Did GCA in America lose it's way as it distanced itself from it's UK roots ?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Golf courses designed at the begining of the 20th Century up to WW II have  passed the ultimate test, the test of time.

Courses designed post WW II seem to be lacking.

Only recently has their been a resurgence or revitalization.

Was the quality, the philisophy and the product diluted with the passing of time and the distancing of the game and its architecture from its origins ?

[Jordan Wall]

I think that architecture had to change Pat.

Over here in America, for the most part, you dont have precious linksland.
You have huge trees and forests, and a lot of different locations.
I think as architects have changed over time the courses have gotten better.  They see what has gone good and what has bad and have used that to their advantage.
I think GCA is getting better every year, and much has been learned from past mistakes.
I do not know if we would have some of the courses we have today if it were not for a period of bad GCA to learn from.
Just my $.02

[Shane Gurnett]

Patrick,

If you mean:

- the obsession with length.
- the obsession with rough.
- the obsession with over-watering and having everything green.
- the obsession with narrowing fairways and reducing options.
- the obsession with having fairway bunkers in the rough and out of play.
- the loss of the ground game
- cartball at the expense of walking
- all the above combining to increase the cost of the game.
- etc, etc

then I tend to agree with you.

Shane.

[Craig Sweet]

This isn't something unique to golf course architecture....just look at early suburban tract housing and strip malls....buildings made to last 20-40 years....

Quality was sacrificed for higher margins or affordability.

The philosophy was bigger, faster,more,move on....

The product had to be available for everyone regardless of location and income...

[Craig Sweet]

Shane, have all of the things on your list really combined to increase the cost of the game?  How does a $50-$60 green's fee compare, in todays dollars to a $15 fee 25-30 years ago?

Patrick...anytime you put some distance (in years) between you and your roots, you can have change....you have your own interpertation, different rules and social norms to contend with, perhaps you "grow" as an architect....others evolve from their roots and bring change...ideas cross pollinate....its human nature.

[T_MacWood]

Pat
Didn't UK architects "lose their way" too at that time?

[Brian_Ewen]

Shane
Did you miss the obsession of exporting it around the world ? .

Brian

[Eric Franzen]

Was the quality, the philisophy and the product diluted with the passing of time and the distancing of the game and its architecture from its origins ?

One of the most interesting names who entered the scene post WW II were Pete Dye. As you know, he never distanced himself from the games original heritage, instead Dye embraced it and added an unique personal twist.

[Dave Bourgeois]

Are we talking public course or private ones?  Many of the courses that are held in high regard from the Golden era tend to be private in nature and therefore were designed to cater to the founders and membership.  When I think about the expansion of golf and the course building boom it only makes sense to me that many of the newer courses were built for the masses and with some exceptions are not architecturally interesting.  The word diluted from your first post seems perfect to me.

[Tom_Doak]

Pat:  That is an EXCELLENT point.

Pretty much all of the Golden Age architects were either born and raised in the U.K. [Ross, MacKenzie, Braid, Colt] or went to school in St. Andrews [Macdonald, Tillinghast] or spent long sojourns there [Maxwell, Hunter].  Their knowledge of the great links was in their blood.  That was the reason I was able to convince Cornell University to send me over ... that and recommendations from Pete Dye and Ben Crenshaw, who help establish the foundation for the modern end of your argument.

But, in between, there is little connection.  Robert Trent Jones certainly got to see everything in the U.K. he wanted to see over time, but he did not talk about the links longingly, and he didn't see them until after a few years with Stanley Thompson.  Dick Wilson was a protege of William Flynn -- and I don't know how much time either of them spent overseas.  And Jones and Wilson were essentially the only two designers of significance between 1945 and 1965.

I have found that the longer I'm away from Scotland, the more I have to re-learn once I go back.  I would not be surprised if it's the same for everyone else.

[BCrosby]

Clearly something changed to gca after WWII. But I think it is more than just losing connections with the Old World. It was broader than that. As Tom MacW notes above, things changed pretty dramamtically in the UK too (though there weren't many new courses built post WWII in the UK) and they were certainly still in touch.

It's remarkable how few courses built from 1940 through 1965 appear on the "Best" lists. There aren't many. It was well and truly a Dark Ages.

I don't understand what happened in that period. But the way RTJ talked about gca circa 1955 was nothing like the way MacK, Ross, Thomas etc. talked about gca circa 1925. You would think they were in different professions.

