How long after u starting playing golf were u smitten by architecture?

[cary lichtenstein]

How did you know knew were smitten by arch?  About how many rounds did u play before this happened? Were you exposed  by someone else to arch or was this a self discovery? Do u remember your 1st recollection?

[Tim_Weiman]

Gary,

I was smitten by golf architecture before I ever played a single shot. First memory is when I was 2-3 years old. Golf course was the Leewood Golf Club in Eastchester, NY. It would be about 7-8 years before I bought my first golf architecture book: SI's Best 18 Holes in America published in 1966. I still love Dan Jenkin's description of Pine Valley:"every man who has ever waggled a wedge with serious intent knows about........".

[Melvyn Morrow]

Gary

I do not believe I was ever smitten by the Architecture. However I was aware from a young age of the importance of Navigating a golf course. The Natural and beauty evolved within my mind as the years passed.

The first course I ever knew was TOC, it was just a few yards from the bottom of my grandfather/father’s house behind Old Tom’s shop. I was aware of the Dunes due to my many adventures and incursions starting from The West Sands, After swimming in the sea  I would cross the road, pass the parked cars and venture up into the Dune complex dodging golfers in the process. Sometimes when alone I would sit atop of one of the Dunes observing the Eden Estuary and watch the golfers, some of them tacking like dinghies down the course, while others seem to quickly pass down the fairway. I suppose it was during this period that I stated to understand The Nature of the area and how natural the golf course looked.

TOC is a designers playground, it seems to fly in the face of many but it works, it works well and if played upon with less than modern equipment brings the very best out of the golfer. Simply it does what it is supposed to do, it challenges a golfer, even more so by the potential change of the weather from AM to PM. But then TOC was the course that has been at the centre of the golfing evolution and set many a famous man, be he home grown or a visitor upon his path to greatness.

Smitten, no but I do enjoy a challenging golf course that can push the player while allowing alternative options to the less skilled. The art of design seems to have been the last thing on many a Customers or Developers mind since the end of WW2, yet thanks God some have seen fit to remember the values and reason why the game became a worldwide sport.

But a bunker or lake complex does not make a golf course, nor do the scares of cart tracks improve the Natural or enhance Nature, but they are present in many a modern course much to the shame of the Customer/Owner IMHO.

I am most thankful to my father, his uncle and other members as well as friends of the family for their part in my golfing education which did encompass the natural beauty of a well-designed course.

Of course the eye of the beholder plays a great part in observing Nature and Natural but a good design is just that a good design and … great fun.

Melvyn

[Tom_Doak]

The second or third course I ever played was Harbour Town, when I was ten years old.  Charles Price's little booklet about how to play each hole got me interested in architecture.

[Cory Lewis]

I started playing when I was 9.  I became smitten with architecture the first time I played Pinehurst #2 when I was 12.  I immediately started reading and saving Links magazine, which at the time was featuring the best courses in the country like Pine Valley and Cypress.  I had never heard of those courses and started seeking out information on golf architecture.

[Jeff_Brauer]

By about the ninth hole of my first round ever (at Medinah no 2 course, age 12)  I was getting hungry and seemed lost in the woods.  When I climbed the ninth tee and saw the clubhouse behind the green, smelled the burgers from the grill, I figured the guy who had designed the course was a genius to think of getting it back to the clubhouse right then.

Seriously, I fell in love with golf courses from the very beginning, and the lost in the woods feeling had something to do with it.

[Dan Herrmann]

I played Pacific Dunes about 2 months after it opened.   I caught the bug right after that round. 

[Bill Gayne]

It took about twelve years and my first trip to Ireland to play links golf.

[Dick Kirkpatrick]

I built maybe 8 or 9 golf courses before I ever swung a club.
Robbie Robinson kept telling my brother and I that we should play and then we would understand what the stategies were, why he was placing the fairway bunkers where they were, and why the green would be angled to accept a shot from one side of the fairway better than the other side.
I still find it hard to believe how good some of those courses turned out, a tip of the hat to Robbie I guess.
After Hugh and I started playing, We both got real interested in architecture and I think our work got much better.

[Mac Plumart]

By my 3rd round of golf.

[Michael Barnett]

About 3 or 4 years after I started playing. I participated in an event at Forsgate - Banks Course and was completely blown away.  First experience on a Redan, Double Plateau, etc. and i was mesmerized by the difference between interesting architecture and bland golf.  From there I was completely hooked.