By Scott Kramer
Veteran golf course architect Paul Albanese is walking the grounds at his upcoming Sage Run Golf Club in Hannahville, Mich. It’s a cool, rainy late August morning in the Upper Peninsula, so the 50-ish Ivy Leaguer is decked out in work boots, khakis and a light jacket. Part of the Island Resort & Casino, Sage Run will officially open for play next June and is located four miles from the hotel and its nine-year-old, highly acclaimed Sweetgrass Golf Club that Albanese also designed. “These are two of my babies,” he says. “But they’re entirely different golf experiences. I liken them to a red wine and a white wine.” As he should. Because so much time has passed between the design process of each course, the technology Albanese used for each job has drastically changed. How so?
How does GPS help you get a better design?
PA: Design is all about tweaking an iteration and making changes. In the old days when we had to stake things out with tape measures and wheels, it would take a long time to make a change and see how it looked on paper — in comparison to what you just staked in the field. With GPS now, I literally can tap my phone and say ‘this is where I’m at, this is where I think the 8th tee should be’ and I can text it to my associate in the office who makes the change in real time and texts me back an image of what the hole would look like. It’s instantaneous feedback using GPS, and the time saved in not only initially staking out the course but being able to make changes and adjustments using GPS versus stakes is an incredible advantage to creating a better golf course. Staking out 18 holes by hand would take two-to-three days, and in some cases longer if it was wooded and we had to get the stakes through woods. By comparison, we were able to stake out the upcoming Sage Run in half a day.
Do you factor in the sun?
Software lets us analyze whether holes will have the sun in your face or not. It maps out from from space where the sun will be at any time of the year and day. My associates and I map the points and say here’s where we want the 9th hole, and then map out the sun path that shows us where it will be in relation to that tee shot for every day of the year. So we can tell early spring if golfers might have the sun in their eyes on the final hole, for example. We’re able to analyze exactly what golf architects have been trying to do for years, and we used to do it in a more general way. A general rule of thumb some 20 years ago or even 10 years ago was don’t tee off into the east and don’t finish into the west. But using technology, we’re now able to tweak that and know what is east exactly. Can it be 20 degrees north of east, if the hole is 23 degrees south of east? There’s all this different tweaking we can do, to know if a golfer’s gonna be heading into the sun or not, and whether it would actually preclude you from making a good golf hole there. And in fact, that’s what we did at Sage Run here. We originally and cautiously had a hole finishing to the west. But after doing sun analysis, we realized that although it was west, it was slightly southwest, and that for the majority of the summer the sun was going to be southeast. So golfers won’t be hitting into the sun like we assumed they would. That actually turns out to be our final hole now, and is a much better hole. Without that technology, we may have not finished and designed this course the way we did, which I think is a superior way to do it.
How has technology minimized costs in designing courses?
Twenty years ago, we would spend most of our time designing the bunkers, the master plan, and the pictures. We spend as much time today with clients designing the cost, because building these factors cost-effectively is critical to success unlike 20 years ago when you just threw a bunch of money at a golf course. One of the reasons the golf industry’s had some issues is because it was overspent, overbuilt and not built cost-effectively. So designers who have succeeded are able to design the cost. And in order to design the cost well, you need technology to figure out more specifically what the design entails. When we put something on paper, we can tell more accurately how many cubic yards of earth we are going to move versus guessing that it’s gonna be about a million. We know how much seeding area, all the details we can deduce and then we can use that as an iterative process by saying things like ‘what if we take out these five acres here, or take out some square footage here, or lower this quantity’ — it’s a back-and-forth between the numbers, the dollars and the design. So you’ve got to design the quantity that matches the design, and that quantity equals dollars. So if you can keep changing them, you can keep figuring out without sacrificing the design what’s the most cost-effective price we can get this design in. To do this without technology would be cost-prohibitive — just to constantly redesign and figure it out by hand. I can remember 20 years ago doing it just once, and then you would go back and just estimate without doing the real details — all that guesswork isn’t as accurate. But today we can change the design, just like the GPS, we hit a button and it tells us the new quantity and cost.
What point of the process does the computer aided design (CAD) come in?
I use CAD from the very beginning now. We spend a lot of time analyzing the site at the beginning — before we do one routing plan. Just analyzing the sight, views, slope, topography, climate, micro-climates, the vegetation — all of that is done on CAD. Ten years ago, we would print it out and then do a routing by hand. A lot of course architects who are into technology say they still do a lot of things by hand in the beginning stages, thinking they’re craftsmen. I agree and do a little bit by hand — maybe the first couple of routings just to get my creative juices flowing. But then I quickly try to put that routing into CAD to save costs. That way if I want to tweak a routing, I don’t have to redraw the whole thing. I can easily take pieces and move them around. It allows my creative thought process to happen quicker than by hand. I’ve noticed by hand I do plenty of erasing and crossing things out. If I want to change just three holes, I used to have to redraw the whole thing or take a piece of tracing paper and put it over it — it became messy. Why not just put it on a computer and do the same thing I was doing by hand more efficiently?