Bob

[Doug Ralston]

Thingshave indeed changed. This is the ONLY time in American golf that I could have played!

Economics has played a gigantic role in what golf courses look/play like. If you build a public now, you better build it to be durable, and playable by people of all levels. I can occasionally splurge $80 to play an 'upscale' public, but mostly I have to be more economical. Luckily, I am able to play in an area with some excellent golf courses in the $30-$50 range, of even cheaper. If i lived in New York, Florida, or California, looks like I would be back to caving/climbing for sport.

If you can afford to belong to Crystal Downs or Sand Hills, you can certainly appreciate a 'return to your roots'. But 'I' can appreciate NEW ideas which make it possible to design courses in less ideal terrain and STILL have a challenging and beautiful site to enjoy.

Do not mistake me; I wish indeed I could experience those old classics. But golf is wonderful in MANY ways, so I take much from the version of 'natural experience' available to me.

I'll never play out of the Road Hole bunker. So I'll settle for hitting from 240ft above a drop dead gorgeous valley, on a course where you only one time even see a fairway other than the one you are playing. There is a certain virtue in THAT, too.

Doug

[Adam Clayman]

Maintenace practices have a lot to do with the loss of principles.

I have seen plenty of post WWII decent enough designs that could use a hair cut (remove the standard bottlenecking roughlines) and a tree trimming. Once that is accomplished, the sport would shine through again.

[Matt_Sullivan]

I think the preference for card and pencil strokeplay in the US has affected design. When playing a match, half par holes are a lot of fun; but strokeplay (or par) obsessed golfers find them disconcerting -- too easy or hard. Furthermore, other quirks that add interest and novelty -- everything from blind shots and penal pot bunkers to par 68 courses etc -- are also often frowned upon by strokeplayers.

And, I suppose a minor point, the unpopularity of stableford scoring in the US may also discourage novelty in design/maintenance/set up -- people in the UK or Oz just take a wipe or lose the hole; they don't have to grind it out for a 9 to avoid an empty spot on the scorecard

[Patrick_Mucci]

Matt,

I don't think medal play became firmly entrenched until the PGA Tour was firmly established and widely telecast.

Tom Doak,

Your comment about the area impacted by bunkers in the UK versus U.S. got me thinking about this subject and the different perspectives on golf course architecture.

Somewhere along the line there was a disconnect between those who came from the UK and their disciples.

I don't think it was the move away from linksland.
Certainly those connected to the UK were able to design great courses inland.

Many, Many years ago, Pete Dye told me that he found inspiration in Scotland, which is what you've alluded to.

On a Golf Channel program highlighting the British Open, an old telecast quotes Ben Crenshaw as pointing out the concave nature of the designs and the need for creativity in playing them.

When you spent the time studying the courses in the UK, were there any design themes, evidenced by the golf courses you visited, that you discovered ?

[paul cowley]

....personally I don't see it as Tom and Patrick do.

GCA followed and paralleled what was happening on a worldwide scale through the late 30's thru the early 70's.
Even as the Depression was fading, the era of 'Modern' design was beginning...briefly interrupted by the WW, it grew exponentially upon its conclusion, and the idea of an entirely new era predominated most forms of artistic expression, something that golf course design was not immune to.
It was a time that was embodied with the attitude that anything 'new' was acceptable...and GCA responded in kind.

Fortunately the Modern Period devolved to the 'Post' Modern and then on to the various Revival periods that have been in vogue the past couple of decades...and GCA has followed in suit.

I don't feel GCA lost its way after the War, but instead was just following the path of the times.....not avoiding or forgetting its roots, but searching instead for new branches.

Its apparent today that most of these efforts are not recognised as 'classics'...any more than most of the building architecture from that period, which is routinely being torn down today.

I just don't feel the effort expended to create the courses of this era was from a sense of being lost, but almost the opposite ... a sense of finding something entirely new.

[Mike_Sweeney]

Paul,

How do you explain all the trees that were planted in the post war period on classic courses such as Augusta, Merion, Oakmont and Winged Foot?

This was not a function of trying something new. It was fixing something that was seen as wrong as the post war era determined that trees and landscaping were more lush than the "stark" look of courses built on farm land.

[paul cowley]

Mike ....I see it rather as an attempt to add something to the new sense of 'environment' that was so prevalent of those times.....not necessarily as an attempt to rectify something that was lacking in the design of things...[think Lady Bird Johnson and highway beautification].

