A Philosophy of the Game and GCA

[Peter Pallotta]

In a 1917 article, Henry Leach discusses the golfing philosophy of John Low. He writes:

"For it has come about that in the general scheme of golfing things, competitions have assumed a most extravagant degree of importance. It was not always so, and it is unfortunate because an excess of competitions and a passionate devotion to them such as is exercised by so many modern players is bad both for the golfer and for golf; and it is unfortunate again in that this game is really less dependent upon the competitive element than any other.

It provides all that is necessary in the way of competition in itself. With its faithful and most resourceful ally, Nature, it places itself in opposition to the player, and they twain fight each other. And it is a desperate fight at times. I can compare it only to angling, and is the golfer indeed not always angling for the hole? He has Nature and the wayward ball always against him, and he exercises all the art and science of stroke and the choice of materials that are at his disposal for the overthrow of the opposing circumstances. In this there is a most absorbing study, and the completeness of the game in itself with but one person given to it is sufficiently indicated in the fact that each one of us may and does often go out alone to the links with clubs and balls, and there finds sufficient entertainment and a full measure of the pleasure of real combat.

There are indeed a few happy and contented men to whom this lonely and contemplative way is quite enough, and they rarely seek the introduction to their studies of a third and human element. Sometimes it seems that such introduction is a needless complication, disturbing to the complacency achieved in the other and simpler golf. It is as if in angling we set another angler besides us and made it the supreme endeavour to catch our fish more quickly than he would catch them. By such effort we tend to subordinate means to the result, and lose much of the pleasure of the study. Especially do we seem in golf to have the game more complete in itself and more independent of the outside human competitive element than in any other form of sport with a ball."

We categorize courses in different ways. I'm wondering if we can't also categorize them as courses that are designed for/ encourage "the competitive game" versus those that are designed for/encourage "the sporting experience".  Is that a potentially useful/interesting way to think about gca?

(In general I mean, as I know that the two aspects are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as the Oakmont thread on penal and strategic helped me to see).

Peter

[JESII]

Peter,

Have you ever had the opportunity to play one of the late Mike Strantz's courses?

[Peter Pallotta]

No, I haven't yet JES. I know very little about his courses except for what I've occasionally read on here.

Might they be an example of these two approaches dovetailing effectively, or coexisting harmoniously?

Thanks
Peter

[JESII]

In reading the passage you posted I had a sort of deja vu about my rounds at his Royal New Kent course near Williamsburg, VA...the course seems wholly inappropriate for tournament golf, and is just about as much fun as you can have playing golf.

The irony is that my only rounds there are during - and in the practice rounds leading up to - a tournament so I was certainly in the competition frame of mind...but it didn't matter.

I'd hate to bring the word "FAIR" into this because I don't think I have ever viewed fairness as having a place in golf...competitive or social. But RNK just seemed to be so extreme in the visual presentation that much of the great stuff is lost on competitive minded players.

On the other hand...and another possible irony...is that I played Tobacco Road and was really underwhelmed. the irony is that I played TR in a bachelor party setting during the run-up to a buddies wedding a couple of months ago. It was only one round, so I am not passing judgement (so don't jump all you TR lovers), but you would think that type of let it fly and hope to find it type of day would correlate well with this idea of finding all the pleasure necessary from a round of golf without competition.


On the third hand, I think it's worth noting that John Low is only comparing golf to other sports played with a ball, and that more than those it enables the player to gain maximum pleasure with no formal competition...

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks, JES - that's an interesting take/perspective. Maybe a dumb or hazy kind of question, but on RNK did you have a greater or lesser sense than you've had at other tournament venues that you were playing more against the course itself ('nature') than against the other players?

On your last point, it IS noteworthy that only 'ball' games are involved in the comparison, but I guess that's why he uses fishing as a parallel (did Max Behr use that too?), i.e. I can't think of another sporting experience/game that has nature as the element that replaces 'human competition'. Maybe downhill skiing or mountain climbing?

By the way, it really was a question, i.e. whether one of the 'prisms' through which we can 'judge' a course is in terms of its design being better for competition or for experience. I'm certainly not sure courses can be divided that way at all...

Peter  

 

[TEPaul]

Peter:

Interesting remarks of Low's.

It has to be safe to say that this is a subject of tremendous personal preference.

I'm sure I know many people who would never think to play golf alone while others may enjoy it more than with human companions.

I guess I was very much the latter. I did all my practicing on the course alone in the evenings. I rarely played recreational golf for maybe 15-20 years.

The most lasting and poignant experience with golf of my recollection was playing golf alone beginning at daybreak every day for a week on this little course in Mallow Ireland.

