I often wonder if the personal philosophy of architecture can change over time.
For the longtime contributors here, I wonder if their opinion of architecture has changed since the inception of this site. It would be interesting to see what was the seminal moment or course that shaped the foundation of their architectural beliefs.
For the newer contributors, I wonder if this board has influenced the way you see architecture. Is there a specific course you once considered great, only to revisit it and experience a let down? Has the development of your GCA education somehow diminished or enhanced the actual playing experience for you? It gets me to wondering if the eureka moment for me was on the course, or in front of a keyboard.
Is there a specific post or theory that you have read which had a profound affect on the way you look at GCA?
WH
Mine has changed pretty signficantly, and I can tell you the exact post that made me reflect, as well as the event that has had the greatest impact.
I stumbled into the area of golf course architecture after a progression of reading about different areas of the game - instruction, history, biographies, etc. I read Geoff Shackelford's
The Captain and
The Golden Age... and then stumbled across this site.
After reading
The Captain, I was fascinated with multiple fairways, avenues to the green, etc., and all of their apparent advantages. When I played around with designing holes at that time for various contests, I leaned heavily upon this.
One day, back in maybe 2001 or so, Tom Doak posted something about cross bunkers and alternate fairways that forever altered my outlook. He said (paraphrasing) that cross bunkers don't usually add as much interest as you'd think and alternate fairways rarely work as well as hoped because the choices are too clear cut.
Thinking long and hard about that helped to develop my own ideas on what I call subtle or grayscale architecture.
As for the event, it was actually multiple events, a combination of attending the US Am at Oakmont in 2003 and watching the 2003 Open and 2004 US Open on the tube.
So I guess mine's changed a good bit. JakaB will call me a suckup and a lemming for allowing the thoughts of others to help formulate my thoughts, but who really cares what he thinks?