Mark, there is a tremendous amount to learn from TOC, as there always has been. Whether or not anyone will actually learn anything is another matter entirely.

Some things, off the top of my head:

- It's not necessary to have 25 yard wide fairways with penal rough to challenge even the world's best;

- Having bunkers that are actually penal makes golf more interesting;

- It's possible for a course to play short - ie just about everyone averaged over 300 yards - and still provide a challenge;

There's a lot more out there, should anyone care to look.

Bottom line: FIRM conditions with undefined holes and interesting green complexes makes for a helluva lot more entertaining golf than the modern standard of green green green with thick rough and defined strategies.

Mark,
This is a great topic.

A hole that continues to perplex me in thought, study and even when I have played it is #13--the Hole O' The Cross-In. Personally, I think it is the toughest mentally, of the natural 2-shotters on the course (The Road hole as you know was originally a three shotter)

The character of the course really starts to get nasty at that point, almost in a "I have entertained you this far, now you have to really work" sort of way.  

I have never seen any architect really reflect on this hole and its strengths. In fact, I think they would be more apt to point out the weaknesses, which frankly, I don't think it has any. It is just one tough hole that plays so fair, yet, provides so much illusion that it has you thinking of areas of safety and respite when they are actually false comforts. Its a scrapper of a golf hole if the wind is behind you and the elementary school bully if the wind is in your face.

I also think this is the place were I first fully realized the Behrian term, Line of Charm and that was because I was fooled by it when I played the hole for the very first time. In fact, from the safe driving are on the right which more or less is blind all the way to the green--you think--but your so taken aback by the line you see to what amounts to the pin of the 5th. I was fooled, tricked, dooped, played the patsy--into thinking that this was the obviousline to the hole. As anyone who has played there knows, it isn't!

Cheers

Tommy - if i am not mistaken, the 13th is discussed by Kyle Phillips in the book "Scottish Golf Links - A Photographers Journey" by Ian Macfarlane Lowe, where KP provides text to accompany the photos.

It is an excellent book if you don't have it. If I had a better memory I would tell you what he said - instead I will go home this evening and re-read it!

Mark:

Your initial post asks that age old question of TOC which is----for what's considered by all to be the prototype of all golf course architecture, why is it that so much about it was never really imitated and today almost all seem to say it couldn't be?

The answer to that question has always been wrapped in a mystery, that's inside an enigma and probably sprinkled with a riddle!

To me the answer is really pretty fundamentally simple and it's contained in the fact that so much of what is TOC simply preceded the entire art and the entire existence of golf course architecture (BTW, my own definition of "architecture" only encompasses what IS man-made. That may be entirely different from the definition of architecture by others but at least mine separates into distinct categories what is natural that's ONLY USED for golf and that which is actually MADE for golf).

But still, why wouldn't golf architects recreate what is naturally occuring about TOC in it's entirety? That question has been asked and asked again by golf architects going all the way back to the turn of the 20th century.

Even the likes of Mackenzie, and Hunter and particularly Max Behr who wrote on this subject and on this fascinating question never really came to a concrete answer.

I should amend that---I firmly believe that Max Behr did come to a concrete and completely logical answer to the age-old question of why TOC was never more completely imitated in golf architecture.

A thumbnail of his answer was essentially in the creation and playing of his "games" man just inherently and intuitively does not do well by trying to make some logical order out of that which is not ordered. The natural randomness of the ground and all about it of TOC is naturally random or natural randomness and particularly without any understandable order at all on which to play a game.

Inherently and intuitively man needs to create order in the structure of his games because that allows him to so much better isolate and exhibit his physical skill, particularly against a human opponent.

This is the answer why TOC was never more imitated even if it's always been known as the "prototype" of all golf course architecture. The key is it preceded man-made architecture and was just something that man started playing across long ago before he could or even thought to actually do something to it himself in a real architectural sense.

And when the time finally came when man could do something about the playing field of golf, when he could begin to make and define things he obviously didn't notice that the essence of a playing field like TOC was never some defined and logical structure but was the earth's randomness, something that was inherently counter-intuitive to the creation and playing of his "games".

Behr called golf architecture's attempts to imbue the game with some undertandable logic as well as definition, the "game mind of man".

Some of the quotations of Behr explain this phenomenon to a tee.

Thanks for your learned replies.  I used the word imitate and probably that is wrong. I'm not particularly thinking of imitating particular holes but more of lifting concepts such as the 12th green or being brave enough to leave an entirely flat canvas such as that on the 9th.  

