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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2020 15:15:27 GMT -5
Jun 25, 2020 10:43:21 GMT -4 15eicheltower9 said: For anyone interested, one of my favorite interviews i've listened to. It's with David McLay Kidd, designer of a number of holes and courses that could fit in this thread. Most notably, here in the US, Bandon Dunes, which paved the way for all the excellent courses at Bandon Resort. feedtheball.com/feed-the-ball-salon-vol-9-ft-david-mclay-kidd/Okay I wanna come back to this and firmly put my foot in the my mouth and maybe take some heat here.... I've listened to just over half the interview with David McLay Kidd (it's just over two hours long!) and everyone here would benefit from a careful listen to his insight into modern golf course design. Here comes the foot to my mouth - I've been reading a lot of stuff on this sight and watched some videos that just don't make sense to me. I'm coming from this as a Class A Superintendent that has built courses, worked with golf architects and taken formal training in golf architecture. Then I hear Mr. Kidd in this interview (son of a superintendent himself) and finally things sounds right and I know I haven't lost my mind. A few things that David said that ring true with my experience: - Golf course design isn't really an art or about art, it's more like architecture where there's structural necessities that lie outside what looks good
- Template holes are overrated. Design new original ideas and stop using old established ideas. Where do you think the templates come from - someone's original idea
- The shot from the tee shouldn't be designed like a chess match - more like checkers.
So my thoughts that I know Mr. Kidd would agree with: - Making sure the course can be physically maintained and the turf is kept alive is paramount to all other considerations. (so consider slopes, drainage, trees, traffic, turf type vs location)
- Bowls on greens can exist - perched water tables are the norm in greens construction and surface drainage is not the main way that greens drain in this modern era
- Setting the solar angle to unrealistic angles or blinding golfers in the face to get visual excitement is art(at best, at worst its annoying in real life). Good design and stunning scenery should stand the test of high noon with the sun overhead.
I'd argue that Augusta looks better at noon then dawn/dusk in my several visits there. - The path to the green should be enjoyable with obvious options - if you need a surveyor's optical theodolite for shot planning then it might be fun for a math nut like me - but not for most.
- Make your fairways as wide as you want, but remember the owner won't be happy with a huge fertilizer, pesticide and cost of labour costs to maintain any unnecessary extra acres.
- Efficient maintenance if roughs is entirely about being able to cut it with a machine. Endless rocks and shrubs in the middle of rough are pretty but unrealistic on real courses. These areas would become infested with weeds in most courses without Augusta budgets. Some goes for tree lines and the edge of lake and streams.
- Bunkers over 5 feet deep are very common in all courses I've worked on and visited, if you need an extension ladder to get out then maybe you've gone too far.
- If you have a tee/green that provides no way to access with golf equipment or even turn around when cutting -then it can't exist. (Tees on cliffs with stair access only)
Creative lighting effects, composition and stunning planting really looks AMAZING in this game, but.... ...I think top points should be given to courses that could really exist - how many supers are on the judging panels that look at each course and point out features that couldn't be managed (or built) in the real world? Maybe there should be two classes of fictional courses - fantasy and realistic? I'm not picking on anyone, in fact I'm inspired by so much of what you post and build. I do think however that a different perspective may be helpful, and elevate design as we head to the next version in August. I'm hoping I get a few folks scratching their heads and giving all of this some thought. For me I'm leaning towards doing some course reviews on Youtube (live? but not Twitch) - purely from a Superintendent's standpoint on how realistic the course is. (my wife will tell you that all I need is yet another hobby!) Secondly with the new version I'm thinking about organizing a design competition for the best 'realistic' course that puts a premium on the 'real' part, followed by architecture and then aesthetics. Not sure if that's something that i can do without this site's mod team getting involved - but here's to giving it a shot. I'm dying to hear your thoughts - the good, bad and the ugly. If you want your course to go through a 'realistic-superintendent-inspection' then let me know - I love to check out new courses - even if they aren't stunning works of art. Almost dinner time - gotta get this foot out of my mouth. Thanks all!
