How dare I replace "wit" with "genius"...I'd certainly prefer wit[/i]...

Similar to people who drive on public roads and people who should drive on public roads?

I have told my reality friends that I like the new tees and rough better than before.  I believe the architecture has been improved.  When guys like me start flying fairway bunkers you need more length and new tees make more sense than moving the bunkers.

"Width and Strategy and Options and Angles are all just code-language synonyms for "easy"."

Why do I even live?

Jeff,
You need to get a set of original green drawings from any of the better Ross courses. Augusta CC would be a good choice.
Having the accompanying hole drawing would would be good as it shows the approach shot values and why he design some of the green contours.
Of course when viewing them you can't impose 2007 golf shots on them.

For those of you that might want to see a repro of an original Ross green drawing, hop over to the thread on Donald Ross tee shirts.....you can not only see a plan, but you can get to wear one too!

I like trees.

I prefer Winged Foot's tree lined holes over Oakmont's wide open course.

I do agree that Oakmont was likely originally intended to look as it now does, and that the current tree-less Oakmont is how Oakmont should be.

However, I would rather my home course have trees of abundance such as found at Winged Foot, rather than being tree less such as now found at Oakmont.  Neither of these course are links courses.  I prefer my inland non-links courses (is that redundant) to include trees as one of the obstacles that will affect my strategy and my options.

Go back and look at the St. Louis C.C. photos.  The trees play an integral part of that course.

Of course, I also prefer the trees to be native to that local.

Jes,

You asked, "Great post...this last thought grabbed me though...just because he did not design his first course for a dozen years does not exclude Tilly from writing with the thought that it may put his name in front of someone that might let him do just that... How would you compare and contrast Tilly's earliest writings with the Confidential Guide by Tom Doak?"

It's a good question and again illustrates what I meant when I said that most people have problems understanding the past historically as they tend to view it from current perspectives.

When Tom wrote the Confidential Guide, he had already gone to school with the express purpose of becoming a golf course architect. He visited and played numerous courses both for the joy of the game and as a learning experience to aid him toward his goal of designing. That he had a passion for writing was separate to his desire to design, yet he found an outlet for it in writing about what he was most interested in.

Tilly, on the other hand, was quite the opposite. When he began to write about golf in the late 1890's, the idea of being a golf course architect as a profession was unheard of and not something that he gave consideration to. Tilly visited Scotland in 1895, 1898 & 1901 with the express purpose of bettering himself as a player. He was convinced that he was a world-class player and his greatest desire was to win a USGA championship. He competed on very high levels, but the reality was that he was at best a second-tier talent.  

In addition, those who desiged golf courses at the turn of the century in America, did a relatively uninspired job for the most part. That is one of the reasons why Macdonald's NGLA was greeted so sensationally. Here was a work of art as well as a challenging golf course.

Tilly & his friends, what we refer to as the Philadelphia School of Design, were nothing more than a bunch of friends who played a lot of golf together. They had a passion for the game and with a growing realization that golf courses could be designed and built to both challenge and please they would often discuss their different philosophies of how they would design if they could.

When Tilly got the commission to design Shawnee in 1909, it was given to him by his close friend C.C. Worthington with whom he spent many hours playing golf and speaking about the game. He was 34 years old and working for his father's rubber goods company part-time while he spent ,most of his time playing and practicing golf.

Tilly's writings then were not done to bring him dsign commissions, but rather were done as a natural byproduct of his passion for playing the game. This can be seen as the content of most of his writings in these early years dealt almost exclusively with tournament results, personal gossip and poetry. not the type of golf writing that would inspire someone to say, "Here's a person I want to design my course."

On the other hand, Tom's Confidential Guide established him early as a young man with a keen mind and eye to understanding golf course design.

Jeff, please appreciate that the "kicked your ass" phrase was not uttered by me.

Since the idea of advertising of design services back in the "Golden Age" has been beaten around, I think it is important to appreciate just how Tilly did advertise his availability to design professionally.

After Shawnee opened, and it did so to very fine reviews, within 3 years Tilly had gotten a number of commissions from Pennsylvania to San Antonio, Texas.

As a result he began to purchase advertising space in the golf journals of the day. As course design had now exploded nearly overnight, a number of early architects chose this path to market themselves.

