TE & Rcih
I reckon I've seen as many courses as you two gents...and I'm half your ages!

I don't consider documenting the architectural history or evolution of a golf course the same as analyzing its playing characteristics. I don't consider sharing a course's historic reputation or historic importance the same as judging or rating its playing condition today.

I played Bethpage, Yale and Hollywood this past summer and loved them all...it doesn't change anything I wrote about those courses prior to my visit...comments which were in historical evolution or reputation mode.

It is also about time someone mentioned that Tom MacWood discussed Willie Park Jr. beginning in part IV of his great series on Arts and Crafts Golf posted on this site.

JeffG:

Someone emailed me the other day and mentioned that Tom MacWood’s five-part A&C Movement article is an impressively researched article. I always thought so---there sure are a lot of names and such in it. But that emailer said in his opinion it was all sound and fury and what about the five-part article’s assumptions and conclusions? So I read the whole thing again with that in mind—eg his assumptions and conclusions! And I agree with the emailer that there sure are some odd assumptions and conclusions and it also leads me to believe they’re a lot more than a little off-based! So I emailed Tom MacWood and said I’d like to do a counterpoint one of these days to his assumptions and conclusions in that five part A&C Movement article. He said by all means do that. I can’t do the whole thing now but here’re some highlights.

Tom MacWood concluded this about Horace Hutchinson;

“But his impact can not be overlooked; his simple theories still hold true. Horace Hutchinson is the father of the art of golf-architecture.”

Horace Hutchinson is the FATHER of the ART of golf architecture??!! Why is that---because he wrote about it? But what did he build? Very little indeed! What did he innovate? Did he tell Willie Park Jr. how or what to build at Sunningdale and Huntercombe? Did he tell the great Heathland architects what to build and how? Are you kidding me?---what he did is report on what they were doing. He reported on what Macdonald was doing at NGLA and Leeds at Myopia and obviously much that was going on in Europe. But how did that albeit comprehensive reportage get Hutchinson onto the pedestal of being the “FATHER of the ART of golf architecture”?

The answer is simple---it didn’t!!

And then Tom MacWood suggests that perhaps the term “Golden Age of Golf Architecture” is not specific or descriptive enough and what this entire era really should be called is “Arts and Crafts Golf” or “Arts and Crafts golf Architecture”.

And why does Tom MacWood conclude that? It seems because the Arts and Crafts movement shared space in the highly popular magazine “Country Life” with golf architecture articles written by the likes of Darwin and Hutchinson and others and that they actually knew some of the proponents of the “Arts and Crafts Movement” such as Rushkin and Morris and then Tom provides about two hundred other names I suppose to try to prove there was some massive connection between golf architecture and a building architecture and crafts movement or philosophy that was based on a very strong influence of naturalism and regionalism in reaction to the dehumanizing influence of “classical” architecture with its ultra balance that was not the basic look of Nature----and perhaps also on the deleterious effects on human labor and human condition of the Industrial Revolution.

This created what Tom MacWood calls “Arts and Crafts golf” and apparently “arts and crafts golf architecture”!

Why---because it was a movement that’s theme was naturalism? There’re a lot of things whose theme is naturalism but that doesn’t mean they all are the primary influences of early golf architecture! What about the incredibly strong early influence of the linksland in early golf architecture, transposed quite early to the amazing early heathland courses by those early architects? What really influenced them and what they did? Was it primarily Country Life and Hutchinson? Come on---give me a break!!

It was the linksland that influence them. That’s why linksland influence was constantly mentioned throughout the entire era of before and during the “Golden Age of Golf Architecture”!

What now---will Tom MacWood try to conclude that it was really the Arts and Crafts Movement that influenced early linksland  and linksland golf architecture? Frankly it wouldn’t surprise me!

Have you ever seen any architects of the early Heathland era ever mention the “Arts and Crafts Movement” as any influence at all on what they did? Have you ever seen any architects from the “Golden Age of Golf Architecture” mention the “Arts and Crafts Movement” as any influence at all on what they did? Forget about influence, have you ever heard them mention it at all in relation to golf architecture?

Horace Hutchinson, basically a golf architecture reporter, albeit a comprehensive and extremely effective and respected one, as the FATHER of the ART of golf architecture?  The Golden Age of Golf Architecture with its reliance on naturalism and its foundation and principles in the early linksland courses as something that should be relabeled “Arts and Crafts Golf and Architecture”?

Give me a break! That emailer was right, I think, having carefully reread that five part article on the Arts and Crafts Movement. There’s a lot of names in there---reams of them, it’s a lot of what that emailer called “sound and fury” but the assumptions and conclusions of what it all means in its influence on golf course architecture misses by a mile, in my opinion, and obviously in the opinion of that emailer.

