The Palimpsest

[Eric Pevoto]

pal•imp•sest   n.
1.      A manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible.
2.      An object, place, or area that reflects its history: “Spaniards in the sixteenth century... saw an ocean moving south... through a palimpsest of bayous and distributary streams in forested paludal basins” (John McPhee).
[Latin palimps stum, from Greek palimps ston, neuter of palimps stos, scraped again  : palin, again; see kwel-1 in Indo-European Roots + ps n, to scrape.]

With all the talk on here about restoration and the evolution of golf courses, particularly Geoff Shackelford’s thread on NGLA, it got me wondering again about the golf course viewed as a palimpsest.  This idea has been hanging around my noggin for a while, but I’ve never really had the cajones to post it.    

I’m certainly no expert on urban planning and such, but during a loooong and varied college career I was lucky enough to take a couple of urban studies and architecture classes.  In one, the professor presented the analogy of a streetscape viewed as a palimpsest.  Buildings are constructed, parts or entire buildings are demolished and new structures are built in their place.  The street evolves into a mix of uses and styles and the different patina of each building adds texture and “flavor” to the scene.  You might call it character. (I guess if it turns out right!)    

In your opinion, does this idea have any merit with regard to the evolution of a golf course?  

[Craig_Rokke]

Eric-
The word for the day is definitely "palimpsest"! I learn something every time I log onto GCA! As far as your
question goes, I think the answer is probably "yes", but it's a little difficult for me to expand on an answer beyond that.
I think that complimentary, and overlapping mixes of styles from different eras can potentially add character, and interest. But I think if overdone, it can also be detrimental to the overall flavor. Tearing down a feature (or building)
and replacing it with something new and improved might also leave one longing for the original.

[Rich Goodale (Guest)]

Good insight, Eric

Golf course are and always have been, in fact, like palimpsests.  The land was the papyrus and the design efforts of the various owners of the land the periodic "writings".  Many great courses, including Shinnecock, Dornoch, Merion, TOC, Pinehurst, etc. evolved this way.  It was only until some people began to read into one or more of the most recent "writings" on some courses some sort of esthetetic (form) value over and above the playability (function) of the design that the act of "writing over" the current design became an issue.

People seem to want to "preserve" a few particular "palimpsests" as they are, or they imagine they were, based often on crumbling sepia drawings from some point in time when none of us were alive and/or cognizant of eithe the form or function of a proper golf course.

And yet, the writings on those palimpsests (i.e. "Golden Age" designs) are just recordings of what was, and was appropriate, for those bygone days.  They have historical value (just as the inventories of Upper Nile farmers written on real palimpsests have similar value).  Do they have functional value these day?

Sure they do.  To people like the 99.9% of the people on this site who can only carry their drives up to 270-280 yards or so, and are happy to get within 25 feet from a sidehill lie 120 yards from the pin.

However, we are like clever college students who can read "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and enjoy it, and can even wade into "Finnegan's Wake" without drowning, even if we only comprehend bits and pieces of the work, from time to time.  On the other hand, the experts at this sport in which we dabble, the touring pros, slide through "A Portrait...." (i..e Dornoch, Cypress, etc.  on a normal "members" day) like a knife through butter, and they tackle "Finnegan..." (i.e. Shinnecock, Muirfield, etc. set up for a proper examination) with a knowledge and skill and art that we wil never really understand.

I think it is selfish to try to tell the owners of ANGC or NGLA or Dornoch or TOC or wherever that they cannot write over their "palimpsest" just because some small band of esthetes, who have very little practical idea as to the higher challenges which might be created from such a revision, want to preserve the field of play for their own limited abilities and/or as an historic artefact.  Of course, they, you?, have that right.

Cheers

Rich

[RJ_Daley]

As I see it, the palimpsest golf course is one that due to forces of nature and need to reconstruct, or intentional tweaking of design have been altered, yet one can see the original features and intentions of the original designer.  Many Ross courses are such.  But heck, I never heard that word before, and never saw it in any book discussion golf course architecture and design.  Not even Dan Proctor uses that word!

