The life cycle of golf architecture styles

[Norbert P]

 Remember Dick, stealing from one is plagiarism; stealing from two is research.

[Neal_Meagher]

So Slag,

What you are saying is that, as golf has transcended from a sport into a game, some modern courses have resorted to being nothing more than banal presentations to the golfer's eye.  

This, potentially, owing to the ever-shortening attention span of the television, MTV generation and X-box crowd needing to neither philosophize or rationalize the golfing grounds upon which they are trodding.

I believe that this, while maybe a stretch, could be a defining element of where some, not all, but some golf design is heading.  More of a television rather than a book approach to architecture.  Why reveal the essence of a course in layers when you can do it all at once?

[Norbert P]

Neal, perceptively extrapolated and eloquently surmised.  (I didn't know I said all that but I agree with what you said I said.)

 My main point of 'choosing' those quotes was to express my belief of the importance of the times and timelessness into the values of art.  Also, if I may paraphrase Bill Coore loosely, "... 'time' is the most important asset in designing and discovering a golf course."

 I think that in these changing times, divorced from the agricultural age by the industrial age, the technological age, and now, what I would call the speculative age, we don't have the same mystical connection to the land as our forebearers.  Nature has become merely a concept of idealism and not necessity.  It has become a personal moral decision whether we care about the Earth. At one time, it was our mother, our brother, our nemesis.  Now, we've fooled ourselves into believing that knowledge is wisdom.
 
 

[RJ_Daley]

Reading Neal and Slagbert philosophising is like good Irish crack, cybercrack, but nurishing.  As in a meal in every pint and a pint in every post.  Carry on gents, you are doing just fine!  

One point strikes me Norby,

I think that in these changing times, divorced from the agricultural age by the industrial age, the technological age, and now, what I would call the speculative age, we don't have the same mystical connection to the land as our forebearers.

As it pertains to GCA and techniques and methods that get one step removed from the craftsmanship of the masters doing it intimately upon the land, is that I'd substitute "digital age" for your "speculative age".  Digital everything, GCS mapping, lazar guided blades, CADD, everything is a techno-digital amalgamation of technique and efficiency, but takes us away from the hours and hours laying it out on the ground getting it just right.

[Norbert P]

 Dick, I should not have glossed over The Information Age.  It has given us all the data to analyze and critique but, as you say, it takes us away from the physicality of knowledge into  symbolic neural processing.  We've had generations gathering info from radio and generations huddled around the television. Now, we've had actual interactive data through the internet to the masses for about 10 years (me about 4).  I think the internet is better than tv and sitcoms but I miss the grooving encapsulation of reading books.  Where attention span was never even considered and time was irrelevant.  Absorbtion went with comprehension.  I'm now compulsively poisoned by the quick answers and perpetual variable opinions that I find interesting but also scatter my thought processes.    

  Three cheers for Martin Luther King Jr.!


   

[TEPaul]

Neal said:

"So Slag,
What you are saying is that, as golf has transcended from a sport into a game,....."

Neal:

It's not possible for golf to transcend from a sport into a game. Whenever golf makes a shift of that sort it must be considered to be descending not transcending!  

Whenever the "game mind" of man begins to take control only standardized and boring things can result! When it devolves completely to the bottom of the abyss it resembles the architecturally formulaic mind of Pat!  

[Neal_Meagher]

Tom,

Of course, it is not possible for golf to transcend from a sport into a game, literally.  While I can understand the misunderstanding, what I was most specifically trying to get at is this ever-increasing way that so many "people who play golf", who are not to be confused with golfers, don't get the sport component of golf.

What I meant was that it seems to me that the folks who scream about courses, or parts of courses, not being fair, etc. are not understanding that golf began as a sport of a sort full of obstacles, both big and small and kept and unkempt.  

So, I will stand by the fact that golf is a sport and a game depending upon whom you are talking to.  I humbly believe, though, that we still have a long way to go (in the USA, Japan and other countries) before we can re-instill the sporting, and therefore, truly beguiling and risk-taking temptations that do make golf so special, but just not as much as I think it used to be.  Long, long, long ago.