"I know when my friends Geoff shackelford and Gil Hanse were doing Rustic Canyon, they went over to Pasadena and took the Craftsman home tour at lleast one time. Geoff I know was over there several times. If that isn't influence in architecture well then your kidding yourself just to prove a point."
TommyN:
This is a great point. There's no question that GeoffShackelford has been powerfully influenced by the Arts and Crafts style. He mentioned that loud and clear and in some depth to me when I was out there at Rustic a number of years ago before it was built.
I think there's little question that A/C style and influence has effected a few of these architects today. I'm sure GeoffShac did influence Gil in this way and there's little question a number of these architects today are foregoing a good deal of the mechanizations available today to do massive amounts of basically hand crafted work on the features of architecture today, particularly the finished features such as bunker surrounds. If anything, this is the A/C theme.
There's no doubt in my mind the A/C theme is having some effect on the work these guys are doing today. But we're talking about the Golden Age and what influenced it, and not today. We're looking to mimic a lot of what was done in the great golden age of golf architecture but they looked to the LINKSLAND for their model and the A/C movement sure didn't need to inform them how to try to imitate some of the natural features on the linksland or how to work with their horses and hands to do it. They didn't have D-8s and D-6s and backhoes and trackhoes and Bobcats and other mechanized equipment back then anyway that they had the opportunity to forego like some of these guys today are. They had to work with their hands and their horses and pans.
Tom,
I hate to break this to you, but Max Behr was influenced by this too. Maybe not MacKenzie, but Max, you might as just well except it as fact.
FACT: Max Behr lived in Pasadena, California, widely perceived as the home of
GREENE & GREENE, who more or less founded the
CRAFTSMAN-style building architecture before Max even got there. I would guess if I venture to his address, I will find a home of
CRAFTSMAN-style architecture.
Most of them up near Pasadena Golf Club, (Altadena) where he was a member are all of the
CRAFTSMAN-style and substance. Ask Geoffrey Childs, who I got a very short tour of Pasadena during a recent visit.
FACT: His adverts reflected a keen sense of
CRAFTSMAN style and substance, from the ivy-like wing-dings to the bric-a-brac borders. all describing
PERMANENT GOLF ARCHITECTURE.Tom, I think if you actually saw some of Max's courses, with a little bit of knowledge of what the Southern California landscape was all about, you might change your tune drastically. If you didn't, then I would swear it was just to disagree with Tom MacWood. (It's been pretty fashionable as of late to do just that, and I do think Tom brings-up a lot of valid points that some just don't care to visit/aren't capable of visiting.)
I'll try to describe what I think a Max Behr course looked like. You can call and ask Geoff Shac if I'm wrong or right or just try to form your own opinion without listening to reason or observing facts. Facts that you simply don't know, only what you perceive to know, or at the very least, facts which you just seemingly want to disagree with Tom MacWood about. (This fact, your not just wrong. Your just not knowledgable on the subject other then what you've accurately read from Behr.)
The courses weren't much to look at first glance. They almost looked like an empty field until you started having to hit shots to the target--the green, a huge/wide fairway where placement of the tee shot evoked several different types of play. You were never out of it on a Max course, even if you were in a fairway bunker.
Every aspect of the courses looked natural from some point in the fairway, until actually getting up close to them and seeing how they were actually constructed. Many of them had been created, like rolls and dramatic tie-ins which Max had no problem in wielding his hand. Oakmont CC #3 is one for example, where this raised, little reverse-Redan of a fairway that started about 20 yards in front of the green could kick a ball into the back tee, averting a carry over a rather large deep and fronting bunker. There was nothing natural about it, but from the fairway that features a rather large dip which tied into this man-made shape perfectly, if not succinctly for the type of challenge presented from every spot on the golf hole. It was like every aspect of the hole was multi-dimensional, as if he spent hours upon hours on how and where to create challenge or simply found it. Much like a Craftsman finds a way to tie-in a wooden butt joint while hiding the screws or nails which bond it together.
Now here's the kicker:
The original fauna--all natural oaks and scrub which on every course has now all been diluted heavy with pine trees that would never exist on a site like this, green, green grass that looks totally out of place for a site so natural, as well as crushed whit e marble for sand in the bunkers which looks as if the particular club found itself a $10.00 hooker as a date to the Member/Guest dinner, all on the--the high ground of a river bed. (I'm thinking of three Max courses in particular whe describing this--each one private and each one completely out of touch what their golf course was ever about.)
The bunkers, well Max's constructed bunkers weren't much to look at--at least they didn't have the natural lacy look in the Billy Bell/MacKenzie sense, but they were--get this--placed naturally in areas where a slope would show wear and erosion. It was all a part of his "look." Theedges were rough but not lacy, and they did have a cape or bay here or there, wherever a severe slope or ridge dictated it to make it look as if water went in directions of top to bottom/the point of least resistance. Some of them would tie-in or hide the target, but there was plenty of options to stay way from them with minimal penalty, only creating an even more interesting sho tinto them. A true sportsman's challenge if there ever was one.
If a natural waste area was part of the landscape, it was used somehow, someway ingeniously, making you feel like you were on a links course, yet never letting go of the fact what kind of environment you were located in.
(Greene & Greene did the same when they used Japanese-influenced styles in their architecture, just the same way Max utilized Scottish influenced styles in his, along with their zest for the natural styles of Craftsman architecture in his quests.)
Greens: Most of Max's greens featured some really interesting pin placements and there never seems to be any two greens shaped alike. If there were on any of his course, then it was only because he was presenting a different type of shot to handle them.
But most of all--through all of this,
HE HAD NO PROBLEM MOVING EARTH. (when he needed to)
Now the thing I think where I can really try to influence you
IF your willing to understand in the same way I have learned from you like places like Pine Valley and Maidstone and NGLA and oh-so-many-others, is that the method of construction--the very root of
ARTS & CRAFTS ARCHITECTURE was practiced by Max to no end, when he constructed his courses. That's the point of being a
CRAFTSMAN. You work every angle you can professionally, by making sure pride is taken when building it--that's where the
TRUE ARTISTRY comes from. Where Greene & Greene would practice different styles of butt joints and methods of craftsmanship, Max would do the very same in how he moved much land to create the movement at Lakeside and Oakmont and Rancho Santa Fe. At Lakeside he imported loamy soils from Long Beach and transported them to Toluca Lake, even though he was afforded the find of pockets of beach sand on the property.
TOM, HE ACTUALLY WENT DOWN TO WHERE THE SAME SANDS ON-SITE, WOULD CARRY TO NEAR THE END OF THE L.A. RIVER AND TRANSPORT THEM BACK TO THE LANDS FROM WHICH THEY ONCE CAME FROM, VIA THE L.A. RIVER BED.Is that
CRAFTSMAN-STYLE of construction enough for you?
Tom, your my dear friend. Come out to LaLaLand when the winter cold hits. You have a lot to learn out here. Just as I still have a lot to learn back there and here too.