But, I am curious about Rich's comments that appear contradictory to me.  First he talks about the 99.9% of the average skill golfer (I am substituting that for "people on this site") who can't carry their drives 240 (substituting for his bloated statistic of 270-280) and are happy to get 25ft from a pin from 120yards.  Now I can certainly agree that is the vast majority of golfers whether they are club member players or the common public course variety.  THOSE ARE THE ONES WHO PLAY THE GAME EVERYDAY!  

Then Rich talks about the very few that play the courses like artists the other .1% of the time.  Yet, he calls the vast majority selfish to want to preserve the fields of play, even though those storied fields of play service virtually everyone else but the competitors at the highest level.  How can the vast majority who have traditioonally dervied so much universal pleasure from playing the palimpsest courses, only changed slightly by nature and TLC maintenance, as depicted in their earlier design forms be selfish?  Isn't it the very few infintisimal numbers who want reconstructed venure changes that erase the features that provided that enjoyment as a time proven experience of golf play over decades the ones that are selfish, if not arrogant to want to change that.

Let the artist/viruoso players have their specially made courses for their competitions, those inhabitants of the pantheon golf skills.  Let the vast majority have the fields they have loved and enjoyed as they were, and were intended to be enjoyed.

[Jim_Kennedy]

......"just because some small band of esthetes, who have very little practical idea as to the higher challenges which might be created from such a revision, want to preserve the field of play for their own limited abilities and/or as an historic artifact".....  

Rich,
You are kidding, aren't you?

[Rich Goodale (Guest)]

Dick

What I was trying to say with the 99.9% bit was that I believe that it is the right of the owner of any golf course who has the ambition to maintain it as a challenge for the very best players of the game to alter that course towards that objective.  And yes, Dick, it does indeed include those of us who can carry the ball 270-280 from time to time.........

......and, yes, Jim, I was saying, in effect that it is selfish (maybe even arrogant) for those of us who play golf courses with about as much relative skill and comprehension as a clever High School senior has in reading "Finnegan's Wake" to try to dictate to owners of great pieces of land who have the ambition to challenge the very best of golfers what they should do with the "palimpsest" over which one or more architects (regardless of how revered those architects might be) happened to pass his or her hand many years ago.....

Perhaps you would both prefer that the World Series be played in a restored Polo Grounds with a softball?

Rich

PS--please mentally insert random smiley faces in my post to refelct the fact that we are talking about a game, and not brain surgery.

[THuckaby2]

OK, NOW I get it.

And that makes really good sense, Rich.  I had a hard time deciphering the first post, but now that you've put this in terms those of us far removed from high school literature can understand, this is indeed very wise.

Do keep stretching the envelope - thanks!  The brain needs exercise just as much as the muscles, doesn't it?  

TH

[Eric Pevoto]

Oops...I guess the post came across a little pedantic It just strikes me that a golf course is dynamic both in function and aesthetics, more like a city than say a painting.  Yet some of the evolutions could be compared to the Guggenheim sitting on whatever street its on in NYC.  On the other hand a place like TOC or NGLA or Cypress has perhaps evolved more organically.  

[Steve Wilson]

I was under the impression this discussion group had concluded that the top .1 % (insert as many zeroes as are au courant to the right of the decimal point) of players dispensed with the strategic options using the same nuanced approach that Alexander used on the Gordian knot, and that it was left to us scrapers and sclaffers to savor the architectural subtleties

[Eric Pevoto]

You're killing me  By the way, not bad for a guy from WV!

[Steve Wilson]

Eric,
I didn't realize I typed with such an evident accent

[Rich Goodale (Guest)]

Steve

You are possibly right (although it is mind boggling that this group could ever come to ANY conclusion!).  However, my point did not dispute your premise (i.e. that we hackers can appreciate the subtelties of the old masters better than can the pros), but rather made a correlative point, i.e. that we cannot appreciate the subtelties of the courses that the pros play and will play in the future.  On TV it was very hard for me to comprehend the 300 yard carry drive that Tiger hit to a tablecloth sized piece of fairway at Bethpage.  I am sure that, standing on that tee, I would not at all have the imagination to even visulaize that shot.

