Odd passages of Dr. Mac

[Sean_A]

While re-reading The Spirit of St. Andrews, I came across an odd paragraph (among many in the book) on page 183.

"In my lectures of twenty years ado I pointed out that on most golf courses there are far too many bunkers, and that the only object of bunkers is to make golf courses more interesting, or, in other words, more popular.  Since then I am more convinced than ever that no bunker should be constructed unless one is convinced that it will make the course more pleasurable."

Does anybody else get the impression that Dr. Mac is trying to have it all?  He seems to suggest that popular and interesting are much of a muchness.  I can hang with pleasurable and interesting being interchangeable, but popular as well?  

Has anybody else come across confusing lines penned by the canny Scot?

Ciao

Sean

[ForkaB]

Sean

If you read enough of MacK you will find he is a mass of contradictions.  Compare, for example his 13 principles of GCA vs. the realities of the course (TOC) that he holds up as the paragon (as well as many of his tracks). The guy designed some fabulous golf, but observation, logic, analysis and self-deprecation were not amongst his fortes.

[Tony_Muldoon]

Generally I found the book to be a big disapointment.  Often on here it's held up as one of the must reads, but I would accept that only becuse of who wrote it and what he will be remembered for, i.e. his real work.  The book itself is just not that interesting, nor particularly well written.  It has often been said that until recently there just haven't been that many books on GCA, so in a small field his book was bound to get attention

His prime motive it seems to me is to produce a massive sales brochure for his own skills. Time and again we are told employ a recognised architect and MacKenzie (sorry the architect) will save you money by doing the job properly.

He is also as early as 1920 claiming to have worked on hundreds of courses - the advertising standards agency wouldn't have allowed it today.

Interestingly I will shortly post on a club that employed him a year later (1921) to rebuild the bunkers on a few of their holes.

[T_MacWood]

"Since then I am more convinced than ever that no bunker should be constructed unless one is convinced that it will make the course more pleasurable."

Sean
If a golf course is both interesting and pleasurable, wouldn't it logically also be popular? At least popular with the golfers who play it on a regular basis. MacKenzie was a canny Englishman.

Tony
Which MacKenzie book are you referring to?

I would agree with you that MacKenzie's books are largely advertising statements, but I don't find them any less interesting because of it. IMO 'The Spirit of St. Andrews' is excellent. There is a lot of info packed in that book, especially about his experiences and observations, which I personally find very interesting.

Rich
You are right, self deprication was not his strength (you see it on occasion). Observation, analysis and logic, I would disagree. IMO he was one of the best golf course critics/analysts of his era...my guess is he saw more first class golf courses around the world (and gave his impressions) than just about anyone at the time. From the Adelaide and Melbourne to Ceylon to Riviera and Lakeside to Banff to NGLA, Timber Point and Lido to PVGC to Chiberta to all the great courses in the UK.

The most bizarre quote I've heard attributed to MacKenzie was the one recently found by Chris Clouser, where he stated Twin Hills in Oklahoma was superior to NGLA, Lido and GCGC. MacKenzie was a huge fan of the NGLA.

[TEPaul]

Sean:

I think we have to take these men from that era in golf architecture in the context of the era in which they lived and worked in golf architecture and wrote about it----not so much in the context of our own era. We need to remember how young golf architecture was at that time.

We, on this website at least, tend to put everything they said under a large microscope and over-analyze the hell out of their every word, in my opinion.

I doubt they expected that or were ready for it in what they said and wrote. We now see all these history books about them using their words from back then, and that tends to induce over-analysis, in my opinion.

Back then most of them were trying to perfect golf architecture for the first time---they were trying to educate golfers who were completely new to many of the things about the game and golf architecture. Some of them like early Ross were trying their best to popularize the game itself in America and they were succeeding.

I think Mackenzie's use of the word 'popular' is very interesting and probably means just that---to make popular--to popularize the game.

