Early sites for North American golf courses

[Philip Spogard]

“The earliest American golf courses were simply dreadful. Somehow, the charm and naturalness of the old links of the British Isles was lost when the game made its way across the Atlantic, …”
- Geoff Shackelford

I wonder why this happened?

There were links areas in the States. Why did that dreadful period occur with all the geometrically shaped courses, etc.?

Why did it end up almost opposite of the British style - only to be "rediscovered" again by C.B.Macdonald?

[ForkaB]

Simple answer, relating to current threads.

1.  No linksland
2.  No heathland

[BCrosby]

I would add:

1. More extreme temperatures in winter and summer, thus very different turf/vegetation options
2. Different soils and drainage thus more limited design options
3. Different culture with a different view of "sport".
4. Almost all early US courses were built by a small group of wealthy men to be played by an only slightly larger group of wealthy men, who tended to come trom the same schools, brokerage houses and law firms and thus had a fairly narrow range of tastes and preferences which included the notion that they knew best how to do things.  

Bob

[T_MacWood]

The early American courses were not unlike the early British inland courses -- which were also unnatural, geometric and formulaic.

[TEPaul]

"“The earliest American golf courses were simply dreadful. Somehow, the charm and naturalness of the old links of the British Isles was lost when the game made its way across the Atlantic, …”
- Geoff Shackelford

I wonder why this happened?"

Philip:

The real reason for the dreadfulness of courses when golf first emigrated out of the Scottish linksland is not very hard to understand if one only tries to imagine golf and golf courses accurately in that time. That dreadfulness of courses way back then was not just true of America but England and Ireland too.

The style of so much man-made golf architecture back during that time some golf architecture historians refer to as the "Dark Ages" (1850-about 1895) was probably more akin style-wise to steeplechasing than to what we consider to be golf course architecture.

It's important to understand that and to put that time into the context it really was in. Even the early man-made architecture in much of the linksland back then was dreadfully rudimentary and unnatural looking. The natural linksland itself wasn't of course, but most of man's attempts to create features back then certainly was.

For some reason too many seem to glorify some of that time and to make it something it never was back then. Just imagine golf in America in the 1880s and most of the 1890s. There were very few balls and implements to play the game with, for God's sakes. Why do you suppose in the 1880s a group of men just went out into a field in Yonkers New York and batted a ball around a bunch of apple trees?

There probably wasn't anything any more or less geometric or dreadful about Americans than anywhere else. It was just that back then the game of golf over here was virtually unknown.

This is precisely why Macdonald eventually basically gave up on trying to imbue the "spirit" of the game on American golfers, even including the USGA which he helped found. He came to realize that Americans simply knew nothing of it, they had no history at all with the game the way the Scots had for literally hundreds of years.

Basically, no one back then in America was looking for linksland or heathland type sites or even considering the condtions of the ground or the make-up of soils. They were simply laying out rudimentary courses in open fields or any other convenient place. It's important to understand golf and golf architecture in the context of those times and not to make more of that time than it really was.

[Philip Spogard]

Do any of you have any recommandations for litterature regarding the subject?

[BCrosby]

Tom MacW -

Yes, US (all) and UK (inland) were pretty awful, mostly for all the same reasons.

The more interesting question - and this gets to the cultural, geological, climatic, economic issues - is why thereafter the dominant strain of US gca became penal, a design philosophy that never had much sway in the UK.

That vast gulf continues to this day. When Americans talk about gca, the vocabulary of the mainstream - aided and abetted by the USGA - is penal design. It is not a vocabulary you can imagine being used by Darwin or Colt or Cotton or Steel or even your average British golfer.

That fork in the road after the Victorian era is one I don't understand. But it is hard to understate the magnitude of the gulf, that it still exists and that it is widening.

Exhibit A - developments at ANGC over the last severl years v. changes to TOC, both in response to holding major championships. The groups charged with making those changes inhabit two very different and incompatible architectural universes.

Bob



 

[ForkaB]

Exhibit A - developments at ANGC over the last severl years v. changes to TOC, both in response to holding major championships. The groups charged with making those changes inhabit two very different and incompatible architectural universes.

