On September, 1936, Tilly gave an interview to a reporter from the Boston Herald. During their conversation, He explained his philosophy of design in a single sentence. I believe that it addresses each of the separate discussions on the importance or lack thereof, angle of play.
During the interview, which was included in the article, he told John English, the reporter for the Herald, the following:
“‘The one shot that tells the story in golf is the shot to the green, and if you conceive of golf as a game of animate attack and inanimate defense with regard to that shot, you have my theory of design in a nutshell,’ he summarized, and then sank back to finger his pointed white moustache and seek adequate explanation.
“Rising forward again, he continued. ‘Where would Joe Louis be now if he fought from a stance like this?’ And he held out his two fists straight forward from the shoulders. ‘Anyone could poke him right on the nose if he used that defense.’ No doubt about that.
“‘But when he covers himself like this, you have to be good to hit him.’ And he bent his elbows so that his forearms curved in, protecting his jaw.
“Having made clear this point with pugilism, Tillinghast relaxed his arms and returned the conversation to golf.
“‘Now,’ he continued, ‘instead of hitting through arms and hands to a jaw, think of the same thing on a golf course. Only, instead of arms and hands, think of traps, and instead of the jaw, insert the green.
“‘All my courses are designed on the principle of the master trap guarding the green, just the way the hands might guard the jaw. To play them successfully, the drive must be so placed that the second shot can be hit from the one good strategic position in the fairway. And then the approach to the green must still avoid this one master trap.
“‘You see now, I hope, my theory of inanimate defense against the animate attack of mid-irons, mashies and niblicks.’
“But having clarified this point which menaces the Sarazens, the Hagens, the Goodmans and the Campbells, what did it have to do with aiding the army of golfers who have their trouble getting to that master bunker, let alone placing drives and guiding second shots?
“‘Just this,’ he explained. ‘If that master bunker remains by the green, the par golfer will always have his troubles. But nearly all the fairway traps can be removed. They only harass the dub, who will have trouble enough without them. They do not affect the par golfer, who is seeking only to place his drive on the right side of the fairway and get a good shot at the green.
“‘By taking out all those unnecessary traps, which often catch good drives by poor players, you make the game more attractive to them. Heaven knows, those poor fellows, who pay the freight on golf, have enough trouble without spending their afternoon wallowing in sand traps.’”
What strikes me is that, to this day, his greens are generally considered among the great ones ever built. Yet one can see from above that they were designed and built based on a “Master Trap” guarding the green complex from the shot into it, and by creating a singular area in the fairway that will provide the best angle into the green that usually only was found by the accomplished player. It took skill to make par back then. Those who broke it on a regular basis were considered to be the best players there in the game.
If one wants to bring that purity of skill back into the game, clubs and the golf balls need to be reversed to what they were in the late 1960s-70s. What’s wrong with requiring that we get rid of medal woods? That the shaft of the driver shouldn’t exceed 43 inches and that the heads be actually made out of wood? That would certainly reign in the mammoth distances that today’s engineered cudgels allow the ball to fly. Speaking of the ball, by allowing them to be made so that the true hook and slice have become a thing of the past, has also aided in bringing about the loss of skill in the game.
Just a different perspective on the issue…