"You've asked that question a couple of times now. It does go to the heart of things. I've been thinking about it. It raises big, bigger and humongous questions."
Bob:
It probably does raise big, bigger or even humongous questions, but my sense is it shouldn't scare us to ask them.
The reason I say that is let's just say it's somewhat determined that he was wrong and did over-estimate man, the golfer, and his sensibilities when he wrote what he did way back then----does that mean man, the golfer, will never care or does it mean that for whatever reason he just accepts what he's given in a general sense?
Let's just say for the hell of it that the architectural philosophy that Behr laid out had really come to pass in a massive way. We don't really know what man, the golfer, would have felt about it do we, since it really never did come to pass.
This is a question which I believe will eventually end up at the age old question of whether golf architects, generally speaking, should be leaders or followers? It may even get down to the old question of what an artist creates art for!
Obviously, compared to other art forms, the art form of golf course architecture is substantially complicated in that vein since golf architecture is so interactive even if one does view it as an art form.
On the other hand, buildings are interactive too, and history seems to show that didn't much stop the creative artistic expressions and independence of building architects. The only real difference between building architecture as an art form and golf course architecture as an art form in an interactive sense is one cannot exactly go inside on a golf course's architecture.