Was it the chicken or was it the egg?

[Sean_A]

I think you lot are missing a critical element.  SPEED.  Courses were built very quickly and on the cheap because of demand.  This is also why Sunningdale was unusual - it took a few years to build.  At least in some measure, the concept of building a course was new.  Additionally, I don't think for a minute that folks lost sight of architectural value in design and aesthetically, otherwise, how would folks have become so disenchanted with inland golf so quickly?  These boys knew better, but the patience, know how and system hadn't yet caught up with the demand.  If you think about it, it was only 25 years between TOC being "completed" and the beginnings of good inland golf.  That isn't much of gap if you ask me. 

I would also say that to follow the progress of inland golf one has to figure out Park Jr.  So far as I know, he was the only on building throughout this "learning period" and the style of his courses bear out what was happening at the time.  Even so, I think it took the arrival of Colt on the scene to really complete the picture for Park Jr. 

Tom P

Perhaps you don't realize it, but often times the comments you make toward David and Tommy  Mac don't come across as funny (if this is the intent).  When they are repeated so often, one can only assume you are trying to be rude and it certainly reads this way to me.  If this is your intent, why is it the case?  If not, I think the course of the joking has run its course.

Ciao

[Thomas MacWood]

I agree with Sean about time (and about Colt). As the game really became popular there was pressure to keep up with the demand.

I think there may have been another reason for some of the strange results. The late Victorian period was sort of golden age of sport. People had more leisure time and a number of sports became very popular. Many of these sports were played on grass ~ lawn tennis, cricket, rugby, croquet, soccer, etc. These playing fields all had rigid geometric demensions. My guess is some of the turf specialists who were involved in making these playing fields were also involved in golf, perhaps constrcution and maintenance. I believe that was how Carters made their name.

Also during this period gardening was quite popular, and there was a certain formality with the typical Victorian garden that may have bled into golf architecture. Some of the early reports refer to golf architects as links gardeners.

Peter
I don't want to come between anything you and TE have working. I will retract my question.

[Sean_A]

Tommy Mac

I think you are right.  The grass surfaces for sport in general must have been going through a period of improvement to eliminate bad bounces etc.  Heck, they still have problems at Wimbledon when rain is scarce.   I also think folks were just looking for ways to have better looking grass for gardens as a grassed area was often considered essential for at least one of the "rooms" in a garden.  I think one very interesting thing is how different parks were from gardens and thus the totally different functions each served.  Parks were and often still are much more wide open with odd specimen trees here and there while gardens tended (and still do) to be much more enclosed. 

Ciao

[TEPaul]

"I think you lot are missing a critical element.  SPEED.  Courses were built very quickly and on the cheap because of demand.  This is also why Sunningdale was unusual - it took a few years to build.  At least in some measure, the concept of building a course was new.  Additionally, I don't think for a minute that folks lost sight of architectural value in design and aesthetically, otherwise, how would folks have become so disenchanted with inland golf so quickly?  These boys knew better, but the patience, know how and system hadn't yet caught up with the demand.  If you think about it, it was only 25 years between TOC being "completed" and the beginnings of good inland golf.  That isn't much of gap if you ask me. 

I would also say that to follow the progress of inland golf one has to figure out Park Jr"



Sean:

That's exactly what I have been looking at, and for about five years now---eg speed. How many times has it been mentioned that most of the linksmen designers may not have been around for more than a few days to "layout" those early less than memorable courses? How could they have even designed those rudimentary features on them much less overseen their building if that was all they did and all the time they spent and all they were asked to do and all they were paid to do?

It also seems pretty undeniable that those courses were on the wrong kind of ground---eg impervious clay soil to produce good enough grass for decent playablitily--eg they say they were generally either rock hard or spongy. They were probably also using indigenous meadow grass instead of the fine two grasses indigenous to linksland.

So my question has always been is that the real reason they produced such poor results? The next question is could a Willie Park Jr. have produced something as good as he did at Sunningdale or Huntercombe ten years earlier (or when he began) if he had been given the kind of time and money and soil conditions he got there around the turn of the century?

That is what I've been trying to determine for years. It just seems pretty illogical to me that he had to be informed and basically taught how to do what he did at those two courses by someone like a Horace Hutchinson or even Colt. Where is there evidence to presume such a thing?