I think par is becoming irrelevant at many places, but at TOC in particular.  That was a fascinating championship - not necessarily exciting - and in the end the score was immaterial.  What mattered was whether the best equipped golfer could maintain his lead, which he did, or whether any of the nearly-as-well-equipped challengers could mount their challenge, which they did not.  In that respect the course won hands down - even the much maligned 18th.

I sat at the 13th for some time on Friday.  One of the best approach shots I witnessed was that of Tom Watson who drove down the right of the fairway and had a completely blind approach.  Luke Donald and (later) Tiger Woods both flirted with the right-hand greenside bunker but nobody else got into it while I was there.  The bigger problem seemed to be missing slightly left of the flag when the ball appeared (from the stand) to turn uphill, further left and run away for ever onto the 5th green.  Those who tried to take the fairway bunkers out of play by driving onto the 6th fairway did not seem to have an advantage, often running out of fairway and into rough, wispy or deeper.  Is that the effect of the new tee?

If you are an architect you are commissioned to construct 18 greens which must give a variety of pin positions with (not written in the rules of golf) certain expectations about relative flatness around the pin positions, distances from edges of greens, slopes, Stimps and all the rest.  TOC greens were Stimping at something very modest yet nobody ever tamed them.  Could you get away with constructing a green as convoluted as the 12th?  Would you be hounded out and banned from designing a golf course thereafter?  Or did the committee select unfair pin positions?

Mark,
The article Tom and I wrote for Golf Tips Mag in July covers this exact topic!  Sorry I can't post it.  We can learn a lot from this Open and I wish people who manage golf courses would learn from it.  George sums up much of it quite well.
Mark

Bill, well said except Hells bunker would have been very much in play if the wind had been from the opposite direction which is the normal summer prevailing one. Then the right tee shot becomes much more dangerous as well. I look forward to hearing about your trip.

Bill -- Absolutely.

And I assume you grant Shivas, me and the one or two other heretics on this subject the same right.

If you are an architect you are commissioned to construct 18 greens which must give a variety of pin positions with (not written in the rules of golf) certain expectations about relative flatness around the pin positions, distances from edges of greens, slopes, Stimps and all the rest.  TOC greens were Stimping at something very modest yet nobody ever tamed them.  Could you get away with constructing a green as convoluted as the 12th?  Would you be hounded out and banned from designing a golf course thereafter?  Or did the committee select unfair pin positions?

Mark- Some of the best new modern designs have pushed the envelope. Black Mesa, The Rawls, Pinon Hills are just a few with wildly undulating greens.

 I even seen a few Fazio greens which have pushed passed the envelope.

The eternal lessons of St. Andrews are many and many more are still to be learned.  Those which I am reminded of after this last Open are as follows:

Features regardless of their nature, penal or beneficial, should always have an impact greater than their actual size.  Examples - bunkers should be the bottom of the funnel that is fed by outer sides that are in play and appear benign.  Mounds should deflect at angles greater than their own width.

O.B. is a feature not a condition.  The fact that 18 is drivable and oft times downwind makes the O.B. behind it a strategic feature which punishes the avarice of a player thus controlling length.  Just as a hazard behind a firm green that slopes away from the player towards a hazard increases the sensitivity of the shot.

Unbridled power, greed, can, and should, be punished.  The Gordon Geckos of golf do not get a free pass do to the singleness of their approach to the game.

Angles work.  Angles created by bunkers and other penal items, gorse, are superior to angles created by mow and / or seeding lines. Those angles are intrinsically related to how they interact with the features of the goal, the green site, its pin placements, and the amount of distance that can be placed between its uses.

Openness is its own temptation and bait.  The fact that the Old Course seems so open and vast only serves to tempt the player into more errors of aggression.  Causing a player to restrain his own game in the face of such temptation is the third leg of the golfing triangle, often the least tested.

The line of charm should change relative to weather and pin location.  Most courses are single faceted and devoid of multiple directional strategy and linear distance strategy.  This ever changing relationship is the sign of true greatness.

The Old Course.  A good reminder.

Cheers!

JT

I agree with George.  Bunkers should be penal.  That's the biggest flaw of most courses in the U.S.  Better players sometimes even aim for bunkers.  I can guarantee that no player aimed for the bunkers last week.

I'm pretty sure I heard Vijay asking his ball to get in the bunker on the ROAD HOLE!  Given how easy they made it, it was probably preferable to him that it go there rather than hit hard on the green and end up somewhere much worse.

The changes to that bunker really went wrong.  By making it larger, more players played even shorter to avoid it, but when they went in it it was quite an easy play for just about every one I saw attempting it.

Nice to be reminded of this. Have we learned anything more following a very different Open Championship last year? Once again, a front-runner was not caught.