Golf Architecture 101: Alister MacKenzie's 13 Principles

00:00:00
Speaker 1: The Bible has its Ten Commandments, golf architecture has Alistair McKenzie's thirteen principles of golf course design. Maybe that comparison is slightly hyperbolic, but McKenzie's list of thirteen essential features of an ideal golf course has been enormously influential ever since it was published in nineteen twenty. It has shaped the way that we all think about golf architecture and the way that golf architects go about their jobs. So, in this second installment of our Golf Architecture one oh one series, I'll discuss McKenzie's thirteen principles with my quote unquote student PJ. Clark. I'm Garrett Morrison, and this is designing golf, all right.

00:00:50
Speaker 2: PG.

00:00:50
Speaker 1: I just introduced to you as my student, but you are, in fact my colleague, a podcast producer for Friday Golf, and you're just getting started on learn about golf architecture. We've done our first lesson Slash episode on the schools of golf course design, Strategic, penal, and heroic. How's all that gone for you so far?

00:01:13
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we got some good feedback. Seemed like people were into it. I feel smarter for having done it, So I'm excited to keep continuing down.

00:01:20
Speaker 1: This bethath Okay, good news, good news. We'll see how we feel after this episode. So I had you do a little reading in advance of this one, which probably makes it feel more like school even than the last one. But it wasn't much reading. I had you read Alistair McKenzie's famous thirteen Principles of Golf Course Design. It's a pretty short bit of reading, and we'll reintroduce it to the listeners as we go along here. So we're going to talk about all thirteen or at least refer to all thirteen principles, then pull out a couple to discuss in greater detail. That's how I'm good to sounds great. There is a lot of meat on this bone. Honestly, you could do an entire episode on each one of these items, and maybe eventually we will, but just for now, we're focusing on kind of the introduction of them and a few that might be confusing or particularly interesting. So you know, first of all, Alistair McKenzie one of the great golf architects of the nineteen tens, twenties, and thirties. He designed Augusta, National, Cyprus, Point, Royal Melbourne, and many other extremely good golf courses. He was also an excellent writer, and these thirteen principles come from his book called Golf Architecture, which Stephen Procter and I talked about in our last episode on the ten books that every golf architecture nut should read. It's probably the most famous and discussed passage, not only from this book, but maybe from all of the literature of golf architecture over the more than a century that stuff has been written about this subject. So let's read through them. Then we can choose a few to drill down on the first principle. The course where possible, should be arranged in two loops of nine holes. So Alistair McKenzie coming right out of the gate in favor of returning nines, there should be This is number two. There should be a large proportion of good two shot holes, two or three drive in pitch holes, and at least four one shot holes. So he's talking basically about par fours and par threes here, and different lengths of par fours. He wants there to be all of those. Number three, there should be little walking between the greens and teas, and the course should be arranged so that, in the first instance, there is always a slight walk forwards from the green to the next tee. Then the holes are sufficiently elastic to be lengthened in the future if necessary. Okay, so a couple of things in there, close connections between greens and teas, and then he also wants there to be room to move teas back to lengthen the course in the Future's awfully prescient.

00:04:21
Speaker 3: As I was, you know, reading through these, I appreciated this one absolutely.

00:04:26
Speaker 1: He Alistair mackenzie was exactly that prescient about where the game was going. He knew that the best players were going to continue to get longer and longer, that equipment was going to get better and better, and that golf courses would need to be longer as a result. I don't think he could have imagined.

00:04:43
Speaker 3: No, I didn't think he had this. You know, we're going to play the Masters at eight thousand yards. I didn't think he had that in mind.

00:04:50
Speaker 1: If you think about Augusta National and some of those walks backwards from greens to teas, I mean a couple hundred yards backwards in some cases. I think he be a ghast, but in any case, he did at least kind of have some idea of where things are going. Number four. The greens and fairways should be sufficiently undulating, but there should be no hill climbing, so he's calling for kind of a happy medium of topography undulating but not too severe. Number five. Every hole should have a different character, very simple variety. Number six. There should be a minimum of blindness for the approach shots, so he's zeroing in approach shots. Doesn't like a lot of blind approach shots. Number seven. The course should have beautiful surroundings, and all the artificial features should have so natural an appearance that a stranger is unable to distinguish them from nature itself. So beautiful surroundings for a course, and whatever is built within the course should blend nicely into those surroundings or into the landscape. Number eight. There should be a sufficient number of heroic carries from the tee, but the course should be arranged so that the weaker player with the loss of a stroke or portion of a stroke shall always have an alternative route open to them. Okay, so there are options for big carries over intimidating hazards, but there should be a kind of bailouter or an option for a weaker player not to take on that carry into kind of work their way around. Number nine. There should be infinite variety in the strokes required to play the various holes, for instance, interesting brassy shots, iron shots, pitch and run up shots. A brassy by the way is like a low lofted fairway would so helpful. Yeah, call it? What is it?

00:07:00
Speaker 2: Click?

00:07:00
Speaker 3: You know you're taking this Taking this from the top here.

