The Architectural Bug

[T_MacWood]

What incident or experience sparked your interest in golf architecture?

[TEPaul]

That's a fun question. I remember it so well. After a tournament round at Manufacturers I was on the porch talking to some guy (I sure wish I could remember who he was) and he mentioned that this museum in Wilmington De had all these old aerials of golf courses.

I went down there (with zero previous interest in architecture) and this nice lady (Barbara Hall) checked the files for Gulph Mills and came back with seven original Dallin aerials of the course from 1924 to 1939. We both put on those white cotton gloves to handle them. I'll never forget my reaction which was---Oh My God look at the way it used to be!

Basically I got hooked right there. I bought them all, took them home and about a week later I'd written that design evolution report.

[George_Bahto]

My clubhouse burned down in 1986 and trying to dig up some of the original material to replace what we lost (mostly stolen) started a serious research project - still going

[ian]

13 years old watching the Crosby Pro Am, I was looking at the course while Dad watched the players. Spent my allowance on a Golf Digest to see more of the course. I bought Golf Digest for two years before I actually played golf for the first time.

[Tony Petersen]

I would have to say that my introduction to this website, along with a move to the mountains of CO fueled my interest in GCA. Next thing you know, I have LOTS of books and a serious jones to play ALOT of courses that I will probably never have the chance to play... Thank God for Wild Horse, Apache Stronghold and Minnesota/New Mexico

[RT]

Playing my first top-100 golf course, in '74.  University of New Mexico South Course, Red Lawrence.  Right there, right then, it was sowed, same day as Nixon resigned.

The primary foundation was seeing the first Harbour Town Golf Classic on CBS.

RT

[cary lichtenstein]

My dad took me to Pebble Beach as a graduation present. That , the 17 mile drive, the first 6 holes at Spyglass, I never stopped looking at the beauties of nature.

[Michael Moore]

In 1999 I was working at a law firm where several of the partners were members at the esteemed (so much so that it used to be listed on "The Next Fifty") Portland Country Club in Falmouth, ME, a Donald Ross course from way back when.

Having assisted there on many a glorious afternoon with the golf team from a local high school, and having enough interest in Donald Ross that I have on file a three page letter from Michael Fay in response to my lamentations regarding the Biddeford-Saco Country Club (along with my regrets at not being able at the time to afford membership in the Donald Ross Society), I was invited on several occasions to play at the club. With my youthful length off the tee, my linen trousers, and my deferential tone, I was a hit.

After one particular round, I was sitting on the spectacular veranda with my host, emulating Mr. Zoeller by enjoying a vodka and tonic and running my mouth. I was talking about the new course at Belgrade Lakes, about how it was OK, but that the fairways were too wide and I preferred an older style of architecture.

My host gave me a look which clearly indicated that I had no idea what I was talking about and that one didn't arrive at his station in life by blurting out whatever nonsense came into one's head.

[Tim_Weiman]

Tom MacWood:

I was two years old sitting by the hill on the 18th hole at Leewood Golf Club in Eastchester, New York. Leewood has no claim to fame other than being the club where Babe Ruth was a member and where George Lewis served as the professional for many years.

Something about the place and the concept of a golf course fascinated me even at that age. I guess my Mother must have liked it as it was pretty easy to just let me sit there watching players come through.

Later when I was ten years old Sports Illustrated published the Dan Jenkins book and I became determined to go out and see the best of what golf architecture had to offer.

I've always had a great deal of appreciation for the men who created the wonderful venues I've seen. For example, I can't play the fourth hole at Spyglass Hill without imagining Robert Trent Jones standing there with a chuckle. I can't visit a shrine like Cypress Point without thinking about Mackenzie. Gosh, how much I wish we could meet and sit down for a chat! Maybe that is why Geoff Shackelford's Good Doctor appealed to me so much. Fantasy? Of course. But, what is wrong with that?

