[Jason Way]

I was listening to Andy Johnson's podcast interview with Mike DeVries, and Mike made an interesting point about Perry Maxwell.  He posited that Maxwell's stature in GCA was hurt more by the time frame during which he worked than it was by his base of operations being in Oklahoma.  The implied question is, what would his body of work have looked like if the Great Depression had not hit?


That got me to wondering, what would have happened to GCA at the macro level had the Golden Age not been interrupted by the Great Depression and WWII?  Would it have lasted until the present day?  Were there courses in the planning stages by the big guys that were never built because of the interruption?  Would the Top 100 look dramatically different than it does today?  Would the dark ages of architecture still have happened anyway?  Would we have had Pete Dye if those dark ages weren't there for him to react to, and would we therefore have Bill Coore, Tom Doak, or even Mike DeVries?


Interested in your musings and speculations...

[Tom_Doak]

The Golden Age happened because of an economic boom that led to the creation of many projects that allowed creativity to be stretched ... which inevitably led to the bust that followed and the reduction of opportunity.  Wondering what if there was no bust and people just kept building courses all the way through is an entirely unrealistic scenario.


Some designers' timing is just better than others' and that is almost entirely  a matter of luck.

[Peter Pallotta]

J - reminds me of a 'what if' question I asked a long time ago: what might American golf be like if CB Macdonald had connections not with NY financiers and captains of industry but with local mayors and city councils instead.
Maybe as unrealistic a scenario as Tom suggests this one is - but it does seem to me that gca, like all other cultural/artistic/social expressions, is both impacted by but also helps shape/define the broader spirit of the age and its complex socio-economic realities. (A bad analogy - the bland featureless but affordable and accessible Dark Age courses reflected the bland featureless but accessible and affordable suburban sprawl and track housing of the post war prosperity, and a desire for a simpler and more democratic life and more egalitarian pastimes.)
Which is to say, the 'style' of the golden age of gca matched pretty closely with that of the broader 'jazz age' that Fitzgerald wrote about, and with the enormous market-driven wealth that everyone thought would be around forever. Well, the markets crashed and there went the jazz age and there went the golden age too. And after the war that followed, is it a surprise that most Americans had no great desire to 'go back' to an era that had ended so badly?
P

[V. Kmetz]

While doing club histories for two Westchester courses in the last 5 years, I got a fascinating glimpse of both ends of the era in question...the last great intended project of the Golden Age (Hessian Hills on the present site of Hudson National)... and the first new course made in the area when that period was nearly over (Brae Burn 1964-5).


A couple of discoveries you might find interesting:

• The September 1926 Miami Hurricane presaged the disasters of the Depression in the southeast; some sources I consulted posit that the Depression (as a matter of over extended credit and speculation) actually begins there.
• the Hessian Hills project (a never realized, partially built Cuthbert Butchart trying to launch in 1926-30) is par exemplar of overborrowed, undersold, puffery masking what was more a real-estate enterprise than a serious sporting venue, loved by serious sporting people. My circumferential research related this style of enterprise was becoming a norm by the Depression.
• Brae Burn came into being as a direct confluence of:

1. More than a few courses/clubs in the Westchester area were run in the owner-proprietor model, not member-equity style.
2. New post War prosperity and the explosion of Westchester created a class of club-men now chafing under that style.
3. Ethnic divisions and sub divisions that strictly defined established clubs were causing people to devise places for their own kind.
4. Commercial and transportation development opened new areas on the map for course development.


I think TD is right; any answer/offering can only rise to imagination and conjecture...it's impossible to take these things out of their catalyzing context and watch them move...they are inert without that contextual oxygen.


cheers   vk

[Rees Milikin]

The Golden Age happened because of an economic boom that led to the creation of many projects that allowed creativity to be stretched ... which inevitably led to the bust that followed and the reduction of opportunity.  Wondering what if there was no bust and people just kept building courses all the way through is an entirely unrealistic scenario.


Some designers' timing is just better than others' and that is almost entirely  a matter of luck.

Jason wasn't basing this on reality, but as a thought exercise.


I think if things kept going as they were, golf courses would be bigger, bolder, and more gaudy.  Having only constant economic growth does not lend it self to restraint and we would probably see more courses akin to Shadow Creek than Sand Hills.

[Jason Way]

Some designers' timing is just better than others' and that is almost entirely  a matter of luck.

Certainly, those designers who entered their prime during the "prime time" of the economic boom benefited by being able to showcase their talents and experience.  Were there other designers who were just approaching their prime (other than Maxwell, if he was one) when the bust hit who never got that chance?


Thanks for the other thoughtful responses gents.  That confluence of the context of the time and the expression of the art form is what I am poking around at here, and you are putting more meat on the bone than I am able to on my own.

[BCrosby]

In a counterfactual world in which the Great Depression never occurred (and it was not inevitable, btw), I've wondered about the the influence ANGC would have on thinking about strategic golf architecture.


Would the things MacK and Jones thought most unique about the course - the paucity of bunkers, reliance on contours, enormous fw's and other features - take flight and be more influential than they were?


