Latest / Designing Golf / Golf Architecture 101: Template Holes

Transcript

Golf Architecture 101: Template Holes · Designing Golf

0:00
Speaker 1: What are CB McDonald's template holes, often called ideal holes?
0:05
Speaker 1: Where did they come from? And why do they seem
0:08
Speaker 1: so important to understanding golf architecture. That's what I'm talking
0:12
Speaker 1: about today with PJ Clark in this installment of our
0:15
Speaker 1: Golf Architecture one oh one series. I'm Garrett Morrison and
0:19
Speaker 1: this is designing golf. All right, PJ, how's it going.
0:29
Speaker 2: I'm doing good. I'm excited for this one.
0:31
Speaker 3: This was this was by my own requests, so I'm
0:33
Speaker 3: really fired up here.
0:35
Speaker 1: Yes, we'll talk about why you requested it because I'm curious.
0:39
Speaker 1: But it's good to have It's good to have class
0:41
Speaker 1: back in session. It's been a while since we've done
0:43
Speaker 1: one of these.
0:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, I'm excited and this is this is
0:46
Speaker 3: uh probably the number one topic I would assume I
0:49
Speaker 3: needed to learn based on what we do here and
0:52
Speaker 3: when we started this.
0:53
Speaker 2: So I'm happy to be I'm happy to be here.
0:56
Speaker 1: That's that's interesting. So hopefully I'll inform you in the
0:59
Speaker 1: way that you want to be informed. But I guess
1:02
Speaker 1: you've heard plenty of references to C. B. MacDonald and
1:05
Speaker 1: SETH Rayner and their and their template holes and our
1:09
Speaker 1: goal here is to kind of demystify that. First, though,
1:13
Speaker 1: I want to quickly clarify something that we covered in
1:16
Speaker 1: our last Golf Architecture one oh one episode, and that
1:22
Speaker 1: was the topic of the episode. Was Alistair Mackenzie's thirteen
1:26
Speaker 1: essential Features of an Ideal golf Course or his thirteen principles.
1:30
Speaker 1: The confusion in that podcast, I think came with principal
1:34
Speaker 1: number six, the principle that said there should be a
1:38
Speaker 1: minimum of blindness for approach shots. Now, what mackenzie means
1:43
Speaker 1: here is that there should not be many blind approach shots.
1:48
Speaker 1: I believe you thought he was saying that approach shots
1:50
Speaker 1: should be at the minimum blind.
1:54
Speaker 2: Yes, that is exactly how I read that.
1:57
Speaker 1: I did not pick up on this during the podcast.
2:00
Speaker 1: I wasn't I was I was failing in my job
2:03
Speaker 1: as a teacher. I wasn't listening properly, and so I
2:05
Speaker 1: was just kind of proceeding with my understanding of it
2:08
Speaker 1: without really noticing that you have interpreted it different.
2:11
Speaker 3: Now I'm I'm pro number six instead of very anti
2:15
Speaker 3: number six. I want to make that clear for now
2:18
Speaker 3: that I've learned the flip side.
2:21
Speaker 1: That was a whoops. These things happened these things. I mean, jeez,
2:24
Speaker 1: looking back on my teaching career, the things that I
2:28
Speaker 1: would just like give lectures on and then discover afterwards
2:31
Speaker 1: that my students had some basic misunderstanding that rendered my
2:35
Speaker 1: entire lecture irrelevant. That happened over and over again. And
2:39
Speaker 1: this is an example of that very understandable that you
2:42
Speaker 1: would interpret the text in that way. Really Like, when
2:46
Speaker 1: I looked at it, I was like, oh, yeah, I
2:47
Speaker 1: can totally see how he got there. And I should
2:50
Speaker 1: have clarified that Mackenzie meant not many blind approach shots.
2:56
Speaker 1: Pleased he did.
2:57
Speaker 3: Not like the doctor was something about something. I should
3:02
Speaker 3: have realized that if I was so confused that it
3:06
Speaker 3: was me who was wrong and not the doctor.
3:08
Speaker 1: Now that makes that's right. Trust the doctor.
3:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, blindly, that makes sense.
3:12
Speaker 1: It would have if we had read more of Mackenzie's
3:16
Speaker 1: writing than just the thirteen Principles, I think it would
3:18
Speaker 1: have been clear because elsewhere he kind of elaborates on
3:21
Speaker 1: this principle and talks about why he doesn't want many
3:24
Speaker 1: blind approach shots and all that kind of stuff. It
3:27
Speaker 1: was just more common in Mackenzie's day that approach shots
3:29
Speaker 1: would be blind because of course earth moving equipment wasn't
3:33
Speaker 1: what it is today, and so they kind of dealt
3:35
Speaker 1: with the lay of the land.
3:36
Speaker 3: That makes sense that I could I could see how
3:39
Speaker 3: you know, if you just dealt the hand on the
3:41
Speaker 3: side of a hill, then it's kind of kind of
3:43
Speaker 3: what you have to work with there.
3:45
Speaker 1: Now, the funny thing is, blind approach shots have come
3:47
Speaker 1: back into fashion. I mean, it's it's some it's a
3:50
Speaker 1: feature of ancient architecture that people now find charming because
3:54
Speaker 1: it's somewhat rare. Blind approachots really fell out of fashion
3:58
Speaker 1: in the middle of the twentieth century, and and so
4:00
Speaker 1: because they became rare, I think people have started to
4:03
Speaker 1: gain a kind of affection for them. But in any case,
4:06
Speaker 1: I just wanted to wrap that up, and there we
4:09
Speaker 1: got a couple of comments and I was like, yeah, yeah,
4:11
Speaker 1: I missed this one. Sorry, So let's get to our
4:14
Speaker 1: topic for the day. Charles Blair McDonald's. Charles Blair McDonald's McDonald's.
4:20
Speaker 1: That would be another that'd be maybe a more Scottish version. Okay, yeah,
4:24
Speaker 1: who knows. Maybe there is a Charles Blair McDonald out there,
4:28
Speaker 1: his ideal holes or template holes. And this is I
4:31
Speaker 1: think actually very related to our discussion of Mackenzie's thirteen Principles,
4:37
Speaker 1: and that's because McKenzie and McDonald were essentially asking the
4:41
Speaker 1: same question, how do you design the ideal golf course.
4:46
Speaker 1: McKenzie's answer to that question was this list of principles.
4:50
Speaker 1: McDonald's answer was his notion of ideal holes. So the
4:56
Speaker 1: ideal holes are whole designs or concepts that you see
4:59
Speaker 1: used over and over on the courses of C. B.
5:02
Speaker 1: McDonald and his collaborator slash protege Seth Rayner McDonald and
5:08
Speaker 1: or Rayner sometimes together, right, they collaborated a lot, but
5:12
Speaker 1: sometimes just Rayner As a solo architect. They were responsible
5:16
Speaker 1: for many of the best regarded golf courses built during
5:20
Speaker 1: the Golden Age of golf architecture in America, which stretched
5:23
Speaker 1: from approximately nineteen ten to the late nineteen thirties. McDonald's
5:28
Speaker 1: best known designs include National Golf Links of America, The Ledo,
5:32
Speaker 1: Piping Rock, Sleepy Hollow, the Creek mid Ocean in Bermuda,
5:37
Speaker 1: and Saint Louis Country Club. Seth Rayner had a much
5:42
Speaker 1: bigger portfolio, right, McDonald's body of work is fairly small,
5:48
Speaker 1: so some of Rayner's highlights would include Fisher's Island, Chicago
5:52
Speaker 1: Golf Club, Shore Acres, Camargo, Yamen's Hall, et cetera, et cetera.
5:57
Speaker 1: And Rayner also served as the associate what we would
6:01
Speaker 1: now call the lead associate or construction manager or whatever
6:05
Speaker 1: on all of McDonald's major projects. A distinctive feature of
6:09
Speaker 1: McDonald and Rayner's courses is the presence of the so
6:13
Speaker 1: called template holes. These particular design concepts usually based on
6:17
Speaker 1: models from famous British links courses and adapted to whatever
6:22
Speaker 1: piece of ground McDonald and Rayner we're working with. Some
6:26
Speaker 1: of the better known template holes include the Radan, the
6:29
Speaker 1: road hole, the Eden, the Cape, the Beertz, the short,
6:34
Speaker 1: the Alps, so on and so forth. I'm sure you've
6:37
Speaker 1: heard these referred to casually in podcasts and been like, Okay,
6:41
Speaker 1: what are we talking about here?
6:42
Speaker 2: That's exactly how we got here.
6:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so that's our subject for this episode. Now
6:49
Speaker 1: we won't cover a lot of particular template holes. That
6:53
Speaker 1: may come as a disappointment, but that I mean, we're
6:56
Speaker 1: mostly in an audio medium here. We'll also publish this
6:58
Speaker 1: on YouTube with some visual and for an audio medium,
7:01
Speaker 1: I figured that just talking about specific template holes might
7:05
Speaker 1: be a little tough because we just have to talk
7:08
Speaker 1: their features out. But what I hope we can do
7:11
Speaker 1: here is kind of establish a basis for understanding all
7:15
Speaker 1: template holes, and then we can dig into whatever particular
7:19
Speaker 1: ones you're curious about. Now, as you mentioned, PJ, you
7:24
Speaker 1: actually requested that we talk about this subject. Why were
7:29
Speaker 1: you interested in it?
7:31
Speaker 3: I feel like it comes up a lot just in
7:35
Speaker 3: random podcasts here or there, or you know, we did
7:38
Speaker 3: the rain or Man merch collection and cameras talking about
7:41
Speaker 3: how he had to draw all the template holes, and
7:43
Speaker 3: I was like, I know, that's the thing I'm supposed
7:45
Speaker 3: to know at some point, but I have no idea
7:46
Speaker 3: what you're talking about. So I got to a point
7:50
Speaker 3: I forget what entirely prompted me. But he got to
7:53
Speaker 3: a point where I was like, I have no idea
7:54
Speaker 3: what we're talking about anymore. So I needed to humbly
7:58
Speaker 3: request to get taught what every year about to teach me?
8:01
Speaker 1: Right now, let's go back to square one.
8:03
Speaker 2: It is.
8:04
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of like a code language. And
8:08
Speaker 1: this is one thing that can make golf architecture an
8:11
Speaker 1: intimidating subject is that you're dropped into it, and people
8:15
Speaker 1: are speaking a different language that includes words like radan
8:20
Speaker 1: and Eden and shorthole and alps, and it's if you
8:25
Speaker 1: don't understand the language, then it can feel a bit alienating.
8:29
Speaker 1: And hopefully that's that's what we're breaking down a bit
8:32
Speaker 1: here in the Golf Architecture one oh one series. I
8:36
Speaker 1: want to assure you there's nothing complicated about understanding these
8:40
Speaker 1: template holes. Most of them are are pretty simple to understand,
8:44
Speaker 1: and a lot of people who casually refer to them
8:46
Speaker 1: in conversation don't don't actually know the design concepts. That
8:53
Speaker 1: that's good. That makes me feel bad.
8:55
Speaker 2: That's great.
8:56
Speaker 1: In order to really have mastery of the subject, and yeah,
9:01
Speaker 1: you do need to dig a little bit deeper, but
9:03
Speaker 1: in order to have just a framework for the conversation,
9:07
Speaker 1: I think we can do that pretty quickly. So let's
9:10
Speaker 1: start with some background, a little bit of history. Who
9:15
Speaker 1: McDonald was, how he came up with this idea. This
9:19
Speaker 1: is actually I love this story. This is one of
9:22
Speaker 1: my one of my favorite stories to tell about golf architecture.
9:24
Speaker 1: I think it it represents so much of what the
9:27
Speaker 1: early development of golf course design as a discipline and
9:32
Speaker 1: a field of study was and so I just I
9:36
Speaker 1: just really like going through this As part of the
9:37
Speaker 1: reason I was excited about this episode. So C B McDonald,
9:41
Speaker 1: wealthy Chicago kid who ended up attending the University of
9:45
Speaker 1: Saint Andrew's in the early eighteen seventies. Saint Andrews, Scotland
9:51
Speaker 1: was and is the international home of golf. So no surprise, Yeah,
9:57
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. I often mention this, I wish I
10:00
Speaker 1: went to the University of Saint Andrews. Speaking of being
10:04
Speaker 1: a teacher, one of my one of my advises when
10:08
Speaker 1: when I was a high school teacher went to the
10:10
Speaker 1: University of Saint Andrews and I sat down with him
10:14
Speaker 1: before he accepted the offer of admission, and I was like, listen,
10:19
Speaker 1: do you play golf? And he said no, And I said,
10:23
Speaker 1: you had better learn golf.
10:24
Speaker 2: How do you kill?
10:26
Speaker 3: How do you even end up in that situation? Like
10:28
Speaker 3: what prompts you to go to the University of St Andrews.
10:31
Speaker 1: If you're not, you know, it's a great university, Like,
10:35
Speaker 1: first of all, really really wonderful university. If you're if
10:38
Speaker 1: you're in Great Britain, it's it's it's like going to
10:42
Speaker 1: I guess an Ivy League university. So they have great academics.
10:45
Speaker 1: But I think if you go to the University of St.
10:48
Speaker 1: Andrews and don't play golf that oh.
10:51
Speaker 3: Man, Yeah, it's still combination.
10:54
Speaker 2: Sure.
10:55
Speaker 1: Yeah. In any case, McDonald did it right. He he
10:58
Speaker 1: really learned a game while he was there. He met
11:00
Speaker 1: and played with old Tom Morris and young Tom Morris.
11:03
Speaker 1: A good time to be there in the eighteen seventies,
11:05
Speaker 1: and he became a very capable player, ultimately one of
11:08
Speaker 1: the better players in the US when he returned. So
11:11
Speaker 1: he got back to the US in the mid eighteen
11:15
Speaker 1: seventies and he was disappointed to find that the game
11:17
Speaker 1: basically didn't exist in the country at that time. So
11:20
Speaker 1: he didn't play much golf for the next fifteen years
11:22
Speaker 1: or so, and whatever golf courses appeared during this period were,
11:26
Speaker 1: in his mind, a very low quality. They just didn't
11:29
Speaker 1: get anywhere close to what he saw in Saint Andrews.
11:32
Speaker 1: At the time. Saint Andrews was basically what it is today,
11:35
Speaker 1: a great, great golf course. You can imagine going from
11:38
Speaker 1: there to the kind of rudimentary golf courses that we
11:40
Speaker 1: had in America at the time, and it was a
11:43
Speaker 1: big difference. So when MacDonald caught the golf bug again
11:47
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen eighties, one of his primary goals
11:51
Speaker 1: became to create the first truly great American golf course.
11:57
Speaker 1: During this period, he established Chicago Golf Club, but the
12:00
Speaker 1: early versions of that course were not on the level
12:03
Speaker 1: of today's Chicago Golf Club, which was primarily designed by
12:07
Speaker 1: Seth Rayner in the nineteen twenties. Nonetheless, Chicago Golf Club
12:12
Speaker 1: was a major early American club, and McDonald became a
12:16
Speaker 1: major figure in the development of American golf.
12:19
Speaker 3: So is this is this just like you know, everybody
12:22
Speaker 3: makes a joke like I'm gonna go write the Great
12:24
Speaker 3: American novel like this, this is somebody just decided to
12:28
Speaker 3: go build a golf course one.
12:29
Speaker 1: Day, That's right. So he wanted to write the great
12:31
Speaker 1: American novel, that's right. He had that ambition, make make
12:35
Speaker 1: the great American movie, make the great American album. That
12:39
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, this ambition is cross disciplinary for sure,
12:44
Speaker 1: goes across art forms, and this was McDonald's version of it.
12:47
Speaker 1: And so yeah, he had this desire. There's a lot
12:52
Speaker 1: of biography here that I won't get into, but McDonald
12:54
Speaker 1: did become instrumental in the founding of the USGA and
12:58
Speaker 1: the origins of the us and so there's interesting stuff
13:01
Speaker 1: there too, but I'll skip forward to the golf course
13:04
Speaker 1: design story. In nineteen oh one, McDonald was reading Golf Illustrated,
13:11
Speaker 1: probably the most popular golf only publication of the time
13:15
Speaker 1: published in the UK, and he came across a debate
13:20
Speaker 1: in the pages of Golf Illustrated between some leading golfers
13:24
Speaker 1: of the time about what the greatest holes in the
13:27
Speaker 1: world were, and by world, I mean great Britain was
13:32
Speaker 1: essentially their frame of reference and where most of the
13:33
Speaker 1: best golf courses were. So to my knowledge, this is
13:38
Speaker 1: the first time a discussion of this type happened in print,
13:41
Speaker 1: which is really saying something because this is a very
13:44
Speaker 1: common thing now right people talking about the best courses
13:48
Speaker 1: and the best holes. So try to imagine a world
13:52
Speaker 1: in which this hadn't happened before.
13:55
Speaker 3: This is kind of kind of crazy, just trying to,
14:00
Speaker 3: you know, starting the take industry, for lack of a
14:03
Speaker 3: better term, from nothing. That's really it's an interesting concept
14:07
Speaker 3: to think about.
