Jeez!
I take the sprogs out swimming for a couple of hours and all hell breaks loose! Where is our beloved moderator!
Enough exclamation points........
As many of your have understood, I do not at all disagree with Tom MacWood, and in fact said so (in effect) more than once in my previous posts on this thread. Namely:
RESEARCH AND EXPERIENCE ARE BOTH IMPORTANT!!!
Sorry for the Mucci treatment (I would have used the Pazin bold type strategy too if he or I knew how to replicate it
), but I'd just like to get that one out of the way before more animus starts ceeping into the conversation we're having.
Where Tom and I disagree, and probably disagree pretty strongly is in the relative value of these two aproaches in determining the quality of a particular golf shot, or golf hole or golf course. I tend to think that this is determined more by the collective experience of golfers, not just me (although I'm not far from perfect, as Geoff Shackleford has so cleverly determined) but all golfers who have played a hole rather than by the direct or indirect observations of "old masters" or writers who happen to have spent a lot of time reading the old masters. I personally prefer Tom MacW's posts where he talks about his actual golfing experiences more than those which talk about his love for the history of the game, but that is in fact just me and my predilections.
Tom Paul
Have I convinced you yet that I haven't slipped off the rails yet?
Good.
Let me get to one of the bees whcih seems to have lain in your bonnet for some time before popping out today.
Art.
I probably did say many moons ago that I was sceptical that GCA is in fact what most people would call "art." I always have found it difficult to compare a Vermeer or a Bach concerto or "Ulysses" to Cypress Point. I even have trouble comparing CPC to the Sistine Chapel, as Sandy Tatum famously once did. In thinking of your post I went to my trusty dictionary, adn I looked up both "art" and artifact." The latter definition I found very intriguing:
"any object made by man, especially with a view to subsequent use."
This, at least to me, is where GCA fits most neatly. As opposed to the art of Vermeer, or Bach, or Joyce, or even Phillip Johnson, golf courses are made "with a view to subsequent use." Not only that, their very use changes them, from day one and their exposure to the elements changes them, and their sheer magnitude makes them susceptible to both serious imperfections in both design and construction as well as subtle changes over time by either owners or caretakers (i.e. greenskeepers). I do not doubt that the better architects may have a more finely tuned esthetic sense, but I still find it difficult to describe their work as "art." However, my mind is open and I can be convinced!
Thingy
Daley
You are right that my experiences on more than a few of the great courses I have been able to play have been limited, and if you have followed my posts with the stalking intenisty of some others you would remember that I have always qualified anything I have said about those courses with a caveat about my near virginity.
Tim W
As Alice said, in effect, I mean what I say and I say what I mean, but like Alice, I find myself confused at times, and often in a strange world.....Nevertheless, I do think we get sidetracked too often on this site by letting our love for the past cloud our vision for the future. Sure the old stuff that Paul Turner and others have revealed to us through their research is neat, but is it what we think golf ought to be in this century? Perhaps it is, perhaps not.
I'm keeping an open mind, but shouldn't my mind be influenced as much or more by experience (mine and others I know and tlak to) as by words and old photographs?
Just wondering.......