The Evolving Art of Strategy
Golf architecture operates in a cycle that reflects its history. When discussing the evolution of hazards, we inevitable return to the Old Course at St. Andrews. The Old Course was one of the first golf courses in the game’s history and because of its chosen status as the first Royal and Ancient Links in 1834, became the standard to which other courses compared themselves.
The old Course evolved from village common to a penal and then strategic golf course, which influences almost all golf design in some fashion. The early links of Scotland evolved from golfers traversing the land without a set number of holes or design guidelines, or understanding modern concepts such stole play, out-of-bounds, or a hazard. Early golfers went about swatting crude golf balls, immediately drawn by the fascination we share today.
Players searched out preferred targets and avoided menacing situations at the same time. These hazards were often found directly between the golfer and target, protecting the shortest, most direct route. Golfers avoided pits in which burrowing animals left sand exposed, and aimed their shots to elude high grass and dunes, which may render their ball missing of difficult to recover. Early golfers played the game and developed strategy by maneuvering around natural landforms blocking views of targets.
The game of golf soon evolved with more players taking interest, crowding courses and requiring a need for broader spaces. At full capacity, the now penal one-way holes at St. Andrews became increasingly dangerous. On orders of practicality, four greens were removed, while also doubling the width of the golf course to provide two-way traffic. As a result, the lay of the land and its hazards were revealed as a series of choices from tee to green. As the St. Andrews Royal and Ancient status became the standard, other courses accepted the eighteen-hole convention and recognized the need for width to accommodate more golfers, unwittingly integrating new ideals of strategic design, and cementing the attraction of this peculiar game for centuries to come. This strategic evolution was accomplished without intentional design nor construction. Golfers just adapted to the lay of the land.
Golf further evolved in response to the need to adapt the land to newer and better implements, the exact opposite of what attracted people to the game from the start. As a result, the evolution of golf architecture moved to a utilitarian period of development, known to some as the Dark Age of golf architecture. Golf courses were created for the purpose of fueling the need to play. Architects stamped courses on the ground, placing rudimentary hazards like coffin bunkers, chocolate-drop mounding, and dragon’s teeth in random locations. Without detailed study of the lay of the land what makes hazards effective, these designers lost sight of the fact that these hazards would have a highly penalizing impact on playability and strategy.
These utilitarian courses lacked the natural process of golfers finding targets at the same time they avoided hazards, resulting in a production line of simple utilization and predictability. It must be noted that the designs of this period were created based on the standards of the time. The concept of strategy was not as deliberated over, or detailed then as later. The utilitarian period was simply and effort to expand the game as quickly as possible.
The utilitarian period evolved into a functional period of design, still providing playing fields, yet sophisticated enough to understand the mistakes of the utilitarian age. Golf architects such as Willie Park Jr. and Harry Colt reintroduced the relationship of a target and hazard, and initiated the concept of aesthetics in an attempt to replicate natural features. They did not present strategic concepts as such, but understood the need for a relationship among golf course features.
The evolution of the functional period arose from the demand for more interesting and challenging golf courses. This generation spanned the utilitarian period and wanted a return to the links that originally attracted them to the game. As the functional period took hold and strategic concepts evolved in the field, John L. Low, a noted golfer and dabbler in design, set a code of strategic values that has not been improved on since. Among his set of principles:
In his masterful book Concerning Golf (1903), Low’s principles laid the foundation for the strategic school of golf course architecture. The palette of design was expanding from utilitarian to functional, and in later years to additional strategic ideals.
The bridge between the functional period and the Golden Age of design can be traced to Charles Blair MacDonald’s National Golf Links of America, opened in 1907. The National was the first attempt at deliberate replication with the purpose of improving the stance of American golf. His goal was to ‘build a classical golf course to eventually compare with championship links abroad and help elevate the game in America’. MacDonald, in replicating holes such as Sahara, Alps, Redan, Eden, and the Road Hole, introduced detailed strategic elements to American courses in a designed fashion for the first time. In addition, MacDonald’s own holes, hybrids of the British Isles, further showed the public what strategy and aesthetics could mean to the vocation of golf course design.
