Design Notebook: The Surprising Parallels Between Golf Courses and Skateboarding Spots

Hey there, and welcome back to Design Notebook, where we’re trying “to make golf course architecture approachable for everyone.” Seriously, that about sums it up. And big congrats to Andy!

In today’s notebook, Garrett Morrison explores the connections between golf architecture and the anti-architecture of skateboarding “spots.” We also share a striking aerial of mid-construction Talking Stick and some mouth-watering shots of Portstewart Golf Club.

Can a Golf Architect Build a “Spot”?

By Garrett Morrison

I mentioned this video about skateboarding “spots” in last week’s Design Notebook, and I’ve continued to think about it for the past week. Thanks again to our friend @GorseNod—also known as Shaun Smith, superintendent at Sullivan County Golf Club and past guest on our podcast—for the find.

A skateboarding spot, as the video defines it, is “an area of land that contains one or more obstacles, of which have the potential to be skated on, over, or around.” The most interesting spots tend to be found in urban environments. Think of concrete staircases with rails or outdoor plazas with benches and planters. The video describes such spots as “naturally occurring,” but of course that’s not exactly accurate. They are manmade—just for a purpose different from, and sometimes unaccommodating of, skateboarding.

The video sets out to explain why these “wild” spots are so compelling to skateboarders, and why skateparks, which are custom-designed for the activity and free of hostile owners and security guards, sometimes fall flat. “Why does the skater opt to skate in an area that is not designated for their recreation?” the narrator asks, with mock-academic formality that pokes fun at the video’s own over-intellectualization of skateboarding.

The answer is not a joke, however. “At a skate park, obstacles are clearly defined, often separate,” the narrator says. “The reason obstacles are easy to label, categorize, and define in this domestic setting is the same reason that the skateboarder might be compelled to wander from their home in search of spots out in the wild. In the wild, spots are less cut and dry. The line between what separates the different types of obstacles is blurred. The world of naturally occurring spots is so vast and complex that it is virtually impossible to categorize and define in its entirety…. This is partially what makes naturally occurring spots so interesting. The lack of defined obstacles forces the skater to use the spot in a more unique way and to find its meaning on their own.”

Brilliant, right? And oddly relevant to golf course design.

Golf courses that prescribe a certain usage—for example, a specific path from tee to fairway to green—deny us the experience of discovery. They restrain us from using our individual playing styles and finding the meaning of each hole on our own. Such courses can be difficult, even exciting, but they always, at least to me, feel somewhat empty. They lack mystery.

Golf architects can lend a measure of mystery to a course by designing holes with multiple potential routes to success. This is why multi-optional strategic design has proven such a sticky idea since John Low first theorized it in the early 1900s.

Yet it would be difficult for a golf course designer to replicate the allure of a wild skateboarding spot. Once an environment is manipulated for a specific purpose, it inevitably loses some of its mystery. It becomes less random, more rationalized. The joy of discovery belongs to the architect rather than the end user.

So, not surprisingly, the golf courses that most resemble the video’s notion of a “naturally occurring” skateboarding spot are the ones that predate the era of professional golf architecture: the oldest links of Scotland. Some of these grounds retain an open-endedness that inspires exploration and creativity. They are spots where golfers happen to play rather than environments built with the intention to guide and please.

The ninth hole at Kilspindie—quite a spot

This is part of The Old Course’s enduring appeal. As Mike Clayton once put it, “The concept of St. Andrews is that the course dictates nothing. The only thing you have to do at St. Andrews is on the first hole you have to hit it over the burn; otherwise you can do anything you want.” And as Alister MacKenzie wrote in 1920, “I believe the real reason St. Andrews Old Course is infinitely superior to anything else is owing to the fact that it was constructed when no one knew anything about the subject [of golf course construction] at all, and since then it has been considered too sacred to be touched.”

