School of Golf Architecture: Tie-Ins with Riley Johns

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All Right. School of Architecture Part three. My tutor today is Riley John's and our topic is tie ins, or the craft of melding a golf course with its surroundings. It was really fun talking to Riley, who's one of the brightest minds in golf architecture today. So let's just get to it.

and hoping that I'll end up with something cool. But looking back, I realized that the first three installments actually concentrate on the same theme, the relationship between a golf course and its setting. First, I talked to Blake Conan about Place. Next, I spoke with George Waters about Linksland and today Riley Johns and I zero in on the spot where a golf course and its environment meet. Architects

and shapers do a lot of work there. The goal is usually to create tie ins or features that mediate between new man made forms and pre existing ones on a completely natural golf course. If such a thing exists, tians would not be necessary. The holes would already be tied in. They would be no different from the land itself. But the more that golf course builders alter the terrain, the tougher it is to reunite the holes with their surroundings. Today,

tians have become especially important in golf course construction. Modern architects, even ones known to revere the lay of the land, move a great deal of earth. At the same time, more and more clients are asking for courses that appear at home in their environments. Give me another sand hills, another Pacific dunes. So if you spend any time around today's golf course builders, you will hear them talk about tians frequently to outsiders, though it's a somewhat mysterious topic.

What exactly do tians look like? How do you make them? What are they supposed to do? To learn more, I reached out to Riley John's. Riley has helped build well some of the twenty first century's most harmonious golfing grounds with Bill Kore and Bank Crenshaw, Tom Doak, Jim Orbina, and Rod Whitman. In twenty thirteen he founded Integrative Golf Design, and in twenty sixteen he and Keith reb renovated the

municipal Winter Park nine in Florida. That course now meshes with its community in a mutually beneficial, mutually beautifying way. More recently, Riley and Keith designed a ten hole short course at Forest Dunes and began a restoration of William Flynn's Rolling Green. Earlier this week, Riley snuck out to his office in downtown Canmore, Canada to let me in on the secrets of the tie in. Just in the simplest terms, what is a tie in? How would you define it?

But you could have a cultural tie in, a historical tie in, a spiritual tie And I listened to the podcast you did with Blake and you guys were talking about space and place. You know, there's a similarity there. You could you could almost say that that discussion you

were talking about cultural and historical times. You know, you could say, like a historical tie in would be the old course at Saint Andrew's and the built environment the town, the structures, the steeples of the buildings and the streets and that and that part of the property, and tying that not just visually in but from a from a

historical point of view. You know that as you approached the town on your bat and the way back in, uh, you know you're walking in the same footsteps that historically every great golfer that's ever walked the earth has done.

it's all about framing the picture. An environmental tie in, which would be a bit more of like vegetation, we would work really hard on making sure that the color and the texture and the composition of how the native landscapes and textures and colors integrate with the turf and the golf components. But typically the three go hand in hand in unison, and they're not mutually exclusive either. So physical, environmental,

and visual. You're kind of tying those three things together all the time when you're creating a golf hole.

They should appear effortless and seamless if done properly. No one will ever comment on how good your tians are because they won't know they don't exist, right, they should just they should just be non existent, is the idea behind them. But if poorly done, you know that disconnection will be forever. It'll be baked into design forever. You know, A good a good tie in makes your work difficult to distinguish where you started and where you ended with

the project. You know, it kind of completes the entire landscape picture, and it makes it look more plausible as if nature herself created it, you know, or you found it yourself. Right, You're kind of always trying to emulate and mimic nature, and the tie ins is a very critical part in doing that. You know, functionally, tying is very important because you know, a thoughtful kient allows the landscape to function as it did prior to your alterations.

