Patrick:

It seems to me that it would be very difficult to entrust a great piece of property to an amateur architect when there are so many qualified experts to choose.   I know that if I owned a great site as an entrepeneur, I would want proven talent that would bring more likelihood of financial success. Was there such a pool of qualified people when Crump and Fowne did their work?  I think it is still possible that some rich person with a personal interest in GCA could purchase a property and do it themselves but only if they were relatively unconcerned about the bottom line.  I bet the name of the designer substantially changes the financial outlook of a high end public or private course.  I bet some of the architects have some data on what a famous name like C&C/Doak/Nicklaus/Fazio/Dye adds to the bottom-line.  Like most things, it probably boils down mostly to $$.

Just my opinion and I am sure you will disagree,

Bart  ND '89

David Tepper started a thread last spring about a course called Trinitas that was done by an amateur architect.  The thread has a link to an article (PDF) on the person who built the course and what sort of help he got along the way.

Patrick:

The cost of failure these days is quite a bit higher, so most of the good candidates to build a course like that are going to get professional help.  A hundred years ago, someone like Ken Bakst or Vinny Giles might have tried to build a course themselves, but I think they showed some wisdom in hiring good architects and then participating from start to finish.

If an amateur DID try to create a course from scratch, as Archie can attest, he's not really going to build it himself anyway ... he's going to get a lot of "help" from contractors and shapers who think they know more about it than he does.

Part of the reason may stem from the current culture's desire for instant gratification.  Common among the early amateur architects was time to devote to the initial project and time to improve the product over many years.  While technical changes in balls and implements induced a lot of changes to golf courses in the classic era, Merion was not "completed" for more than 20 years.  Crump was working daily on Pine Valley for some 6+ years before he died and work still remained.  Macdonald worked on NGLA for many years to improve it.  I wish someone would identify the earliest iteration of NGLA and demonstrate the differences between that and the finished product.  Who among today's rich is willing to devote themselves to a project that may take years to get right?

As with most of life, gall is all. Those who might pursue designing a course and have the resources to follow through on it, just do not have the stones or the patience or the time to take the ultimate leap. It is much safer to hire an established architect and attach his name to the project.

Interestingly, in Cincinnati, a fellow named Jeff Osterfeld designed and built a golf course called Stonelick Hills. It is a pretty ambitious project...an upscale, semi-private club. Osterfeld made his money through a chain of sandwich shops and was a member at Coldstream (a pretty good Dick Wilson design). It is a pretty good effort (unfortunately, he felt the need to put an island green behind the clubhouse on the par 5 ninth and the finishing hole, another par 5, is not very good). It is not perfect but he did a decent job and, if you read his mission statement on his website, his heart is in the right place (this is not a housing development, he wants to continue to improve the course over time). What did he have that others do not? The nerve to do it and the persistence to follow it through.

www.stonelickhills.com

Mark Parsinen appears to have been very hands on in the GCA of the 2 golf courses has developed (Granite Bay & Kingsbarns) and the one he is now developing (Castle Stuart). However, he has used a professional GCA on all 3 projects. Kyle Phillips was the GCA of record on the first two and Gil Hanse is the GCA at Castle Stuart.  

I know Parsinen is spending a lot of time at Castle Stuart and is out on the course daily with the construction crew when he is there.

"Is it ONLY the technical aspects that prevent their rise to prominence?
Is the inate talent out there?
Or does it only reside within the ranks of professionals?"


Patrick:

Of course the innate talent is out there unless one thinks those early amateur (sportsmen) architects such as Leeds, Fownes, Macdonald, Wilson, Crump, Thomas et al were some kind of historic anomaly.

One asked on here how many great courses amateur architects produced. I don't think that's the point at all, since most of them were not into high production, they were into very low production and a few basically had one course careers and that probably was a large measure of the success of the courses they did that the world still considers great---ie Myopia, NGLA, Oakmont, Pine Valley, Merion, Riviera etc.

Those men were designer architects even though some of them developed tremendous knowledge of other aspects of golf architecture such as Wilson in agronomics and probably Thomas in construction and drainage.

I doubt any of them actually got out on their courses and helped shape architecture or dug bunkers or even technically drew for much of that. They knew how to find good enough people as their foremen and such to get their visions on the ground. But I'm pretty confident the design aspect of their courses from routing to shaping to the additional design features were their own creations and history seems to prove this.