The golf courses of the Golden Age exemplified by MacDonald’s accomplishments at the National Golf Links, evolved into the art of golf architecture. The courses of Mackenzie, Tillinghast, Ross, and others, are the ones most referred to as great exemplars of design and what many Architects today strive to emulate. Golden Age architects were the first to truly create strategy reflecting the lay of the land. Where nature was deficient, tasks were undertaken to replicate nature. As a benchmark, the courses of this era are so profoundly influential on golf design today, that critics will not allow new courses any rightful comparison with these classics.
The period following the Golden Age could easily be referred to as the early earthmoving era of golf architecture. Advances in construction and maintenance provided architects with the means to craft something completely different from the natural appearance of the Golden Age courses. Robert Trent Jones, the first marketing genius of our profession, saw the chance to create a new standard he called modern golf course architecture. His philosophy could concisely be summed up as: ‘bigger is better’. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see how as his own heroic school of design was an adaptation and re-introduction of C. B. MacDonald’s Cape hole strategy from the National Golf Links.
This era also coincided with the world of professional golf beginning its rise and influence on golf architecture. Robert Trent Jones and other architects jumped on this opportunity and introduced the notion of tournament golf course design. In theory, only with penal hazards and strategies can one defend par against the greatest golfers of the day. Jones pinched in fairway-landing areas with sand bunkers and surrounded many greens with same. He also specified deep rough to penalize stray shots. As the average golfer was exposed to the professional influence, they too wanted the experience for themselves, leading to a proliferation of difficult golf courses with numerous hazards. The golf industry translated this into a blueprint for future success, the ‘eye candy’ of green grass, acres of sand, and blue water. It resulted in difficult, costly, and unmaintainable golf courses with little strategic merit. Many strategic golf course features of the Golden Age were rendered irrelevant due to high rough and the whims of golfers, professional and amateur alike.
Pete Dye’s first golf courses reflected Robert Trent Jones’s modern ideals of runway tees, 7000 yard courses, serpentine features, and over-sized putting surfaces. Yet also like Jones before him, Pete Dye quickly recognized an opportunity to create something completely different from the architects of this time. The influence of the early links brought about an effort to create a golf course for the eighties, one that embodied the principles of strategy, yet morphed into an incredible amount of visual interest. Like Jones before him, Pete Dye changed the face of design toward the end of the twentieth century. Dye’s golf courses incorporated railroad ties, small undulating greens, and mounds and hollows in place of sand bunkers. These elements were representative of architects from the past, in particular, MacDonald, Perry Maxwell and Donald Ross. Dye just reintroduced them in an 80’s manner.
At the close of the twentieth century with two decades of excess in design, the world of golf architecture was left with many courses that fell short of reflecting any strategic or aesthetic merit. Gone forever were Dark Age-style coffin bunkers and random straight lines, replace by vertical slopes, artificial rockwork, and cascading waterfalls. Gone also were the simple days of good strategic golf courses, ones that embodied a combination of strategic, penal, and heroic schools of thought. What resulted was a wayward emphasis on eye candy and a lack of challenge.
Hazards of this period were introduced more as an aesthetic effort to boost rankings, achieve magazine cover status, and to sell real estate. Golf courses evolved into penal layouts which were expensive to maintain, operate, and play. Advances in maintenance and grasses further pushed the envelope of development and the limits of strategic design. Faster putting surfaces were more in vogue than great contoured greens. Architects cannot design the truly great putting green complexes of the past as the stimpmeter has rendered green design to a few timid contour lines, leaving flat yet swift putting greens.
