Lido--In Non-Revisionist Terms

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Sean, I'm just going off of your tone with me from the last couple of months. The title is in reference to TE Paul's posts on the other Lido thread.

Merry Xmas also.

Pat,
I can't think of a single green that isn't manufactured to some extent, whether it be to the infratructure of the complex itself, or the old style push-up nature to them. The point is that when they are constructed that they maintain the natural flow or at least tie-in to the surrounding features of land and nature itself. This is the one problem I have with Seth Raynor--For as every bit as good his golf courses are, they look as if he had just got done watching the Terminator trilogy of films starring Arnold Schwarzneggar--my govenor. It doesn't mean I don't like them, I in fact do, but I don't think Seth Raynor really "got" the nature part of things without C.B. there to drum it into him.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tommy Naccarato,

Like a play, the golfer at NGLA is given the view of the golf course before him, like the audience sees the stage.

But, when you go back stage, behind the scenes, your view and understanding of the scenery changes drastically, just like when you go behind every hole, every feature at NGLA, you get a different perspective and understand the constructed nature of the site.

Irrespective of how CBM did it, the genius of the design and play of the golf course becomes self evident, even to the architectural "Ray Charles's" of the world, TEPaul.

Would you say that Raynor is guilty of the type of work you describe above at: Westhampton, Hackensack and Everglades or is it confined to a few courses ?  And, which ones are they ?

[SPDB]

I'd stick to a subject where you have a reasonable degree of knowledge and familiarity.  You're out of your league on this one.

Fair enough, but how is that I should stay away from subjects with which i have knowledge and familiarity, when you don't hold yourself to a similar standard, e.g. -

That's just common sense.

Pat - Do you consider any of your posts complete unless it includes an insulting remark?

Do you not think 18 at GCGC is manufactured?

You weren't talking about tees, we were talking about greensites.

[TEPaul]

A classic from Pat:

"TEPaul,
You're correct, I did find the quote on page 188, which proves that even a clock that's stopped is correct twice a day.  On the previous page he refers to the site as ideal.
However, if you think that the 4th hole at NGLA is "absolutely natural", then you and CBM have been partaking of the same spirits."

It doesn't get much better than that folks. Pat Mucci in the same post admitting I'm correct and also claiming he knows more about C.B. Macdonald's golf course including his world famous Redan than C.B himself did. And I love the remark about me partaking of the same spirits as CBM! Just to open his eyes I'd get Pat a flask so he too can partake of the same spirits as me and CBM but I doubt Pat would be able to figure out how to use it!    

[Patrick_Mucci]

SPDB,

Fair enough, but how is that I should stay away from subjects with which i have knowledge and familiarity, when you don't hold yourself to a similar standard, e.g. -

Ah, but that's not true, I do.  I've avoided making any critical assessment of any holes or features on a golf course that I've never played or seen, and I've refrained from making any in-depth analysis of golf courses that I'm not familiar with.

Pat - Do you consider any of your posts complete unless it includes an insulting remark?

You can't pick a fight, and then when you get your nose bloodied, cry foul.  As Tommy said, you've had an edge on your posts lately and I was just responding in kind.

And...you were way off base in your postulate and shouldn't have stuck your nose in so assertively without considering that it just might get bruised in the rebuttal process.
 
Rather then tyring to just contradict me for contrarian purposes, which has been a repetitive theme of yours lately, you should have thought about what you were posting on its architectural merits, on a factual, site specific basis.

Instead, you chose to disagree, just to disagree, without carefully analyzing the specifics of the discussion.  
Another way of putting it is, you didn't do your homework.

But, in the Holiday, and New Year spirit, I'm willing to start all over again on a kinder, gentler tone, if you'll do the same.  

Have a Merry Christmas, and more importantly, a Happy and Healthy New Year.

Do you not think 18 at GCGC is manufactured?

Which part ?

You weren't talking about tees, we were talking about greensites.

You did say that the ENTIRE hole was natural, and the tees are a component of the hole, as are the greens

[TEPaul]

You know I was kind of wondering also what it was that prompted TommyN to start this thread. Here's the reason apparently from his post #25 above on this thread:

"Sean, I'm just going off of your tone with me from the last couple of months. The title is in reference to TE Paul's posts on the other Lido thread.

So I started thinking back on when I last used the term "revisonism" or "revisionist history". It was over on David Moriarty's thread entitled "Jumping the Shark". DavidM's premise on that thread which he asked us if we agreed with was that in his opinon the Lido represented Man's ultimate arrogance, and that the Lido itself represented something he called "jumping the shark" which he meant as symbolic indication that Lido's values repressed or sold out the Golden Age of golf architecture because Macdonald completely created the Lido out of swampland and that represented an example of C.B. Macdonald attempting to play the Creator (God) in contravention of Nature!

What I kept saying to DavidM over on that "jumping the shark" thread is that I didn't agree with his premise at all about Lido and Macdonald's values repressing or selling out the Golden Age of Golf architecture.