His first advertisements were simple, yet within a short time he was advertising that he could provide full course designs on paper for those that desired something that simple, specifications, plans and models for greens as a separate product and even "Lilliputt Links", a product that he patented and trademarked as small courses on small properties.

As his work gained in respect and his fame as a designer grew, he began including sobriquets in his advertisements; thus he referred to himself not as the designer, but as the "Creator of Baltusrol." Next came listings of his designs and current work and even which courses were now being used to host national championships. There is no question that Tilly understood the importance of marketing his services.

At the same time his magazine writings drastically decreased as a result of a quite large design schedule. It would take the Depression and few design commissions to see Tilly once more writing a great deal as both the Editor of Golf Illustrated and later for the Pacific Coast Golfer.

I have a question for Jeff about his assertion (or is it an implication?) that the ODG's get too much credit.
The sentiment implies today's archies are so much better because they have so much more to think about and work around. It also implies the modern guys do it exponentially better.

If that were true, why does one of the most prolific modern guys have to re-do so many of his designs?

As a matter of fact, I do think the broad spectrum of architecture is better today - i.e., the 20th ranked modern gca is far better than the 20th ranked (if there was one!) gca of the golden age.  The top designs of any era match up well, IMHO.  And it has nothing to do with more to work around, better or worse sites, etc.  Good architecture is good architecture, regardless of era.

Jeff:

Here are 20-plus golden-age architects. You choose the one who you think was 20th best, and select his best work, and then choose the 20th-best modern architect, and his best work, and compare:

Tillinghast, Mackenzie, Ross, Thomas/Bell, Flynn, Langford/Moreau, Banks, Macdonald, Raynor, Colt, Alison, Emmet, Park, Travis, Strong, Leeds, Fowler, Fownes, Crump, Egan, Hugh Wilson, Thompson, Stiles/Van Kleek, Simpson, Maxwell, Braid.

John:

I assume, then, that you'd put DeVries as the 20th best modern architect. Who are the 19 better ones?

Jeff, I didn't mean to insult you.  My comment was in the spirit of a thread of brazenly provocative statements.   Maybe I'm not as good at it as JK.  I'd prefer you think of it as a hockey analogy, and while you are playing the game, you did, in my opinion, get hipchecked into the boards on that run, by Phil!  Maybe after a short blow, you can come out and deek him on your next shift.  

But, to the point, I really think I've detected an almost a standard defensive attitude in your on-going theme of trying to "myth bust" the ODGs contributions, and their attention to detail.  When you say that many of the contours and nuances now examined by  ODG-o-philes are more likely just greens soil and FW settling, I think you minimise what was always there and observed and found in writings contemporary to their hayday.  The 6% slope stuff you now scorn as not relavant to modern conditions and speed, are simply not looking at the genius they were in their time when they were not beyond the pale of great design due to turf maintenance and qrowth abilities.  I think Phil has the upper hand here in the discussion simply because he has the better handle on historical context, and he seems to have nothing to defend in terms of a practicing archie business and modern design and construction techniques that are too often simply declared superior, when often they are only technically superior, not superior in an intellectual sense of being more well crafted or thought out, IMHO.  

Peter,

You raise a very good point when you state that, "Much of what the ODGs wrote is buried in journals and periodicals that are now hard to find..."

That is why the Tillinghast Association has turned their website into a virtual archive and research center. Already we have placed copies of a large volume of Tilly's writings on the site with the goal of shortly having everything that he ever wrote in one place so that anyone with internet access can examine, study and appreciate his work.

Visit the site and take a look. you'll find that the quotes I used were not taken out of context but actually do reflect a definite design philosophy that he adhered to.

Just as some do use a quick quote from an ODG to back up an idea in an inappropriate fashion, many today are too quick to simply take the stand that since we are in the here and now the here and now is better and the architects are superior. That too is false reasoning.

Balance must be struck when studying history and also considering current actions for their relative place in history.

RJ, as much as I appreciate the compliments, for the sake of accuracy I must let you know that I have now consulted with several courses considering renovations and/or restorations to their courses. This has taken both the form of historical research and on-the-ground advive of proposed work. So in that sense, I am performing very minimal architectural services, though not in the sense of what you wrote, "terms of a practicing archie business and modern design and construction techniques."