00:07:04
Speaker 1: What is a clique is is one of the greatest questions of our time. Really that has many different possible answers these days. But in any case, what what Mackenzie is talking here talking about here in the ninth principle is just the variety of different shots that a golf course should require or inspire a player to try. Number ten, There should be a complete absence of the annoyance and irritation caused by the necessity of searching for lost balls. Okay, this is one that a lot of modern golf courses don't embody, but doesn't doesn't like the time spent. Mackenzie doesn't like the time spent looking for lost balls, and so try to create a course where that doesn't happen that much. You can find the ball. You might be in trouble, but at least you can find the ball and play a shot. Number eleven. The course should be so interesting that even the plus man this is like a plus handicap or really good player. The course should be so interesting that even the plus man is constantly stimulated to improve his game in attempting shots he has hitherto been unable to play. Okay, the phrasing there might confuse some people, but basically what it's saying is that the course should provide opportunities for really, really skilled players to try shots that maybe they aren't capable of or are at the very edge of their abilities. A course shouldn't just be kind of easy all around for a really good player. Number twelve, and this is kind of a companion to number eleven. Number twelve, the course should be so arranged that the long handicapped player or even the absolute beginner should be able to enjoy his round in spite of the fact that he is piling up a big score. So both of those things together, yep, the course should provide these opportunities for great players to get even better or to try shots that they haven't been able to play so far. But it should also be fun for less skilled players in spite of the fact that they may be shooting a high score number thirteen. The course should be equally good during winter and summer. The texture of the greens and the faraways should be perfect, and the approaches should have the same consistency as the greens. That is Mackenzie's final principle. It relates to conditioning, and you know, maybe we'll return to this at some point later in this episode, but just keep in mind that Mackenzie is speaking from the perspective of someone in nineteen twenty when courses were much much more ruggedly conditioned than what we're used to now, And so when he says greens and faaraways should be perfect, what he means by perfect is not what we think of when we think of perfect greens. He's think of more of like a basic standard of the greens should nice and smoothly and.

00:10:01
Speaker 2: The green exists.

00:10:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, it's there, it's got grass on it, you know. Okay, those are the thirteen principles. So I'll ask you, PJ, where do you want to start in looking at certain principles. Which ones do you have the most thoughts about or the most questions about. Give me one and we can we can start there.

00:10:23
Speaker 3: Just overall, you said to me when you assigned me this homework, you said, don't be afraid to let the doctor have it. I responded to you, after doing some research that, unfortunately, I feel like the doctor has made some very good points here.

00:10:37
Speaker 1: I'm sad to report that the doctor might have known what he was talking about.

00:10:41
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, it's very very unfortunate for my willingness to argue. But I feel like my main two that stuck out to me we're five and six. The every hole should have a different character, and the blindness on approach at at minimum. I feel like, especially on modern golf courses, especially on a lot of the PGA tour courses that are you know, they're not great, but.

00:11:12
Speaker 2: I feel like every hole is not different.

00:11:14
Speaker 3: I feel like there's just a lot of you know, looking the same kind of bomb and gouge and.

00:11:19
Speaker 2: You know, long par fours whatever.

00:11:21
Speaker 3: Like even at Tory Pines, you're getting lost and on so many similar holes back and forth.

00:11:26
Speaker 2: There.

00:11:27
Speaker 1: Absolutely that's one of the main critiques of Tory Pines. In fact, if you look at the views of the greens from the approach zone, a lot of those greens have a similar design. That's one of the knocks on that golf course and many other PGA Tour golf courses as well. So let's focus on number five. So every hole should have a different character. That's the principle. It's one of the simplest expressions of a golf architecture principle in this list of thirteen. So when you think character, a hole has a character, where can that character come from? What are the points of differentiation between golf holes that stick out to you distance?

00:12:11
Speaker 3: I feel like it's probably elevation, Like you know, a direction, is it the you know dogleg right left, you know anything like that. I feel like a lot of these places, or at least like a lot.

00:12:25
Speaker 2: Of places I play.

00:12:26
Speaker 3: I don't play anywhere too terribly nice, but like it's just you're going part four back up and down, just like straight straight every time, and they're all right next to each other, and it opens up and you know nothing, nothing about it is tangibly different, you know, as you keep going up and down the course.

00:12:43
Speaker 1: Yes, right, this is this is about the overall variety of the golf course direction. I'm glad you mentioned that, because a hole's relationship to the wind and to whatever elements there might be is one of the things that can give it character. And if a lot of holes on a golf course have a similar relationship to the wind and to the elements, then it starts to become the case that you don't view those holes as having their own character. So other things that can do that. Dog leg left, dog leg right. You mentioned that distance is a really key one, par par four, par five, par three. It's funny actually that in the principle where mackenzie talks about two shot holes and one shot holes and driving pitch holes, he doesn't actually mention three shot holes. He doesn't mention par fives. But certainly, you know, those are considered to be part of the variety of golf of a golf course and part of the character of a hole. It's it's par score. Other things topography, contour, bunkering, green design views, the esthetics of the shaping of the hole, just how it all looks and presents itself to you. So those are all dimensions along which a hole can have character. Why do you think it's Why do you think it's good for, you know, for holes to be different from each other? Why is that something that is it should even be emphasized. Why is a golf course where all the holes have similar character? Why is that golf course not as good as one where each hole is is different.

