[TEPaul]

TomD:

On the other hand, maybe Macdonald knew something that some of the real naturalists with the look in architecture that was occuring through the late teens and into the 1920s didn't know including architects like Tillie who apparently was somewhat critical of the look of Macd/Raynor. And I guess should include people like the wacko naturalist Wayno Morrison isn't aware of today either, and that would be that Macdonald understood that even if his architecture did look engineered that a pretty good slice of golfers admired it then and perhaps would continue to admire it, including the look of it into the future for whatever their reasons.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom P:

I think Macdonald did know his courses looked a bit old-fashioned and that suited him just fine, because he was so enamored with tradition.  In fact he compared his whole idea of borrowing classic forms to ancient Greek architecture, which is full of rigid formality -- columns in front, and only a couple of styles of column at that.

On the other hand, I wouldn't say he was stuck in the transition era.  I think his real architectural career was from 1900 to 1915, after which everything else was pretty much Raynor's work.  (George may disagree with me, or he may not, I'll be curious to hear which it is.)  If I'm correct, nobody before 1915 was building anything very naturalistic for comparative purposes.

[TEPaul]

TomD:

Beginning right around WW1 and certainly in the years thereafter and for whatever his myriad of reasons it appears pretty obvious Macdonald was seriously pissed off at most everyone in golf and architecture.

We have this letter exchange between Hugh Wilson and Piper around 1920. They were trying to get Macdonald involved in their new USGA Green Section.

Piper went down to NGLA to see Macdonald. Wilson wrote Piper asking if Macdonald tried to hit him or something and Piper wrote back saying that no he didn't exactly try to hit him but Charlie did mention that everyone in golf and architecture was a bunch of Goddamned idiots.

[John_Cullum]

I don't think it was Macdonald's intent to build artifical-looking greens and bunkers ... he just didn't have much practice at building natural-looking ones.

That may be the most brilliant sentence ever posted on GCA.com

[TEPaul]

John:

Do you think that statement is that brillant? If you do ask yourself where Macdonald would've even found an example!

In my opinion there actually were a few notable examples of inland golf architecture before Macdonald and his NGLA but I would not expect a guy like that to acknowedge it.

Do you know what really is interesting about Macdonald and his abhorence of what he saw over here that was so obnoxious that preceded his NGLA?

It was a ton of what some of us think of as super right angle geometric architecture but what Macdonald himself said really disgusted him (and he mentioned seeing so much of it on the drive out to Long Island) was architecture and architectural angles, particularly green constructions, that looked like what he called "Marcel waves".

Do you know what marcel waves were John? The last thing they were was right angle geometric architecture. Frankly they were the polar opposite of geometric right angles!  

[Tom_Doak]

Tom:

What are marcel waves?  I remember reading that passage a long time ago but I never looked it up.  Off to Google ...

A hairstyle from the 1870's ?!!  You are even older than I guessed!    I'll be damned if I know what older golf courses had shaping like that, though.

[TEPaul]

TomD:

I don't know what era the marcel wave was popular in with ladies hairstyles but they were prominent and remarkably regular waves that were ironed in with a special "marcel iron".

Macdonald wrote his book in the mid-1920s so that remark of his may've been aimed at some of the first attempts at using what architects thought were natural lines---ie regular wavy lines.

Perhaps Macdonald was poking fun at the early naturalist architects who were beginning to poke fun at his engineered architectural lines.

[wsmorrison]

"Do you know what really is interesting about Macdonald and his abhorence of what he saw over here that was so obnoxious that preceded his NGLA?

It was a ton of what some of us think of as super right angle geometric architecture but what Macdonald himself said really disgusted him (and he mentioned seeing so much of it on the drive out to Long Island) was architecture and architectural angles, particularly green constructions, that looked like what he called "Marcel waves".

Tom,

I never did understand why Macdonald was so disgusted with the look and play of the American courses of that era with geometric features and the steeplechase look.  He supposedly built NGLA as a counterpoint.  Yet his original design at Chicago GC looked exactly like the style is was apparently disgusted with.  What gives?  Did he disgust himself?

