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T_MacWood

Foreign influence
« on: December 23, 2004, 06:38:39 AM »
Which foreign golf architect had the most influence on N.American golf architecture?

TEPaul

Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #1 on: December 23, 2004, 06:51:44 AM »
How could it not have been Ross since he was the most prolific, famous and recognizable golf architect in N. America in the first half of the last century?

Why do I get the feeling you might suggest it was Harry Colt, though, despite the fact he didn't seem to like traveling over here and may have never returned after 1913?

Do you think Ross was part of that campaign to minimize Harry Colt's contribution to N. American architecture?

On the other hand, as I've said a number of times on here before, I do think the so-called "heathland" influence on the architectural principles of some of the best and most sophisticated of the early American architects was far greater than most have ever realized or recognized or even given credit to. The reason for that, I think, is simply because the "heathland" era and genre was the first of the truly sophisticated architecture after golf initially moved from just the linksland.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2004, 06:55:47 AM by TEPaul »

T_MacWood

Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #2 on: December 23, 2004, 07:06:34 AM »
TE
You Philadelphian's are a sensative lot...maybe not all, but at least a couple of you.

I can think of several candidates (some not so obvious)...I'm interested everyone's opinion of who and why. As far as I can tell, there are no right or wrong answers...just opinions and educated guesses
« Last Edit: December 23, 2004, 08:04:12 AM by Tom MacWood »

TEPaul

Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #3 on: December 23, 2004, 07:41:31 AM »
Us Philadelphians are a sensitive lot---in the sense of having sophisticated sensibilities for golf and golf architecture. That's probably one of the reasons the original "Philadelphia School of architecture" was so fascinating---the architects and others around here had heightened senses and sensibilities. The last thing any of them tried to do was to force things into some preconceived notion of what is and where it came from like some others not from here do. The highlight of the "Philly School" was their camaraderie, their collaboration that produced a remarkable degree of individuality in architectural expression despite how close and tight-knit the participants were. They were some strong minds and adventurous minds that created an interesting and diverse fabric of golf architecture.

T_MacWood

Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #4 on: December 23, 2004, 08:13:31 AM »
TE
Was there a foriegn influence upon the "Philadelphia School" as whole or perhaps on some of the individual "members"...or was it more or less a home grown architecture?

Mike_Sweeney

Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #5 on: December 23, 2004, 08:18:39 AM »
Ross for the GCA/architect world and MacKenzie for the rest of the world solely due to Augusta which people saw on TV every year.

Michael Moore

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #6 on: December 23, 2004, 09:03:45 AM »
Stanley Thompson.
Metaphor is social and shares the table with the objects it intertwines and the attitudes it reconciles. Opinion, like the Michelin inspector, dines alone. - Adam Gopnik, The Table Comes First

Tyler Kearns

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #7 on: December 23, 2004, 09:22:08 AM »
Michael,

Why is it that us Canadians are considered foreigners when discussing the contributions to North American golf architecture? :'(

TK

Michael Moore

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #8 on: December 23, 2004, 09:36:43 AM »
Stanley Thomspon was from Scotland.

I am well versed in things Canadian - I spent many months of my childhood in Victoria, my mother is a citizen, and we are surrounded by provinces up here.
Metaphor is social and shares the table with the objects it intertwines and the attitudes it reconciles. Opinion, like the Michelin inspector, dines alone. - Adam Gopnik, The Table Comes First

Jeff_Mingay

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #9 on: December 23, 2004, 09:50:54 AM »
Michael,

Stanley Thompson is from Toronto, not Scotland. Born and raised in T.O.
jeffmingay.com

TEPaul

Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #10 on: December 23, 2004, 10:32:04 AM »
"TE
Was there a foriegn influence upon the "Philadelphia School" as whole or perhaps on some of the individual "members"...or was it more or less a home grown architecture?"

