Howard Swan: My principles of golf course design

Emma Williams
By Emma Williams October 25, 2011 13:30

Every member of a club, every professional golfer and every player thinks that he or she is a golf course architect and can be a golf course architect – just like each and every one of us feels that we can be a greenkeeper. It is easy to be an expert!

Designing a golf course, or redesigning an existing one in a renovation or improvement exercise, is a fascinating task, an exacting one and very specialist in its technical, as well as in its artistic nature. It needs to be an experience in expert hands wherever it is in the world.

The professional golf course architect not only needs to be an artist but an engineer, a hydrologist, an agronomist, a quantity surveyor,            a turfgrass specialist, a scientist, a computer software expert, a draughtsman, a financial wizard, a marketing agent and also a diplomat and a politician.

Or at least he needs to understand each of these specialist fields in practising his professional work.

The list goes on and on and the person who understands the ins and outs of the game, but not necessarily a player of the lowest handicap or the highest golfing quality, is going to make a professional golf course architect.

In laying out new golf courses, the professional golf course architect tends to follow one of three design philosophies, or better still combines them as he or she sees fit.

The first is the penal philosophy, punishing at every opportunity, ensuring that golfers stay on the straight and narrow and giving no encouragement to those who might wish to think of how they are going to plot their way around the course.

The second is a strategic philosophy, which most of us modern architects follow. It favours the brave and is based upon giving options and alternative routes to the player to play any hole so that he or she employs a risk and reward strategy – the more you bite off and the more successful you are the greater the return for that bravery and courage.

The final philosophy is one of heroism, and not untypically American.  The winner takes all, all bites taken are large and when successful yield a great prize, but if one fails in any regard there is no possible get out. It is death or glory.

The modern golf course architect will follow one or more of these philosophies in practising his art and his science on new golf courses and, particularly, in looking at the renovation of the older ones. In relation, it is, indeed, a fact that reconstruction, restoration and renovation is a necessity, to ensure long term sustainability of any golf course.

I would like to think that it is the third option of those three r’s which is available to us as I do not think that it is possible to restore and keep up to date, nor to reconstruct with any intent played to the original design.

There is sound reason to keep up to date, or in fact to keep in front. To protect the asset, to maintain it in good condition and add to its value. In this commercial world this is just common sense. The golf course is not different; it is arguably a club’s biggest asset. A golf course needs to be maintained, not just regularly in the sense of routine greenkeeping, but in the sense of continuous evolution – continuous development of its natural structure.

Failure to do so results in a deteriorating product, a less attractive one to player, club, owner and operator alike. Sadly, however, the structure of many of our golf club operations does not allow this to happen.

Committees may be in office for just one year. Captains similarly. Green committee chairmen not always much longer. Such a turnover does not favour gradual, consistent evolution of the golf course as it so badly needs and as nature warrants.

Improvements tend to be staccato, inconsistent and persian. Passing fancies and fashions prevail. Captains and committee members wish to leave their mark for the future.

Reconstruction, restoration or better still renovation are absolutely essential – professionally conceived, created, designed and managed to ensure the correct way forward in the long term and to ensure success.

The combination with modern golfing equipment and its associated technology in clubs and balls, and perhaps a fitter human body, has brought many courses to their knees. The best players, amateur sometimes, but certainly professional, may hit the ball over 300 yards and mostly in the air on a consistent basis, but many of the rest of us don’t do that.  Some may hit it further than others but not always in the right direction and the dispersion of the ball relative to safety of golf courses is a great concern for professional golf course architects. A clamber for longer and longer golf courses is evident. Safety and security is, therefore, a bigger problem than most care to recognise or admit and which would be an essential part of any appraisal of any golf course in putting together a renovation programme.

Lengthening the course may not be the answer, it certainly is not alone and not at the expense of the ruination of its tradition and the strategic appeal of its design. Did making Augusta National much longer defend it against Tiger? I wonder. This was only one solution and perhaps not the right one.

