Forrest:
Does the ASGCA keep up with those "credits" for every course, or do they just stop after the architect has his list of five, with credit for his future work maybe to be passed down the line to other associates who apply for membership?
Or say one of my associates wanted to apply ... how the hell would you decide whether they deserved PRIMARY credit for one of the courses with my name on it, or whether I did?
TD,
ASGCA has had long philosophical discussions on these kind of issues. I do believe they keep up with the credits - if, say Art Hills has an associate apply, he/she cannot use credit for a course that some other associate has previously used. BTW, while there is no official rule, unofficially, we prefer that the head of the firm applies and gets in first. hint, hint.....then, then an ASGCA member who is head of a firm generally is allowed to dole out credit as he sees fit within the firm, with the presumption that one associate takes a lead role.
When I was membership chairman, I fielded a lot of questions from our ultra honest members about whether associate "X" did enough of this or that to take primary responsibility. So, whether in ASGCA, here, or in the general media (for guys like Brad Klien and Ron Whitten who care about such issues) the debate still carries a lot of value judgement, particularly in bigger offices where the work tends to get divvied up a lot more.
For that matter, with courses taking a dozen years or so between conception and permitting/funding/completion it gets REALLY hard to assign primary credit. Cowboys, for instance was a dozen year project that was handled completely by one of my associates. Colbert Hills and a few others started and one associate and I routed it, but then he left. Some changes were made in the routing, etc. and I did the feature designs and another associate ended up working in the field there full time. I have heard claims made by the now departed associate who did the bulk of the routing that he should get a share (or all, depending on who is telling me the story) of the credit, but should he, can he, when he wasn't there for any detail design?
As Jim says, all of those kind of questions - unless gca's write it down somewhere, may never be answered and some gca.com members 50 years from now will be having some hellish debates! Take any golf course, and there are probably associates, shapers, contractors and general hangers on who have claimed credit at one point or another. I get calls often from someone saying "I built that course" when in fact I know the designer and the contractors, and it turns out the guy was the seeding contractor, or something like that.
Short version - there are a lot of folks out there who want credit for designs they didn't do! Why rail against the pros, who at least bring some percieved marketing value?
Someone who has studied this, BTW, told me the other day that a pro's marketing value lasts about 18 months, which about jives with my experience. Take MN, for instance. I am sure Deacon's Lodge got a first year boost from the Palmer name. Giants Ridge and the Wilderness had to rely on other marketing, of course (except for the Legend, which did have Lanny's name attached) and also had strong first year play. But, after that, golfers seek out value and fun - and the courses with the most rounds are the ones percieved that way, regardless of designers name.