"I believe the "renaissance" is not limited to GCA but illustrates a general trend toward historic recognition and preservation that is taking place in all facets of our culture."
Tom Yost:
Undoubtedly, you're right, as is Paul Cowley. The discussion of a subject like this should probably begin in a much broader context---eg a sort of societal context, or some context of the "cycles" in particularly American culture.
The Dyes, C&Cs, Doaks etc don't just pop out of a vacuum---the times do have to be ready for them and so does golf.
Paul Cowley mentions the so-called "Greening of America" that was certainly a societal cycle that emerged out of perhaps the 60s, the Vietnam War and the entire so-called "Social Revolution" that produced something of a "counter culture". All of that was clearly inspired by real dissatisfaction with one thing or another and basically swept the country (not everyone but certainly enough).
We need to look not just at the protestors but at the very things that were and are being protested to understand why things inevitably change.
C.B Macdonald's primary inspiration was not simply some type of old world architectural principles, it was a overarching abhorence of the crap he saw all around him in architecture at that time before NGLA.
Beginning perhaps 15 or 20 years ago a significant slice of golf in America had probably just become dissatisfied and bored with the regularity and lack of naturalism of the so-called "modern age" of architecture which had had perhaps a 40 year run.
Back to Paul Cowley's mention of the so-called "Greening of America". That was no doubt a massive cultural or generational shift. It also began almost 45 years ago. It's initial proponents have grown old now and have actually gone through a shift back towards conservatism.
My point is golf is perhaps one of the most inherently conservative recreations there is and so are most of the people who are interested in it and it isn't lost on me that golf got around to a rejection of the status quo almost an entire generation after the so-called "counter culture did with their "greening of America".
What I'm saying is golf in the larger sense is generally conservative and traditional and consequently slow to react. It is definitely not at the vanguard of cultural change. It's probably at the tail end of it.
To understand what has happened with the renaissance in golf and architecture and to predict what may happen in golf or golf architecture next one should probably be mindful of W.C. Field's remark of what one should do if the world came to an end which was---"Go to Philadelphia because it is at least 30 years behind the times."
If the naturalism bent of the renaissance in golf architecture is in any way akin to the "greening of America" via the counter culture of the Social Revolution that emanated out of the 1960s and 1970s, again the renaissance in golf architecture is about 30 years behind the times. But for conservative and traditionalist golf that is not surprising.
