Where you’ve taken this topic, JC, and the examples you and Tom share, and the directions you point to: all valid, of course, and because you’re leaders in the field of golf design and construction a telling sign of what’s to come. And yet my first, heart-felt reaction to it all is one of melancholy and nostalgia:
it seems the end is nearing for the kinds of golf courses that once so lifted my spirit and fired my imagination, some 20 years before I’d ever paid a green fee or even hit my first golf shot, and almost 30 years before I’d fallen in love with the game.
I remember: there was an old stone town under a low grey sky, and its golf course there seemed to flow right into (and out of) the town itself: it too was old and laying low as it gently weaved its way to the sea and meandered back, so naturally it seemed, inevitably even — as the rain falling from the grey skies nourished it and the winds that blew from the seas shaped it, and defined the game.
As a child in a far away city I first saw that golf course on television, so clearly such an integral part of that old stone town, and I saw a quiet gentle game that could be played (and played well) without any violence or rancour or pomp & circumstance. The golf course and the game seemed to me to go hand-in-hand -- you played the game by yourself and 'against' no one, and the golf course was simply itself, and unlike any other.
And I imagined what a joy it would be to wake up in that town and simply walk to that course, a bag over my shoulder as I waved to the milkman and stopped at the baker’s shop and paused to say a short prayer in front of the church before I stepped onto the first tee, in a grey mist under a low sky as the rain fell, with the wind from the sea in my face. As I said earlier, I'd never even played golf at that point in time, and wouldn't for many years to come -- but I could already sense the 'rightness' of it all, and the soul nourishing charms.
Not a requiem for that place: the golf course and the town are still there, alive and well. But I think certainly a goodbye: a farewell to what as a child I once thought the game and its fields of play were all about — all that they possibly could be, or should be or that I needed or wanted them to be.
My limitations, JC, not yours or Tom's. But I saw a video here once of you sitting in the sand and using your hands to shape it, describing the process of green-building and design; and I must say that (in the context of the game and its courses) I 'understand' that JC a lot better than I do the one who mentions Base Camp Golf as an exciting new possibility. (Just as I 'understand' Tom "The Loop" Doak better than I do Tom "Maha Napa" Doak.) Again, my limits not yours.