Bob



 

Bob

Not sure what you are getting at?  The main thing both ANGC and TOC did was find new tee boxes back in the boonies to accomodate the new length of players, no?  Both have grown the rough a bit too.  What's the big difference betgween the two approaches that you see?

Rich

[Philip Spogard]

BCrosby,

What are your thoughts on the american vs. european mentality in design (penal).

Is it because the americans are more eager to take out luck as a part of the game, thereby making courses more penal?

[BCrosby]

Rich -

Augusta narrowed playing corridors by adding a large number of trees and new rough on many holes. TOC didn't narrow playing corridors, at least not appreciably.

ANGC started its life as a little brother to TOC. Now they don't speak the same language.

Bob

[TEPaul]

"Do any of you have any recommandations for litterature regarding the subject?"

Philip:

Yes I most certainly do have a recommendation for literature regarding this subject. My recommendation would be for you to log into this website's discussion group often and read very carefully every single word I say on here on the subject. Then and only then will you ever come to understand exactly what went on back then and why. Whatever you do, for gold's sake do not listen to these revisionist glorifiers of some of these musty old dead guys, and what these ODG idolizers try to tell you about what happened back then. Their assumptions and conclusions are HISTORICALLY REVISIONISTIC BUNKUM!

[Philip Spogard]

 

Well that is a way to put it!

I would still appreciate any recommendations on litterature about this not so documented period prior to around 1895.

[Jason Topp]

Philip

I found the recent reprint of Horace Hutchinson's book from the late 1890's to be an interesting indirect way of looking at the era.  There are some great pictures and descriptions.

While on a completely different topic, I recently read a book about the building of the Panama Canal.  It was intersting in its description of the time period and how exciting it was for man to be able to conquer nature through the building of giant projects such as canals, railway lines, bridges and other things.  I don't know the extent to which this would have had anything to do with golf architecture but it certainly would have something to do with the perception of beauty at the time.  Man made things were exciting because they were so new and created new possibilities.  I would doubt that golf course builders at the time saw naturalness as a consideration that they were interested in or had to worry about.

It will be interesting to see if the 20th century analog to the victorian courses - the mass produced courses of the 50's through the 80's - meet the same fate as the Victorian courses.

[Philip Spogard]

I agree. "Time will tell".

I think the answer as well is understanding the way the projects were perceived by the respective owners/builders. What was "beauty" back then?

The discussion is relevant to many of the courses today. Is TPC at Sawgrass (Stadium) beautiful. Some would say. Some wouldn't. But it is a modern achievement to construct it and that might have been the case back then as well I guess.

[TEPaul]

Bob:

Your post #6 is very, very interesting to me. Go on, by all means. I'd like to see and hear something of a rant on your part on the subject which I sense is bubbling to the surface anyway.

You mention cultural. Do you think it's possible that "can-do", dynamic, "change at any cost" America may actually be, and perhaps always has been, far more straight-laced, Victorian and moralistic underneath than the British Isles? Do you think that may be why we are basically into essentially the penal philosophy in 20th century American golf architecture? You know, we can't stand anyone to get away with anything in a moral sense---that the sinners must pay, in other words.

For God's sake would you just look what this mad political genius Carl Rove has uncovered, fostered and promoted in the last few years with this "Evangelical Right"??  They say he's organized seven millions of those maniacs.

Can you imagine if any of those people got into golf architecture in America?? The fairways would be straight as an arrow and about two yards wide with every conceivable form of perdition and damnation on either side. Furthermore "Right to Lifers" would probably be banned from playing golf. Maybe even everyone would! It's a sin to enjoy yourself and experience pleasure for any reason other than religiosity, you know?

Long live the off-beat fantastic old British Isles freethinking eccentrics. At least they can still see and understand the utiliity, the spirit and the philosophy of wide fairways with knick-knacks sprinkled throughout them and the wonders of how that can promote free choice.

A few years ago some one of our members had a whole group of those beauties from Muirfield over here and he asked me to play with them. You should've seen those guys---what a bunch of pieces of work.