00:14:26
Speaker 3: I don't know if this is like the right phrasing, but I feel like it's more intellectually stimulating, like if you're you're thinking about it, where as opposed to if every hole is the same or very similar, you're not putting a lot of thought into.

00:14:39
Speaker 2: What you're doing as you're playing it.

00:14:41
Speaker 3: I feel like, you know, the more strategy comes into play, whether you're you're good or bad, or how seriously you're taking the round. Like, the more strategy comes into play, at least for me, is more appealing.

00:14:56
Speaker 1: Right. There are a number of things that you can do during a round of golf aside from paying attention to the golf course. If the golf course is boring or is not capturing your attention, then you might just focus on the social experience, so focus on talking with your playing partners. You might focus on your game and trying to accumulate a good score. There are a lot of things that you can do aside from really engaging with the architecture of the golf course. And that's fine, rights, That's what's great about golf. You can you can enjoy it in many different ways. But I think the really good golf courses are the ones that capture your attention, that demand your attention on every single hole where where you know it provokes some thought. And part of that is yet strategy and the challenge of the golf shots that you're hitting. But another part of it is that variety. If each hole is different, then you've got to pay attention, you've got to adjust, you've got to take in something that is new. Right. Yeah, But at the same time, I want to put out one danger of this. If an architect is overemphasizing each hole having a different character, then they might fall into some gimmicks to try to differentiate the holes. Yeah, they might go too far with it. There's probably a happy medium there because if you you know, if an architect is insecure about this, then they might say, well, this hole doesn't stand out enough, so I'm just gonna go ahead and put a bunker in the middle of the green for no reason. Then they'll then they'll remember.

00:16:30
Speaker 3: It at that that I I there does need to be some happy medium. I also, like, y know, I feel like if you try too hard to differentiate things, like does that.

00:16:42
Speaker 2: Kind of disrupt the flow?

00:16:45
Speaker 3: Like I know that that that sometimes you know things are meant to kind of go together. You play two holes as a as a par nine, and and you could do it like that, Like does that get in the way?

00:16:56
Speaker 2: Then sure?

00:16:57
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely. I think the real danger here is if the holes almost have too much variety, then the course doesn't have a consistent character in itself. Right, Each course should probably have some kind of unifying theme. Right. If all the holes are super different from each other stylistically, then sometimes it feels like they don't really fit together. Kind of like an album where one song is a country song and the next song is a rap song and the next song is a EDM club banger, and it's like, well, okay, yeah, it's fair. Yeah, all right, so that's number five. Every hole should have a different character. It seems like we generally think this is an important principle, but there are some some things that could be nuanced that could nuance our views about it. I don't know if nuance is a verb, but I just used it as one. You mentioned six also six Principal six is there should be a minimum of blindness for the approach shots.

00:18:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what do we mean by minimum here?

00:18:06
Speaker 1: Like like how many is too many?

00:18:10
Speaker 3: Or even like you know doesn't have to be blind right, Like you could have a hard approach shot that you can see exactly where you're supposed to go and still screw it up, Like I don't. I don't think blindness is necessarily the end all be all. This is This might be my biggest gripe of the thirteen.

00:18:27
Speaker 1: Truthfully, Okay, you you like blindness? Is that what you're saying.

00:18:32
Speaker 3: I'm not saying I like it, But I don't think I don't think there needs to be a minimum. I don't think it needs to be blind and then things on top of it. I think you could I could see things that I know I'm not supposed to do and then do them anyway.

00:18:46
Speaker 2: Like I feel like.

00:18:48
Speaker 1: The blindness is not your primary problem, is what you're saying.

00:18:51
Speaker 3: No, No, if I don't know where it's going, then I can't be worried about it going places that I don't I can't see you know what I mean?

00:18:58
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, let's talk about arguments against blind approach shots and arguments for blind approach shots. Why might a blind approach shot be considered bad? I mean, McKenzie doesn't say here what his objection to a lot of blind shots on a golf course is. But what's what do you think the problem with a lot of blind shots would be?

00:19:19
Speaker 3: Well, if you're playing it for the first time, you you don't really know what you're doing, I guess, like, but wouldn't that kind of be The good part too, is that you don't know what you're doing, so you have no idea where the danger is and you can kind of hit it more freely. Like if I'm thinking about me, if I see like water on the left and I visually see it that, I'm way more worried about it than Oh, I just didn't know that was there, kind of thing like.

00:19:46
Speaker 1: Well, if you get there and you discover that there's water that you didn't see, you're going to be pretty pissed, right.

00:19:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, But at that point it's not my fault. It's oh, I didn't know that was there.

00:19:56
Speaker 1: I see. You can blame it on somebody else, so that's all right, Yeah, yeah, okay, So absolutely, blind approach shots are really disorienting for first time players, and it might be the case that a lot of first time players will say, that's not fair. You didn't show me what I was playing at and so I had I had no context for trying to execute a good golf shot here.

