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