What sustains the interest? At its best, golf architecture is just a wonderful art form, a sheer joy just to sit and look at. Something like the beautiful manner in which Tom Doak tied #12 and #13 together at Atlantic City Country Club is classic. Or how about those pictures Ken Bakst developed for Friar's Head? How can you not be inspired?

[Craig Disher]

After playing munis for many years and almost quitting the game because of the 5-6 hour rounds, my wife and I took a couple of vacations to Scotland and England. Golf there was a revelation - not that I could play in under 3 hours, but it was just so much more fun. The courses had features I'd never encountered before - bunkers in the line of play that were HAZARDS, for example. The courses were neither expensive nor exclusive and I wondered why my local munis were so different - and so uninteresting in comparison. A friend of mine and I took a weekend trip to Pinehurst and the answers started to fall into place - it was the architecture and I was hooked.

[BCrosby]

Three unconnected events.

 - As a teenager at the Athens CC (Ross, 1925). One day in the mid-60's someone told me that the 18th used to play 50 yards longer as a par 5. No one knew where the old tee box used to be amongst the pines. A mystery that remains unsolved to this day.

 - Sitting on the porch of the Myopia Hunt Club in 1970 after a team qualifying round thinking Myopia required a different kind of game from that required by any other golf course I had played to date.

 -  A visceral dislike for Dye's Atlanta National the first time I played it in 1982. I'm not sure I feel the same way now, but at the time the strength of my feelings surprised me. (Maybe finishing double, double to miss qualifying for the state am had something to do with it.) I began thinking about my reactions to the course, comparing ATL National to other courses I knew. Whether my critical views made any sense, etc.

That internal dialogue continued for many years. I figured I was the only one who cared much about such things. The main golf magazines, Golf Channel, other media outlets didn't seem to. I started thinking of it as a private vice. Something you do alone at home. Then I discovered the NLE TraditionalGolf web site several years ago. From which I migrated to this site.

Bob    

[Mark_Fine]

Playing Royal Liverpool back in the 80's, my first links course.  When I took at look at the golf course walking out of the clubhouse, I said, what the hell is this?  Little did I know at the time.

[Jeff Goldman]

Playing a great course for the first time - River Course at BWR.  I only took up golf a few years ago when I moved back from New York to Chicago, and after playing the River Course I wanted to understand better why it was so good, how it got that way, and what other great courses were.  I actually did a google search under "golf course architecture" to find this site, visited Pebble, Banff/Jasper, La Quinta and Pinehurst (so far), discovered that I love (apologies to Tony Curtis) "da classics," although I haven't played many, and the rest is history.  Still kicking myself for not playing golf when I was a law clerk in 1991 in Detroit because the boss was a member of Franklin Hills, and we used to stop by for lunch or dinner a lot.  If I still lived there I'd bug him endlessly to get me put up for membership.  Aarrrggghhh!

Jeff Goldman

[Jeff_Brauer]

My first round of golf, at age 12, I actually took bus fare back home, or at least to the clubhouse, as I thought I would end up at the street somewhere.

I had no idea that the course could be routed to start and finish at the same place!  Plus, I was getting hungry on hole 8.  When I climbed nine tee, saw the clubhouse, and smelled burgers cooking, I thought to myself, "The guy who designed this was a genius!"

I was so enamored going through the woods, turning direction, getting lost, etc.  I tried to sketch out the routing on a cocktail napkin that night.  As I have told Pete Dye, the only difference in his career and mine is that I progressed from that point!

[tonyt]

Before I was 10, I would go out each year and watch my uncle win the club championship in my home town at Ballarat Golf Club, in Victoria, Australia. It is a flat and very plain country golf course.

Then I was invited by him to be taken to the Australian PGA Championship and watch the big guns play. I was ecstatic. Tempted by the promise of Greg Norman, Graham Marsh, Seve Ballesteros and Johnny Miller.

