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Ran Morrissett

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... under In My Opinion.

For many, the interaction between man and golf courses lies at the heart of the sport. Some courses stir something more emotive inside us, perhaps sentiments that we didn’t know existed and certainly ones we rarely feel. Almost regardless of the economy, people make pilgrimages to those places that they find most enriching. Be it County Down or the Monterrey Peninsula, it hardly matters as regardless, your spirit soars and you enjoy an elusive sense of well being.

Therefore, the question that begs to be delved into is: How exactly does man interact with a course? Peter’s piece entitled ‘Golf Through the Looking Glass – A Layman’s Reflections on the Art of Seeing’ does that by heading into largely unchartered waters. It carries on from his earlier thread on the subject and starts off with Aldous Huxley, a man whose writing can’t be read (or at least understood!  :-[) quickly. Huxley makes the distinction between the act of physically sensing and then the psychological act of perception. Furthermore, it differs person to person based on your own experiences! Yikes - What’s an owner or a manager of a course to take from that?? :-\

Peter uses heady quotes from intellectual luminaries like Huxley, C.S. Lewis, William James (godson to Ralph Waldo Emerson), Chuang Tzu, and golf’s own brooding intellect Max Behr in making his observations. In particular, Peter’s break down of James' writing personally strikes home. Read what Peter writes here:

“Writing not as a theologian but as a psychologist, James argued that human beings seemed to be manifestly religious animals — that a desire to re-link to the one Reality and Source of Life seemed to be lodged deep in the human psyche, independent of any official religious upbringing or affiliation. It is as if James had said: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”. With this endorsement of personal religious experience, James opened the door wide to emerging concepts about spiritual worship in daily life. In a sense, he gave a whole generation (and indeed, future generations) of religious seekers permission to abandon traditional places of worship — the churches, temples and synagogues — and to instead worship and seek spiritual nourishment wherever and in whatever way suited them best. Not surprisingly, many in the newly-minted Edwardian Age found that it was in Nature and in the natural world — so free from actual or perceived Victorian restraints — where they could most directly experience the divine Ground, where they could most easily share in the one Reality. Lying with a lover on the banks of the Thames could be as spiritual as a Sunday sermon in St. Paul’s Cathedral; and so too could a round of golf played in the misty silence, as the rain fell from low grey clouds draped over a sea-side links in Scotland like a shroud.”

How well said is that?! Many fortunate people among us know exactly the point that Peter makes.

Peter neatly ties various concepts back into golf course architecture. Take this paragraph where the artist’s need for time is discussed, ’An early and influential exponent of the minimalist movement that returned to the top of architecture’s value system a deep appreciation of the golfing possibilities inherent in the land in its natural state, Doak has often noted the primary importance of Time in the creative process – time to wander across the landscape, to ponder and reflect, to look and to look again and again at the golf holes and potential routings that lie already present there in nature itself, waiting for human hands to simply hew away the rough excess so that others may one day see and enjoy them too.’

Also, Peter adroitly uses Huxley’s quote ‘Here we may remark in passing that mechanization is incompatible with inspiration’ as a feed into what went wrong in the 1960s and 70s during the Dark Ages of architecture.
 
The fact that man’s interaction with certain courses can help confer such a warm inward glow of peace is nothing short of amazing and it makes us VERY lucky to be participants. As expressed by Peter, ‘Listen to golfers (down to earth, secular, good and honest people) as they reflect on the moments of Transcendence they experienced at their personal golfing meccas (Dornoch, say, or Ballyneal, or New South Wales at twilight); sit with them as they talk of those experiences with what feels like Awe and Reverence: it is as if you can hear their voices quiver with what might be Joy, and see in their eyes the gentle distant look of what might be Blessedness.’

In sum, this highly original paper is an altogether different take on why some courses resonate and others don’t. Some of the concepts referenced here like Huxley’s one of Grace are none too easy to comprehend. However, Peter expertly guides us through these tricky waters and the very act of grappling with such theories is quite beneficial. Indeed, it may alter the way you look at courses in the future and that makes perusing it time very well spent indeed.

Cheers,

Mark Saltzman

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #1 on: March 04, 2012, 04:39:37 PM »
Peter, fascinating piece, thank you. I always figured you were smarter than me -- now I know it for sure!

Colin Macqueen

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #2 on: March 04, 2012, 06:39:43 PM »
Peter,

Woe is me as I am presently at work and I have just had the quickest glance at your IMO essay.

