Golf Courses of the British Isles

[Rick Shefchik]

I'm home, I have the book, and I tried it.

(To set it up, Darwin is writing about the two nines of Fixby, the first "half" of which he describes as "park golf" or "park land" -- the book was published in 1910, so that should help identify how far back in time the expression "parkland golf" originated; the second "half" of the course is more open, undulating, and features a "ubiquitous" stone wall. Darwin isn't wild about the wall, nor does he cotton to all the blind shots at Fixby.)

"I should not like to pledge myself as to the exact number of walls, but we shall be lucky if we do not make acquaintance with more than one of them upon a windy day; and, in parenthesis, the wind can blow at Fixby with an energy worthy of the strongest seaside gale. The two halves may fairly be summed up by saying that the first half provides the sounder golf, and the second the more exciting; and that both need a man to play them."

I'd say Crenshaw has a sound theory going.

[Tony_Muldoon]

"Cromer, like Felixstowe, makes me feel a very old golfer, because, when I first played there, there was a little ladies' course along the edge of the cliff, which has many, many years since toppled peacefully over into the German Ocean.  Later on I saw an excellent seventeeth hole share the same fate, and I suppose the poor first hole must go the same way some time.  It is particularly sad, because the holes on the down land near the cliff constitute the most attractive part of the course.  The holes inland, which were added later, are long and well bunkered, and have doubtless all the Christian virtues, but they are just a little agricultural and uninspiring."  

Sorry to be the party pooper but I value Darwin because he's the best (sometimes only) witness we've got.  He gets way to much love on here.

I feel it's often like wading through treacle, nice at first but sickly in large doses.  Perhaps I'm showing my age when I want to scream "Get to the Point Man" at him.  Often there just isn’t any point.  

Open any of his books at random and you find it easy to cast a critical gaze.

Do cliffs really "topple peacefully"?  Why mention the ladies course at all unless it's something valuable lost, he doesn’t make any argument for it beyond nostalgia?  It’s the North Sea not the 'German Ocean'.    Explain to me the relevance of comparing the holes added later with the most "attractive" part?  

I could on but try any of his writing and it all falls down when taken as more than a wordsmiths meanderings. Especially the Braid Biography, that is a very poor effort.

Give me the purple prose of Dickenson any day.  

[Rick Shefchik]

Tony,

In the example of Dickinson's prose earlier on this thread, he used the chalk-and-cheese comparison -- which I thought was clever enough, but I found the same comparison in Darwin's piece on Fixby (though Dickinson added the part about cheese being nationalized).

I agree that an entire book of Darwin would not digest easily in a couple of gulps. He's like a Sauternes, a desert wine. But he's damned original, and most of the good ones since -- like Dickinson, apparently -- have found ways to steal from him.

I intend to steal from him, too -- the next time I'm furious about something on a golf course, I'm going to quote his Speakman rant.

[Dan Kelly]

"I should not like to pledge myself as to the exact number of walls, but we shall be lucky if we do not make acquaintance with more than one of them upon a windy day; and, in parenthesis, the wind can blow at Fixby with an energy worthy of the strongest seaside gale. The two halves may fairly be summed up by saying that the first half provides the sounder golf, and the second the more exciting; and that both need a man to play them."

What editor, nowadays, would let you write like that?

Rhetorical question.

As good as Darwin was (very good!), I believe that numerous writers of my acquaintance -- some of them resident on this very Web site -- could write charmingly Darwinian prose about golf courses, given the time (and demand) for it.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Just to keep this interesting, I opened a random page of Dickinson and this is the first graf my eyes read:

"Before leaving the links let us recall a famous remark from the early 1830s: 'He takes more time to tee his ball than any three men, pulls up as much grass as would summer a hunter, and after all he ends in an abortive puff.' The number of abortive puffs upon the links of North Berwick if laid end to end would stretch from ----- to ------.  (You can fill in the divots as you please.)"

Excellent -- and I have no idea how you "summer a hunter"!

[Lloyd_Cole]

Lloyd:

I did get to meet Peter Dobereiner a couple of times before he passed away, and I loved his writing also, but he wasn't nearly as sharp on golf course architecture as Darwin was.

I suspect Darwin was friendly with Colt, Alison, Abercromby, and some of the other great Golden Age architects in Britain, whereas there weren't many for Dobereiner to learn from.

Tom
That wasn't really his interest, was it? He seemed easily content with RTJ style dominated 60's designs. He was more interested in the people and their interactions within the game. Especially the government of the game. His rules books are by far the best available and often hilarious.

[Steve Wilson]

Summer a hunter--that would be a reference to the amount of grass required to feed a horse (hunter) for the summer season.

