Jay:
This is a good thread subject but other than just asking where some of those old "Eighteen Stakes on a Sunday Afternoon" type courses are to play or look at, I'd like to see this accompanied by a discussion of just what really was going on in golf and architecture that far back.
For instance, I'm very happy to hear that Chris Clouser is looking into perhaps doing a book on the very early era we sometimes refer to as "Victorian" architecture or even "Dark Age" architecture.
Obviously an evolved off-shoot of that could be that time and those architects, like Bendelow and Findlay who truly could be considered the Pied Pipers of golf in America. Obviously they were trying to popularize the game in America first and not necessarily trying to build the greatest courses around.
It was also a simple matter of time and economics.
We should probably not look at some of those early architects in inland England or in America as not talented. We should probably understand better the evolution of this entire art form. At various points along the way certain things, certain requirements, certain expectations just hadn't arrived yet.
Sometimes when we think of art forms and their histories we think of them in terms of the many many centuries they've been evolving.
We should remember that the art form of golf course architecture is to date just a little more than 150 years old. Perhaps in the broad scheme of things it's still in its infancy---eg perhaps its early teenager years.