I'm not sure what you think about all this but it seems you feel as I do that he, and some like him, just needed the opportunity to slow down and take the time necessary on a project to produce something much better, and of course the "discovered" soil conditions of the heathland gave him that opportunity as well.

This looks like the real history as far as I can tell. For someone to suggest after all those years someone else had to actually show him how to do all this around the turn of the century just never made much sense to me and it still doesn't. Park Jr has been given credit in some history books for doing this first and I can't yet see how that seems wrong.

[Peter Pallotta]

Tom M -

On your question, the thread is about the move inland.  And since I don't think the Park Jns and Colts of the world were trying to emulate the Hell or Alps bunkers in that context, I thought it safe to assume that they weren't spending much time thinking about them in any practical/everyday sense. Since those men weren't blind, and since they were neither fools nor knaves, and since they knew very well the great courses like TOC and Prestwick, it seems to me that what they thought the important (and fundamental) principles of golf course design didn't include bunker shapes....especially if they were moving fast (and yes, especially if the ground they were working with made such emulation difficult or impossible). It seems to me that it was many years later before the unconscious became conscious (e.g. the strategic options that TOC offered, and how) and before the overall golf aesthetic and its link to fundamental design principles came to the fore. (Interestingly, then you had the Cranes of the word ranking TOC very low and the Mackenzies ranking it high; and you had American courses adding bunkers all over the place to make them tougher). Anyway, my point being that we shouldn't be focussing on distinctions that only became crystalized later and that the early designers weren't making. I don't think we should be asking something of the early designers that they weren't asking themselves. I'm convinced the old greats understood a great deal about design, even if that knowledge and the expression of it doesn't match yours or mine or that of later designers.  Edit: Rich just noted on another thread the genius of an early Park Jn routing...routing being, of course, what many of the excellent working professionals we have on this board still use as a main measuring stick for an architect's skill.    

And please, knock off the nonsence about "coming in between anything you and Tom Paul have working". That's silly -- and if you really wanted to retract the question you could've deleted it. I've said enough times on this board that I have almost everything to learn, and that I enjoy tossing out ideas just to see what might have relevance or interest.

Peter 
 

[BCrosby]

I think there may have been another reason for some of the strange results. The late Victorian period was sort of golden age of sport. People had more leisure time and a number of sports became very popular. Many of these sports were played on grass ~ lawn tennis, cricket, rugby, croquet, soccer, etc. These playing fields all had rigid geometric demensions. 

Also during this period gardening was quite popular, and there was a certain formality with the typical Victorian garden that may have bled into golf architecture. Some of the early reports refer to golf architects as links gardeners.

Tom MacW -

Great observation. I think the rise of popular sports during the Victorian Age had a tremendous impact on how people thought about golf as a sport and about how golf courses ought to be built.

The explosive growth of those sports (which was really unprecedented) raised all sorts of interesting questions about the extent to which golf ought to strive to be more like those other sports. Which (depending on where you come down on the issue) had fairly obvious consequences for how golf courses ought to be designed.

Bob 

[TEPaul]

"Were their shapes of little importance?"


Of little importance to whom? To Park probably not but how was a Park Jr going to even attempt to emulate such things if many of his English clients weren't asking for that and weren't giving him the kind of sites where that was remotely possible to do and weren't providing him the time or the money to even attempt it? I don't see that all that exactly translates into the presumption that he couldn't have done it though and even much earlier.

[TEPaul]

"I think there may have been another reason for some of the strange results. The late Victorian period was sort of golden age of sport. People had more leisure time and a number of sports became very popular. Many of these sports were played on grass ~ lawn tennis, cricket, rugby, croquet, soccer, etc. These playing fields all had rigid geometric demensions. My guess is some of the turf specialists who were involved in making these playing fields were also involved in golf, perhaps constrcution and maintenance. I believe that was how Carters made their name.

Also during this period gardening was quite popular, and there was a certain formality with the typical Victorian garden that may have bled into golf architecture. Some of the early reports refer to golf architects as links gardeners."



That makes a lot of sense to me too but I think the primary sport of the Victorian era that influenced golf architecture at that time was not primary those ones mentioned above, I think it was the world of horse sport and of those primarily steeplechasing. It is certainly not lost on me that is precisely what some of the contemporaneous and best observers of that era called it as well such as Bernard Darwin. They referred to it as "steeplechase" golf (or architecture).

When I suggested that to Tom MacWood about five years ago he claimed that Darwin must have been joking!

