Hi,
I speak with the bias that I like carts and that I walk 500-600 miles of golf course seasonally as a caddie.
I observe that anti-cart posters here are disproportionately invested in something that doesn't hurt them, that they 98/100 times can choose to ignore, and over which only the most ardent and obstinate of them wouldn't admit a utilitarian value.
I think carts have been as important to the growth, diversification and widespread enjoyment of the game as any significant development, like the Haskell ball or the developed jurisprudence of rules, or color television...
And that's what GCA is all about, in the end - enjoyment, whether that comes from playing challenge or a mix of game playing with visual aesthetics. I appreciate architecture that much more which acknowledges and/or allows for carts' use; I don't mind blacktop cart paths weaving, paralleling, or cutting across play areas; I accept a ball ricocheting off them (for good or for ill) like any other turf/non turf feature.
I do have a problem with the awkward parking/green-tee/systems that sometimes occur when cart usage is NOT well-figured into a plan for a course/hole that intends to use them.
But that wasn't the original question...
"Notable" courses that I have enjoyed more BECAUSE there were carts in use: (I don't know if this translates to "aided" as CR originally meant it.)
Yale, Fisher's, NGLA, Fenway, Sleepy Hollow,
"Notable" courses that would be more enjoyable IF there were carts in use
Bethpage B, Augusta National (I think there are), Pine Valley (?), Hudson National (hate the course, but I would hate it far less if carts were the regular thing there)
Notable Courses that are such easy walking courses--to the extent that part of the enjoyment of the course is actually discovering how gentle it is to walk and how the rhythm of walking can enhance play...
Winged Foot West, CC of Fairfield, Maidstone, Seminole,
Unsolicited:
Even in my bias, I acknowledge that an original essence of the game--pastorally, competitively, and recreationally-- (that has been maintained in its elite levels) is the exertion of walking. But I also think it is unnecessarily defensive and contentious to constantly re-posit that carts are to be identified as a deleterious influence which decays the game, and therefore can have no place in esteemed golf course architecture. How does it do that, when the pleasures of the game and its architecture have been reported in a hundred subjective ways across the 50 million human players? Walking is only one or two of those 100 ways it is enjoyed, not 99 of them.
The game is indeed for everyone who wants to enjoy it, and the people get to vote with their feet (pun intended) on what enjoyment is. The game is not noble in and of itself; whatever nobility it has comes from the conduct of what people do when they engage it, play it or serve its play. If walking is on the list of things that are pleasurable, enjoyable, precious, dear and recreationally stimulating about golf, it is somewhat down the list. If we did a Family Feud type survey question, it might be "We asked 100 golfers what is most pleasurable about golf?"... "Walking" might be #6 on the list with like 3 votes out of 100...immediately after, "Get to Ride in a Cart" at# 5, with 8 votes.
The soapbox is now going back to holding soap
cheers
vk