In an effort to advance the game, the golf industry unwittingly priced the game out of reach for the golfing masses, who are the future of the game. Many developers of the 1990’s fed their egos by creating golf courses which cost at least fifty dollars in green fees, confidently boasting that these courses will be the most successful. Well, many of those courses are for sale today, leaving developers wondering what went wrong. None of them initially wanted the two to three million dollar golf courses with thirty dollar green fees. Except, of course, the golfers!
From our historical gleanings, we can clearly see the evolution of strategy, and how golf architecture has changed with the times, for better and for worse. The most apparent trends in the history of golf course architecture are a reaction to the demands of the most outspoken golfers, and doing something completely different than what has previously been deemed a success.
The early links gave way to the utilitarian courses of the Dark Age, which gave way to the greats of the Golden Age. Robert Trent Jones ushered in the era of contemporary golf architecture, the opposite of the Golden Age. Pete Dye returned to earlier principles to foster a different statement than Jones and the architects of the 1960s and 70s. His Golden Age-inspired style bubbled into another era of penal design dominated by ‘eye candy’ and perfect playing conditions.
In the new millennium we return to the new era of minimalism and reverence for the Golden Age masters. Many architects create minimalist features, yet in artificial ways with an excess of earthmoving. True minimalism should more accurately be defined as creating the most out of the least resources. When this design attitude is universally accepted, we will truly be as close to the origins of golf course architecture than we have ever been previously.
Another major trend in golf architecture is the voice of the public. The public demanded more golf from the start and were rewarded with utilitarian courses. The public reacted against the punitive nature of these courses and were rewarded with the early courses of the functional period. With the prodding of C. B. MacDonald and others, golfers were introduced to the Golden Age. As the era of professional golf and television ushered in the era of large-scale design and deep, green rough, the public wanted the same and got it. When the public wanted ‘eye candy’, they got it. Today, as golf is quickly being priced out of reach for the ordinary player, the demand for more affordable golf is resulting in a minimalist attitude that is slowly materializing into a new style of course at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Originally featured in Golf Architecture: A Worldwide Perspective - Volume Two, a book compiled by Paul Daley.
The old Course evolved from village common to a penal and then strategic golf course, which influences almost all golf design in some fashion. The early links of Scotland evolved from golfers traversing the land without a set number of holes or design guidelines, or understanding modern concepts such stole play, out-of-bounds, or a hazard. Early golfers went about swatting crude golf balls, immediately drawn by the fascination we share today.
Players searched out preferred targets and avoided menacing situations at the same time. These hazards were often found directly between the golfer and target, protecting the shortest, most direct route. Golfers avoided pits in which burrowing animals left sand exposed, and aimed their shots to elude high grass and dunes, which may render their ball missing of difficult to recover. Early golfers played the game and developed strategy by maneuvering around natural landforms blocking views of targets.
The game of golf soon evolved with more players taking interest, crowding courses and requiring a need for broader spaces. At full capacity, the now penal one-way holes at St. Andrews became increasingly dangerous. On orders of practicality, four greens were removed, while also doubling the width of the golf course to provide two-way traffic. As a result, the lay of the land and its hazards were revealed as a series of choices from tee to green. As the St. Andrews Royal and Ancient status became the standard, other courses accepted the eighteen-hole convention and recognized the need for width to accommodate more golfers, unwittingly integrating new ideals of strategic design, and cementing the attraction of this peculiar game for centuries to come. This strategic evolution was accomplished without intentional design nor construction. Golfers just adapted to the lay of the land.
Golf further evolved in response to the need to adapt the land to newer and better implements, the exact opposite of what attracted people to the game from the start. As a result, the evolution of golf architecture moved to a utilitarian period of development, known to some as the Dark Age of golf architecture. Golf courses were created for the purpose of fueling the need to play. Architects stamped courses on the ground, placing rudimentary hazards like coffin bunkers, chocolate-drop mounding, and dragon’s teeth in random locations. Without detailed study of the lay of the land what makes hazards effective, these designers lost sight of the fact that these hazards would have a highly penalizing impact on playability and strategy.
