[BCrosby]

Tom/Jim -

Interesting stuff.

It is very bizarre. You look around in 1955 and your course has been hacked and chopped for 25 years just to keep it open. You finally have money to put things right. And what do you do? You spend it on a tree planting program?

Bizarre. And it seemed to happen almost everywhere.

Jim -

It's a telling comment on the devastation of the Depression and WWII that in 1957, after 27 years of population growth, there still weren't as many course in the US as there were in 1930. From your numbers it looks like the number of courses did not return to 1930 levels until about 1960. Wow.


Bob

 

[Bill Gayne]

Another theory that I will throw out as to why the changes in GCA before the Depression and the end of WWII is that most of the Golden Age Architects were dead by the end of the war. With construction essentially coming to a halt for 15-20 years there weren't ample opportunities for young architects to serve as apprentices for golden age architects. A generation was skipped. The promiment architects that came in the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies never had an opportunity to work directly with the Golden Age architects.

[TEPaul]

BillG:

That's undoubedly true to some extent and it's a theory espoused for a long time. Some call it the "hiatus" basically where the twain of continuity was snapped due to the downtime through the depression years and WW2.

On the other hand, we can't forget the early careers of RTJ and Dick Wilson and how grounded they were or should have been in the classic principles and golden age times with those they apprenticed and worked with--ie Thompson and Flynn (and to some extent perhaps some Ross influence with RTJ). And still post-WW2 those two were apparently transitioning architecturally bigtime!

This of course brings up the question most interesting to me---what was Flynn doing towards the end of his career? How was his style and his priniciples transitoning? Where would his style have ended up if he's lived a longer life and had a longer career perhaps into the 1960s (he died at 55 in 1945)?

Wayne and I are starting to see all kinds of little things in Flynn on some courses (particularly some types of sites) where he appears to be transitioning into what was to become the "Modern Age" of architecture although he didn't quite make it that far!

Anyway, it's interesting to analyze all these details.

[A_Clay_Man]

Tom Paul, Not sure if it's been intimated on this thread yet, but there's an influence, a dynamic that has had a large effect on the populous, and their living and spending habits. And that was Television. If we conclude that many of the mentioned changes didn't really become practice until the mid-fifties. (Same as TV's intro) In the subsequent fifty years, the habits of the "golfer" has changed. The want and/or need to join "clubs" has been minimized. Houses, for one, are now built with all the amenities of a CC. The same way TV made every home, that had one, a movie theatre.

Has the reality of modern life, made the traditional club model less functional, or is there still enough "new money" wanting to join them? And if so, should'nt most clubs follow the Sand Hills model, and concentrate primarily on the golf?

[TEPaul]

Adam:

That's interesting----television!

I guess one would probably have to say televsion may have had a homogenizing influence on all our lives in the last fifty or so years. Maybe that influence lapped into golf architecture (and maintenance practices) too. Certainly we're all familiar with something like the "ANGC syndrome" (TV).This basic "one size fits all" idea of maintenance practices at so many courses that's basically been going on during that time (about fifty years) seems bizarre when one steps back and looks at the different types of courses and their different maintenance needs over the last century. This whole bizarre "one size fits all" maintenance mode certainly flies in the face of the concept of the "Ideal Maintenance Meld" which is primarily those possibly unique practices that work to highlight an individual type course best but may be very different than what's best for the course across town.

What you said about golf clubs going back to offering just golf more--instead of the multi-service full-blown country club--is interesting too. Some of my firiends with kids say there're so many different extra-cirricular activities going on these days in their kids lives that the multi-service country club setting is starting to lose its use--the use it used to have.

[A_Clay_Man]

I thought the timing was just too coincidental.

What it shows me is that the evolution of the game (or really anything) is, and can be effected, by seemingly innocuous things.

Maybe "singles" or gays would be more attracted to the notion, these days.

[Robert Thompson]

It is interesting to note that between the wars was when Stanley Thompson created his best work -- including St. George's (1929), Banff (1928) and Jasper (1925). He also opened courses during the depression -- like Highlands Links, a make-work project that opened in 1939, and was aimed at getting unemployed workers involved in a government project. Thompson even pitched the concept of Highlands as a means to get Cape Breton men working in an area that still has a notoriously high unemployment rate.

Of course, Thompson also opened Westmount at a time when Canada had been at war with Germany for two years. Thompson also worked in partnership with Trent Jones during the period of 1930-38. My understanding is that Trent Jones didn't really come into notice much until after the war.

An interesting period, indeed. Not sure if Jeff Mingay or Ian Andrew have a good sense of the state of Canada's great courses during the wars or depression....

Robert

[Neil Regan]

I think this chart might be of relevant interest. It's from a study of the 17,000 entry Golf Course database maintained by Golf Magazine.
I think the data is pretty reliable, but obvious limitations jump out of the chart. For example, look at the spikes every 10 years from 1910 to 1970. I'm sure that this is because many clubs, when asked by Golf Magazine, rounded off the years of their founding, either through ignorance or carelessness.

(Off topic, but no doubt of interest to this GCA website, are these two numbers counted in the database:
Designers: 3,290
Top Courses: 2,370 (rated by the various golf periodicals.[/color])

New Courses Built, by Year

[TEPaul]

Neil:

That's a pretty interesting chart but I bet it doesn't even come close to tracking course construction in the very early years perhaps mostly just after the turn of the 20th century and into the teens. I'm talking about the really rudimentary courses, probably lots of 9 hole and odd hole courses and perhaps those courses of that truly odd era in America known as the "geometric" era that probably did as much as anything to inspire (because some like MacDonald were so horrified by them) the beginnings of really good golf architecture that evolved into what we now call the "Classic Golden Age" of architecture---that basically came to a halt after the stock market crash and the ensuing Great Depression.

[Neil Regan]

Tom,

  The study from which the chart comes doesn't offer too much information on the Golf Magazine database. It might be that the database only includes clubs still in existence, and it might be that it has no data on those clubs that died before the wars. I'm still looking for a reliable data source for that era. I'd bet we could build one here at GCA in less than a year, just by providing a place for posters to deposit their knowledge.

   Do you remember Ron Prichard's chart that he showed at Baltusrol, with the timelines of Golden Age architects and their constructions ? I'd love to see that posted here.

Neil

[Patrick_Mucci]

Neil Regan,

Great chart.

I wonder how it tracks with interest rates ?

[Neil Regan]

Pat,    
   
  How about this instead ?

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