We are using GPS to stake the critical golf course points. It is much easier and faster than traditional surveying. It took us about 30 minutes to stake the perimeter of the lake, the tee and green locations for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd holes.
While putting away the equipment I heard a great story about the potential horrors of GPS.
A design company everyone knows, working with a builder in an English speaking country that should have had someone on the building team that knew better, hooked their equipment up to the GPS plans and off they went. It was a huge dirt moving operation, and three months passed before someone from the design company visited. Well, the builder followed the GPS… too precisely, for the golf course looked like it was constructed from LEGO!
The builder had to haul in another 10% material to fill in the gaps of their LEGO-like construction. Work that cost significant time and money cost to eliminate. OUCH!
The moral:
1. GPS, like CAD, is a tool, not a miracle… and the best courses… they don’t follow plans precisely because man is imperfect, and achieving perfection is a process, is hard work… not an event.
2. Even in a golfing nation, on a huge project, not one of the builders knew golf!!!
There is one additional tale to the GPS Horror Show. The property, so I am told, was so good it didn't require extensive bulldozing. The architect was simply unsympathetic to the site, forcing his idea$ into an already beautiful canvas instead of using the tremendous gifts provided by Nature.
Richard and James staking the first green.
Tony Ristola
www.agolfarchitect.com
agolfarchitect@yahoo.com
+1(909) 581 0080
