[George Pazin]

If golf had developed originally somewhere where the weather was a little milder, do you think the game or architecture would have developed any differently?

I wonder if we would've ended up in the RTJ era a lot earlier.

[Peter Pallotta]

George - good question. I'll be interested in the answers. My guess is probably "not very significant at all".  I'd imagine that the nature of the links land had much more to do with it; and that we'd be projecting backwards (and incorrectly) onto the early designers a modern-day concern about how wacky weather might affect scoring and fairness. But I'm not sure about any of that at all -- just wanted to keep this from dropping too far down the page.

Peter   

[Jim Sweeney]

Agree with Peter. Seems that golf equipment, player skills, construction technology, and land forms would have had much more effect than the weather.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Disagree completely with Peter!

The combo of implement technology and wind had to affect basic thinking.  If there were more than a few postage stamp holes, they went away because they simply couldn't be played.

You don't think golfers crying "unfair" is new do you?   I date the first accusation of unfairness to about three days after the old course opened, maybe earlier.....

[Adam Clayman]

Try 1647 Thomas Klatt's dying thought had to be "unfair".

I'll disagree with George's premise that implies the links land is not mild weather.

[Kirk Gill]

I think that Jeff hit the key weather element on the head - wind !

It HAD to be in the heads of folks who started to lay out courses, or formalize courses over land that had been played over in various configurations during the course of years. Just like putting areas couldn't be TOO steep or the ball would just roll off, landing areas couldn't be TOO small or they'd be unhittable in the wind, or you'd have to wait for a calm day which might take a while to come.

Of course, it's easy to say such a thing, with absolutely no facts to back me up, but that's never stopped me before...

[Peter Pallotta]

I tend to defer to the thoughts and opinions of professional architects. But just to keep thinking out-loud:

On a piece of linksland subject to a lot of wind, the impact or influence of wacky weather on the actual design would likely have amounted to, what, big greens and wide fairways? Okay - so the question is, does that describe ALL links courses, especially in their first and early iterations?( I think even TOC's fairways got widened and narrowed over the years, no?) And if not, what does that suggest about the true significance of weather on those early designs? Perhaps the consensus (and even reasonable) opinion on this is wrong. Hhmm?

Peter

And from what I can tell, even today a links course on the Open rota is virtually unplayable when the wind is really bad, especially for the average golfer.  If no one in charge is bothered by that today, is it likely they would've been back then?

[Kalen Braley]

This is an interesting topic.

I think its important to think in terms of the context they were working in and what golf was to them.  In its infancy I think golf was mostly:

Matchplay:  In this format, narrow corridors and small greens don't matter as much.  Get out of position and you simply lose the hole and there is no fuss about finishing the hole like we do with todays stroke play mentality

Penal:  Nuff said, quit your belly aching and hit the ball straighter next time right?  

Unstandardized:  No concept of par, confirming equipment, fairness of the golf hole etc.  In these conditions, it leads to great imagination in devising ways to beat your opponent. Who cares if its only 300 yard hole and you had a 7 to beat his 8... just find a way to get the job done.

Mother Nature:  I suspect for the most part though without earth moving equipment and other ways to alter the landscape you took what the land and conditions gave you.  It was probably an accepted and likely embraced fact of the game.

I think all of these factors could all explain extremely difficult, penal, and sometimes unfinishable holes.  And I doubt many thought twice about changing it until the sport went more mainstream and became "standardized"

[Peter Pallotta]

Good post, Kalen. Makes a lot of sense to me (though that might be a "counter-indicator").

Peter

[Jeff_Brauer]

Peter,

I think it was mostly frontal openings and lack of forced carries the wind forced the designers into.  The fw were probably pretty wide, but it seems like the "standard" green sizes were set by Muirfield in 1892 or so.  At least, that seems to be the first modern scaled course to my eye.

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks, Jeff. I honestly hadn't thought of the green openings and lack of forced carries as design features/elements that were engendered by the weather. It makes sense intuitively, but yet thinking about it now those design elements seem to me to have at least as much to do with the nature of the equipment, the nature of the turf, and the ethos of the game back then as it does the weather (as Jim S said.) But again, I've never read anything about that from the early designers...so any more of your thoughts/details would be appreciated.   

Peter

[JESII]

Do we have any evidence that there was much play during the real wacky weather days?

[Tom_Doak]

I think you have to say the combination of weather AND EQUIPMENT played the key roles.

The greens didn't have to be open in front just because of downwind conditions.  You just couldn't spin a featherie or a gutty ball that much -- in fact for most players just getting them airborne consistently was a challenge, I think.  That's why most courses featured just one or two blind shots over a big dune -- because it was damned hard to hit a ball over the Maiden at Sandwich, not because they couldn't see the green.

[Melvyn Morrow]

Jes

The weather has always been a major part of the game in the UK. That linked with the on shore wind adds that inescapable quality to the game which is more prominent on the old links courses. As I mentioned previously, the links land in Scotland was made over for sheep when the Landed Gentry evicted most of their Tenants in the 18th Century, allowing the vegetation to be well cropped and also well fed by the sheep’s manure. The evictions of the crofters/tenants from what was already coastal land was totally ruthless but may have resulted a century later in giving golf the ideal mix to produce excellent golf courses on these sheep maintained fertile links.