Or would RTJ design the kind of courses he designed in the '50s and later anyway? I don't have a neat answer to that question.


Bob   


 

[Sean_A]

Some designers' timing is just better than others' and that is almost entirely  a matter of luck.

Certainly, those designers who entered their prime during the "prime time" of the economic boom benefited by being able to showcase their talents and experience.  Were there other designers who were just approaching their prime (other than Maxwell, if he was one) when the bust hit who never got that chance?


Thanks for the other thoughtful responses gents.  That confluence of the context of the time and the expression of the art form is what I am poking around at here, and you are putting more meat on the bone than I am able to on my own.

The guy I wonder about is Simpson.  Did he hitch his wagon to the wrong train in Fowler?  It doesn't seem to me that Simpson's talents were anywhere near fully realized...of course that could be because of his personality.

Ciao

[BCrosby]

Sean -


Agreed about Simpson.


I'm not sure he failed to realize his potential because he linked up with Fowler, because some of his ideas were too radical (I'm thinking of his holes at Sunningdale and other places that were were undone or muted) or because of his prickly personality.


On the plus side, few people wrote so clearly and prolifically about golf architecture.


Bob

[Steve Lang]

   Would it be similar to wonder whether the demise of much British aristocracy wouldn't have broken up many lands/areas that eventually became golf courses?

[Tom_Doak]

In a counterfactual world in which the Great Depression never occurred (and it was not inevitable, btw), I've wondered about the the influence ANGC would have on thinking about strategic golf architecture.


Would the things MacK and Jones thought most unique about the course - the paucity of bunkers, reliance on contours, enormous fw's and other features - take flight and be more influential than they were?


Or would RTJ design the kind of courses he designed in the '50s and later anyway? I don't have a neat answer to that question.

But would MacKenzie and Bob Jones have gone so far in the direction of less bunkers if Augusta National wasn't built right at the height of the Depression?  I really doubt it.

[BCrosby]

Tom -


Maybe, but from everything I've read, MacK and Jones built the course they wanted to build. I haven't seen anything to suggest that they would have designed ANGC differently had they been given more money.


Bob

[Peter Pallotta]

Or to put it bluntly: are successful craftsmen merely pawns of the dominant ethos and economic realities of the age in which they live, compelled to create within the narrow confines of a given world-view as if they were pre-programmed automatons; or instead do they have at least a measure of free will and freedom of expression, and the capacity to keep alive (and make manifest) their creative goals and ideals and deeply held beliefs even in the face of criticism and unsupportive/unhelpful socio-economic factors?
Are there any gadflies left? Anyone willing and able to rock the boat? Were there ever?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Who was left to carry on the GA after the OG's who 'founded' it became ODGs?

[Peter Pallotta]

Who was left to carry on the GA after the OG's who 'founded' it became ODGs?

Very good question, Jim. The related one is: who was there that *wanted* to?
There doesn't seem to have been a market for "the old" after the depression and the war.
"New" was the thing, it seems - the gca equivalent of tupperware and the self-cleaning oven. 

[Ira Fishman]

Jim and Peter,


Several of the ODGs were neither D or very O in 1929--Ross, Simpson, Flynn, Thompson, Tillinghast, and Colt for example.  But more importantly, they and those who had passed away in the 1920s probably had a host of people who worked for them who never got a chance to carry on and expand on the traditions because a generation of golf course development was lost to the Depression and the War.  We might still be in the "Dark Ages" if the Dye Tree of architects never got a chance to show their stuff.


Ira

[Tom_Doak]

Who was left to carry on the GA after the OG's who 'founded' it became ODGs?

There were quite a few founders of the American Society of Golf Course Architects in 1947 ... fifteen or twenty of them I think, all of whom would have worked in the boom or they wouldn't have had a resume to join.  Trent Jones [who worked with Stanley Thompson] and Dick Wilson [who worked with William Flynn in some capacity of other] were the two guys whose careers took off after 1947, so I have no reason to speculate that it would have been anyone different if the Depression had ended in the mid-30's.  Some other holdovers from the Golden Age would have gotten to do more work somewhere -- Tom Simpson, in particular, if there wasn't a war.

[Tom_Doak]

Or to put it bluntly: are successful craftsmen merely pawns of the dominant ethos and economic realities of the age in which they live, compelled to create within the narrow confines of a given world-view as if they were pre-programmed automatons; or instead do they have at least a measure of free will and freedom of expression, and the capacity to keep alive (and make manifest) their creative goals and ideals and deeply held beliefs even in the face of criticism and unsupportive/unhelpful socio-economic factors?
Are there any gadflies left? Anyone willing and able to rock the boat? Were there ever?

Bob and Peter:


As I said before, I can't imagine Augusta National would have been the same if MacKenzie wasn't so influenced by the onset of the Depression.  Right up until 1929 he was building lots and lots of bunkers, and then by 1931, he was touting places like Bayside Links, Augusta and The Jockey Club all of which had very few bunkers.  He had spent some time with Bobby Jones just before the Crash, but it is hard for me [as a child of parents who grew up in the Depression] to imagine Jones had more influence on him than the Crash did.