George C. Thomas had a great quote where he said in golf Course, construction, art and utility meet both are absolutely one is absolutely ruined without the other. And I think he's kind of talking to the idea of the functional component of times with your work. For instance, if you have a natural swale that intersects a proposed golf hole that you're going to build. It's an inherent feature of the landscape, and your job is to riff off of it, to play off of it, to utilize it,

and to be inspired by it. And by mimicking that swale in the golf hole, you're maintaining its relationship with the golf hole. If you filled in the swale or if you blocked or damned that swale prior to it's a coming into the golf hole and exiting the golf hole. You know, that would be considered a poor tying because

it's all of a sudden contrived, it's unnatural. And not only that, you're blocking the functionality of it, which is a conduit for water potentially and creating an issue, and so all of a sudden things become unbalanced, right, And so's that's where I think the importance of a tie is. It's both in a visual anesthetic but also a functionality component to it.

green or tea or bunker, what have you. And so the idea is, after this destruction of the natural landscape, how do we reconstruct it? How do we put humpty dumpty back together again? So that's that's the hardest part. When you have and already inherently complex rich textures, colors, you know, a landscape that's evolved in that particular spot to its microclimate over one hundred years. You can't necessarily

create that in a month. But you know, an example that jumps out to me is when we were working at Cabot Cliffs and a whole two there was a big hillside that was covered in trees, and the process of removing and grubbing those trees essentially denude and just destroyed that hillside. And so we had to figure out how to shape some tea's in there, but then tie

it back into the natural looking dune scape. And so what we did was we took sand, the native sand, some merrim grass, some logs, some wood, some brushes, some brush, some different native vegetation. We call it chunking, where you take scoops of native material from elsewhere on site and you replace it places that you've worked, or you plug it into places where you've worked, give it the most visual impact. It'll eventually grow in and spread and propagate itself.

So what we had to do is essentially create a massive faux dune to conceal the work we had to do in order to build two teas at Caba Cliffs, and so it took a lot of We had two excavators. We had to flip sand up to the other. Exec that's how high of a hill this was, right, there was no sand on it, and we had to create what we then called frankin dune. It we were waiting for a lightning strike and it was going to come alive. We choke them the idea and then we let the

wind hit it. We let the natural element start to kind of do their thing, and we created a fake giant dune to hide the work that had to go on in order to build the teas at Cabacliffs. That's that's an example, an extreme example of us playing off the natural surrounds and trying to bridge and connect the gap between what we had to create and what was existing. And we had to choose what element that was going to be because we could have done you could do

anything right. You could you could replant trees, you could just hide your seatd with some fescu grass. You could just let it be and see what native plants re emerge. And so you have to make those decisions on what's your theme, what's your inspiration, and then go for it and create it. I mean, you know we're faking nature.

the course throughout. So you built this dune, But towards the end of the process, it seems like this was a key part of the process, you allowed nature to go to work on the feature. You didn't fix it in place. You allowed wind and the elements to shape the form that you made, so that presumably it started to look a little bit more like what was around it. Do I have that right?

it is chaotic. So if we're in there trying to beautifully place what in our human mind we think is the ideal bunker, while we're missing the whole purpose of it. Sometimes creative chaos is your best approach to mimicking nature.

So when you were rebuilding features there, rebuilding the greens, building new bunkers, rebuilding bunkers, how did you think about tying in the course to its surroundings Because they weren't all natural surrounding, right they were. There's a lot of neighborhood there. Did you think about tying the course into that?

lot different. Typically, you would love to be able to draw out or string out your tie in. The tighter of a box that you're placed in, the more difficult it is to tie in, whereas if you're on an eighteen hole golf course, like Capaclish is something you can literally tie in something, you know, for thirty yards if you need to winter Park. We did not have that luxury because we were bound by the street corners and the curbs and the shape of the of the blocks

of the street. So there was certainly a different tie in in our constraints were given to us. We weren't able to knock down a curb or move a sidewalk or change things significantly. So our only tie ins that we could could do other than tying in physically to the streetscape was visual corridors. Was experiential tie ins was community and culture, and those things we kind of discussed before.

We wanted to open up different views to structures, whether that the church or the grave, you know, the cemetery, the main street, to people walking on the street, on the on the sidewalk, to also open up the viewing corridors in the opposite direction, because we're always thinking about, oh,

it's the golfer's perspective, the golfer's perspective. But in winter Park it was a weird animal because we were also cognizant of the other people's perspective, the people commuting driving by, the people walking their dog down the street, the people biking by. We wanted to give them the experience of the golf course without having to play it. So another example at Winter Park would have been before we'd got there, there was an entire cluster of trees hiding the train tracks.

