Why are most of us enamored with these places? They embody magical form, like secret gardens and the playgrounds of youthful fantasy. Some of us have, in a way, never grown up entirely, or at least been able to preserve this emotional attachment and converted it into some sort of adult pursuit - whether as designers, writers, or simply as golfers. In that sense, we are lucky to have never entirely lost the element of play - without which we'd all be nothing but corporate zombies or working in a factory.
Whenever I meet a golfer or someone who purports an interest in architecture (including a GCA poster) I make a judgment as to whether it seems they really love architecture and whether that element of play is still alive. If not, I avoid them. If I think it's there, then I warm to their interest and try to respond accordingly.
For me, golf courses have always been magical for their quality of light, the play of shadow on interesting landforms, for the escape they provided from my family growing up in NYC, for the refuge they afforded me and the ease with which I found myself spending an entire day there. I loved watching the sun break over the ground, watching the shadows give way to light, watching the elements change during the course of a day and how the rhythm afforded by the ground gave rise to different intensities of play, diverse characters, animals, plants, color and tones.