|
 |   |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
What's My Line? The tools have changed, but creating the holes remains a designer's biggest thrill
By John Garrity
"I collect antiques and old books," Weed says, and there is about him, as well, a trace of the Old South -- a mid-state South Carolina accent. However, as he opens mail on a Monday morning in early February and discusses the University of Florida project with senior associate designer Scot Sherman, Weed's eyes keep returning to his laptop computer, perched on a pulled-out wing of the desk. Weed taps the keys, and a photograph of a golf hole appears. He taps again, and a color rendering of a golf course plan floods the screen.
With any golf course job, whether it's a new layout or a renovation, the design process starts with a preliminary routing study, or center-line drawing, so called because it consists of little more than a map of the property with straight lines drawn between proposed tee and green sites. On the Florida project Weed and Sherman began by spreading a large aerial photograph of the current Florida course on their design table. Next to that they spread an identically scaled topographical map of the property. (A topo is a surveyor's map that shows the elevation, in feet above sea level, of all points on the ground.) Demonstrating, Sherman takes a large piece of tracing paper and places it over the topo. "We lay it out over this booger," he says cheerfully, "and then we start doodling." These first pencil drawings are covered with notes: "Leave some trees.... Add some trees.... What is flood elevation? 10 yr. 25 yr. 100 yr...." The notes and outlines of each hole are done in black pencil, the center lines are red, and the water features are outlined in blue. "This is a routing study that we did in November. It's very different from what we have now because we thought we were going to get this piece of land down here," says Sherman, pointing to a couple of holes that stick out from the southwest corner of the site. "That didn't happen, so we went to plan B." Now they're on plan C, which roughly follows the current routing for 13 of the holes but calls for five totally new holes to take advantage of unused property in the northwest corner. "It's a very creative exercise," Sherman says. "Sometimes we do routings at night in our hotel rooms. We spread a topo map on the bed and sit there in our boxer shorts, trying to imagine what the course will be."
Once the basic hole designs are in the computer, Sherman and Weed refine the plan, relying on field sketches made during their weekly trips to Gainesville. The digitized 17th hole, for instance, recently sprouted several greenside bunkers and lost between five and 10 vertical feet of soil in front of the tee -- part of Weed's plan to turn the short, bland par-4 into a drivable tease like the 10th at Riviera. "This shows your basic hole strategy," Sherman says, "but the drawing is only about 75 percent there. The other 25 percent will be done in the field. That's the fun part." For now, though, Sherman follows the cable that stretches from the back of his PC to a waist-high machine called a plotter (most people would call it a printer). When the architects want an updated copy of their plan, they click on the "plot" icon, and the Hewlett-Packard Design Jet 650c chatters until a 36-by-42-inch print emerges. The medium is 19-pound vellum -- a translucent paper favored by architects and by young women sending out wedding invitations. "It's not the hottest thing on the market," Sherman says of his plotter, "but it's like a reliable old Ford. We can spit out these plans in volume." The vellum version is then walked across the room to an even bigger machine, the Ozalid 595. This blueline machine (most people would call it a copier) scans the vellum and rolls out the 36-by-42-inch blueline copies that the architects fold up and carry around. In large type at the bottom of the Florida routing study is this disclaimer: "This plan is conceptual and is subject to change by designer." "Every plan we produce will say that," Sherman says. "Nothing is final until the course is grassed." He smiles. "Sometimes not even then." So which is it? Old World shop or microchip design boutique? Judging from the decor of Weed Golf Course Design's Ponte Vedra Beach offices, it's both. The burgundy carpet is topped with an Oriental rug. File cabinets share space with an antique umbrella stand full of hickory-shafted putters. The glass-doored lawyer's bookcases contain technical manuals, yes, but there's also a vintage copy of Gene Sarazen's Common Sense Golf Tips. When old is out of the question, Weed will happily fake it. A water-colored routing plan for the Golf Course at Glen Mills, in Philadelphia, which Weed designed, is drying on a table, yellow and wrinkled. "We soaked this in tea," Weed says, "to give it an Old World look." But can he modernize the university's layout without losing the look of This Old Course?
In the next installment of This Old Course, we'll meet civil engineer Jay
Brown, the man handling permits for the university. ("He's the guy with the
bull's-eye on his forehead," says Weed, fretting over possible delays.)
We'll also look at the university's plan to build the new maintenance barn in a
flood plain -- which, if rejected by regulatory agencies, will force Weed to
produce yet another routing
plan.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
