"This unpromising territory was chosen for the making of an ideal golf course partly because of its climate and proximity to New York but partly also because it left the hand of the golf architect perfectly free to build his course from the bottom up."
"It's amazing how many concepts/ideas/philosophies/debates about the art and craft (and business) of golf course architecture are referenced in just that one simple sentence.
To me, the most interesting part is the juxtaposition of/relationship between the pursuit of an "ideal" golf course with the "free hand" given an architect. You could write a book about it...."
Peter:
A remark like that may not be worth an entire book but on the other hand maybe it is. It does pretty much go directly to the age old golf architecture question of how much good architecture should use what nature provides and how much an architect should actually manufacture? Obviously something like that depends so much on the natural site.
The fact is that answer was determined at the Lido site as naturally it was in no way conducive to a golf course. Ironically, that fact, according to Macdonald, is what got him to agree to do it in the first place----eg he could actually “CREATE” everything and anything he had not theretofore been able to find appropriate landforms for elsewhere. Macdonald said himself the prospect of what he could do by totally manufacturing Lido made him feel like he was “a CREATOR”. That sounds to me like he felt he could play the part of Nature itself at Lido where Nature provided no limitations to good golf and where all that he had previously wanted to do, particularly from abroad, was possible---possible for him to entirely manufacture, including all the little humps and bumps and contours of fairways and such, not to even mention ideal tees and greens and green sites and all the elevation configurations he wanted that could go with them.
I don’t think there’s any question either, that some American architects who were really beginning to make a name for themselves through the teens were probably beginning to get sort of turned off on Macdonald’s continuous theme and promotion of the idea that holes from abroad that were time tested were what should always be so liberally used in this country.
Another interesting thing with seemingly ALL Macdonald’s courses in New York through the years, including NGLA, and including Mid Ocean in Bermuda, is it seems at least some of the very same principals were always with him on everything he did. All of those men were rich and powerful New Yorkers and some from elsewhere and the fact is they all knew each other not just through golf but through their businesses and their own pretty tight-knit society in New York and Long Island that did extend to other locales frequented by these very same people.
The promotion and the superlatives about Lido’s course were pretty heady for sure including that it should be and would be one of the great enduring courses of the world. However, in my opinion at least, the demise of Lido which actually began very early, did not have much of anything to do with the golf course. Numerous other factors contributed to its demise which would include probably not the best over-all location, extremely bad timing with the onset of WW1, and perhaps just an general overreach that something like that would produce the demand the original principals thought it would. There was one other apparently unforeseen problem that could certainly kill the popularity of any golf course anywhere, no matter how great---a very endemic mosquito problem! The fact is the original principals, most all of whom were friends of Macdonald’s and with him on other courses pulled out and sold the place to independent real estate developers within just a few years of Lido’s creation.