A second Golden Age?

[TEPaul]

"I think where it could be interesting is in areas such as Orlando and Myrtle Beach where there is a ton of competition for players. Will we see a 1970's era course in MB dig itself under and then create "Friar's Tuck Golf Club" aka MB's answer to Friar's Head ?"

Mike Sweeney:

I think that's an excellent thought. Certainly sounds logical to me. Particularly after Ken Bakst has ushered in all 800 of these rating geniuses from each of those golf magazines!

Yeah right!

Nevertheless, when Friar's Head goes high on those lists which it sure seems logical to assume it would, you're right the courses that are most sensitive to who those rankings attract the attention of--probably the public golfer those public couses may be the first to imitate.

Good thought and wouldn't it be cool if that does happen.

Forrest:

3,992 is what constitutes "many"? Thanks for that but I wish you'd be more precise.

[Mike_Sweeney]

P.S. to Mike Sweeney:  As some here know, you have to use baseball analogies very carefully when I'm around.  I'd say that Camden Yards relates more to the "CCFAD" trend than to a golden age of design.  It gives the fans what they want -- home runs, clear sightlines, and lots of food options -- but it doesn't give the pitcher ways to outsmart the hitters, as many of the old parks did.

Tom Doak and Philly guys,

As a side note, my sister is the project manager for her firm which is doing the interior design work at the new Phillies baseball stadium, and from what I saw on paper, it looks very nice. Having spent too many days as a kid at The Vet and barely remembering Connie Mack Stadium, I will take CCFAD any day over The Vet.

However, I suspect like most here, I will take a day at Fenway any day over the others.

[TEPaul]

Mike:

Tell your sister to give these Philly guys lots of food and drink options and plenty of urinals and also tell her to get out of town once the stadium opens unless she enjoys extreme profanity and general grotesqueness. You could put these Philly guys in the taj Mahal and the next day it would look like those Stygian Stables--virtually uncleanable.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Tom Paul, Just to let you know, I'm hoping that the next time I'm in town, I'll be able to schedule it during a Phils homestand against MY Dodgers. YOU will be there!

Then you can see how ugly a real fan can get!

[Mike_Sweeney]

Tommy,

I offer my caddy services to you and Tom in exchange for the right to see you and Tom at a Phils - Dodgers game

[ForkaB]

I'll caddy too, just for the opportunity of seeing what a "Stygian" stable might look like.  Surely something uncleanable beyond even the imagination of a Hercules.............

[TEPaul]

I'll tell you what I mean about the Philly fans. Everybody knows they're an out of control lot anyway.

But a number of years ago I took out this cute little blond girl from Rochester. You've all seen the type, I'm sure--she was super cute looking but the type that was sort of the life of the party, talked all the time, sort of loud and if you took her into a bar, for instance, instead of shaking hands with someone she was apt to just punch them pretty hard in the shoulder instead. And man could she swear--the language that would come out of that pretty little thing could have made a sailor blush (and I'm a very sensitive and refined man!).

So I took her to an Eagles game and we were sitting just in front of the cheap seats (where the real and serious Philly fans reside). They looked and sounded like a bunch of unwashed Huns. And then the game started.

And man were they carrying on! The language and the noise of it was too much. So about five minutes into the game this little girl stands up, turns around and screams at them at the top of her lungs; "Shut the F....Up!"

God, you would have thought the third world war started. You've never heard such screaming and yelling and language. For the rest of the quarter she had her head on her knees saying "I can't believe this."

I don't think we made it past the first quarter before I had to take her out of there. Only time I ever saw her cowed.

Those Philly fans are something else!

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Sounds like we need to take the horse out of the stable one day and ride them into downtown Philly, me with my caddy Mike:) and Tom with his caddy Rich, and paint the town Dodger Blue!

I too would like to get a good look at this stygian stable.

[TEPaul]

Rich:

You're the type who would know all this type of thing like the Stygian Stables. What's the story on that myth? As I recall some mythologic power broker got pissed at another one and diverted a large muddy river into the Stygian Stables (which belonged to one of the semi-Gods).

I think it might have been Hercules who was given the assignment to clean the mess up. Can't remember how he fared though. But even Hercules would have his hands full with a stadium full of real Philly fans. And of course the noise and language he would be completely powerless to control.

[TEPaul]

Actually, no, no, no, I think I remember now. The Stygian Stables were a bloody mess to start with-- horse sh..., and garbage and cigarette butts and beer cans all over the place sort of like a stadium after the Philly fans had been there.

Hercules (I think it was) was given the assigment to clean the mess up because all the Gods thought that an impossiblity. So Hercules, the clever bastard, diverted the river through the Stygian Stables and presto--they were all clean.

But it occurs to me that the Schuykill River is pretty close to the Philly sports complexes but if I diverted it through one of those stadiums after the Philly fans had been there I don't know how clean it would get.

