[Rich Goodale]

Peter, as the Good Doctor Stein said to Ms. Toklas, "A golf course is a golf course is a golf course."

To me, the only thing that America has added to the equation was the physical creation of a venue (rather than just giving the land a shave and a haircut).  LIDO.  In many ways, TPC-Sawgrass is just Lido, Redux.

Rich

[Adam Clayman]

Tom, My comment was more about the man than the courses.  CBM's struggle to not only introduce the game, but finance a golf course, was virtually the beginning of the expansive growth of the game in America.
Isn't that why Mr. Keiser is paying tribute to him?

[Peter Pallotta]

Rich -

yes, but as Ms. Stein might've said about Lido: "There is no there, there".

But now I'm really talking like an under-grad...up next, Albert Camus' theory of golf architecture.

(I have one, actually)

Peter   

[TEPaul]

"What I saw in TPC is a golf course that no one would ever confuse with an old British links course (even a "perfected" or "modified" one); a golf course that was specifically designed to challenge the greatest players in the world; and a golf course that could not have and would not have been built anywhere else in the world but America -- but one that still manifested the traditional and solid golf architectural principles of the past as found in the British courses, albeit in a startling new and inventive way."


PeterP:

Yes sir, I think that's very true and also why, when one looks very carefully at WHAT-ALL Pete Dye (and probably Alice too) did with golf architecture probably needs its VERY OWN and VERY SPECIAL place in the entire history and evolution of golf course architecture.

The truly fascinating thing to me about Pete Dye is how he combined both really really valid basic architectural principles as the relate to things like playability/strategies and shot values and such with a pretty blatant artifcal look in some aspects of his architecture.

Pete didn't do that fascinating combination by accident, in my opinion---he did it very much by design and I believe I've known why for many years. The other interesting thing about that, and perhaps great thing, is I don't believe he borrowed the combination of it from anyone---it all pretty much came straight out of his own head and his own imagination, and it might've been the ultimate borrowing of some aspects of the old to come up with a combination of something truly new and unique!

I think in many ways Pete Dye (and Alice), despite his fame, might've always been a bit overlooked in the pantheon of architectural greatness and his name will probably continue to suffer that fate. It's not that he's not famous, just that he probably ought to be more famous.

I'm just fascinated by people in this art form and business who found what made them great somewhere in the reaches of their imagination or even just in the timing of things in their lives. I'm fascinated that they never got what they did from someone else at all----it really was uniquely their own. If you think about it, to pull that off as Pete Dye did, probably takes some luck and a whole lot of guts. The thing that may keep his over-all greatness down somewhat is that vestige of the look artificiality or the blatantly man-made (which I think he has always loved) about his style as well as the fact that Pete has never hid the fact that he really likes the idea of "hard" or "difficult". That probably came from the fact that both he and Alice were really good players but maybe more from the fact that both of them have a pretty cool sense of humor about all this!  

[Peter Pallotta]

The truly fascinating thing to me about Pete Dye is how he combined both really really valid basic architectural principles as the relate to things like playability/strategies and shot values and such with a pretty blatant artifcal look in some aspects of his architecture.

Pete didn't do that fascinating combination by accident, in my opinion---he did it very much by design and I believe I've known why for many years. The other interesting thing about that, and perhaps great thing, is I don't believe he borrowed the combination of it from anyone---it all pretty much came straight out of his own head and his own imagination, and it might've been the ultimate borrowing of some aspects of the old to come up with a combination of something truly new and unique!

Tom - thanks, that's it exactly. The IMAGINATIVE aspect of it all. That Pete Dye could go to the UK and study courses and then transmute the fundamental principles he found there into THAT, i.e. into TPC, is really interesting....and I think a first.

Peter 

[Kirk Gill]

One thing has to be said, though. When the subject comes up of a course like the K Club, folks are very quick to say something along the lines of "why would someone want to travel over to Ireland to play an American course?"

So if there is this notion of what an "American" Course is (in the usual understanding of the word, which ignores every place in the Americas other than the U.S.), which was the first course over here to possess these features? I get the feeling that now the term "American," as applied to golf courses, is considered pejorative.

[TEPaul]

"Tom, My comment was more about the man than the courses.  CBM's struggle to not only introduce the game, but finance a golf course, was virtually the beginning of the expansive growth of the game in America."


Adam:

I don't think there's any question of that. I think Macdonald, the man, and not just as it relates to his life and career in golf architecture is still a huge story waiting to be told. Because we on here are into golf architecture I think we tend to overlook how important he was to the beginning of GOLF in America and how much more important he could've been somewhat later. One thing that I think is really overlooked his his times and attempts on the administrative side of golf.

I think it's very possible that had he gotten his way on the administrative side, golf in North America may've become quite different from the way it did become.

In my opinion, that remark made about the need for "American golf" by incoming USGA president Robertson in 1901 sent a stake right through Macdonald's heart from which he never really would recover. Most call Macdonald The "Father" of American Golf Course Arcitecture, and in many ways he was that, but what he really was and could've been even more of is the "Father" of American GOLF, period!

