Tom Paul,
If you read Hutchinson then you will know the answer to your Yacht riddle. If you read his writings from 1910 you will not rely on his as you do for the greatness of American achiecture outside of NGLA.
No doubt Myopia was a good course, especially when compared to the rest. But to put it in the same category as NGLA as far as influence? I think not.
Peter,
David M - I'm wondering whether Macdonald was a "necessary" catalyst for change, i.e. if he'd never been born, whether American architecture would've nonetheless begun to manifest the strategic principles of the world's finest golf holes, and at about the same time.
That might be too stringent a test, I realize, but my point again is simply that Macdonald was not the only one who understood the principles of good design. Without being able to answer the questions you asked or provide proof, that theory seems sensible and believable to me.
Are you serious? "Too stringent" is a huge understatement. The test you propose is fantasy. The fact is, he existed, and he made a huge difference on golf and gca in America. Apply your test to anyone in history and see what it gets you. One can always argue that it all would have happened anyway. What if Thomas Edison hadn't been born? The knowledge was out there, surely someone would have figured it out. What about Old Tom? What about George Washington. What if Hitler had never been born? The ideas where out there anyway, and the conditions were ripe for what happened, so who is to say he deserves the blame? Absolutely Absurd.
The funny thing is, even with this outrageous test, Macdonald passes with flying colors. If there is one guy who was "a necessary catalyst" for what happened with golf in America, it was Macdonald. Without CBM golf in America would have been much different. Instead of the USGA rules we would have had regional or local ruling bodies. We'd likely have done away with the ancient rules from the beginning, before history or tradition could be established. For all we know our golf would to to their golf like our football is to their football. Who knows how it would have changed, but it certainly wouldn't have been like it is today.
As for golf architecture, the same could be said. NGLA was a model that was studied, praised, and emulated across the country. He spearheaded a return the roots of golf, the links, as inspiration for all golf courses, links or otherwise. Whether or not we copied his holes, we most certainly adopted his approach and borrowed the classic principles. Macdonald not only built some fantastic courses, he changed the way we approached course design and construction in this country. He introduced the fundamental links land principles to America, on a wide scale, and gave them an example of just how great this could make our golf. Did Leeds do this? I don't think so.
You keep talking about CBM's views and ideas like they were commonplace, but you have yet to produce any consistent sources. Surely if they were all talking about it, someone was acting on it. Who else was building a sophisticated course based entirely on the great holes and principles from the links courses in 1907? Not Leeds. No way.
Imagine American golf without CBM and NGLA? Impossible. We'd have no Merion, that is for sure. And no Flynn. Probably no Pine Valley. Would there have been a place for Colt and Mackenzie and the other greats from abroad without Macdonald creating an appreciation for an entirely different style of golf course? Who is to say? Would those here have stepped up their games? Who knows?
Let's play your game. Take either Hugh Wilson out of history or CBM Macdonald. Who has more impact on the original Merion East? If the answer is not pretty obvious to you, then I don't know what else to say.
But fortunately, we'll never know what the world would have been like withou Macdonald. Macdonald was there. And thank goodness for it. Second guessing his existence is just too much.
Peter, as opposed to speculating again and again, why don't you take a look at what was being written in the era, and then deny Macdonald's influence. Learn the history and you cannot.
Yes, the Hutchinson article praises NGLA and Macdonald very highly, and rightly so. But look at what he says about some of the other courses he played back then. While he might decry the shortness of some of those courses and (ironically) the too-frequent blind shots, he speaks of good and fine and interesting tests of golf over and over again: at the Canadian courses, which among inland courses take a very high place; the highly praised Myopia; Brookline; Garden City, which was rather ugly but another fine test of golf; Baltusrol, too hilly in his eyes but an interesting course; and "others too many to name."
