole. I'd go so far as to say we'd never design a course with a par 3 early, except that the second I say it, a piece of land will dictate otherwise. (...)
IN THE BEGINNING, MOST COURSES IN THE U.S. WERE DESIGNED to be very expansive because there was no irrigation to speak of. Certainly that's the case with Oakmont, Winged Foot and Oak Hill, among others. Trees weren't even in the minds of the architects. With the advent of single-row irrigation systems, the fairways got narrower because they couldn't water the entire property. So now they had green fairways that looked out of scale against the brown areas. Greens committees quite understandably added trees to fill in those areas. Trees became the standard. But over time, a lot of downsides emerged. Because trees grow, they eventually limit strategy and shut off opportunities for recovery shots. And they're terrible for grass, period. Tree-removal programs began in earnest. I love trees as much as the next person, but I've learned to take a clinical, unromantic approach to taking them out. Our restoration work at Aronimink, Sleepy Hollow and Winged Foot included significant tree removal. Members think they'll miss them, but I've never heard a single complaint once they're gone.
ARCHITECTS CAN IMPOSE THEIR WILL ON LANDFORMS. They can construct ponds, fill in swamps, create islands and build bunkers. But they can't dominate the weather. Courses built on flood plains are going to get flooded. A sand dune built near a wash, sooner or later is going to wind up in a dump truck. If you take on Mother Nature, you're eventually going to lose that fight. (...)
THE DAYS OF A YOUNG PERSON COMING OUT OF COLLEGE with a landscape-architecture degree and finding work in a top designer's office are long gone. There just aren't enough courses being built. To design a course with your name on it, you're going to have to work for years on the construction side, building up calluses, being super passionate and doing everything you're asked to do. Show one shred of entitlement, and you're going to be weeded out in a hurry. It's a very tough field to succeed in. (...)
I APPLAUD OLD COURSES THAT REFUSE TO ADD LENGTH IN AN EFFORT TO NOT BECOME "OBSOLETE." Adding length separates the proximity of greens to tees, and it changes angles and shot values, often irreparably. A prime example is St. George's Golf and Country Club, a 1917 Devereux Emmet de-sign on Long Island. It is one of the great unheralded courses in America. Everyone who visits there gasps, it's so good. It measures just over 6,400 yards from the blue tees. The people there feel its first iteration is its best iteration.
MARK PARSINEN, OUR CO-DESIGNER AT CASTLE STUART, says, "The defining characteristic of a great course is the perspective of the golfer facing his third shot on a par 4." That's profound, because architects traditionally have focused on the drive, approach and then the green complexes. But Mark's point is that very few golfers hit many greens in regulation. If we can make the recovery scenarios around the greens more interesting—little golf courses in themselves—it turns the whole golf course up a notch. (...)
I FEAR GOLF SIMULATORS ARE GOING TO BECOME MUCH MORE ADVANCED. Technology 30 years from now will provide golf experiences more lifelike than we can imagine. Sights, sounds and climate will be duplicated, rain and temperature included. On every shot, the quality of your lie will be adjusted, the slopes just like the real thing. Wind will be provided. You might be able to walk to your ball. Smells, conversation, bad bounces, they'll have it all. I sincerely believe all of this is inevitable. And I hope I'm dead by the time it happens.
by Gil Hanse, Golf Digest | Read more:
Image: Finlay MacKay
This morning, Bill Kittleman, one of our design partners and the head pro at Merion from 1963-'96, came out to the 15th green to discuss the finishing touches of our restoration work there. It's always fun being with Bill because his experiences at Merion made him a very wise man with a great eye. One time Bill was helping us on another project here in Philadelphia. The maintenance crew had left early and had taken their equipment with them. Bill, noticing an imperfection along the edge of a bunker, grabbed a stick on the ground and started chopping away at it. After a few minutes he stopped, took a long draw on his cigar and said, "Look at us. We're just a bunch of [bleeping] cave men hacking away out here." Ever since, we've referred to the fine-tuning we do with rakes and shovels—and sometimes our bare hands or soles of our shoes—as "cave-man construction." It's part nonsense, part truth. Some architects really do get down and dirty like that.