14:08
Speaker 1: God, it's fascinating to read because that's exactly it. The
14:11
Speaker 1: first hot takes about golf architecture. It's like nobody had
14:15
Speaker 1: ever done it before. And these guys, you know, Harry Varden,
14:19
Speaker 1: Jage Taylor, James Braid, Willie Park Junior, John Lowe, Horace Hutchinson,
14:23
Speaker 1: these were the first, you know, take.
14:26
Speaker 2: Masters sitting there like, what have I done?
14:30
Speaker 1: Yeah? If they if they now.
14:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the end of Oppenheimer just staring blankly into
14:36
Speaker 3: the camera. It's a tough scene for those guys.
14:41
Speaker 1: So the golfers who participated in this debate were the
14:45
Speaker 1: heavies of the game at the time, very impressive names.
14:49
Speaker 1: The ones that I mentioned these were, you know, Open
14:51
Speaker 1: championship winners and just significant figures, and so their word
14:57
Speaker 1: carried weight and McDonald was fascinated by what they were writing.
15:00
Speaker 1: And it turned out that a certain number of holes
15:03
Speaker 1: kind of rose to the top. It got mentioned by
15:06
Speaker 1: a lot of different people as being the best of
15:08
Speaker 1: their kind. They talked about the best one shotters, two shotters,
15:11
Speaker 1: and three shotters. So par three's, par four's, par five's.
15:15
Speaker 1: The best one shotters, according to this panel, turned out
15:18
Speaker 1: to be the Eden, the eleventh hole at Saint Andrews,
15:23
Speaker 1: The were Dan, the fifteenth hole at North Barrick, the Alps,
15:28
Speaker 1: the seventeenth hole at Prestwick, the road hole seventeen at
15:32
Speaker 1: Saint Andrews, the long hole fourteen at Saint Andrews. I
15:36
Speaker 1: ended up going through the two shotters and three shotters.
15:39
Speaker 1: They're actually without mentioning it, but the road hole at
15:41
Speaker 1: the time now considered a par four, right, it's categorized
15:45
Speaker 1: as a par four. At the time it was considered
15:47
Speaker 1: more of a par five. They didn't call it a
15:49
Speaker 1: par five, but it was it was thought that you
15:52
Speaker 1: would spend three shots in getting to that green. And
15:55
Speaker 1: so those are the holes that came up, and these
15:58
Speaker 1: remain some of the most as holes in the UK.
16:02
Speaker 1: Prestwick is on the west coast of Scotland and that
16:05
Speaker 1: was that was an early old Tom Morris course. You've
16:09
Speaker 1: probably heard Andy mentioned North Barrack, Great Scottish Links Course,
16:13
Speaker 1: and then of course the old course at St Andrew's
16:15
Speaker 1: still very much on the open rota and at the
16:19
Speaker 1: top of everybody's minds. All of these holes, the ones
16:22
Speaker 1: that were mentioned in this debate in this magazine in
16:25
Speaker 1: nineteen oh one, eventually became template holes. There were more
16:30
Speaker 1: template holes than those, but this was kind of the
16:33
Speaker 1: starting point. This was the first, you know, body of
16:37
Speaker 1: whole designs that McDonald started working with. So this whole
16:41
Speaker 1: discussion and Golf illustrated it. It kind of prompted a
16:45
Speaker 1: brain wave for McDonald. He said to himself, surely if
16:51
Speaker 1: you build a course with eighteen of these ideal holes,
16:57
Speaker 1: then you would have an ideal golf course.
16:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a guy with good take or it.
17:00
Speaker 3: There.
17:02
Speaker 2: That's that's pretty good. I like that a lot.
17:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like I like how his mind works. He's like,
17:10
Speaker 1: nobody's ever thought of this.
17:11
Speaker 3: And nobody could get mad because everybody agrees to the best.
17:14
Speaker 3: So that's right, that's it.
17:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna kind of replicate
17:19
Speaker 1: these designs and then everybody will have to acknowledge, Oh
17:23
Speaker 1: my god, you have a red dan, you have an alps,
17:26
Speaker 1: you have a road hole.
17:28
Speaker 3: That's that great American novel way of thinking. Right there,
17:31
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna copy everybody else. Nobody's gonna get mad.
17:34
Speaker 1: Right, I'll just borrow a character from Melville and you know,
17:38
Speaker 1: a little bit of pros from Fitzgerald, and there you go.
17:42
Speaker 1: In any case, he spent the next decade or so
17:46
Speaker 1: researching the best holes of Great Britain. So he took
17:50
Speaker 1: multiple trips. He sent friends on trips to do research
17:53
Speaker 1: for him and to take measurements and to really nail
17:56
Speaker 1: these down. And he quickly discovered that replicating the holes
18:00
Speaker 1: with any real precision would be impossible because of course
18:04
Speaker 1: you would be working with a different piece of land,
18:07
Speaker 1: and many of these holes were just lay of the
18:09
Speaker 1: land holes. They were not manufactured. They derived their features
18:14
Speaker 1: from the topography, and so McDonald said, well, if I
18:18
Speaker 1: don't have this topography, then then I guess I can't
18:21
Speaker 1: exactly replicate them. So ultimately he decided to go for
18:25
Speaker 1: looser interpretations, basically extracting the strategic essence of these holes,
18:31
Speaker 1: boiling them down to their basic features, rather than copying them.
18:36
Speaker 1: And I think that it was in this process that
18:41
Speaker 1: McDonald came to understand golf course design on as deep
18:45
Speaker 1: and sophisticated a level as any architect of the Golden Age.
18:49
Speaker 1: It was when he started to try to interpret these
18:51
Speaker 1: holes and actually find out why they were great instead
18:56
Speaker 1: of just replicating them, that he became a great golf
19:01
Speaker 1: architecture mind, because you know, he essentially discovered for himself
19:07
Speaker 1: the strategic school of golf architecture, which we talked about
19:10
Speaker 1: in the in the first one oh one episode. So
19:13
Speaker 1: while he was doing this, he was also searching far
19:16
Speaker 1: and wide for a piece of land for his great
19:19
Speaker 1: American golf course. He looked at Maine, he looked, he
19:23
Speaker 1: was looking up and down the East coast, and he
19:26
Speaker 1: eventually settled on a piece of land right next to
19:29
Speaker 1: Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Long Island, in Pj's domain.
19:34
Speaker 1: So eventually found found his found.
19:36
Speaker 2: A lot of people find things in Southampton, so it makes.
19:40
Speaker 1: Sense, Yeah, find their summer house, you know. So uh,
19:45
Speaker 1: this would ultimately become, of course, the National Golf Links
19:48
Speaker 1: of America, which opened in nineteen eleven and received immediate
19:53
Speaker 1: rapturous praise. People went and played this course and were
19:56
Speaker 1: blown away by it. It was it was like nothing
19:59
Speaker 1: else that had been created in the States at the time.
20:02
Speaker 1: It was a next level golf course in every way.
20:06
Speaker 1: That's a very surface level account of the creation of
20:08
Speaker 1: National Golf Links that I just gave. I've done a
20:10
Speaker 1: deeper dive into that history with Chris Millard, who wrote
20:16
Speaker 1: the most recent historical book on National Golf Links. This
20:19
Speaker 1: is a Friday Podcast episode from about a year and
20:22
Speaker 1: a half ago called Great Courses National Golf Links, So
20:25
Speaker 1: check that out if you want more detail. But it
20:28
Speaker 1: wasn't just the ideal holes that made National Golf Links different.
20:32
Speaker 1: It was also the construction, the agronomy like in every way,
20:37
Speaker 1: and the amount of money that went into it like nothing.
20:40
Speaker 1: I don't think anything close to this amount of money
20:42
Speaker 1: had ever been spent on constructing a golf course before
20:45
Speaker 1: he got all the basically the richest people on the
20:47
Speaker 1: East Coast to pitch in for his great American golf course.
20:52
Speaker 1: He was a remarkable, remarkable mover and shaker McDonald and
20:57
Speaker 1: so National Golf Links turned out really well well, And
21:01
Speaker 1: of course it did represent the debut of McDonald's ideal holes.
21:06
Speaker 1: The National had great renditions of the Radan, the Alps,
21:10
Speaker 1: the road Hole, the Eden. It was all there. It
21:13
Speaker 1: was a fully formed statement of a golf course. And
21:17
Speaker 1: McDonald meant NGLA to be his one true master work, right,
21:21
Speaker 1: his example for all of American golf. He didn't really
21:24
Speaker 1: intend to build other golf courses. He was kind of like,
21:29
Speaker 1: I'm done.
21:30
Speaker 3: I mean, if if you build something in it immediately
21:33
Speaker 3: gets you know rapturous praise. As you said, I could.
21:37
Speaker 3: I could see how you want to just go out
21:39
Speaker 3: on top.