These utilitarian courses lacked the natural process of golfers finding targets at the same time they avoided hazards, resulting in a production line of simple utilization and predictability. It must be noted that the designs of this period were created based on the standards of the time. The concept of strategy was not as deliberated over, or detailed then as later. The utilitarian period was simply and effort to expand the game as quickly as possible.
The utilitarian period evolved into a functional period of design, still providing playing fields, yet sophisticated enough to understand the mistakes of the utilitarian age. Golf architects such as Willie Park Jr. and Harry Colt reintroduced the relationship of a target and hazard, and initiated the concept of aesthetics in an attempt to replicate natural features. They did not present strategic concepts as such, but understood the need for a relationship among golf course features.
The evolution of the functional period arose from the demand for more interesting and challenging golf courses. This generation spanned the utilitarian period and wanted a return to the links that originally attracted them to the game. As the functional period took hold and strategic concepts evolved in the field, John L. Low, a noted golfer and dabbler in design, set a code of strategic values that has not been improved on since. Among his set of principles:
A golf course should provide entertainment for the high handicapper while at the same time present a searching and difficult test for the accomplished golfer. The shortest, most direct line to the hole, even if it be the center of the fairway, should be fraught with danger. The architect must allow the ground to dictate play. The good architect sees that there is a special interest for the golfer in each stroke, just as the billiard player always has in mind the next stroke or strokes.
In his masterful book Concerning Golf (1903), Low’s principles laid the foundation for the strategic school of golf course architecture. The palette of design was expanding from utilitarian to functional, and in later years to additional strategic ideals.
The bridge between the functional period and the Golden Age of design can be traced to Charles Blair MacDonald’s National Golf Links of America, opened in 1907. The National was the first attempt at deliberate replication with the purpose of improving the stance of American golf. His goal was to ‘build a classical golf course to eventually compare with championship links abroad and help elevate the game in America’. MacDonald, in replicating holes such as Sahara, Alps, Redan, Eden, and the Road Hole, introduced detailed strategic elements to American courses in a designed fashion for the first time. In addition, MacDonald’s own holes, hybrids of the British Isles, further showed the public what strategy and aesthetics could mean to the vocation of golf course design.
The golf courses of the Golden Age exemplified by MacDonald’s accomplishments at the National Golf Links, evolved into the art of golf architecture. The courses of Mackenzie, Tillinghast, Ross, and others, are the ones most referred to as great exemplars of design and what many Architects today strive to emulate. Golden Age architects were the first to truly create strategy reflecting the lay of the land. Where nature was deficient, tasks were undertaken to replicate nature. As a benchmark, the courses of this era are so profoundly influential on golf design today, that critics will not allow new courses any rightful comparison with these classics.
The period following the Golden Age could easily be referred to as the early earthmoving era of golf architecture. Advances in construction and maintenance provided architects with the means to craft something completely different from the natural appearance of the Golden Age courses. Robert Trent Jones, the first marketing genius of our profession, saw the chance to create a new standard he called modern golf course architecture. His philosophy could concisely be summed up as: ‘bigger is better’. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see how as his own heroic school of design was an adaptation and re-introduction of C. B. MacDonald’s Cape hole strategy from the National Golf Links.
This era also coincided with the world of professional golf beginning its rise and influence on golf architecture. Robert Trent Jones and other architects jumped on this opportunity and introduced the notion of tournament golf course design. In theory, only with penal hazards and strategies can one defend par against the greatest golfers of the day. Jones pinched in fairway-landing areas with sand bunkers and surrounded many greens with same. He also specified deep rough to penalize stray shots. As the average golfer was exposed to the professional influence, they too wanted the experience for themselves, leading to a proliferation of difficult golf courses with numerous hazards. The golf industry translated this into a blueprint for future success, the ‘eye candy’ of green grass, acres of sand, and blue water. It resulted in difficult, costly, and unmaintainable golf courses with little strategic merit. Many strategic golf course features of the Golden Age were rendered irrelevant due to high rough and the whims of golfers, professional and amateur alike.
