This is fascinating, sociologically speaking. Since the Golden Age, the world's population has quadrupled, the golf industry has grown exponentially in size and scope, golf course architecture has become almost wholly professionalized and institutionalized, and communications/media is global and instant and all-pervasive in ways undreamed of even 20 years ago, let alone 90. And yet, for all this momentus change, it seems that now -- just as in the 1920s -- there is still a "100 Club" the rules the roost. Then as now, there is just a very small group of top-flight architects and wealthy clients and prominent private club members and influential writers/critics and famous and accomplished golfers who all know eachother and work with eachother and support/criticize eachother and influence and/or compete against eachother. Then as now, these 100 people (at most, and mostly men) dominate and shape the prevailing ethos and attitudes of an entire game, for an entire generation of golfers. That this was true in the 1920s isn't so surprising to me, but that it should still be true today is, as I say, fascinating.
Peter
Time for a quote, but apropos of nothing save that it came to mind (as in: I guess it's always the Roman Empire):
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar—what should be in that “Caesar”?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name.
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well.
Weigh them, it is as heavy. Conjure with 'em,
“Brutus” will start a spirit as soon as “Caesar.”
Now in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talked of Rome,
That her wide walks encompassed but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
Oh, you and I have heard our fathers say,
There was a Brutus once that would have brooked
Th' eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.