Instead of wasting too much time with our resident village idiot Melvyn, I would rather get back on topic as the first post by Jim E. was a great one and a perfect example of how a professional questions the amateur peanut gallery and instead of answering, they throw the question back at the professional.
The bottom line is that golf is golf. There is zero difference between riding in a cart or walking on a general scale. In no way is a golfer playing one of Jim's courses in a cart any less of a golfer playing Pac Dunes with a caddie or push cart. While anyone that has played with me knows, I love to walk and play golf...and fast. However if I'm at Stone Eagle in July, or my host is riding, or everyone else in the group is taking a cart (very rare in my usual group), then what's the difference? You're still playing the same golf course, hitting it in the same places, and experiencing essentially the same thing. Golf while riding in a cart is still a hell of a lot better than no golf at all!
We get all worked up with Melvyn not because many of us don't like to walk, but because he is so adament (and insulting towards others) about being a "pure" golfer and that anyone who doesn't play golf exactly like him is disgracing the name of his famous dead great granddaddy Old Tom. While really it doesn't matter at all what Old Tom would do today, or yesterday, or a hundred years ago (esp. when there was no other option than walking). In fact the only reason Melvyn is here is because no one in their right mind would actually listen to his nonsense in the real world...Scotland or elsewhere.
The idea that a course with a riding only policy is any less of a golf course and that we should do everything we can to purposely avoid it is nutso. Of course I prefer to play golf while walking and I would rather play golf courses that let me do that, but it's not so serious of an issue as many make it nor should it take away from the study of the actual GCA of a course.
Pat Craig,
Beautifully said. Jim Engh's post was a simple, clear, and educational offering from a professional to a group of people who are anything but. If he reads the entirety of this thread, I wouldn't expect him to ever post again; why would a PhD. wish to return to a group of ill-behaved first graders? He made his thoughts and decision-making process clear, and the professional nit-pickers here on GCA have covered it in manure, as so often is the case in the last couple of years.
I, too, love to walk when I play golf. But THE core value of golf for me is that I just love to play the game. So when I find myself in a carts-only situation and faced with the choice of riding or not playing, it is not a choice at all. I play the game. And at the end of the round, when I think back on whatever good shots I might have hit, I NEVER think to myself, "Yes, but I rode..."
Thanks to Jim Engh and the other GCA's out there who find ways to build good and memorable courses on difficult sites for developers who insist on housing and cart paths and all the rest. How exactly more good courses with wonderful golf holes and vistas can be bad for the game escapes me completely. The genie is out of the bottle now; carts are here to stay, and are a critical part of the revenue stream of modern golf. It may be lamentable that every course isn't a links in Scotland, but the game has grown far, far beyond that and will never go back. To think otherwise is exactly comparable to a life membership in the Flat Earth Society.
Walking is important, to the game and to me. It is integral to the game's history, it is fantastically healthy, and quite simply the way the game is best played. BUT it is not THE game, or we wouldn't have clubs and balls and bunkers and all the rest; we would just walk. There is much, much more to golf than a simple walk, or it wouldn't have such a hold over all of us. My experience is that trying to give simple answers to complex questions rarely succeeds and often obscures the truth.
So I'll walk when possible, and ride when necessary for whatever reason. Either way, I'll be playing GOLF and my life will be better for the experience. And if I'm ever fortunate enough to play one of Jim Engh's courses, I'll enjoy the day no matter how I get from one shot to another.