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Craig Disher

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Darwin on architects
« on: June 28, 2007, 12:42:35 PM »
A friend of mine loaned me one of his prize books - a first edition of Out of the Rough by Bernard Darwin. It's a collection of essays culled from his writings for Country Life and The Times. I don't have Silverman's book but it's possible some appear in his collection.

Six of the essays are portraits of golfers - Sarazen, Travis, Arthur Croome, Ouimet and more. Others are on various aspects of the game. But one describes his experience on a course he refuses to name (it's Rye, based on his description of the holes) with an architect (Simpson?) who is asked to review a committee's plan to "make less perilous a road that runs through the course."

Darwin's last few sentences would be appreciated by any architect. After spending most of the day on the course with the architect, he says, "If anybody thinks that golfing architects do not work hard and earn their living by the sweat of their brow, I hereby throw down my gauntlet and will meet him with niblicks. That is to say, when I have recovered. I must have a little rest first."




Michael Blake

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Re:Darwin on architects
« Reply #1 on: June 28, 2007, 01:15:23 PM »
The chapter "Architectooralooral" from 'On Golf' Dariwn writes about his appreciation of the architect and the many challenges they face.

From 1934:  (boldface all mine)

 "It is their task to make golf courses no harder for the ordinary mortal, and yet a good deal more exciting and less monotonous for the man who can regularly drive untold yards and as regularly follow his drive with a high pitching shot with some lofted variety of graded iron. They have tackled it with courage and ingenuity, but it would be flattery to say that they have wholly succeded, since the modern ball and the modern golfer's power of hitting it are in combination sometimes too much for them."

more...

"Long driving is not merely a matter of youth and strength;  it it essentially a matter of skill and deserves every fair advantage it can gain.  At present it is doing more than that;  it is spoiling the beauty and interest of the game.........The architects have done nobly;  they have fought the good fight, but it ought not to be a fight.  The fact that it threatens to become so is the fault of the ball.  Whether or not the ball can ever be brought back to its proper limits is another story, but unless it can, the architects will be forever fighting an uphill battle."

From 1934!!!  Wow!!!  Sounds like it could have been written yesterday, 73 years later.