As for “Do we have any evidence that there was much play during the real wacky weather days?”  you just need to read the account of the last real game Young Tom played the month before he died playing Young Arthur Molesworth in the blinding snow and snowdrifts – I believe the white gutta balls were painted red to be able to see them.

Tom is right about get the feathery & gutty to fly, but it just goes to show the quality of these early professionals i.e. Young Tom’s down in 3 on the first hole (578 yard Par 6) at Prestwick in 1870.  Also don’t think you would have heard them moaning about not reaching a Green or wanting the R&A to shorten the hole by 10 yards to facilitate their game on a wet and windy day– makes some of our modern Pros look perhaps more like prema donna's IMHO.

[JESII]

Melvyn,

Thanks for that, really cool stuff imagining Young Tom playing in the blinding snow.

What impact do you think that day had on golf course architecture?

What I mean is, I have played dozens of tournament rounds in some sort of hellacious weather...the type that would clear the course on non-tournament days...but as you know, when the flag goes up, you must play.

I am sure that the professional game impacts (and always has impacted) architecture to some degree, but weather to the extreme we have referenced would seem to require more consideration for the architecture (eg: capacity) of the pub than the golf course.

Perhaps I am going too far with George's words, but I don't think even a guy from the 'Burgh would consider 10 - 15 mph winds or a bit of rain "WACKY". I think "WACKY" must mean the stuff the guys at Birkdale played in yesterday morning, no?   If I am correct, well, that's drinking weather if you ask me and I'd bet rounds are down 90+% on those days so why would we be designing courses for those lunatics...

[Mike_Cirba]

Is it just me or does anyone else just love the way Melvyn writes?

[Eric Smith]

Is it just me or does anyone else just love the way Melvyn writes?

Mike,

Count me as a fan of Melvyn's prose.  I'm also happy he's with us. 

[RJ_Daley]

I really like what Kalen had to say.  And, the only source I have to really try to analyse the frequency or willingness of the guys in late 1800s to go out and play the toon-a-mints in wild and whacky weather would be the "Scrapbook of Old Tom Morris".  I'll have to look through the clipping and try and find any accounts and descriptions specifically of wild weather.   My previous readings were not specifically looking for the wild weather issue to try and get a handle on how the old guys approached the subject.  Melvyn's account of Young Tom playing in snow is the only specific example I have heard to consider just how brutal of weather they would accept as just the rub of the weather and conditions of the day, and go play whatever you are dealt. 

I also suspect as Kalen discussed, matchplay lent to the playing ethic, that 'it is the same' for each opponent, no matter what the weather - just play.

Another factor I think has had an impact on modern day attitudes is the shear size of the fields in tournaments, putting pressure on the tournament organizers to get the rounds in as the size of the entrants in the field increased. 

but, that doesn't answer the original question of what influence the wild yet expected traditional weather generally is there in the craddle of where golf developed, on the trends in architecture.  To that end, I think the design meld of randomness of bunker placements, as is the randomness of weather conditions cropping up at any time, is sort of a marker for the whole design/lay-out mentality up to a certain era, where you get what you get, and just play on.  Then, when tournaments got more organized with larger fields of contestants, there might have been more emphasis on more considerations to more fully design features to aid, or make the playing field more compatible with predictability of playing conditions and reactions of how the ball and impliments would be effected by the design. 

So, I think we may have had randomness, play on, take what you are given by nature in the earliest days, and then when things got more organized, larger fields, more ability to build and control the field of play, a concerted effort to blend design "fairness-predictablility" into the newer designs effecting more considered hazard placements for a specific purpose, and to demand a specific player skill set based on the archie's 'original intent'; not Mother Natures ambivolance. 

[Melvyn Morrow]

Jes

To be quite honest I would say that that day had no effect on architecture, I would also go on to say that they accepted the climate and conditions that they were given. Another example of the Good Old Days and which I do not believe you would expect to see today is the daily dip in the North Sea i.e. Old Tom – not just on New Years Day but all year round. Again, and as with all things we must reflect the time period and the quality of the lives they lived in the 19th Century.

I believe that the early designers had accomplished great things compared with their later counterparts. Working with restrictions on finance, on potential locations and nearly all work was achieved by the physical hand of Man and not machinery (unless you call a wheelbarrow and spade machinery). Massive drawbacks? Maybe but this allowed the designers to work with Nature and in turn they deliver a balanced and mature design, unlike our new courses which take years to mellow and grow into the tree lined avenues with well manicured fairways and greens only  ruined by the ubiquitous cart tracks.

Different times, land actually fit for purpose albeit most only small parcels of land to start with hence the limitation on the number of holes on the early courses. Plus people willing to accept the conditions (both weather and social) of their times. Regrettable today, we have just become soft and tend to look for the easy option in nearly every walk of life – that something for nothing, that free lunch through to the ‘world owes a living’ attitude, something the Victorian Age did not accept – after all rightly or wrongly it was the days of world empires, soon to be brought to an end in 1914-18 by the Great War.

The world is a changing but the “Wacky” weather is not far off normal in the UK, nothing quite like the English Summer, but I do not think that any architectural modifications are need or required.

[Kalen Braley]

Sorry,

This may be a really dumb question, but if summer weather is a good as it gets in the UK, then there must be some really sh#$%y weather pretty much all the time over there??

I could move to Seattle if I wanted that but at least their summers are spectacular!! 

[George Pazin]

Thanks for the many thoughtful answers, one and all.

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()