You are the Theologian of the Tee, the St. Francis of The Fairway and the Gerontius of The Green!  I have always subscribed to the idea that the pursuit of golf, the peregrinations within its playgrounds and the dwelling within its cathedrals is akin to a religious experience.

Haultain, Behr, Handel, Thoureau a veritable cornucopia of greats! Ah yes an Act of Grace indeed. Have the Keys to this Kingdom been provided by you Peter and upon this rock of yours can I continue to build my fantasy.

I am looking forward to reading your piece in the peace and tranquillity of my home.

Many thanks,

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

Jim_Kennedy

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #3 on: March 04, 2012, 07:24:19 PM »
Nicely done Peter.

I do think that Huxley might have changed his mind to:  "Here we may remark in passing that mechanization is incompatible with inspiration" had he witnessed the inspired visions of some modern architects being transcribed onto the earth by equally talented men on machines.

Thanks for the essay. 
"I never beat a well man in my life" - Harry Vardon

Mac Plumart

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #4 on: March 04, 2012, 11:28:32 PM »
Peter...

That is truly excellent!  I'll be refering to that piece often.  I agree with your points even though I may use different terminology.  Namely, magic.

Thanks;  That is very, very good!!
Sportsman/Adventure loving golfer.

Ed Oden

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #5 on: March 04, 2012, 11:40:04 PM »
Thanks Peter, very nicely played.  As an aside, I just realized that I read your piece while watching "Tyson", offering perhaps the greatest juxtapostion of thought in the history of mankind.

Mike Hendren

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #6 on: March 05, 2012, 08:26:36 AM »
Just what this site needs - another fricking big brain.  The Bubba quotient is slowly but surely being squeezed out.

Very impressive Peter.  Thank you.

Bogey
Two Corinthians walk into a bar ....

Peter Pallotta

Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #7 on: March 05, 2012, 10:09:20 PM »
Thanks, gents.  As I wrote to someone off-line, while I'm certainly no expert (nor even a very good student) on the subject, I tried to convey some thoughts while keeping the green to tee walks short and the terrain varied. On that latter, it sure is easier when 30-50% of that terrain doesn't come from me, but from Chuang Tzu and James and Huxley.  I appreciate the kind words - I knew when I hit send that it was a strange, discursive bit of writing...but I figured "what the hell - there is no client to withhold payment!"

thanks again
Peter

Rich Goodale

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #8 on: March 06, 2012, 04:54:45 AM »
Very thought provoking stuff, Peter.  Many thanks.  One particular thing which intrigues me is your statement to the effect of:  "Bill Coore found 18 holes at Sand Hills."  As I understand the legend, he in fact found at least 100 holes on the land that was entrusted to him and chose the chosen 18 with much thought and angst.  Could that not also have been said about the piece of marble entrusted to Michaelangelo?  Perhaps he saw 100 statues in that piece of marble and rejected amongst others, say, a Pieta or even a Laocoon?  Could not almost any piece of wood produce an instrument stand?  Likewise, to the aficionado does there not exist in almost every piece of land a golf course, or at least a golf hole, or at the very least a golf shot?  Yes, one might say, but of what quality?  Yes, but is quality not really in the eyes of the beholders, each one of whom will probably have different concepts and weightings of aesthetics and utility?

Ii is serendipitpous that your fine piece is (at least for now) stickily juxtaposed with the new works of Mike Miller.  I love Mike's talent and like his style, but when I look at the three of his paintings whose reality is most familiar to me (18 Half Moon Bay, 18 Pebble Beach, Cape NGLA), I am not particularly moved by any of them, as Mike's eye and mine see each hole differently.  What he has done is less unearthing an essence than expressing a point of view, with which others can agree or disagree.  Maybe this is just an occupational hazard of trying to depict something which is real and accessible (i.e. the 18th at Pebble Beach) rather than something which is mythical (Laocoon) mysterious (David) and/or more aesthetic than utilitarian (a music stand).

The implications of all of the above for golf course architecture and golf course architects is not clear, at least for me.  The great art of the Renaissance was not driven by popular demand or aesthetics but by the purse strings of the commercial and political interests who funded Leonardo and those of his ilk.  There is more than a hint of analogy in this statement to the1995-2005 period of heroic efforts and huge budgets chasing the elusive goal of immediately "classic" golf course architecture.

Of course, "Classic" is in the eye of the beholder, and the eyes of the beholders change over time, as do we.

Life is good.

Any afterlife is unlikely and/or dodgy.

