Architectural indifference in Britain

[Mark_Rowlinson]

I am British and write books about golf courses.  How often do I learn something of significance about a British course, its designer or its architecture from someone who lives in the USA or Australia!  I am often asked why we do not value our golfing architectural heritage as highly as do those from overseas.  I really don't know the answer.

We value our royal heritage and historic buildings (mostly for their tourism value).  We sell whatever we can in the way of artistic creations (except serious music).  We realise that we can screw overseas visitors for $150 or more for a round over one of our more famous golf links.  Why do we British take so little interest in the wealth and breadth of so many of our courses, at the same time destroying the key values of the courses as they were intended to be played?

I cannot answer these questions when they are asked.  I have a few theories, of course, but they don't stand up to serious scrutiny.  Once again I ask our friends from distant shores to enlighten me.  Where have we missed the boat?

[A_Clay_Man]

I wonder if partly it isn't similar to New Yorkers never going to the top of the Empire State building or to LAdy Liberty. They take it for granted that it will always be there, so they don't have to go and end up never going. Same could be true about Brits? Perhaps more complicated, if there's a Scottish appreciation but not a British one. Does that make any sense?

[Marty Bonnar]

Mark/Adam,
I am of the opinion that British golfers have never HAD to appreciate their golfing environments. These places have - in their eyes - always existed. They are part and parcel of THE landscape. They are ACTUALLY pieces of ground which exist ONLY for golf. Let me elucidate...a brief(!) expounding of British Golf.
Golf begins on the Links....every Scotsman has access. Golf expands...other ground is employed and more people play. The popularity of the game overtakes the land's ability to provide 'suitable' terrain. The game gets played 'WHEREVER'!!!! Even on boggy, marshy Parkland.
The POINT is golfers want to play the GAME so they WILL!!!!!

Naive yet obvious, no?

Martin.

[stovepipe]

O.Kay, I have a theory? i think?

Unfortunatly theres a small percentage of our 56 million inhab that actualy appreciate our game, ask a kid where Liverpool or Arsenal play, there as keen as mustard to give you the answer, ask the same kid about Golf, he wouldnt have a clue, and this is typical of the whole nation.

Although, at the moment we are living in the "Tiger" ere (past 5 yrs) And the game has exploded beyond beleif, which is great news for us & the States.

But over here Golf has still got this old Draconian attitude, to play Wentworth its going to cost £100 or more, to play at St Andrews you need to book in advance, and still pay a load to play the Links

Its just another example of rip-off Britain, there all at it

Its still a rich mans game, but its getting easier for the working man to play. good news for me

So i think theres less Golfers over here per cappita than in the States. Do you go along with that?

[A_Clay_Man]

Stovepipe- Hate to pick on the semantics but Golfers are not found more here in the states per capita than there in the UK (I'd wager) but, people who play golf are. Got it?  

I've been thinking about this lack of appreciation and it appears that the few who do take the time to investigate GCA, eventually learn fundamental differences between what looks good and what is real golf. I was thinking about it in the context of what the uninitiated would use as a justification for why their preferences are their preferences. All I could come up with was similar to a scene in Annie Hall (Happy bday Woody) when asking a very attractive couple how they make their relationship work? They responded with something along the lines of "I'm shallow and have noting interesting to say" and the man said "and i'm pretty much the same". Golfs version is more like " I have no creativity and I like to know where my ball is gonna land" or "I'm a mental dullard and don't want anything but a perfect yardage".

Would they ever admit it?

Is it really like that there in Britian? I was started to get worried about youz guys back when I started to notice many venues looked like American golf. I thought "WHY"

[Matthew Schulte]

In my limited interactions with the Scots I was constantly surprised at how little they had sampled the gems of Scottish golf outside of their immediate area.

Which leads me to believe, that for many of the Scots I encountered, the playing of the game is far more important than where the game is being played.  They didn't seem to be the trophy hunter/bag tag collectors that we in North America often are.

The fact that the majority of Americans playing oversees are not overly appreciative of the nuances of links golf, are constantly attempting flop shots from places they shouldn't and shoot in the 90s probably only reinforces the Scots belief that the playing of the game is more important than the sampling and the studying of the architecture.

[Doane McTork]

 Excellent question Mark, with some fine answers.

 It may be that the American psyche thrives on "What is the Best" (Peter Dobereiner wrote a great article about it.)  Even when the pursuit of the best will never answer the question, we feel compelled to search for it.

[BCrosby]

Mark -

Good question. A related question is why are there no superstar architects from the UK? I can't think of any practicing architect from the UK with the name recognition of a Fazio or a Rees Jones or a Pete Dye. (Or am I just being hopelessly parochial?)

That is odd because a young man/woman in the UK wanting a career in golf architecture would have seen many more classic courses early on than a young person in the US. A UK native would come into the profession with a much more sophisticated understanding of great holes and their history.

My guess is that, in the end, it is a money issue. For all sorts of cultural and historic reasons, you aren't going to make the big bucks designing courses in Britain. Or at least nothing like the money you can make in the US where the initiation fees can be $100,000 plus and you are paying - quite explicitly -for a "name" architect.