[TEPaul]

"Tom,
I never did understand why Macdonald was so disgusted with the look and play of the American courses of that era with geometric features and the steeplechase look.  He supposedly built NGLA as a counterpoint.  Yet his original design at Chicago GC looked exactly like the style is was apparently disgusted with.  What gives?  Did he disgust himself?"

Wayne:

Obviously it didn't look the same to him.

It doesn't look the same to me either. NGLA does have some features that look engineered and manufactured but the course and it's features certainly doesn't look like that early geometric and steeplechase stuff.

This "marcel wave" remark of his may be pretty interesting because he may not have been looking at the old geometric stuff but perhaps some later attempts at an early natural look.

[Bill_McBride]

"Marcel waves" look like this - (not sure this is helpful, but hey, you never know)

[paul cowley]

Bill....very helpful...its all making sense to me now...some definate curves of charm....thanks.

[James Bennett]

Paul

looks like the photo was from the era when fairways were wider at the shot point, and then narrowed before widening again just before the approach to the green.  Some of the hazards remind me of Wayne's Flynn drawing at Pocono Manor.  

James B

[wsmorrison]

Tom,

I'm not saying that NGLA had the geometric features that so nauseated Macdonald.  I said that his original design at Chicago GC did.  Why did he build that golf course after his sojourn in the UK?  How could he have been inspired by the linksland and have instilled the spirit of St. Andrews and still create the steeplechase course at Chicago?  This inquiring mind wants to know and wants you to answer it pronto.

[TEPaul]

Wayne:

Other than the fact Macdonald was a most opinionated and strong-willed man who apparently didn't like admitting various things, one should consider he designed the Chicago CC course in the 1890s and long before he made NGLA and even longer before he made those remarks about the obnoxious "marcel wave" style of architecture he saw on Long Island.

To understand any of this stuff and particularly why it happened one must always consider at what point things happened in the evolution of golf architecture, in my opinion. I think it's just a lot easier to understand that way in the end.

[John_Cullum]

TE

I think that statement is brilliant because it helps explain many things.

One is that some of these early architects just didn't know how to get the job done.

I can go to Paris and study a few Rembrandts, but if I go back home and try to duplicate one, it will be a fiasco

[wsmorrison]

Tom,

I understand all that.  I still don't see how, even in the 1890s you can look at the golf courses on the linkslands (even though Dornoch had somewhat geometric greens) and come up with the geometric designs he came up with.  What courses influenced him to design such a steeplechase course as the first iteration of Chicago CC?  Were they the inland courses of the UK at the time?  Why did vestiges of that geometric steeplechase look remain in the designs of Raynor and Banks?  

To then 10 years later decry that style and not recognize his own role in popularizing it is strange.  Passing him off as a strong-willed man who didn't like admitting things isn't answer enough.  I find Macdonald fascinating, a lot more so than his architecture.  This facet is worth exploring and writing about.  

Reading the articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer, it was clear that his template model and design style was not universally acclaimed.  He seemed completely incapable of accepting criticism yet he got it and his earliest work conflicted with his later theories.  I believe his ego would only accept encomiums.  No wonder he couldn't get along with so many and withdrew from efforts he helped bring about.  He comes across as both a brilliant man and a spoiled child.

[George_Bahto]

Tom D: "A hairstyle from the 1870's ?!!  ........ I'll be damned if I know what older golf courses had shaping like that, though."

Tom, that quote always had me scratching my head .... Marcel waves we're just wave after wave of flat-looking waves - that chick in the center of the front row has really got the "look" !! I don’t know of how that translate to anything on a golf course in those days.

Sounds more like a Maxwell green ?

If I remember correctly, I think the term came from a hair company's advertisement. It was the rage!

[TEPaul]

George

I don't believe it's so hard to understand what Macdonald was talking about with his "marcel wave" remark.

Clearly in the teens at least golf architecture in some areas was beginning to evolve from the strikingly symmetrical lines used in architecture previous to that time. Those architectural lines were generally straight and right angles.

Architects were beginning to use more flowing and curving lines in what they made and apparently the "marcel wave" type curving lines was one of the first of that expression. The problem with those kinds of curving lines is they were also extremely regular and symmetrical and apparently Macdonald didn't like that look.