I don't think so. I think he was merely describing a pretty obvious reality of that time. 

[BCrosby]

Not to go all colonial on you, but the agronomic issues raised on this thread have a parallel, but very different, history south of the Mason Dixon Line.

Down here the issue was finding a turf that would survive the summer heat. The development of Bermuda grass was the key.

That's a history yet to be researched or written. My sense is that the issue was treated by the USGA as a red-headed stepchild until after WWII.

Bob

[TEPaul]

"Not to go all colonial on you, but the agronomic issues raised on this thread have a parallel, but very different, history south of the Mason Dixon Line.

Down here the issue was finding a turf that would survive the summer heat. The development of Bermuda grass was the key.

That's a history yet to be researched or written. My sense is that the issue was treated by the USGA as a red-headed stepchild until after WWII."



Bob

It looks like very early on some golf agronomy problems such as how to handle heat and such south of the Mason Dixon Line was very much going to be a separate and special problem to overcome and one that had no practical examples to follow on the other side. The fact that it took them a number of decades to even begin to accomplish it (into the 1930s and 1940s) just confirms it.

[TEPaul]

"I think one very interesting thing is how different parks were from gardens and thus the totally different functions each served.  Parks were and often still are much more wide open with odd specimen trees here and there while gardens tended (and still do) to be much more enclosed."


Sean:

This is something we talked a lot about on here a few years ago and I think this is a very important point to make in how English "gardens" and "parks" may've influence golf architecture. The fact is on a number of occassions 19th century golf courses were constructed right into some "parkland" estates that had been totally "architecturally landscaped" up to a century or more previous by the likes of the Lancelot "Capability" Browns, but one could never put a golf course into an typical "English garden" for obvious reasons. 

[Sean_A]

"I think you lot are missing a critical element.  SPEED.  Courses were built very quickly and on the cheap because of demand.  This is also why Sunningdale was unusual - it took a few years to build.  At least in some measure, the concept of building a course was new.  Additionally, I don't think for a minute that folks lost sight of architectural value in design and aesthetically, otherwise, how would folks have become so disenchanted with inland golf so quickly?  These boys knew better, but the patience, know how and system hadn't yet caught up with the demand.  If you think about it, it was only 25 years between TOC being "completed" and the beginnings of good inland golf.  That isn't much of gap if you ask me. 

I would also say that to follow the progress of inland golf one has to figure out Park Jr"



Sean:

That's exactly what I have been looking at, and for about five years now---eg speed. How many times has it been mentioned that most of the linksmen designers may not have been around for more than a few days to "layout" those early less than memorable courses? How could they have even designed those rudimentary features on them much less overseen their building if that was all they did and all the time they spent and all they were asked to do and all they were paid to do?

It also seems pretty undeniable that those courses were on the wrong kind of ground---eg impervious clay soil to produce good enough grass for decent playablitily--eg they say they were generally either rock hard or spongy. They were probably also using indigenous meadow grass instead of the fine two grasses indigenous to linksland.

So my question has always been is that the real reason they produced such poor results? The next question is could a Willie Park Jr. have produced something as good as he did at Sunningdale or Huntercombe ten years earlier (or when he began) if he had been given the kind of time and money and soil conditions he got there around the turn of the century?

That is what I've been trying to determine for years. It just seems pretty illogical to me that he had to be informed and basically taught how to do what he did at those two courses by someone like a Horace Hutchinson or even Colt. Where is there evidence to presume such a thing?

I'm not sure what you think about all this but it seems you feel as I do that he, and some like him, just needed the opportunity to slow down and take the time necessary on a project to produce something much better, and of course the "discovered" soil conditions of the heathland gave him that opportunity as well.

This looks like the real history as far as I can tell. For someone to suggest after all those years someone else had to actually show him how to do all this around the turn of the century just never made much sense to me and it still doesn't. Park Jr has been given credit in some history books for doing this first and I can't yet see how that seems wrong.

Tom P

I think Huntercombe as a stand alone course could have been done 10 years or more earlier.  The site was far more friendly to golf than Sunningdale's from the get go.  In some ways, Huntercome has more in common with a downland course than a heathland course.  I wonder if the site were cleared of trees if folks would call it downland? 

