The fox and the hedgehog

[Ryan Farrow]

So in theory class today, we were discussing the fox's and hedgehogs of the world, in terms of architects and landscape architects. For those of you who have never heard of the theory, it is based on the actions of these two animals when they are confronted. The fox has an arsenal of solutions to this problem, it can run, hide, attack etc... but the hedgehog relies on a singular solution, curling up and taking cover. I think some of us have a good understanding of which architects fall into a respective category, so I'd like to have some discussion on why you think they belong as either the fox or the hedgehog of golf course design.

[TEPaul]

Ryan:

I'd like to answer your question but as much golf as I've played and as many courses as I've seen I just don't recall seeing any architecture that either runs, hides or attacks or even curls up and takes cover so I just don't know what to say.

I can't even recall any of the many architects I know ever running or hiding or attacking or curling up or taking cover either, although I think I might suspect Bill Coore of some of that. I have spent enough time on raw sites with him when I can't figure out where he is and I suspected he was hiding from me but generally a cell phone call from my Philadelphia based cell phone finds him and his Austen based cell phone hiding just around the bend.

This sort of reminds me of the Crane/Behr debate when Behr, for some reason, classified all golfers and architects into something like either sheep or goats. Joshua Crane discovered he was a goat and for the life of him he couldn't seem to figure out why.

But if I were to pick an animal that represents the type of architect I think I like the best it would probably be a cat. Cats have a most curious way when you tell them something or ask them to do something of looking at you silently like you're a dumb turd and then whatever it is you said to them they just turn around and go and do whatever they feel like.

[Britt Rife]

I was always amused by Malcolm Muggeridge's division of folk into either foxes or hedgehogs.  The comparison was one of the "guy with one big idea", like Karl Marx or John Stuart Mill and the "guy with no overarching idea, just lots of little ones", like Edmund Burke.  A simple approach would seem to put MacRaynorBanks into the hedgehog camp and Flynn into the fox camp.

But yes, Mr. Paul has it right.  Cat architects are to be cherished.

[BCrosby]

I thought Isaiah Berlin coined the phrase.  Based on Tolstoy's theory of history.

Bob

[Britt Rife]

I thought Isaiah Berlin coined the phrase.  Based on Tolstoy's theory of history.

Bob

You're exactly right--where on earth did I get Muggeridge?

[TEPaul]

Were Isaiah and Irving Berlin brothers?
No
Were they cousins?
No
Were they friends?
No
Were they at least birds of a feather?


I'll tell you one interesting thing talking about foxes and hedgehogs----and that is as I sit here in my perch in my new barn/office looking out over the fields, if I were to see some animals out there in those fields the two I'm most likely to see are foxes and hedgehogs. Frankly, I'm not sure what they'd do if they ran right into one another. Would they run or hide or attack? Or would they just curl up?

I don't know but I do know one thing, and that is if my sister's dog, Jackson (named for Jackson Mississippi where an animal lover found him about 7/8 dead after he was abandoned as a puppy by some good-ol'-boys) spots either the fox or the hedgehog or both out there in one of those fields the chances are pretty good one or both of them will be dead meat. Jackson is actually a very sweet dog but I guess you can't take the country out of him because at this point he's pretty much performed total genocide on all the barn cats in the vicinity.

Matter of fact I think Jackson might just have all the makings of a damn fine cutting edge golf architect!

You know, actually, I'm probably not kidding. I've been eying the field off to the left to create a homemade golf course on with maybe about six greens to play to from all directions. You know what, if I decided to route and design the course and its strategies around what might be called a "hedgehog hole" layout principle, I could actually just turn Jackson loose out there and he would identify all the hedgehog holes for me in no time at all. It could be the first course in history routed in about fifteen minutes by a "good ol' boy Mississippi Delta dog."

I'll even give him equal co-design attribution. The course will be known as the first "Jackson/Paul" design.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Bob, Britt - and Ryan. Especially Ryan.

I think it goes back to Aesop (or one of the ancient Greeks), who wrote something like, "the fox knows many small things, but the hedgehog one big thing." something like that - you could google it.

Then Isaiah Berlin, seeking I think in part really to try to understand what the heck the aphorism meant, used it to classify writers, in particular to distinguish Tolstoi (hedgehog) from Dostoyevski (fox), in this really awesome essay.

The CBM ref seems like a nice pickup on the hedgehog, as does Flynn on the fox. MacKenzie has to top the classic rankings of foxes IMHO, just like Tom Doak really deserves it on the modern list.

But Ryan goodbye to all that and read dem buttkickin  Russians!!!

Mark

[Mark Bourgeois]

Tom Paul

Re Jackson

Going from 7/8 dead to living 3/4 time:

Got folks in Jackson we're going to meet,
Car wheels on a gravel road.

[Garland Bayley]

Seems to me that especially in the early years JN was a hedgehog.

[George Pazin]

To get back to Ryan's topic (not that I don't enjoy Tom and Bob's repartee), I see the hedgehog maneuver analog in "lengthen and narrow". For far too many architects, that seems to be the only response to today's technology - make courses longer, make holes narrower.

Curiously, I think a lot would be more receptive to other things, were it not for the courses that seem to win all the awards every year, not to mention the constant "What did they do to Augusta this year?" and "How was such and such course altered for the US Open?" articles every year.

[Ryan Farrow]

George, is it no surprise that the biggest hedgehog of all is the US Open doctor.

[TEPaul]

"... but the hedgehog relies on a singular solution, curling up and taking cover."

Ryan:

Part of the reason I probably have a hard time answering your initial question is I just don't think that's a very good description of what hedgehogs do or their "solution".

I mean hardly a day goes by when I don't see a hedgehog on this farm and we also have a guy on the other side of the farm whose greatest love in life is hunting---or I should probably say shooting and killing things.

Just the other day we were standing out in a field and a hedgehog was nearby sticking his head out of his hole just looking at us. Terry said---"Do you believe those dumb-ass hedgehogs and how stupid they are? I could be standing right over his hole with a 10 gauge shotgun and that dumb-ass hedgehog will sit there in his hole looking right at me. What the hell does he think I'm going to do?" 

So I would say a hedgehog's answer to things and his perpetual solution is complete stupidity.

Do you still want us to identify the architects who resemble hedgehogs?