As to bunkers and using them judiciously, we can find from the writing of many of those early ground breaking architects of that era---eg Hunter, Thomas, Mackenzie, Bob Jones, Tillinghast that bunkering more judiciously was actually an economy measure. All of them were interested in saving money on the construction and maintenance of most golf architecture---at least in theory. The reasons are obvious---they could see that if they didn't do that some courses would not likely survive.

Read the foreward to Hunter's book--or some of what others said about it then. Read Thomas's section in his book on half-strokes for putting and how that could impact economical bunkering. Hunter's book was considered to be the first excellent primer on how those interested in building golf courses could go about doing it logically and economically. Same with what Flynn wrote for the Green Section, and Behr's writing, and Mackenzie's and even that early Ross work that landed in a drawer for decades. They were trying to educate and popularize a new sport in America that was catching on like wild-fire. As Bob Crosby observed, so many of those books were written in a fairly contained window of time in the 1920s.  

[BCrosby]

It is remarkable that virtually all the classic books on gca were written in the five year period from '25 to '30.

(I don't think MacK's 1920 book titled "Golf Architecture" ranks with his Spirit of StA or other books by Hunter, Thomas, MacD, Simpson and others written during that period. It wasn't just a Golden Age for design. It was a Golden Age for the literature of the game generally. Think also of Keeler, Rice and Darwin. Their best stuff was written during those years.)

But as for the MacK passage, almost everything MacK wrote was in the context of an argument. He was a combative guy. Threaded through almost every sentence  - directly or indirectly - was an attack on penal design in favor of his understanding of strategic design. He usually chose his language very carefully. Certainly he did later, in The Spirit of StA.

I read the passage above as MacK contrasting his understanding of the strategic function of bunkers with the popular babble spouted then (and now) that the function of bunkers is to penalize bad shots.

Bob    

[ForkaB]

As Bob Crosby observed, so many of those books were written in a fairly contained window of time in the 1920s.  

WOW, Tom!

You have perfected your speed posting so much that you can anticipate even erudite men such as Bob Crosby.  Well done, buckaroo!

As for the content of your post, I don't think any of the literary work from the golden age will stand the test of time, except as historical artefacts.  I reread both MacKennzie and MacDonald recently, and they are both extremely self-centered and uninspiring on the written page.  Think Madison Avenue rather than F. Scott Fitzgerald......  Very much unlike the quality of their work on the the ground.  Of the old guys, only Hunter could really write well, and he writes even better than he does for golf when he is discussing his primary interest--Socialism.

Cheers

Rich

[T_MacWood]

"If the posters on this site are any measure, then popular design and interesting design are two very different animals."

Sean
Please explain. I can't speak for all the others, but 'interesting' golf courses are popular with most people I know.  

Bob
I agree with you. One of the main themes throughout MacKenzie's writing is that golf should be pleasurable, and in contrast, need not be overly penal. The job of the golf architect is to create interest and pleasure for the largest number of golfers (of all classes) possible.

Tony
I do not believe MacKenzie claimed he had worked on hundreds of courses as early is 1920. I believe he wrote he'd advised 100 courses by 1920.

[T_MacWood]

'The Spirit of St. Andrews' is more or less a collection of articles MacKenzie published in different magazines. There are also parts of his earlier book 'Golf Archicture' inserted into it. Considering it was a Depression era project, I suspect it was a rough draft and never found its way to an editor.

As a fan of MacKenzie and the history of golf architecture (especially that period) I find the book fascinating, and I can overlook some of its literary short comings. It is full of great information, and entertaining as well.

Editorial short comings not withstanding, I still do not see evidence of Sean's original point regarding odd passages.

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

I'd disagree with you, which should come as no surprise.

In their era, the written word was still the most powerful force in media.  No TV, DVD's Tapes, Hi-tech movies, etc., etc..  Newspapers and books were highly influencial in getting the message out.

I think they were trying to establish their importance, their architectural legacy and their place in history vis a vis their writings.

