Are we drawn to croquet or golf?

[Tim Gallant]

  The other day I was reading ‘The Links’ by Robert Hunter, and this passage stuck with me:


‘Croquet and ping-pong require some skill, knocking golf-balls about on the lawn, or playing them over patches of shrubbery, arouse a mild interest, but how few of the many bewitched by golf would long be attracted to sports so tame. Is it not a fact that the more difficult our golf courses become the more numerous and intense are the devotees? Certainly no other game has infatuated so many. No other mistress has drawn to herself so many lovers - amateurs yearning to achieve some degree of mastery over this crafty, subtle, and evasive creature. Like that other lover on the Grecian Vase, of who Keats sings, so is the golfer, standing eternally on the threshold of possession, ‘winning near the goal’.’


After some consideration, I tend to agree with Mr. Hunter. I know we have covered this a few times with the pandering thread, but in my mind, growing the game isn’t about dumbing down course design. Maybe it isn’t about finishing the round with the same golf ball you started. How else do you learn to avoid certain misses? How else do you really improve? How else do you infatuate the next generation of players?


Is it really about playability - making the path so easy for the high-handicap that he is happy but ultimately bored with his pars and bogeys? Even when he does make a birdie, will he feel victorious, or merely contented?


We celebrate holes like the 5th at Pine Valley, which are pretty much do or die. Is it not in continual dying that we appreciate the doing when it happens? And there is when the infatuation begins and takes a deep hold of players?


Final question: Is golf architecture moving towards playability (read pandering) because that is what society demands today? Instant gratification, which ultimately, will be replaced once something more exciting comes along? Or do we genuinely believe this is the best golf courses we can build?

[Tom_Doak]

Playability [or my version of it] does NOT mean dumbing down the course or making it easy.  I can't remember which of the old books has the quote that goes something like, "it is not the love of something easy which brings golfers back, it is the maddening difficulty of it."  And I agree with that completely.


But you can make a course challenging or frustrating enough to keep golfers coming back, without making them lose a sleeve of balls in the long rough or in water hazards.  Or, that's what I've been out to prove.


To your final question:  some of society today DOES demand pandering.  That's why some of us complain about the idea that we ought to build four or five or six sets of tees so that everyone can reach every green with a drive and a 7-iron [or less].  That's why 90-yard fairways might be going too far. 


I would love to build a course like Pine Valley, but I have yet to find a client who would dare to try ... most are worried about putting off any potential customer.  I might have to develop that course myself.  If I do, I hope it turns out better for me than it did for George Crump   

[Matt Dawson]

I can't remember which of the old books has the quote that goes something like, "it is not the love of something easy which brings golfers back, it is the maddening difficulty of it." 

That's exactly how I feel. I like difficult & challenging things. I was trying to explain the allure of golf to a co-worker the other day, who had never played, and he was totally baffled by this. I think this is where golf struggles compared to cycling, for example, which lots of middle-aged men on weekend mornings now tackle instead of golf. Literally everyone can ride a bike, but golf requires a serious amount of time invested to reach basic competence


On a separate point Tim, have you played much croquet? It's like a strategic putting competition, but with the added frisson of being able to knock your opponents ball into a worse position. And you still have the stymie...

[Adam Lawrence]

I played a lot of croquet when I was at university and immediately afterwards, and I got pretty good at it, in fact, it remains the only sport at which I have ever got really good. But I would never compare it to golf, because it is about using all the balls to make progress, and, as Matt says, to hurt your opponent. I don't think I have ever come across a more strategic game. I should start playing again.

[Sam Andrews]

Strategic? It's plain vicious.

[jeffwarne]

I think golf should go the curling rule and only permit touching the line while the ball is rolling-would save a lot time.

[Tim Gallant]

"it is not the love of something easy which brings golfers back, it is the maddening difficulty of it."  And I agree with that completely.


But you can make a course challenging or frustrating enough to keep golfers coming back, without making them lose a sleeve of balls in the long rough or in water hazards.  Or, that's what I've been out to prove.


To your final question:  some of society today DOES demand pandering.  That's why some of us complain about the idea that we ought to build four or five or six sets of tees so that everyone can reach every green with a drive and a 7-iron [or less].  That's why 90-yard fairways might be going too far. 


I would love to build a course like Pine Valley, but I have yet to find a client who would dare to try ... most are worried about putting off any potential customer.  I might have to develop that course myself.  If I do, I hope it turns out better for me than it did for George Crump   

Agree with your first point, and I agree that you can make a course challenging and frustrating without losing golf balls. However, like most things in GCA, I wonder if it is about variety. Maybe there is one water hazard or OB (alla 1 at Prestwick) where you can easily lose a golf ball). Maybe there is one green that you can easily 4-putt if you are above the hole.


I would LOVE to see 'Doak's Folly', but will hope that you can enjoy it more than Crump enjoyed PV

[Tim Gallant]

I played a lot of croquet when I was at university and immediately afterwards, and I got pretty good at it, in fact, it remains the only sport at which I have ever got really good. But I would never compare it to golf, because it is about using all the balls to make progress, and, as Matt says, to hurt your opponent. I don't think I have ever come across a more strategic game. I should start playing again.

So if it is the most strategic game you have played, why didn't it grab you and never let go? My guess it's the same reason why we all aren't here commenting on chess, mainly, that it isn't just strategic design that captivates us, but the difficulty and the possibility of conquering the unconquerable that has made us addicted!