[Tom_Doak]

Paul:

I'm betting that is the first Lady Bird Johnson reference in the history of Golf Club Atlas!

[Jim Thompson]

I'd say that American design lost its way as a combination of three factors:

1.  An obsession with visuals and perfect hazard placement.

2.  The movement of the game from match play to stroke play format. How much better would golf be if none had ever invented the Nassau?

3.  The steam engine that allowed massive amount of earth to be moved to "open up" or creat vistas and playing corridors.

I think everything else just follwed.

Cheers!

JT

[TEPaul]

Paul:

I think your post #15 is a fine one---a most accurate and honest evaluation of the history and the evolution of architecture. I often think that if golfers from some former time could read the way we evaluate what was going on with golf architecture during their times they would barely recognize a thing of what we're saying. I think most of us tend to look back at them through the prisms of all we know that came after them they never could've known or barely could've foreseen.

We should always remember that in the latter decades of the 19th century and into the beginnings of the 20th century (probably into even the late 1920s) not just golf architecture but golf itself, particularly in America, was still struggling to figure out what it should be. We too easily forget how new it was to so many back then compared to what we know and relate to today.

You have been around the world a whole lot in your life and you're an observer of various art forms and their histories, not to mention that you're an interested observer of history in general---you're highly visual and an artist in various contexts---and it shows. What you seem to know and feel obviously didn't just come from books.  

[Michael Whitaker]

Pat - In May you asked on another thread "What changed architecture in the 20th Century?" I hate to repeat myself, but I think my answer there applys here:

Don't you think that architecture changed in the 20th century when architects stopped trying to replicate UK courses and began creating American courses for golfers who had never seen a links course? Tom Paul's assumption that the move away from trying to create the look & feel of the UK links courses with the introduction of landscape architecture may be spot on. To the average American golfer there is nothing attractive about a links course. But, turn a course into a park with green grass, flowers, & landscaping and you've got something they will notice!

Once equipment was introduced that allowed courses to be built on virtually any terrain imaginable the game was on. Anyone with enough money could have a course and "architects" were standing ready to build them... for a price. A mass market was born. Thus began the escalating spiral of costs and the exchange of true golf design for "beauty" at any price.

Look at some of the old ads and promotional brochures for the courses built during the 50's and 60's. They don't talk about the quality of the strategy built into the course or how great they will test one's game, they talk about how beautiful the courses are... especially if they offer a few water features... and how anyone at any skill level can enjoy them.

For an American course to be considered "great" archtecture it seems to me that many still require it to match itself against the original UK courses, or those that copy the features found on UK courses (like NGLA). How many great design concepts are original to this country?

[ForkaB]

It's the golf cart which has screwed up design more than anything else, and I blame that on the Germans, who invented the internal combustion engine!  Once the archies figured out that they could pick and choose their holes without any physical connection between them, GCA went to hell in a handbasket.  IMVHO, of course.

[Mike_Sweeney]

Mike ....I see it rather as an attempt to add something to the new sense of 'environment' that was so prevalent of those times.....not necessarily as an attempt to rectify something that was lacking in the design of things...[think Lady Bird Johnson and highway beautification].

Paul,

Nice try with the distracting Lady Bird reference.   However, Lady Bird proves the point perfectly as the Highway Beautification Act was a response to the eyesore of billboards and similar and also beautification of environment!

See:

http://www.wildflower.org/?nd=biography

"In her endless travels as a politician's helpmate, Lady Bird discovered that America's roadsides were becoming cluttered with billboards and junkyards, and that our nation's once vast natural beauty was quickly vanishing. Mrs. Johnson viewed roadsides as a window through which we learned about our ecological heritage. As First Lady, she recognized an opportunity to start a national revitalization effort, and she fought to make America more beautiful by restoring and protecting our natural habitats. She made headlines by planting bulbs and trees on roadsides and parkways, and called attention to the growing crisis created by habitat and species loss. In 1965, the Highway Beautification Act (known as "Lady Bird's Bill") was passed. It was the first milestone on a long list of accomplishments protecting and preserving the environment."


FatBaldyDrummer has often mentioned the Yanks need to constantly tinker and make things better. It is now 100 years later and we (well at least 1500 of us) are just figuring it out that what we had at the beginning was pretty good!

[paul cowley]

Mike.....you must have been quite a precocious three year old to remember Lady Bird as well as you do.....but the fact that you're also Irish explains a lot.....