The other day I was reading ‘The Links’ by Robert Hunter, and this passage stuck with me:
‘Croquet and ping-pong require some skill, knocking golf-balls about on the lawn, or playing them over patches of shrubbery, arouse a mild interest, but how few of the many bewitched by golf would long be attracted to sports so tame. Is it not a fact that the more difficult our golf courses become the more numerous and intense are the devotees? Certainly no other game has infatuated so many. No other mistress has drawn to herself so many lovers - amateurs yearning to achieve some degree of mastery over this crafty, subtle, and evasive creature. Like that other lover on the Grecian Vase, of who Keats sings, so is the golfer, standing eternally on the threshold of possession, ‘winning near the goal’.’
After some consideration, I tend to agree with Mr. Hunter. I know we have covered this a few times with the pandering thread, but in my mind, growing the game isn’t about dumbing down course design. Maybe it isn’t about finishing the round with the same golf ball you started. How else do you learn to avoid certain misses? How else do you really improve? How else do you infatuate the next generation of players?
Is it really about playability - making the path so easy for the high-handicap that he is happy but ultimately bored with his pars and bogeys? Even when he does make a birdie, will he feel victorious, or merely contented?
We celebrate holes like the 5th at Pine Valley, which are pretty much do or die. Is it not in continual dying that we appreciate the doing when it happens? And there is when the infatuation begins and takes a deep hold of players?
Final question: Is golf architecture moving towards playability (read pandering) because that is what society demands today? Instant gratification, which ultimately, will be replaced once something more exciting comes along? Or do we genuinely believe this is the best golf courses we can build?