Jean-Paul Parodi

Ian Andrew

Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #9 on: March 06, 2012, 08:52:04 AM »
Peter,

Brilliant piece. Have you read John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" It's largely about advertising and art, but a fascinating study all the same. Since we share the same area, I can get that book to you. It may be a way to continue some of the ideas you are exploring.

There were a lot of very though provoking quotes throughout. Kudos to you for bringing so many of those ideas together in such a comprehensive piece.

“What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing, but it also depends on what sort of person you are.”


That one actually unnerved me to think that while we try and focus players attention on certain elements of the site or our own architecture, we may actually have less influence than we think.

“I first bring my mind into a state of absolute quiet. After 3 days in this state I become oblivious to any possible reward or gain. After 5 days, I become oblivious to any fame I might achieve. After 7 days, I become unconscious of my limbs and physical frame.  Only then, when there is no thought of you or the Court in my mind, the skills I have become concentrated and all disturbing elements from without are gone.”

Sorry to shorten this piece. It begs the question of whether modern architects are losing touch because of the complications of running a business. I've been doing everything I can to maximize my time on site for Laval, but you spend so much time trying t keep other clients happy, other projects going ad make sure you have the next project lined up when you finish. Where is that moment of tranquility before creation. Perhaps Tom's model is the only one that can accomplish that essential starting point and the key figure is not Tom but one of his men on site.

"Huxley believed, to see more, and to see more clearly, and to recognize/experience the presence of Grace — and, once experienced, to share it with others."

Do you think we need to find these moments on our own first?


Golf changed for me the first time I played on my own at twilight. I found myself obsessed with the landscape and listening to each individual sound. The one thing I didn't concentrate on was playing. It simply happened as I removed all thoughts of play and melted into the experience. That was the day I knew I would play golf for the rest of my life looking for similar moments.

BCrosby

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #10 on: March 06, 2012, 09:12:54 AM »
Peter -

I like your essay very much. Not the usual fare. That's a compliment.

Some thoughts, in no particular order.

- As you note, there is a metaphysical school of golf writing. From Haultain, to Behr, to Updike, to Murphy and others. (Should we include Low and Darwin? Sometimes I think so, other times not so much.) They all, in different ways, urge us see that there are things bigger than golf to be gotten from playing golf. They view golf from the perspective of the consumer of the sport, the golfer. They are saying to us - look how much more you can get out of golf if you think about a golf course as more than just a place to win or lose matches or bets with buddies. Not unlike wine commentators who tell us that wine is much more than just something to wash down with a steak. And of course, both the golf and wine metaphysicians are right. There is lots that we normal plodders miss. So we read and enjoy their stuff. And in some cases their golf courses too.  

- But you are coming at things not from the perspective of the golfer/consumer, but from a step removed - from the perspective of the men who design the golf courses. Your question, I think, is what is it about (good) golf architects that enables them to design golf courses that confer those special benefits? Which you boil down to a matter of 'seeing' things in the land that us plodders simply don't see.

- I think that must be right. And it's fascinating. Walking a piney wood with a Doak or a Young or a Coore, they will all see different things, but all of them will also see much more than I will. Things invisible to me will be quite obvious to them. They exist in a different perceptual universe, in a sense. (I wonder if a designer more oriented to engineering would seem so other worldly to us normal folks? RTJ or even Flynn, for example?)

- To return to your main question -  what is it about (good) golf architects that enables them to design golf courses that confer those special benefits? – you do a wonderful job of painting the mystery of all that. I suspect that even those architects don't know themselves how they do the best things that they do. They just do it. Which is a good thing. The letter kills the spirit and all that.

- Aldous Huxley was a complete nut job. I said my comments would be random.

-  Can we talk about Behr? I'll start. Behr's prose is sometimes, but not always, obtuse. Having gotten that out of the way, it is his more metaphysical stuff that is usually the hardest to follow. Partly, I think, because he is an undisciplined writer (a good editor would have been a godsend), but mostly because we are unable or unwilling to follow where Behr wants to take us. And where he seems to want to take us is to some higher connection with nature that, in turn, will make us better people. His point about good gca is that it is a pathway to that special connection with nature that will elevate us humans to a higher and better place.

- I am unable to go there with Behr. Which is why I have reservations about the whole metaphysical strain of golf writing. One of the refreshing things about Low or MacKenzie or Colt or MacD is that they didn't make metaphysical (probably the wrong word) claims about golf. Golf on good golf courses does not, for them, open a window on some higher consciousness. They make much more humble claims for good gca. Good gca makes for a more fun and interesting game. It's about simple pleasures.

