It has taken me a little time to reply to this thread, but I believe it will be worth it.
A few pages from the chapter entitled "The Ideal Golf Course" (p 44-50) from Wethered & Simpson's "The Architectural Side of Golf" (1929) - a counter point to the position of Pat Ward-Thomas.
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OCCASIONALLY a discussion is raised to decide which are the best eighteen holes in the world, or preferably in the British Isles. But a further question is whether anyone after going to the fatigue of composing the ideal course would care to play over it. For ourselves, we have gone to the trouble of considering over thirty alternatives, and have no hesitation whatever in saying that purely for practical purposes it would possess few attractions.
Such discussions however have a certain value, since they make an appeal to the imagination. It is an amusing method of expressing what we can never hope to realise, quite apart from the question whether it would be desirable to do so. And in addition it is an excellent test of criticism upon a subject on which there can never be an agreement between any two students of the game. We do not yearn for ideal courses to play on; we discuss them merely as agreeable arguments on which pleasantly to differ. Whenever the attempt has been made to carry out the construction of this so-called "ideal course" by making a series of facsimiles of superlative holes at considerable expense, the experiment, although interesting in a way, has rarely proved anything but a cold and lifeless failure.
The reason is not far to seek. The point was emphasised by Ruskin many years ago that the demand for perfection was invariably a "sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art." As for Architecture (in his day such a thing as the minor art of golf architecture was almost unthinkable), he even went as far as to lay down the seeming paradox that "the work of man cannot be good unless it is imperfect." The application of this principle does not imply that all imperfect golf courses are necessarily admirable; but it does suggest that in the absence, fortunately, of any existing course that confounds all criticism, some imperfect courses are amongst the most interesting and amusing to play over.
The fact is that we could never live up to the ideal. We should feel too uncomfortable, too much out of our natural element of imperfection. Imagine, for instance, a repetition of eighteen holes, all of the supreme excellence of the most exceptional hole we can think of at the moment - the Seventeenth at St. Andrews. The strain of it all! Eighteen tee shots of the same intensity or eighteen approaches which courted disaster in the same dire form! It would to a certainty break our hearts and leave us nervous wrecks or golf lunatics in real earnest. In fact, it would be no ideal course for us, however much theoretically we might admire it. We must be allowed to ease the tension at occasional intervals for our sanity, so that our brains may cool and our hearts expand with renewed life and freedom. We must count on at the very least one indifferent hole in a round, to be quite on the safe side, we will allow an additional half of indifference as well, for the sake of extra relief. The course we think of should be noble in spite of its defects, as perfection throughout would be a monument of chilly precision incapable of inspiring us or of stimulating our jaded imagination. Is it not true to say that where we cannot criticise we experience a difficulty in feeling enthusiastic? Yet it must be insisted upon that every hole in the list we offer, shall be a hole of reputation; and happily there are holes of reputation to be found in abundance that are so far not above suspicion that they will relieve us from the burden of supreme subtlety and provide a welcome excuse for a light-hearted effort to which we may look forward.
The first thought that occurs is whether there is any existing course in the British Isles that as nearly as possible approaches the ideal - as near the ideal, in fact, as "makes no matter" - because this would partly help to solve the problem. If we were invited to make one definite choice, much as we should prefer to be excused the invitation, we should without hesitation give our vote for Saunton in North Devon. The level of excellence there may be, if anything, a shade monotonous, a little lacking in the quality of variety which is perhaps the greatest essential of all. Perhaps too we feel that there is not quite that need for a continual mental agility that may be the quality we look for most in a great course; and, to be even more hypercritical, we should regard the beauty of the floral display about the links at Saunton as almost too luxurious to ensure that classic severity which is usually associated with the rigour of the game.
Fifteen years ago, without, a second thought, we should have said that St. Andrews was our ideal. Today the position is different; the run of the ball due to the closer quality of the turf reduces much of the subtlety of the folds short of the green and permits of the mashie-niblick being brought into play, with a shot which at an earlier period in history would have earned its just reward.
But whatever may be said of St. Andrews as it is at the present day, it still remains a model of architecture at its best, a model never again likely to repeat itself. The form and structure will always remain an example of strategic golf which has successfully resisted every attempt towards "improvement," rash experiments which would have ruined what has been handed down to us as a precious legacy.
Another preliminary question which cannot be ignored is: What course do we like best? In other words, if we were condemned for the rest of our days to play on one course only - in this country - which would it be?
