"Wayne - I'm not sure how close I'm getting to what Behr might've be exploring and saying, and almost all of what I know about Raynor and Banks has come from the threads you've started or participated in. But on one of those threads, Patrick Mucci said to you something like "It's about shot-testing, not poetry"...and my reaction was "Why couldn't it be about shot-testing AND poetry?"
Peter:
That's essentially the question Wayne has always asked when he talks about the engineered look and style of the National School compared to the far more natural looking architecture of, for instance, the Monterrey School about fifteen or twenty years later.
"It reminds me of a question that's often been asked around here, ie. why is TOC so revered, and if so revered why hasn't it been copied elsewhere?"
Peter:
Honestly, that question has not just been asked around here, it's been asked by architects for probably close to a hundred years now.
In my opinion, that question has never been completely answered and maybe it never will be. And I think that very question is probably the fundamental/base-line question of everything the entire history of golf course architecture, and maybe golf itself too, is and is about.
IF AND WHEN, anyone EVER fully answers that particular question I really doubt there will be much more to know or for us to talk about on the entire subject of golf architecture, or, at least I should say where this art form began and has come to at this point.
If that ever happens, if that question ever gets really answered the result may be pretty remarkable.
I sense that the effect of it may be something for us and others addicted to golf architecture someting like what Martin Luther King said in that emotion roiling speech in DC:
"Free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty, we're free at last".
And then he said how all colors and creeds can be released from the preceding shackles and bonds and prejudices to climb those high American mountain tops.
If that question ever gets its total answer we may all be free to scramble up over those mountain tops and see and understand what lies in the future for this odd and unique business and art form.
God only knows what it might be. I for one sure have no clue!