And my point: Shouldn't we assume that for a man like Hutchinson, an interesting golf course and a fine test of golf manifests the strategic principles of good architecture? (And if I CAN'T assume that about Hutchinson, why would I give his views on NGLA much credence, in this context?) And yet, none of those courses -- as far as I know -- bore any resemblance to NGLA, or to the "forms" in which NGLA manifested those principles.
Why does he give Leeds such high praise for his work at Myopia? Again, what else but the fact that the course manifests strategic principles would a man like Hutchinson find worthy of such praise? And if he had seen about 5 years later a course like Pine Valley, even in it's unfinished state, wouldn't he have seen those principles manifest there as well, and again in a form that bore little resemblance to NGLA?
Peter, perhaps he was making amends or trying to sell books. He was after all writing in an american magazine, and that had not gone over too well in 1910. Yes, I don't know how to break it to you, but Hutchinson was singing a different tune in 1910.
At least you thought he was. In fact you accused him of bias and dismissed his views as unfairly harsh on American courses. Here is one of your posts from earlier this year:
Also interesting (even though often mentioned) is how perspectives change. Here's a bit of an article from 1910 taking Horace Hutchinson to task for his comments on American courses:
"Mr. Hutchinson, like many other Britishers who have in the past loomed somewhat largely in the public eye, has not been able to resist the temptation to tell us of our shortcomings, and how lamentably far we fall short of those standards of excellence in golf, in which, according to him, his compatriots stand so high—from that lofty British standpoint which is so typically patronizing and condescending. Mr. Hutchinson airs his opinions in an article on "An English View of American Golf" in the November issue of the Metropolitan magazine. Passing by his criticism that on most of the American courses he has seen the "serious hazards are tree hazards," we are told that at Myopia some of the greens "in avoidance of the monotony of the dead level, have been carried very near the other extreme of trickiness, so swift is their gradient"; that Myopia is deplorably weak in that it has so many "blind" shots; that at Essex County the climbing is not "below the dignity of a chamois' achievement"; that The Country Club at Brookline, on which the amateur championship was played, is "an amusing course, but too short"; that Shinnecock Hills is "a pathetic sight," the play consisting principally "at short holes over hilltops"; that Garden City, damned by faint praise, is "a flat, unlovely place," which from "the aesthetic point of view would be much improved if one might take in a field gun and batter down a great brick chimney of immense height and hideousness that looms largely upon the eye"; that "the bunkers which have been formed by laying sand over the surface of certain portions of the course and arranging the sand into furrows across the line of play" offend his artistic eye; and that "when the National links is opened next year it will be far and away the best in the United States" and that "it has no weak point."
Ah, NGLA...always NGLA. It's like a course being buit today and Golf Digest ranking it #1 months before it opens. You gotta figure something's going on besides an objective assessment....
Thanks again, Sean
Peter You say that I don't understand the importantce of Macdonald and NGLA to golf in America. You may be right about that, I'm not sure. But I can't see how you can argue definitively that -- despite that truly "ideal" nature of the course that Macdonald built -- he was the only one in America at the time who understood golf architecture's strategic principles.
Amundsen was the first man to reach the South Pole, but was he the only one who knew the way?
You keep mentioning all these others who understood the principles like CBM did, and thought them applicable in this country. Who were they? Who else was talking about this stuff in the united states in 1906? More importantly, who was building a course based entirely on these principles in 1907. Who? Surely they must have written something about it? Surely they acted on it.
It is fitting that you would end your post by dismissing and minimizing a groundbreaking explorer. Yes, others could find South on a compass, but while these men were sitting around with their compasses in their hands, Amundsen did it. Those who act change the world. As for those that maybe or maybe not knew enough to act, but didn't? They change nothing.
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Phillip, didn't you say in this very thread something about Tillinghast having certain hole styles that he used repeatedly, like the double dogleg?
And I think it disingenuous to put Shawnee ahead of NGLA in time. They had been golfing at NGLA since 1909. The clubhouse did not open until 1911, and thus the official opening in fall of 1911.