Gary
I do not believe I was ever smitten by the Architecture. However I was aware from a young age of the importance of Navigating a golf course. The Natural and beauty evolved within my mind as the years passed.
The first course I ever knew was TOC, it was just a few yards from the bottom of my grandfather/father’s house behind Old Tom’s shop. I was aware of the Dunes due to my many adventures and incursions starting from The West Sands, After swimming in the sea I would cross the road, pass the parked cars and venture up into the Dune complex dodging golfers in the process. Sometimes when alone I would sit atop of one of the Dunes observing the Eden Estuary and watch the golfers, some of them tacking like dinghies down the course, while others seem to quickly pass down the fairway. I suppose it was during this period that I stated to understand The Nature of the area and how natural the golf course looked.
TOC is a designers playground, it seems to fly in the face of many but it works, it works well and if played upon with less than modern equipment brings the very best out of the golfer. Simply it does what it is supposed to do, it challenges a golfer, even more so by the potential change of the weather from AM to PM. But then TOC was the course that has been at the centre of the golfing evolution and set many a famous man, be he home grown or a visitor upon his path to greatness.
Smitten, no but I do enjoy a challenging golf course that can push the player while allowing alternative options to the less skilled. The art of design seems to have been the last thing on many a Customers or Developers mind since the end of WW2, yet thanks God some have seen fit to remember the values and reason why the game became a worldwide sport.
But a bunker or lake complex does not make a golf course, nor do the scares of cart tracks improve the Natural or enhance Nature, but they are present in many a modern course much to the shame of the Customer/Owner IMHO.
I am most thankful to my father, his uncle and other members as well as friends of the family for their part in my golfing education which did encompass the natural beauty of a well-designed course.
Of course the eye of the beholder plays a great part in observing Nature and Natural but a good design is just that a good design and … great fun.
Melvyn