Gotta run. Work to do. Will continue this later. Your piece is remarkably thought-provoking. Can't ask for more than that.

Bob
« Last Edit: March 06, 2012, 02:55:13 PM by BCrosby »

Peter Pallotta

Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #11 on: March 06, 2012, 10:17:16 AM »
Thanks much, gents. It's a pleasure bouncing ideas around like this. I wish we were all in the same room instead (preferably a bar, off an 18th hole someplace, with no obligations awaiting us the next morning). But, some early/random thoughts:

Bob:
 
I too have my reservations about Behr, Haultain, Updike, and Murphy.  You're right: they want us to follow along to discover with them another and higher realm/meaning in the experience, a metaphysics of golf -- and sometimes that's not where I want to go, or at least not go with them.  For lack of a better word, their exercises often seem sacrilegious (even just plain silly) -- the product of a certain leisured class.  And yet, since I don't want to conclude that I will never change, never experience any differently, any deeper, with any more clarity or insight (or even simply Imagination), I find myself pulled back to these writers (and, as I suggested, to their antecedents like James and Huxley) to wonder and ponder and perhaps to learn (about myself if about nothing else).  On your other point: yes, it seems clear/a fact that the good golf architects see more and differently than I do. I don't see golf holes/routings in the land, nor statues in the marble or music stands in a piece of wood. As you say so well: things invisible to me are quite obvious to them.  (Tom D raised a point on the original thread that I didn't know how to discuss in the essay but which is fascinating, i.e. how he often sees golf holes not on the ground but on the topo map -- as if that process of seeing can see nature not only as physical fact but also as mathematical equation.) That mystery/art of seeing is what I was trying to explore -- and I think I knew that there was no clear answer, that there was a mystery involved. That's why I landed on the word Grace -- because the word itself is a mystery.  What are the properties of Grace? How does it operate? How do we (can we) prepare ourselves to experience it?   I think the word comes from the Greek word charis -- which I think has the double meaning of something lovely and something to be grateful for (i.e. as we would be grateful for an unexpected gift). In short, I like the idea of 'explaining' the ability to see in this special way as a lovely gift, one that comes to us from an unexpected place.  That might not be the explanation or even a good explanation -- but it has the advantage of embodying a sense of the mysterious, and hopefully therefore of not killing the subject with the letter but enlivening it with the spirit.

Ian:

Thank you for the suggestion of Berger's book.  I have heard of it before (maybe from you, in fact) and will look it up.  (Thank you as well, post facto, for your post on masters and prodigies.  My wife read the essay after I posted it, and that was one of her favourite parts.)
First off, that's a wonderful example of how a reader (or a golfer) finds/experiences something in the writing/golf course that the writer/architect hadn't intended (or at least intended consciously):  I would never have drawn -- from the CS Lewis line you quote -- what you did there, i.e. the fact that the golfer's experience will have as much to do as what sort of golfer he/she is as it does with where he/she is standing. Yes, it certainly presents a dilemma for the architect (and writer)!!  But I think you have already understood/addressed that, i.e. the way through that (in gca and in writing too I think) is not to dictate, not to proscribed -- to recognize, in short, that our work is a dialogue, not a monologue; that it's meaning and purpose is fulfilled in the very interaction with 'the other'. On your other point, I do think we need to experience grace ourselves -- but as I wrote to Bob, that is a high and mysterious thing (at least to me it is).  Your final point reminded me - almost word for word -- of what a priest (a good priest, a good and brilliant man) once said to me: he said that he decided to enter the priesthood not because he was sure of God or of loving God, but because he was sure he wanted to spend his life in pursuing a knowledge and love of God. 

