A while back, I introduced everyone to a great historian named J. Eric Thompson. Sir J. Eric Thompson (1898-1975) was one of the most influential Mayanologists - Mayan Historians - from the 1930’s until his death, over forty years. He was a master of Mayan calendrics, a topic he taught himself. He worked for years in the dirt at many of the most revered sites in the Mayan world such as Chichen Itza and Copan. He studied the living Maya themselves in their villages. He worked hand in hand with the greatest archaeologists of the day. He was a prolific and convincing writer and college professor and made many indelible contributions to the study of the Maya.
However, by sheer force of his sardonic personality, acerbic pen and powerful alliances on both sides of the Atlantic he single-handedly held up decoding of Maya writing from the 40s until close to the day he died.
Thompson was convinced that the hieroglyphics were merely ornamental pictures and could not possibly be letters, words or syllables. He vehemently and violently (for an academician) maintained the writing was not a language and he would never cease attacking anyone who disagreed until they were completely discredited.
Thompson was horribly, horribly wrong.
One of his early victims was brilliant American linguist Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941) who was absolutely right that the carvings were writing, but was never able to achieve a proper phonetic decipherment. Thompson ruthlessly and sarcastically attacked Whorf and other opposition relentlessly, dismissing their positions as unworthy of study or debate. Others soon joined Whorf as notches on Thompson’s belt. “It was a brave or foolhardy Mayanist who dared go against his opinion” wrote eminent Mayanologist Michael Coe in his groundbreaking book Breaking the Maya Code.
Happily, Thompson’s influence did not extend behind the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union – the most unlikely of places – saw the birth of the truth. In 1947 historian Sergei Tokarev challenged his brightest pupil, Yuri Valentinovich Knorosov (1922-1990) – “If you believe that any writing system produced by humans can be read by humans, why don’t you try to crack the Maya system?”
That’s exactly what Knorosov did. In the late 50s, Knorosov correctly solved that the hieroglyphics were groupings of syllables forming words and published his findings. Years of verbal sparring with Thompson ensued. Thompson even dubbed his rival “The Red Menace” and never failed to make the leap of logic in his published papers that Knorosov was wrong, among other reasons, because he worked in the U.S.S.R.
But Knorosov had survived Stalin’s terrible spectre so he had no fear of Thompson and was safely out of reach of his influence and in 1960, Tania Proskouriakoff, a disciple of Knorosov and his syllabary approach, proved that the monuments recorded dates of history and the deeds of rulers by a comparative analysis of a broad array of carvings. On the evening her paper made its way into Thompson’s hands for his review he stormed, “That can’t possibly be right.”
The following morning Thompson told the same people that gave him the paper, “Of course she’s right!” Within fifteen years, we deciphered every Mayan monument known.
However the moral of this story is that for forty-five years, the influence, name, stature, reputation, and work of one man held up the craft for nearly half a century.
The same thing happened with golf course architecture in America. Robert Trent Jones (1906-1999) – simply “Trent” to everyone in golf – was one of the most genial, affable personalities to grace the game. He designed close to 500 golf courses in over three dozen countries. His contributions to the science of building a golf course - turf grasses, hydronics, equipment and agronomy, for example - were staggering and therefore he was able to build on lava, granite, sandy beach or red rock flatirons where no one before him could. This talent made him the “go to guy” to build anywhere.
Trent was also a master marketer and a gifted salesman. He could talk anybody into anything. His catchy business phrases like “give your course a signature” were, sadly, the defining mantras of decades of the craft. As a result, for years Trent landed the most high profile resorts all over the world. As television brought color broadcasts of his beautiful water hazards, emerald fairways and cloverleaf bunker shapes, Trent’s look and feel became synonymous with American parkland golf.