Read the five part “Arts and Crafts Movement” again and see what you think. Those great early architects were massively influenced by the early linksland and its natural randomness---at least they sure did mention it and write about it a lot and they sure all seemed to label it as their architectural influence---look at how many of them said that! So one should ask, if they mentioned it so much didn’t they mean it? . If they were influenced by the arts and crafts movement they sure as hell were silent about it, and why was that? Probably because although they may’ve been aware of it---it really didn’t influence what they thought and did in golf architecture.

"TE
When I was researching the A&C piece Hutchison's importance was a surprise to me as well. In fact the father of the modern game of golf wouldn't be too far off the mark."


Uh, huh, I see. The big secret of the true inflluence on golf and architecture that none of the best architects of that time wanted to reveal for some reason!!!! I guess they thought, hey, let's see if we can keep this con for as many decades as possible so even one of the true expert researchers/writers 100 years later will be completely surprised along with everyone else!  Hmmmmm! Interesting idea, indeed.

So Tom, are you saying that Willie Park Jr and the Heathland architects as well as perhaps C.B Macdonald had to sort of wait for Horace to sorta, kinda, tell them what to think and what to do before they could do what they did? That's funny because I thought guys like Leeds, Macdonald, Crump, Wilson, Tillinghast et al basically just went back to the linksland and heathlands to look at that great architecture and to sketch it and it's principles such. I didn't know they went back there to read Hutchinson's book and learn from him what they should do.

Let me ask you that question again. If the Arts and Craft Movement was so prevalent, and so written about in a popular magazine like Country Life why is it that no golf architect mentioned the influence of the arts and crafts movement on what he did and thought? Why was it that so many of them mentioned the linksland, its raw naturalness and particularly the strategic prototype of TOC that was so much of an architectural influence on them? Why would so many of them say that then and why nary a mention of the A&C movement as an influence?

Do you think they like all got together and agreed to keep the real influence on them (the A&C movement and Horace Hutchinson) a secret so some guy in Ohio could figure it out and reveal it a hundred years later?

Interesting thesis but more than a little bizarre and off-base, in my opinion. I guess there's just no telling what some will conclude despite so much evidence to the contrary.

Tom MacW

Your statement that Willie Park Jr.'s "....earlier designs were no different then the rest of the Victorian stuff" is just not true.

One example that I know well (as a player and a former member) is Burntisland's Dodhead course, which Willie built in 1896, effectively "writing over" a 6-hole course that had been built in 1891 (that replacing the old links course, 2-3 miles away, which had been in existence from the earliest days of golf in Scotland, and can still be seen--it is a local park).

While Dodhead is not a great course, it is NOT anything like the "Victorian" courses that are pooh-poohed by you and others.  There are some superb natural greensites (particularly 4, 5, 6, 8 & 14 (double), 9, 15 and 16), and some finely crafted ones (if I can use that term....) including 2, 3, 7, 11, 12, 13 and 17.  The bunkering is natural and restrained.  The routing is ingenious on a restricted piece of land (Park wanted to build a 15-hole course, but OTM convinced the club that they should have 18 holes!--one of the few of the big guy's GCA mistakes!).

If you ever visit Burntisland, you will see the folly of your theory.  This was first-class GCA--before Sunningdale and Huntercombe.........

Prior to his work in England, Park also was responsible for courses such as Duddingston, Gullane #2, Murrayfield, Old Ranfuly, and Western Gailes.  I do not know the complete architectural history of these course (as I do with Burntisland) but I would be astonished if Willie's efforts at these fine places were ".....no different then the rest of the Victorian stuff."  Do you have any evidence to back up your assertion?

Let's face, it, Tom.  You just do not know anything about Willie Park's early career except what you read into what other's have said.  In Plato's parable, you are looking at the shadows of the fire from within the cave, and not the fire itself

I hope you do get the chance to come over to the UK and do some real field research.  To see the fire.  If and when you do, I suspect you may find that, in this case, you have really and truly got it wrong.

You may also learn that GCA in Scotland around the turn of the last century was alive, well, prospering and happily oblivious to the "Arts and Crafts" movement.

Tom MacWood:

One of the problems with your five part "Arts and Crafts Movement" article is you pretty much fail to make a connection between Willie Park jr, the early golf architectural influences on him and Horace Hutchinson. Did Hutchinson influence Park jr's early ideas on golf architecture? If they did why don't you point out how, where and why? Even the timing of Park Jr and Hutchinson's careers don't really match!

For some reason you just assume that Willie Park jr's early work or his early ideas on golf architecture were what you refer to as "Victorian". Rich is right, why would you assume that? And if you do, then prove it! What do you know of his early ideas and the early influences on him?