Rich: you raise some very good and fundamental questions.  First off, on Coore at Sand Hills, I took some artistic licence there: I know the legend too, but I was focusing on the writing and on the cadence of the words and that didn't fit it as well (in my opinion) with the legend as it did with "searching for a golf course, and then finding one".  To your larger point: what you suggest may very well be, i.e. that Coore could have found a dozen courses there, and Michelangelo a hundred statues in a slab of marble, and that every piece of wood contains a musical stand. To that to things come to mind: 1) even if it's true, it doesn't explain away the mystery, the mystery in this case being that -- to use Bob's word -- most plodders couldn't and don't see even the one, let alone the hundred, and 2) that while you may be spot on about each having/weighing different concepts of aesthetics and utility, I wonder if Michelangelo seeing "The Pieta" or Coore's seeing the finished Sand Hills has not more to do with a deep seated Intention than with anything else -- i.e. Michelangelo saw The Pieta there (instead of the other 99 possibilities) because he wanted to see The Pieta, or, more accurately, he was intending to look for The Pieta all along.   I also like very much the distinction you make between "unearthing an essence" and "expressing a point of view".  My thoughts are all over the place on that, but if you won;t hold it against me I'll type out what I'm thinking right at the moment: i.e. good art/work, useful and worthy and beautiful -- that can and sometimes does come from a fine artists expressing a point of view; the truly great and meaningful work emerges only when an essence is un-earthed.

Thanks much, gents.
Peter

Tom_Doak

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #12 on: March 06, 2012, 02:45:06 PM »
Thanks, gents.  As I wrote to someone off-line, while I'm certainly no expert (nor even a very good student) on the subject, I tried to convey some thoughts while keeping the green to tee walks short and the terrain varied. On that latter, it sure is easier when 30-50% of that terrain doesn't come from me, but from Chuang Tzu and James and Huxley.  I appreciate the kind words - I knew when I hit send that it was a strange, discursive bit of writing...but I figured "what the hell - there is no client to withhold payment!"

thanks again
Peter


Peter:

This is much the same way I try to design a golf course ... it sure is easier when 30-50% of the terrain is already there, courtesy of Nature, or God, or The Mosaic Company, or whatever process was at work.

Tom_Doak

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #13 on: March 06, 2012, 02:53:04 PM »
Sorry to shorten this piece. It begs the question of whether modern architects are losing touch because of the complications of running a business. I've been doing everything I can to maximize my time on site for Laval, but you spend so much time trying t keep other clients happy, other projects going ad make sure you have the next project lined up when you finish. Where is that moment of tranquility before creation. Perhaps Tom's model is the only one that can accomplish that essential starting point and the key figure is not Tom but one of his men on site.


Ian:

It's a bit more complicated than that.  To some degree, we take turns being the one who gets to have that moment of tranquility.  During the routing process, it's mostly about me, and I absolutely have to be in the right mood for it to work well ... which is why sometimes it takes a long time, and sometimes it's done in a flash.  To get to that point, I often find that I have to go through several days of avoiding phone calls and "business" decisions and other distractions before I'm ready to come up with something cool ... I've been in one of those phases the last week or two, unable to focus in the office, trying to ward off the distractions so I can really think.  [It's the polar opposite of the intense push we had to make to get out our Olympic proposal, by the way.]

During the construction of the course, sometimes it's the lead associate who gets to that state of Grace; sometimes it is one or another of the shapers; and sometimes it is still me.  While the holes are being shaped, I often wander out ahead to the next three or four holes by myself and just ponder them for a while.

RJ_Daley

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #14 on: March 06, 2012, 03:59:39 PM »
“Rising above the din”.  We’ve often heard that phrase in many contexts, from development of intellectual thought, creative and artistic efforts in fields of philosophical writing, to visual arts, music composition, or GCA.  Ch’ing talks about the need for ‘absolute quiet’ to get himself ready to create.  I think I remember Irving Stone’s description as he interpreted Buonarroti’s work process as nothing distracting in the room or mind of the great master, only to hear the clinking of the hammer and chisel as he brought out his inspired vision from the stone and that the singular sound of that clinking told him where to go within the marble.  (I don’t know if Stone got that from something he researched as attributed to something Buonarroti wrote or said recorded by a contemporary, or just Stone’s speculation based on his research of other clues left behind by the great master). But, I think the virtue or need for quiet, was recognized as part of the process.

I wonder if all the great GCAs while routing, have that sort of quietude where silence is present in reality or at least the din of the ambient noise of life is so suppressed as to allow the mind to see the vision of the routing, and the intended design of the features that will relate in the highest possible manner to the appreciation of the user/consumer of the end product.  I think that in order to reach that concept of creative vision, there must be a version of quiet or silence.  

By the same measure, those of us who fancy ourselves golfers and grateful consumers of the ‘art’ of GCA have likely also had our moment of quietude or tranquility upon a great course where we had some realization of “we get it”, that being the essence of what the artist/archie has tried to convey to us in use or contemplation of the object of their creation.  One of those aspects in GCA that define how we “get it” is the understanding of how the game functions over the terrain- and if it is really great- brings to our senses and realization that the commune of the course with our ideal of nature is a work of GCA in harmony.

