To appreciate the design and architecture, do you really need to play it?

[Matthew Essig]

Without playing you don't get the full appreciation of the greens. There are obvious slopes but speed and subtly are hard to get without rolling a ball.

+1

[Steve Lang]

   even if you do your homework before hand reading, looking at pics, and aerials, you've got to at least see it up close to best appreciate and i think play it, to fully appreciate.  My basis is TOC, studied and read about it for years, finally got to see it on a Sunday in sept 96, walk about, roll some balls, check out the topo at the museum, look in the windows of the R&A and play it the next day.  To me its the looks, the synoptics of it all without framing, nice field work if you can get it. 

[James Brown]

James,

So, by the same logic, must one be a skilled artist to write as an art critic? I would say the best sports writers have rarely played any sport at the highest level.

Think about the term "highest level" for a minute.

I cannot write about Indy Racing unless I competed against Fittipaldi?

Both George Will and Charles Krauthammer can fairly be described as baseball experts, yet neither can either hit or throw a curve ball.

Bill Simmons wrote a definitive book on basketball and my guess is he couldn't score a single basket one-on-one against even a marginal Div III guard.

Darwin was a fine golfer, but Dobereiner and Herb Wind were hardly crack players. Seth Raynor was not really a golfer at all . . . .

Careful about that litmus test there . . . . Rickey Henderson is the single most exciting lead-off hitter in history, but couldn't spell cat if you spotted him the first two letters. Or maybe he can replace Vin Scully after this season - it cannot be that big of a leap from playing American League ball to broadcasting in the NL.  ;-)


 

There are some things you cannot appreciate fully until you experience them.