What we do know is Willie Park jr was from the linksland, and as so many have described before the primary architectural influence on those early Scottish architects such as the Parks was the linksland courses themselves with their largely pre-architecture naturalness and randomness, and not "Victorianism", Horace Hutchinson or the English Arts and Crafts movement. Read Cornish and Whitten's Chapter 2 again in "The Architects of Golf". In my opinion, and seemingly in the opinion of most interested in this kind of thing, they chronicle the evolution, histories and influences on these people a whole lot better than you have with your completely forced insertion of this massive influence from an arts and crafts movement which is scarely, if ever, even mentioned in all the histories and evolutions of this early era, as well as the later era of the "Golden Age of Architecture". Your A&C movement influence of GCA, to me, is simply a classic example of an attempt at revisionist history in architecture, and in our opinion it just doesn't fly---not even close. It's just not supportable by facts, and frankly not even supportable by what you included in your own article.

Again, even in your five part article on the "Arts and Crafts Movement" you don't even make a connection between Park Jr and Hutchinson (or the A&C Movement) you simply seem to assume it and gloss right over or past it.

I think we can now understand why---because the connection and influence just didn't and doesn't really exist! It's not exactly a matter of people back then being aware of something like the A&C Movement, I'm sure we can be fairly certain many of those people back then were "aware" of a lot of things that didn't have a major influence on their golf architecture.

Your articles truly are massively researched with all kinds of extraneous information like who the headmaster of the school Hutchinson went to school was, what he believed in and his connection in some way to perhaps the ideas of Rushkin or Morris (A&C Movement). But that kind of attempt to massively connect everything and anything to me is like the classic "conspiracy theorist" who often attempts to prove that if anyone ever even met someone else they must have been massively influenced by him.

To me this is of no real difference from the "stretch" you either were or still are trying to make with the manner of George Crump's death and some connection to the club's glorification of Crump at the expense of Harry Colt's attribution by the club or others to the architecture of PVGC.

I know that club really well, the architecture, then and now, and plenty of members for years, and what they feel about PVGC, Crump and Colt. I feel confident that from the teens through to today if any of them read some of your opinions on the place and what they feel about things they really would wonder where this guy is coming up with this stuff.

You most certainly have a right to your opinions but in my opinion, and apparently in the opinion of others, some of yours are massively off-base and really unsupportable. But I'm sure that's no reason to you that you shouldn't continue to hold them! And the reason you generally seem to give most everyone for the accuracy of your assumptions and conclusions is only that you feel you are an 'expert reseacher/writer who's been doing this a long time'! That may be so but I'll always prefer to judge the accuracy of what you write and not just assume you're accurate because you keep saying you are!  

Rich:

First of all, an early Willie Park jr course would have to be fairly similar to the way it was back then when he built it to have much meaning to this conversation, don't you think? If it wasn't, what possible meaning would it have to this conversation? We're talking about a potential influence (or not) well over a hundred years ago---not familiarity with a course now. Wouldn't you think it would be necessary to see it the way it was in some photo or whatever then to determine what might've influenced the look of it and the way Park jr built it?

I see Tom MacWood has asked you to prove that HH was NOT the father of the art of golf architecture---to prove that HH and the A&C Movement was not the architectural influence on Willie Jr, and was not the major influence on the entire "Golden Age of Architecture". I don't know about you but I'm generally into trying to prove something did happen--not trying to prove something didn't happen. How do you prove something that never happened?

It'd probably end up being a bit like the dialogue I had with Tom MacW not long ago over his contention he could prove George Crump blew his brains out;

"How can you prove that Tom MacW?

"Because it's true."

"How do you know it's true?"

"Because it's a fact."

"How do you know it's a fact?"

"Because it's true."

How do you know it's a fact and true?"

"Because I proved it."

"How did you prove it?"

"Because it's true."

Is that the kind of dialogue one generally has with a self-proclaimed expert golf architecture researcher/writer?

Tom MacW:

If you're going to write these articles perhaps your first response shouldn't always be to take what others say critically about them personally.

I certainly don't have one eye on the A&C Movement and one eye on this Crump suicide issue you floated. I merely have both eyes on the assumptions and conclusions you sometimes make.

I'm certainly not trying to diminish Horace Hutchinson, he certainly was a prolific and highly respected writer and critic of his and that early time, and he certainly was a man that most all in that world knew. You're right, he did have an impressive platform which clearly allowed him to report on what was going on in architecture during his time. He certainly was a knowledgeable man on many things to do with golf---one can see from Macdonald (his book) that he depended on HH for many things, certainly for opinions on rules and certainly to trumpet his NGLA. Certainly HH's reporting was a platform but that by no means indicates he actually influenced the seminal architecture of men like Macdonald, Colt et al and Park jr. Perhaps they influenced him as he reported on what they were doing! The only incident I've ever seen about HH actually influencing the architectural thought of any of them in that early architecture era was when Macdonald mentioned HH's advice to throw pebbles on a surface as a way of creating random green contours.

