Intelligent Design
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Estimated reading time 8 min
Intelligent Design is the wallpaper term that has replaced Creationism in the Fundamentalist Christian lexicon. Creationism versus Darwinism. By inference Intelligent Design opposes Evolution.
In the non-spiritual world of Arts, Crafts, Science and Engineering, a world in which Golf Course Architecture finds itself, intelligent design and evolution are intricately interwoven. A golf course is an artefact with specific functions and only those designed intelligently in respect of their functions will be acclaimed. Intelligent design is what Golf Course Architecture is about.
To make balls fly further and straighter sporting goods manufactures refine their products by matching new materials with changing requirements. Engineers develop new maintenance machines and irrigation equipment. Biologists and chemists create new varieties and active ingredients to ensure lusher swards of faster grass. They do this by numerous small and subtle changes over time. This process is called evolution. Improvements are preserved, failures abandoned. That is called natural selection.
Nothing stands still; golf course design evolves, as does everything else. The Wall Street Crash in 1929 marked the end of a 40-year period of intense golf course developments, and the beginning of a twenty-year hiatus. From the early 50’s to the oil crises in the 70’s golf went into it’s American phase with new ideas boosted by scientific and technological advances enabling golf architects to express themselves over a wider geography and climate range.
Over the past twenty years two major influences have significantly altered our perceptions of what a modern golf course should be. They have resulted in two opposed styles of design. The resulting polarisation has placed modern golf course architects and designers, into one of two distinct camps. There remains a third group, the vast majority in the style-free zone, the opportunistic, the hesitants, and those tethered fleas jumping ceaseless from one camp to the other.
The word Environment did not exist in the golf dictionary before the mid eighties. Since then it has defined what gets built where, and how it gets built in Europe, in many parts of the States and the developed world. Sadly this did not apply in the developing world with the resulting rise in rabid anti-golf movements in places like Thailand, the Philippines and Mexico. Environmental legislation and public awareness has had a major effect on the evolution of golf course design. As a result many landscape architects and ecologists have become course designers, creating dull but trendy eco-golfs which are brought up to standard by their colleagues a few years later.
However a small group of architects have embraced the notion of working within an environment and creating a new one, producing excellent golf courses without excess. Lean and mean class acts whose excellence some recognise with a sickening thump in the stomach. Jealousy is what that is. Less is more – but GOOD. It doesn’t have a name – no “isms” or “ists” here. Branding with someone else’s label means you’ve missed the point entirely. Sadly many architects and designers have been constrained rather than liberated by the phenomena. Their confusion is manifest in their attempts to reinvent themselves by applying buzzword descriptions to their wrappings whilst being fundamentally unable to alter the core content of their product. Self proclaimed Minimalists, Naturalists and Ecologists frolic uneasily in the shadow of The Architects.
Like a Tectonic plate the Signature Factor has been slowly creeping up on us since the late seventies when Jack, Arnold and Gary started to lose tournaments and decided to raise income by signing designs. They have been followed by a legion of greying Green Blazers protected, herded and marketed by their shepherds, the managers, sponsors and real estate developers. The Signatures’ primary function has been as real estate, package tourism and golf club membership salesmen. None the less their collective influence on golf course architecture has been immense, on a par with the Environmental factors, and far more so than that of changing bat and ball technology. The Signatures express profound thoughts about being obliged to design longer, tougher courses, bigger monuments to their inflated egos. Like small boys around the campfire comparing the length and sharpness of their blades, so Signatures judge their worth by quantity, not quality. And the little people follow in awe. Less is maybe more in some places, but this here is Disneyland and Macdo’ Country where less is trash, big is good and bigger is better. This is Designer Land.
In terms of course quality there is nothing that says an environmentally friendly golf course is a bad one or that a Signature Course is automatically good. Far from it. But these two pressures on the evolution of golf course architecture have acted like Dr Doolittle’s fabled two-headed beast, the Push-me Pull-you. Environmental issues acting as a break on the ever-expanding requirements of ostentatious bad taste, conspicuous consumption and filthy lucre.
Where there are no environmental constraints and a great deal of money the Signatures have taken over the territory. The shining example is Dubai where Signatures compete ferociously to have the biggest, bestest course ever. Decent courses built only ten years ago have been bulldozed away to make room for new Signature Courses. I confess an interest here. The nearest Nick Faldo will ever get to one of my courses is when he bulldozes my Wadi Course at the Emirates. The Creek course went the same way last year under the knife of EGD and one of their off the shelf pro’s.) Dubai is currently in the running to win the International Association of Tour Operators Award for Established Destination of the Year. To increase their chances Dubai Golf has invited 70 top tour operators and journalists for a weekend beano in Dubai just a few weeks before the IAGTO ceremony.
Where there isn’t much money and some fierce environmental constraints the Signatures don’t have a chance of doing their thing and minimalism is the only permissible option. In this case the average quality of the courses can be, at best, mediocre by Signature standards but golfer enjoyment is usually very high. Austria is a case in point. Austria won the IAGTO Undiscovered Golf Destination Award in 2004.
In the middle ground we have the British Isles and the US with a combination of money and restrictions. Two recent sea side golf course developments have caught the attention of the golf press: Brandon, designed by a Scot, David Kidd, on the west coast of America, and Kingsbarns designed by an American, Kyle Phillips, on the East coast of Scotland. Both courses have been highly praised for the quality of their sites, the naturalism of their architecture and their intense golfing interest. Whistling Straits, another of Pete Dye’s many masterpieces also springs to mind. Whilst Mr Dye could out design anything the Signatures and their acolytes put together, they can only dream of his achievements. This is art, not craft.
The scale of the achievement of Kingsbarns (or Brandon or Whistling Straits for that matter) can probably only be fully appreciated by an envious golf course architect. It actually looks like what it’s supposed to look like – a genuine links course. But built on a boring piece of farmland (with great views). A testimony to some remarkable teamwork between the owner, architect, constructor, shaper, green keeper and a geographer. This is not Minimalism. To imitate the effortless anarchy of such a natural landscape demands great skill, perseverance, resources and that occasional ray of sunshine – luck.
Whilst many crafty courses built in Dubai will be bulldozed and replaced in a frenzied Las Vegas cycle of renewal or become Ozymandian lone and levels sands stretching far away, I think that Kingsbarns will sit alongside St Andrews for as long as golf is played in Scotland.
That is Intelligent Design.
This article originally appeared in Golf Course Architecture October 2005. Click here for further information.