I don't really know if Sunningdale could have been built earlier.  Besides the concept of building a course from scratch, there were important factors other than the golf which were in part driving that project.  In other words, Sunningdale was far more related to suburban growth than Huntercombe.  I know Huntercombe started off as a housing project, but it was never meant to be a suburb, it was more a getaway like folks escaped to the seaside for a few days golf.  To be honest, it could have been these very folks (those that fled to the seaside for golf on weekends etc) that were the impetus behind good inland golf.  Folks talk about the train all time, but that was a means of getting to work in London.  I am sure the car was the main means of getting to the local golf clubs once they were established.  This trend of belonging to a local good club and a seaside club hasn't really died out.   

On the idea of parks vs gardens; I think the idea of the two melded in the form of country clubs where golf is concerned.  I am not sure how successful the concept where the courses were concerned ever was.  There seems to be a string divide amongst those who favour melding the two concepts with the addition of more trees and those who think the two should never mix.  I spose it was bound to happen that folks would try to merge the two. 

Ciao

[TEPaul]

Sean:

While I am immensely interested, I really am, in how and why things like trains and the motivations for residential development helped promote early golf, I don't think those things could ever say much about how and why golf agronomy became improved in various places and times or how and why architectural styles rather suddenly changed. The reasons for that I believe are other things and quite different things.

[Sean_A]

Sean:

While I am immensely interested, I really am, in how and why things like trains and the motivations for residential development helped promote early golf, I don't think those things could ever say much about how and why golf agronomy became improved in various places and times or how and why architectural styles rather suddenly changed. The reasons for that I believe are other things and quite different things.

TomP

Perhaps this is a major sticking point and one where I would certainly disagree with you.  Things did not just suddenly change - they rarely do.  Its convenient for us to box things in little packages for ease of reference, but in reality, nearly all change has a process in which "suddenly" does not apply.  For heaven's sake, we can see a gradual change over a 10 year period just speaking of heathland architecture.  Why would you think thnigs just suddenly changed?

Ciao

[TEPaul]

"Why would you think thnigs just suddenly changed?"

It's really quite simple, Sean. It's called "discovery"! 

If someone uncovers a motherlode of ideal sandy soil and soil makeup remarkably similar to the soil consistency and soil makeup of the Scottish linksland HIDDEN outside London under a groundcover of heather, rhodendren, Scotch Pine and fir, one might call that a rather sudden "discovery", don't you think?  Why do you think that kind of discovery would take ten years to figure out?

Sometimes these discussions get something like pulling teeth, don't you think?


Gold prospector;
"Gee, look at this big bright shiny nugget in this stream---I guess it might take me up to ten years to figure out what it is and what it means!"

Personally, I don't think so but perhaps you do. I think it's probably rather instantaneous.

[Thomas MacWood]

Tom M -

On your question, the thread is about the move inland.  And since I don't think the Park Jns and Colts of the world were trying to emulate the Hell or Alps bunkers in that context, I thought it safe to assume that they weren't spending much time thinking about them in any practical/everyday sense. Since those men weren't blind, and since they were neither fools nor knaves, and since they knew very well the great courses like TOC and Prestwick, it seems to me that what they thought the important (and fundamental) principles of golf course design didn't include bunker shapes....especially if they were moving fast (and yes, especially if the ground they were working with made such emulation difficult or impossible). It seems to me that it was many years later before the unconscious became conscious (e.g. the strategic options that TOC offered, and how) and before the overall golf aesthetic and its link to fundamental design principles came to the fore. (Interestingly, then you had the Cranes of the word ranking TOC very low and the Mackenzies ranking it high; and you had American courses adding bunkers all over the place to make them tougher). Anyway, my point being that we shouldn't be focussing on distinctions that only became crystalized later and that the early designers weren't making. I don't think we should be asking something of the early designers that they weren't asking themselves. I'm convinced the old greats understood a great deal about design, even if that knowledge and the expression of it doesn't match yours or mine or that of later designers.  Edit: Rich just noted on another thread the genius of an early Park Jn routing...routing being, of course, what many of the excellent working professionals we have on this board still use as a main measuring stick for an architect's skill.    

And please, knock off the nonsence about "coming in between anything you and Tom Paul have working". That's silly -- and if you really wanted to retract the question you could've deleted it. I've said enough times on this board that I have almost everything to learn, and that I enjoy tossing out ideas just to see what might have relevance or interest.

Peter 
 

Sorry if my retraction bothered you. You'd have to admit TE's follow-up post was pretty strange regarding your relationship over the last couple of years. And I have no idea how to delete a post.