The day was about 37 and blowing. They were all decked out in tweeds and such and one of them, Johnny Manca, even had on his three piece knickers suit. All they did is hang around the clubhouse sipping scotch for a while and standing on chairs and such looking at all the old pictures on the walls. When the time came to tee off I asked them if they'd like to hit some balls and they all said; "Oooh no", and they just preceded to the first tee without even so much as a practice putt and each drove it off in about half a New York second as all the rest crooned "Well away, laddie!"

And well away we all went!

[Bill Gayne]

Phillip,

Although a little later than 1895 a search of this website will provide a lot of great info on golf in America in the early 1900s.

http://www.aafla.org/search/search.htm

Also reading "Scotland's Gift" and Bob Labannce's book "The Old Man" about Travis will tell you a good bit of info.  

The ability to travel was largely limited to railroads so courses had to either locate close to the rail or around population centers. So the selection of sites was heavily influenced by access. Yes, there was good land in America but it really wasn't accessible. In those day's the Hampton's was far away journey that happened to have rail service.

[BCrosby]

TEP -

It is odd, isn't it. The USGA, the average American golfer, heck almost everyone in or around the game in the US, when they talk about gca they use the vocabulary of the penal school. (The only people that don't are some (not all) golf architects and some of us wingnuts.)

I don't understand the historical forces that brought that about. But there it is. It didn't have to turn out that way, btw. There is no inexorable law of nature involved. It didn't turn out that way in the UK, for example.

Very odd, the more I think about it.

Bob

[T_MacWood]

I'd agree with Bill, those would be two good books touching on early American golf.

[TEPaul]

"I don't understand the historical forces that brought that about. But there it is. It didn't have to turn out that way, btw. There is no inexorable law of nature involved. It didn't turn out that way in the UK, for example.

Very odd, the more I think about it."

Bobzee:

No it surely didn't have to turn out that way over here. Or did it? The older I get and the more I ruminate on the subject of the good old US of A and its fascinating ethos the more I realize we are a people of supreme contradictions, perhaps some of the greatest contradictions in human societal history. I call the whole ethos of the US of A (Americans) "Manifest Destiny". We admire to our very core our supreme power but it secretly makes us also feel exteme guilt sometimes. And then there's all that super serious religiosity we brought over here with us.

To be honest I blame the whole thing about the way we are, our moralizing and puritanical streak to our narrow and penal golf holes on the cock-up between Henry VIII and the Catholic Church. Both of them took a little trivial neck chopping and wenching way too damn seriously and let things get out of hand like driving us into boats and well away. Both of them just should've let it be and I think we, over here, would be OK today----our golf courses would have wider and firmer and faster fairways, more choice and shot options and definitely less of the Mrs Grundy moralizing penality on each side of our narrow golf holes.

[Jim_Bick]

Bob,

How about the differences in weather as an explanation. UK weather plays a bigger factor on a daily basis than in the areas where early US courses were built. To have an equal "challenge" on average, the US design might gravitate to more penal. Also, it could be more demanding of a certain shot because the architect did not need to make allowance for 30 MPH winds from most any direction on a regular basis.

Just a thought.

[Bill Gayne]

Philip,

Below is a link to an article that Willie Tucker wrote in June 1900 you might find of interest. It will probably be necessary to copy the link and paste it into your browser.

http://www.aafla.org/SportsLibrary/Outing/Volume_36/outXXXVI03/outXXXVI03l.pdf#xml=http://www.aafla.org:8080/verity_templates/jsp/search/xmlread.jsp?k2dockey=/mnt/docs/SportsLibrary/Outing/Volume_36/outXXXVI03/outXXXVI03l.pdf@aafla_pdf&serverSpec=localhost:9920&querytext=%28%28%3Cword%3E+tucker%29+%3Cand%3E+%28+Journal_Title+%3Ccontains%3E+Outing+%29%29

[Philip Spogard]

Thank you for the tip.

I think it is a very interesting period of time from 1880s to 1910 in american gca. For some reason the early part is very sparsely commented in modern litterature. If it is, it's often just "geometrical design", "oil sand greens", blablabla.

Even when it comes to the 1890s lots is written about Chicago GC but not much of the ordinary course, and why they ended up like that.

It would be an interesting subject for a book I think!