My main point was to argue that the great canvases/"palimpsests" on which many of our greatest golf venues are drawn could be diminished if they were restricted to their current routings and dimensions, rather than allowing them to be redesigned to challenge current capabilities and preconceptions.

Kinda like what old CB tried to do, perhaps, so many years ago out past the potato fields in Eastern LI?

[Dan Kelly]

What a magnificent thread this is on the way to being.

Hell, it's magnificent already!

Maybe we should stop it right here. Preserve it -- just as it is, lest someone (like, say, some damned newspaperman out in the Midwest) come along and ruin it.

No. Let's not get in the way of its evolution, just because it's started off so well. Let's keep the good stuff -- and allow it to grow and blossom, to deepen its textures.

After all, it's a work in progress. How could it be otherwise?

Let's be VERY protective of this thread's virtues -- but not overprotective, to the point where we choke off any possibility of its continued improvement.

Seriously (not that I haven't been serious to this point -- because I have been!): It's the possibility of finding such a thread -- of finding an entirely new vocabulary for thinking about golf courses (thanks, Eric, for "palimpsest" [a word that's always sounded vaguely dirty to me, not that that matters!] as a golf-course metaphor), and of finding a heretofore-unimagined schema for categorizing golf courses (thanks, Rich, for your Joycean distinctions) -- that brought me to gca.com in the first place, and that bring me back whenever I start to imagine that I've read it all before.

All of that -- plus, just for example, a vagrant vision of pouring hot soup into Patrick Mucci's pants!

[Bob_Huntley]

Rich:

What is interesting to me, is the adulation given by some in our forum, to some of the quirkiest features in golfing architecture. Have a Fazio or Rees Jones build a dog-leg par three, as at Cruden Bay and they would be crucified.

I must confess of the books you mentioned, I did spend most of my time on the "naughty bits."

Bob

[Rich Goodale (Guest)]

Bob

Imagine my huge disappointment when, after wading though 784 pages of brilliant wordplay I got to the last bit of "Ulysses" and all that was there was a run of the mill Celtic female orgasm!  Kind of like playing the 18th at Cypress Point..........

Rich

PS--C&C/Bakst have a dog leg par 3 at Friar's Head with what looks like an enormous female breast sticking up out of the ground and guarding the left 1/2 of the green.  It reminds you that there are more important things in life than golf.....

Rich

[Dan Kelly]

Rich --

Name two.  

Or maybe three.

[Rich Goodale (Guest)]

Breasts.  That's two.  Modesty forbids me from mentioning number 3.

Dr. Katz

Do you offer group discounts?

[Steve Wilson]

Eric,
I didn't realize I typed with such an evident accent

[Steve Wilson]

Eric,
I didn't realize I typed with such an evident accent

[Steve Wilson]

So is this a record for a delayed triple post.  I have no idea what happened.  

This thread is ALIVE!

[Rick Shefchik]

Rich --

I think we need to draw a distinction between a professional playing field and a golf club. I wouldn't begin to argue that the owner of a golf course -- or club -- does not have the right to do any damn thing he pleases to his course -- and you're certainly right that the sport must continue to challenge its best players.

The Polo Grounds analogy is where I got snagged, however. Nobody played baseball in the Polo Grounds except the New York Giants and their professional opponents. It would have been different if they just played the World Series there every fall, and for the rest of the year it was either a private baseball club for amateur members, or open to the public for any and all to try swinging for Chinese homeruns down the rightfield line (no offense intended to the Chinese, but that's what they were called). But baseball doesn't need public play to keep its stadiums open.

I think many of our go-rounds on this site tend to hinge on pro vs. amateur/public usage of golf courses. Tim Finchem's interests are not mine. If he wants to build professional playing fields for his highly skilled athletes, let him make them as long and difficult as he chooses. I wouldn't join a club like that, wouldn't enjoy playing it and wouldn't want my own course to emulate it. And yet that's what the courses we play are doing -- adapting to the skills of the pros, who almost never play our courses.