00:20:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's.

00:20:22
Speaker 1: Maybe one possible objection to it. What would be an argument in favor of a blind approach shot. Why might a blind approach shot be considered fun?

00:20:30
Speaker 3: I think somewhat for the same reason that like you you don't know how close you are if you hit a good shot, and it's kind of an element of surprise, and I mean, I feel like it's fun, Like I especially on you know, like I think of this discourse you used to play in Syracuse all the time, Like there's a downhill par three that's just a blind green and you turn the corner and there's only two balls on the green. You go, oh, like who's that? That becomes a conversation topic. I guess I wouldn't say it's a great golf hole, but I would say it's fun because of the memorable rise.

00:21:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's one of those things. Each hole has its own character, well, that a blind approach shot can give a hole a kind of character. Maybe it's a slightly gimmicky character. Maybe it's a character that some people don't like, but seems like it might be worthwhile to have one or two during the round, and that maybe that wouldn't be too objectionable. Certainly, I think that blind shots can be fun in the sense that you play your shot and then as you're walking up to the green, you get to discover what happened, and that process of discovery can be really interesting and different and provide some useful variety during a round of golf, I would say, by the same token, seeing your ball land on a green and watching it do what it does once it lands. Watching your ball interact with a green complex, whether it's the putting surface itself or what's around it is a key part of the joy of golf too. So if every approach shot is blind, then that becomes problematic. I guess it's one of those everything in moderation principles.

00:22:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just I feel like and this is just like thinking about me and how I approach the game, which is probably is not I'll be the first to admit it's not a good way to do it. But like if I got up to the green and I didn't know it was there, and I ended up in a bunker, like I could have spent the last three minutes walking up to it, like trying to figure out how to get out of this, and then I feel like I'm scrambling because I don't I didn't have the preconceived notion of like, oh, I ended up in this bunker.

00:22:43
Speaker 2: You know what I mean?

00:22:44
Speaker 1: Right, So there are arguments for and against blind shots. I would say that this principle among golf architecture nerds currently is maybe the least popular of all thirteen. People object to this one pretty commonly because blind shots have become fashionable again. What we have to keep in mind, though, is that Alistair McKenzie lived during a period when golf architects couldn't really move a lot of earth in creating golf courses, and so blind shots on golf courses were much more common back in the day. Because if you think about it now, if there is some blindness in an approach shot, if there's something, if there's a landform that gets in the way of the view of the green from from the fairway. Then a modern architect can just knock down that landform and create a line of visibility. Earth moving has created the ability for there to be no blind shots on a golf course almost unless the golf course is really really hilly, and then you're probably inevitably going to have some blind or at least partially blind shots. But on modern golf courses, blind shots became much much less common because of the ability to move earth. But think about Mackenzie's context. He existed during a period when courses didn't move a lot of earth, and so there were a ton of these blind shots, and in order to avoid those blind shots, architects had to be really clever about how they routed a golf course. And so part of what mackenzie is saying is we need to be more careful about how we route our golf courses so that there aren't so many blind shots. But then once blind shots became uncommon, people started to say, hey, what happened to those blind shots? We kind of I like those, you know, those are kind of those are kind of fun. Let's bring some of those back.

00:24:47
Speaker 2: I know, I don't I like it.

00:24:49
Speaker 3: I guess I never thought of it because I'm not thinking of golf courses this way. Until we started doing this, Like, I never thought of it as a gimmick. But now that you just said that it does, it does feel pretty kind of cheap to me.

00:25:02
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting because once you have the ability to eliminate a blind shot, but then you choose to keep the blind shot, or maybe even you choose to create a blind shot by building something. And this is something that some architects have done. Pete Die has done this. He has built, He has built huge mounds in front of greens before just to create a blind shot. Once it feels like the architect is doing it intentionally, you start to receive it differently, don't you. Yeah, yeah, I've always wondered why that is.

00:25:36
Speaker 3: I don't I don't, I don't know. I I do think that's interesting. That's just I mean, now I'm advocating maybe for the blind shot, because that just adds another position, that just adds another level of you know, and he always calls the course like the defensive coordinator that you're trying to go up against.

00:25:54
Speaker 2: That, you know. Pete Die, however, many years.

00:25:57
Speaker 3: Ago, screwed this out, but like put this up to screw with you kind of thing.

00:26:07
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf is brought to you by the USGA Green Section. The USGA Green Section recently launched a new USGA Moisture Meter, another data collection tool that seamlessly connects to the Deacon management system. Designed with the Meter Group, a leader in soil sensing technology, this new moisture meter has research grade accuracy for everyday use to manage water, plant health and course playability. The USGA Moisture Meter uses CDX technology to capture consistent, accurate, and repeatable readings for soil moisture, temperature, and salinity. The data is instantly uploaded in the Deacon mobile app, creating a color coded pin map that indicates which areas need or don't need more water. Pretty cool stuff. Use Deacon to view trends over time or compare to other data collected such as firmness from the GS three ball, to make data driven decisions on playability and whole locations. Get yours today by visiting gsshop dot USGA dot org. Thank you to the USGA Green Section for supporting Designing Golf. Let's get back to the episode. Let's talk about principal number one. I want to highlight this one because I think there's kind of a fun story behind it. So first reactions, PJ. The principle is the course where possible should be arranged in two loops of nine holes. Give me some pros of this principle, and give me some cons of this principle.