Technology keeps everyone on the same page during design, yes?
There’s always a vision at the beginning. The idea is to come up with a unique concept every time — not just stick with one and duplicate it for every site. That unique concept includes the vision of what it will look like, its style and flavor, and what you want to do that’s different than what’s been done before. Technology allows us to refine that vision in ways that was hard to do back in the olden days. Architects adept to technology can use it to take an idea in your brain and make it a reality. I’ve seen many projects where an architect and property owner think they’re on the same page with a concept, yet the reality doesn’t show that at the end of the day. Maybe there’s a conflict. But if an architect can use technology to show the client the concept, and also the guys in the field who are building it, it allows the concept to be translated more accurately than just random luck or hoping that the land shapers will do what you want them to do. With technology, your vision comes to fruition.
You also rely on handheld rangefinders, too.
They’re very simple tools to use in the field that I have that on my belt whenever I do a site visit. Twenty years ago, I would look out to where I planned a bunker and it would be staked or maybe semi-shaped, and I’d look at it from the tee and think this is what I wanted on paper and now here it is in the field, but does this work? Or I’d guess how far away the bunker is, exactly. The only way to figure that out was to pace it off. Now, we sit on the tee with a rangefinder, and know it’s exactly 280. But if we realize that it’s downhill or there are different field conditions and I really wanted it at 260, now I can make that decision without spending literally a half-hour walking it off. I just look at it, and it takes 10 seconds versus an hour. Plus, I don’t have to worry about losing my step count as I’m pacing.
Technology helps you save water, too?
Universities around the country are using a lot of technology to analyze turf. Because of that technology, they’ve been able to use materials now on a golf course that are great for the golf industry in many ways, lowering both maintenance costs and the environmental impact that turf has on the environment. In the old days, it took a lot more chemicals, pesticides and non-organic matter to keep turf growing in an environment that maybe it wasn’t meant to be growing in. But through technology, the universities and research centers figure out how to grow turf in environments without having to use toxins. So the whole paradigm of the golf world being pesticide-ridden or using chemicals in it as a negative to the environment, technology has allowed golf to be an enhancement to the environment. Which is a big difference than 10 or 20 years ago. When I first started in the business, I used to pick up soil by hand and determine if it was ripe for turf. Today, it’s standard operating procedure to take a gallon of the soil on site and ship it off to soil consultants who use their technology to figure out all the chemicals and everything the soil is made of, and then match turfgrass that’s been technologically developed to perfectly work with the soil. With water being such a premium these days, we can minimize the use of irrigation, pesticides and fertilizer. They have created amazing turfs that don’t require nearly as much water as they used to. That’s been the biggest boon for the golf industry, as courses have been really unfairly known for overusing water. But in the old days, you did have to use more water to ensure that turf could grow. One of the best technological advances has been the irrigation systems themselves — courses can spoon-feed the exact amount of water the turf needs. They have sensors that show when turf doesn’t need any watering, so you don’t need to water tonight. In the old days, a superintendent’s regime was to water everyday. Technology is completely changing the paradigm of how to water a course. Our software also tells us exactly where to put the actual sprinklers. It’s great. The biggest plus of technology is that it’s allowed us to lower the cost of building courses and lowered the environmental impact of courses. Those two things have always been a big problem for the golf industry and technology is solving them.
How much less-expensive is it to build a course these days, due to technology?
Using technology we can actually pick the best course site, right off the bat. Assuming we pick the right site compared to 20 years ago, we can lower the price of building a golf course by 25 or 30 percent — because we can build it in that much less time. Time is money. Still, you can’t design a course solely on a computer. You still need to be hands-on in the field during the process, providing that human touch. That’s still very important.
Scott Kramer is a veteran, Southern California-based writer primarily versed in golf and personal technology. Studying Computer Sciences in college, and then working as a programmer/software engineer for about a decade, triggered my passion for today’s high-end, high-tech gadgets. I can’t help myself whenever I see any kind of cool new personal technology. I feel compelled to further check it out and see what it’s all about. And even if I have no use for it personally, I’m always thinking who it might best suit. There are exciting new innovations emerging daily that are shaping the future and simplifying life. And I hope to be your eyes to that world, through the words of this column.