Even given that, what interests me most of all is how Macdonald reacted to that both at the time and later in his life. As big and strong, and opinionated and curmudgeonly as he was and could certainly be, what really interests me is how he apparently also understood not just what he was up against but WHO he was up against. In that particularly way Macdonald had a pretty interesting sense of when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em and when we understand better who some of the men he was up against back then were it will all become a lot more clear. Essentially some of those guys back then around New York and early golf administration just did not take no from anyone, or accept some way that was pretty much not their own---not from even Macdonald---not from anyone. Some of them were types that never thought twice about doing things THEIR way!

That Macdonald seemed to always understand that and how he eventually dealt with it I think is a story waiting to be told about American GOLF and probably even somewhat about its architecture,

[Dan Moore]

RJ,

You hit on some of my thoughts.  Isn't the very idea that a swamp can be turned into the major centerpeice of a huge resort through the will of one man and a lot of cash epitomize the American entrepreneurial spirit.  Isn't it a precursor of Shadow Creek and anything Trumpish.  Sure Colt had begun to utilize serious construction techniques in the heaths outside London but Lido was something else altogether.  And even if MacDonald "copied" architectural ideas from the UK wasn't it an American concept to import the best ideas from abroad and build upon them.  One might also object to the fact Macdonald wasn't born in the US, but he was raised in Chicago and built his business career in the twenty or so years between the Great Chicago Fire and The World's Fair of 1893 when Chicago established itself as "The City of the Century."   He embodied the brash American spirit of the times and Lido was an outgroth of that spirit.  

[TEPaul]

"Tom - thanks, that's it exactly. The IMAGINATIVE aspect of it all. That Pete Dye could go to the UK and study courses and then transmute the fundamental principles he found there into THAT, i.e. into TPC, is really interesting....and I think a first."


PeterP:

That's it, in my opinion. He most definitely picked up on the best of the fundamental principles of golf course architecture and transmuted them over here and that's why his over-all use of angles is so good, maybe some of the best ever. But the fact that he always liked to use the look of the man-made or the look of artificiality too is what's so interesting to me. I think the reason for that is when they went over there to learn years ago they did pick up on architectural principles as made by nature and used well by man but he also became pretty fascinated by the existence of some shockingly man-made and rudimentary architectural features that existed in old links architecture.

One thing one has to understand about Pete is he was certainly never one of golf architecture's greatest "naturalist". It's not that he doesn't recognize it or understand it, he does----it's just that he really likes to MAKE things---he loves to build things---he loved to get on machinery and just make "architecture". He's a true "ARCHITECT" in that particular sense and definition of the word.

[TEPaul]

"And even if MacDonald "copied" architectural ideas from the UK wasn't it an American concept to import the best ideas from abroad and build upon them."


Dan:

No, I don't think importing holes from abroad was an American concept at all. It was pretty much a totally unique Macdonald concept. He was the one who thought of it and introduced it not just to America but to the whole idea of golf course architecture, in my opinion.

I think it was a concept that had an enormous INITIAL impact on American architecture but then the best of the American architectural practioners/philosophers began to depart from that idea and concept rather quickly and even rather vociferously. Some of them even began to criticize that "copy hole" idea of Macdonald's because they clearly felt they had found a better way, and, in my opinion, there's little question that they sure had!   

[TEPaul]

"So if there is this notion of what an "American" Course is (in the usual understanding of the word, which ignores every place in the Americas other than the U.S.), which was the first course over here to possess these features? I get the feeling that now the term "American," as applied to golf courses, is considered pejorative."

Kirk:

I think some do use the term "American" course in the pejorative. Some Americans do and so do some over there. But some over there seem to like it or be fascinated in it maybe even if just as a novelty from most of what they know.

I think the thing that fascinates many from over there the most about the "American" style course is not only the architecture but probably a good deal more the inevitable conditioning that almost always comes with the "American" style course even over there.

I've seen that fascination with some of them---basically they just cannot believe the immaculatness of the American style course. I even saw a Walker Cupper do that at Pine Valley during the Walker cup there in 1988. He was so blown away but the immaculateness of the fairways he actually asked if he could cut out a small piece on one of them and take it home with him. 

[Dan Moore]

"And even if MacDonald "copied" architectural ideas from the UK wasn't it an American concept to import the best ideas from abroad and build upon them."


Dan:

No, I don't think importing holes from abroad was an American concept at all. It was pretty much a totally unique Macdonald concept. He was the one who thought of it and introduced it not just to America but to the whole idea of golf course architecture, in my opinion.

I think it was a concept that had an enormous INITIAL impact on American architecture but then the best of the American architectural practioners/philosophers began to depart from that idea and concept rather quickly and even rather vociferously. Some of them even began to criticize that "copy hole" idea of Macdonald's because they clearly felt they had found a better way, and, in my opinion, there's little question that they sure had!   

Tom,

Your logic eludes me.  I agree it was Macdonald's idea and uniquely his idea but since Macdonald was an American architect isn't that what makes it a uniquely American idea.  Indeed many deviated from the concept of using template holes in search of variety and individual expression and style yet in fact the basic concepts in many of the templates continue to used today;  the Cape, the Short, the Redan. 

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