21:39
Speaker 2: I get that absolutely.
21:41
Speaker 1: And you know, he has this in common with a
21:44
Speaker 1: lot of great artists too, who want to create their
21:46
Speaker 1: one great thing and then it's like, Okay, that's what
21:48
Speaker 1: I devoted my life to and I'm done. But it
21:51
Speaker 1: didn't really turn out that way, because, of course people
21:54
Speaker 1: kept asking him to design more golf courses for them.
21:59
Speaker 1: All of his rich friend were like, Hey, this looks cool,
22:03
Speaker 1: I'd like one, and so he did design a few others,
22:06
Speaker 1: but for the most part, he passed off his commissions
22:09
Speaker 1: or his potential commissions to Seth Rayner, and Rayner was
22:14
Speaker 1: really the one who spread the idea of ideal holes broadly.
22:19
Speaker 1: Rayner became the Johnny Appleseed of this approach to golf
22:24
Speaker 1: course design and a big reason why why we know
22:27
Speaker 1: template holes today. And so that's the background of the
22:32
Speaker 1: ideal holes. Before we get into some examples of templates,
22:37
Speaker 1: and before we have maybe a little bit of discussion
22:40
Speaker 1: about the virtues of ideal holes as an approach to
22:42
Speaker 1: golf course design, I'd like to talk a bit about
22:46
Speaker 1: the USGA Green Section the USGA Green Section is a
22:49
Speaker 1: supporter of the Designing Golf podcast in its early days here,
22:53
Speaker 1: so thank you so much to the Green Section. Understanding
22:57
Speaker 1: the performance of your greens has never been easy year
23:00
Speaker 1: thanks to the GS three ball from the USGA Green Section.
23:04
Speaker 1: The GS three seamlessly connects to the Deacon management system,
23:09
Speaker 1: instantly telling you how fast, smooth, true, and firm your
23:13
Speaker 1: greens are. Now you can make data driven decisions, better
23:17
Speaker 1: manage resources, communicate to course personnel, and most importantly, create
23:22
Speaker 1: a playing experience for your golfers like never before. To
23:26
Speaker 1: learn more, visit the USGA Green Sections shop at GS
23:31
Speaker 1: shop dot USGA dot org. I've actually seen the GS
23:35
Speaker 1: three ball in action. We've been doing some documentaries lately
23:39
Speaker 1: about various turf operations throughout the country. I have seen
23:43
Speaker 1: the GS three ball in use and it is pretty cool.
23:46
Speaker 1: So check out that offering from the USGA Green Section.
23:51
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about a couple examples of templates. PJ.
23:55
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to have you put on your sort
23:57
Speaker 1: of visualizing hat now if we can. I know this
24:02
Speaker 1: can sometimes be tricky. For the YouTube version of this
24:05
Speaker 1: episode will maybe incorporate a couple of images of these
24:07
Speaker 1: holes to help out people who consume the podcast that way.
24:11
Speaker 1: But the first one I want to talk about is
24:13
Speaker 1: the redan. Where else would be.
24:15
Speaker 3: Like this is the number one, This is the number
24:18
Speaker 3: one that I gets mentioned by you guys all the time.
24:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's a very common type of hole. It is.
24:26
Speaker 1: It's spread like wildfire. Everybody, everybody has a radan. So
24:30
Speaker 1: this is based on the fifteenth hole at North Barrick.
24:34
Speaker 1: The key elements one. The green is kind of oriented
24:38
Speaker 1: on a forty five degree angle on a diagonal in
24:42
Speaker 1: relation to the t usually from short right to long
24:45
Speaker 1: left right. Okay, so it's set on a diagonal where
24:49
Speaker 1: if you're a right hander you kind of want to
24:51
Speaker 1: work a draw into there. The green is tilted from
24:56
Speaker 1: front to back okay, so from the front right to
25:00
Speaker 1: the back left section it's tilted away from the tee.
25:05
Speaker 1: A deep, often flashed up bunker guards the front left
25:09
Speaker 1: side of the green, so kind of in front of
25:11
Speaker 1: the green, sitting on that same diagonal as the green.
25:14
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's another bunker, even deeper one perhaps guarding the
25:19
Speaker 1: back right side of the green, so if you go
25:21
Speaker 1: over you'll end up there. Now, the original version at
25:25
Speaker 1: North Barrick has a pair of bunkers cut into a
25:28
Speaker 1: rise about fifty yards short of the green. This is
25:33
Speaker 1: I think actually where the name or Dan came from.
25:36
Speaker 1: Because Dan, and I'm sure people will correct me if
25:39
Speaker 1: I'm wrong. I didn't actually confirm this before I came
25:42
Speaker 1: on the podcast. But Dan, I believe, is a term
25:45
Speaker 1: for a military fortification. And my sense is that this
25:51
Speaker 1: feature at North Barrick, this like kind of dune like rise,
25:55
Speaker 1: that these bunkers are cut into fifty yards short of
25:58
Speaker 1: the green, kind of blocking the view of the green
26:01
Speaker 1: to an extent, is where that idea of a fortification
26:05
Speaker 1: came from, and where the notion of her Dan came from.
26:08
Speaker 1: But MacDonald and Rayner's dance often did not have this feature.
26:15
Speaker 1: Sometimes they did, often they didn't didn't because again, it
26:18
Speaker 1: would require some topography to do that, you would need
26:22
Speaker 1: a rise. So the essential elements of a modern radan
26:28
Speaker 1: tend to be that orientation of the green on a diagonal,
26:32
Speaker 1: and the fact that it runs front to back, and
26:36
Speaker 1: that often there's like a kicker slope, what's called a
26:38
Speaker 1: kicker slope, a little kind of backboard at the front
26:42
Speaker 1: right portion of the green where you can hit your
26:47
Speaker 1: ball into it and it kind of deflects the ball
26:50
Speaker 1: filters it back to the back left portion of the green,
26:54
Speaker 1: so it's like a ramp, right. I think this hole
26:58
Speaker 1: is at its most strategically interesting when the pin is
27:01
Speaker 1: in the back, and that's because you can choose between
27:06
Speaker 1: going straight at the pin over that big bunker in
27:09
Speaker 1: front of the green, or you can play it along
27:13
Speaker 1: the ground through the opening to the green on the right,
27:16
Speaker 1: maybe kind of sling a low draw in there, go
27:20
Speaker 1: through the opening to the green and let the ball
27:24
Speaker 1: release along that downslope, the front to back slope back
27:28
Speaker 1: to the pin. That's the kind of clever way to
27:30
Speaker 1: play the hole. You don't have to make the big
27:32
Speaker 1: carry and you can kind of work it around. So
27:35
Speaker 1: you have options here, right, which is the soul of
27:38
Speaker 1: strategic golf options and the attendant risks and rewards. So
27:44
Speaker 1: the reason you've heard this term is that this is
27:47
Speaker 1: like the most replicated par three design in the history
27:50
Speaker 1: of golf. It is often done poorly or just partially right.
27:55
Speaker 1: The most commonly missing feature is that front to back
27:59
Speaker 1: slope because people don't usually like building holes where the
28:03
Speaker 1: green runs away from the player. But the problem is
28:06
Speaker 1: when you don't have that, you kind of lose the
28:08
Speaker 1: ability to work the ball to a back pin through
28:12
Speaker 1: that kind of clever, low running shot that I talked about.
28:16
Speaker 1: And so often people will just refer to any hole
28:20
Speaker 1: with a diagonally set green as a re dan, But personally,
28:24
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a dan at all unless you
28:27
Speaker 1: have that element of a kicker slope and a front
28:30
Speaker 1: to back slope to get the ball to a backpin
28:34
Speaker 1: through other methods than just going straight at it. I
28:37
Speaker 1: think if you don't have that, you really don't have
28:39
Speaker 1: her a dan. Reverse or dance became common as well.
28:44
Speaker 1: When people say reverse ra dan, they just mean the
28:47
Speaker 1: exact same design, but the green is set on a
28:49
Speaker 1: diagonal that would seem to accept a fade from a
28:53
Speaker 1: right handed player. This maybe isn't as common because when
28:58
Speaker 1: you know most people are right hand. Not to disrespect
29:01
Speaker 1: the lefties out there, sorry that ra dans aren't as
29:03
Speaker 1: fun for you, but uh, when you're hitting a fade,
29:07
Speaker 1: your ball stops quicker if you're a right hander and
29:10
Speaker 1: if you're a left hander, but your fing goes the
29:11
Speaker 1: other direction right hand or hitting a draw to a
29:15
Speaker 1: traditional radan, the ball is going to have less spin
29:19
Speaker 1: and it's going to have that element of being able
29:21
Speaker 1: to run along the ground, and that's why right to
29:24
Speaker 1: left radans are more common. Does that all make sense?
