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Post by rjwils30 on Apr 3, 2021 17:41:56 GMT -5
Following this conversation with interest… I’d read the article and had lots of similar thoughts… I think there are a number of different aspects that overlap here. Thinking about real courses for a moment… starting with a naturally interesting plot with features that can become part of a golf hole without any alteration, would allow the architect to come in and simply route a course… as they did in the early days… and often the number of holes was variable as a result of this… that’s your minimalist approach… the changes you need to make are few and if you looked at the before and after images you would recognise the old landscape after the course had been laid… The converse… the architect who arrives at a flat area of dry wasteland and leaves with a mountainous watery wonderland… albeit looking really natural!… every hole designed and options aplenty… The middle ground is also obviously possible - what if the landscape designer came in and designed and built a landscape with hills and hollows, dunes and plateaus … but without golf in mind… the course architect pitches up and has features to work with and now fits with his minimalist ideal. A lot of this just depends on the initial state at the point that someone states their intention that this is where Golf could be played!… If we think then about the 2K21 designer… if you divide your main activities into plot creation and then course design, well then you are effectively following the small golf principles … I’ve referred mainly to the landscape here… but the other issue at play is how much you let the existing land dictate how the hole plays… or whether that strategy is pre-determined and applied to the plot. I think even in the most minimalist minds, there are still choices to be made about where to place the main parts of a hole, the distance between tee and flag for example … Anyway, definitely interesting ! I like your thought about adding a bunch of random features like berms and mounds etc.. to a real plot of land and then designing after. It’s basically how I used to build courses in the game until I started doing more plot swaps.
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Post by rjwils30 on Apr 3, 2021 17:46:46 GMT -5
Instead of getting a landscape designer to do the original plot perhaps it’s just a dumping ground for fill from around town. Get a drunk guy to move the dirt around on a dozer for a few days and there ya go. Would likely need to be done on a sandier site as I’m sure you would end up with lots of drainage issues. In a way, designing the new sheep ranch over the old sheep ranch is similar to this sort of approach.
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Post by SkinniePost on Apr 3, 2021 18:20:34 GMT -5
Raise Tool = Small Golf Flatten Tool = Big Golf Raise Tool > Flatten Tool
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Post by PithyDoctorG on Apr 4, 2021 15:55:49 GMT -5
This article also made me think of Tom Doak's (somewhat provocative, of course) description of the 4th hole (Alps) at Fishers Island from vol. 3 of the Confidential Guide. I finally had time to look it up. I quote below:
"While aficionados of golf course architecture love to drone on about the importance of strategic design, the original spirit of the game is for the player to surmount great natural obstacles...Two good shots are essential here; no bunkers are required to complicate the task at hand."
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Post by rjwils30 on Apr 4, 2021 17:50:50 GMT -5
This article also made me think of Tom Doak's (somewhat provocative, of course) description of the 4th hole (Alps) at Fishers Island from vol. 3 of the Confidential Guide. I finally had time to look it up. I quote below: "While aficionados of golf course architecture love to drone on about the importance of strategic design, the original spirit of the game is for the player to surmount great natural obstacles...Two good shots are essential here; no bunkers are required to complicate the task at hand." I think this quote is spot on. Holes don’t have to be overly complicated when you have an interesting feature. Sometime there’s more strength in simplicity.
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Post by hallzballz6908 on Apr 5, 2021 13:51:14 GMT -5
I had an (at least what I thought to be, anyway) interesting quandary about this topic just now. Is big golf simply small golf on a grander, more refined scale? After reading rjwils30 thoughts on St Andrews being a small golf track (which I agree with), it got me to thinking that if St Andrews is the first “formalized” golf course, aren’t all the courses designed with the idea of emulating St Andrews (which is, if we’re being honest, pretty much all of them) technically “big golf” type courses? Another thought in regards to St Andrews in particular: could we say that it has become a “big golf” course in the modern day due to it’s fame? I’ve never played SA but the pictures I’ve seen clearly show a well manicured, well kept championship style golf course. I suppose it should be given the triple digit green fee required to walk its holes but would it be a better course in essence if it’s condition was left alone to be governed by the hand of nature more so than the hand of man? My heart thinks so but my mind knows that most casual players would probably feel slighted by paying a high green fee to play a “scruffy” track. I guess my point here is that although it started as an economically un-ambitious “small golf” track, it’s quality and fame have caused it to become an economically ambitious “big golf” track. Can anyone think of any more examples of this sort of phenomenon or possibly share some examples of some tracks you feel could become “big golf” with improvement and why?