I think they KNEW they would be scrutinized, that's one of the reasons they wrote,  that's what they were hoping for, attention and recognition.

I think what we fail to realize is that being a good architect doesn't make one objective about their work, nor does it make them accomplished authors.

Actions speak louder than words.
I think we have to examine what they produced rather than what they espoused.

When it comes to self examination on their part, I think we have to view that with enlightened suspicion.

Despite all they say, which can be in the context of an ideal environment, we have to look to their work to see what they really believed, and what they actually created and produced, despite their pronouncements in support of or in contradiction of their writings.

The "proof", the validation of their theories, designs and construction remains in the "tasting", their work, and not in their writings.

This is why you have to exercise caution when reading what they had to say.

If you didn't, you'd be led to believe that Seminole was FLAT  

[BCrosby]

It is silly to hold books about golf architecture to the literary standards you learned in college. Even Bernard Darwin, the best of the lot, is not remotely as good a writer as any of the literary lions of his time. None of MacK, Thomas, Hunter or Jones will be remembered for their writing style. So let's move on.

What they will be remembered for is what they had to say about golf course architecture. You may not like they way they organized their paragraphs, you may think they indulged in sloppy sentence structure, but they had interesting, informative things to say about gca. In fact, I would argue, the most interesting and informative things ever said about gca. As an extra bonus, they were also the first to say it.

My little world is not so rarified that I can't bear an awkward sentence or two in a book about golf design. Whether you find them painful to slog through or not, the books published in the late '20's are about as good as it gets if you want a foundation in the subject.

And the high point for all that writing (however low you think that high point is in relation to Joyce, Faulkner, Lawrence, Proust, Waugh, Green, Fitzgerald  et al.) was in the late '20's.

Bob

[T_MacWood]

"Posters often throw up photos of various well known architects with the intention of ridiculing their work.  Then the lamentations start about how these courses could be deemed good and why do people pay money to play them?"

Huh? I don't see the connection. What do these photo sesions have to do with MacKenzie's theories on golf architecture?

After reading the entire book you choke on MacKenzie's use of the word 'popular' in the context of making golf courses more interesting and exciting? This realtionship of interesting and exciting with popular is odd?

I take it you haven't read many books on golf architecture. It may not be a masterpiece of literature, but it is a hell of book on golf architect, packed with excellent thoughts on the art and fascinating info on the artisit...and the game as well.

The book flows reasonably well in my opinion, I would recommend it to anyone interested in golf architecture and the history of golf architecture...literary critics shouldn't bother.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

I myself find that MacKenzie's books are entertaining, informative on the subject and worth the effort for any golf architecture afficianado.

Rich, for you to say that they won't stand the test of time, go look and see what originals of these books go for in price as well as the fact you wouldn't even be discussing them if they hadn't stood that very test. These books are usually the most valued of that age, both by the collector and the student of the Game.

100 years from now, they'll be worth even more. Both literary and literally!  

Sean,
Your post is puzzling. I don't find any of Mac's passages odd. Maybe a bit complex, but not odd.

Pat,
TE Paul wrong? ? ? ?  

[ForkaB]

Tommy

Don't confuse intrinsic value with collectability.  Feathery balls now go for thousands each, but would you want to play with one (on the golf course, of course.......)?

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Yes Rich, Absolutely! If I had the where-with-all (Is that a word? It's 3:00am PST, and I'm tired!) I would be playing at the very least with a floater and hickories, if not earlier.

I still have a soft spot in my heart when I hear the story of how Max Behr still outdrove everyone on a regular basis here in SoCal with the Floater, while the rest of them were all playing the contemporary wound ball! I'm sure if Max could have played a Featherie he would have loved to. But why do that when he lived in the Golden Age when everything in Golf was GREAT. (Tony the Tiger Great)

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Sean, It is really late, but I find this is the only time I canreally get things done without my aunt coming in and constantly asking crossword questions or wanting to feed the cat medicine, etc. etc. etc.