Tom MacWood:

To understand the influences on the Philly School (or Pennsylvania) architects simply understand some of their histories and that basically four out of six of them were amateurs who never took a nickel for what they did, and half of them were doing architecture just for their club or themselves. Good examples;

Thomas:
Read in his own words in the "appreciaton" in the front of his own book "Golf Architecture in America"

Crump;
Read what's been written on this site recently. Trip to Europe, influences of Colt, Tillinghast, Travis, Macdonald, and numerous others at PVGC.

Wilson:
Read what he said written in his own words in recent days on this site. Macdonald's advice and itinerary advice before his seven month trip to Europe, what he said about the prinicples of NGLA, PVGC and those in Europe, and what others with him at Merion East said he applied to that course.

Tillinghast;
Read it in his own words of influences in Europe, Old Tom etc, and his own ideas on "modern" architecture.

Flynn:
Influences of Merion East, PVGC etc, read his own ideas written on here on such things as trees in architecture and articles he wrote on architectural principles for the USGA Green Section.

Fownes;
Good question. Read his own words about his feeling about PVGC etc

Did all those Philly or Pennsylnania architects develop their own unique and individual styles and types and ideas and preferences on architecture that's reflected in their courses? Yes, definitely!
 

Michael Moore

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #11 on: December 23, 2004, 11:49:48 AM »
Damn.

Bradley Klein's SI roundup has a sidebar that said Scotland.

Two weeks probation for Mr. Moore.

Happy holidays to all, especially to the Commonwealth which rescued Christmas from oblivion.
Metaphor is social and shares the table with the objects it intertwines and the attitudes it reconciles. Opinion, like the Michelin inspector, dines alone. - Adam Gopnik, The Table Comes First

Paul_Turner

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #12 on: December 23, 2004, 11:53:21 AM »
That Taffy Jones, TRENT.
can't get to heaven with a three chord song

Michael Wharton-Palmer

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #13 on: December 23, 2004, 12:12:23 PM »
No contest..the Pride of Scotland...Dr Mac

A_Clay_Man

Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #14 on: December 23, 2004, 12:55:57 PM »
C.B., With the first 18 holer near Chicago.

Tyler Kearns

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #15 on: December 23, 2004, 11:01:28 PM »
Adam,

Another Canadian!! (Niagara Falls, Ontario) But, nationality aside - arguably the most important golf architect in North American history. He really got the ball rolling with the National Golf Links of America, and the strategic school evolved naturally from there.

TK

SPDB

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #16 on: December 24, 2004, 12:41:30 AM »
I'd have to agree with Paul Turner, it is definitely RTJ.

As for foreigners who either never became US citizens, or, if they did, only late in life. It would probably be Donny Ross.

I think you can't name Mac without acknowledging Colt.

I think Park might have had the honor of the biggest impact on both sides, though his influence is diluted as a result.

Perhaps it was J.H. Taylor? If he hadn't alpinized Mid-Surrey, might we not have had containment mounding?

TEPaul

Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #17 on: December 24, 2004, 06:44:30 AM »
"Perhaps it was J.H. Taylor? If he hadn't alpinized Mid-Surrey, might we not have had containment mounding?"

SPDB;

I thought you might put a smiley face behind that remark. JH Taylor's "Mid-Surrey" mounds, sometimes referred to as alpinization was actually a fairly radical experiment by JH Taylor at Mid Surrey---but very much with a strategic purpose. It was basically an attempt at a more progressive penalty and an intended departure from the old more penal cross hazards such as cop bunkers. You can read all about it and Taylor's feelings about it and hopes for it's future. Go to the "In My Opinion" section and click on TommyN's "In Praise of the Ralph Miller Library" and read the long section in the article about the evolution of the bunker by JH Taylor!

I think the thing that sort of did in the "Mid-Surrey" mounds or alpinization experiment rather quickly, at least at Merion and PVGC where it was experimented with early on was it was just pretty damn ugly looking!