But back to your question. The lack of interest in the architectural history of even great UK courses is very surprising. It is one of the reasons I started a thread a couple of weeks ago about Colt. I didn't know much about him. And the reason was, basically, because he had done so little work in the US and so few people in the UK had ever discussed or analyzed his work there.

It is very odd.

Maybe you are the one to open their eyes. I hope someone will.

Bob

[ForkaB]

An interesting corollary to this phenomenon is genealogy.  Virtually nobody in Britain outside the House of Lords has a clue as to who their great grandparents were.  Contrast this with the States where everybody and anybody has at least one relative who spends more time searching their family tree than Tom Paul does in writing posts to GCA.

Interesting that people lving amongst history seem to be so oblivious to it, or maybe that's the answer......familiarity breeds contempt?

[Lou_Duran]

Rich-

I don't think that familiarity breeds contempt so much as it does complacency.  I live within two miles of a large regional amusement park (Six Flaggs) and haven't been there for years.  The Rangers play baseball next door, and my wife has to drag me out of the house to go sit 20 rows up on the home plate side of first base.

I suspect that the participation rate is quite a bit higher in Scotland relative to the U.S.  Perhaps in the UK, people are less brand concious.  On the other hand, I think too that the number of people who really care about architecture in the U.S. is much smaller than most think.  Large numbers may have heard of Fazio but may not necessarily know if the first name is Jim or Tom.  In other words, many probably remember the brand name (Fazio, Dye, Nicklaus, etc.), but relatively few have a clue as to the substance.  Generalizing the knowledge and interest in gca of the kooks on this site to the U.S.population is a huge stretch.

Ask the average golfer at most clubs in the U.S. the name of the designer and I bet that he won't know.  Ask the best players at most private clubs who Tom Doak is and the large percentage won't know either.  The point being that people play golf for a variety of reasons; architecture is probably one of the less important ones.

BTW,  "nae gowf, nae wind" at the bottom of your post, is that another play on the Rihc-dyslexia thing?  

 

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Some interesting theories, and there's probably something valid in them all.  Bob is absolutely right - there's no way a Brit is going to part with the equivalent of $100K as an initiation fee.  When I was taken to the Meadow Club in California as a guest I was horrified how much membership cost and how much that member had to pay in order to introduce me.  Our fee structure could not survive long at that level.  

Many of our golfers (by which I mean those who play often, competitively) take themselves off to Spain or Portugal in the winter, not to play the classic Arana courses of Spain but to get out on Valderrama, Sotogrande, Las Brisas and all the look-alikes, many of which are British designed.  But they have had to be designed in the RTJ manner to compete.  These are the sort of courses they see on TV and they know for sure that the US Pro Tour is far better than ours, so their courses must be better and that imitations of them are also bound to be better.

We now have quite a few Nicklaus courses, courses by members of the RTJ dynasty, Weiskopf, Kyle Phillips, Gil Hanse and so on.  Clearly Phillips has done something special at Kingsbarns and its merits and demerits were discussed at length recently in these pages.  You will find (particularly amongst the corporate golf fraternity [big money here]) a genuine desire to play The Oxfordshire (Rees Jones), Carden Park (Nicklaus), The London (Nicklaus), Celtic Manor (RTJ 1 & 2) and, of course, The Belfry which was probably our earliest native attempt at recreating American-style golf.  

Earlier in the year I took an American guest to look at 'The Brabazon at The Belfry' (as they call it - ungrammatically).  He had seen the Ryder Cup on TV.  We watched as groups of 4 players all kitted out in identical new shirts and caps bearing a company logo teed off from the first, being video-filmed as they did so with the company's banner in the background and the famous lake on the 18th in the background.  How many of these played golf seriously and carried genuine club handicaps I cannot say, but it was very few, to judge by the standard of play of the matches we witnessed.  They were being treated to rounds of golf at over £100, would no doubt have a fortune spent on them in the restaurant and bar and may even have stayed overnight at the company's expense in the hotel.  This is where the money is.  These are the people who call the tune.  It is for this market that almost every high-end new course in Britain is designed.  The only thing to be said in their favour is that they are doing little harm to the boring sites on which so many of them seem to be built and there is very little fecund ground left unless you are prepared to create it yourself as Phillips did at Kingsbarns.

However, having witnessed the subtle changes to Birkdale made by Martin Hawtree (especially his rebuilding of the greens) and knowing Donald Steel's intimate knowledge of and appreciation for the classic British courses, links and inland, I don't doubt that they could both turn in a modern classic if they were given the budget and the client wanted it.  But it's very unlikely that the client would.

[Mike Hendren]

In my limited interactions with the Scots I was constantly surprised at how little they had sampled the gems of Scottish golf outside of their immediate area.

Which leads me to believe, that for many of the Scots I encountered, the playing of the game is far more important than where the game is being played.  

Seconded.  Furthermore, a good match can be played anywhere.  The less competitive likely view the course as a place for recreation, exercise, outdoor activity - in which case the architecture is irrelevant.  

I was effusive in my praise of Kilspindie.  The pro and club secretary with whom I visited looked at me as if I was some kind of nut!

The starter at North Berwick mentioned the redan before I teed off.  He was too busy apologizing for not arranging a match for me that my comments about C. B. Macdonald's evangelism of the redan were totally lost on him.  

It's the game, stupid (me).

Mike