Mike, Probably some of the members of the Walter J. Travis Society! John
John,
I'm trying to be objective based on the timeline of events and the collaboration in those early years between Macdonald and Travis. While not dispositive, this snippet below from my IMO piece on Travis's role at NGLA seems an early inflection point.
After winning his second consecutive United States Amateur tournament during the fall of 1901, Travis began to think more about the state of the game in America. Imbued with newfound knowledge and exposure to the great courses abroad the previous summer, the analytical side of Travis began to mentally explore what he saw as fundamental differences that largely accounted for both superior courses as well as superior golfers on the other side of the pond.\
This exercise eventually translated into an article for Golf magazine titled simply, “Hazards”. In the piece Travis railed against the American penchant for platform flat greens and tees, shallow cross bunkers crossing the fairways at rote intervals, ramrod straight golf holes, and general malaise in thinking, creativity, and naturalness. Instead, Travis argued that interesting and thoughtfully placed bunkers placed generally along the sides but also towards the desired line of play brought interest, intrigue, challenge, and a sense of adventure to a round of golf, particularly for the better player. Travis felt American courses were too “dumbed down” in a condescending way, often to please the vast majority of club members who were not proficient in the game yet whose egos wouldn’t permit them to face a real challenge lest their ineptness be on full display. Travis felt that only by providing suitable challenge for all players would golfers be forced to improve, leading to an overall greater enjoyment for everyone. However, that is not to suggest that Travis was a penal architect; in fact, just the opposite. He believed that soundly designed courses provided the handicap man with safe, albeit indirect avenues of play but that same duffer could risk taking the more challenging route and dare punitive hazards when feeling his oats.
He wrote; “Speaking by and large, our courses here are not nearly so difficult, in respect to hazards, as those in Great Britain; nor, it may be added, has the game reached the same standard; and until we reach the approximate level of the one we can hardly hope to do so of the other… A really good course, before it can be unprejudicially pronounced as such, must abound in hazards – and good courses develop good players.”
“…Generally speaking, while we have not nearly enough bunkers, there is too much of what we do have. The material is there, but it is not scientifically applied. Let me endeavor to exemplify my meaning. Take, for instance, the regulation bunker for the tee shot. This almost invariably stretches across the entire width of the green. Instead of this, I should put in one, irregularly outlined, of about one-third the width across, leaving clear spaces on either side for the shorter player who cannot comfortably carry it, and from twenty to forty yards further on – according to the distance of the first bunker from the tee – hazards of nearly equal size on either side of the course to catch a pulled or sliced ball, as the case may be…”
…The player carrying the first bunker would have the advantage of practically a clear and unobstructed approach to the green while the more timorously inclined or shorter player could play safely to the side, only, however, to be forced to negotiate the second bunker on his next shot.”
“Hazards arranged somewhat upon the lines indicated rather than slavishly following the system adopted on the great majority of our courses, would, I think, make the game vastly more interesting and more provocative of better golf all around.”
It is insightful to note that this was in 1902, almost a decade prior to the opening of National Golf Links of America, at a time when most of the courses in America at the time, including Macdonald’s vaunted Chicago Golf Club, and Devereux Emmet’s Garden City Golf Club featured much the same type of flat greens and cross bunkering that Travis criticized so evocatively in his article. What Travis was describing as a more creative and inspirational alternative is what we know and take for granted today as “strategic golf course architecture”, yet at the time Travis was writing these were no less than revolutionary ideas in America.