I WAS A BABY CAVE MAN. At age 11, my brothers and I built golf holes in the dirt in the back yard of our home in Babylon, Long Island. We didn't just build golf holes, but really intricate dams and levees, using a garden hose. Eventually I got a master's degree in landscape architecture at Cornell and got into course design while I was there. But it all started in my back yard.EIGHTSOMES, PLAYING BAREFOOT AND LISTENING TO MUSIC. Grandparents playing alongside toddlers. Near-beginners jumping up and down when they hit a green in regulation for the first time. Experienced players playing with only one or two clubs, drinks in hand, laughing, with no pencil touching a scorecard. That's what happens at The Cradle, the nine-hole par-3 course at Pinehurst that opened last year. It might be the most successful of all our designs because we accomplished exactly what we set out to do—grow the game and make it fun. When the U.S. Open returns to Pinehurst No. 2 in 2024, The Cradle will be used as the practice range. But the hope is to shut down the range for a few hours and send the players out there with their children or kids from the community. Similar to the Par-3 Contest at the Masters. How cool would that be?
THE NEXT TIME YOU DESIGN A FEW HOLES IN YOUR HEAD, or imagine how a couple at your course might be redesigned, start with the notion that water flows downhill. Drainage is always first and foremost. Think of the water principle, and your design will get much better because you'll be doing it in the context of solving a problem. And it will provide clues as to why that crazy architect did what he did, and you might decide he wasn't so crazy after all.
GOLFERS LOVE PAR 3S, and architects know it, so we tend to hoard them for later in the front and back nines. We try to put them later, too, because they take the longest to play, and you don't want a backup on a par-3 second hole. I'd go so far as to say we'd never design a course with a par 3 early, except that the second I say it, a piece of land will dictate otherwise. (...)
IN THE BEGINNING, MOST COURSES IN THE U.S. WERE DESIGNED to be very expansive because there was no irrigation to speak of. Certainly that's the case with Oakmont, Winged Foot and Oak Hill, among others. Trees weren't even in the minds of the architects. With the advent of single-row irrigation systems, the fairways got narrower because they couldn't water the entire property. So now they had green fairways that looked out of scale against the brown areas. Greens committees quite understandably added trees to fill in those areas. Trees became the standard. But over time, a lot of downsides emerged. Because trees grow, they eventually limit strategy and shut off opportunities for recovery shots. And they're terrible for grass, period. Tree-removal programs began in earnest. I love trees as much as the next person, but I've learned to take a clinical, unromantic approach to taking them out. Our restoration work at Aronimink, Sleepy Hollow and Winged Foot included significant tree removal. Members think they'll miss them, but I've never heard a single complaint once they're gone.
ARCHITECTS CAN IMPOSE THEIR WILL ON LANDFORMS. They can construct ponds, fill in swamps, create islands and build bunkers. But they can't dominate the weather. Courses built on flood plains are going to get flooded. A sand dune built near a wash, sooner or later is going to wind up in a dump truck. If you take on Mother Nature, you're eventually going to lose that fight. (...)
THE DAYS OF A YOUNG PERSON COMING OUT OF COLLEGE with a landscape-architecture degree and finding work in a top designer's office are long gone. There just aren't enough courses being built. To design a course with your name on it, you're going to have to work for years on the construction side, building up calluses, being super passionate and doing everything you're asked to do. Show one shred of entitlement, and you're going to be weeded out in a hurry. It's a very tough field to succeed in. (...)
I APPLAUD OLD COURSES THAT REFUSE TO ADD LENGTH IN AN EFFORT TO NOT BECOME "OBSOLETE." Adding length separates the proximity of greens to tees, and it changes angles and shot values, often irreparably. A prime example is St. George's Golf and Country Club, a 1917 Devereux Emmet de-sign on Long Island. It is one of the great unheralded courses in America. Everyone who visits there gasps, it's so good. It measures just over 6,400 yards from the blue tees. The people there feel its first iteration is its best iteration.
MARK PARSINEN, OUR CO-DESIGNER AT CASTLE STUART, says, "The defining characteristic of a great course is the perspective of the golfer facing his third shot on a par 4." That's profound, because architects traditionally have focused on the drive, approach and then the green complexes. But Mark's point is that very few golfers hit many greens in regulation. If we can make the recovery scenarios around the greens more interesting—little golf courses in themselves—it turns the whole golf course up a notch. (...)
I FEAR GOLF SIMULATORS ARE GOING TO BECOME MUCH MORE ADVANCED. Technology 30 years from now will provide golf experiences more lifelike than we can imagine. Sights, sounds and climate will be duplicated, rain and temperature included. On every shot, the quality of your lie will be adjusted, the slopes just like the real thing. Wind will be provided. You might be able to walk to your ball. Smells, conversation, bad bounces, they'll have it all. I sincerely believe all of this is inevitable. And I hope I'm dead by the time it happens.
by Gil Hanse, Golf Digest | Read more:
Image: Finlay MacKay