And so we felt like, rather than denying the train tracks, rather than camouflaging, hiding and concealing them, let's embrace it and bring it into the golf course physically and visually. So what we did was we cleared all those trees and we tied the golf course into the train tracks rather than try and hide them. And if you stand on six Keys today and you see a train going by, it'll appear as if the train is driving on top

of the golf holes. We visually tried to connect the grade and the train tracks in a way that your perspective gave the illusion that the train was floating on top of the grass, right. And so those are just those are just the little nuances of tying in. We wanted to tie in the fact that historically and culturally, this train track, this train system was instrumental in the creation and development and success of winter part as a community.

And so there's the historical tie in, right, and so now people can they have a connection with the train tracks, with the golf course, the community and visually they all kind of get bridged together. And you know, audibly you can hear the train whistle, right, You can hear the train whistle from different parts of the golf course. So all these kind of things do tie in to create a sense of place like you and Blake were talking about, but also gives the site and the golf course a

bit more of a distinct DNA to it. It's a more distinct product. At the end of the day, it's more memorable, there's more intrigue, there's more interest, there's more layers of flavor to the golf experience, and that, at the end of the day, is really the objective of all of this.

part of the town. It's not a separate section. Now, I think that's a wonderful idea, but does it sometimes come into conflict with questions of safety because obviously, one of the big ways that you can accomplish visual tie ins between a neighborhood golf course and the surrounding neighborhood

is by removing trees. When you remove trees, there's a sense that, you know, perhaps not an accurate sense, but at least some people would suspect that golf balls would more easily travel from the golf course to places that you don't want them to go off the golf course. So was there ever some tension in your renovation of Winter Park between tie ins and safety.

this is an inherently dangerous golf course. We're going to do our best to help prevent and mitigate any sort of conflicts. Safety is something that we're definitely going to try to design into it when we're designed and in the field, we made sure that we angled tea boxes in a way that hopefully directs to play a little bit away from the streets. You know, we were very aware that we didn't want to put bunkers necessarily where if you sculled your shot, you would shoot directly into

the street or across a sidewalk. So, yes, we we were very aware of the safety component and our design we felt reflected those concerns as best as we possibly could without sacrificing, you know, without putting up a fence and nets and you know, doing all these alternative means of protecting people's safety through those kind of measures. So it was it's tricky, but yeah, no, that's a it's a concern, But what can you do.

or ones from one hundred years ago. Which courses come to mind when you think of excellent tie ins.

the environmental, the visual. I think those tians are spectacular because it was created by man, right, but it took its cues from the line of sandbuilt and the pines and the different vegetation of that area. So I think I think Piner's Number two has beautiful tie ins, and then Heathland courses in England they do a really good job of tying their golf course in with the natural surrounds, using heather as the primary element of glue, so to speak,

to connect those two things. Once again, you got your color, your texture, your you know, your vegetation and all these different things, you know, which at the end of the day, you know, design is it's all the same whether you're designing a house or a golf course or anything or

car for that matter. Everyone uses the same design elements to achieve whatever they're trying to achieve, and so that's perspective lot you know, line, form, color, texture, repetition, emphasis, balance, variety, scale, symmetry, all of those things are design tools, elements that you can use when trying to conceal your work or connect

your work or tie in your work. And so a lot of the tie ins that we're talking about here, whether that was Tiner's Number two or the heather in the Heathland courses, a lot of that is uh, you know, form and color and texture. But you know Royal Dorn it's another example, right, they ties in using gorse and

the connecting thread throughout the entire property. Royal Melbourne and the sand belt courses in Australia, they tie into their existing landforms in a way that's distinct to the sand belt, right. You know, Cypress point ties in with the Monterey Peninsula in a way that you know, that's why that course just has that spiritual Now we're getting in the spiritual component.

