Sprezzatura

[Brent Hutto]

It is an art which does not seem to be an art. One must avoid affectation and practice in all things a certain sprezzatura, disdain or carelessness, so as to conceal art, and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it....obvious effort is the antithesis of grace.

--Book of the Courtier

This seems to me a very useful term for the design of certain golf courses much loved on this forum. For my part, it is a talent for sprezzatura that lets many of Donald Ross's course routings lay so perfectly on land that is not spectacular but nevertheless used to maximum effect for variety and interest. Certainly Dr. MacKenzie attempted a certain sprezzatura in the way he used flashy bunkers to disguise the contours which artfully determine the way certain holes are played.

[JESII]

I thought the green complexes on the new course at Stonewall exemplified the opposite of this word...Sprezzatura...whatever that may be.

Or maybe it was a failed attempt at Sprezzatura, I don't really know...

[Brent Hutto]

I'll have to go back and review the Stonewall thread but perhaps we should come up with a counterpoint term for anti-Sprezzatura. There are probably more "anti-" examples than not if we look around. For instance, I dearly love the Mike Strantz courses I've played but one does not get the sense of no effort having been involved, quite the opposite in fact. Or at least that's how a course like Tobacco Road strikes me.

[JESII]

Absolutely...Royal New Kent is the same deal...in that case I think his goal was to blow you away with hallucinagenic features...and it works. That is one reason I consider his work the only 'ART' I have seen in GCA. I don't consider them golf courses per se, because they are so inefficient...but they are incredible to look at and play in a one-hole-at-a-time sense. I lose the continuity of an 18 hole round, but each hole is a blast.

Stonewall's greens "appear" to me to be the result of a tremendous amount of effort.

[Brent Hutto]

So Strantzzatura it shall be!

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Brent, How about Enghzzatura?



 

[BCrosby]

Good point Tommy. The "avoidance of affectation" is not the first thing that comes to mind with Engh.

Bob

[Tom_Doak]

I've never heard this term before, so I can't be accused of trying to achieve the term itself, but you have to be careful how you're applying it here.  Ross's routings are no less forced upon the land than Bill Coore's, or any other minimalist's; and MacKenzie's bunkers are far from careless or thoughtless.

I do agree that this characteristic is what makes a lot of older courses (and especially links courses) great, but I don't know that you will find a lot of it in modern design, or even in Golden Age architecture ... maybe Ross' chocolate drops count.

I think that story MacKenzie told about natural contouring of greens may apply -- finding the biggest fool in the village, and telling him to make them flat.  The trouble with modern architecture's lack of "sprezzatura" may be that we are expected to spend so much time on each project nowadays, to keep coming back, to make sure there are no "errors".  We find all the most talented people and they all try so hard.

[Peter Pallotta]

Maybe an easier word to try to apply (or not) is the one biographer Nick Tosches used to describe Dean Martin: 'menefreghista', from the italian dialect meaning 'one who doesn't give a f---'.

I guess like the casual contempt/disregard of sprezzatura, it can also be about not APPEARING to give a f---. So: who SEEMS to work with casual disregard, but actually doesn't?  

Peter