"They died childless and, but for us wingnuts, unloved."
Bob:
No, I really feel it's even odder than even that. Some of those old holes that are famous and respected really are not unloved---although in the mindset of most golfers today "famous, respected and loved" may be virtually indistinguishable!
Holes that're actually famous (not infamous), respected and loved but never that much copied (except by perhaps Macdonald) are the likes of the Road Hole, NGLA's #2, #3, #6). I think the reason for it is there's just something about each one of them that flies in the face of some perception of the way things should be today. But those old holes are past that point of criticism or there unchanged because they may been seen now as as such an interesting aspect of golf and architecture's antiquity. They aren't just accepted for that, though, they really are famous, respected and loved. It's just truly odd but it is true.
You said:
"You can think of this in a more abstract way. The very concept of a "natural" looking design, one that follows what the terrain dictates, is in conflict with the notion of "predicability". It is an inherent contradiction. The two concepts aren't even on speaking terms with each other."
Of course they're not. This is almost the fundamental of all that Behr was trying to say THROUGHOUT his essays on golf architecture. Although he didn't actually come right out and state it his obvious point was to draw a comparison between the way man, the golfer, looks at his relationship with Nature vs how he looks at his relationship with his fellow man, in this case his fellow man being a golf course architect.
Behr did actually say that if a golfer is tripped up by some obstacle that he can clearly see is man-made (or conceived by Man) he is far more likely to object to it, and more relevently to criticize it than if he was tripped up by an obstacle (perhaps even the same one) that he either thought looked natural or that he actually knew was put there by Nature.
Behr's reasoning was just that in Man's evolution he tended to look at Nature as something he really couldn't dominate and so he just tended to accept the consequences of the randomness and unpredictablitity of it more readily as it affected his golf or even his entire life.
This fundamental is what Behr based his entire idea of "Permanent Architecture" on. That, and the fact that landforms that actually followed the basic Darwinian evolutionary shapes of the FORCES of Nature (wind and water) in man-made construction would be more likely to withstand those forces of Nature over time and endure. But clearly Behr said those things about a point in time that was well before Man could massively change landforms (the original linksland and the early English Victorian architecture), at least economically and then later at a time even towards the end of the Golden Age somewhat before Man actually could dominate natural landforms as he can do so much more easily now.
You said;
"For example, one of the reasons Colt, Morrison, Park etc. wanted to move away from the man-made Victorian era look was not only to get back to more natural designs, but to reintroduce the unpredictability of links-like courses. They sought to make the game more interesting by introducing more chance. (Or to use Behr-speak, they wanted golf to be more like a sport and less like a game.)"
I don't much agree with that. And that's precisely why I don't agree much with what Tom MacWood considers to be the massive influence of something like the "arts and crafts" movement on the "Golden Age" of golf architecture.
The "Arts and Crafts" Movement was in most ways a reaction to the balanced aesthetics of building architecture emanating all the way from the beginning of the civilizations of Greece and Rome almost two thousand years hence and perhaps even more of a reaction to the dehumanized effects of the juggernaut of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. Some of the reaction to the "classic" aesthetic of building architecture took on religious meaning and proportions.