“Herbert Warren Wind introduced (or reintroduced) his big 4 to the modern American golfer in the 1970s: Mackenzie, Macdonald, Ross and Tillinghast. Wind is largely responsible for creating the mythology of the American amateur architect that we now take for granted - the story of Wilson at Merion, Crump at PV and Nevill & Grant at Pebble Beach. For some reason he ingored Leeds from his home town of Boston. Wind was also an important promoter of RTJ, which obviously had a major impact on modern golf architecture.
Does Wind get enough credit and/or blame for forming our common understanding of golf architecture history?”
Tom:
This is precisely the kind of subject and question that gets my interest and attention and might bring me back to participating on here if we can discuss subjects like this. I have a huge interest in this kind of subject and question----eg particularly those fascinating so-called “amateur/sportsmen” architects of that early era mentioned by Herbert Warren Wind and by me in two magazine and program articles on the original Philadelphia School of Architecture (Pennsylvania School with Fownes) and perhaps one upcoming for the 2009 Walker Cup program.
I would love to discuss if Wind gets enough credit and/or blame for forming our common understanding of golf architecture history!!
And how about this quotation on this particular subject you put on another thread recently from Bernard Darwin?
“This is some of what Darwin wrote about the controversy:
"So much for the question as to whether or not a few gentlemen, mere atoms in the great world of golf, should be allowed to enter certain competitions. There is a wider question, which concerns the golfing community in general. It is for the general good that courses should be laid out as well as possible, and any legislation tending to restrict rather than to encourage the best work might be deemed as being in legal phraseology, contrary to public policy. At the risk of a rather invidious assertion it may be said that most of the best modern work in the laying out of courses has been done by amateurs--nor, indeed, is it all surprising that this is so. To lay out a course is a task requiring keen powers of observation and large amount of hard and intelligent thought. The professional though, as a rule, a charming companion and possessed of considerable shrewdness, has not had the same advantages as the amateur; and the better and wider education of the latter generally bears fruit in the form of holes more carefully thought out and far more original. There are, needless to say, professionals who lay out very interesting courses; but the typical professionally-designed course is on strongly stereotyped lines. The professional in times past clung too affectionately to the 'steeplechase' system of cross-bunkers; and the abandonment of that system, the adoption of the more ingenious one of lateral bunkers, and the enlightened gospel which demands that the shot should be not merely hit but placed, we owe chiefly to the amateurs. Of course, in order to acquire the necessary knowledge and experience the amateur has to devote himself heart and solid to the game, and in that case there is a good deal in the oft-quoted dictum of an old Scottish professional that the only difference between Mr. So-and-so and the professionals was that he had 'mair to eat and mair to drink.'"
As with Herbert Warren Wind does Darwin get enough credit and/or blame for his articulation of that amateur architect from that early time and the whys and hows, according to Darwin, of what that type of amateur architect could accomplish and did accomplish?
It’s a great subject and thanks for posting it on a thread, not the least reason being both Darwin and Wind are considered to be arguably golf and golf architecture’s greatest observers, chroniclers and writers!