I'd be back before anyone of the family had breakfast. The experience was almost indescribable and it seemed like every day it just got better and better.

Most of the reason, I think, was that summer in '99 was about the driest in memory in Ireland and that little course was just screaming fast. It was almost hilarious what the ball could and would do. It took me a couple of days to even figure out how to deal with it.

I can honestly say that never in my entire life have I felt so much atonement with the land and the ground watching what the ground did with the ball and how I could play a part in that. It took more thought by a mile than I've ever experienced with golf. I realized how much was up to me but the part that course played was almost beyond description.

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks, Tom - that's every evocative, and I'm glad competitive players like you and JES have responded. In sort of the same vein as my question to JES, would you say that the DESIGN of that little course in Ireland played a role in making it such an ideal ground for the 'sporting experience'? Or, am I trying to make too much out of that distinction?

Peter    

[JESII]

Interesting question Peter..."but on RNK did you have a greater or lesser sense than you've had at other tournament venues that you were playing more against the course itself ('nature') than against the other players?"   The only honest way I can answer that is to say that I felt like I understood how to play the course after only a few holes of my first practice round the first year I went...and that didn't change through three years of one or two practice rounds and four tournament rounds...what, 15 or 20 total...



"By the way, it really was a question, i.e. whether one of the 'prisms' through which we can 'judge' a course is in terms of its design being better for competition or for experience. I'm certainly not sure courses can be divided that way at all..."

I would say you could not -or maybe should not[/i] is better - because I truly feel that if you are not attempting to figure out how to get the ball in the hole in the fewest possible strokes you're just not playing golf. In that light, even the most solitary rounds (like Tom's there in Ireland) reflect a competition of some sort...

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks, JES - your answers always seem to 'shift' or reframe the way I'm even thinking about the question. I'm going to be thinking about your answer re: RNK for a while....it's just not one that I have the experience to understand easily.  

Peter

[JESII]

Peter,

Use my final paragraph in that post as a guide. Perhaps others have a different opinion, but my thought process is always about getting it in the hole as fast as I can. I understand that I play (and have played) much more competition than most, but if someone comes on here and tries to suggest that they do not 'try to get it in the holes as quick as possible' I am going to have to wonder just what they're doing out there.

In that light, you have to try to figure out what the course is trying to do to you...some want to visually deceive you at every corner, some want to show you all the secrets and just leave it to you to execute, some are a mix of both...there are tons of other 'things' courses try to do to you, and the sooner you figure out what it's trying to do, the sooner you know how to get to it. I firmly believe this is the case for me as I try to shoot par, and for 22 handicappers trying to break 90...that's the juice for me.

At Royal New Kent, I just understood very early on what to do...or at least try to do...

[Rich Goodale]

Peter

A few years prior to that article you quote, Low was railing against "Haskelitis" and encouraging existing quirky layouts to be remodeled and lengthened, presumedly to make them more "competitive."  As a result we lost a lot of charming, challenging and interesting golf courses, at least in Britain.  The ones overlaid in their place are mostly "better," but not as conforming to the ideal he seems to have adopted by 1917, well after the hoirse was out of the barn.

The only course I can think of that does (or even could) reach Low's ideal is the Sheep Ranch--partly because it is private and one can play it in solitude without bothering other players (as does the lone angler on the hidden stream), but also partly because it is not a "course" per se, but a collection of tees and green sites that can be played randomly.  It is possible, as Tom notes, to create one's own private "Sheep Ranch" on most courses in Britain and Ireland, if you play very early in the morning or very late in the evening.  I often do both on my holidays at Dornoch, in order to spend more time with my children in the middle of the day.

As to whether the dichotomoy (between competitive and non-competitive golf) is related to design/GCA, I would say no.  Any course can be played contemplatively or competitively.  One could have a contemplative round at Oakmont as easily as a competitive one at Mallow.

Finally, those (like Low and Behr) who think that any game of golf can be completely non-competitive ignore the fact that the essence of golf is trying to hit a ball at some sort of target--be it over a stream, at a green or to a hole.  It is also about personal satisfaction and achievement.  No golfer loves a foozle more than a clean strike, any more than an angler would prefer a cast which embeds a fish hook in his hat over one which caught the interest of a fine brown trout.....

Rich

[TEPaul]

"In sort of the same vein as my question to JES, would you say that the DESIGN of that little course in Ireland played a role in making it such an ideal ground for the 'sporting experience'? Or, am I trying to make too much out of that distinction?"

Peter:

I don't think you're making too much of it at all.

The DESIGN of the Mallow course was no great shakes as it goes, I guess. It runs basically along the side of a mountain that tumbles down to the Mallow river. The course could probably be considered old fashioned and quirky.

