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DMoriarty

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Sean, at some point in time what you are saying may have become true, but I am not sure this was the case early in the supposed golden age.  The greatest American early GA courses were built to be great golf courses, not championship courses (and the three best and most difficult never hosted "championships") and they were based on courses abroad.
Golf history can be quite interesting if you just let your favorite legends go and allow the truth to take you where it will.
--Tom MacWood (1958-2012)

Peter Pallotta

With all these interesting Melvyn inspired threads lately, it made me want to start one more, asking a 'fundamental' question, ie Have we gained more than we've lost, or lost more than we have gained, or is such a question even relevant/applicable?
Peter

Sven Nilsen

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Sean, at some point in time what you are saying may have become true, but I am not sure this was the case early in the supposed golden age.  The greatest American early GA courses were built to be great golf courses, not championship courses (and the three best and most difficult never hosted "championships") and they were based on courses abroad.

David:

Curious as to what three courses you are referring to, and what time frame.

One example of an early American course built to host a Championship is Glen Echo, which had a specific goal in mind when conceived.  Not that I'm disagreeing with you, just that there were exceptions.

Just about every championship course from the early days saw significant "improvements" prior to hosting.  Donald Ross kept himself pretty busy in this manner in the late teens.

Sven
"As much as we have learned about the history of golf architecture in the last ten plus years, I'm convinced we have only scratched the surface."  A GCA Poster

"There's the golf hole; play it any way you please." Donald Ross

DMoriarty

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NGLA, Pine Valley, Lido.   All pre 1920.
Golf history can be quite interesting if you just let your favorite legends go and allow the truth to take you where it will.
--Tom MacWood (1958-2012)

Sean_A

  • Karma: +0/-0
Sean, at some point in time what you are saying may have become true, but I am not sure this was the case early in the supposed golden age.  The greatest American early GA courses were built to be great golf courses, not championship courses (and the three best and most difficult never hosted "championships") and they were based on courses abroad.

David

Pine Valley and NGLA were considered very difficult courses and could easily have held championships..though I don't believe that was ever the intention, but I think in general you are right...its the latter classic courses which I am refering to. 

One small but important correction.  The US courses were based on holes, not courses.

Ciao
New plays planned for 2024:Winterfield & Hartlepool

Jeff_Brauer

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Grass doesn't grow naturally?  Sprinklers!  That kind of thing.

Just MHO.

I vividly remember Mr. Dye telling me that his mentor, Bill Diddel, refused on principle to install fairway irrigation on his golf courses.  Pete thought that was a good stand to take, but Mr. Diddel told him not to make it, that he would never get any work that way. 

But, that was 1958, not 1928.

Jeff, I'd be curious if you could cite a couple of passages from books by MacKenzie or Thomas or Simpson or Colt, where they are overly concerned with fairness and eliminating the rub of the green.  Those are the four main books of the period, aside from Robert Hunter's THE LINKS, and I know you're not going to find it there, when he is waxing poetically about his little match with John Ball at Hoylake.

I think you're projecting.

TD,

I sure take Mac comments about no long grass and avoid piling up a big score as first steps to fairness. Ditto, no blind shots at flags.

Ross (pg 188 in Golf Has Never Failed Me) says "Improvements have made the game easier, and more attractive to the average player, and that's as it should be."

On 157 he notes "Bunkering for arts sake adds little to playing quality and much to the maintenance budget"

How about "Greens that slope away from the stroke finds little favor, because it does not give the golfer a chance to play boldly as otherwise, and the green is apt to be more or less blind."

I guess you can interpret these writings any way you want.  I have always taken several passages they write as "Hey, that sounds pretty modern".  As other newspaper clips here show, they did believe it was almost a whole new ballgame, deserving of a design paradigm they felt fit here, rather than mere copying of the old links.

I can understand that line of thinking, and it is sort of the American way, perhaps held over from the Mayflower and "New World" mentality.  Certainly, "form follows function" has long been a design staple over "copy what was done somewhere else" in all fields of design.

So, no doubt American design was different, IMHO.  The real question is if that was a bad thing under the circumstances?  Proably a mix of good and bad, as most things are.
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

Niall C

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There's a great deal of context that needs to be considered in this conversation, specifically how the game was changing in its early years.

Now that the ball-makers have successfully ruined most of our leading courses, it remains for the golf architects to so design the greens that they shall be both difficult of access and that the putting shall demand care and skill in judging slopes and undulations. - W. Herbert Fowler

Add in steel shafts and other innovations in the clubs themselves, and you have a constantly changing game.  Bendelow and others were ahead of the curve, espousing the design of courses of added length to keep up with the changes in how far players could hit the ball.  Here, Fowler describes taking the concept a step further, in added difficulty around and on the greens.

And I don't think this paradigm shift was merely an American phenomenon.  It was just that more new courses were being built over here.

Sven

Sven

I was just reading a magazine article from 1909 (from memory) by AC Croome regarding Fowlers changes at Westward Ho ! and it's full of comments about bunkers put in to trap slicers and hookers. It also details the changes made to lengthen holes, and to set greens back on plateaus which seemed to be a theme for Fowler. All of the above changes seem to favour the stronger player in my opinion. Not much chat about the new greens being more undualting from what I remember.