29:27
Speaker 1: Were you able to visualize that and stay with me
29:29
Speaker 1: any questions?
29:30
Speaker 2: Yeah? So A, I think it makes sense.
29:34
Speaker 3: I'm now trying to like because it's pretty common, think
29:38
Speaker 3: of like holes that I might have seen at some
29:41
Speaker 3: point that would that would fit this. I think, I mean,
29:46
Speaker 3: I I it definitely makes sense, and I actually appreciate
29:50
Speaker 3: the idea of I get why maybe a modern day architect,
29:54
Speaker 3: if you're building a hole like now with the you know,
29:58
Speaker 3: incessant need for a whole in one or give people
30:01
Speaker 3: a chance that you want to have people see it
30:03
Speaker 3: roll in back towards you versus a feeder pin away.
30:07
Speaker 3: But I actually I like the idea of the feeter
30:10
Speaker 3: pin away and having it kind of slope downward to
30:13
Speaker 3: me as a player, I feel like that would be
30:15
Speaker 3: more fun than having it run further and kind of
30:19
Speaker 3: work the ball versus just you know, hit it straight
30:22
Speaker 3: up in the air and have it roll back down
30:24
Speaker 3: towards you kind of thing.
30:25
Speaker 1: That's where the fun comes from seeing the ball go
30:27
Speaker 1: along the ground. It's the most fun thing to do
30:30
Speaker 1: in golf, and the most fun thing to watch in
30:32
Speaker 1: golf is what the ball does after it hits the ground.
30:36
Speaker 1: And when you have a green going away from you,
30:38
Speaker 1: it behaves a lot like firmness because it accelerates the
30:42
Speaker 1: ball as it goes along the ground, and you really
30:45
Speaker 1: have to consider what to do. Are you going to
30:47
Speaker 1: try to stop it or are you going to just
30:49
Speaker 1: accept that the slope is going to do what it
30:51
Speaker 1: does to your ball and use that. And that's the
30:54
Speaker 1: central question of a proper radan. Now you'll see a
30:58
Speaker 1: lot of as I said before, or diagonally set greens
31:01
Speaker 1: out there in the world of golf, and somebody might
31:03
Speaker 1: refer to them as a radan, but it's it's it's
31:06
Speaker 1: not really unless unless you can work the ball along
31:09
Speaker 1: the ground. I recommend that you don't correct people when
31:12
Speaker 1: when they not that you would do this. It's not
31:15
Speaker 1: really your personality.
31:17
Speaker 3: Now I feel like I just not along and yeah, right,
31:20
Speaker 3: but in my head, but I get up to that green,
31:22
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be like, oh, is there slope here?
31:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I can't count. It doesn't doesn't count.
31:27
Speaker 1: That doesn't I'm not going to check that off my list. Yeah, so,
31:30
Speaker 1: really like true radans are a little more rare than
31:33
Speaker 1: than people think. You know, diagonal greens with a bunker
31:36
Speaker 1: in front, you know, you'll see that all the time.
31:38
Speaker 1: But a real radan with like a kicker slope and
31:41
Speaker 1: the ability to to work the ball in that way,
31:44
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's it's fairly rare because you know,
31:47
Speaker 1: front to back sloping greens are are fairly rare these days. Okay,
31:52
Speaker 1: So that's the that's the radan template. That's always very helpful.
31:56
Speaker 3: I feel like I needed that one. If I was
31:58
Speaker 3: leaving here with something I think I've checked that buy.
32:01
Speaker 1: That wasn't essential. I'll talk to you about one other,
32:05
Speaker 1: and then if there's if there's another one that you
32:07
Speaker 1: want to talk about, we can we can kind of
32:09
Speaker 1: improvise that as well. But the next one I want
32:13
Speaker 1: to talk to you about is the Alps. Okay, I
32:16
Speaker 1: like this name. First of all, this is based on
32:20
Speaker 1: the seventeenth hole at Prestwick, So it's not a course
32:23
Speaker 1: that people are super familiar with these days unless they've
32:27
Speaker 1: actually played it. Because it's not a course that shows
32:30
Speaker 1: up on TV. But this was the original Open Championship
32:33
Speaker 1: course back when the Open was thirty six holes. Prestwick
32:37
Speaker 1: was twelve holes and they would play the course three times. Yeah, yeah,
32:44
Speaker 1: that was the Open.
32:46
Speaker 2: Well.
32:46
Speaker 1: Eventually Prestwick got expanded to eighteen holes and the Alps
32:50
Speaker 1: became the seventeenth hole on that course. But some version
32:53
Speaker 1: of the Alps was always was always there on the course.
32:56
Speaker 1: The key element of this hole, and I know this
32:58
Speaker 1: is going to challenge you because of what we've discussed
33:01
Speaker 1: with regard to blind holes. There's a huge dune directly
33:05
Speaker 1: in front of the green, and then typically there's a
33:11
Speaker 1: bunker between the bottom of the far side of that
33:14
Speaker 1: dune and the green. So you not only are hitting
33:17
Speaker 1: over a dune to get to the green, but there's
33:20
Speaker 1: a bunker on the other side of it. Yeah, you
33:22
Speaker 1: got to get over. You got to really make the carry.
33:24
Speaker 1: This is you know, this is not what i'd call
33:27
Speaker 1: the strategic school of golf architecture. This is pretty penal,
33:31
Speaker 1: at least in its original essence. You know, just this
33:34
Speaker 1: feature of the hole, it's fairly penal because you've got
33:37
Speaker 1: to bake a big aerial carry. The fun of it
33:41
Speaker 1: is hitting your shot and then getting up and seeing
33:43
Speaker 1: the result. You know, if you have a fun attitude
33:47
Speaker 1: about it, then you're like, all right, my in the bunker,
33:50
Speaker 1: My in the dune, My on the green. You never
33:52
Speaker 1: know until you get there, so completely blind approach, and
33:57
Speaker 1: often the green will be sitting in a hollow, a
34:00
Speaker 1: kind of punch bowl often what we refer to as
34:02
Speaker 1: a punch You may hear that term a lot too,
34:04
Speaker 1: a punch bowl green. This is an example of it's
34:08
Speaker 1: not always a pure punch bowl green, but it's sitting
34:11
Speaker 1: in a hollow there. And so if that means if
34:14
Speaker 1: you get over the dune and get over the bunker,
34:17
Speaker 1: then the green is kind of friendly to you because
34:20
Speaker 1: if you're on the right side of it, well, it's
34:21
Speaker 1: going to slope down to the middle. If you're on
34:22
Speaker 1: the left side, it's going to slip down the middle.
34:24
Speaker 1: If you're long, it's going to you just don't want
34:26
Speaker 1: to be short, and so if you make the carry,
34:29
Speaker 1: then your hole, you your ball is probably going to
34:32
Speaker 1: end up close to the hole. The key wrinkle that
34:35
Speaker 1: McDonald and Rayner introduced to many of their versions that
34:39
Speaker 1: I think is brilliant is that they would have this
34:44
Speaker 1: dune or this rise in front of the green, they
34:47
Speaker 1: would have the kind of low set green in a hollow,
34:51
Speaker 1: But then they would offer you an option from the
34:54
Speaker 1: tee to get a view of the green. Potentially, if
34:58
Speaker 1: you hit a long, risky drive up a particular side
35:03
Speaker 1: of the hole, then from that position you might be
35:06
Speaker 1: able to see around the dune to the green. If
35:10
Speaker 1: you hit your t shop especially well and positioned it.
35:15
Speaker 1: You know, perhaps there are some bunkers guarding this position
35:17
Speaker 1: in the fairway. But if you take that.
35:19
Speaker 3: Ask, now we're back to angles. Angles is gonna be
35:22
Speaker 3: a whole different episode. But now we're back to angles.
35:24
Speaker 1: Or back to angles. This angle is vision related because
35:31
Speaker 1: if you take the risk, then you can see the
35:34
Speaker 1: green on your approach. And that's nice because the whole
35:37
Speaker 1: thing about that blind approach is that it's uncomfortable. You
35:40
Speaker 1: don't know maybe where to aim, You don't know, you
35:43
Speaker 1: don't really have a true intuitive sense of how far
35:46
Speaker 1: to hit your ball. But McDonald and Rayner, in their
35:49
Speaker 1: versions of the Alps often did give you this option
35:53
Speaker 1: to see the green if you took a risk. So
35:56
Speaker 1: that's the Alps hole reactions to that.
35:59
Speaker 2: I like the idea of the punch bowl green.
36:01
Speaker 3: I think I I was gonna add that that was
36:05
Speaker 3: one of my follow up questions, so that a punch
36:08
Speaker 3: bowl is not a template or is a template or
36:11
Speaker 3: is that just like a design characteristic rather.