And on one of my posts on that thread while trying to make that point to DavidM, on post #64 I said;

"There’s nothing worse than revisionist history. Did Macdonald himself not make it clear that the Lido golf course never even became a club under the control of the original investors which led Macdonald to report early on?-----"

That's the only time I've ever said anything about "revisionism". I guess that's what TommyN is referring to on this thread. When I said there's nothing worse than revisionist history on that "jumping the shark" thread I was referring to David Moriarty trying to make the point and premise that Lido produced values that sold out or repressed the Golden Age of golf architecture.

I do not believe that at all and that's what I was telling DavidM that I thought his point and premise was--eg revisionist history.

I don't know what TommyN thought I meant about revisionist history but it obviously wasn't what I said and meant. I think the Lido was a great golf course despite how it was created. I don't think it created values that repressed or sold out the Golden Age of golf architecture and I don't think Macdonald showed Man's ultimate arrogance for designing it either.

So I'm not real clear what this thread was about either. These articles are interesting to post. They are articles I've read before about the Lido though.

But again, the Lido did not go to eventual wrack and ruin due to its architecture or some symbolic selling out of the Golden Age of golf architecture. It eventually went down for those very reasons that can be found in Macdonald's own book and that was because those original investors who cared about it sold out very early to a real estate development company that did not care about the golf course and did not know how to run it!

And that's no revisionist history---that's the truth of what happened to the great Lido golf course!

[A_Clay_Man]

I haven't read the "shark" thread, and thanks to tompaul's cliff notes, I will be less likely to tackle it. But what strikes me is how C.B himself tries to give deference to the holes he considered from a golden age. Perspective and timing is everything.

The real heart of a different matter comes from the bombshell TN drops on the other "lees" thread on Lido. He says:

'To repeat myself, It is also almost a 90% chance that the ultimate destruction of Lido was at the hands of organized crime boss Charlie Lucchese who maintained a huge hold on that area as his OWN personal turf. I'm searching now to see if one of his companies was in fact the developer of Lido Estates, which are the houses that now exist on that once fabled property.'

Maybe the houses can be torn down if they were acquiried with "illeagal' funds? I'd bet you could sell it to some up and comer in the states attorneys office. Sorry, Typical Chicagoan, hope springing and all.

[TEPaul]

I don't know that it really matters a whit if the entire Lido Corporation including the golf course was rather quickly taken over by some NY crime figure or a legitimate real estate development company. The point C.B Macdonald made in his book published in 1927 was that those original investors who obviously cared enough about the course to let Macdonald do what he did there and at enormous cost sold out early on and the interests that bought them out didn't really care about the course or understand how to maintain it properly as the original investors might have. Real estate development seemed the primary interest of the buy-out interests not the maintenance and preservation of a great golf course!

The reasons the original investors who coddled Macdonald into coming on board sold out early on are interesting to know of course. If one can prove, which seems the historical case, they were looking at taking a real financial bath there, one can hardly blame them for selling out. Cost and location will always be important factors in real estate development and the impending world war near to the opening of their course could have been nothing but the worst of timing.

I've no doubt the Lido as a great golf course and architecturally was everything those who saw it said it was but in a way a course as great as that one that began its decline as quickly as it did reminds me of the epitaph on the gravestone of the baby;

"I was so quickly done for I wonder what I was begun for!"

[SPDB]

Pat -
I'll say this once, and not respond b/c I don't want to promote any bickering. But, if you think the following, constitutes "picking a fight," you have got deeper problems than we originally thought:

Pat -
Most greensites are "heavily manufactured," what makes you think NGLA is so special in that regard? The push up on a green-end doesn't prevent the entire hole from being "natural"

p.s. merry christmas

what "edge" is there to that post, that either you or tommy can point to?

moreover, where is the assertive sticking of my nose that required you to respond in kind? (maybe responding in kind would have avoided this, actually).

Pat,
the problem is that you think anyone who disagrees with you does so not because they actually disagree with you, but rather for contrarian purposes, as if you have some claim on logic or truth. Please don't try to muzzle me when I deign to disagree with you, it does the spirit of this entire discussion group a terrible disservice.

It has really gotten to the point where your combative tone has dominated the discussion group in whatever thread you wade into.

Far be it from me to tell you what might be a good New Year's resolution, but certainly taking a more conciliatory tenor in your posting would, and I think I speak for many who post here, be an olive branch to the entire discussion group.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Sean,
Make no mistake about it, I'm not with Pat's total ideas on these threads, and have told him as much on the phone during our Merry Xmas call.

No one loves the National more then Pat, but the thing I find of great interest is that National is a course that you can never know enough about, and you have to keep an open mind to what other people think. I'm trying to do that, but Pat maintains it like he is the only one with a backstage pass. Yes, he has much more experience with the course then I, but still, I see things a lot differently there then him, and I'm not afraid to admit it either.

So I have a a few questions for Pat: (I want him to teach me what I'm not seeing)

--Pat has argud with Tom MacWood incessantly that the course was recovered from brambles, swamps and other natural occuring fauna, so bad that they had to ride ponies to look at it. (Pat, I too have read Scotland's Gift many many times.) So, "what areas of fairways were filled-in and or created, and where do you find your information on this IN PRINT?"

