David Moriarty:
This is your paragraph from your previous post;
"Moreover, the architect's "strategy" constrains our choices, influences our decisions, and plays with our perspectives. When it comes to golfing on a particular course, saying (to paraphrase) that 'we are all unique individuals practicing our own unique strategy' greatly overstates our indivuduality and our freedom of choice on the golf course. Whether the golfer is aware or not, it is the architect who is the puppeteer pulling our strings, or at least the author setting out the plot points before we even have a chance to act. Wasnt it Fazio who said something like golf is unique in that it is the only instance where an architect gets total control over the subject's (the golfer's) perspective?"
David:
Yours is a most interesting paragraph. It touches directly on some of the most basic and fundamental principles of golf course architecture and it also probably puts in as stark a comparison as possible the fundamental architectural principles of someone such as Tom Fazio compared to an architect and architectural thinker such as Max Behr (MacKenzie et al).
Behr is unusual, to say the least, but particularly because he theorized on what it is that can most ideally make golf a joy and inspiration to a golfer generally. In his words, that was to make the playing of the game (he preferred to call it a sport as opposed to a game) an individual’s expression and sense of ‘freedom’.
Certainly much as been said about Behr on this website, both critically and admiringly, and even jokingly. But for now I really do want to be serious about some of the things he said that relate directly to this paragraph of yours. And I should also say that the more I’ve come to understand some of Max Behr’s principles relating to architecture and golf the more I subscribe to them. They make fundamental sense to me.
Firstly, when you say in your paragraph, "Moreover, the architect's "strategy" constrains our choices, influences our decisions”, you are essentially saying everything that Tom Fazio probably does believe in fundamentally about architecture and also the very things that Max Behr fundamentally resisted and felt was not ideal about architecture and for the ideal enjoyment of the game.
Here’s why. Behr did not believe the architect should have what APPEARED to the golfer to be a “strategy”, certainly not as it related to any golfer. If an architect had a strategy (in Behr’s mind) it may only be when that architect was playing golf himself (even on his own golf course). Behr truly did believe that the strategy of any golfer should appear to be uniquely a golfer’s own! The reasons for that are very interesting, very fundamental and really quite simple.
It was that Behr felt any golfer would likely face a golf course less critically if it appeared to him to be, even if subliminally, nature unadorned by the hand of man. And certainly, it should be said, including natural obstacles (nature’s golf features!?) unadorned by the hand of man!
Conversely, Behr felt any golfer would face a golf course more critically (in this case obviously negatively) if it appeared to him to be, even if subliminally, obstacles put before him by another man (another golfer--an architect) instead of nature unadorned by man.
The reason he felt this way is so fascinating. Clearly he believed that “Man’s” fundamental relationship to Nature was different than man’s fundamental relationship to man! To see why those such as Behr felt that way obviously gets back to the beginnings of the original sport of golf and how it was played in actual Nature preceding man-made architecture, the hand of man and man’s influence on the creation of courses. Others would probably say this basic idea may even have had to do with the innate feeling of the Scots and their acceptance of all things natural (land and sea) simply because it was too great, too glorious, too powerful for man to even think about influencing. So they just accepted it and everything about it (including luck) without even a thought of criticism to all that it was (obviously including the weather and the wind!).
Behr felt that since man (the golfer) did feel differently about unadorned Nature vs what was put before him by another man that he would accept its challenges less critically, more willingly, more inspirationally, more freely! And clearly he felt also that Nature itself neither would nor could have created some formulaic prearranged “strategies” with the intention of playing the opponent to a game of man’s making!
So you can see what some of the reasons were to Behr (MacKenzie et al) to make architecture (that which is man-made on a golf course) appear to look as if it was not architecture at all.
This is where something like MacKenzie’s ideas on camouflage come into it. MacKenzie was using applications of camouflage not so much to trick or deceive a golfer’s decision making and golf shots (although clearly it had that effect) but he was using camouflage to hide from the golfer the fact he’d made anything at all!
So that’s much of what the “look” of it was supposed to be about and how it was believed to inherently affect man (the golfer).
But then the next part—the strategies a golfer used, the decisions that occurred to him, and the consequences of those decisions—and when you said, “the architect's "strategy" constrains our choices, influences our decisions, and plays with our perspectives.” Again, if it can be seen that an architect believes, as does Fazio, that there actually is or can be an “architect’s strategy” that any golfer should conform to, then in that case an architect really does appear to be dictating something to any golfer (a strategy) and does appear to be constraining his choices and influencing his decisions.
That’s the very thing, the very perception on the part of the golfer (and architect) that Behr (and MacKenzie et al) were trying so hard to avoid and to disguise. Again, they felt if the golfer perceived the challenges to be just nature unadorned by man that golfers would inherently feel they were finding and creating their very own strategies since one might assume that Nature itself was not interested in the “formulaics” of the game of golf; that Nature was nothing more than randomness anyway, and that frankly Nature probably had better things to do with her time and efforts than to play the “formulaic” architect to some game of man!
And then Behr went even further, and theorized if these things were true and if they were valid that even things such as “penalty” and “risk and reward” would also be looked at differently by a golfer if he perceived them to be unadorned Nature instead of some obstacle put before him by another man (another golfer—an architect!).
It may seem a stretch to some (but not me) that Behr then theorized sort of a “glass half empty/ glass half full” or an optimist/pessimist comparison that if a golfer felt, even subliminally, that if the obstacles before him were Nature’s, not man’s, that he would then look at their challenges more as an inspiration to overcome.
Behr believed that if a golfer felt, even subliminally, that the obstacles that challenged him were perceived to be man-made that he would perceive them as more a mirror image of his own faults or possibly even that another man may not have the same kind of right to challenge him so powerfully as Nature could! Again, fundamental evidence of the interesting distinctions between Man's feeling about his relationship to Nature vs his relationship to Man! And so he was apt to face man-made challenges more critically and with less natural inspiration and enthusiasm or freedom of his own individual expression!
And so finally, it may be that an architect such as Tom Fazio, at least in the eyes of a Max Behr or perhaps MacKenzie (et al), as he attempts and even admits to being the ultimate "puppeteer" (as you say) who controls the choices and destinies of golfers may be seen to be far more arrogant than any architect needs to be.
Fazio admits to rearranging nature in such a way that he doesn't even see the necessity or the point of hiding his architectural hand. Some may say, though, that Fazio is extremely good at creating architecture that looks pretty, that's picturesque, that mimics nature in that way somehow, but again, if he actually does admit to attempting to be the one who appears to control the choices and destinies of golfers instead of Nature itself, then one might say he feels comfortable putting himself in a league with Nature itself. Anyone might see a real arrogance in that attitude, or perhaps even a stupidity.
Some do believe and do say that the work of an architect such as Fazio with what he has done and how it's been received can be described as extremely pretty and picturesque.
But, for what it's worth Behr even had something to say about that in 1927 before an architect like Tom Fazio was born.
Max Behr said;
"We are too apt to mistake that which is pretty, or picturesque, for the beautiful. Prettiness, although pleasing, is a transient thing incident to the fancies of the moment; but beauty rests upon the fundamental---it's lineaments are the surface revelation of a a perfection that lies beneath. Where beauty is lacking there must likewise be a lack of intelligence. Indeed beauty may well prove to be the economic solvent to that continual evolution in the way of innovations and alterations to which most all golf courses are subject. If the holes have been advantageously routed in the beginning, beauty should then be the ideal to be striven for in construction, for beauty practically always accompanies economy of structure. When we perceive it we first become aware of truth; and only in the presence of truth do we recognize stability and permanence."
Max Behr 1927
To be continued…