Also find it interesting in his comment on the ball. I recall that Fowler played in the 1902 Cruden Bay Amateur tournament and was the only one to play with the Haskell. Clearly he played his own part in the "ruination" of the game by advancing technology.

Niall

Sven Nilsen

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Just so we're clear that this wasn't an American phenomenon (from the March 1902 edition of Golf Magazine, quoting London Field):



"As much as we have learned about the history of golf architecture in the last ten plus years, I'm convinced we have only scratched the surface."  A GCA Poster

"There's the golf hole; play it any way you please." Donald Ross

V. Kmetz

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Hello,

I think this is an excellent topic and I hope it breeds further discussion/other topic/question...

1. If yes, then...has it been a loss? Where is the loss felt? What about the game's origins (as one sees it); what essential character of the origins has been lost by the "straying?"

2. If no, then... has there been any increased value? What discoveries and positive additions were made by architects NOT straying from the game's origins? (eg. Did Tillinghast's work maintain fidelity to the game's origins, regardless of property, and prove it is the architect understanding of THAT, and NOT the land that inaugurates the enduring quality?)

3. Does this debate matter to the evaluation of contemporary and future work, and its commercial success? Does it point a light or show a problem in stark relief that can be addressed by the industry?

As for my own answer, I agree with the general opinions expressed by SN, JT and TD... My own take:

"No, I don't think American golf architecture strayed too far from the game's origins, at least not the "best" of it. I think American architecture retained, replanted and exploited the fundamentals of the game's origins...still about angles, still about judgement, still about calculation in a changed environment...still about compounding dangers of error and lingering rewards for execution...still about handling fortune.

If it "feels" like it has strayed too far, it is because of the number and variety of American courses - America has like 25 different environments in which to design the game...the games origins in Scotland/UK has three or four. -- This sheer breadth promotes a great number of plain or awkwardly-situated, utilitarian courses intended to advantage a recreational or commercial purpose; they give provincials a chance to go beyond a driving range. But that is understandable; not every ballfield is Wembley Stadium, Fenway Park or the Yale Bowl either.

If anything, american architects (or whatever could be said generally about their "architecture") are observed continually translating the game's origins despite incursions from technology. Those incursions should be the real "culprits" for those who feel a palpable loss from changes in design and conduct of the game from that early time.

Still TD seems correct to say that if there is such a "break" with the games' origins, it is in the work and profound influence of RTJ from the 40s to just recently. He was the one of the first, most strident architectural voices to conceptualize "hard par easy bogey" which really seems an American "medal" departure from the game's "match" origins...he, at greater and greater budgets, freely altered and moved land to create his design, rather than suffer confinement by the land upon his design.

This when the game's origins and first championship eras were played upon courses that were incidental to the land...a complete reversal of philosophy... as the games origins had to follow the places where grasses were, where heather and gorse were not, where sheep had burrowed, where rabbits ran, and where the dunes and swept and rolled. The general environments were the same, but each canvas was different; for RTJ, each canvas was rendered perfectly "flat" first, and then the land was made to shape a conceptual and/or aesthetic purpose.

I observe that the games origins were forged on architecture which exercised little or no control over what the player would see, how he would feel, how he would play, or how much he would enjoy the round and wanted to repeat it in the recreational market. (I suppose GC Architecture REALLY changed from the game's origins once an "architect" imposed any control whatsoever) Still, RTJ has to be, if any, the first significant notorious break with architecture straying from origins...his work is the first to subordinate the fortune of land to a conceptual standard, and elevate the fortune of land to realize an aesthetic standard."

cheers

vk
"The tee shot must first be hit straight and long between a vast bunker on the left which whispers 'slice' in the player's ear, and a wilderness on the right which induces a hurried hook." -

Tommy Naccarato

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Did the early and then Golden Age (or thereabouts) American architects stray too far from its Scottish roots?

Jeff, In my opinion, they followed it, if not further carried the mantle of nature being the best guide--and how a golf course should embrace its surroundings as well as the freedom of being outdoors.  This would eventually die when the hugely popular sport was exploited by those with lesser ideals and far less passion, but far more ego. Well that and a Great Depression and World War, coupled with mass redevelopment.

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Was it turf and natural conditions that forced the change?  Or an American desire to put a stamp on the game?

I think color photography, film and television was much to blame for that, as well as a certain course in Georgia.  However, the desire to change the game usually was the result of people selfishly trying to make the game easier for themselves. Lost was the mystery of Golf, its challenge to Sportsmen and the endless quest to play the perfect golf hole.

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Could their designs have looked more like the early courses?

No! Their designs embraced the very nature f a site, as well as the possibility of challenging holes the land could deliver.

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And, should they have?

No! They taught those that are still willing to listen, observe and reflect upon.

Sven Nilsen

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Some more food for thought (from the Nov. 1903 edition of Golf Magazine).

My only quibble with the article is that the author ignores that many of the early designs he criticizes were laid out by imported pros.





"As much as we have learned about the history of golf architecture in the last ten plus years, I'm convinced we have only scratched the surface."  A GCA Poster

"There's the golf hole; play it any way you please." Donald Ross

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