If the design principles/strategic ideas of the Golden Age architects weren't that subtle or complicated, why didn't more modern day architects pick up on them ?
Patrick - I think that for about the first 40 years after WWII, most architects in America simply
ignored those design principles/strategic ideas. And the architects (and developers) who did the ignoring did it for pretty much the same reason people always ignore principles and ideas, i.e. money. There wasn't any money to be made in honouring those fundamental strategies. You could probably list better than I could all the reasons why there wasn't any money to be made in replicating the golden age style and ethos, but here are some guesses: changing demographics (i.e. a wider range of players, talent-wise, and a lot more of them, numbers-wise); changing economic models (i.e. away from primarily the small, exclusive private club model); changing technologies (i.e. both in construction methods and maintenances practices, eg gang mowers); and changing tastes, especially after the emergence of television. The kinds of GB&I courses that Sean (rightly) praises clearly manifested the kinds of strategies that are being discussed on this thread -- clearly manifested them, that is, for anyone with eyes to see, and with the
willingness to see. But for a big chunk of the latter half of the 20th century in America, most architects and developers
didn't want to see. They didn't want to replicate/recreate/honour those GB&I courses. So that now, in nostalgia and regret, we look back at a drawing of a decent hole by W&S and unduly praise it as a paragon of strategic subtlety. Again, I think it's a simple and wonderful hole. But complex in design it's not. And that's not intended to be a criticism.
Peter