TOC: How is it possible...

[Matt_Cohn]

...that 500 years after the creation of the first golf course, nobody has managed to build one that is, by consensus, better?

When else in human history has the first attempt at anything proven to be the best of all time? Or, when else have so many subsequent attempts failed to match the quality of the original?

It's basically a fact of life the the first version of anything is just a starting point. You study it, you make changes, and almost invariably, you improve on it in future versions.

Yet in over 30,000 attempts, perhaps ten courses - maybe none - have been built that surpass the quality of the very first golf course ever created. One could make a strong argument that we haven't improved on it at all.

This doesn't make sense, and it goes against the logic of human progress that applies to, literally, almost everything else in the world.

How did that happen? How is it even possible?

[Rich Goodale]

Matt

For the same reasons that many people think that Centre Court Wimbledon is the finest tennis court in the world.  It's all about the context, not the content.

Rich

[Jon Wiggett]

Maybe it is to do with the vanity of man that he always thinks he can improve on what nature has provided. There are very few GCAs capable of producing that quality of course. At the moment perhaps Coore and Doak. If either were able to find the place and the backers to produce a course like TOC they would be crucified by almost the whole golfing community. TOC doesn't look spectacular, has blind shots and bunkers galore and has so many other features that would be criticised else where but it is still an outstanding course although no one can really put their finger on why.
Matt, look at ANGC which was one the finest examples of one of the games finest GCAs. It has been destroyed!
This gives me an idea for a new thread
 

[Brad Klein]

Actually, I think you have the question wrong. It took 350 years years for them to get it right -- not until the 1840s was the current double-green arrangement developed. The real question is how did the critics, media, R&A captains, town real estate developers and golf pros tolerate all of those centuries of constant tinkering and renovation?

[Tim Bert]

Actually, I think you have the question wrong. It took 350 years years for them to get it right -- not until the 1840s was the current double-green arrangement developed. The real question is how did the critics, media, R&A captains, town real estate developers and golf pros tolerate all of those centuries of constant tinkering and renovation?

So, what you're saying is that in another 250+ years, Augusta just might nail it with all their changes...

[Brad Klein]

Tim,

that would be the most optimistic intepretation.

By the way, The Old Course occasionally goofs. Witness all of those back tees that sit on or beyond the actually golf course. or the awful softening of Hell and Road Hole bunkers, which have rendered them lifeless of late.

[Tom_Doak]

I can't remember whether the quote is by MacKenzie or someone else, along the lines of:

"It was built before anyone had any preconceived notions of golf course architecture, and since then it has been considered too sacred to be touched."

No they can't help tinkering around with the tees, but they haven't moved a bunker in quite some time now.

[Peter Pallotta]

Matt,

I wonder if it's not a little bit like Dante's "Divine Comedy”, which is considered the towering achievement of Italian literature in part because it INVENTED Italian literature (e.g. the northern Italian dialect in which it was written became the basis for the standardized Italian we read today). Similarly:

The Old Course is incomparable in part because it INVENTED the language and concepts by which all comparisons must be made.

Does that make sense?

Peter    

[Tim Leahy]

"It was built before anyone had any preconceived notions of golf course architecture, and since then it has been considered too sacred to be touched."

With all the replica courses being built now a days, I am surprised that no one has attempted to recreate the Old Course in its entirety somewhere here in the States. Are golf course designs copywrited so to speak?

[Doug Siebert]

There are a limited number of places where you could build it, unless someone wants to truck in enough sand to fill the whole place 10 or 20 feet deep.  Then you have to have very accurate topology measurements accurate to within a few inches and figure out a way to shape things just right -- bulldozers won't do you much good!  I really doubt that's technologically possible today even with a Shadow Creek sized budget, and would take years since you'd have to account for settling that would necessitate going back and fixing things here and there and then it'd take a while to get the proper grass established and mature.

I mean, anyone with money and the desire can copy the basic layout of the holes, put the bunkers in the right places, recreate gross features like the Valley of Sin and Swilken Burn.  But if you don't reproduce the small features that you would never notice until you encountered them and the firmness of the ground just right, it won't be TOC any more than having an imitation of a Picasso on your wall is the same as having the real thing.  Its those little things that make TOC TOC, not what you can see in a Strokesaver.

Even if TOC was copyrighted, it wouldn't be valid any longer unless it was under that special copyright that keeps the King James bible and certain other works under official copyright of the Crown for perpetuity in the UK.  And even then the US doesn't recognize that, thus the King James is public domain in the US.