I sincerely hope that the prevailing wisdom about golf courses, expressed both here and in the rankings in major golf publications, is not a fashionable trend. I'd like to think that it is an evolution of thought about the sport. I don't know if strict logic is involved, but there are practical reasons why certain features on a golf course are desirable. Thanks.
I don't really even know how to respond to this so I apologize in advance for this wall of text.
We are talking about aesthetics here. Golf is a game that is ultimately pointless, and the only value it provides is the feelings it engenders in us. The idea that there is some ideal course that we are chasing is just nonsense. We decide what we want golf to be: stroke play, match play, or just
putting smiley faces for our score. Is it better to hit the percentage shot, the hero shot, or just the shot that's most fun? None if it ultimately matters. The idea that golf "should be" one way or "should be" another way is entirely arbitrary. We should be careful when we try to universalize our own preferences, because telling others that their honest preferences are incorrect is obviously ridiculous.
Now, I understand that most people will reject my philosophical
absurdism here, and there are some places to push back against it. That people are born with a basis for aesthetics built into our minds is certainly a possibility. However, in looking at the history of art, we just see the same thing over and over: waves of novel and interesting concepts flooding in, and then receding when the next generation gets a chance to make something new and interesting. That the older generations often reject these "new wave" art movements is obviously not important, as time marches on without them.
Yes, technology plays a major role here, but technology ultimately just removes some of the obstructions of to the artist (here I meant to find a interview with Sufjan Stevens about layering midi tracks), or opens up new areas to explore (
Giorgio Moroder exploring the synth) . And ultimately the interaction between the artist and his or her environment will heavily impact the type of art that will be successful (
David Byrne on the influence of architecture on music), and with golf the main hindrance is obviously cost (though PGA 2K25 is being released this month, and GCA fans do themselves credit by following some of the
artists on that platform if they want to see designs
that genuine do not care about this group, much less any groupthink).
As long as cost prohibits the architecture, it's easy for us to convince ourselves that our generation's versions of Solomon Guggenheim are geniuses, instead of just people with interesting taste and the means to execute their vision. It is that conception of the world where we start fighting about groupthink, but as these thought-leaders pass away, their vision will be replaced with other interesting visions. There's nothing wrong with this. Something being in fashion doesn't make it worthy of scorn, it just means that we exist in a certain time and place, and we can accept and find what we like where we are, or we can pine for a previous era (an era where folks likely also pined for their previous eras). Does it make sense to fight about how to rank
Franz Liszt or
Robert Johnson or even
Joel Zimmerman? It's a fool's errand, but we can still enjoy them and have preferences about them.