Could have Seth Raynor been a worthy critic..

[John Kavanaugh]

First of all, is there any evidence or writings of his ability to critique others work.  Second...does his use of template holes, engineering background and inability to play other peoples work make it unlikely he would be capable of evaluating any course he was not intimately familiar with..

[Patrick_Mucci]

JakaB,

Who's work would he have critiqued in the U.S. ?

In 1908 how many courses were there in the U.S. ?

How many were there by 1926 when he died ?

It appears from his backround and work that he would be a credible critic.

It appears that the early designers were more collaborative than critical.

[Mike_Sweeney]

My guess is that Princeton educated engineers probably had/have the ability to form opinions.

According to George Bahto, Raynor put very little down on paper.

According to John Caldwell, author of 'Mountain Lake' in 1986, Raynor came to Florida for the first time in his life in the Spring of 1915, where he met by Fred Olmstead and they toured the Belleaire Hotel’s two 18 hole golf courses in Clearwater, Florida.

I doubt he walked away without an opinion.

[Jim Thompson]

John,

I doubt there is much of anything to give us a real insight into how Raynor would view other's work.  Like many, even today's, archies he was pretty focused on his own projects and methods.  

That said, I think it is a real shame that engineering types, especially Raynor, aren't given to share their views on functional and formative matters.  I'm pretty sure that had Raynor been a critic his insights on the functionality of feature design, placement, and relationships would have been facinating.  As a sidebar I'd day they are much needed today as a reference for modern design which, in my opinion, at times is a bit heavy on the aesthetic and a little lite on substance.  I doubt his style / fashion comments would have been studied by many, but the flow / structure could have been a text book.

A better question might be.  Had Raynor actually written down his thoughts, would anyone be able to understand them???

Cheers!

JT

[tlavin]

I've only played Chicago Golf and Shoreacres, so I'm hardly an authority on this subject, but it has always amazed me that Raynor is called a genius when much of his work involved replicating holes from other golf courses.  Sure, I love the Redan hole at Chicago and the Redan hole at Shoreacres and the other examples of the template style that Barney mentions, but if a current architect designed courses this way, it seems that he would get more than a little bit of criticism from many on this site.

[david h. carroll]

Terry--the total package of Raynor is what you're missing....routing, routing, routing; the way those template holes play differently from course to course and on different terrains ie downhill biarritzes at 250 and flat ones at 210; etc.  I dunno, for me there's nothing cooler than being able to compare his templates from site to site.