36:15
Speaker 1: It's a good question. I think I would consider it. Yeah,
36:20
Speaker 1: it's sort of in between. There are certain templates, so
36:24
Speaker 1: called templates, that are just green designs, and those would
36:29
Speaker 1: include maybe the double plateau hole. Really, what the double
36:33
Speaker 1: plateau is is a green with two plateaus and then
36:38
Speaker 1: a channel between them, and then a lower section like
36:42
Speaker 1: a three section green, where you have these two high
36:45
Speaker 1: sections where you can put pins, and then one low
36:47
Speaker 1: section where you can put a pin, and then a
36:50
Speaker 1: little trough between the plateaus. That's a double plateau green,
36:56
Speaker 1: but it's not really specific as to what the other
37:00
Speaker 1: features of a whole of the hole would be. You know,
37:02
Speaker 1: often a double plateau green is paired with a principal's
37:05
Speaker 1: nose bunker complex, which is based on a bunker complex
37:08
Speaker 1: on the sixteenth Hole at Saint Andrew's where you have
37:11
Speaker 1: kind of a couple of bunkers cut into a small
37:15
Speaker 1: mound or dune, and if you look at it from above,
37:19
Speaker 1: it looks like a nose with two nostrils, right, the
37:22
Speaker 1: bunkers the two nostrils. Silly, but you don't really see
37:26
Speaker 1: it that way from the from the ground. If you
37:27
Speaker 1: look at it from the air then in any case,
37:32
Speaker 1: so these these some of these motifs, like the double
37:35
Speaker 1: plateau green and the Principal's nose bunker complex are kind
37:39
Speaker 1: of free floating, so it's not like a whole integrated
37:42
Speaker 1: hole design. And I guess I would consider the punch
37:45
Speaker 1: bowl one of those, but there are holes on courses
37:51
Speaker 1: designed by MacDonald and Rayner with the name punch bowl,
37:53
Speaker 1: and and so it can get a little bit confusing
37:56
Speaker 1: that way. I think the best way to understand templates, though,
38:00
Speaker 1: is that they're not always strict. The par three templates,
38:03
Speaker 1: the typical par three templates, the radan, the beerz, the
38:07
Speaker 1: short hole, and the edenhole. You'll see those over and
38:11
Speaker 1: over and over in kind of similar configurations. The topography
38:17
Speaker 1: will be different and the layer it will be.
38:19
Speaker 2: On a par three, right, it's kind of it is
38:21
Speaker 2: what it is.
38:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Whereas on the par four's and par fives
38:28
Speaker 1: often elements will be remixed, rearranged, different, different things will
38:33
Speaker 1: be used in different places, and so I think I
38:36
Speaker 1: would consider the term punch bowl to be part of
38:40
Speaker 1: that network of motifs that are sometimes used in some
38:44
Speaker 1: places and sometimes in other places.
38:48
Speaker 3: Okay, that makes sense, I mean, I mean back to
38:50
Speaker 3: back to the template itself. Then I like the idea
38:55
Speaker 3: of the reward of carrying this this dune you get
38:58
Speaker 3: a feeder green. That that makes sense to me in
39:02
Speaker 3: my binary yes or no one ones and zeros. If
39:05
Speaker 3: I carry this, I deserve to be rewarded. And I
39:08
Speaker 3: also I like the I like the idea of taking
39:11
Speaker 3: an angle and getting to see past the bunker. So
39:16
Speaker 3: I I I think I'm visualizing it correctly, and I
39:21
Speaker 3: I like the idea of it on paper a lot.
39:24
Speaker 1: Okay, that's good, but you're uncomfortable with blind approach shots, yeah,
39:28
Speaker 1: which is understandable.
39:30
Speaker 2: Yeah.
39:30
Speaker 3: No, I I think I would be infuriated, like standing
39:33
Speaker 3: in the fair way looking at it. But if you
39:35
Speaker 3: told me, like, hey, all you have to do is
39:37
Speaker 3: hit this number and it's going to feed down, I'd
39:39
Speaker 3: be like, Okay, at least I'll try that. Like that,
39:42
Speaker 3: that makes sense. I deserve to be rewarded in some
39:45
Speaker 3: some circumstance there.
39:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely so you would. You would be frustrated
39:51
Speaker 1: by the Maiden hole, which as a whole was a
39:56
Speaker 1: hole at Royal Saint George's where you where it was
40:00
Speaker 1: a par three but basically an Alps whole because you
40:05
Speaker 1: are standing on the tee and just hitting over a
40:07
Speaker 1: dune to a semi kind of punch bowl green on
40:11
Speaker 1: the other side. That was the Maiden hole. Now, confusingly enough,
40:17
Speaker 1: McDonald and Rayner developed on some of their courses a
40:20
Speaker 1: maiden template. It didn't really have anything. It was more
40:24
Speaker 1: of a green design than a replica of the Saint
40:29
Speaker 1: George's Maiden hole. And so that that kind of introduces
40:35
Speaker 1: a key idea of Rainer and McDonald's templates that sometimes
40:43
Speaker 1: the hole, sometimes the ideal holes are based on models
40:47
Speaker 1: that are either unknown or are so different from what
40:52
Speaker 1: McDonald and Rayner ended up creating that it's hard to
40:55
Speaker 1: see the connection. I yeah, So when people talk about
40:59
Speaker 1: template hole, it's really not a strict one to one
41:03
Speaker 1: relationship between the model and what ultimately got built. On
41:07
Speaker 1: many of McDonald and Rayner's courses, sometimes there was some
41:11
Speaker 1: real interpretation reinterpretation going on, and sometimes there was just
41:15
Speaker 1: a complete departure from the original model, and you just like,
41:20
Speaker 1: it's a mystery what was going through their minds And
41:23
Speaker 1: nobody really knows how they came up with what they
41:25
Speaker 1: came up with, and so there was there was, there
41:29
Speaker 1: was a lot of creativity in this process of developing
41:32
Speaker 1: ideal holes, and we're still coming to terms with what
41:37
Speaker 1: exactly they did. There are some unknowns here. Basically, are
41:41
Speaker 1: there any other template holes terms that you would that
41:46
Speaker 1: you're curious to have identified?
41:48
Speaker 2: Yeah? I have.
41:48
Speaker 3: I have two ways I want to take this. So
41:50
Speaker 3: on the are there any other holes? How does a
41:53
Speaker 3: road hole work when it's.
41:55
Speaker 2: Not the road hole?
41:56
Speaker 3: Because I understand what it looks like there, but I
42:00
Speaker 3: how do you take that out of that context and
42:02
Speaker 3: there's no hotel and you're not you know, you're removing
42:05
Speaker 3: all circumstantial, you know, outside influences.
42:10
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, first of all, that when McDonald first
42:12
Speaker 1: there's no Old Course hotel. Yeah it was, it was
42:18
Speaker 1: something different. But but yes, that's a great question because
42:21
Speaker 1: the road hole uses certain unique features of the Saint
42:27
Speaker 1: Andrew's city scape to create its strategy, one of which
42:31
Speaker 1: is that little corner with you know that now the
42:33
Speaker 1: Old Course hotel, but there's always been some amount of
42:37
Speaker 1: building or human settlement there that players are kind of
42:39
Speaker 1: hitting over. And then there's the road, of course, on
42:42
Speaker 1: that backside of the green. This is an example of
42:46
Speaker 1: where McDonald may have looked at the original version of
42:51
Speaker 1: the hole said, clearly, this needs to be one of
42:53
Speaker 1: the ideal holes, because everybody agrees that it's the greatest
42:58
Speaker 1: three shot hole or two shot hole or whatever you
43:00
Speaker 1: wanted to consider it in the world. We've got to
43:03
Speaker 1: have some version of this, but we can't replicate exactly
43:07
Speaker 1: the features that it has in its landscape. And so
43:10
Speaker 1: I think what McDonald and Rayner ended up doing in
43:13
Speaker 1: their versions was boiling the hole down to its strategic fundamentals,
43:19
Speaker 1: its angles. Essentially, if you think about what the road
43:22
Speaker 1: Hole really is, beyond just the particularities of the hotel
43:28
Speaker 1: and the road, it is a sharply dog legging right
43:33
Speaker 1: hole with an intimidating hazard on the inside of the
43:38
Speaker 1: dog leg and plenty of room to play on the
43:42
Speaker 1: outside of the dog leg. But then a green oriented
43:47
Speaker 1: from right to left along that redan diagonal, but designed
43:52
Speaker 1: completely differently from a ridan with a super deep, terrifying
43:57
Speaker 1: bunker embedded into that green on its left side, and
44:04
Speaker 1: then a hazard, a kind of straight line hazard on
44:09
Speaker 1: the outside on the other side. And so the conundrum
44:12
Speaker 1: you find is that if you bail out away from
44:16
Speaker 1: the hazard on the inside of the dog leg, then
44:19
Speaker 1: you're facing approach and approach where you're hitting over that
44:22
Speaker 1: terrifying pop punker and toward the road on the other side.