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Post by b101 on Jun 27, 2020 16:03:25 GMT -5
Agree with some, disagree with some. Going to bullet point a few thoughts for ease:
- The main one: it's a game rather than real life. With that in mind, there are times where we a) can take liberties and b) need to take liberties. Most RCR's translate poorly in game because real life hazard placements are trivial in a game where you can hit straight very easily. Many of us are hoping that the swing changes in 2K to allow a wider dispersion and therefore more realistic design. However, the chess match scenario you mention pretty much comes from here.
- Template holes are great and poorly understood by many. They are not carbon copies and, indeed, Kaiuma Bay is pretty much all template holes. The template refers to a concept rather than a plug and play design. It's totally worth reading up on them properly as they give a wide variety of ways to make golfers think and not just plop a fairway down with hazards either side to punish the person who can't hit the fairway.
- In a golf game, rather than real life, there is a premium on aesthetics. Let's face it, the experience of pushing a joystick back then forwards isn't thrilling. Therefore courses have to engage you. 'Realistic' muni style courses can do that, but it's tough. Hence fantasy courses. A number of designers will hop from one style to the other, but most have a preference and I think it's fair to say that most winners of recent contests have been rooted very firmly in reality.
- Definitely agree that some things are over-critiqued (puddles on greens, flat tees, perfect transitions etc), but generally the concepts behind those critiques are sound.
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Post by tpetro on Jun 27, 2020 16:25:48 GMT -5
- Template holes are great and poorly understood by many. They are not carbon copies and, indeed, Kaiuma Bay is pretty much all template holes. The template refers to a concept rather than a plug and play design. It's totally worth reading up on them properly as they give a wide variety of ways to make golfers think and not just plop a fairway down with hazards either side to punish the person who can't hit the fairway. Though I'm not the ultimate Template Czar, I can safely say Ben is 100% correct. Even MacDonald, the original Template man, adapted the concepts he saw in Britain and changed them wherever he used them. The original Redan (North Berwick) has 3 bunkers long of the green. Have you ever seen a MacDonald Redan with three circular bunkers behind the green? No. They exist to be changed and adapted to both the land and the designer's individual style. If you don't use the concepts in conjunction with your own creativity, you're missing the point.
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Post by ezzinomilonga on Jun 27, 2020 16:36:56 GMT -5
I'll be happy to give you my point of view, is a debate that could be really interesting and instructive, but please consider i'm a total profane who just falled in love with golf games some year ago and with architecture applied on golf just some month ago..i never played real golf in my life and i know very few things..and this is the only things about i'm sure. About your points, i wish to start saying that i believe in this community is already made a good difference between "fantasy" and "realistic" fictional courses. But i'll return later on this point. I humbly totally agree with your first point. Almost totally. I mean...something i noticed from the start is that we have a lor of great designers who are awesome artists, but way less better architects. There are really few designers who masters REALLY both these aspects. After all, is not a case if to be an architect are needed years of study. But, at the same time, i think that if a golf course follows and satisfy only the principle of architecture, without some blink to the art, that golf course will probably always miss something in terms of beauty and appeal. In short, i think the great golf courses are those in which architecture and art walks together, hands in hands. About templates, i personally love some of them, some other just don't tells so much to me, but i also firmly believe that nothing in life should ever be intended in a dogmatic way. I believe that templates can be a great source of inspirations and of course can also be funny, interesting, useful and correct to recreate some of them, if the situation suggest it..but i agree about the fact that the best approach is always to stay open to new ideas, also taking everytime in count what the ground in which you're building a course will suggest. All your other statements are too much on the "technic" side, to have an opinion about them. I have no reasons or arguments to say they are wrong or right, but they sounds pretty full of common sense, so i tendentially would agree. But..you know..i started playing this game being sincerely "obsessed" about real courses. I really disliked fictional courses. REALLY. But i must admit i slowly changed my mind. And it happened not cause suddenly i started to appreciated this kind of courses "by default", but just following my experience as a player on the Tour. I understood that, although real courses are a great thing, if you play this game using aids as the scout cam and the grid on greens, suddenly the 99% of real courses are courses in which is way too easy to obtain crazy low scores. And is at this point that fictional courses became not only useful, but really important, for this Tour/community (with no need to point out just how much funny can be for a designer to create courses). But..if you follow what happens in the best Tours we have, usually, even playing the vaste majority of fictional courses, the main (if not the only) way to keep scores "realistic", is to play with high wind and cranking up firmness and speed of greens..making the experience not so much enjoyable, if not annoying, after some time. Now that i'm starting to work as a designer, i'm very interested about this problem, cause i believe it can be solved creating a certain kind of courses that, compared with a real course, would be considered not only for sure unrealistic, but probably also pretty unfair. Facing this problem, now i'm studying and collecting material, looking exactly for a way to create realistic courses but with those fictional "licenses" that can create some proper but fair difficulty and challenge for the best players on the Tour. I'm creating a list of "factors" that can help to reach this goal and, in the next months (when the new game will be realized) i'll probably try to applicate the principles i'm studying right now. I told you all this, just to say that realism is a great thing, but if the vaste majority of this community plays the game with thise 2 aids, the realism is definitely not enough to provide a proper challenge. For all these reasons, now i think about realism what i think about templates. Is a great thing to have, but on this game just shouldn't ever be a dogma. No counting that one of the best things of a videogame is also the chance to create something that IRL couldn't be absolutely possible to create. I mean..if someone should ever to create a set of tees reachable only with a stairway, honestly i would not find it a problem. (of course, if we should ever talk about the same game played with no aids, my thoughts would be different and realism would be way, way more important )
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Post by lessthanbread on Jun 27, 2020 17:03:42 GMT -5
Don’t bother playing my courses then, you’ll hate all of them haha
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2020 17:24:07 GMT -5
Wow - all amazing points and I love the discussion. b101 - Ben I agree that that we need to take some liberties because it's a game. I felt I did that with my Storm King course - I did things that I knew would never fly in the real world. Ironically I think me first review will be of my own course to point out the things that I did because it was a game versus what is more likely in the real world. Kaiuma Bay is my favorite course - so maybe those template holes are doing a job on my golf-subconscious and I didn't realize it. I love the line "the experience of pushing a joystick back then forwards isn't thrilling"; I'm sure that's how it looks to my wife on the other end of the couch! tpetro - Thomas I like the concept of template holes for sure. Most holes - even original, could likely be grouped into a template hole if you blur your eyes a bit. I agree that having the templates to draw inspiration from is a solid approach -just as long as the designer adds their own personal touch. ezzinomilonga - Ezzino, I feel like I went down the same road in search of only real courses and I refused to look at or design fictional courses. I then started to see some of the work being done by folks around this site and I changed my tune pretty fast. I must be a much worse golfer than all of you. When I play I bounce around either side of par for each course. I played Kegusta the other day and was +9! Then played Kaiuma Bay and scored a -3. I've never broke par on my own courses. So please don't crank the winds and increase green speed cause I'd delete the game in frustration. So I guess the challenge of real courses is subjective. I played TPC River Highlands last night to see how I would do next to Phil and I played it at +5. My real course, Island Springs, I've never broke par. So for me the real courses play very real for me. Maybe the settings at the high end aren't realistic? lessthanbread - Mr. Myself - now you just know that I'm heading off to play one of your courses! Good hook
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Post by ezzinomilonga on Jun 27, 2020 18:30:18 GMT -5