You really didn't answer my first question. What are you basing your theory or theories upon. Have you read HG Hutchinson's book British Golf Links? There seems to be quite a bit of focus on interesting hazards in that book, including inland hazards - from the awesome Chalk Pit at Eastbourne to the massive bunker at Ganton to the Loxahatchee-like bunkers at Bournemouth.

Is there any particular course or courses you had in mind that when you speak of square bunkers?

[Sean_A]

"Why would you think thnigs just suddenly changed?"

It's really quite simple, Sean. It's called "discovery"! 

If someone uncovers a motherlode of ideal sandy soil and soil makeup remarkably similar to the soil consistency and soil makeup of the Scottish linksland HIDDEN outside London under a groundcover of heather, rhodendren, Scotch Pine and fir, one might call that a rather sudden "discovery", don't you think?  Why do you think that kind of discovery would take ten years to figure out?

Sometimes these discussions get something like pulling teeth, don't you think?


Gold prospector;
"Gee, look at this big bright shiny nugget in this stream---I guess it might take me up to ten years to figure out what it is and what it means!"

Personally, I don't think so but perhaps you do. I think it's probably rather instantaneous.

TomP

You are forgetting the process of discovery.  Do you believe that folks just stumbled upon the heathlands and thought, "gee, I bet if we clear this shit out of the way a great course can be slapped down here" or that a solution to poor inland courses was being sought out for some time?  I think you must look at things too much in a bubble and don't relate happenings to other events otherwise you could never believe believe that a place like Sunningdale was instantaneous.   

Ciao

Ciao

[TEPaul]

"Do you believe that folks just stumbled upon the heathlands and thought, "gee, I bet if we clear this shit out of the way a great course can be slapped down here" or that a solution to poor inland courses was being sought out for some time?:


It would be my sense from what I've read about it that they'd been looking for a solution to poor inland courses for some time. Seemingly, the solution was discovered in the English heathlands.

[Thomas MacWood]

“Dozens of sorry inland courses built on impervious clay soils convinced most golf purists that only the ancient links could produce excellent golf. But a few golf course prospectors were unconvinced and kept searching for suitable terrain comparable to the best linksland. Their search was fruitful, for at the turn of the century they unearthed a mother lode of fine golfing land less than fifty miles from London.
   Here were the “heathlands”, with well drained, rock free, sandy soil in gently undulating terrain. This was true golf country, and its discovery was a major step in the development of golf course architecture. Many of the world’s greatest courses have since been created on land similar to that of the heaths, which except for the presence of trees, is not unlike the links. The long delay in the discovery of the heathlands, despite their proximity to London is not difficult to understand. The heathlands were covered with an undergrowth of heather, rhododendrons, Scotch fir and pines. Only a fool, it seemed, would spend time building a golf course in such a wasteland when vast meadows were available for the purpose.”
   The “fools” that did build courses in the heathlands became the most prominent golf architects of their day. Four names in particular stand out: Willie Park Jr, J.F. Abercromby, H.S. Colt and W. Herbert Fowler. Their prominence was due in part to their vision in recognizing the true potential of this unlikely terrain and in a part to their ability to shape the land into splendid golf holes.”

TE
This quote from C&W seems to be the source of your idea there were some actively looking. C&W do not list them by name. Who were the golf course prospectors above? I think this is an example where the consise synopsis can be a little misleading.

From all the evidence I've seen it doesn't appear Willie Park-Jr was looking. TA Roberts found the site for Sunningdale. Dry sandy soil was perfect for home sites in a damp climate, and Roberts was certainly not the first person to understand that fact. Ironically Willie Park-Jr chose a very different site when he was calling the shots at Huntercombe.

[Sean_A]

From all the evidence I've seen it doesn't appear Willie Park-Jr was looking. TA Roberts found the site for Sunningdale. Dry sandy soil was perfect for home sites in a damp climate, and Roberts was certainly not the first person to understand that fact. Ironically Willie Park-Jr chose a very different site when he was calling the shots at Huntercombe.

Tommy Mac

And why do you think that was?

Ciao

[Thomas MacWood]

Why what was? The choice of the Huntercombe site?

[Thomas MacWood]

I'm not sure why Park chose the Huntercombe site over a heathland site. Building Sunningdale was very difficult, expensive and time consuming. He may not have been up for the difficulty and the cost, and from what I understand Huntercombe was a good site, with some interesting natural features.

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