Separation: Why?

[Mark Bourgeois]

JES

Funny you should mention links. One thing I find interesting about links is how they achieve not necessarily separation but isolation.

When the wind is up, heads are down, plowing forward. Very little conversation is attempted, for the voice barely carries.

It is amazing to see groups of golfers, members all and playing friendly rounds, passing each other on adjacent fairways with nary a hello. Get on with it, mate...

It is odd and, building on the earlier post, questlike in feeling. For you are surrounded by man, yet alone.

Mark

[Peter Zarlengo]

I get the point where trees were planted to "landscape" the course. And in looking at trees as symbols in the landscape: trees=history (due to the lenght of time it takes to get an overstory tree mature) and history=prestige/money. Thus many clubs view thier thick, overgrown forests as symbols of stability and wealth.

What about the type of partial seperation through mounding, artificial or natural, on one or both sides of the fairway. This style has persisted for decades. Is the main function of this mounding to give the golfer the experience of having a "hole all to itself"?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Peter Z,

No question about it, containment mounding has been used to seperate holes.

When used to buffer the course from the outside world, it's application is useful.

It's cheap to plant a tree, it's very expensive to create seperation mounds, and I don't know of ONE EXISTING golf club that introduced substantive seperation mounding to their golf course after it opened.

As an acoustical or visual barrier at the perimeter, containment mounds serve a valuable purpose, as do trees, but, an infinitesimal number of golf courses added containment mounds to seperate holes, while an enormous number of clubs added them to seperate and frame holes and featues.

[Jeff Doerr]

Beautification of America (plant a tree for the day programs) were all a big part of it.  At one course we are restoring, members back in the 50's and 60's on one special day each year were allowed to plant a tree almost anywhere they wanted on the golf course (except on the greens)    Amazing but true.  

Mark, that is an awesome quote!  
Maybe it is time to do the opposite. Members could throw their names in and X number per year get to designate a sacred cow/tree to be cut down...