Of course, my point of view about the toughness of real courses is absolutely relative, is for this reason that i added the premise that it was referred to the best players we have. I'm not among the best players, but i'm at that point that playing with the TGCTour setting, unless i play really, really bad, is hard i can score less than -8 on almost every real course, no matter conditions. Of course (and i consider it a great luck) there are exceptions. There are a bunch of real courses that are ALWAYS challenging and tough. But i must admit hey are actually a minority. In these weeks i'm playing a PGA Tour simulation on my private society. I play it with no aids, except the grid on greens (soon or later i'll try to play without it, but i can't play so much in these last months, i just can't find some rythm or consistence on my swing, i should need to play way more...) and obviously i'm playing only on real courses. And is amazing how much better and instructive they are, played in the way they are intended to be played (The Old White and Pebble Beach, just to say, are totally different beasts. The North Course at Los Angeles CC is simply amazing..and i can't wait to play all the other courses i love!! ) As a final thought, totally personal and probably not particularly appreciated by the majoriry of players here, the scout cam is something i really would love to see not implemented anymore on this Tour..at least on some of the Pro Tours (but my forbidden dream would be to see it as a basic rule for the whole Tour) cause i think this aid ruins every possible strategy on this game, frustrating a lot, in particular, exactly the architecture behind a course and, always personally, i find this aid way more unrealistic than the grid on greens. For me, is as if a soccer simulation should be played without the offside. Or a tennis game without the net. Is simply against the spirit, the basement of the game. (oh..by the way, if you are mainly interested on real courses, maybe you could be interested in the list of real courses i created using Google Sheet. You can find the link on a thread on the "complete courses" section. If i remember well, you should just type "list of real courses" to find it. Is updated until a week ago, it contains almost 1600 courses with correct par and scorecard, a good number of them are verified, checking their routing and accuracy in the shaping of everything with satellite maps, but unfortunately i have really no time to verify every course...they are really too much!!! )
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Post by gamesdecent on Jun 27, 2020 20:25:26 GMT -5
I think the best fictional courses are either A) so realistic in the aspects that you pointed out, whether the designer made the decision consciously or not, that they can pass for a real course or B) so fantastical that they transport you completely out of your normal golfing mindset into a place you know can’t exist but also can’t wait to explore.
I think doing things like putting lakes or ponds at the low points on a property as opposed to haphazardly anywhere hole strategy dictates, making tees and green sites on natural high points of the routing, sculpting greens so that they would drain naturally, etc. all contribute to keeping a player immersed in your environment without jarring them awake with something that doesn’t look natural or feel quite right.
Pretty funny hearing comments like that from DMK though who is probably one of the most criticized architects for how much square footage and turf maintenance his courses require. Go look how massive the fairways are on a Mammoth Dunes, Tetherow, etc. and imagine the budget required.
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Post by tpetro on Jun 27, 2020 21:14:05 GMT -5
And to the point of maintenance - having several surfaces increases costs. Yes, Mammoth Dunes has massive fairways, but the resort doesn't have to maintain a single square foot of rough. If you want to mow an area that isn't within the fairway and shouldn't be mow-able - whether due to land movement or natural features or "rocks and shrubs" - congratulations, you are Rees Jones, and you should quit.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2020 21:23:47 GMT -5
Don’t bother playing my courses then, you’ll hate all of them haha I played the Mighty Oak! It wasn’t nearly as extreme as you made me imagine. I thought I saw a lap pool in a grass island inside a bunker - I had to move around to see it in more detail. It was more of an artificial rectangular pond that you’d see at the entrance of a zoo or amusement park. Totally unique and unexpected. I enjoyed the course and round. I shot +3 after starting with double bogeys on #1 and #2. Don’t even ask how I ended up in the water on #1. It was fun and I had options and challenges. That’s what it’s about.
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Post by lessthanbread on Jun 27, 2020 21:47:18 GMT -5
Don’t bother playing my courses then, you’ll hate all of them haha I played the Mighty Oak! It wasn’t nearly as extreme as you made me imagine. I thought I saw a lap pool in a grass island inside a bunker - I had to move around to see it in more detail. It was more of an artificial rectangular pond that you’d see at the entrance of a zoo or amusement park. Totally unique and unexpected. I enjoyed the course and round. I shot +3 after starting with double bogeys on #1 and #2. Don’t even ask how I ended up in the water on #1. It was fun and I had options and challenges. That’s what it’s about. Right on man. Mighty Oak is for sure my most realistic design to date in terms of setting and feel.
