Architects always surprise me

I am not good at keeping numbers, so I am not sure how many architects I have walked around with over the years. But I do know that every time I do, I learn something — about what they know that I don’t, and about connections between parts of what makes up a golf course that I did not fully appreciate.

A recent example is a round with Jay Blasi at Poppy Ridge Golf Course in Livermore, California, a course owned by the Northern California Golf Association that he had just finished rerouting completely. I was too busy trying to figure out how to hit the green at the par-3 third hole when Blasi explained how he revealed an infinity edge view of the Livermore Valley by dropping the grade of a pond behind that green.

I cannot recall my first tour with an architect. But I do recall an early one, with New York Met-area architect Stephen Kay back in late 1987, right after I had acquired a monthly column on design for Golfweek. We met in Westchester County, toured two of his projects there, then raced across to Long Island, where we ended up at Seawane Club in the Five Towns, on the southwest corner of Nassau County. It was a course I thought I knew well from my teenage caddie days in the area, but Kay’s enthusiasm proved overwhelming, especially at the short par-4 fourth hole, with a diagonal drive across an intruding canal. The way he explained the hole and the import of its central fairway bunker was my first serious study into the art of the “drivable” par 4.

For all I had read and studied, nothing quite prepared me for meeting Pete Dye on site for the first time. It came at Kiawah Island, South Carolina, soon after Hurricane Hugo had devastated a site that Dye was getting ready for the 1991 Ryder Cup. Sand flying everywhere, massive earth-moving equipment, everybody stripped down to short pants and a T-shirt (if that), and here was the diminutive fellow in beige slacks and a white polo shirt directing the whole show with complete confidence — and in a jumble of half-mumbled phrases, not a complete sentence among them, completely clear in his head what he wanted of the crew.

At Dye’s suggestion, I accompanied him to a meeting with local regulatory authorities. There, I witnessed a master class in explanatory gymnastics as Dye ran circles around these local engineers trying to pin him down. If there was any reference to plans on paper, it hardly seemed to matter. The whole course existed in Dye’s head and it was simply a matter of him finding a way to convert those visions into three-dimensional reality. The amazing thing was the language he used — an extreme variant of colloquial English that only his crew could understand.

Among the skills I have come to admire among truly inventive architects is that of routing — or re-routing. Among the best of these is Bill Coore, longtime partner of Ben Crenshaw and someone with whom I have bushwacked through various thickets in search of workable holes. Coore is like a master scout, noting high points, long lead lines and small hollows, and mapping them in his mind or on a crumpled piece of paper that is miraculously converted into a full routing plan. How he sees the land and can connect the dots is a remarkable skill.

Coore spoke about it years ago at a meeting of architecture gurus who converged upon Sand Hills, Nebraska, one spring to celebrate what that landmark course has meant to the craft. We found lots of holes, he said. Over 130 of them. The key was to connect them in a walkable way so that the golf course made sense as a unified composition. I paraphrase, but you get the point.

In walking a course with club members or green committees I will often be the talkative one. But as soon as an architect joins the group I quiet down and listen. Their understanding of the connections between drainage, strategy, turfgrass and construction methods for bunkers and greens requires a comprehensive view of the trade. It’s one thing to consider playing strategy or the degree of skill difference between a back tee play and a front tee golfer. But if you really want to go deep in the weeds on the craft, ask to see a bid document with its budgetary spreadsheet. Or read through the 50- to 100-page spec sheet that attends each project as the architect of record indicates construction methodology, work sequences and conditions of approval for phased payment. That’s when your eyes will get blurry and you’ll marvel, as I always do, at the aptitude required to be a real golf course architect.