But the way that the golf course ties into the rocks the ocean, the way that the bunkers, the form of the bunkers mimic the form of the cypress trees, right, and how all of these things all of a sudden start interplaying with each other in a way that makes that golf course or any of these golf courses we just discussed, fit into their landscape, fit into their home in a way that looks completely seamless, as if no one moved a spoonful of dirt sand Hills Nebraska. Right.

They didn't go with Kentucky bluegrass and get it all vibrant green. They went with fescus, and the fescus bleed into the fair wind bleed out of the fairway. You know, the golf course looks found and discovered the way that the sand scabs of those bunkers, you know, splash using the wind. They look like they were created by the by the wind, and you know those tie into the character and the patterns of the area, of the region,

of the entire sand hill region. So you know, it's all of these kind of different elements go in as layers, and it's almost like you go into a golf course project first stripping layers away, and then you go build the golf course and then you start bringing the layers back, you start melding them together, so it's almost like you're right, you add a little bit of ingredients here, a little bit there, so you know, you want to get a

little bit of color and texture there. It moves your eye this way, and maybe you want to get that horizon line of that bunker over there, so maybe you can use it to obscure a building or an unsightly view that you don't want, or maybe that bunker needs to feed into the shoulder of an existing hill that's emerging out of the trees, and so you play off of that existing landform. You use accents from the landforms all around you, and then you place the golf element

in there, and then you blend the two together. And so as you go to completing the golf course, you slowly start getting that balance and that variety and that scales right, and all these different textures and colors, and then it comes all the way down to the maintenance, where then the grassing lines are another big component of

tie in. Right, you can go from a sand Hills or a Pinehurst Number two like we just discussed, where the grass and the edges of the sands scrapes seem to bleed with each other, right, giving you this harmonious kind of feel to the landscape as if it was

inherently always there. But then you could use desert golf as the antithesis to that exact theory of well, now we have a landscape that's dry and arid and brown and dusty and all these different and then you have this green, lush golf course and usually the line is hard, right. Not very often you can blend those two environmental factors. You know, one requires water, one doesn't have any water.

But that's where you could go to the extreme on the spectrum of almost blatantly accepting that there is no tie in, or we're not going to even attempt to tie in. We're going to delineate a hard line and that's going to be our design element. That's the form that we want to express. And so that hard line of a green, lush fairway and then a stark line where there's brown desert. That's a conscious decision of no time. So the different sites call for different modes of tying in.

It always feels like it blends. So I'm curious, as somebody who's worked for that firm, worked with Bill and Ben, what did you learn from them about approaching this part of the craft.

of a sudden become much more difficult, you know. I think for them, they just they celebrate the diversity in the landscape and they elevate it and they don't mute it or sanitize it. And that's the key, right and so, but I think at the end of the day, Bill and Ben, they just they've studied this craft for so long and they know how important it is to get those details right. Anything that's kind of forced or contrived is just less appealing to the human eye, to the

to the experience. I don't know what it is that we humans like about a beautifully flowing, connected, harmonious landscape, but we do. And so that's all we're trying to do, is you know, we know as this, we like this. It gives us pleasure. Making the golf hole look naturally in place in its sight is something that we tend to value as golfers. And I don't know why, what do you think, why do we why do we value that? Right?

because I think that humans are pretty good. Maybe not as good as other animals at this, but humans are pretty good at picking out the unnatural, just in the way that when animation or special effects try to mimic the human face, we're really good at picking out Hey, that's wrong, that's fake. We're maybe not as good with the landscape. But I think there's a similar reaction that we might have where we see something that doesn't fit in a landscape, that doesn't register as natural, and we

say immediately, Yep, that's bs, that's fake. I don't like that. That that makes me feel a little bit queasy. There's a there's an effect of the uncanny where where where it just doesn't it doesn't feel right. I don't know, does it. Does that resonate with with you at all?

in golf we have strategic and penal, right. And then one of the ones in landscape art texture is called prospect refuge. And the theory behind that one is is we you know, at the dawn of human civilization, we preferred the savannah is our home, as our hunting grounds is our you know, the ecotype that we preferred as a species. And the theory behind it is the savannah. You have the prospect in front of you of underneath the canopy of the trees, and then you have the

refuge of the trees behind you. So it's kind of a blend between. You know, in old stories, the dark woods was always a theme, right, the dark woods, and that's the savannah too. That's too close, right, the Handsel and Gretel of It's scary, it's dark, it's mystical, it's unknown, it's dangerous. You get all these kind of different feelings out of a dark force where an open prairie, you also get a feeling of where do I run to hide if I need to? Where's my protection, Where's my refuge?