There is a photo of a green (probably at the Philadelphia Country Club) in American Golfer of March 1916 on page 349 that has the caption, "One of the greens at the Country Club, illustrating how Philadelphia is casting loose from the symmetrical lines of other days and turning to the ruggedness of nature."

The photo of that green shows some damn fine looking natural architectural lines.

Obviously this was not an example of the regular and symmetrical curves Macdonald was referring to with "marcel waves" that may've preceded this look.

[Peter Pallotta]

A question:

In the 1910s and early 1920a, was there a growing awareness of the importance of a site's topography on the quality -- and naturalness -- of the finished product?

If so, did this growing awareness run parallel to -- or did it engender -- the movement towards a more naturalisic aesthetic?

Maybe that's not very clear. Did early architect's know what they needed to be looking for in the land in order to create shot-tests that looked natural?  Did the first natural looking holes (that also had shot values) happen by accident? What came first, the talent or the aesthetic?

Thanks
Peter  

[TEPaul]

Peter:

You know, that's a really good question and one that may take, in my opinion, or should take, some serious time and consideration to discuss.

Let me give you an example of what I think you're getting at, particularly when you mention something like "shot values" with the question of the aesthetics (in a naturalist sense) of architecture.

The best example to answer your question just may be Cypress Point.

On that course you have the 9th hole, one quirky and cool little hole that Mackenzie basically did nothing at all to other than plant grass on it. Any other architect may've just totally missed the natural potential for golf of that particular natural landform.

On the other hand, his construction crew, the ultra creative American Construction Co, with its amazing Irish contractors such as Patty Cole, apparently got into mimicking the lines and formations of passing clouds in their bunker shapes.

What I mean to say here in answer to your question is one example (#9) is an example of an actual natural site landform used as is and that'll never change much but the other example is natural (passing clouds), of course, but nevertheless not exactly site specific and definitely ephemeral.  

[paul cowley]

Peter....I think that in the beginning design was for the most part one of function....lay out something that worked easy with the terrain that was given. I have seen a lot of older links courses that were good as long as they had the terrain, but the holes that fell out of the good stuff are usually disappointments....but they were, and in many cases still are, accepted as such. It wasn't the the designers fault....he just ran out of good dirt.
But the best and most talented designers of that era were the ones that could lay out a course of interest combined with aesthetics.

I don't think much changed with the onset of the early Golden Age, and the need to create golf on sites that weren't linksland....which was also combined with more money to spend on construction and better equipment to build courses with.....and I bet a lot of real junk was built then.
The talented ones [those we speak of here], were able to combine function and aesthetics.

Fast forward and nothings really changed.

[paul cowley]

Well JKB....I guess you could say we have drifted a bit from my original post...which was probably a bit lame anyway.

Sometimes I just pick out words for how they look in a sentence.

Seriously.  

[Peter Pallotta]

Tom, Paul - thanks.

Tom's use of Mackenzie as an example seems to fit Paul's point; but there's a lot in both posts that I'm not sure I'm understanding/picking up on.

But I wonder if the schism between the form and function camps wasn't larger back then, or whether it took well into the 20s before the reality of that schism even became apparent.

Macdonald seemed more interested in 'shot testing' (function) and Mackenzie more interested in 'aesthetics' (form). Earlier on, maybe no one was really making the distincion that clearly, or if they were weren't quite sure what to look for in a piece of property so as to meld the two (?). A little later on, and at least for a little while, no self respecting architect would even think of not trying to meld the two (?); here I'm thinking of Mackenzie at Augusta.

And then, it all seemed to drop away for a few decades -- and maybe one basic fact about today's architects is that, once again, few would not consider melding form and function a very very important thing (?). I thought it was striking that Tom Doak mentioned on another thread that Mackenzie and Raynor were amongst his favourites -- indicative of a modern day blending of form and function (?)

Peter

   

[Mike_Cirba]

Wayne,

In the 1939 aerials, when I zoom in close, it does appear that at least some of Flynn's bunkering at Pocono Manor were in fact built to spec.

I'll go double check, but sure looks like sand to me.

Sorry you can't make it tomorrow.   I'll tell Hugh and George's ghosts that you're too busy channeliing with Flynn.  

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