Actually, I've been on the wrong end of some pretty bad migrane headaches the last two days and I had a to get a lot of stuff done!

[T_MacWood]

Sean
Are you comparing what MacKenzie refers to as a popular feature (bunker) in your quote to the universal popularity of a golf course?

You seem to be hung up on semantics. There is 'popular' and there is 'popular'.

You should read it as saying "penal hazards (and golf courses) are not appealing to all levels of golfers...hazards should be interesting (strategic/requiring thought/presenting options) and exciting (aesthetically pleasing and/or intimidating). Hazards that are thought provoking and aesthetically pleasing are appealing to most golfers (pleasurable/popular). See Cypress Point and Royal Melbourne."

Rich
Based on the work of Tom Doak I'd say MacKenzie's ideas and theories have stood up pretty well.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Sean,
You also wouldn't be wrong in saying that MacKenzie spoke in a sort of way that could be equated to parables--somehow finding the way to get his message across in the form of a humorous story of a Yorkshire lad....yada, yada, yada.... Or something like that.

To me, SOSA is a phenominal book, even though much of it seems to be the same rehash of writing, only somewhat updated from Golf Architecture. My feeling is that he carried these books by the dozens, handing them out to whomever he thought was financially capable of building a course or simply, someone that may have proped him on the subject and didn't fall asleep after the rambling!

The verse you mention on the bunkers is an easy one, well at least for me. It's basically the calling for the end of eye candy bunkers that have little regard to the hole itself and figure into its strategy, as well as added time and expense in maintenance.

Charles Ambrose once wrote in British Golf Illustrated (and I have a copy of it around here but I'm not going to look for it right now) but it was hilighting I think it was the 2nd hole at Sunningdale-Old and how Max Behr felt that the same strategy, maybe even more definitive strategy could be mapped out with less bunkers. Ambrose drew both men's versions of the hole--the actual Colt hole and the Behr theory--precisely and it makes a lot of the same sense you see in the Mac statement. I think it's partially calling for an end to penal golf and stating the obvious--the heroic or pleasurable side of things. The type of golf where you laugh at yourself for being fooled deceptively rather then get tired of being in a bunker all round, hole after hole.

[TEPaul]

Sean:

While anyone can find some vaguely contradictory or confusing passages in some of the old architectural writing I certainly wouldn't say the one you cited is.

Have you ever noticed that MacKenzie, Ross, Tillinghast, Behr, Hunter, Thomas, Flynn and a number of others who wrote were generally critical of the effects of green committees and green chairmen but never the general golfer? Obviously they felt they should design to create interest for the general golfer and if they did that successfully the game would be enjoyable to him and what's enjoyable to golfers makes the game and the courses they play popular. These men said this was necessary as those are the people who pay the bills and if they aren't satisfied the profession they all chose, golf course architecture, wouldn't be particularly enduring and obviously they didn't want that.

They were against the vagaries for solely personal and individual reasons of some of the things green committees and particularly green chairmen did but they were never against doing things that interested the general golfer. Interest and popularity pretty much go hand in hand, or as we say, one follows the other.

It's rare to find a good architect who was not concerned about what the general golfer felt about golf and their courses. But there were some examples of those who really didn't care and actually said so. Two would be WIlliam Fownes and George Crump. Their primary concern with architecture was simply to test the good player as well as could be done. Of course it's significant that both spent all their time on only one golf course. And what golf courses they turned out to be.

It's probably never a good idea to try to generalize too much about this business of golf architecture.  

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Sean,
Don't forget, a lot of this leads to the TE Paul School of Big World of Golf Design. A very big world.

