PeterP
In your first few posts on this thread you asked some really good questions. I think anyone with a pretty fair understanding of this fascinating era (you use 1905-1925---I would use just before 1900-1925 or slightly later) would have to admit the answers to your questions are never going to be easy answers or all that exact for obvious reasons---eg it really was a general evolution even if one that seemed to get rolling like a spigot opening to full bore in both quantity and particularly quality and quality in concept as well as in sophisticated style actually on the ground.
So what was happening in this interesting era in the evolution of golf course architecture, particularly in America, that made for this explosion of ideas and styles and concepts and techniques and increasing specializations?
I think the answers and reasons are just so numerous it gets really hard to analyze any single one of them individually---in others words, they are all just so interrelated and intertwined. Things were just beginning to come together from so many perspectives all at the same time, but mostly the whole tapestry was motivated and driven by the fact that golf itself was expanding like wild-fire in America and the need and demand to think better and improve was the logical extension and the next logical evolutionary step.
I don't think we need to look much farther than at most all the very early real rudimentary courses of the late 19th and early 20th century and at the fact that they were clearly so bad that they collectively became totally unacceptable to the early practitioners and rapidly increasing participants in golf over here, a few of which knew a little bit about how good golf with good NATURAL architecture abroad could be (primarily the linksland). In this particular case I'm not just talking about some of those early jack-of-all-trades immigrant Scots who came over here to help lay out and promote the game in America and in the meantime make a new life for themselves and their families they did not enjoy in their homelands. I'm most definitely talking about that type and even class like the Leedses, Emmets, Macdonalds, Fowneses, Crumps, Wilsons, Thomases, Hunters, Behrs et al who had the resources and opportunities to go abroad as most of them had for other things and other interests anyway.
I would not be averse to somewhat generalizing and calling this particular group "renaissance" men. The fact is they were all considered to be highly educated (most through the pinnacle institutions of the so-called Ivy League schools and colleges) for their times----they knew that and understood it and they really did feel they had abilities probably borne from curiosity and sophistication through exposure to mostly classical education of the finest order. In a word, they probably felt they were "The best and the brightest" in many things or even in most anything they tried and dedicated themselves too.
Somewhat oddly, because it seems sort of counter-intuitive but one of the burning interests of some of this group and type was sports and excellence in sports! And in many cases this was not just some single sport but often a few of them simultaneously. One just needs to look at some of them such as Herbert Leeds or H.C. Fownes or Max Behr or George Thomas to tell this. Their mindset and frankly their culture looked at sport in something of the classic Olympian model that denoted "amateurism"---a quest for excellence in sport simply for the love of the sport. This was considered to complete the cycle of what was considered to be the "well rounded" man---the sort of "renaissance gentleman"---in their mind a form of the ideal man.
Enter that so-called group referred to as the "amateur/sportsman" designer who all were pretty much that and generally considered, at that time, to be that.
You're right, Peter, they were the conceptualizers because they felt they could be better and do better than what they saw from those who came before them.
But was it only all about talent? Of course not. What they had that those of the Scottish immigrant group did not have at all is the time, and obviously they had that time because they also had the resources that created the opportunity to devote that time to these projects the other group never had.
There is more, lots more, but for later.
Certainly, as we've discussed before off-line the entire area of the rapid development in golf agronomy from theretofore almost complete lack of understanding was as important as architecture in this interesting time. But there is another reason that was clearly cultural that some today might feel both uncomfortable discussing or even considering despite how completely prevalent it really was back then.
Interestingly, the latter can probably be largely contained and explained in a single seemingly throw-away phrase that completely prevaded that time and class and social structure. It was called "working with your hands". This was something those people who considered themselves to be "gentlemen" and of a particular class simply did not do and if they ever did it was for the love of some endeavor and definitely not for money or financial remuneration. The word or term "tradesman" was fairly synonymous.
Some on here may laugh at this and dismiss it as fanciful or romantic but if they do that they do it at the risk of historic inaccuracy and of a very tall order.
Those guys hired people to get their hands dirty and carry out the "concepts" in architecture of that particular group.
And that is a lot of the engine of this entire fascinating time of the so-called "amateur/sportsman" designer who clearly felt the need to pick up the slack in the dearth of quality back then (maybe the end of the 19th century/1900 until just after WW1 when none of them began again those projects they had done earlier that became the famous American courses from that fascinating era they spent so much time on).
The fact that they never really began any of those types of projects after around WW1 just might be as important to understanding the whys and wherefores of this era as the fact that they began them, as they did, earlier!
And this is when, in my opinion, some of the most interesting things of all happened, and from both sides. This is when the first real "crossing-over" began from the particular classes and specialities and previous segregations. Those former gaps and cultural and actual segregations in golf and architecture and society and culture too within and without the sport. Great examples would be A.W. Tillinghast from the elite class and William Flynn from the "work with your hands" workingman world. This is one of the reasons Flynn has always fascinated me so much---eg he was a great example of a real "bridge" this way.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about all of this is it once again confirms that if one gets really good in most any area that has to do with golf---eg as a golfer, as an architect or as a agronomist et al, they will almost always find real democracy at the other end. In this way golf in the over-all just might be one of the greatest "levelers" we have ever known. Of course, as you know I feel and as I know you feel, always somewhere hanging around the edges of it all---eg golf---there is this mysterious thing we have come to call "The Spirit". Whatever it really is I think somehow it manages to tie it all together including anyone with which it had to do and who had to do really well with it.