[Bob_Huntley]

"Cromer, like Felixstowe, makes me feel a very old golfer, because, when I first played there, there was a little ladies' course along the edge of the cliff, which has many, many years since toppled peacefully over into the German Ocean.  Later on I saw an excellent seventeeth hole share the same fate, and I suppose the poor first hole must go the same way some time.  It is particularly sad, because the holes on the down land near the cliff constitute the most attractive part of the course.  The holes inland, which were added later, are long and well bunkered, and have doubtless all the Christian virtues, but they are just a little agricultural and uninspiring."  

Sorry to be the party pooper but I value Darwin because he's the best (sometimes only) witness we've got.  He gets way to much love on here.

I feel it's often like wading through treacle, nice at first but sickly in large doses.  Perhaps I'm showing my age when I want to scream "Get to the Point Man" at him.  Often there just isn’t any point.  

Open any of his books at random and you find it easy to cast a critical gaze.

Do cliffs really "topple peacefully"?  Why mention the ladies course at all unless it's something valuable lost, he doesn’t make any argument for it beyond nostalgia?  It’s the North Sea not the 'German Ocean'.    Explain to me the relevance of comparing the holes added later with the most "attractive" part?  

I could on but try any of his writing and it all falls down when taken as more than a wordsmiths meanderings. Especially the Braid Biography, that is a very poor effort.

Give me the purple prose of Dickenson any day.  

Tony,

You are probably a very young man because as a schoolboy I remember references to the North Sea as the German Ocean.

Conan Doyle once wrote "The "violet rim of the German Ocean appeared over the green edge of the Norfolk coast nearby to Riding Thorpe Manor," in one of his Holmes books.

Bob

[Tony_Muldoon]

Unfortunately not that young at all.

Nice Quote.

[Rich Goodale]

Crenshaw's "theory" was in fact stolen from Norman Mailer, who said the same thing about Catch-22 40+ years ago.

[James Bennett]

Tony

go to bed.  It is past a young man's bedtime.

By the way, I wonder if Bernard Darwin coined the phrase 'What a pity'.

James B

[RJ_Daley]

By the way, I wonder if Bernard Darwin coined the phrase 'What a pity'.

Now that is funny!  

I believe Jay Flemma is flirting with some interesting wordsmithing.  Good lawyers are often great writers, IMO.  

[Tony_Muldoon]

Yes guys, German Ocean was a new one to me and I knew exactly what he was on about.  As a phrase it made me smile and when Bob gave another example of it I wondered after which war it had dropped out of use.  My point is, it’s yet another poetic phrase which he stirs into his sentences when he seems to be to be laying on it thick to disguise the fact that he hasn't really got a point to make.  I wish I had his turn of phrase (and a strict editor “Murder your darlings”.) and I bet you lot do to.


I realise that he was a forerunner of today’s newspaper columnists who rattle on until they have filled their required number of words. He didn’t have to produce pieces with defined subjects he just seemed to put down what his post luncheon thoughts were that day.  Most of the writings as we see them were not intended for a book, but he started anthologizing them himself.   I agree he's the’ best’ but it's in a field of one because no one else wrote so much history of golf as it was happening.  Interestingly his stuff is suffused with nostalgia for the past and this is a trait he shares with many great writers.  But his readers toady are suffering from nostalgia squared if they can’t see his weaknesses.

Earlier this year I celebrated his writing about Muirfield in Winter and I can see his value and I guess it’s a personal thing but I can only take so much, I’ve been know to read him in bed as the perfect remedy.

It’s the accretions that each phrase acquires that step by silent step slows down his progress and stops his ship from ever leaving harbour ……Ok I’ll stop now and lie down and wait for inspiration.

[Tom_Doak]

Tony:

I read that paragraph just the opposite -- he had a great point to make about golf course architecture, but if he'd tried to do it in the one sentence it really needed he would have seemed quite harsh about it.  By the end of that paragraph few would take it that way and yet his point is made.

To the several people who have implied that many could write this way if given the time, I would ask you to show me an example.  Darwin's style was his own and should not be copied.  But, there is plenty of room in golf for a more long-winded profile of a golf course, if anyone out there was capable of writing a really good one.

The longer you write something, the better you need to be to pull it off ... that's why I keep most of my stuff short and to the point.

[Dan Kelly]

To the several people who have implied that many could write this way if given the time, I would ask you to show me an example.  Darwin's style was his own and should not be copied.  But, there is plenty of room in golf for a more long-winded profile of a golf course, if anyone out there was capable of writing a really good one.

I not only implied it; I said it. And I believe it, too: There are many writers who could write charmingly and insightfully about golf courses, and at some length -- in the manner (if not the style) of Bernard Darwin.

I believe that you, for one, could do it -- given an equally capable editor.

Here are the real questions:

Who would publish such writings, Tom? And how much would they pay?

[Mike Policano]

Tom,

Thanks for raising this topic.  I just ordered my copy from Classics of Golf.

Cheers

[Tom_Doak]

Dan:

The Golf Courses of the British Isles was a book that sold quite well (and still does, 97 years later!).  If anybody could write that well on the subject today, I guarantee they could find a publisher for it, or print it themselves and sell a few thousand copies over time.  (I have some experience with that part.)