The first hole's fairway canted enough in those dry conditions that I couldn't keep anything on it all week. In the end I hit the ball almost into a little orchard on the right and it would still end up left of the fairway.

I don't even remember what the yardages of most of the holes were, maybe I never knew----that just didn't seem important in those conditions. All you really needed to do is figure out what would happen after the ball hit the ground.

I don't really even remember the greens very well or putting on them because that wasn't important either or wasn't what was so exciting.

What was so thrilling is figuring out where to hit the ball "through the green" and on the topography that went up and down and sideways all over the place and where the ball would eventually end up. That's what I'll never forget.

I'd just never seen a ball fire all over a golf course on the ground like that. When it first hit the ground it could bounce 6-10 feet in the air.

When you have conditions like that it sort of forces you to totally engage with the ground---eg with Nature. I generally hit a 9 iron about 130-135 and I could use a 9 iron on some areas of that course from 220 yards given the terrain.

Richard Goodale has heard me talk about Mallow that time in 99 for years now and he always kids me that I just don't know GB golf.

He's completely right about that. I didn't know golf that way at all and I haven't had much experience on those kinds of courses and conditions but if the conditions over here never get even 50% like Mallow was in 1999, Americans, including me, have absolutely no idea what they are missing.

Perhaps a year or two later I played in the National's Singles tournament at NGLA and it was sort of like that. It was a real revelation to me with American golf and about a day later driving back home down the NJ Turnpike---BAM---the entire jigsaw prescription of the IMM was born in a flash.

I know now what Low was talking about basically because of Mallow (and NGLA and the other courses over here that're getting into serious F&F programs), but I think it takes an experience like Mallow to make most any golfer truly understand what it takes to engage with Nature with golf as Low described it.

When you have conditions and playability like that the need to have someone around playing with you really does seem secondary. The course pretty much grabs your undivided attention.

Over here we have little idea what our golf courses can offer us in this way.

[Rich Goodale]

Good post, Tom.  BTW, I was being serious about Mallow this time.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Rich,
You wrote:

..."those (like Low and Behr) who think that any game of golf can be completely non-competitive ignore the fact that the essence of golf is trying to hit a ball at some sort of target--be it over a stream, at a green or to a hole.  It is also about personal satisfaction and achievement."

 
That doesn't appear to be his position. He(Low) said golf is a game that: ..."is really less dependent upon the competitive element than any other" but that ..."it provides all that is necessary in the way of competition in itself. With its faithful and most resourceful ally, Nature, it places itself in opposition to the player, and they twain fight each other. And it is a desperate fight at times."

[Rich Goodale]

Let's be honest, Jim.  We both missed the obvious fact that that was Leach interpreting Low.  We're in one of those Plato's Cave/Twilight Zone sort of spaces, and as long as we realize that it is a great big 11-dimensional world out there (to quote Tom Paul's interpretation of String Theory) we're all OK, at least fur the noo....

Rich

[Peter Pallotta]

JES - thanks; that helps.

Jim - yes, that's my take as well; but some of the earlier responses got me to wondering whether or not that 'fight' was driven by/involved the desire to get the ball into the hole in the fewest strokes possible. I think it does, but maybe that has less to do with the design of the golf course than I think it might. (see below)

Tom - from your last post I get the impression that the "competitive game-sporting experience" divide that I'm asking about might have more to do with the maintenance of a course rather than its design, i.e. whether playing alone or in competition, the firm and fast conditions demanded a greater participation in and focus on 'nature'. Yes? Maybe?

Thanks
Peter  

[Jim_Kennedy]

Peter,
"...is the golfer indeed not always angling for the hole?"

I don't doubt that the desire to get the ball into the hole in the fewest strokes possible has its place but, you don't have to catch a fish to have a rewarding day on a river.

Rich,
Only 11?



 

[BCrosby]

Great couple of posts Tom. Lots of things to say, no time to say them. Will get back later.

Peter -

Is Leach quoting Low or is that Leach writing about Low?

Bob

[Peter Pallotta]

Bob
I think it's right to say that it's Leach on Low. He starts the article wth a direct quote from Low that is a little on the poetic side, and then appears - to me at least -to try to expand upon and illucidate Low's idea, faithfully.

Peter
Tom - yes, a couple of excellent posts.

[TEPaul]

Richard the Mag;

Don't short-change "String Theory". I believe it's 13 dimensions, not 11.

When Low talks about golf not needing human competition compared to games needing human competition he obviously means it in a relative way compared to the exigencies of those other games.

Golf is pretty unusual in the world of ball games in that the ball is not vied for by human opponents as in most every other ball game. That right there completely sets it apart from other ball games in that something else of necessity has to take the place of a human opponent and that would be the aspect of Nature and playing across it, obviously.