00:27:42
Speaker 3: So when I first read this, I didn't. You told me to save all of my questions, thoughts, and comments for when we do this. But my first thought d or question or comment was is he referring to or alluding to that maybe the two nine holes should be different, like you should have a you know, an easier layout on the front and a harder layout on the back, or two like kind of separate, Like do they have to be Like the way he phrased this in my brain made it seem like he was advocating for two distinct groups of nine like one cohesive.

00:28:26
Speaker 2: Unit that flows through.

00:28:28
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I haven't seen it that way so far. I think mostly what he's saying, it's possible he's alluding to something like that, but I think mainly what he's saying is that after nine holes, the course should return to the starting point should return to the clubhouse, and then the next one should return to the clubhouse as well, just for that convenience of returning nines.

00:28:52
Speaker 3: As a person who plays at beth Page, where the tenth t is about as far away from humanity as you could possibly get, I very much would enjoy this.

00:29:01
Speaker 1: If this was a thing, you would like there to be returning nines. You would prefer there to be returning nines at beth Page. Why is that? Why is that such a convenience a convenience?

00:29:12
Speaker 3: I well, I just feel like it's it's easier to well, a you can get like a drink or a snack or something, and you could kind of kind of collect yourself after going through nine. But it's just I think it's a mental thing more than anything else. That like when you get to nine, ten, eleven, especially eleven T for beth Page Black is like all the way in the back corner, you're across the street from everything already, Like it is about as far away from civilization as you can get. And that's just like it's mentally taxing that you know you are not even close to home yet, and you are.

00:29:49
Speaker 1: You are committed to eighteen holes yeah, and you are. There's no way out except going all the way back through the golf course.

00:29:56
Speaker 3: I think I think that's where it's it's it's It adds a level of mental intimidation for people.

00:30:03
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I think that's really true. And so McKenzie's McKenzie's saying, agreeing with you, saying, there are some benefits to returning nines, maybe psychologically for players, maybe just in terms of giving them a break or allowing them to grab something at the clubhouse, assuming that this particular course doesn't build a comfort station or something like that in the middle of the golf course as many do these days. Mackenzie also added some arguments in favor of returning nines that we haven't mentioned yet. What it allows people to play nine holes if they want to. Yeah, that's true, to just play nine. Whereas if you have that out in back eighteen hole routing, then there's really unless you have holes in the middle of the round that return somehow to the clubhouse, then you don't have these loops that you can create easily. It allows for split T starts. You can if you ever turning nines, you can start groups from the first t. You can start them from the tenth tee if you have a lot of groups on a particular morning, and overall, I think it just increases the profitability of the course. You know, in a number of ways. If you have those returning nines, players are going to come back to the clubhouse buy some stuff. And then also you can pack more groups onto the course through these various methods, the split too, starter or just playing nine okay. At the same time, it can be very limiting for the designer right to have returning nines.

00:31:32
Speaker 3: If you know that you have to rout it back to you know, the top of the hill or wherever you're at after wherever the clubhouse is built.

00:31:40
Speaker 2: Kind of thing that I could see how that could be annoying.

00:31:43
Speaker 1: Sure, what if the starting point of your golf course is on top of a hill, as you say, and it has to be there. That's where they're building the clubhouse, that's where they're building the parking lot. Everything is going there, and a couple of miles away there's an amazing set of landform that you'd really like to get to and build golf holes on, but you can't get there if you have returning nines, because you just can't get all the way out there with a few holes before you know you have to come back. In that case, then it can be it can be pretty frustrating for a golf architect to insist on returning nines. And I would also point out that if you look at the highest ranked courses in the world. I'm using Golf Magazine's Top one hundred World Top one hundred list just as an example, if you look at the top thirty courses on that list, I count fully fourteen of them, almost half of them that do not have returning nines. The old course at Saint Andrew's famously is an out and back routing without returning nines. National Golf Links of America on Long Island no returning nines. Royal Dornick no returning nines. Mary An East Course doesn't have have classically returning nines. Pebble Beach certainly doesn't have returning nines. The tenth Green is the farthest point from from the uh from the first t that you get there. Fisher's Island doesn't have returning nines. Royal Port Rush. I could go on and on. So many of the best regarded courses in the world don't have returning nines, including by the way Cyprus Point, which Alistair McKenzie designed.

00:33:23
Speaker 2: That's that's that's that is That's a good point.

00:33:26
Speaker 1: I love.

00:33:26
Speaker 3: I love when people write things down and then completely culture themselves.

00:33:30
Speaker 1: Well mackenzie McKenzie had to reckon with this later, but I can mention that in a minute. What were you going to say?

00:33:35
Speaker 3: I so, is that in your opinion, as you know golf courses are here, do you is that correlation or causation or nothing like just a pure coincidence that the best courses in the world do not have this.