I think a few of the posters above all touch on those moments of enlightenment or exceptional creativity, where the effort reaches or approaches close to the ‘divine ground’, based on a process of grace, or higher force of inspiration.  With the artist, like Buonarroti, or the carpenter like Ch’ing, there is a need for quiet to let the vision or art of seeing what is sought to be created, to take over the process.  The quiet required seems to me to be the notion that the seeing becomes an enhanced sense when the sense of hearing (particularly distracting noise) is reduced or eliminated.  Maybe seeing best is not hearing much or anything at all but the inner voices.

‘Rising above the din’ in our modern era has much ambient noise to contend with, both physical sound of noise, and mental distraction of created noise of marketing-advertising for our attention.  The more noise created, the less we really ‘see’ or understand, or ‘get it’ as the essence of the real thing or problems before us.  

I wonder if mankind, the user-consumers in this world, would not benefit if we only had a period of complete quiet tranquility in order to really think and heighten the other senses to be able to ‘see’ or visualize our future in a more grace-ful manner.

Quote
“The twentieth century is, among other things, the Age of Noise. Physical noise, mental noise and noise of desire -- we hold history's record for all of them. And no wonder; for all the resources of our almost miraculous technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence. That most popular and influential of all recent inventions, the radio is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes. And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the eardrums. It penetrates the mind, filling it with a babel of distractions, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but usually create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas. And where, as in most countries, the broadcasting stations support themselves by selling time to advertisers, the noise is carried from the ear, through the realms of phantasy, knowledge and feeling to the ego's core of wish and desire. Spoken or printed, broadcast over the ether or on wood-pulp, all advertising copy has but one purpose -- to prevent the will from ever achieving silence. Desirelessness is the condition of deliverance and illumination. The condition of an expanding and technologically progressive system of mass production is universal craving. Advertising is the organized effort to extend and intensify the workings of that force, which (as all the saints and teachers of all the higher religions have always taught) is the principal cause of suffering and wrong-doing and the greatest obstacle between the human soul and its Divine Ground. — fromSilence, Liberty, and Peace (1946)  Aldous Huxley.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2012, 04:01:52 PM by RJ_Daley »
No actual golf rounds were ruined or delayed, nor golf rules broken, in the taking of any photographs that may be displayed by the above forum user.

David Harshbarger

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #15 on: March 06, 2012, 05:46:10 PM »
Peter,

Wonderful stuff, and it really gets down to the heart of the creative process.

As mentioned above, I wouldn't get hung up on mechanization.  Your craftsmen works with tools, as do today's shapers, as did Michelangelo.  Artistry is an extension of the artist through the tools, onto the medium.  Mechanization as a force that inhibits artistry is merely a by-product of the process established in the use of the tools.  A process that insists on uniformity and conformity robs the soul of the opportunity for expression.  But that process can work its evils whether a man wields a machine, or just his two hands.

Having worked in the creative world of software development, I've often wondered what someone like me would have done in the days before computers.  While certainly no great artist, I have experienced that bliss of creation, too, made even more magical as the what is created in software is no more than a virtualization of a thought, or maybe the realization in a virtual sense of that vision in the mind's eye.  For any of you software people out there, like R Choi, you may know what I mean.  There's nothing so cool as to make something come to life out of, really, nothing, but your mind and your thoughts, as they flow out of your finger tips. 

Oddly, those moments of creativity, of which I have experienced a handful, are rarely quiet.  Sure, there has to be some respite of the normal office going's on, but absolute quiet of the no sound but the click of the keys is more likely the driving sound of an endless playlist. 

Great article through and through though.  And one thing that leaves me in awe of the GCA, is the ability to unearth these creations that then engender transcendent experiences in others, through the active act of playing through them . Maybe that's a false difference between the transcendence of experiencing music, or art, or a great book, as our conscious attention is required in all cases.  But the physicality of playing the course as part of the experience just takes the accomplsishment of the GCA to another level, IMHO.

Thankse so much.

Dave

And my moment was the 10th at the Saratoga Spa Course, with the light streaming through the tall pines, turning the fairway into a mighty nave, the bright green apse awaiting the communicant, ahead.
The trouble with modern equipment and distance—and I don't see anyone pointing this out—is that it robs from the player's experience. - Mickey Wright

Dan Kelly

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #16 on: March 06, 2012, 09:20:08 PM »
Hey, Peter --

Thank you.