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Post by shotstone on Apr 5, 2021 14:10:45 GMT -5
I had an (at least what I thought to be, anyway) interesting quandary about this topic just now. Is big golf simply small golf on a grander, more refined scale? After reading rjwils30 thoughts on St Andrews being a small golf track (which I agree with), it got me to thinking that if St Andrews is the first “formalized” golf course, aren’t all the courses designed with the idea of emulating St Andrews (which is, if we’re being honest, pretty much all of them) technically “big golf” type courses? Another thought in regards to St Andrews in particular: could we say that it has become a “big golf” course in the modern day due to it’s fame? I’ve never played SA but the pictures I’ve seen clearly show a well manicured, well kept championship style golf course. I suppose it should be given the triple digit green fee required to walk its holes but would it be a better course in essence if it’s condition was left alone to be governed by the hand of nature more so than the hand of man? My heart thinks so but my mind knows that most casual players would probably feel slighted by paying a high green fee to play a “scruffy” track. I guess my point here is that although it started as an economically un-ambitious “small golf” track, it’s quality and fame have caused it to become an economically ambitious “big golf” track. Can anyone think of any more examples of this sort of phenomenon or possibly share some examples of some tracks you feel could become “big golf” with improvement and why? For me, I've been thinking about it as "engineering requirements" when putting the course in place. Even minimalism from Doak and others still require quite a bit of sculpting and dirt movement, grading, etc, etc. For me this is the hallmark of big golf. Lots of engineering to get the slopes angles, etc to get the course to fit the architects vision... For me, small golf is the architect fitting the course into the land (much as the early course of Scotland). Minimal effort is put into the shaping, grading, etc of the route and property. Natural undulations, sloping, pits, etc are all used more or less in their natural state. Obviously thought and care is given to the strategy and layout, but insomuch as it fits and works with the natural lay of the land... That for me is where the line in the sand is, so to speak...
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slottie
Weekend Golfer
Nazca Sandhills... go play it you fools
Posts: 95
TGCT Name: Oliver Slot
Tour: Kinetic
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Post by slottie on Apr 5, 2021 19:33:59 GMT -5
For me small golf is the whole concept of finding strategy instead of building strategy, anyone can walk onto most golf holes built by prolific architects and tell you, given a yardbook, what the best strategy would be. On a golf game as we play, strategy in terms of big golf is just inherently more important as its much easier to hit the ball exactly where you want and therefore maybe where big golf triumph small golf in real life, here om a video game, small golf should triumph as there should never be one way to play a hole on first play through we should design so unfairness is not manufactured but achieved by what we see in the plot
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Post by shotstone on Apr 15, 2021 18:30:57 GMT -5
I may have immediately leapt into creating a new plot. Will see where it goes and share if it's any good for a community challenge of sorts. Well..... i.imgur.com/4ETXzun.gifKidding of course. Was just now finally catching up on this thread
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Post by b101 on Apr 16, 2021 3:48:08 GMT -5
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Post by williamwes626 on Apr 19, 2021 20:48:10 GMT -5
I like a good random bounce on an undulating links course but I don’t like the idea of course’s strategy relying on the random. I think an architect can easily come up with a strategy being inspired by the land they are using, resulting in a natural-styled course and arrive at a better golfing experience than someone who doesn’t have the funds and doesn’t plan. It’s odd the writer implies 'exciting creative strategy possibilities would open up for architects' since he thinks luck will provide new strategies that logic didn't come up with. It's all been thought of before. Lots of great courses built differently from one another. It’s about the result not the process.
I also think there’s not much distinction between ‘big’ and ‘small’ golf since the author says that both will plan the course with the ‘big’ architect putting in a lot more time. I also don’t know why length has anything to do with it unless the writer is implying that the architect with little money will also not have little land but that is left unclear.
The greens seemed to be an emotional ordeal for the writer as if they were a sin for not being a photocopy of the land around it. So small golf means every green’s entirety just leans one way with no nuance? Bunkers being dug was also mentioned so does that mean ‘small golf’ is bunkerless? What if it's a flat field in Florida? Strategy has to be applied regardless of exterior circumstances. I think he wants golf course architecture that nowadays trend to ‘natural’ over ‘manufactured’ to further trend towards even more natural – untouched land both physically and for some odd reason – mentally as well. There’s an agenda to the article asking for more architects to not think out strategy but let nature dictate it, but to me, once a small or big golf architect places fairways, greens, bunkers, and clearing trees, they’re 'scripting' the surroundings whether they have a large or small budget and whether or not they have a lot or little strategic thought. Might as well come up with a great strategic golf course that matches the surroundings instead of rolling the dice.
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