00:33:53
Speaker 1: I think it is certainly correlation. I don't think there's anything about non returning nines that makes a golf course better. You could argue that the freedom to route the golf course how the architect wanted to tends to create a better course than one where you told the architect you have to rout the golf course this way. So maybe there is some causation there, but I think for the most part, a lot of the courses that have non returning nines that appear on these world top one hundred lists are just very old courses, yeah, that were built in an age when returning nines was not a thing old course at Saint Andrew's, nobody was thinking about returning nines when they led out that golf course.

00:34:41
Speaker 3: They are just thinking, like nobody's looking to get a turkey sandwich at the turn right.

00:34:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, Old Tom's Golf repair shop didn't yet carry the breakfast sandwich. But in any case, the most natural way to rout a golf course is just to start at a point, to go out until you realize that you got to turn your ass back around and get back. That is the most instinctive way to rout a golf course. And you know, it's no coincidence that many of the earliest golf courses links courses in the UK and Ireland were routed in this manner, including the old Course Royal Dornick and many other well regarded links courses. A lot of the Open Championship courses don't have returning nines. Real Truon has that kind of classic out and back routing, and so I think that that's part of it. A lot of the courses on these lists are very old courses and returning nines is really something that became fashionable with people like McKenzie advocating them, and it became a kind of hard and fast convention in the middle of the twentieth century. But it's one of those conventions like blind shots, like the prohibition against blind shots. It's one of those conventions that architects rec have started to resist. One of the big things that has happened recently with especially resort courses, is that architects have now been given the freedom by some developers to not have returning nines. Pacific Dunes at the Abandon Dunes resort doesn't have returning nines, and that was one of the big deals. When that course opened, people looked at and said, oh my god, the ninth hole doesn't go back to the clubhouse. What's going on here? It was sort of radical. But then you know, these courses keep getting built Sand Valley, Stream Song, Stream Song, et cetera, et cetera, and and it's just not not a hard and fast rule anymore. A lot of architects like David McLay, Kid, Tom Doak, Corn Crenshaw, Gil Hants are not limited as much by the returning nines convention anymore.

00:36:53
Speaker 3: So I can't Yeah, I guess this is another thing that I never really like considered too much. But when you go down the list as you just did and being like this doesn't have it, this doesn't have it, this doesn't have it, you start to take I don't know, maybe this is a good idea and you should just go where the land tells you to go kind of thing.

00:37:12
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I certainly want golf courses to be profitable, so I understand why they build returning nines. Yeah, but it can be limiting to a golf architect. And Mackenzie himself later acknowledged this. Maybe it was building Cyprus Point and also the Valley Club of Boncito doesn't have returning nines. He built a lot of golf courses in the later in the nineteen twenties that didn't have this feature to them, and he later wrote that he regretted basically writing interest writing this principle. His book The Spirit of Saint Andrew's kind of like an updated edition of golf Architecture, and he includes a whole couple of paragraphs in there about losing sleep because certain committees that he was dealing with were obsessed with this principle of returning nines.

00:38:03
Speaker 3: And so this is a classic we're all trying to find the guy who did this exactly.

00:38:09
Speaker 1: Mackenzie was wearing the hot dog costume and and so.

00:38:14
Speaker 3: Why do you what do you what are you guys reading? Why are you thinking this?

00:38:17
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:38:18
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and I think it's you know, this is also the way that people often understand lists like this is stricter than the lists themselves were ever intended to be. Mackenzie called these the essential features of an ideal golf course. He didn't say principles. No, I mean he you know, I've been using the word principles. He didn't really even say that that much, and he certainly didn't call them rules. So I think he means these to be sort of this is how you can evaluate whether a golf course is ideal. But not all great golf courses are necessarily going to have these features, and not all golf architects in every situation should follow every rule to the letter.

00:39:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, this is this is very you know, when I said, like, oh, he's presenting a bunch of he has a bunch of good ideas, like this is a very idealistic view of everything. That putting these things into practice, I'm sure are far more difficult than than you know, you would have expected in nineteen ten or whatever he wrote these absolutely.

00:39:23
Speaker 1: Okay, last one I want to briefly talk about with you is number seven.

00:39:27
Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't really get this one, and I just I just didn't get it.

00:39:31
Speaker 1: The course should have beautiful surroundings, and all the artificial features should have so natural an appearance that a stranger is unable to distinguish them from nature itself. What don't you get about that one?

00:39:42
Speaker 2: Well?

00:39:43
Speaker 3: I well, I guess, especially when these were written, you're not thinking of like cell phone towers or like any you know, modern technology. But like my favorite thing is when there's a cell phone tower and they put tree branches on it. It's like, shut up, like don't don't tell me it's raining.

00:40:00
Speaker 1: All right, distinguish it from nature itself.

00:40:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you know, don't do that. Don't Where did I do?

00:40:06
Speaker 1: I've never seen this before?

00:40:07
Speaker 2: Is something intelligence? Oh? Yeah? There there are a couple.