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Lifeonaboard
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TGCT Name: Jaron Pauls
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Post by Lifeonaboard on Jun 28, 2020 2:03:33 GMT -5
- If you have a tee/green that provides no way to access with golf equipment or even turn around when cutting -then it can't exist. (Tees on cliffs with stair access only)
I've cut a tee box with a line trimmer before. I've also worked on a course IRL that had a green with a retaining wall into water. We figured out ways of turning around. I guess my point with that is that a highly skilled turf crew can overcome a lot of obstacles. Also when I see a statement like this my first thought is "challenge accepted" .
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Post by joegolferg on Jun 28, 2020 5:14:59 GMT -5
- If you have a tee/green that provides no way to access with golf equipment or even turn around when cutting -then it can't exist. (Tees on cliffs with stair access only)
I've cut a tee box with a line trimmer before. I've also worked on a course IRL that had a green with a retaining wall into water. We figured out ways of turning around. I guess my point with that is that a highly skilled turf crew can overcome a lot of obstacles. Also when I see a statement like this my first thought is "challenge accepted" . Hand mowers are used in such instances. Not everything is cut with a sit on mower.
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Post by joegolferg on Jun 28, 2020 5:41:52 GMT -5
As Ben already pointed out we're playing a computer game and so ultra realistic golf architecture, such as RCR's, usually play pretty uninteresting for the most part as we can get the perfect trajectory of a ball every time even with poorly timed shots.
Bowls on greens I agree are a thing that exist today, mostly on modern built courses with posh green draining technology. That said I still see this as poor design because most courses, at least here in the UK, I would guess do not use the expensive technology used to drain puddles and the ones that do (Worsley Marriott CC) near where I live are just bigv budget, corporate owned tourist traps and the irony is that we have so much bad weather here in Britain, these technologies are easily overrun as I've witnessed this many times at Worsley alone. So this is probably where my bias for surface draining via clever contouring comes from and I still believe this is the best way for any architect to build their greens and its also miles cheaper than the technological route.
On templates I often see people referring to them as overrated and one dimensional but the fact is that we all use them all the time, I'm genuinely convinced, as was C.B Macdonald, that outside of the listed templates (ideal holes) there aren't really many other truly unique concepts. An example people might throw at me in such debate would be Pete Dye's Island hole which even Pete didn't recognise as his signature hole, Pete's signature was non other than a Prize Dogleg like the 18th at Sawgrass, which happens to be a template concept that Raynor popularised and pioneered during the 20's. Anyway the island hole itself is not a unique concept or even a unique hole, Tillinghast had the first green surrounded by water at Galen Hall then shortly followed Macdonald and Raynors Island biarritz at the Creek Club. But the whole idea of a par three island green comes from the "short" hole template, the original hole situated at Brancaster GC in the UK had a pushed up green surrounded by sand to give it an island look and feel. Replacing sand with water is just merely putting a spin on a template and the creation of a "new" idea. So what I'm getting at is that when you think long and hard about CBM's theory of there only being a certain amount of hole idea's and all others are a variation of the idea's, it becomes quite true and I've struggled to find many "new" idea's that aren't already a template concept or a mash up of template idea's. So to say templates are overrated is ignorant to fact that a majority of golf holes use these concepts and most of the architects probably didn't even realise it.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 28, 2020 7:59:10 GMT -5
I've cut a tee box with a line trimmer before. I've also worked on a course IRL that had a green with a retaining wall into water. We figured out ways of turning around. I guess my point with that is that a highly skilled turf crew can overcome a lot of obstacles. Also when I see a statement like this my first thought is "challenge accepted" . Hand mowers are used in such instances. Not everything is cut with a sit on mower. Most decisions that us super's make about what type of mowing equipment isn't related to course design and space restrictions. Compaction and quality of cut are the primary considerations in cutting greens with walkers versus riding greensmowers. Even in that space there's more decisions on say just walkers - floating heads vs fixed heads on walkers, groomers on or off, bedknife/bedbar adjustments and turf stress. It's not uncommon to switch between walkers and riding equipment bases on the level of prep going on for a tournament, time of year or weather stress. I'd have labour regulators on me pretty fast if I'm putting out a summer student with a walker to cut a tee on the edge of a cliff, with 6 feet to turn around, at 7am in the morning, with the staff member wearing steel toed boots in a heavy dew.
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