It's probable the Schuykill River is as grotesque as the Philly fans!

[ForkaB]

Tommy (P)

It was the Augean stables that Hercules cleaned up, diverting the river Alphaeus (I had to look that one up....) to carry away all the cow grunties, etc. to someplace where the plebeians lived, I'm sure.  Probably New Jersey......  "Stygian" refers to another river, the Styx, over which Charon the Boatman (aka Rees) used to carry the souls of the dead across from temporal graveyards to the nether world.

Having spent spent less that the Fieldsian maximum of my life in Philadephia (i.e. <7 days) I cannot comment on the behaviour of your various ilks of Phanatics, but I would not at all be surprised to find out that Schuykill was just the way some dead Dutchman pronounced a hopelessly muddled amalgam of Styx and Alphaeus.

[TEPaul]

Rich:

I knew you'd be good for the proper explanation and definition. Stygian, Augean--it's all Greek mythology to me.

I guess I'd have to say that you have a ways to go to catch W.C. Fields, though, for quality time spent in Philadelphia. Afterall he did say he spent three of the best years of his life there one summer!

[TEPaul]

Of course that may have been before W.C. moved to the great state of California to get away from small children and dogs--and life was good again. At least it was good again until someone on the set put grapefruit juice in his grapefruit juice.

[Forrest Richardson]

"Caddie, hand me my club.........my Canadian Club."

-- W.C. Fields

[A_Clay_Man]

Forrest- As any good caddie can tell you, cocktail first, club second. And, never ever set the cocktail on the ground.

[Kelly_Blake_Moran]

Tom,

I knew a comment and endorsement like yours was coming, that hopefully Friars Head will be copied in the future.  To what extent you mean copied I am uncertain, but I would hope that what is copied is the process by C&C and Doak and Hanse and others, but not the look.  There may be sites where the look of a Friar's Head is appropriate, but it would be a tremendous waste of talent to have younger architects think they can make it if they copy the Friars Head look on their projects, or those architects that have built their whole design style around doing what attracts the raters.  I guess I am naive but I never realized architects actually design in a way to attract raters.  What a shallow existence!

I believe in each person contributing their creativity to the "conversation"  I have no interst in conversing with anyone that is copying the look of the moment, because it would be a very short conversation. What makes this whole business interesting is the individual contribution each person makes to what could seem to be standard stuff.  There is an excellent way to unleash one's talents and that is to enter into the design process in much the way the afore mentioned architects have done.  The process they have embarked upon have resulted in some astounding work.  I do not beleive great works or movements come from copying someone, that might help jump start your creative adventure but at some point if the person is to reach or extend beyond that method they are going to have to use a similar process but in their own way so the result may be some thing that does not look like Friarshead but none the less is ever bit as dramatic and subtle and strategic.

Too many people are lost in other people's ways.  The real joy comes from those whom are following their own drummer, who have a deep feeling for the traditions of those that came before them, but nevertheless have embarked on their own journey, and what is left in their wake is a very personal statement of their own little vision of the world.

[TEPaul]

Kelly:

That's so true that every architect should follow his own instincts and not copy others. Difference is good--maybe the real spice of it.

I think of the original "Philadelphia School" architects, the orginial 5-6 of them (Wilson, Crump, Tillinghast, Thomas, Flynn and Fownes) who were all friends, very close really and all basically collaborators but they all sort of marched to their individual drummer and did their own unique things although always hanging around each other. Obviously their purposes may have been quite different with the limited output careers of Wilson, Crump and Fownes but nevertheless whatever they copied was only vaguely influential in some things that most would never really recognize as similarities.

Ultimately the relatively small Philly school left architecture with some pretty interesting variations in architecture.

[W.H. Cosgrove]

Economics drove much of the first golden age and economics drove much of this most recent 'platinum' age as it were.  The excesses of the teens and twenties allowed developers and dreamers to create golf courses of any type.  The artists were allowed to create.  Similarly the rapid growth of wealth in the nineties allowed people like Mike Keiser to go to the end of nowhere and create his dream.  The creation of Sandhills would seem to follow the same path.  

The economy and the explosion of wealth allowed builders to go to the land rather than bringing the course to the location.  In contrast the fifties and sixties were a time when golf was brought to the masses.  Housing development and golf were brought together.  Lot sales drove the design rather than artisitc exploration and quality.  

Finally the question that must be asked is whether the early years of the new millenium will follow the path of the great depression where marginally developed courses were plowed under or simply grew over.  Someone mentioned "Lost Links" which is a book I look forward to seeing.  Are the courses of today all going to survive a very soft golf business?  I would guess not.  The links of extraordinary quality will find a way to go on, but many will not.  

I believe that the great age of the nineties is already passed.  Courses being completed today are simply the last begun during that heady decade.  From here what courses will survive and which others will make almost any change in an effort to survive?