When 8 inches of snow blankets a golf course, like it does here today, all you see are the shapes and contours of the land.
When you can't see fairways or greens or hazards -- in other words, when the golf course as Field of Play is covered in snow -- the utility and quality of those golfing features lose all meaning.
The eye doesn’t get caught up in the beauty and/or naturalness of the golfing features or by what the architect has created there; the golfer can’t focus on what he’s usually there to see and interact with, a field of play.
What's left to see – the only thing left to see -- is the way the site truly fits in (or doesn’t) with the surrounding countryside.
The whole countryside is similarly blanketed, and if it has a gentle slope/cant, or if it is just gently rolling (say, farmland) without any abrupt mounding, then you can see right away whether or not the golf course flows in the same way and embraces and manifests those same qualities.
I stopped this morning by the side of the road, next to a modest golf course designed by a golf architect (now deceased) who I think designed dozens of similarly modest golf courses.
But suddenly, its charm and simplicity became clearer to me than ever, looking at it now covered in snow.
The golf course fit the land.
Golf courses built in areas that never get covered in snow never get this same kind of ‘test’. I wonder if that has even a little to do with how they are shaped.
Peter