--Where does C.B. MacDonald, a man of little modesty, profess about his talent for creating these features in great detail? (Personally, given the character, I think C.B. would have been more then glad to have given great descriptions of building the National, all in great detail.  Where is it, and where did you find it?

[kwl]

TN

thank you for the efforts (scholarship and labor). the golf illustrated articles are touchstones for meaningful discussion and analysis-the essence of the site.

geoff childs hole-by-hole analysis (& historical perspectives) of Yale GC and your Lido work deserve recognition. keep up the good work and again, thanks.

 

[TEPaul]

TommyN:

In your posts #25 and #34 you're right on the mark with something I'd love to see continue to be discussed on here in detail---that being where exactly do the lines and "ties in" between what is natural and original topography at NGLA and what was created by the architect/engineer begin and end. Not only that but if it can be better understood where the natural and original grades and the created architectural lines connect can it be said that the created architecture really does appear obviously man-made (the so-called “engineered” look of Macdonald/Raynor)? And the next question is, of course, if that famous “engineered” look can be so obviously seen why was it that Macdonald/Raynor never really did seem interested in creating less of an engineered look in what they architecturally created?

Tom MacWood said in post #49 on the “Jumping the shark” thread that golf architecture was in its infancy in this early time of the creation of NGLA (1907-1910) and the Lido (1913-1916) and it was a time of experimentation and pushing the envelop. Obviously that was true—we already know that, but he also said; “The point is they were all trying to push the envelope while observing a small set of common principals.” But he also said one of the mistakes we make is to look at the “Golden Age” of golf architecture as a coordinated movement.

So I’d like to see some of us identify what those “small set of common principles” were and what they weren’t. Of course the whole idea of “naturalism” in architecture is what I’m really after here. Not only that but how those various architects of the Golden Age viewed “naturalism” in architecture and how far any of them wanted to go—how far any of them could go at any particular time but primarily how far the best of them wanted to see “naturalism” in architecture go in the future and WHY?

Eventually, all this should point to those very specially theories and philosophies of Max Behr and his interconnecting theme of Nature’s necessary balance in golf and golf architecture for a whole variety of reasons, not the least of which was its ultimate psychological affect on the golfer—even if it might have been perhaps somewhat subliminal. Of course the other side of the coin of Behr’s architectural philosophy of supreme “naturalism” in architecture had to do with the structural integrity of architecture. His belief was that if architects completely understood the “forces of Nature” they could better understand how to both make man-made architecture more naturally appearing and also make it last longer as it would be less vulnerable to natural forces.

Regarding Macdonald/Raynor one needs to ask how much did they understand that comprehensive philosophy of “naturalism” in architecture or how much did they ultimately care about it? Looking at their on-going “engineered” style one really does need to ask that question.

But of course the ultimate question is does an attempt at supreme naturalism in architecture matter at all either back then or in the future, and if so why? Was Behr right to hope for a return to supreme naturalism in golf architecture through improved machinery and technology or ultimately was he wrong for some reason? Ultimately, does it really matter to the golfer even if subliminally?

TommyN, did offer an interesting quote from C.B Macdonald on this subject and in this vein;

“One will always see however that it is the creation of man and not the creation of Nature, for it has, as most holes on this course have, the technical design of an architect rather than the inimitable design of nature." -C.B. MacDonald on The Lido

What was Macdonald saying by that quotation? Do you suppose he believed that the obviousness of the technical design of an architect was only how far architecture of that time had gotten or do you suppose he was implying that was as far as it ever would need to go?

To me, although he said that about 90 years ago I believe this is still a very fundamental question.

In the end if an architect could somehow almost seamlessly blend man-made architecture and nature (even if the look of it and the structural integrity of it) together would that be the ideal or does it not really matter?

[A_Clay_Man]

I 'd bet the answer to tep's questions are more dependant on the individual project. Which would follow the prinicple that "Golf is a big place and there's room it it for everyone".

Lawsonia Links is clearly manufactured but Wild Horse is not. Both are superior designs from opposite ends of the timeline, yet both work very well and have very little in common. Lawsonias intimidation factor is higher because of the manufacturing while Wild Horse's naturalness and textures causes it's own worries in the mind of the golfer.

With those two as examples one could conclude that it doesn't matter which style the golf takes on, as long as it enters the mind of the golfer, having a field day on the less confident while bringing the arrogant or over confident to their whimpering kness.

Could one conclude that greatness is then acheived when that intimidation factor is felt round after round after round over the same ground?

[TEPaul]

Adam:

Maybe the "Big World" theory of golf architecture is the way it was meant to be in the future afterall. I wonder what Max Behr would've said about the "Big World" theory of golf architecture.

On second thought maybe we know what he would've thought about the "Big World" theory of architecture---after all it was Max who wrote about "nursegirls" and "Mrs. Grundy bunkers"!