You see, Mac was openly critical in other publications of several architects of the day, although he respected their work, he was critical and more or less pushed it off as a, "It's not the way I would do it...." type of quote. Fowler wasn't spared and either was J.H. Taylor to name a few. (Mac I feel didn't like the Alpinization at Mid-Surrey)  It was just his school of thinking. On a funnier side is the open criticisms and mutual dislike of Gene Sarazen and The Good Doctor. MacKenzie went so far as to actually call him a Vandal! MacKenzie was also openly critical of Captain George Thomas and his notions par 3 mashie courses! Undoubtedly the result of thinking that he was being called in to save the day at Riviera and Fox Hills which were both being constructed at the same time. I'm sure as soon as he saw #10 at Riv, it became a thing of instant envy, if not jealousy! The closest thing he could pick on was the Mashie Course which was right next to #10!

(Tom MacWood, please do correct me on this if I'm wrong.)

When I first saw that BGI article by Ambrose, I sort of scratched my head. Why on earth would one architect such as Max Behr openly criticize the work of one of the biggest architects of the day? (H.S. Colt) It was then I realized that it wasn't so much the criticism of the style, it was just the offering of a different take--the different ideas on how to find the strategy, which with less bunkers, offered more differing lines to the hole, or at least provided the information with less bunkering, came less cost, less penal golf--which at the time was a concern in all golf architecture as well as less cost of maintenance.

Ambrose closed the article with a sort of, Well such is the demeanor of our American friend and great golf architect in his own right...Max Behr which translated to me that Behr was dissecting the architecture and that the great theories of the Great Britain were translating themselves over in the New World. It wasn't so much a criticism but a way of doing things to accomplish certain strategies that embraced the school of thinking. Certainly the intelligence of Max Behr and Chalres Ambrose would support this.

[TEPaul]

TommyN:

There's a lot of interesting stuff in that last post of yours. A lot of it shows where those guys were at that time. Political correctness was an unknown thing and would've been scoffed at if it had been.

Many of those guys were looking at the same things from different perspectives.

Look at J. H. Taylor and his basic architectural invention of "alpinization". He was very proud of it and he should've been in a certain sense. It was a fascinating architectural concept in progressive penalty that got away from the mind-bendingly boring penalty of the old cross hazard feature of the old school of penal architecture that in fact wasn't much different from the horse world of equestrianism. That old school of architectural penality didn't effect basically good players at all and took the interest out of it for the rest. Over here some well known courses got into Taylor's progressive penalty idea of "alpinization" (Mid-surry mounding) until rather quickly realizing it looked like shit just in an age when "naturalism" in architecture was beginning to burgeon.

No wonder Behr or Tillinghast criticized the guy. Despite the heretofore tutelage of some of the Americans by the European contingent those over here like Tillinghast and Behr et all realized they could do better than their brethern abroad. Then they got into what they called "modern" architecture or "scientific" architecture, and Tillinghast even said the war years in Europe but not over here gave the Americans a real head-start. That's how fast styles and philosophies were moving and ebbing and flowing. I guess to them the possiblilities must have seemed endless particularly when back then they did not suffer under endless perceptions amongst golfers of what should be and shouldn't be like we do today. Golf in America was still so young then! The possibilities must have seemed unlimited. Half-strokes for putts!?! Can you imagine some architect seriously trying to propose something like that today like Thomas did back then---brilliantly, I might add.  

[Tommy_Naccarato]

I think the affect half strokes for putts would have had on the game would have probably sent it through the roof competitively. I really do.

If you think about it, it put such a greater demand on both putting and iron play. It may have even speeded up the game in match play say if a guy hits it on the green in regulation whereas his opponent missed the green and then it was inevitable that he would get down in two. He's not going to beat a 2½ or 3. His opponent would have to then three putt and he would have to get up and down just to save the hole. He would ultimately just pick-up and not let the guy make his putt, which for some is a very competitive way of getting into a opponents mind

Compelling stuff, and I think we should all play it sometime just for the fun of it!

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Also, the Vandalism that Dr. MacKenzie spoke of was that Sarazen wanted to see the actual diameter of the cup enlarged to like double the size. Thomas I believe too wanted to see something of the sort too, for the weekend player.

Ironically, American Golf I believe tried this in the early 80's, in hopes of making the game play faster on it's aquired public courses. It went over like a helium-filled ballon.