The professionals of that early day were also generally much different than they are today. They were basically golf professionals and such who just laid out courses and were gone. I doubt many professionals back then ever stayed around long enough to oversee the details of great architecture which obviously takes time to do and to make.

This is probably exactly why when Willie Park Jr finally decided to slow down and take about a year or so to do a couple of courses in the English heathlands the world saw what was apparently considered to be the first really good inland architecture.

Of course there came a time, probably around the 1920s when professional architects began to try to make it look like only they knew how to design a great golf course and of course the professional entities in the business today are still trying to promote that belief. And why wouldn't they? To do otherwise is simply not very good for business.

But the fact that professionals try to promote the idea that just because they get paid for what they do they are the only ones who know what to do still makes me chuckle. And the thing that really makes me laugh is how hard some of these self-appointed architecture analysts try to rationalize how somebody else had to be found or brought in to explain to those early amateur architects what to do.

In a design context I think those great early amateur architects proved that wrong and also proved that the key to great design is simply developing experience and that obviously happens with loads of on-site time-in which each and every one of those early amateur architects had, and the record on them proves that.

Kalen:

I think the difference between a Fownes/Crump and Keiser is neither Fownes or Crump had a professional architect onboard for long to oversee things on their projects as Keiser did.

The same was true of Wilson and Merion, or Leeds and Myopia, or Macdonald and NGLA, or Thomas and...., or.....    

Macdonald seemed to load up on some architecture talent maybe for reputation and cover when he brought Travis and Emmet on board early on but it does not look like he stuck with them that long. He certainly let Travis go.

Tom P:

The book I've been reading this weekend covers the other side of your "amateur architect" defense.  I will quote from the book, The Black Swan:

One Diagoras, a nonbeliever in the gods, was shown painted tablets bearing the portraits of some worshippers who prayed, then survived a subsequent shipwreck.  The implication was that praying protects you from drowning.  Diagoras asked, "Where were the pictures of those who prayed, then drowned?"

So, I agree with you completely that there have been several noteworthy, indeed historic works of golf architecture performed by amateurs.  For THAT matter, every architect is something of an amateur their first time out.  But you are overlooking the HUNDREDS of indifferent, or downright bad, courses that were also built by amateurs in the early days of architecture.

As my book says, if you're going to study the past and not leap to bad conclusions, you've got to look in the cemetery as well as looking at the successes.

Would it not be the case that many of those 'amateur architects' were, in fact, independently wealthy men of means with family money and/or family estates upon which to 'practice'?

Time and Cash are, as always, the elements of projects which are generally in shortest supply.

Please, someone deposit a couple of million dollars in my bank account and I promise to build the finest golf course I possibly can. (It may take ten or twenty years, and I will probably be drunk for much of the time, but it will be so worth it!)

yeah,
FBD.

Tom:

I think what it indicates is that neither the professionals nor the amateurs were very well practiced at the CRAFT of building golf courses back then, and that only the handful of amateurs who really got dirt under their fingernails could be as successful as the professionals.

This is what bothers me about all of the arguments we've had here over the years on this very subject.  I am perfectly willing to admit that there are people who could be better than myself at the "theory" of architecture and strategizing of golf holes.  However, those ideas need to be implemented along with a lot of practical considerations if they are going to work as intended.  If the great strategists such as Geoff Shackelford need to rely on Gil Hanse's talents or my talents to get their ideas in the ground, then what are they except pretenders?  And why would we bother puffing up their egos instead of our own?  

Being really good at architecture is about learning the craft, whether you are a professional or an amateur.  I just don't have time for the people who think they are great without having taken the time to learn the craft.  Tour pros are one such subset of people (with notable exceptions).  Golf Club Atlas posters are another (with exceptions also).

How many good cars were designed by amateurs?

Tesla is an independant car manufacturer that should be making some big waves in the industry soon.  http://www.teslamotors.com/design/gallery-body.php

Then there's Homer's car...

As far as landscaping, especially one so entwined with being profitable, or, at the least, sustainable, reputation and track record are imparitive for anything that will be spoken of in the GCA circles but, out there in the cold, planting marram grass, there will come somebody to design and be entrusted to build.

 Crump may have been an amateur, but he hired the finest professional minds of the time, and he had money and the passion for the craft.  A rare combination.  Off the top of my head, Mike Keiser compares but there are many more that are unsung, and are probably ok with that anonymity.