[Peter Flory]

The more golf history and early accounts that I read, the more that I realize that those guys in the late 1800s and early 1900s were adventurers.  Getting your butt kicked seemed to be expected and it was all about beating your man under the same conditions, not shooting a score or comparing your performance to any 3rd party.  It looked like they routinely played in harsher weather as well.  There are tons of old photos of guys in tweed jackets out in snowy conditions even.  It was like they were royals enjoying an invigorating hunt.


And the bunkering and hazards shows in Hutchinson's British Golf Links really opened my eyes.  It's page after page of guys hacking golf balls out of unraked sand quarries 6 to 30 feet deep. 


If a course was built now to replicate the difficulty of some of that early golf (adjusting for the yardage inflation), it would be shocking to people. 

[Lou_Duran]

Final question: Is golf architecture moving towards playability (read pandering) because that is what society demands today? Instant gratification, which ultimately, will be replaced once something more exciting comes along? Or do we genuinely believe this is the best golf courses we can build?

Those who have studied human behavior know that people, to varying degrees, are wired to strive,  to achieve.  The wisdom of the quote attributed to Thomas Paine-  “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”-  is validated repeatedly at home while raising our kids, and in the workplace as we set challenging goals and progress in our careers.

My first exposure to golf was on very rudimentary courses in rural Ohio.  They were little more than former cornfields, short, with small, roundish pushed-up greens and very few design features.  I liked golf quite a bit because as a decent athlete and good baseball player, I could get the ball in the air toward the target better than most of my friends.

It was not until I got to Ohio State's Scarlet course a year or two later that I got "the" itch for the game.  Scarlet was known as an extremely difficult test of golf and much higher regarded then than it is presently among raters.  Contrary to today's popular "gentle handshake" start, one had to be well prepared on the first tee to get past the first six holes with a salvageable round.  It remains the challenge of the game that keeps me entranced to this day.

To the extent that basic human behavior is very difficult to change- and I don't necessarily buy the instant gratification argument, though I do believe that prosperity reinforces habits and begets a sense of entitlement- the answer to the question is nuanced.  The DG tends to be very insular and self-reinforcing.  Issues such as "playability", the evolution of the ball and equipment, changes to golf courses, etc. are viewed differently by the vast majority of golfers (try taking the GCA.com approved positions to your non-site golf friends and watch their eyes roll).

I think that some architects- Brauer here, C & C to some extent, Fazio- do a very good job of creating "playability" while not dumbing down the long game aspects of the course.  Perhaps through visual techniques, maybe even a variation of Mackenzie's camouflaging, they make holes seemingly more difficult than they actually play, especially if the golfer is able to utilize the proper tactics.  IMO, the belief that the architect should be free to ply his art without regard to his ultimate customer is terribly misguided.   

 

   

[Mark_Rowlinson]

I agree with Adam. I expect I played croquet on the same beautifully conditioned lawns at Oxford that he did, for me back in the 60s and early 70s. These lawns need to be very well maintained, they need to be big and you certainly don't find them anywhere. There's one club only up here in Cheshire. It was a very good game and I'm glad I played it, but after I left Oxford it wasn't really a possibility.


I was also lucky enough to have the use of one of the most expensive tennis courts in Britain when I sang in the choir at Westminster Abbey. The court was in behind a cloister of the Abbey and Westminster School behind the wall that cuts it off from the Houses of Parliament. It was beautifully maintained for about three or four people who used it!


For that matter, two or three of us used to have cricket nets at Vincent Square, the cricket ground of Westminster School, about the size of Lord's Cricket Ground but in an even more affluent part of Victoria. When you had done Matins at 9.00 and weren't required for Evensong rehearsal until something like 4 o'clock it made for a very entertaining day's exercise. My wife, meanwhile was busy teaching her heart out in Ealing. I was remarkably fit in those days.


Golf was not so well provided for. For me it was two courses that hosted the Concert Golf Society - a bunch of itinerant musicians who trod the boards at Worthing during the summer season and were out of work for the winter. We played Coombe Wood (next door to Coombe Hill) a course of 18 holes which just broke 5,000 yards from the very back tees, and Highgate, another 18 hole layout on a very cramped site in north London shared with the taxi drivers, which included a number of holes played over a covered-in reservoir. But what fun we had in those days! But you never knew who you were playing with - song-and-dance routines, a conjuror (what mischief would he get up to?) and they were all so friendly.


I have a particularly fond memory of Coombe Wood. Somewhere on the back nine you played alongside some fairly posh houses with swimming pools etc. The summers of 1975 and 76 were quite hot by our standards, and the girls at one house, which was owned by an actor who got parts as a thug in crime TV, wore very little or nothing. Yes, fond memories!

[Colin Macqueen]

Gentlemen,
I tell ya .... I swear to take up croquet at least every second round of golf I undertake!


As kids and teenagers we would play croquet on the lawns at Pitkerro. Now these lawns were no doubt not as preened as those at Oxford but the game was still strategic, cut-throat and unforgiving. How quickly allegiances would change depending on the situation.


Brisbane has two croquet clubs and I expect that with the creep of advancing years that a fair number of golfing stalwarts will gravitate to this "end of career" option!


I agree entirely that croquet's allure is nowhere near as addictive as that of golf. As mentioned earlier it is the games "...maddening difficulty.." and the hope that one will overcome all the travails presented by this infuriating pastime that reels one in!  And hope springs eternal!  Why is that I wonder!?


Cheers Colin