Out of an experience that covers fully 600 courses, including, as we believe, every really fine course in the world, we should, without hesitation, say that our choice fell on Woking. And if it were necessary to give our reason - an invidious task in any case - it might be apposite to quote the observation of a learned Master, of the Rolls in the Court of Appeal: " I entirely agree with the decision of the learned judge in the court below, but I find myself in disagreement with all the reasons he advanced for arriving at his decision." In the same attitude of mind we should prefer to say merely "Woking" and leave the matter at that; because, to be entirely candid, there is not in our opinion a single hole on that course which could be termed of really outstanding merit, although the Second, a fine short hole of deceptive distance, comes very near to that standard of excellence. This is only another way of confessing that great golfing holes play in reality a minor part in our enjoyment. And there is another reason for our choice, which is given in Green Memories, that Woking is still "a place where the most interesting of golf can be played in decency and comfort, without crowding, without time-sheets, without Bogey." But that may be an opinion that might not commend itself to the more strictly competitive lovers of the game.
Having prepared our way by making what may be regarded as some slightly damaging admissions, it is permissible to say that the course one likes best and an ideal course can, and must be, two entirely separate things. But in the larger consideration an attempt at definition is necessary. What do we actually mean by the ideal course?
One essential we would insist on is that it should afford at least as much opportunity for mental agility as it does for physical capacity, although we are prepared to admit that this is not a view likely to commend itself to the Tiger whose physical capacity is in the ascendant.
Another essential is good visibility. In certain cases we regard blind shots as admissible; still on the whole we prefer a course each hole of which presents a problem which needs to be thought out with thoroughness in the matter of attack; and blindness is injurious to the right presentation of such problems. All the pros and cons of this or that method of arriving at a solution must, under the conditions of this enquiry, be carefully weighed in the balance.
It must be, in fact, a course that from start to finish stimulates thought and provides mental excitement. For this reason, if for no other, it must be a course not too exacting for everyday purposes. The type of hole that is seen at a glance makes little appeal. We demand the occasion when it becomes necessary to enquire into the meaning and possibly the indirect intention of the designer in order to discover whether he has a purpose he is trying to conceal. If he has, then it is our business to discover the solution.
Also, to be true to our principles, we should insist that the course as a whole should derive from the strategic rather than from the penal school of golf architecture.
And since, again, a course with any pretensions to greatness must have its imperfections, care must be taken to introduce the attractive discord. We therefore intend to include one thoroughly amusing but bad hole for the sake of variety and a brief interval of mental tranquility - the Seventeenth at Prestwick - and at least another that is open to criticism, the Sixteenth at Westward Ho! which has the obvious demerits of being a semi-blind one-shotter of under 150 yards in length.
There is, too, the need for a complete and searching test of every kind of golfing shot. We would never limit the course to holes by the sea merely because the two-shotters were played on seaside turf. On the other hand we would definitely refuse to include any two-shotters where the soil happened to be of a clay formation.
Aesthetic considerations, naturally, cannot be allowed to have any weight. If we admitted them, we might get a course we vastly preferred to play on; but the sacrifices that would have to be made would be too serious for our purpose. It is not a question of mere liking - that is our point - but of exercising a rigid discrimination as to the greatest golfing attributes.
The pity of it all is that when we have succeeded in amusing ourselves in building up the ideal course, picking and choosing wonderful holes here and there - when we have, as we fancy, completed something rather wonderful, a string of pearls we admire individually, against which nothing can be said except collectively - we shall probably find ourselves saying with feelings amounting almost to repugnance "Heaven forbid that we should be asked to play here! The strain of it would be intolerable." This is equivalent to saying that anything approaching a uniform degree of excellence is the one thing in golf which must be avoided at all cost. It smacks of standardisation, which is abhorrent when it is applied to a game with the fine versatility of golf.
To prove that a choice has not been lightly arrived at, we can point to thirty-two alternatives before arriving at a final decision, and that after regretfully having to discard such attractions as the Eighteenth at Machrihanish, the Eleventh on the new course at Walton Heath, the Sixth at Wentworth, the Fifteenth at Skegness, the Second and Fourteenth at Saunton, the Fifth at Liphook, the Sixth at Cruden Bay, and the Fourth at Dornoch. It is difficult to resist the temptation, to which critics are prone to yield, of basing a judgement on what we personally have a liking for or for some type of hole which brings out and is best suited for a favourite shot. It has therefore been necessary to exercise a restraint and a spirit of intolerance that can at times be painful to maintain; but as a result of many conflicting claims we submit an ideal British course to our readers, for what it may be felt to be worth…