I guess some may not mind hitting a bunch of tennis balls across the net to a standardized court with noone on the other side but somehow playing golf alone tops that endeavor by quite a good ways, don't you think?  

Ask your own daughter what a golf course alone can do for someone, Richard, you bonehead. Show her a rake and a sand bunker and it appears she can entertain herself almost endlessly. Imagine what she could do with a golf ball and golf club alone on a golf course.

It's just amazing to me when adults get to the point and the perspective where they need to be retaught many of the essences of life by their children.  

[TEPaul]

Peter:

I will throw something else out there to you on this general subject.

You will be absolutely amazed to learn how naturally and how intensely the element of competition arose in this country when golf first arrived over here and was played on courses that really did resemble steeplechase courses so much more than the great architecture of the courses we talk about over there and in this country which factually preceded that early day over here by a good decade and maybe two.

If we really think about that carefully we should probably realize that batting a golf ball around ALONE on something that resembled a flat steeplechase course probably wasn't much more interesting than batting a tennis ball at a backboard or over a tennis net with noone on the other side.

No wonder compeition caught on like wild-fire when golf first arrived in this country.

Matter of fact, some really odd articles can even be found in some of the earliest American golf magazines of the late 19th century proclaiming that this flat and standardized form of sort of steeplechase like golf and golf courses must even be better than the linksland and an improvement on it. This is precisely the thing that Behr referred to as the inherent "game mind of man" which is to inherently want to standardize and measure out the playing field simply to isolate and better measure human vs human (the game ball either vied for or used as the only means of human competitive measurement) competition and skill.

Most of those very early American golfers who gravitated immediately towards competition (that's all completely documented, by the way) had no conception at all of the natural glories of the Scottish linksland, and what it looked like and was like to play on, even alone.

[Rich Goodale]

Tommy

If you really think that golf was non-competitive in those glorious days of 19th century Scotland, you probabgly also believe in the tooth fairy, that there are 13 dimensions to string theory and that you invented the concept of "fast and firm."  Dream on, buckaroo!  Ignorance can really be bliss, if accomponied by a fine Merlot.....

Magno

[TEPaul]

"Tommy
If you really think that golf was non-competitive in those glorious days of 19th century Scotland, you probabgly also believe in the tooth fairy, that there are 13 dimensions to string theory and that you invented the concept of "fast and firm."  Dream on, buckaroo!  Ignorance can really be bliss, if accomponied by a fine Merlot....."

Richard:

It has always been very funny to me how defensive you and so many others over there get when anything much is said about American golf.

It's almost like an involuntary reaction that you all have to proclaim that everything came first over there and was better.

There's no question competition was very popular in the linksland probably decades before the game arrived over here.

But the point of my post is the question of how many of those early American golfers who played on those first rudimentary steeplechase like courses and gravitated towards competition KNEW THAT?

Don't worry I am well aware that the Scots invented the Hula Hoop and the TWIST too.

[Adam Clayman]

Peter,

Great question. So far, I have gone from a negative, to an acceptance of both yes and no, to a resounding YES. Talk about fickle.

The modern version of the flat steeplechase like course
has sadly become every course, due to manintenance practices. The land's interaction is almost non-existent on a consistantly over-saturated canvas.

It takes an educated descerning eye to look 40 yards into the trees, at some older venues, and realize that at one time that hillside was integral to the hole strategies, but is currently covered in both vertical hazards, and long grass. Too many times the new dictated path of that hole, leaves the average or newer golfer uninspired. It's an assumption, on my part, that these types of evolutionary results are systemic, and likely due to always asking the better player to make alterations to a specific designs. But I digress...

I'd call your prism a very sophisticated one.
 

[Peter Pallotta]

Jim - I think Leach overplayed his hand with the 'angling for the hole' bit. I think angling is a very good metaphor, mind you, but I think he was forcing the analogy with that one (especially as it's the only place in the entire article that he even hints at the 'goal' of getting the ball in the hole.)

TE - thanks. Always interesting and (for me) new information.

Adam - Thanks, and I'm with you on the 'fickle' reactions. I can't quite get a handle on it. But, the way I read the excerpt, the dichotomy struck me not as competing versus non-competing, but more as competing-against-an-opponent versus competing-against-oneself-and-nature. Leach himself focuses on the 'inward' part of the equation, i.e. encouraging the golfer to foster in his own mind and spirit the latter attitude. The question that occurred to me, however, was whether there was something in the design of a course and/or -- as you and TE both seem to infer -- the way a course is maintained that would tend to foster the latter approach more than the former.  

Peter