Therein also lay the problem, for as time has shown, while the resorts at which you find Trent’s work are great venues, they are not necessarily the greatest golf course designs. Yet through the sheer force of his personality dominating the landscape so thoroughly for so long and through TV constantly bringing to viewers what looks pretty instead of what is a fascinating strategic golf hole, Trent’s designs became so indelibly tied to the game that it took decades to break out of the design doldrums he helped trigger.
Because of Trent’s widespread influence, draw bunkers became regularly placed at 280 yards out, slice bunkers at 260. Scenic water hazards also created heroic all or nothing shots and tight, tree-lined fairways placed a premium on accuracy. Elevated tees and long forced carries offered challenge to the professional players and expert golfers. Greens were often elevated so much that the ground game was all but eliminated in favor of aerial attack. More power, less finesse, harder is better and nothing should block the player’s view of the challenge in front of him; those were the results of Trent’s design philosophy. Blind shots, so much a part of the game where the game originated, were anathema to Trent and all but eliminated in favor of his doctrine of framing.
Tom Fazio does exactly the same thing. By sheer force of his name, reputation and power, he has impeded the spread of the revival of great classic features. Casual golfers and those learning the game rely on being spoon-fed how to play the hole and are pre-conditioned to accept that there was really only one play – down the middle. And that has got to stop.
We now know wider is better and more air space, not less helps create multiple playing options and angles of attack for all golfers. Trent’s courses were frequently murder on novices because they were either too narrow with little air space (for example Crumpin-Fox which has trees lining both sides on the Trent designed back nine) or had all uphill approach shots that all but eliminated the ground game and therefore playing options most often used by the average golfer. One mistake meant at least double bogey. Yes, Fazio is - generally - much easier on the average golfer then Trent, the problem still exists, just in a different form. By force of reputation, Fazio is holding us back.
Of the hundreds of courses Fazio has designed, indisputable masterpieces? Perhaps World Woods. Everything else? They’re great resorts or pretty places - Pelican Hill, TPC Myrtle Beach, Ventana Canyon, Barton Creek - pretty places that have golf, but isn’t there a reason no major championship has returned to a Fazio design? Yes, there is. Because when you look behind agronomy and horticulture, look behind the “$500,000 cooling system underneath the 3rd green at Ventana Canyon Mountain Course to keep the green at a consistent temperature, look behind the meaningless mantra of “hard par, easy bogey,” look behind the flash and waterfalls and stained glass windows and “magic gates” that open to let you into the facility, you see what the U.S.G.A. and PGA knew since 1987 after the last Fazio design held a major. His work on the ground - the lack of fairway undulations and green contours and strategies - does not quite soar to the heights reached by either classics by Mackenzie, Ross and Seth Raynor or the modern day work of Pete Dye and Tom Doak. Dye has numerous indisputable masterpieces including Harbour Town, Whistling Straits, TPC Sawgrass (Stadium Course), Kiawah Island (Ocean Course) and Blackwolf Run. Doak has built around two dozen designs – a mere fraction of Fazio’s number – yet, Pacific Dunes, Ballyneal and Cape Kidnappers are all among the world’s greatest designs. The same is true of his one-time protege Mike Strantz, who in a few short years built indisputable masterpieces at Tobacco Road, Bulls Bay, Monterey Peninsula C.C. and Caledonia.
With Fazio, the resorts frequently surpass the golf. They are great vacation spots with excellent to world-class accommodations, but the golf is rather pedestrian, especially regarding the often exorbitant price tag.
Fazio can design as he pleases, but to take his arguments to their logical conclusion, he would have us eschew Augusta, National Golf Links of America, Merion and yes, even his favorite, Pine Valley - of which he is a member - all because they have tough cross hazards that an octogenarian or thirty-six handicapper might have trouble playing. There is no question Fazio is affable and all are unanimous in their praise of him as a human being. Nevertheless, he also shares the same historic parallel with Thompson; for decades the power of his reputation actually limited variety of thought in the design features used in golf course architecture. We have a duty to golf to begin a dialogue with Fazio to show him why we might think he is mistaken.