Pete Dye’s first golf courses reflected Robert Trent Jones’s modern ideals of runway tees, 7000 yard courses, serpentine features, and over-sized putting surfaces. Yet also like Jones before him, Pete Dye quickly recognized an opportunity to create something completely different from the architects of this time. The influence of the early links brought about an effort to create a golf course for the eighties, one that embodied the principles of strategy, yet morphed into an incredible amount of visual interest. Like Jones before him, Pete Dye changed the face of design toward the end of the twentieth century. Dye’s golf courses incorporated railroad ties, small undulating greens, and mounds and hollows in place of sand bunkers. These elements were representative of architects from the past, in particular, MacDonald, Perry Maxwell and Donald Ross. Dye just reintroduced them in an 80’s manner.
At the close of the twentieth century with two decades of excess in design, the world of golf architecture was left with many courses that fell short of reflecting any strategic or aesthetic merit. Gone forever were Dark Age-style coffin bunkers and random straight lines, replace by vertical slopes, artificial rockwork, and cascading waterfalls. Gone also were the simple days of good strategic golf courses, ones that embodied a combination of strategic, penal, and heroic schools of thought. What resulted was a wayward emphasis on eye candy and a lack of challenge.
Hazards of this period were introduced more as an aesthetic effort to boost rankings, achieve magazine cover status, and to sell real estate. Golf courses evolved into penal layouts which were expensive to maintain, operate, and play. Advances in maintenance and grasses further pushed the envelope of development and the limits of strategic design. Faster putting surfaces were more in vogue than great contoured greens. Architects cannot design the truly great putting green complexes of the past as the stimpmeter has rendered green design to a few timid contour lines, leaving flat yet swift putting greens.
In an effort to advance the game, the golf industry unwittingly priced the game out of reach for the golfing masses, who are the future of the game. Many developers of the 1990’s fed their egos by creating golf courses which cost at least fifty dollars in green fees, confidently boasting that these courses will be the most successful. Well, many of those courses are for sale today, leaving developers wondering what went wrong. None of them initially wanted the two to three million dollar golf courses with thirty dollar green fees. Except, of course, the golfers!
From our historical gleanings, we can clearly see the evolution of strategy, and how golf architecture has changed with the times, for better and for worse. The most apparent trends in the history of golf course architecture are a reaction to the demands of the most outspoken golfers, and doing something completely different than what has previously been deemed a success.
The early links gave way to the utilitarian courses of the Dark Age, which gave way to the greats of the Golden Age. Robert Trent Jones ushered in the era of contemporary golf architecture, the opposite of the Golden Age. Pete Dye returned to earlier principles to foster a different statement than Jones and the architects of the 1960s and 70s. His Golden Age-inspired style bubbled into another era of penal design dominated by ‘eye candy’ and perfect playing conditions.
In the new millennium we return to the new era of minimalism and reverence for the Golden Age masters. Many architects create minimalist features, yet in artificial ways with an excess of earthmoving. True minimalism should more accurately be defined as creating the most out of the least resources. When this design attitude is universally accepted, we will truly be as close to the origins of golf course architecture than we have ever been previously.
Another major trend in golf architecture is the voice of the public. The public demanded more golf from the start and were rewarded with utilitarian courses. The public reacted against the punitive nature of these courses and were rewarded with the early courses of the functional period. With the prodding of C. B. MacDonald and others, golfers were introduced to the Golden Age. As the era of professional golf and television ushered in the era of large-scale design and deep, green rough, the public wanted the same and got it. When the public wanted ‘eye candy’, they got it. Today, as golf is quickly being priced out of reach for the ordinary player, the demand for more affordable golf is resulting in a minimalist attitude that is slowly materializing into a new style of course at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Originally featured in Golf Architecture: A Worldwide Perspective - Volume Two, a book compiled by Paul Daley.
Richard Mandell Golf Architecture
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