I think Wayne and I basically use the very same definition of architecture as something that is actually built or designed and built by a golf course architect.
So what do we call the rest of a golf course?
Well, I guess we just call it natural landforms or natural features or whatever. The reason we make that distinction is because it simply connotes for us what was man-made and what was not.
I really don't care all that much what definitions people want to use in this business---if they want to call everthing that was natural and not really touched by man that's used on golf courses architecture, then fine. Some even include many things in the definition of architecture that frame and backdrop golf courses and golf holes like the Mountains of Mourne at RCD that aren't even on the golf course and over which the golf architect had no control whatsoever other than to line up some of his holes with them in the backdrop.
But I do recognize, that a most important feature of golf architecture---eg routing---is not exactly "built" by the architect either---it's nothing much more than a "plan" outlined on the ground over which golfers will proceed.
At least that's what a completed routing is preconstruction and I guess I'd have a hard time not considering a routing at that point to not be architecture even if it was not, at that point, actually built on the ground---if in fact one could ever even say a routing is actually "built". It was however, designed by the golf course architect across the raw natural landforms before man evn physically altered any of the natural site.
This fact is also why I seem to make a much greater distinction between the routing phase and what I call the "designing up" phase of a routing, a good deal of which is man-made although by no means all of it.
I call the "designing up" phase a process in which the architect builds things (architecture) and just uses other preexisting things, natural things and otherwise as they were before a course was planned on that site.
To me this thread is not really some philosophical misunderstanding about what golf course architecture is, it's merely an argument over the definition of a word, in my opinion.
If people want Wayne or me to make the distinction we do by calling man-made architecture "man-made architecture" and the rest "non-man-made architecture" or "naturally occuring architecture" that would be just fine by me.
I guess another way of looking at it is that Wayne and I just do not call everything that is on or part of a golf course architecture.
But obviously some do call everything architecture.
Wayne and I probably just felt that if you do that then how do you try to distinguish between and then define what is naturally occuring vs what is actually man-made on a golf course?