"Needless to say, I hadn't thought of it that way before; a little surprising, since my basic premise/assumption in trying to learn about gca is that its development/evolution was not disconnected or random."
Peter:
Maybe I didn't write that post very well. I didn't mean to say the evolution was completely disconnected or random, the opposite in fact, in my opinion.
Obviously it was not seamless and without problems of all types and kinds---problems of unappealing sites, unwelcome soil for golf, the great void and vacuum of the unrecognizable and unrecognized, even national pride and such.
The point with the early emigration of golf and architecture outside Scotland was how long so many essential things about both were unrecognizable and unrecognized. One could probably make a pretty could case that it was actually about two to two and a half decades of real crap with inland golf and architecture outside Scotland (or outside seaside sites) that got the worm to turn at all.
If one is to put much credence in Behr and what he wrote I suppose they would have to accept what he seemed to suggest that when golf was in that state of innocence in Scotland, the only place the game existed for so long, that even those early linksmen had no real idea what had been so naturally and fortunately given to them in the linksland. That they only came to realize just how fortunate their golf (and architecture) was after others attempted to take it elsewhere. I guess in a real way that's probably what a state of innocence is all about.
And then some decades after the stream of emigration outside Scotland had started and become so much more quantitative did those who took it elsewhere finally begin to realize just how and why one can take some of the technicalities of the game and its playing fields away to other unconducive places without really understanding that the essence has been left behind or even what the essence was.
That, I would call the first phase of the evolution. The next which might be best looked at as golf in America that virtually exploded after the turn of the century, one probably needs to look at the Americans themselves and their ethos of ingenuity and individuality.
That next phase and what occured I think can be well represented by that horrifying remark to C.B. Macdonald of incoming USGA president Robertson in 1901;
"Nothing can stay long in America without being Americanized."
At this point Behr mentions that the game and its component pieces were torn apart so that they could be more closely scrutinized as to what they may scientifically mean. In Behr's mind this was the point when the necessary component of Nature in golf and in golf architecture began to lose its place and its importance---to the dire detriment of the game (sport) of course.