The bitch about fashion is, the trend that precedes the current one always seems to be the most hideous.....until it eventually comes back into style years later and more or less is OK again.
As one who had my formative years in the 80s, 70s fashion was such a puke fest to me, but now you can get away with Bell bottoms, flaired shirts, and saying Groovy...its all good!!
KB (and all),
But if that "circular" sense of fashion holds in gca, it could suggest that we will go back to artificial ponds, tree-choked turf and playing corridors, massive earth moving, aerial golf, etc...
I've been thinking that since golf design re-emerged from the 15 year near-hiatus of Depression and War years (1930 - 45) it re-emerged with a struggle it didn't possess in the first 25 before it...the battle between "What a golf course COULD Be vs What a golf course OUGHT TO Be."
Maybe that's too fine a distinction with too many exceptions, but the earlier period seemed not to focus so much on what could be, but what it ought to be...each designer, of course, having his own idea of "ought to be" CBM with this in mind, Fownes with that, Ross with his, Tillie with his writings and his product...
Come post War times, and steel shafts, and the first bloom of professional play (Snead, Hogan, Nelson), the game and the prosperous Jet Age culture around it, brought the consideration of the "could be"...projects were grand and visionary, national tournaments could be hosted there, soon to be on TV and in color magazines, aesthetically perfect as tests of medal golf and parkland beauty...once the Space Age follows, boundaries widen further...the period just about ends with Pete Dye's salad days...before it settled in transition period of Fazio and player-designers... where the ethos is almost fully "what could be" with far less care for what ought to be.
not ironclad...but my sense of this shifting "acclaim"
cheers vk