44:27
Speaker 1: You are going to end up either in the pop
44:29
Speaker 1: bunker or on the road, neither of which is good.
44:33
Speaker 1: And maybe you'll maybe you have some space to bail
44:36
Speaker 1: out on one side or the other. You could play
44:37
Speaker 1: short of the green. Some people even provocatively play long
44:41
Speaker 1: of the green on the road hole, but that is
44:43
Speaker 1: the strategic essence of the whole. Unless you challenge the
44:46
Speaker 1: inside of the dog leg, you're going to face an
44:50
Speaker 1: enormously difficult second shot. And that is what McDonald and
44:55
Speaker 1: Rayner extracted from the road hole. So ultimately what they
44:59
Speaker 1: did was in st out of the road, they often
45:02
Speaker 1: just put a bunker on the other side there to
45:04
Speaker 1: stand in for the road, kind of a linear bunker,
45:08
Speaker 1: basically in the same position and in the same orientation
45:11
Speaker 1: as the road, and then maybe they'd find something else
45:14
Speaker 1: for the inside of the dog lake, maybe some trees,
45:17
Speaker 1: maybe maybe some water, you know, things varied, or maybe
45:21
Speaker 1: just some bunkers to again stand in for that hazard
45:24
Speaker 1: that you would want to avoid on the inside of
45:27
Speaker 1: the dog lake.
45:29
Speaker 3: So that was my follow up question was does it
45:33
Speaker 3: need to be like a boundary, like do you have
45:36
Speaker 3: to have a like a literal like road or out
45:41
Speaker 3: of play or whatever, like does this have to be
45:43
Speaker 3: pushed up against the edge of a property or like
45:46
Speaker 3: what are you throwing on that side to that end there?
45:49
Speaker 1: You could definitely argue that in order to recreate the
45:52
Speaker 1: tension of the road hole, you need a boundary because
45:56
Speaker 1: you really need those hazards on that outside of the
46:00
Speaker 1: green and the inside of the dog leg to be
46:04
Speaker 1: absolutely just the things that you know you need to
46:08
Speaker 1: avoid at all costs. So I think some people would
46:12
Speaker 1: argue that, yes, it needs to be an out of
46:13
Speaker 1: bounds kind of situation. But the fact is that if
46:16
Speaker 1: you look at McDonald and Rainer's versions of the road hole,
46:20
Speaker 1: they usually didn't have that because they didn't usually have
46:24
Speaker 1: a boundary line with the right dimensions to create that,
46:29
Speaker 1: so they needed to create it in another way. But yeah,
46:32
Speaker 1: I think that in general, the road Hole, to my mind,
46:37
Speaker 1: this is just my opinion, is not always the most
46:40
Speaker 1: successful McDonald and Rainer template. I think precisely because of
46:44
Speaker 1: this reason, because usually it's not a boundary and some
46:48
Speaker 1: of the character of the hole is lost as a result.
46:53
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen a version of the
46:56
Speaker 1: road Hole that exceeds the original.
47:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, Whereas whereas.
47:01
Speaker 1: Some other templates, in many cases the renditions by MacDonald
47:07
Speaker 1: and Rayner were better, and I don't think that's the
47:11
Speaker 1: case with the road Hole. Is the original so good?
47:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like it would be hard to beat
47:16
Speaker 3: that actually having the road and the bunker, you know,
47:20
Speaker 3: how you can put you know, a penal bunker in
47:24
Speaker 3: that position, but are you getting it to be that
47:27
Speaker 3: exact bunker? And how bad that is in that slope?
47:31
Speaker 3: I you know, I feel like it's hard to replicate anywhere.
47:34
Speaker 1: This is always the problem with influences in art, because
47:40
Speaker 1: if you're just trying to replicate something that you really love,
47:42
Speaker 1: a really great work of art, you're always going to
47:45
Speaker 1: fall a little short because it's not the original. And
47:47
Speaker 1: even if you try to tweak or improve some elements
47:50
Speaker 1: of it, the original is going to have something about
47:53
Speaker 1: it that is just better. And so in order to
47:57
Speaker 1: exceed your influences or be as great as your influences,
48:00
Speaker 1: you need to transform them in the process of making
48:03
Speaker 1: new art. And I think that's why the McDonald and
48:06
Speaker 1: Rainer templates that are really different from their models tend
48:10
Speaker 1: to be the better ones.
48:12
Speaker 3: So that's that's kind of the second half of my
48:16
Speaker 3: two ways that I wanted to take this. I wanted
48:18
Speaker 3: to figure out what the road hole was when you
48:19
Speaker 3: remove all context of the actual road hole. Now my
48:23
Speaker 3: question to you is, do you think, in your opinion,
48:29
Speaker 3: however you want to take this, like, are the template
48:31
Speaker 3: holes good?
48:34
Speaker 1: Like this is a question I had for you as well.
48:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, even obviously they are to some extent that they're
48:40
Speaker 3: still being used one hundred and twenty years after this
48:44
Speaker 3: all started, But like, would you prefer to have these
48:49
Speaker 3: continually be used into the future or is it time
48:52
Speaker 3: to kind of move on and figure out something new?
48:55
Speaker 1: Wonderful question? Let me throw it back at you briefly
48:58
Speaker 1: before I give my thoughts on it. Do you think
49:01
Speaker 1: the template holes are unoriginal? That's the first question. Do
49:04
Speaker 1: you think their lack of originality is a problem?
49:08
Speaker 3: I don't think it's a problem because, like you said,
49:10
Speaker 3: like you're never getting the same land, and it's not
49:14
Speaker 3: going to be kind of cookie cutter, like every single
49:17
Speaker 3: time you build it is going to be the exact
49:20
Speaker 3: same thing. I like having aspects of recurring motifs, like
49:25
Speaker 3: you said, throughout an architect's kind of portfolio. I think
49:30
Speaker 3: that makes sense. That's kind of like any kind of art,
49:33
Speaker 3: that you're going to have kind of recurring themes or
49:36
Speaker 3: identifiable characteristics. But you know, I think, especially when you're
49:42
Speaker 3: talking about the you know, amount of land that now
49:47
Speaker 3: some of these courses are taking up, like if you
49:49
Speaker 3: have the opportunity to get creative, I wouldn't necessarily be
49:54
Speaker 3: against that either.
49:56
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, no, I think you've thought through that really well.
50:01
Speaker 1: For me, what you said at the beginning that the
50:04
Speaker 1: land differentiates template holes from each other is the key
50:09
Speaker 1: thing to understand about McDonald and Rayner's own courses. I
50:14
Speaker 1: think when you look at these courses from a Google
50:18
Speaker 1: Earth view, you might say they're just doing the same
50:21
Speaker 1: holes over and over again. But when you play them,
50:25
Speaker 1: that kind of flies out of your mind. Because each
50:29
Speaker 1: McDonald and Rainer course, especially their best ones, especially National
50:34
Speaker 1: Golf Links or the leado As recreated in the Sand Valley,
50:36
Speaker 1: or Rainer's best courses like the course at Yale or
50:41
Speaker 1: Yamen's Hall or Chicago Golf Club. When you actually play
50:46
Speaker 1: these courses, they feel so specific and original to their
50:51
Speaker 1: piece of land. I think especially Rainer's genius because he
50:56
Speaker 1: designed so many more courses than McDonald, But Rayner's genius
50:59
Speaker 1: was finding different ways to adapt these template ideas to
51:05
Speaker 1: different pieces of land is really an interesting exercise, and
51:09
Speaker 1: he managed to come up with courses that just feel
51:11
Speaker 1: totally original time after time, totally unique. And that was
51:16
Speaker 1: something that goes beyond just theorizing the ideal holes. It
51:21
Speaker 1: drew on the skills of routing and you know, just
51:27
Speaker 1: finding opportunities in the land that you know were field skills.
