I'm having a hard time getting my head around all these interesting responses. Thanks all.
Like Tom Paul, whose ultimate response I eagerly await, I've had some false starts on this, including several at the the keyboard. Every time I try to take it forward I seem to go backwards and end up with that gray thing Slag adroitly pointed out.
So I'll just toss this out. Beauty, as I see it, will always evoke an emotional response. And unlike something that is just pretty, it will also appeal to the head. You peer into a baby's face (natural beauty), you feel a strong response with both your head and your heart. You look at one of Cezanne's landscapes (man made beauty), you have a similar head/heart response. The important difference being that the artist had to have a hook into your being that nature gets automatic.
Golf course architecture, to state something everyone here knows, is a hybrid of the two. And then there's that interesting little dimension called the game.
I absolutely respond emotionally to golf courses. What I still don't get is how architects with their brains and their souls and their backhoes make that happen. But none of them have chimed in, so maybe this is all bs.