00:40:12
Speaker 3: There are a couple on on random courses in the central New York region that try to make this helephone towers blend in or like wind turbines, like, shut up, that don't don't do that. So I guess, you know, I'll give Alistair McKenzie a pass because he didn't know wind turbines were going to exist to this extent. But I just like, what what, like, why is the problem if there's like a building, like I don't you know what I mean, Like, I don't I think that's I think it's fine. Like you you mentioned all like the Old Course or all these places in Scotland that have like just walls in the middle of like fairways or next to the green or whatever. It's like it's it's part of the charm, like who cares kind of thing.

00:40:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, and those can be considered beautiful surroundings. The town of Saint Andrews is certainly a feature of the Old Course. You know, say what you want about the Old Course hotel. I don't think anybody would call that beautiful, but at least, you know, back in the day, the town of Saint Andrews and still to an extent, has an aesthetic charm to it that is part of the Old Course, and so it doesn't necessarily have to be completely natural or open surroundings. But I think it's right to push back on this notion that for a golf course to be ideal then it has to be blessed with a beautiful landscape surrounding it, because that's not a reasonable assumption or expectation for most golf courses. So I think there is some wiggle room with that principle. But it's true that not all golf courses are blessed in this manner, especially now that urbanization has picked up so much, and many golf courses it used to be out in the country, including many of McKenzie's courses, are now surrounded by densely developed neighborhoods. You know. So the really interesting part of this seventh principle to me is the second part of it. Artificial features should have so natural an appearance that a stranger is unable to distinguish them from nature itself. Now you kind of poked fun at this, like, if there are some really unnatural elements on the golf course, then you really can't dress them up, yeah, to look natural. But what do you make of this principle in general, that what an architect builds in the land, the earth that the architect moves should then be shaped and tied in to the natural surroundings. Do you generally agree with that.

00:42:32
Speaker 2: In a way, right?

00:42:34
Speaker 3: Like I think, you know, I think back to when we were just down in Florida, and you know that the Florida land is all like flat and very you know, there's not a lot going on there. But then you see some of these places where there are large elevation changes, and you just think of like how much earth they had to move, and to an extent, like it looks like it was just kind of dropped in there, like you're playing like zootokon and you're just dropping things into the flat floor to land. It's like, yeah, here's this giant hill and it's like that's not that didn't exist. But like I see the value in doing that for building an interesting golf course, but you know that it's not natural with you know, you're not in an area that that would happen naturally. So it does, like to an extent, I think, kind of take you out of it.

00:43:25
Speaker 1: M Yeah, if you can be fooled into thinking that a golf course is more natural than it actually is, if the architect is successful in convincing you that this golf course was just sitting here and all we did was put grass on it, I think there is a special feeling that can come from that.

00:43:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:43:45
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you're competing against nature rather than competing against an artificial construct, and so that's what a lot of current golf architects go for. The degree to which they succeed depends on their skill. Architects are better at it than others. Corn Crenshaw, Tom Doak are certainly considered to be some of the best architects in the industry at doing precisely this, at building things that are so well blended in to the natural landscape surrounding the golf course that you never think that they built this, or at least you can't tell where the construction started and ended. You know that some construction happened, but you can't identify exactly where it happened. There is a pleasure that comes from that from the player. At the same time, if we insist that all golf courses should look perfectly natural, that can be limiting in a number of ways. What if an architect says, that's not my style. I'm not going for naturalism, I'm going for something more heightened. I'm not a realist author. I don't write realist novels. I write fantasy novels. I mean, I want to do sci fi.

00:44:55
Speaker 3: It's kind of fun, right like I to an extent, like it might not make for the best golf course like Valhalla. The waterfalls like it's visually appeeling right like it's it's it's fun to look at, like I don't you know, I don't know if it's it's exactly what we're going for here, but it's it's something that I feel like is like a zoo tycoon kind of thing, where like you're building like an amusement park and it's like, oh, we have all this limestone and we're gonna make waterfalls running over it.

00:45:24
Speaker 1: Jack Nicholas wasn't thinking players are going to believe that these waterfalls were natural. Yeah, you know, you just put him in there because you think they look cool. And we can push back on that and say, ah, they don't look that cool. They look kind of corny. They look they look sort of chintzy, and and the aesthetic is not really really pleasing to me. This is this is like a Thomas Kincaid painting as opposed to something with real artistic merit. But there are other architects like Pete Die for I go back to Pete die a lot because he defied a lot of conventions of the Golden Age in interesting ways and embraced others interesting ways. But Pete Die wasn't necessarily trying to make everything look natural, especially when he was building on some flat Florida swamp that didn't really give him anything to work with. He was trying to build interesting looking stuff, and a lot of the time he succeeded in building things that don't look natural necessarily. They look manufactured, but they're cool to look at. And I think that's something that golf architects should feel free to do if that's what they want to do. But again, everything comes back to execution. Are you executing this in a way that is tasteful and well done? And that's the rubric we should use to judge it. But Mackenzie certainly was a firm advocate of natural golf courses and a pioneer in this art of tying in the manufactured with the natural, which is a real art.