I'm going to give you my initial thoughts, without reading others' first. I'll be interested to see if anyone sees (or should I say perceives? ha!) things as I do.

It's very well written, I think -- with one exception: the Max Behr quotations. To me, he's just impenetrable. I can't get anything out of what he writes. I'd make it a rule: If you're going to quote Max Behr, you're required to run, immediately thereafter, a Behr-bones summation of the meaning you find there.

The rest rings clear as a bell. Well done.

"The Varieties of Religious Experience" was one of my favorite books in an American Intellectual History course almost 40 years ago. I'm sure it's still out in my "furnace room library." I should drag it out and reread at least the highlighted passages. (I was a big highlighter. Still am!)

I think I don't agree with a good part of your argument, but you expressed it very well.

Here's my initial reaction:

Michelangelo could have envisioned dozens of wonderful sculptures from any given piece of marble. (He might have claimed to see only one -- but I think that was just a bit of showing-off.) Similarly, I think the best architects could envision dozens of golf courses from any given piece of excellent golf terrain. I wouldn't reject your idea of Grace, but I don't Talent is wrong, either.

Furthermore, I think that true golfers -- those "down to earth, secular, good and honest people" -- reach Transcendence on golf courses, when they reach it, GENERALLY where Nature itself is transcendent. Golf just adds to the pleasure of the transcendence for golfers -- but I think hikers and hunters and photographers (including the golfers among them) would feel the same transcendence at many of the same spots, if there were no golf course there at all.

Nice job, overall. I'll read your next one, too!

Dan

P.S. Just remembered. Your comments on mechanization reminded me of a letter to the editor of The New Yorker, in the 3/5/2012 issue:

Jeremy Denk’s wonderful piece about the arduous process of assembling from many takes an ideal recording of Charles Ives’s “Concord” Sonata reminded me why many great performers—Artur Schnabel and Otto Klemperer, to name two—hated the process of recording (“Flight of the Concord,” February 6th). Schnabel’s mix of analytical brilliance and enormous intensity of utterance always included fistfuls of wrong notes. But who cares? Would additional takes really have “improved” any of it? Klemperer would generally record entire movements, not small sections or “bits.” Denk’s search for the clinically pristine and the rapturous in a willful exercise of technological mix and match makes it easy to see why some artists and major orchestras—the Boston Symphony under James Levine among them—chose to record live performances, letting at least some of the chips fall where they may, and thereby restoring to the process a humanity that is in danger of becoming vestigial.

Dan Farber

Portsmouth, R.I.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/letters/2012/03/05/120305mama_mail3#ixzz1oOV9E6yr
« Last Edit: March 06, 2012, 09:30:57 PM by Dan Kelly »
"There's no money in doing less." -- Joe Hancock, 11/25/2010
"Rankings are silly and subjective..." -- Tom Doak, 3/12/2016

BCrosby

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #17 on: March 07, 2012, 09:18:10 AM »
Peter -

Your focus on an architect's ability to 'see' things the rest of us don't, brought to mind a passage from Darwin where he talks about a problem hole at Rye. It was the 9th, as I recall. Darwin and other club members studied possible solutions and finally came up with a complicated fix. They asked Tom Simpson to check out their ideas. He looked over the hole and in a few minutes offered a simple, elegant change that no one had thought of. Simpson's change was adopted on the spot. Darwin, dazzled, notes that Simpson's solution should have been obvious from the beginning. But, of course, it wasn't, except to Simpson.

Darwin's main point is much like yours. For whatever reason good architects see things that other people don't. A good thing and it's always impressive. But I pull up short of calling it "Grace". Too many religious connotations for my taste. Good architects are really good at their art. Which is high praise indeed. Not sure there's a need to go much beyond that, however.

Bob
« Last Edit: March 10, 2012, 09:10:05 AM by BCrosby »

Peter Pallotta

Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #18 on: March 07, 2012, 12:58:52 PM »
Thanks again, gents. David, RJ - good posts, thanks.

Dan, Bob, Rich - it seems you are all in basic agreement, thus forming a powerful Triumvirate indeed!  I'd like to think the quality of an idea can be measured by the might of those arrayed against it!  :)

But that's enough of that/this -- there is big news in the golfing world today, the real world of actual golf courses!

