Some interesting observations and advice from Horace Hutchinson

[TEPaul]

In the very first issue of Golf Illustrated (and Outdoor America) an article on golf course construction by Horace Hutchinson is featured (along with a couple of other featured articles).

In that article Hutchinson warns against architects starting a routing by first identifying and designing par 3 holes (and then filling in the rest around them).

He also warns against keeping an OB boundary on one side too long in a routing. He suggests breaking it up by 'diving into the middle' and then perhaps immediately back out to the boundary with the next hole.

Another thing he features is the correct overall balance and variety with length of holes; this is an issue I will have a whole lot more to say about as elaborated by some of those ODGs like Hutchinson and Macdonald----because to them in their time of analysis, review, criticism and suggestions and products it looks to be huge----really HUGE, maybe even the ultimate KEY to "ideal" golf course architecture----ala the ultimate point and revolutionary break-through idea of Macdonald with NGLA---leading him to call it the first example of 'golfing architecture!'

I have no doubt at all that Hutchinson was a very smart and respected guy in early architecture and with the sussing out of some important principles of GCA and such but with what he sometimes condemns it seems like a better policy for him would've been to suggest that perhaps his recommendations confirm that the exception makes the rule. Thank God Hugh Wilson and Merion East didn't take his suggestion with that routing.

And with blindness in architecture and what he said about Myopia vs NGLA regarding blindness it appears he was either pretty unobservant at Myopia or a bit blind himself in his architectural analyses?  (Count 'em up, Boys because those courses have not changed that way with one exception---ie Myopia's 10th.

Some of these old articles are just remarakable. It shows a pretty dynamic tapesty of opinion back then!

[TEPaul]

By the way, the very first editor of Golf Illustrated (and Outdoor America) was Max Behr, who came over to the new magazine from his year plus long stint as editor of GOLF Magazine, a golf magazine that went back to the middle of the 1890s and was the orginal official organ of the USGA for a time.

There's an editorial article in that first Golf Illustrated magazine about the argument in the Lesley Cup Matches to use four-ball competition over foursome competition. The article isn't signed by Max but I know my Max Behr and this article is the absolute ultimate and pinnacle of Max Behrian labrynthian logic. In the first part of the article it seems he uses his premise (the benefit of foursome play) as a justification and argument for the benefit of foursome play in his argument FOR foursome play in the Lesley Cup and in golf.

What do you call that? Would it be circular reasoning with a point or dare I say, f...ffffa. fala...sus..suahsuss...eeee.....OH never mind. Those Ivy League renaissance cats back then were something else with their ideas and their presentation of them but at least they enjoined them in their writing and articles and discussions and argumentations and debates rather than clownishly dismissing them and going on to total nonsequitors as Pat Mucci does today on here----the latest being his recent spat of Pine Vallye tree removal threads. 

[Jim_Kennedy]

I don't spend 1/10 of the time that others do reading some of those old magazines, but one thing I've noticed is the frequent number of articles that are written with the intent of codifying GCA, much like Hutchinson in the passages you just posted.

Must have driven Behr nuts.

[TEPaul]

Jim Kennedy:

If by codifying you mean what I generally refer to as "standardizing" architecture, then, yeah, that kind of thing generally drove Behr nuts.

Behr seemed to be a long-term advocate and proponent of what one might call a form or perception of natural randomness in architecture or at least a form of architecture that appealed to a golfer's emotions more than some sense of mathematical prescription.