When we got to the venue (some place called Royal Melbourne ), I was in disbelief that with all he had told me about coming down to Melbourne, he had neglected to mention how amazingly different the golf course was (read: no flat, small circular greens). The undulating fairways (I remember asking what a player is supposed to do if they can't stand level), and incredibly interesting and dangerous looking bunkers (the old Doc can be intimidating to a nine year old).

I went back and saw Ballarat Golf Club, and asked my father why it had to be the way it was, after I saw at RM what could be. From then on, I marvelled at anything that was more than just mown greens and tees in a park, and when I started playing, obsessed with playing as many different courses as I could. Bless the patience of some of my teachers, who had to interrupt my penciled golf course designs during classes.

[Michael Dugger]

Great question Tom!!

For me, it had to be the first time I unearthered not one, but two copies of Robert Hunter's The Links from the University of Oregon's Knight Library.  The way in which he described the game of golf....those incredible pictures of an infant Pine Valley.  I was positively mesmerized.

I found out about Mackenzie and Hunter and Thomas' books from reading Anatomy just prior.  It still boggles my mind that after reading Golf Digest and so on in my youth, I had never even heard of these golf course architects dudes from something called the Golden Era?  I knew Pete Dye made an island green and Robert Trent Jones was famous.

[Jeremy_Glenn.]

When I was 14, I discovered my grandmother's mashie, spoon and niblick at the back of our garage, at our cottage (an old farm).

The farm was surrounded by small pastures and two ponds, with good elevation changes.  Not that I had any about this game called "golf" (I thought it was a pass-time for old farts in ugly pants), the farm's surroudings turned out to be ideal for a home-made pitch & putt.

"Glenn Abbey" (as we eventually called it years later) was the setting for countless hours of fun and legendary tales of "Alice in Wonderland"-style golf.

I should post a story of our little course.  Thanks for the memories, Tom!

[Jeff_Blume]

My interest in golf course architecture came in the opposite way that most touring professionals of today get their interest.  Unlike the professionals, I decided to become an architect when I realized that I would not be an accomplished enough player to make a living playing golf.  Only after I had started my career did I realize that how well I hit the ball had very little to do with my understanding of routings, strategic and tactical design, grading and drainage, etc.  As my old boss used to say, "It is only in golf that we let the opera singer design the opera house, and the lunatics run the assylm".

Actually, when I realized that I wasn't good enough to be a professional I decided I wanted to do something to stay in touch with the game.  I suppose that is not much different from the aging touring professional who's skills are fading.  Again as my old boss used to say, "every pro that ever three putted becomes an architect".

[Daryl "Turboe" Boe]

I had just started playing golf fairly seriously when I moved out to the Bay area.  Some of the guys from work arranged a Saturday morning group of foursomes to go down to play Pasitiempo.  I remember getting a little sticker shock when I found out how much the round was going to cost.  I had never paid over $100 for a round of golf to that point, and to tell you the truth was not very excited about the prospect.  Had it not been a group of guys from work, and I wanted to go play with them, who knows what might have happened.

After a few weeks we had an opportunity when some customers, and vendors were coming into town for our annual company golf tournament (hit and giggle affair) that we got some of the more serious golfers together for a warm up day the day before.  We wanted to go somewhere nice to treat our customers so I say "How about Pasitiempo?"  I played there recently and it was nice.

It wasnt until my second time around the course that I really got the full effect of how good the course was.  I tried to pay closer attention to more of the details of the course, and what made it great in my mind.  It was bizzare, in a couple of weeks I had gone from a guy who doubted why this or any course would be worth $100 to play to a guy that wanted to find out why this course seemed better than some others I had played.

After playing the course I was left with the thought that this was a great golf course.  Challenging, but not unfair, great variety of holes, and a special feel about the place.  When I finished I had the feeling that it was $100 well spent (acutally I am trying to remember, but I think it was $125 maybe, would that be right for about 1993?).  It was the first time I really thought "you know this $125 round was better and more memorable than two rounds at Sunol Valley (one of the more usual weekend places we were subjected to playing many weekends) by a long shot.  

