[Anthony Gray]

 With all the discussion about how GCA has deteriorated,I thought it would be nice to recolect what life was like without it.Please share your own stories.

 Before the DG,I would look at the Courses by Country but seldom the DG.Out of guilt I sent in a donation then recieved asn invitation to join the DG after a brief discussion with Ran.Up to that point I had played many of the top "You can play courses" and the great ones in Scotland and a few other countries.I knew very little of the ODGs and had 0 "ZERO" friends that shared my same interest.

  AFTER GCA DG

  Invitations to play (all impossible to recieve to this date)  Ones played marked with *

  NGLA*
  Friars Head
  Yale
  Lookout Mountain*
  Old Mac*....before opening
  The Honors*
  Seminole*
  Cabo del Sol*
  Diamonte*
  Castle Stuart*
  Royal Dornach
  Augusta CC
  Victoria National*
  Wolf Creek
  Chechesee*
  Sand Hills
  Ballyneal
  Hidden Creek
  Scranton CC*....way underrated
  Chattanooga Golf Club*
  Cape Kidnappers*
  Olympic
  Wine Valley*
  Chambers Bay*
  Sherwood CC*
  Roko Ki
  Punta Espada*
  And others

  Have caddied at Holston Hills and Harbortown

  Have gotton access for members at The Old Course,and others and hosted over 10 members.

  Aside from the golf I have finally met people with the same passion for what I like to call the "Ground it is played on".Golf is great because of the people that play it and because of the ground it is played on.Also I have been educated on the history of golf.Most notibally the ODGs.

  I think the ones that are complaining about the site now need to remember what this site has done for them.Is there a mid-GCA life crisis when the honeymoon is over and after she's not as attractive it is time to move on to another.You forget she worked while you went to school and gave you a couple kids,but now after some mileage she is not what she used to be. I hope to be forever grateful of the friendships I have made,the courses played,and my typeing skills today.

  Anthony




  

 

[Ronald Montesano]

I like to think of myself as Carlos, the little baby in The Hangover...what I couldn't do for myself, Allan had to do for me.  As I got older, I gained control and knowledge and presto!  Now I'm good at it.

In the same vein, I played Colt/Allison, Travis, Stiles/Van KleekRoss courses in high school but had no real understanding about what made them special.  Since Buffalo did not have a new build from around 1970 until 2000, nothing was going on of any substance from which to learn.  I do remember wiling away the hours in the high school library, looking at the MacKenzie routing of The Old Course.  I grew up near the 1912 US Open site, the second iteration of the Country Club of Buffalo, and often sneaked onto the course once my baseball playing days were over (shredded rotator cuff in 9th grade.)  I guess I knew that there was something about the place, as I returned time and again and thought about the cross bunkers and green contours (even though the fairway and rough were indiscernible and the greens, slow as hippie hair.)

Joining the forum allowed me to confirm that I knew very little (back to the Carlos image) and that I had (and wanted) much to learn.  I'd say I'm 40% of the way there...I can speak confidently about certain tendencies and can rattle off who designed what (always been a bit of a Rain Man in that way.)  I haven't been able to take advantage of any invitations yet, although two nearby ones should be tackled this Fall at Lookout Point and St. Catherine's.  I wish that I had a club of my own to which to invite people, but I don't.

Since joining the forum, I've played a bunch of terrific courses by ODGs and YLGs alike, compared and contrasted and complained.  If someone asks, "Have you ever played an RTJ/Rulewich/Ross/Maxwell/Stiles-Van Kleek/Colt-Allison/Muirhead/RTJ2/Rees/Fazio/Strantz/George/Witter/Hurdzan-Fry/Travis/C&C/Doak/Kidd/Raynor?" I can respond "Yes" and enter a discussion.  I've yet to play a MacKenzie or a true Tillinghast, but I guess that those will come.  I'd like to play a Flynn and a CBM and a few others before my days are done.

So, thank you, Ran and Ben, Anthony Gray and all the rest, for this opportunity.  Long may it reign.

[Garland Bayley]

Ronald,

Please return your name to its proper place in your profile.

