[Garland Bayley]

...
So of the courses you and Garland listed, how many would have been viable projects in the 1950s, taking into account their local populations, affordability and demand for courses in that area?

What does the 1950s have to do with it? Your conjecture was that land near population centers was exhausted after the golden age. 2000 qualifies as after the golden age as well as 1950.

I think you need to drop the word theory from your subject line. Theories are developed from data and checked against data. Where is your data? What checking have you done against data? It appears to me that all you have is speculative conjecture.

You bring up the World 100, which of course includes all the great links of GB & I. These are all resorts, or at least not located near population centers. It seems to me that the World 100 shoots your speculative conjecture so full of holes it is not worth continuing on this thread.

[Michael Dugger]

I don't mean to be a dick here but hasn't most of this been well-known for decades?

I didn't know this theory was a great unanswered question....

Money....growth....development....when it is thriving so is golf course design.

[Scott Warren]

...
So of the courses you and Garland listed, how many would have been viable projects in the 1950s, taking into account their local populations, affordability and demand for courses in that area?

What does the 1950s have to do with it? Your conjecture was that land near population centers was exhausted after the golden age. 2000 qualifies as after the golden age as well as 1950.

The city I grew up in, Sydney, is growing rapidly. As a result, there have been numerous courses built in the past 20 years than would not have been viable before that. That's the point I am making. These courses are obviously in or near to cities now, but was that land viable for a course in the 50s? Because if it wasn't, you can't really say it was there to be used in the 50s. The examples you offered may well be, I'm simply trying to find out.

I think you need to drop the word theory from your subject line. Theories are developed from data and checked against data. Where is your data? What checking have you done against data? It appears to me that all you have is speculative conjecture.

I'm sorry it doesn't meet your criteria of a theory.

You bring up the World 100, which of course includes all the great links of GB & I. These are all resorts, or at least not located near population centers. It seems to me that the World 100 shoots your speculative conjecture so full of holes it is not worth continuing on this thread.

I'm going to need you to clarify this bit for me.

[Ian Andrew]

Scott,

I enjoyed your theory quite a bit - and this is one of my favourite threads in recent times. Thanks.

Two contributions that I thought should be looked at again were:

1. Dan King's point about new tools - and the process of learning how to use them properly.
2. Doak's point about the dominate architects dictating style - and the point that all were Modernists

There's a good opinion piece in all this.

Here's something I wrote a while back that goes along with this discussion:

The very nature of golf design was about to be changed forever when architects like Robert Trent Jones began to build courses utilizing large amounts of earthmoving equipment.  Initially, this was done to speed up construction but it soon removed the limits on what could be accomplished. Jones seized this opportunity and began to move away from adapting ideas to suit the site, and began the era of adapting sites to suit ideas. His style and philosophy were quickly embraced by other architects of the era ushering in Modern Architecture.

The architects that followed Jones shaped and “improved” their raw course sites and in turn took control over how a player played the course. The more the site was manipulated, the more the playing experience became about executing a predetermined set of shots.  No longer was it player against nature -- it had become player versus the architect.  With this trend came new responsibilities.  Since it was the designer who was defining the shots, the designer tended to remove any element of chance so that he wouldn’t be blamed when a good shot produced a poor result. Ultimately, architecture during this period leaned toward underutilizing natural features and focusing on man-made features such as bunkers to create clarity and “fairness” in the design. Golf transformed from a game of discovery to a game of execution. This trend resulted in more name-recognition for golf architects, particularly the successful, prolific and popular ones, since the game was now played “against” their designs.  

[Niall C]

Ian

Thats a very fine piece. Do you think that perhaps that the modernists perhaps were handicaped in "adapting sites to suit there ideas" rather than using the natural contours of the ground. After all mother nature will always come up with infinitely more shapes than even the most imaginative architect. After a while when the imagination runs out its back to basics by working with the land and letting it inspire you. Or am I just over simplifying ?

Niall

[Peter Pallotta]

Ian - thanks.

You wrote: "[he] began to move away from adapting ideas to suit the site, and began the era of adapting sites to suit ideas."

And I think an argument could be made that, it was at exactly this moment that the ideas themselves were devalued. 

Maybe it's only when you have to adapt ideas to a site that the ideas themselves are (and are deemed) most important, and when they most need to be crystal clear. 

I find that when someone can do anything they want, they usually end up doing the same thing over and over again.

Peter

[James Boon]

Interesting discussion Scott which has raised some interesting points,

My theory is that the depression knocked out all the small quantity course builders and left only bigger operators in business.
My theory predicts that the great recession we are going through will leave the likes of Fazio, Jones, and Nicklaus in business after it is over.

Interesting theory Bayley, and Tom Doak references this sort of thing as happening after the Second World War,

In the 1950's and 1960's there were only two or three big-name architects you could go to if you wanted to create a great course, so the business evolved as they decided it should.  One of them, Trent Jones, was into efficiency and mass production on a worldwide scale; the other, Dick Wilson, took the opposite tack and was very site-oriented, but was limited to a handful of jobs per year as a result.  And both were more or less modernists.

Bayley's point about the big boys doing well after the recession is interesting though. I can see how things panned out after the Second World War, and I love Rich's theory about the Seabees, but I wonder if times are different now. There are books, articles, websites and discussion forums that let everyone know about the smaller guys out there. Not sure how big the likes of Tom Doak's or Coore and Crenshaw's companies are, but these are names that people seem to be wanting to be associated with, more than Nicklaus or Fazio or Woods for that matter. Sure there will always be people who just want to go with the big names, but today with modern technology and the spreading of knowledge (or not as the case may be on some forums  ) that comes with it, I can see the smaller guys shining through.

And back to one of Scott's queries, if the likes of Colt, Alister MacKenzie or Tom Doak would have found acclaim in the 40s or 50s? From what I have read MacKenzie was very good at the PR and getting himself known, or involved with other talented designers in the part of the world he was visiting, so if he was around in the 50s I suspect he could have teamed up with Trent Jones perhaps, but I'm saying that without knowing Jones' personality?

Cheers,

James

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