Sean
Little Aston and a couple of others aside, why does the UK do parkland so badly?
Ryan
I think part of the problem is perception. People think of links first and heathland second when GB&I is on the table. There are some very good parkland courses such as Little Aston and Blackwell that don't get their due. In the right hands (with people wo are willing to spend money) Blackwell is as good as many of the best US parklands.
Money....in the US they spend far more on presenting a course...over the course of 20 years this can make a huge difference.
Another issue is that in reality, most of the heathland courses are really parkland with some heather and better drainage than your average parkland. Many of the big gun US parkland courses don't have to worry anywhere near as much about drainage because many close in the winter and they have bigger green staff to sort out problems that occur with heavy rain. So part of the issue of drainage is only a big time headache for courses open 12 months a year in an area which has winter. I don't think a lot of Americans properly appreciate this.
There are far more parkland courses in the US than in GB&I...the US bound to have far more gooduns. Plus, in the US the parkland courses are
the championship courses...so a different level of design was involved...and I think there wa a trickle down effect. In some cases, the courses were so damn difficult back in the day that today they have stood the test of time and are now damn good for the club golfer.
Many of the heathland and links courses had "name" people behind them compared to parkland efforts. So the chances were that at least one good archie at some point had his hand in the design. I don't think this is nearly so much the case for parkland courses.
Finally, the US had a load of good archies working its land and with parkland being the main canvass.....
Ciao