Sean,
I wonder if any Maine or NE based caddie ever told a golfer he "couldn't get there from here?
I don't have the quote in front of me, but my personal fave is Colt writing that "in no case, shall a putt run away from the putter like a swine possessed by the devil."
That said, the book I was reading had several inspiration type quotes more or less trumpeting the role of architecture in making society better. Is there anything along those lines out there in the history of gca?
Jeff:
Did you not read the last chapter of MacKenzie's book? There are some pearls in there:
"The only reason for the existence of golf and other games is that they promote the health, pleasure and even the prosperity of the community."
"A good golf course is a great asset to a nation.
Those who harangue against land being diverted from agriculture and used for golf have little sense of proportion. Comparing the small amount of land utilized for golf and other playing fields with the large amount devoted to agriculture, we get infinitely more value out of the former than the latter. We all eat too much.
During the Great WAr, in Britain, the majority were all the better for being rationed and getting a smaller amount of food, but none of us get enough fresh air, pleasurable excitement and exercise.
Health and happiness are everything in this world. Money grubbing, so-called business, except insofar as it helps to attain this, is of minor importance.
One of the reasons why I, a medical man, decided to give up medicine and take to golf architecture was my firm conviction of the extraordinary influence on health of pleasurable excitement, especially when combined with fresh air and exercise."
Also,
"Today one can almost gauge the intelligence and prosperity of a community by the extent golf and golf courses are booming. In America there is a tremendous boom in golf; in Russia there is none."
With the exception of ignorant politicians who, with a few notable exceptions, appear to desire to tax golf courses and playing fields out of existence, most people know that golf and other games promote the health and happiness of the community, but there are few who realize the extent to which it promotes the prosperity of the world.
Some years ago I was designing a golf course on the East coast of England which was financed by an old man and one who did not play golf. I was curious to know why he, a non-golfer, should finance the club, so one day I asked him.
He said, "During the war twelve of my clerks started to play golf. They became so much more mentally alert and so much more useful to me that I concluded golf was a great asset in promoting the prosperity of the community, and I decided to promote it to the fullest extent in my power."
I can only imagine the reaction if I repeated that story at a permit hearing, though.
As to my favorite quote on architecture, it was the one Pete Dye said to me off-handedly, years ago, about designing a course for the pros, which I printed in The Anatomy of a Golf Course:
"If you get those dudes thinking, they're in trouble."