Tom MacW:
You mentioned the extraordinarily large natural dune that dominates the center of Cypress. You also mentioned a number of unusual natural formations around the earth that dominate certain settings, particularly one in Yosemite.
First of all, I certainly don't see that dune at Cypress as angular, unless of course we're prepared to call almost every other lineament in nature "angular". But regardless of what we call the contours and lines of that dune it's undeniable to anyone that it's a part of the natural site before the golf course was built!
But regardless of what the exact definitions of the actual lines of certain features used in golf architecture are or look like--whether natural or man-made ones--probably the most fundamental aspect of either is whether the golfer perceives them as natural or man-made. Certainly that's Max Behr's fundamental point!
Presumably whether or not the actual lines of whatever is naturally occuring at Yosemite, albeit very angular, were used somewhere else other than Yosemite, any golfer might perceive it as made by man nevertheless, don't you think?
In this context Max Behr did have some very interesting sentiments that seem applicable:
"What then is art in golf architecture?"
"....Experience has taught us that courses constructed with no higher end than merely to create a playground around which one may strike the ball, present the golfer with little more than a landscape brutalized with the ideas of some other golfer."
"It follows that when the canvas of Nature over which the club-stroke must pass is filled with holes artifically designed to impede the golfer's progress, these obvious man-made contraptions cause a violation of that sense of liberty he has every right to expect. This accounts for the checkered history of every artifical appearing golf course."
"Indeed the veriest tyro is unconsciously aware that golf is a contest with Nature. Thus where he meets her unadorned, unblemished by the hand of man, he meets her without criticism."
"The medium of the artist is paint, and he becomes its master; but the medium of the golf architect is the surface of the earth over which the forces of Nature alone are master."
"Therefore, in the prosecution of his designs, if the architect correctly uses the forces of nature to express them and thus succeeds in hiding his hand, then, only, has he created the illusion that can still all criticism."
It appears from all of this (if one subscribes to Max Behr's ideas) that the key concept here is to HIDE THE HAND OF THE ARCHITECT no matter what it is he creates on the site and no matter what the definitions of the angles are--natural or man-made looking!
If an architect perfectly recreated the naturally occuring angular feature of Yosemite in the wrong place and on the wrong site a golfer might very well perceive it as man-made, don't you think?
It appears that an architect like Tom Fazio is telling us that he's very good at recreating scenes that appear to be natural, somewhere perhaps, but not necessarily natural to the site he's building his golf course on (Shadow Creek might be an example).
Is that good enough to fulfill Behr's percept that the architect must hide his hand on the landscape over which the golfer is playing?
It wouldn't seem so to me, but how can I deny that many golfers appreciate Shadow Creek as some kind of illusion although clearly not one that's site-specifically natural looking!
Fazio (in his book) even goes farther and claims that many naturally occuring formations must be altered or wiped away in golf architecture since the golfer will resist them, anyway (apparently in direct contradiction to Behr)! Presumably Fazio is thinking of things like blind shots and such!
But certainly architects like MacKenzie and Behr did not advocate using some natural features for golfers to play over if that appeared unusually difficult--just to possibly use them as part of the site otherwise (like the large dune at Cypress)!
Perhaps this is the very thing that interested Ken Bakst in Coore's routing of the difficult naturally occuring dunes areas of Friar's Head! Coore needed to route holes through those natural dunes, certainly, but he did not want to alter them or destroy them to a point where they would cease to be what they were to that site.
Fazio on the other hand apparently advocated going farther and simply altering them in his own routing to a far greater extent and basically not using them as part of the look and feel of the site--at least not anywhere near the extent that Coore did!
It's no secret whatsoever to Bakst either that Coore came within a wisker of saying he could not get the holes he needed to into those dunes without going beyond where he wanted to in altering them! Presumably this may also have meant that the site would not have worked well enough otherwise in Coore's mind!
But the payoff, of course, is the golf course is done now, and I saw it both before anything was done and also after construction and I can't tell at all anymore what Coore did and didn't do! That's as complete a job of an architect hiding his hand as I've ever seen!
But if an architect does not hide his hand, even at all, do golfers really care? Probably many don't! But certainly some do very much.
If that's true, Behr was apparently right only to an extent! And Fazio too!
It only proves to me again, what a great big thing golf and it's architecture is, and that there's room in it for everyone!
The real deal probably is in the differences of it all, afterall!
That probably shouldn't prevent people like us, though, Tom, from saying we think that some golfers and architects really have no taste!
And it shouldn't prevent them from saying the same about us!