Which magazines would print such a review?  Well, LINKS seems just desperate for good writers on the subject of golf courses.  
They don't always give their "classic courses" nearly the space they deserve, but if somebody wrote well enough, it might be a different story.

[Dan Kelly]

Dan:

The Golf Courses of the British Isles was a book that sold quite well (and still does, 97 years later!).  If anybody could write that well on the subject today, I guarantee they could find a publisher for it, or print it themselves and sell a few thousand copies over time.  (I have some experience with that part.)

Which magazines would print such a review?  Well, LINKS seems just desperate for good writers on the subject of golf courses.  
They don't always give their "classic courses" nearly the space they deserve, but if somebody wrote well enough, it might be a different story.

Tom --

I appreciate the answer.

Here's mine:

The key question I asked was: How much would they pay?

I think the economics of becoming the "next Bernard Darwin" would be prohibitive for virtually every writer in the world who might be eager and able to pull it off.

Who can afford to be traveling about, here and there, becoming authoritative, writing magazine pieces, and not bankrupt himself?

Oh, I suppose there are a few gentleman writers, or writers who've already hit it BIG, who could do it -- but the rest of us? No.

None of the magazines (including Links) is going to pay a writer to wander here and there, gaining the necessary experience to write with the authority of a Darwin. And none of them, I'd think, will ever devote the salary and space to put the next Darwin on staff and let him develop his following.

Furthermore: I've not noticed, in any of the mainline magazines, that there's much interest in CRITICISM that's worthy of the name -- as opposed to your standard-issue travel/puff piece. (I haven't seen Links lately, but it sure had no interest in criticism back when I did see it regularly.)

I certainly don't intend to detract from the rave notices your courses have received -- but really: Wouldn't it mean more to you if you knew that the critics were just as free to rip you as to laud you? (I don't KNOW that they aren't free to do so -- but it seems that way, from the evidence at hand.)

Surely you would agree that you can't get the next Darwin from someone with a smiley-face pasted to his visage. He must be free to write the truth as he sees it. I don't think there's much of a market for that, frankly. Or, more accurately: I don't think any of the magazines sees much of a market for that.

And newspapers? Not likely. You have certainly noticed that American newspapers, at least, are not about to devote their dwindling resources to specialty beats.

I wish it were otherwise.

Dan

[Mark Bourgeois]

Dan Webster to Dan Kelly: "There is always room at the top."

[Dan Kelly]

Dan Webster to Dan Kelly: "There is always room at the top."

Dan Kelly to Mark Bourgeois: "Tell that to the best maker of persimmon drivers."

His time, like Bernard Darwin's, has passed.

Alas.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Rick Reilly to Dan Kelly: "There is always room at the top. Oh, and money. Lots and lots of money!"

[Dan Kelly]

Rick Reilly to Mark Bourgeois: "If I wrote like Bernard Darwin, you'd never have heard of me!"

[Peter Pallotta]

Dan
It seems to me that you have some experience in this area, but I still have to disagree with your POV on this.

As I wrote (in a too long and rambling, and now deleted post) on the "10% difference" thread, I've come to believe that a fundamental choice can and needs to be made right off the bat:

Assuming I have learned and care about my craft, I can choose either to try to "figure out" the marketplace and the economics of the field I want to work in (writing or golf course architecture) and then find myself a place in it, wherever and however I can; or I can put my faith in my deepest-help beliefs, ideas and feelings about what constitutes excellence in my field, and sticking to that with courage and determination, wait for the marketplace to come to me and for the economics to (eventually) work out.

I know that sounds naive; all I can say is that i have some experience with this choice myself, and I believe the latter to be the soundest and most fulfilling approach in the long run, and that which produces the best (or at least the most truthful) work.

I'm not implying any value-judgement here; these are very personal choices, and some don't even recognize that the choice can be made.

Peter

   

[Mark Bourgeois]

Frank Deford to Rick Reilly:
"Beliefs like that are why you're overpaid, Rick! You can't even hold my Underwood's jockstrap - or Darwin's. I'm Frank Deford, bee-otch!"

[Steve Okula]

RT,

Apologies for butting in but your comment begs a different question: is there a linkage between design and writing abilities, like that between music and math in the brain?

Mark, normally I restrain myself from these types of comments, but since stylish writing is the very essence of this thread, I am compelled to point out your erroneous usage of the phrase, "beg the question".

"Begging the question" is a form of logical fallacy in which an argument is assumed to be true without evidence other than the argument itself. When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place.

A simple example would be "I think he is unattractive because he is ugly." The adjective "ugly" does not explain why the subject is "unattractive" -- they virtually amount to the same subjective meaning, and the proof is merely a restatement of the premise. The sentence has begged the question.

What you mean to say, is "raise the question", or perhaps, "pose the question".