This article caught my eye because its premise was that golf courses in the UK would improve because of the war, World War I that is. (It was obviously written by someone who took his golf course architecture very seriously). I thought the article might also be interesting in light of recent threads about change/the future/the basics of gca. Some selections:
"If there had been no war the green committees and the course architects would just now have been at their busiest. Change and upheaval would have been rampant. Clubs with large credit balances at their banks would have determined
that the money must be spent and that the best way of spending it was on improvements on the course; "improvements" they would have called them, but mere changes they would really be. New holes would be made instead of old ones, putting greens would be moved from one place to another, and above all numberless new bunkers would be made until it almost seemed that it would be impossible to hit the ball anywhere without its being trapped....Golf was being made bit by bit so tricky and so unfairly difficult that the average player was becoming very much exasperated. He did not mind fair difficulty, but he cried out -- or was beginning to think of crying out -- against such fantastic bunkering, done according to plans and drawings made in offices, that prevented him from getting the ball near the hole except by a fluke or a miracle. He said this was not golf, and he was right. If there had been no war there would certainly have been very soon a great revolt against this sort of thing and in favour of simpler, fairer golf.
As it is, the war is doing the needful. Our courses are by no means being neglected....[But] clubs have realised the necessity of saving their money and husbanding their financial resources in every way possible. Labour is, of course, scarce, but there is enough of it for the purposes required, the unnecessary things not now being done...A little more is being left to nature and simplicity, and the courses will be all the better for it...Clubs have concluded that their necessity does indeed become a virtue. They are clear in their minds now that the fancy bunkering and fantastic course architecture was being very much overdone and that they will have no more of it because their golf was being spoiled by it. This does not mean that they want only very easy golf, but they want courses that are simpler and less elaborate...
If there is, as I have said, practically no new bunkering being done in these days, a most useful, simple and inexpensive innovation was made on one of our leading London courses a little while back that deserves some mention here. I refer to the course of the Mid-Surrey Club at Richmond, where the bumps-and-hollows system of bunkering, as it has been called, was first instituted some years ago. When the latter was done Peter Lees, now of America, was the head greenkeeper in charge, and in a general way he brought this course to such a state of perfection that it was the admiration of everyone and had a simply marvelous capacity for standing wear and tear. There is probably more play upon it than on any other in Great Britain. When Peter sailed across the Atlantic many people thought it would be impossible to fill his place at Richmond adequately. What has happened, however, only proves once again, as has been proved so often before, that in this strange world no man is indispensable.
Doubtless the Mid-Surrey Club has been exceptionally fortunate, but here is the plain fact that at Leven in Scotland it unearthed a new greenkeeper to take the place of Lees, who has indeed proved himself to be a veritable treasure, a genius of the first class. I am and shall always be a great admirer of Lees, but I do not think anyone could be a finer greenkeeper than the new one at Mid-Surrey. Already he has effected, at a minimum of cost and labour, many great improvements on the putting greens and fairway, and that he has ideas and good ones in course construction is proved by the excellent....
[In terms of the bumps-and-hollows bunkering] what he has done is very simple, and almost obvious, but like so many of such things, nobody seems to have thought about it beforehand. Having made the hills and hollows rather more irregular than they were before, he has inserted into them numerous small and quite shallow patches of sand bunkering....These patches of sand amid the grass hills and hollows are easily kept in order, needing practically no attention, and so in the matter of upkeep this is a very economical system of bunkering. And it looks very well indeed. The example here set is likely to be widely followed."