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Peter Pallotta

The Voice of the Rabbits - Redux
« on: October 28, 2011, 02:58:17 PM »
Off of George's thread (and how it reminded me of Bernard Darwin), here is a snippet from a Darwin article.

The Voice of the Rabbits
Considering the Complaints that Courses are Too Long

"The voice of the rabbit is heard in the land once more. He does not resemble the cuckoo. In June he does not change his tune. His mournful song is ever the same.  The holes, he says, are too long and so are the carries; the courses are laid out by tigers for
tigers. He has been recently saying it again in a number of letters to the press....Personally I have a great deal of sympathy
with these rabbits. As one who is sloping slowly, or perhaps not very slowly, towards their condition I agree that courses and holes are often made wearifully long. Because I sympathize with them I do not wish to emphasize too strongly the fact that some of their premises are doubtful and weak.  They imply that it is only the good players who are the long drivers, but in fact there has arisen today a whole generation of golfers, all of whom can hit the ball a long way, yet many of whom are far from being good players.... They seem also to imply, in their demands that  skill and accuracy should be rewarded, that these attributes go with short driving, but this is not so; the majority of short drivers have little skill, and their accuracy consists largely in being so short as to be unable to reach the rough. When all is said, however, I agree that many courses, at any rate when they are at full stretch, are not calculated to give anything like the maximum of pleasure to anything like the majority of golfers. If this be so, where does the remedy lie? Surely in the hands of the rabbits... [But] In the first place they are lazy in organizing revolt, and in the second a great many of them from motives, whether noble or ignoble, like to think that their course has a reputation for being long and hard, especially longer and harder than those of their immediate neighbors. However that may be, until they do organize revolt it is perhaps not unfair to suggest that they deserve to remain slaves.  It is my private impression that a soviet of red rabbits would lay out a bad course, so bad that they would either share the fate of most revolutionaries and be quickly turned out, or else would be compelled to get a few mild scratch players of democratic tendencies to come and strengthen them. The sort of person who would lay them out a far better course than they would make for themselves would be a rather passé tiger brought up in the traditions of the elder Scottish courses."

Ha ha - red rabbits and passe tigers and being too short to reach the rough - man, I love Darwin.

Peter

« Last Edit: October 28, 2011, 03:06:50 PM by PPallotta »

Ally Mcintosh

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Voice of the Rabbits - Redux
« Reply #1 on: October 28, 2011, 03:13:46 PM »
Rabbit, Run....

I haven't seen that before... Thanks Peter... I think I might groom myself to become a passé tiger...

Peter Pallotta

Re: The Voice of the Rabbits - Redux
« Reply #2 on: October 28, 2011, 03:29:19 PM »
An honourable goal, Ally.  And it brings to mind a related question(s): among the passé tigers-architects of the last hundred years (and there were many of them, i think, even if not all had ever been true tigers), which kept honouring in their work the traditions of elder Scottish courses and which didn't; and, more interestingly, why did some choose one path and others another.

Peter

Colin Macqueen

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Voice of the Rabbits - Redux
« Reply #3 on: October 28, 2011, 04:11:52 PM »
Peter,
How prescient was Darwin,eh? Passé Tigers indeed!

Was the creation of NGLA not partly intended to ensure that golf architects in America, in the early years, did not lose sight of the quintessential elements of golf hole architecture. Does this not tend to suggest that early fields of play were not emulating "the traditions of the elder Scottish courses."

Cheers Colin
"Golf, thou art a gentle sprite, I owe thee much"
The Hielander

Jay Cox

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Voice of the Rabbits - Redux
« Reply #4 on: October 28, 2011, 09:07:11 PM »
I must admit that any time I see a reference to rabbits on GCA, I think of the white rabbit at Pebble Beach.

Bill Brightly

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Voice of the Rabbits - Redux New
« Reply #5 on: October 28, 2011, 09:21:01 PM »
I must admit that any time I see a reference to rabbits on GCA, I think of the white rabbit at Pebble Beach.

+1

However, when I saw it was a PPallotta post, I muted the TV as I always need to focus when I read what he writes :)
« Last Edit: October 28, 2011, 09:23:44 PM by Bill Brightly »

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