Let's discuss one that does.
Many of you may know that I belong to Clovernook Country Club in Cincinnati, a 1923 Langford and Moreau design built on just over 100 acres. While the course has seen some tree planting and a limited number of changes to one or two bunkers over its 90 years, the majority of the course is still as L&M built it with the only real exception a slight shift in the angle of the 13th tee. As a result, it stands as one of the most intact Langford designs still standing.
The club hosted a group of GCAers back in August, which generated a fair amount of buzz in the membership. Clovernook members (myself included) have a bit of an inferiority complex within the Cincinnati golf landscape. We aren't as highly rated as Camargo, and we aren't as #BallSoHard as Kenwood. We don't have the Ross name that Maketewah and Hyde Park have. Most members have little knowledge of who Langford and Moreau are, and yet, we're very proud of our course. We know we love playing it, and hosting a group from a Golf Course Architecture website made a lot of guys feel like we finally got a little bit of attention. I fielded numerous questions about what the "Golf Architecture Guys" thought over the month or two after the GCA outing. Within a week or two, our GM had asked me to host a dinner to discuss the course and the Golden Age principles it displays. We billed it as a discussion of golf course architecture, Langford and Moreau, and the Golden Age of golf course design.
We hosted the dinner last night, and even my unrepentant ego was surprised at the turnout. We had over 40 members in attendance. A few of the best players in the club attended. We also had a lot of higher handicappers and a few guys in their 80s who can't physically play anymore. We had a wide spectrum or ages and a large representation of women and men. We had board members and committee members. I planned for 75 minutes or so, and we went well over two hours with questions and comments and insight from the older guys into what the course looked like back in the '40s. We had to wrap up a little after 9:00, but not before establishing that it's something we want to do again in a few months.
We talked about how the ODGs used ground contours to influence play and how to differentiate between a strategic hazard and a penal hazard. An hour later, the audience decided that the swale in our second fairway didn't need to be a bunker to be a strategic feature that makes play interesting for everyone from the guy who drives it 170 yards to the guy who carries it 270. We talked about how the average guest who plays our 14th hole and hits his tee shot past the flag might throw a fit when he can't keep his subsequent putt on the green, but we mostly agreed that it's not "unfair" and that the player should've been smart enough to leave his tee shot below the hole. We also talked a bit about other Golden Age designs. The audience oohed and ahhed at the famous Sitwell Park green photo and tried to guess where the green was in a photo of the 5th tee at Crystal Downs. Several guys confessed that they can't stand playing "name" courses by guys like Nicklaus or Palmer that are so difficult and soggy that they turn miserable. I even heard a few guys say "Brown is good if it means the course plays fast and firm" (which was also mentioned at our Annual Meeting a few weeks ago).
It could just be that No Shave November has the world more open to beard-pulling, but maybe there really is an audience out there interested in learning more about this dorky fascination of ours.