Usually, it is preferable to look at the routing of the golf course, then create a better balance of each nine holes to expose golfers to a more interesting shot, variety and envisage an enhanced use of the original land or perhaps some additional areas that may be available.

The aim, surely, is to create an appealing rhythm in the holes, leading into a rollercoaster of emotion for the player and some satisfaction when he or she steps off the 18th green.

Improving the course’s safety can not be ignored. Golf balls hurt! As an integral part of any renovation exercise an audit of the holes needs to be undertaken and revisions made in terms of safety, should risks not be considered to be acceptably manageable.

Once the overall design has been considered with the safety in mind, then the components of the golf course need to be evaluated.

With greens, the focus should lie with their size, their depth, their width, their shape, their contour and the number of pin positions that are available.

Their constructional profile and drainage performance, the quality of their sward and their grass type and the adequacy of entry and exit from the green, together with the quality and shape of their future surrounds must be assessed.

There is only slightly less to consider with tees; their size, their tolerance to wear, their shape and location in relation to the improvement of strategy of the golf hole on which they are placed, the profile of their construction, their drainage and the status of the growing medium.

The professional architect in the assessment of a golf course must establish whether the bunkering is consistent in shape, size and style. Additionally, and most importantly, is it appropriate? Are the bunkers located in the right place to define the hole to guide the shot, to punish the errant golfer?  With modern technology changing so much, it’s unlikely that that will be the case.

Draining is critical for bunkering, including the need for a consistent colour and depth of sand and shaping of the external featuring of the bunker so that water is not attracted into it when it rains hard.

All of these aspects need to be thoroughly investigated, researched in their performance – technical and golfing, evaluated with recommendations and made for their improvement.

Couching such measures in the context of the natural landscape, the natural setting of the golf course – enhancing the natural environment and creating improved habitats must be a part of any renovation.

Doing so enhances its beauty, its attraction, its inherent value and gives thrills for the golfer just as Dr Alister Mackenzie said so, so many years ago.

Whatever style or rhythm is put into the renovation, it is essential that the environmental impact of the work is assessed professionally by a suitably-qualified specialist together with the golf course architect.

They together need to make an ecological evaluation of the golf course; its character, its habitats and its natural value.

Praying scant homage to that with the bulldozer is all too simple and is not for today’s or tomorrow’s world, in my view.

The possibility of creating an environmental management plan and an accreditation for the renovated golf course is something which must be considered to be important in upgrading the value of the course.

Then there’s irrigation, field drainage, traffic management, landscape improvements and the presentation of the golf course, mowing shapes and patterns to each of the greens, collars and approaches; tees and their embankments; fairways, semi-roughs, golfing and non-golfing semi-roughs; ongoing management of the roughs – improving their natural framework and managing woodlands in a progressive and yet reasonable way.

All this must be communicated from the golf course architect through to the membership of the club and this is not always easily done. There may be political and personal objections, obstructive and antagonistic views, which invariably stem from those who are against change, see no need for it and see only having their time to live out on the golf course that they have always played on.

The opportunity to present the audit – the appraisal – to explain the analysis of the existing design and to determine the recommendations for the way forward are essential items that need to be taken professionally. Comprehensive reporting by word and drawing, the use of photography on a before-and-after basis, creating photomontages of how holes will look after renovation all help to justify the case to show those who doubt how it could or should be.

Personal presentations to members are an equally important communication vehicle, albeit sometimes quite taxing and quite difficult for all concerned.

The professional golf course architect needs to harness all these skills and perhaps more to demonstrate the essential wares of their profession, their experience, their expertise, their skill, their vision and how each can be applied to the task, whether it be a new golf course project or a renovation.

Howard Swan is one of Europe’s most experienced golf course architects and has been designing and building golf courses for more than 40 years

Emma Williams
By Emma Williams October 25, 2011 13:30
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