Kelly:
Your last post is a very good one---as usual, and for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is that you expressed a sentiment in your first paragraph that was very much expressed when Macdonald himself was talking about the entire concept of using the best features of holes from abroad in the making of his NGLA, or even in what he probably felt should be done with American architecture (I'll get into more of that later with a quote from his book and such).
But another reason your post is a good one is because you express again your obviously strong sentiment that golf architects and golf architecture should keep on stretching for some fresh and effective ideas now and into the future.
In that vein, the thing I've always liked about your attitude and approach to golf architecture is that you mention this constant search for new and interesting ideas to apply while never really identifying what they might be. To me this just exemplifies the fact that you really are on that constant search and have not arrived at any final destination or goal in that search. Perhaps there isn't one, and perhaps that's your very point----it's the search that's the real deal because it gets away from ever settling for some standardization, style or perhaps even principle.
But if one really tries to do that---to do what you may be doing in that vein, I should ask, where in the world are you looking? In how many places, contexts, philosophies etc?
Last night I was speaking to Peter Pallota on the phone, and in the course of that conversation we both agreed there are probably just layers and layers, and other layers upon other layers if one really does consider golf and golfers and golf course architecture altogether somehow.
What could possibly come out of trying to consider all these things together if one is actually looking to find or take something truly positive from it? That is a good question, indeed, don't you think? It just may be the everlasting riddle in all of golf and golf course architecture.
I think there may be an answer, and a pretty good one and it was a concept that Macdonald himself articulated a number of times. Unfortunately, his answer and concept, which was agreed with and also articulated by a few others who were arguably the best architects of his times, such as Mackenzie, probably does seem to be something of an nonanswer to many golfers and golf architecture analysts, and golf architects.
That answer and concept was of course the concept and idea of "controversy" or what they apparently looked at as "beneficial controversy." It's effect and result was supposed to be that something really good should be and must be hotly contested and apparently always. Consensus of opinion seemed to be anathema to them, including something that everyone felt was good.
Isn't it just amazing that they felt that if everyone agreed that something was good, that there must be something wrong with it---that it was actually lacking interest because there was consensus of opinion about it?
Apparently to some of those guys controversy actually equalled interest, that real interest has to amount to what is controversial in the end and in the final analyis.
But in some sense it seems that Macdonald was contradicting himself in this way if he truly approved of using even the best of known and recognizable features from abroad.
But what may be a really important distinction in what Macdonald meant in that vein has just occured to me, which might help explain what he was thinking. He may've meant the known and recognizable features from abroad were not necessarily things he should actually make in his architecture but merely search for in the way of natural landforms on various sites. But knowing his architecture as I do I can tell that is not exactly what he did, and Piping Rock's redan---in my opinion one of the best playing redans in the world----was certainly not wholly natural----he definitely had to make a lot of it and it definitely shows.
I'm drifting around here but on another post I want to get back to your constant search for fresh and interesting ideas.