I started to think about what makes one course better than another.  About this time as if by fate I stumbled across MacKenzie's book "Spirit of St. Andrews" in the proshop there.  I recognized his name from the pictures I had seen out in the lobby when we arrived.  While I was killing some time waiting for the subsequent groups to finish, I started reading it.  By the time everyone got done, and we got ready to leave I was hooked and had to buy the book.

The rest as they say is history.

One of these days I plan to get back there as I have not been back since I left the Bay area about 8 years ago.

[Tom_Doak]

The first golf course I saw was Harbour Town, when I was ten years old and our family was on vacation.  It was then in GOLF DIGEST's top ten courses in America.

They had a little booklet about the golf course (sort of like a modern yardage book, but without any yardages!), with two-sentence descriptions of each hole written by Charles Price.  The thoughts behind the design were clearly and simply explained.  And I was fascinated.  Even if I couldn't hit it out of my shadow yet, I could visualize what I was supposed to be able to do someday.

[Jeff_Mingay]

I was fortunate to have been introduced to golf at Essex G&CC (Donald Ross, 1929), which instigated my fascination with golf courses and their architecture at a young age.

However, like Tom Doak, Harbour Town really pushed me over the edge. My dad used to bring my brother and I down there, to Hilton Head, when we were youngsters and I couldn't 'hit it out of my shadow', either.

My younger brother, on the other hand, became a very good player at a very young age. So, my dad and my brother used to play Harbour Town, and I'd simply follow them around with a yardage book and a scorecard in-hand, to look at the golf course.

[Although I haven't seen the course since the recent renovation, I'm still fascinated with Harbour Town and its wonderful, low-profile nature.]

About the same time, I guess I was about 13 or 14 years old, my dad bought me The World Atlas of Golf, for Christmas. If I had studied science and math as much as I studied that World Atlas throughout high school, I'd probably be working for NASA these days!

Instead, I'm riding around on bulldozers and backhoes  

[SoLa_in_NoIll]

In the mid-late-'80s, Golf Digest conducted an annual "armchair architect" contest to design a single hole given a topographical drawing and a brief description of the site.  I remember spending hours drawing several versions of the hole, ultimately picking a short par 5 with water fronting the green with, of course, railroad ties protecting the green (hey, it was the mid-late'80s).  I never submitted my design to GD, but I kept it and used it as a basis for a couple of high school projects.  One of those was for a religion class (I attended a Catholic h.s.) on our "life dreams."  I picked GCA and had a blast researching the project.  One of the articles I included in my appendix was from Golf magazine entitled "Boy Wonder" about some young guy who had recently designed a course in Michigan called High Pointe.  The article mentioned Mr. Doak's studies at Cornell, and I became interested in pursuing architecture through the academic route.

Unfortunately, I guess, I never pursued that "life dream," having instead studied accounting, then law and now business.  But, I've retained an interest in GCA and this website has certainly expanded my knowledge of and interest in the subject.  

[McCloskey]

Was Mr. Doak the architectural editor of Golf Magazine when you read the article on the "Boy Wonder?"  LOL

[les_claytor]

I developed an appreciation for golf course architecture caddying as a youth in Cleveland at Shaker Hts. CC.  An early Donald Ross course, Shaker provided plenty of lessons for me as teenager, and one of the best was restraint.  

During the 70's, modern golf course design was in vouge, and modern design cliches were popular.  Fortunatley, classic design principles and restrained mule and scoop shaping produce courses with a sensibility that endures, and is a big influence on me to this day.

I only wish we could greens that break like those today!

[George Blunt]

Drinking beer with Ran.  

I found that after way too much beer Ran's discourse on GCA actually became quite interesting.

(Unlike the rest of his various discourses - but that would be delving into non-GCA matters )