And so the savannah bridges those two, This is the theory, at least the the savannah bridges those two together in a perfect combination, a mixture of prospect and refuge. And that's why we like parks so much, right because we have sparsely planted trees. We have the prospect, and we have the refuge, and it inherently makes us feel comfortable. And if that is a theory that actually holds water, maybe that's why golf courses are something that we enjoy experiencing.

But also people who don't necessarily even golf will look at a golf course photo and go that gives me comfort, you know, whatever that feeling is, and maybe it goes all the way back to our holmost sapien days.

going to feel a little bit weird. And when I'm throwing you out onto a huge open space where there's nothing to hang on to, then you're going to feel a little bit weird there too. And and so you know, kind of just as jazz musicians know that we don't like dissonance and that we want it to be resolved, golf architects could could play with the same type of emotion in golfers.

now you got this. You know deception, it's plan confusion, and so we're now we're sprinkling planned confusion and deception and illusion and warped perspectives and you know, visual emphasis and all these kind of tricks of landscape design to make the golfer react or imagine or think or do something that is perhaps we're subtly or passively nudging a golfer in a certain direction or doing something to their

state of mind subconsciously they're not quite sure of. But that's where you know the design components of building a hazard or deception and all those things, and then tying those in to the landform now gives it that believability. And now you have this adventure on a planned landscape that looks like it was found, and there's something about that that gives us immense pleasure.

and it reminds me right away of Alistair Mackenzie. The chief object of every golf architector greenkeeper worth his salt, he says in his nineteen twenty book Golf Architecture, is to imitate the beauties of nature so closely as to make his work indistinguishable from nature itself. Further along in the book, Mackenzie goes into the mechanics behind nature fakery. He makes a famous analogy between building golf courses and building military earthworks. Through his service in the Second Boer War.

In World War One, Mackenzie became an expert in camouflage, designing fortifications that blended in with the terrain. The parallels to his style of golf architecture offered themselves readily. Successful golf course construction and successful camouflage, he writes, are almost entirely due to the utilization of natural features to the fullest extent, and to the construction of artificial ones indistinguishable from nature. He was, in other words, creating tie ins.

For Mackenzie, tie ins were all about deception. Deceive the enemy to defeat him, deceive the golfer to delight him. It's true that a man made landform in harmony with a natural one brings us pleasure. Conversely, when the man made clashes with the natural, we may feel uncomfortable. Since golf should be pleasurable, it stands to reason that courses should, as Mackenzie puts it, imitate the beauties of nature. At the same time, discomfort is a powerful tool for any artist.

Comedians are masters of it, just as jazz musicians are masters of dissonance. And any good storyteller knows how to unsettle us, how to give us alternating experiences of tension and release. So why shouldn't golf architects do the same with tie ins. At one moment, they could draw attention to the artificiality of their work. At the next they could provide the comforting release of camouflage. I don't know.

Maybe this idea is more fun to babble about on the podcast than it is to put in the ground, but an interest to me because the future of golf course design is a big question mark right now. Bill Corr and Tom Doak are in the fourth decade of their careers, and the many talented architects they've trained, like Riley Johns are starting to get major jobs. Where will this new generation take the craft. How will they differentiate themselves from their mentors or from the heroes of their mentors.

It's possible that some of them will decide that imitating the beauties of nature is not in fact their chief object. If you want to dig deeper into tie ins, I've put together a post for this episode on the Frida egg dot com. It has photos, resources, and some extras from my conversation with Riley. You can also connect with me on Twitter at g fod Golf, with Riley at Integrative Golf, and with the Friday Egg at the Friday Egg with underscores between each word. Let's keep the discussion going.