00:46:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think, like I understand what he's going for with this principle. I think, like you said, like when you're at a place that you feel like you're just competing against you know, whatever. Glaciers moved here however many millions of years ago kind of thing like that's super cool. But I do think there is a you know, there's certainly a market for the the sci fi or however you want to phrase it, just kind of dropping things in here and making them look, you know, visually appealing or visually different than the rest of the things you're going to see.

00:47:32
Speaker 2: I definitely think the.

00:47:33
Speaker 1: Futuristic, Yeah, it can be really interesting, you know, not all if you think of building architecture, A lot of the great buildings, they don't look like they naturally occur and out of landscape. I mean, there are architects who tried to emulate the natural landscape and their building architecture, but there are others who tried to set up a contrast, like a hard contrast between the building and the surroundings and discover something interesting in there. And in Golfer connecture, I think there's maybe something similar that that could happen, but it's just hard to do it well. And I suppose that's the that's the issue. All right, Let's wrap up by identifying one principle that we agree with the most and one principle that we disagree with the most. Now, that we've discussed a few of them. What do you agree with the most out of this list?

00:48:23
Speaker 3: I think I agree the most with two, saying that there should be you know, a couple of part threes, at least four part threes, and then you know, longer part fours, not even getting into part fives. Like I just I feel like having a wide range of distances is good for everybody, every level of player. It's challenging enough for everybody, and this, you know, ideologically makes a lot of sense to me.

00:48:53
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I think Andy Johnson, founder of FIDA Golf, would disagree with you. I think he wants to see a golf course with all par fours. He started he started to own that block recently. But yes, that's a good one to point out. The one that I agree with the most, or that I resonate with the most, is just the first part of number three. There should be little walking between greens and teas. I'm pretty obsessive about this. I know it's a quirk of mine that not everybody shares. And a lot of people play golf in carts, which is fine. I prefer to walk golf courses, and for me, there's something just so wonderful about a tea being right next to the green. It allows the course to have a flow and to lull you into this continuous state of experience, whereas a long walk or an awkward walk between a green and a tea takes me out of it. It reminds me that the golf course is a constructed thing and not this kind of continuous dream that I'm that I'm experiencing. And so that's one that I emphasize quite a bit as far as my own pleasure and a golf course concerned. Which principle do you most disagree with?

00:50:04
Speaker 3: Ah, I don't necessarily know if I like vehemently disagree with any of them that I'm taking like downright offense to. I think the blind the blind approach is definitely a kind of one that I would get hung up on. Is that I feel like if you're asking for a minimum of blindness and then throwing things on top of that, I feel like that I like seeing the green. I like seeing if I am lucky enough to hit a green, I would like to see it happen. That's it's pretty much my take on this.

00:50:42
Speaker 1: Great the one that I have the hardest time with is the last one. The course should be equally good during winter and summer. The texture of the greens should in fair ways, should be perfect. I know he's talking about the ideal golf course here, and to an extent, I get. I get what he's talking about. You know, an ideal golf course meets you know, many of these characteristics. The conditioning should be great. But I think that this standard number thirteen has turned into kind of an impossible expectation among many golfers. And if I were to rewrite this list, I know that would be a presumptuous thing to do. But if I were to rewrite this list for the modern age, I think I would say something really different about ideal golf course conditioning. To me, if you're going to live up to the principle of natural and artificial being blended together in as graceful a manner as possible, then agronomy maintenance is part of that, and overly refined agronomy and maintenance can tend to make the golf course stand out from its natural setting in what I think is a fairly unattractive way. And so if you're going to try to blend the golf course in to its surroundings. Then you have to have the guts to give the golf course some frayed edges in its presentation. And so I think that if I were writing this list for myself, that I would say something along those lines rather than this. But I understand that Mackenzie was speaking from the perspective of somebody who had a very different experience of golf course conditioning.

00:52:22
Speaker 2: That that would make sense.

00:52:24
Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like expecting everything to be perfect is a good way to let yourself down.

00:52:31
Speaker 1: Why don't we end on that note, PG, I think that's those are words of wisdom from the young man. Thank you for doing this with me, appreciate it fun as always.

00:52:38
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. This is great.

00:52:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is great, absolutely, and we'll figure out where to go next from here. This episode of Designing Golf was produced by PJ Clark. Thank you, PJ. CLUBTFE go to the Frida egg dot com slash membership and see what CLUBTFE is all about. This is Friday Golf's membership. One particular thing I want to draw your attention to is that sign ups for our event at Colorado Golf Club, a great Corn Crenshaw design, are live right now on the day that this episode drops. In fact, the event may already be sold out. I'm not sure, but something that you get with your Club TFE membership is early access to registration for these events, and that can really help you get a spot in some of these great experiences at great golf courses. Other events that we have opening for registrations soon will include our event at Lossonia Links in Wisconsin in our event at Essex County Club in Massachusetts, two extremely wonderful golf courses that are close to my heart. So check out Club TFE. We offer a lot more through that membership, but access to events and experiences is certainly one big part of it. Thank you for listening, and we'll be back again soon in a couple of weeks with a new episode of Designing Golf.