There are current architects who would love to capture the spot-like spirit of a naturally occurring links. Kyle Franz often speaks of “adventure golf,” referring to a type of course that seems so random that the golfer becomes bemused and must rely on trial and error to discover lines of play. James Duncan has said that playing his and Coore & Crenshaw’s design at Brambles should feel less like a round of golf and more like walking through a field and doing battle with nature. Tom Doak’s original Sheep Ranch may have come the closest of any modern course to the ideal of a spot, but its choose-your-own-routing concept was always unlikely to survive Bandon Dunes’ business model.

Brambles during grow-in

Ultimately, it might be impossible—like, ontologically impossible—to create a spot intentionally. Skateboarding spots spring into existence through use, not design. In fact, as the video mentions in a section on “spot ‘fixing,’” after too many skater-friendly alterations, a spot may lose what makes it appealing. “The line between fixing a spot and creating a spot is a very blurry one,” the narrator explains. “This practice calls into question what makes a spot truly naturally occurring.”

Is it feasible to build a modern golf course without “spot fixing”? Indeed, without doing far more than that?

I doubt it. Still, giving golfers the experiences of mystery, discovery, and freedom that skateboarders associate with wild spots is not a bad goal for golf architecture. Building a true golfing “spot” would require a great deal of humility and courage. Humility because the end product would show little to no evidence of the designer’s hand; courage because it might not be well received by those accustomed to the golf equivalent of skate parks.

But if we could somehow create—or find—more spots, I think our game would be better off.

Aerial of the Week

By Garrett Morrison

While doing research for last week’s course profile, Cameron stumbled upon this ghostly aerial of the O’odham Course (then known as the North) at Talking Stick in the midst of construction.

Talking Stick in 1997 (black-and-white image)

Taken in April 1997, the photo shows most of the course’s greens and hazards shaped, at least roughly, and grass beginning to take hold on the second, third, and fourth holes. The Piipaash/South Course (on the right half of the property) has been cleared but not built.

Above all, this aerial is a reminder of how barren the site was before Bill Coore arrived. For an architect who talks frequently about deriving inspiration from the land, the Talking Stick project must have represented a profound challenge—and maybe an opportunity to prove he wasn’t a one-trick pony.

Talking Stick in 2024

Chocolate Drops

By Garrett Morrison

Hoopin’. According to a Golf Club Atlas thread, Hooper Golf Course, a very cool-looking nine-holer in New Hampshire designed by Wayne Stiles and John Van Kleek in 1927, is in search of a consulting architect. Let’s hope the green committee goes with someone willing to spend sparingly and use a light touch. Hooper’s modesty and low green fee appear to be integral aspects of its appeal.

Evangelist is back. Tom Doak is republishing The Evangelist of Golf, George Bahto’s biography of C.B. Macdonald—surely one of the most influential golf architecture books of the past 50 years, as well as one of the hardest to purchase for a non-crippling sum. The new edition features a foreword from Doak and an introduction from Ben Crenshaw. It’s available on pre-order for $95.

A Course We Photographed Recently

The Strand at Portstewart Golf Club (Portstewart, Northern Ireland)—designed by Willie Park, Jr., in 1920, front nine redesigned by Des Giffin in 1990

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Quotable

“Fairness in golf architecture almost always tends to emphasize simple, dull, and humorless design elements. To make a course ‘compatible’ for stroke play, the riskiest and most interesting shots have to be left out of our modern courses. Risk and reward situations, the lifeblood of timeless design and true fun for all players, are sacrificed in the name of fairness. The architect’s ability to put a fresh twist on an old design idea is often shelved because it might be received as strange or unjust even though the very same course that inspired the idea is ranked in the top twenty in the world!

“Comic touches like a blind pot bunker behind a green or a fairway full of uneven lies are no longer considered distinctive design touches in the stroke play mindset. They are cruel and unusual. However, those same eccentric features become interesting in match play situations because no one cares about the eighteen-hole medal play total, just a hole-by-hole match score.” –Geoff Shackelford