« Last Edit: December 24, 2004, 06:46:05 AM by TEPaul »

T_MacWood

Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #18 on: December 24, 2004, 10:31:21 AM »
JH Taylor is an interesting choice. There is no doubt there was a strategic purpose for his 'humps and hollows', but the aesthetic interest they provided was equally important. Mid Surrey may have been flatest golf course in all of England; the course was famous for being more or less a bore. The major earthworks gave the course some relief and interest where none existed. Mid Surrey was also blessed financially, it was probably the most prominant club in central London....they could afford the expense. Unfortunately a lot of the clubs who tried to emulate Taylor's methods didn't have equally deep pockets.

Darwin:"A great deal of credit is due to Taylor, Peter Lees and the others who first exploited the theory of 'humps and hollows' at Mid Surrey...we may see pious imitations on many field courses, but no means all of them successful. True, some of these other clubs cannot afford the labour, and the the thorough 'alpinisation' of a whole course is a very big job; but many of these attempts need not be half so futile as they are. We see little groups of grassy 'pimples' looking like a dog's cemetary plumped down on a flat of ground."

I don't agree that Mid Surrey's mounds were ugly (although the one picture is a little homely). They had a naturalistic irregular look to them. Very similar to Leeds' mounds at Somerset Hills and Quaker Ridge. Of the Philadelphia architects, Tilly seem to embrace their use the most. At Shawnee he produced some really ugly ones, but when he partnered with Leeds and the results were quite good IMO.

Travis was a proponent of these humps and hollows as well...although his at GCGC may have predated Taylor's.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2004, 11:53:06 AM by Tom MacWood »

RT

Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #19 on: December 24, 2004, 11:46:24 AM »
Agree with Tom MacWood the moguls at RM-S display a certain irregularity and add interest to an otherwise featureless site (although rich in local/national history) of 216 acres (this is 2 courses plus small driving range, excluding the Kings' Observatory implanted within the course).

The moguls were built using itenerate Irish labor and horses, and when finished attracted fascination from the intrinsically curious good London folk (non-golfers alike).

A fascinating photo showed a beaming Lees and crew on one of the turfed over mogul complexes; alas the photo went up in flames with the clubhouse end of March 2001.

As much as anything I think Lees construction work at RM-S drew attention to him from that standpoint as much as his deft hand in greenskeeping.  Hence his move to northeastern seaboard USA.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2004, 12:00:47 PM by RT »

TEPaul

Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #20 on: December 24, 2004, 12:28:46 PM »
Regarding the extent of a "natural" look of "Mid-Surrey" mounding or alpinization of the type created by JH Taylor, Lees or even others such as Tillinghast at SH, they may've thought it looked natural for that time or in comparison to some of what was being done in golf architecture at that time---eg highly geometric and engineered shapes---but I sure don't think it looked particularly natural, in retrospect. It sure doesn't look as unnatural as the extreme forms of earlier geometic architecture but to me it looks as unnatural compared to some of the far more natural architecture that followed it as the original squared off highly geometeric architecture did to it.

T_MacWood

Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #21 on: December 24, 2004, 01:56:51 PM »
Although technically RTJ was born in Britain, I have hard time thinking of him as foreign.

How about Horace Hutchinson...his influence can be traced to just about every architect already mentioned?

He was a mentor to Macdonald. He was a major influence on the Heathland architects; Colt, Fowler and Park later spread the word to N.America. When Crump and Wilson are directed to the UK by Macdonald HH must have been on the agenda...Macdonald's mentor and author/editor of the first and only (at the time) serious book devoted to golf design. When Hutchinson and Macdonald tour America they visit Essex County, months later Ross goes on his own tour of British and Scotish golf courses to study golf architecture. As a boy JH Taylor was HH's caddy at Westward Ho!
« Last Edit: December 24, 2004, 01:58:23 PM by Tom MacWood »

TEPaul

Re:Foreign influence
« Reply #22 on: December 24, 2004, 05:37:06 PM »
Why don't we just go all the way back to Alan Robertson himself as not just the most influential foreign influence on North American architecture but on architecture everywhere? After-all how can you get much more influential than being the first person to actually make something and begin the entire art of golf architecture?  ;)

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