51:33
Speaker 1: They were on the ground skills that McDonald and Rayner
51:37
Speaker 1: had in doing this. So their genius goes way way
51:41
Speaker 1: beyond just coming up with the ideal holes. Now, I
51:44
Speaker 1: think it's true that occasionally I wish that Rayner would
51:51
Speaker 1: have used different Part three ideas. That's really where this
51:57
Speaker 1: kind of starts to become a bit repetitive. And whenever
52:00
Speaker 1: Rainer incorporates a new kind of par three into his
52:05
Speaker 1: set of part three's on a particular course, I get
52:08
Speaker 1: really exciting. WHOA, yeah, I haven't seen this before. That's
52:13
Speaker 1: where it becomes exciting. And also something to bear in
52:16
Speaker 1: mind is that on every McDonald and Rainer course there
52:19
Speaker 1: are holes that they didn't replicate elsewhere. It's not one
52:23
Speaker 1: hundred percent template holes. On any McDonald and Rayner course,
52:27
Speaker 1: there are always kind of one of one holes, and
52:31
Speaker 1: sometimes it's those ones that really jump out at you
52:34
Speaker 1: for a variety of reasons. And maybe that does indicate
52:39
Speaker 1: a new direction for golf architecture after McDonald and Rayner,
52:42
Speaker 1: that that pursuing these original ideas moving beyond the templates
52:46
Speaker 1: was the way to go. At the same time, I
52:49
Speaker 1: do appreciate the way that the ideal holes were adapted
52:53
Speaker 1: to each landscape of each course, and I don't necessarily
52:56
Speaker 1: wish that they did that. They did things differently. Now.
53:00
Speaker 1: I think it's a separate question should modern architects use
53:03
Speaker 1: template holes. What's your thought about that.
53:08
Speaker 3: I think there's probably a line, a really fickle line,
53:12
Speaker 3: between use and overuse. I wouldn't say don't do it,
53:16
Speaker 3: but I would caution against overdoing it. I don't know
53:20
Speaker 3: exactly where that line is. Like you said, like the
53:23
Speaker 3: dan comes up a lot, you want to do one
53:26
Speaker 3: of those like cool, but maybe don't like put all
53:30
Speaker 3: of them out there, you know what I mean?
53:32
Speaker 1: Right? And there are some modern courses that use all
53:36
Speaker 1: template holes. Old McDonald at Bandon Dune's is an example,
53:40
Speaker 1: and Gil Hants recently did one in Florida called Kinsale.
53:44
Speaker 1: And these courses are good Old McDonald I love, But
53:49
Speaker 1: what old McDonald did is that it took the template
53:52
Speaker 1: holes and did something new with them. That course doesn't
53:56
Speaker 1: look like a McDonald and Rainer course. The aesthetics are
53:58
Speaker 1: totally different. The way the bunkers greens are built is
54:01
Speaker 1: totally different. It looks much more like Saint Andrew's than
54:04
Speaker 1: it does like National Golf Links. And that was the
54:08
Speaker 1: new idea that Tom Duck introduced. So in my opinion,
54:12
Speaker 1: I'm with you. Don't overdo it, first of all, because
54:15
Speaker 1: they've already been done really well. And if you're gonna
54:19
Speaker 1: do it, find a new spin, find a new slant.
54:22
Speaker 2: Find a new slant. These are perfectly normal collers. Find
54:26
Speaker 2: find a new.
54:26
Speaker 1: Slat, perfectly normal template holes. Yeah, find find your new
54:31
Speaker 1: slant and do it in that way. But to an extent,
54:36
Speaker 1: the purpose of McDonald and Rayner's template holes has has
54:41
Speaker 1: gone because their original purpose was to introduce great design
54:47
Speaker 1: ideas to America. They did that. Yeah, And now that
54:51
Speaker 1: they've done that, I guess it's time for us all
54:55
Speaker 1: to move on. And then, besides that, another question that's
54:59
Speaker 1: ra by McDonald and Rayner's project here recreating the ideal holes,
55:05
Speaker 1: a bigger question about the entire idea of it is
55:10
Speaker 1: whether a course with the eighteen best holes is necessarily
55:16
Speaker 1: the best golf course. That was McDonald's theory at the beginning.
55:20
Speaker 1: If I create eighteen ideal holes, I will have the
55:23
Speaker 1: ideal golf course for a variety of reasons. I don't
55:26
Speaker 1: think I agree.
55:27
Speaker 3: No, I feel like you need what's making the holes great.
55:31
Speaker 3: I've never been to say Andrews, but I think part
55:35
Speaker 3: of what makes the road hole great, for example, is
55:39
Speaker 3: the context of it and having it be, you know,
55:44
Speaker 3: late in the round where it's positioned in the routing,
55:47
Speaker 3: having the road, having the now hotel like, all of
55:50
Speaker 3: that is what makes the whole legendary. And if you
55:55
Speaker 3: remove literally all of that, then it's just like a
55:58
Speaker 3: nice gulfer.
56:00
Speaker 1: Think you're exactly right. The wonder of Saint Andrew's is
56:05
Speaker 1: the journey out to the estuary and back to town.
56:11
Speaker 1: That's what's so great about I mean, that's one of
56:14
Speaker 1: the things that's so great about that golf course that
56:16
Speaker 1: that accounts for a lot of its emotional impact on players.
56:19
Speaker 1: That you kind of you kind of go on an
56:22
Speaker 1: adventure away from town and then for the last several holes,
56:25
Speaker 1: the town gets bigger and bigger in your frame of
56:29
Speaker 1: view until you're finally right in it. And part of
56:33
Speaker 1: the magic of the road hole is that it directly
56:35
Speaker 1: engages with the town. The town is like part of that. Yeah,
56:41
Speaker 1: that's right, And this is what you've been building towards
56:43
Speaker 1: throughout the whole round. You went away from it, now
56:46
Speaker 1: you're coming back to it, and so that is that
56:49
Speaker 1: is a big part of why the road hole is
56:51
Speaker 1: so cool. And and when you take it out of
56:54
Speaker 1: context and you and you make it the fourth hole
56:56
Speaker 1: on a golf course and you and you don't have
56:58
Speaker 1: those elements of the town there, then what you have
57:02
Speaker 1: is the strategy, which is really cool, but it is different.
57:07
Speaker 1: And that's why that's why responding to the particular piece
57:12
Speaker 1: of land that you have in designing a golf course
57:15
Speaker 1: is probably always the best method. Now, if you don't
57:18
Speaker 1: have anything in that piece of land that's interesting, then
57:21
Speaker 1: you can consider what to do from there. But if
57:25
Speaker 1: you have a piece of land with great features in it,
57:28
Speaker 1: then the first job is to use those features well.
57:32
Speaker 1: And that's what the old course does, and by the way,
57:35
Speaker 1: that's what so many of McDonald and Rayner's best courses
57:37
Speaker 1: do as well. In addition to having these template holes,
57:41
Speaker 1: they also use the land extremely well. They don't miss
57:45
Speaker 1: any opportunities. Does that make you feel more comfortable with
57:48
Speaker 1: the template holes now, PJ? There are many more specific
57:51
Speaker 1: instances to talk about, but I hope that that's gotten
57:54
Speaker 1: you to a point where at least the discussion as
57:57
Speaker 1: a whole makes sense.
57:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well again, I wanted to leave here with knowing
58:02
Speaker 2: whatever Dan was. I think I'm hammered.
58:05
Speaker 3: I got that one locked down, so mission accomplished. All
58:09
Speaker 3: of this other historical context is great gravy, but I'm
58:14
Speaker 3: leaving here with something I love it.
58:17
Speaker 1: PJ. Always a pleasure to talk to you about golf architecture.
58:21
Speaker 1: One oh one. We'll do it again soon, and please
58:24
Speaker 1: let me know if there's another topic that you want
58:25
Speaker 1: to dig into.
58:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll have to think about it, but I don't know.
58:30
Speaker 3: Give me a couple of weeks of hearing you guys
58:31
Speaker 3: talk about something and something will pop it in my brain.
58:33
Speaker 1: I'm sure exactly. This episode of Designing Golf was produced
58:47
Speaker 1: by our guest PJ Clark. Thank you PJ for everything
58:51
Speaker 1: you do online. Now, if you've been enjoying Designing Golf,
58:56
Speaker 1: leave us a rating and review wherever you happen to
58:59
Speaker 1: be listening to us. We like to hear feedback, and
59:01
Speaker 1: also consider joining Frida Egg Golf Club recently renamed as
59:06
Speaker 1: we relaunched our website. We're building a great community in
59:09
Speaker 1: there where we talk about things like Dan's and so
59:13
Speaker 1: if you like talking about that kind of stuff, then
59:15
Speaker 1: come join us in Frida Egg Golf Club. Go to
59:18
Speaker 1: the Frida Egg dot com slash membership enjoy our upcoming
59:24
Speaker 1: golf here where you know, we just finished the PGA
59:27
Speaker 1: Championship and the US Open is quickly approaching. So we're
59:30
Speaker 1: going to do some fun things on designing golf that
59:33
Speaker 1: are related to the major championship venues, So make sure
59:37
Speaker 1: to stick with us for that thank you for listening,
59:39
Speaker 1: and we'll be back again soon with another episode.