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How much do you know about William Watson and his style? He had a very long design career...how would you characterize his style...what are some of his most representative designs in your opinion?"
Tom MacWood:
I know very little about Willie Watson, other than what I've read about him and a few photos of holes and features he did probably in the teens and 1920s. I'd characterize his style, later style anyway, as naturistic, and that photo you produced of a hole at Minikahda in 1927 represents what I know of Willie Watson's style of architecture (you attributed the bunkering look in that hole to Ross, and I doubt it was--I feel it looks more like the bunker style of Watson). That style to me is fairly akin to some of the architectural styles of California in the 1920s, particularly the late 20s when a certain style (Monterrey style or whatever one wants to call it) may have taken golf architecture, in a sense, to it's highest levels ever in the context of a "look".
I know that Hunter recruited Watson to California to design Berkley C.C. I have real respect for Robert Hunter and if Willie Watson was part of his group and genre I have real respect for Watson's style of architecture too.
But the point here is---if Willie Watson actually did DESIGN (as you say he did and I don't necessarily yet believe) that super geometric hole at the Annandale G.C around 1900 that shows up in the photo in the first page of the introduction to GeoffShac's book "The Golden Age of Design" I really would like to know not just that he did it but also why he designed a style (highly geometrically artifical looking) like that even if it was very early.
I'm not just interested that some architects got from A to Z in their careers, I'm also interested in finding both how and why!