[Melvyn Morrow]

Garland

My wife told me we had a wonderful social life before GCA. I remember it well, I would be out with friend trekking over the links followed by an evening in the bar before she poured me into the back of the car. Those were the days when carts were an American fantasy and we would nearly kill ourselves laughing at some poor old sod pacing distance.

It now become the Day of the living dead on the golf course with GPS cart and electronic distance aids, I am just waiting for someone’s pace maker to microwave their heart. See the attached clip to see what may happen in the future if we older ones do not have our whit’s about us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9J_q2OUzis&feature=related

Although I love this clip but it was banned from our TV as apparently it can make you go blind http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FulvvgE87Q&feature=related

Melvyn

[Tom_Doak]

Before this site existed, I saw more of my friends around the world face to face, and actually played golf with Ran and his brothers occasionally.  But my work was not nearly as well known as today, which had something to do with Golf Club Atlas coming online just before we started construction on Pacific Dunes.

I certainly never answered so many questions about our work and how we do things before.  Most importantly, the site has helped me get to know other architects from the four corners of the globe, and even a few potential architects of the future.

[Ben Sims]

Before I "met" this site, I was a young officer with interests ranging from competitive wakeboarding to a short stint as a lounge singer in Oklahoma City while awaiting pilot training.  I was single, drank what you would expect from a mid-twenties military pilot, and derived self worth from how well I could shuffle a plane about the sky.  I played golf as a hobby, an escape from everything else, and took pleasure that the only thing I did right on a golf course was "swing hard", just like Harvey Pennick told me to in The Little Red Book. The only golf book I owned. 

After I met GCA.com, I became firmly entrenched as a wannabe golf purist, and general golf architecture junkie.  I read books by men whose names were identifiable by zero of my golfing buddies.  Names like MacKenzie, Macdonald, Coore and Doak rolled off my tongue like a Sportscenter anchor reading an all-star roster.  My biggest accomplishment was being fortunate enough to converse--through a computer--with luminaries in the business.  Architects, owners, and superintendents combined with apparel execs and club manufacturers taught me more in one year than I could fathom.  It drove me to spend far too much of my salary on new equipment, plane tickets, green fees, more books, in a slightly vain yet pure attempt to collect golf experiences as proof of my obsession to learn more.  It has even driven me so far as to declare golf as my next career, and gain a postgraduate degree in turf. 

I have met dozens of folks from this site and others and I have found something to like about all of them.  There is something special about golf courses, and all of the people I've met through the internet (how weird does that sound by the way) share a feeling of stewardship.  If that is the legacy of a bunch of cuckoos online, yapping about obscure yet important elements of the game, I'm happy to be a part of it.   

[Colin Macqueen]

Before “I met this site..” (thank you Ben) I was very interested in golf course architecture but adrift in so far as I knew of no place or no-one where  interaction with regard to this obsession could be undertaken.
I knew/know so little that I cannot add a great deal of substance to threads but due to the existence of G.C.A. I have been learning a great deal and in a very pleasant manner. Reading the differing points of view, in regards to different aspects of course architecture, delivered by thread participants is far more beneficial to me than my reading, in isolation, books on golf course architecture. The Feature Interviews and In My Opinion pieces have added immeasurably to my general understanding of course architecture and golf course architects.
In a similiar vein I have not played many of the courses discussed and dissected on this forum (though in my defence Carnoustie, Pasatiempo, Rustic Canyon and a walk around TOC doesn’t sound too bad when I write it down!) so it has been a real education being able to browse through the photographic compilations that get exhibited on G.C.A.. I particularly like the fact that this photo-journalism provides imagery of courses which are unlikely to feature in the leading golf magazines so from that perspective provide a unique source of information.

I suspect becoming acquainted with G.C.A. has turned an obsession into an addiction!

My thanks to Ben and Ran as well as all you crazy G.C.A. participants for opening a window to this world.

Colin

[Matthew Rose]

I'll repeat what I said in the Ran thread.

If you had asked me what a Biarritz was, I wouldn't have had any idea in the slightest what you were talking about. Now, I know. I'm even trying to build one in Links 2003.

This place is an education.

[Garland Bayley]

I used to stare off into space and daydream while doing builds and running regression tests at work. Now, I continually stimulate my mind by reading and responding to this site.

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