"I think you'd be surprised to read some of the comments about the merits of the formulaic designs....I just recently found a review written by Harold Hilton which praised its superiority. I'm not sure when he eventually saw the light."
Tom MacWood:
Well good for you on reading that Hilton article, but, no, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest, and I haven't been for years. I've read that article, and I've read a number of 19th century articles praising the superiority of some of that formulaic, rudimentary Victorian, Dark Age, geometric, steeplechase like or penal design.
In my opinion, those sentiments were purely knee-jerk reactions due to a couple of factors.
First, it was a reaction to the constant refrain out of Scotland of "Nae links, nae golf", that was a result of the incredibly ill-suited sites for both golf and agronomy that were being used inland in England, Ireland, the USA and around the world. That Scottish refrain, if anything, was certainly embarrassing to those utilizing those rudimentary features in architecture on inland sites outside Scotland. But certainly it took some time for either side to appreciate the extent of it.
Second, it was nothing more than defensive rationalization under the guise of national hubris and pride emanating from that constant old national dog that "we are better than you are" that if you haven't noticed almost completely saddled golf itself in those early years of golf competitons that were so fixating for whole nations striving to top one another in those days (eventually leading to the unbelievable crucible of WW1). It culminated in golf in the Travis win in 1904 and the resulting Schnectedy putter controversy where national pride ran amok and even good friendships were ruined, the newspapers were crowing like roosters and even the President of the United States became involved in it all.
Your assumption and contention that those early rudimentary courses and rudimentary architectural features were somehow the result or on some model of the products and the mentality of the Industrial Revolution complete with its dehumanized labor force is positively ridiculous.
What exactly were they copying from the Industrial Revolution when they made square flat greens and cop bunkers inland that looked exactly like steeplechase obstacle features?
The fact that man inherently tends to make straight and defined lines in various things went back thousands of years anyway and in golf architecture at that time only indicated that golf architecture was taking its first baby steps and hadn't advanced any further outside Scotland for a few decades.
As Behr said, at that point, they took just the game out of Scotland for the first time not noticing that they had left behind the real essence of it----eg its highly natural linkland sites perfectly suited in a natural sense to golf without even the application of golf course architecture. At that point golf architecture itself had hardly been born.
That's not remotely similar to the incredibly dynamic and productive albeit somewhat destructive and dehumanizing engine of the Industrial Revolution.
You've said that those early rudimentary architectural features were cheap, as were many of the products of the Industrial Revolution and that that was the reason those early rudimentary golf architecture features looked as they did? So what? Steeplechase jump obstacles that looked exactly like earthen pits and berms of Victorian golf architecture were cheap to construct too.
Do you also think the Industrial Revolution spawned the style and look of steeplechase obstacle features and was a powerful influence on it? Because if you do you don't know much more about the early years of golf architecture and its evolution than you do about steeplechasing and its evolution.