Does that make Dr. Mackenzie a pawn, or an automaton?  I surely don't think so.  Art of any sort, to be acclaimed, has to make an impression in its own day, and golf course architecture especially so, as it generally requires paying customers to keep it in business.  It can only exist in the context of the land, of the culture, of the times, and of the golf.  But there is plenty of free will within those contexts ... for proof, just look at all the bad work that was done concurrently!

[Peter Pallotta]

That's a good post, Tom - thanks. The insights of your last few lines, and the logic of the very last one, are particularly strong.
Peter

[Sven Nilsen]

At least one of Jason's questions doesn't amount to an exercise in imagination.  There were hundreds of courses that never came to fruition because of the depression and the related events leading up to it (including the Miami hurricane).  Some of these were big money projects with big names attached.  Many were smaller scale local courses.  Quite a few resulted in just 9 holes of a planned 18 being built, often with the second 9 added at a much later date.

[Jason Way]

At least one of Jason's questions doesn't amount to an exercise in imagination.  There were hundreds of courses that never came to fruition because of the depression and the related events leading up to it (including the Miami hurricane).  Some of these were big money projects with big names attached.  Many were smaller scale local courses.  Quite a few resulted in just 9 holes of a planned 18 being built, often with the second 9 added at a much later date.

Do you know of another thread on here re: that subject, Sven?  Perhaps contained within this thread you started a few years back?


http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,57804.0.html

[BCrosby]

Tom -


I take your point, but we'll have to agree to disagree. I think more was involved with the minimization of bunkers at ANGC than economic expediency. I say that because so much of what MacK wrote at the time suggests that minimizing the number of bunkers was a notion he strongly endorsed as an architectural principle. The Great Depression may have nudged him towards such views, (and yes his earlier courses had plenty of bunkers) but I don't find any suggestion that he wasn't fully committed to the idea by 1931 or so.


To that point, one of the main themes of The Spirit of SA, written at about the same time he began working on ANGC, is that natural contouring (rather than man-made features like bunkers) should be seen as a key element in good design. Ditto his writings about his work at ANGC, about Behr's work at Lakeside and about other courses. Tom Simpson and others had expressed similar ideas about minimizing bunkers for more than a decade.


The other thing to note is that ANGC had enormous greens and fw's and a state of the art irrigation system. If cutting corners was a major concern, cutting back on those things would have been a more effective way to save money than foregoing some additional bunkers.


Everything I've read suggests MacK was very proud of his design of ANGC. I don't get the sense that he thought it was a second best design. The course's minimized bunkering was a design idea that he believed in on its own terms and not primarily as a response to budgetary constraints.


To the point of this thread, I think MacK's thinking about such things might have gone on to be very influential. But then the GD and WWII happened.


Bob 


   

[Tom_Doak]

Tom -


I take your point, but we'll have to agree to disagree. I think more was involved with the minimization of bunkers at ANGC than economic expediency. I say that because so much of what MacK wrote at the time suggests that minimizing the number of bunkers was a notion he strongly endorsed as an architectural principle. The Great Depression may have nudged him towards such views, (and yes his earlier courses had plenty of bunkers) but I don't find any suggestion that he wasn't fully committed to the idea by 1931 or so.


To that point, one of the main themes of The Spirit of SA, written at about the same time he began working on ANGC, is that natural contouring (rather than man-made features like bunkers) should be seen as a key element in good design. Ditto his writings about his work at ANGC, about Behr's work at Lakeside and about other courses. Tom Simpson and others had expressed similar ideas about minimizing bunkers for more than a decade.


The other thing to note is that ANGC had enormous greens and fw's and a state of the art irrigation system. If cutting corners was a major concern, cutting back on those things would have been a more effective way to save money than foregoing some additional bunkers.


Everything I've read suggests MacK was very proud of his design of ANGC. I don't get the sense that he thought it was a second best design. The course's minimized bunkering was a design idea that he believed in on its own terms and not primarily as a response to budgetary constraints.


To the point of this thread, I think MacK's thinking about such things might have gone on to be very influential. But then the GD and WWII happened.

Bob:


As much as I would like to agree with my esteemed editor, we will have to disagree, at least until you find me something that MacKenzie wrote before 1930 about reducing the number of bunkers.  Cypress Point and Pasatiempo opened in 1929 with tons and tons of them.  The Spirit of St. Andrews was written after the Crash.


I do agree, though, that Augusta National was not built as a low-maintenance design.

[Jim Nugent]

Tom, Mackenzie wrote that the land forms and streams at ANGC made more bunkers unnecessary.  Do you think he was wrong?  If so, where do you think he might have placed additional bunkers, if he hadn't felt constrained by the depression? 

[Tom_Doak]

Jim:


Maybe MacKenzie wouldn't have put any more bunkers at Augusta, because of all the water.  But his other courses done after 1930 had far less bunkers, too, even on sites with no water hazards.  I believe he was trying to reduce labor costs by building fewer bunkers.

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