Peter

« Last Edit: March 07, 2012, 02:21:48 PM by PPallotta »

Dan Kelly

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #19 on: March 09, 2012, 08:37:07 PM »
Peter --

Just ran across a quotation I think you'll like:

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see." -- Arthur Schopenhauer
"There's no money in doing less." -- Joe Hancock, 11/25/2010
"Rankings are silly and subjective..." -- Tom Doak, 3/12/2016

Peter Pallotta

Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #20 on: March 09, 2012, 08:43:18 PM »
Ah, Dan - thank you, sir.  It takes a good man to share a gift, it takes a big man to admit he's wrong! :D  (Just kidding - otherwise I would've never used the emoticon in your presence).

Great line isn't it And a pithy one (which is almost as good).  There is, I know there is Toto, another level beyond talent (already a lofty benchmark).  I tried to put my finger on it; Schopenhauer seems to be referencing a kind of "vision" - an art of seeing perhaps, as one might see if the windows of perception were wiped clean?

Thanks, Dan.

Peter

Dick Kirkpatrick

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #21 on: March 10, 2012, 06:55:52 PM »
Thank you Peter.

Jeffrey Stein

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #22 on: March 12, 2012, 08:11:53 AM »
Peter,

A wonderful essay which resonates with me as well as the ensuing thoughts and questions about the creative process.  I am beginning my own transformative endeavor in golf architecture, with the help of the drawing excercises in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Dr. Betty Edwards.  It goes deeper into the ways in which we perceive to explain what we actually see.  For example one of the exercises asks the student to copy an image upside down, in effect breaking down any preconceived notion of what something should look like.

When I start drawing in earnest, with no distractions, I feel that same quiet state that exists without time.  This often happens as well when doing any type of hand work in the finishing of a golf course, laboring over the smallest of details.  Recently, I have been spending many hours in an excavator, creating bunkers, and it is much harder to maintain this same level of transcendence with the noise and often awkward positioning of the machine.  Music helps, however it is when I get out of the machine to gain better visual perspective or fine tune the edges that I truly return to grace, as you put it.  As I have learned from some of the best in art of golf architecture, creativity and inspiration manifests itself on the ground and not always in the seat of a machine and hardly ever in the seat of a golf cart !

Lastly I would like to state my appreciation to Ian for sharing and Peter for neatly tying this all together, it gives me a glimmer of hope in what sometimes seems like a bleak future for aspiring professionals in golf architecture.

Quote
As suggested earlier, the parable distills a lifetime of dedication into a week of intense preparation; the reader is not meant to assume that Ch’ing has always been chief carpenter, that he has always been a master.  And this picture of a life-long process fits well with the thoughts of a current golf architect, Ian Andrew.  In discussing the differences between, in his words, prodigies and masters, Andrew concludes that great architects are more like masters than prodigies: “The Master is equal to the prodigy in terms of talent; but their route to a successful expression of that talent is much, much longer.…They usually begin the journey without clarity, and much of the early work is setting the table for what is to come in the future.  They obtain clarity through exploration.  They learn, work, experiment, seek new ideas, create, assess, refine and so on, often for decades until through determination and inherent ability they find what they are looking for.  The main reason for this drawn out approach is they seek perfection.”

Thanks for all the inspiration.
I love the smell of hydroseed in the morning.
www.steingolf.com

Peter Pallotta

Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #23 on: March 12, 2012, 11:29:24 AM »
Jeffrey - thanks much for writing. I'm very glad the essay resonated with you.  Even though I 'finished' it and sent it in to Ran, it really was/is a work in progress -- an exploration (for myself) of some ideas I have floating around and that I want to get on paper so that I can begin to understand them better.  As with most anything I write, i just start typing with no end goal in mind and let my fingers lead me where they want to go. (That's why I mentioned making my main concern the short green to tee walks -- I just want to make sure to connect the dots as I go).  Anway, I say this because your response helps me to believe that this porcess of exploration is worth something. Thanks.

Peter
« Last Edit: March 12, 2012, 11:37:28 AM by PPallotta »

John Kirk

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Re: Peter Pallotta's 'Golf through the Looking Glass' is now posted ...
« Reply #24 on: March 13, 2012, 03:37:56 PM »
Peter,

Thanks for the nice essay.

After reading your essay, I read almost all of Bob Crosby's essay about Joshua Crane.  I've had a full morning of golf design philosophy, and the nature of creativity.  Both are great.

I'm not the kind of person who tends to develop a worthwhile response to things of depth without a significant amount of time to let them settle in.

I will say this.  A prescribed walk through a diverse, natural landscape is infinitely more complex and beautiful than the simple game we play while making the walk.

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