We each have our heroes, some may have achieved far more or less than others but that does not diminish our enjoyment of their achievements. My reason for supporting many is down to having their deeds recorded.
Problem is that today it would seem that Design Houses are just too big or “Designers” have lost the ability of their predecessors to design a complete course by themselves. From what Tom Doak’s has mentioned the trend is to split the design and have different peoples working on different aspects. That’s my understand of Tom’s passed comments and perhaps explains why the spark seems to have been lost in many of the latest designs.
Unlike Tom, I feel the history of the game and that of the courses need to be know, their original designer(s) and all subsequence modification given reasons why and by whom. For a few seconds, the time taken to note the names we have a path leading back through the years of a man life and times. Its translates into his life’s work and it is all there for those who love his work to follow. Tom may have made the cut, his name will be remembered, but what about the others who still achieved, but not to the height of our Mr Doaks.
If we are going to have a history, then let’s have a history and record the life of the club which after all is around the golf course. Who knows what the future will hold, due to the size of a golf courses and the environmental cost future Governments might ban them in favour of fields of eatable crops The Great Game of Golf to be in future played upon the small screen of an X-Box.
We need records for posterity and for no other reason than to shut up researchers who just sit upon their backside and do not go out into the fields to undertake a much closer study. Copies of books or’ Golf’ do not hold all the answers, hard and long hours of reading old local records is the main way forward as it also explains from time to time the reasons for the changes. There is also the added benefit of seeing the site of the course, be it now a housing estate, under a school, a ploughed field or allowed to return to its natural state.
The exhilaration of finding an old closed and/or lost golf course is so bitter yet sweet, bitter as the search is finished, sweet because you have achieved what you set out to find.
Mr Doak the record requires the name(s) of the individual(s) who designed the course. If it’s a composite design then say so and declare the participants confirming their responsibilities. If the guys who signed off the design did not participate in the actual site location, survey or design, just his name over the door of the Design House then that too should be declared.
If Golf is an open and honest game then we deserve the name of the course designers and how the work was broken down. Or have we moves so far away from the core roots of GCA that we no longer feel the need or for that matter want to honour the new designer(s).
Let’s have our heroes Mr Doaks, including you as we are mere humans and need inspiration from others, it’s what can keep us going through the hard times .
Take Golf away from nature and you no longer have a game called Golf – the guys in the 19th and early 20th Century knew that seems that some of the latest GCA’s have forgotten it, still we want their names – more to keep them out of the hallowed Halls of Records.
Is it not part of the design and construction process
Melvyn