I'm glad you've read all you reported in your last post. Why don't you cite a few pertinent remarks by some of these early architects you claim were all so influenced by the A&C movement that they actually were influenced by that movement. If it's even 1/100 as voluminous as the references they all made to the influence on them of the linksland I might begin to consider some of your assumptions and conclusions but not until. Is there any remark by any of them that they were actually influenced in their architecture by the A&C Movement? Have you ever read any one of them that've actually said that?

The record of what influenced them is long and voluminous. I just seriously doubt some strong influence you think you've found a 100 and some years later that was never mentioned at the time it happened. That to me just seems pretty illogical!

No problem with you having this opinion, but I can't see it's convincing.

"If you're going to write these articles perhaps your first response shouldn't always be to take what others say critically about them personally."

TE

Just an observation...you started by questioning the A&C article and ended in some kind of bizarre merger of A&C and Crump. It seems that every other post you make has something about me and Crump or some other subject and Crump...some might get the impression you are consumed by Crump. No worries. Carry on.

If you are interested in exploring HH's influence on architecture beyond what you've read in my essay, might I suggest a library. It is amazing what you can learn there.

The essay speaks for itself regarding the connection between the A&C Movement and golf architecture, if you aren't satisifed, so be it. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. You can't please everyone.

Paul:

Victorian? Man, you guys just see whatever your agenda is at any time don't you? Take out the steps and planks and it doesn't look much different from Macdonald/Raynor---and I thought Tom MacWood said all those guys were totally influenced by Horace Hutchinson and the Arts and Crafts Movement! Or did he really mean they were all influenced by Queen Victoria? Or was it Napolean?

"Well it certainly ain't the natural look!"

You're sure never going to hear me say MacDonald/Raynor are great examples of the "natural" look although I bet Tom MacWood would say that, as he's already said all of them including MacDonald's architecture was influenced by HH and the A&C Movement!!  

Paul, since Tom MacWood wouldn't answer my question (for an obvious reason ) would you ask him to cite you just a couple of little examples where some of those early architects even mentioned the A&C Movement as an influence on them? And if he can't find any examples would you ask him why he thinks that is?  

Tom MacW says;

"...some might get the impression you are consumed by Crump."

Uh huh. Well, it sure wasn't me who called Merchantville NJ in the first place in an attempt to find out if Crump blew his brains out 87 years ago (to try to make some bizarre case that that's the reason PV glorified Crump to minimize Colt) and pissing off a number of public officials in the process!!

Fair enough. Then don't answer, but would you venture your own guess as to why he continues to avoid that question? Oh, never mind, if you don't want to venture a guess I can understand why that would be too. He isn't much at answering simple questions about the things he writes though. So far he's managed to tell me its amazing what I can find out in a library, that I'm deranged, on a vendetta and consumed by Crump! Some intelligent answers those are!  

"All this comes form the club's history, which leads off the section I am summarizing with the following words:

"Although the course has undergone a number of changes, there is little doubt that Willie Park would recognise most of his design."

Rich:

Then there probably is good reason to come and play and analyze the course by such as Tom MacWood or me if one is so assuming as to label it "victorian" as Tom MacWood just did without ever seeing it. Tom MacWood obviously thinks he's very facile at analyzing the details of golf courses without ever actually laying eyes on them.

"PPS--are you implying that WPJr. became a convert to the Arts and Crafts movement shortly after moving to England.  somehow I can't see him reading Country Life and sitting in Morris' house sipping pink gins with Oscar Wilde, but I could be wrong!"

It appears he is implying such a thing. It appears he's saying not just Park jr but the entire varsity roster of the Golden Age architects were converted by the A&C Movement somehow. Isn't it interesting how Tom MacWood continues to avoid responding to the simple question that if that was so where is a single reference by any of them to that effect? In his voluminously researched five part A&C Movement article I don't believe I see a single reference by any of them to the A&C Movement. It's just a long laundry list of this guy knew this guy, this guy's headmaster was this guy and he knew Rushkin at some point and Rushkin advocated a philosophy of "naturalism" and regionalism in building architecture and crafts! Many of those great old early architects who began to take the art away from early rudimentariness and geometric shapes certainly referenced "naturalism" in architecture but I'm pretty sure the A&C Movement didn't have a monopoly on "naturalism" or "naturalism" in golf architecture. To say such a thing is pretty slighting of the obvious model of the natural linksland courses which most all of them have left us with a record that that was their basic model for naturalism.

As far as sipping pink gins in Morris's or Hutchinson's house with Oscar Wilde I don't really see Willie Park jr doing that, and certainly not C.B. or Alister but I wouldn't put it past Devie Emmett!