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JC Jones

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The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« on: September 20, 2010, 02:18:56 PM »
On the thread regarding the best courses in 1910 there is an interesting discussion that I think is happening below the surface.  It involves the beginnings of golf course architecture. 

I think this is fascinating but I also think that it requires us to define "golf course architecture" first, before we can point to a starting point.

Tom Paul states that he thinks Myopia is the first great example, but he also states that the course is very much just holes cut into the existing terrain (my interpretation of what he is saying, not his words so Tom, feel free to correct me) with very little help from the hand of man.  Is that "architecture"?  Does "architecture" connote designing a course more than building the course?

If pre-build design is what is considered architecture, what would constitute pre-build design?  Topo maps, plasticine models, etc?  No doubt Garden City and Myopia were courses that were around prior to NGLA, but is walking the land and placing holes on it, "architecture," or is there more "planning" involved?

What do you think of or what is your definition of "golf course architecture"?
I get it, you are mad at the world because you are an adult caddie and few people take you seriously.

Excellent spellers usually lack any vision or common sense.

I know plenty of courses that are in the red, and they are killing it.

Jim_Kennedy

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #1 on: September 20, 2010, 03:03:50 PM »
JC,
There is one definition of the word that says it's the orderly arrangement of parts. Accept that and the beginning of architecture starts with the first fellow who said "start here" and "end there".  He may not have built anything but he did a routing, i.e, the orderly arrangement of parts.

Beyond that I think Allan Robertson gets the nod as the first person who used artificial 'parts'.
"I never beat a well man in my life" - Harry Vardon

Peter Pallotta

Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #2 on: September 20, 2010, 03:50:36 PM »
JC -

I think Jim K is spot on there.

He has left me speechless.

Peter

JC Jones

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Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #3 on: September 20, 2010, 04:10:43 PM »

He has left me speechless.

Peter

Thank goodness. ;D
« Last Edit: September 20, 2010, 04:27:48 PM by JC Jones »
I get it, you are mad at the world because you are an adult caddie and few people take you seriously.

Excellent spellers usually lack any vision or common sense.

I know plenty of courses that are in the red, and they are killing it.

Mac Plumart

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #4 on: September 20, 2010, 04:45:14 PM »
“The object of golf architecture is to give an intelligent purpose to the striking of a golf ball”

Max Behr


If we accept the above as the truth, then walking a course and finding natural green sites and routing a course along the natural terrain would certainly classify as architecture.  So, Allen Robertson and Old Tom Morris would certainly be considered pioneering golf course architects.  And here are a few of their courses:

Lahinch        
Muirfield        
Royal County Down        
Royal Dornoch        
Carnousite  
  
But also, we must come to grips with the different phases of golf course architecture.

Early American architecture began as simply getting something in the ground so people could get exposure to the game.  And it progressed to building golf courses that could propel Americans to become the best golfers in the world.  This was certainly influenced by Vardon’s articles/comments…

"This is not the fault of your golfers. They have not had the chance. It is the fault of those who are responsible for your courses. Because the American golfer is seldom put to a real test, he has not improved his game to any great extent. You have some good players over here, but they are not trained to play the right way. In other words, America is not getting as much out of its golf as it should. Your golfer can not play a proper game, because his course is not right.’"

and American competitive spirit, perhaps personified by John McDermott.  

Perhaps a few of these gems came about with a little help from this Britain vs. American golf battle of the early 1900’s.

Pebble Beach
Inverness
Pine Valley
San Francisco
Somerset
Oakland Hills
Scioto
Merion
Nat'l Golf Links
Oakmont

Of course, we can’t ignore technology changes…feathery to guttie to rubber cored balls to Pro V1’s.  Hickory shafted clubs to persimmon woods to 460cc drivers.  I think this changed the game dramatically.  Could a need for new courses been brought about by technology enhancements? Sure.   And perhaps these courses are a by-product of that…

Kiawah Ocean Course
TPC Sawgrass
Muirfield Village
Spyglass Hill
Cabo de Sol (Ocean)        
Casa De Campo  

But I think it just might always come back to its beginnings and the courses, and therefore the architects, in our current Renaissance just might be proving that as minimalisitic courses seem to be making a big comeback…

Machrihanish Dunes; Ballyneal; Sand Hills

And perhaps Max Behr says it best…

“Golf is' a sport, not a game; and this distinction is fundamental if one is to attain a correct perspective of it, for both are endowed with principles of a different character.

Games are civilized institutions as subject to change as are fashions in dress;”


To me, this implies no matter how we try to create something new and unique relative to golf courses and architecture the classics always shine and the golfer will always want a course that embodies the sport’s true nature…and that is of a sportsman looking to conquer a challenge.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2010, 07:36:02 PM by Mac Plumart »
Sportsman/Adventure loving golfer.

TEPaul

Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #5 on: September 20, 2010, 04:46:07 PM »
JC:

I think we talked about a number of things today that bear on the subject of your thread here.

I'm OK with most people's definition of architecture but what interests me the most is not what we say about it on GOLFCLUBATLAS but what others have. Cornish and Whiten seem to pick Alan Robertson as the first architect and what he did at TOC in 1848 as the first example of man-made architecture (the Road Hole green and Road Hole bunker). However, I could certainly see someone legitimately attributing the first example of golf architecture to whomever just arranged a series of holes consisting of fairways and greens (before about 1875 the Rules of Golf did not even allow for separate tee areas other than club lengths from the previous hole) without doing a thing to the land with earthmoving and making features.

But what I think is more indicative is what others in the past thought it was or said it was. In that vein, I particularly note C.B. Macdonald. He wrote in his book that he thought he was the first golf course architect and presumably with NGLA. If he said that one most certainly does need to consider why he would say something like that given the fact a man like Macdonald was certainly as familiar as any at that time about the entire history of golf and what we call architecture.

Therefore he certainly could not have been denying the existence of all the courses that came before NGLA including TOC, all the good courses abroad and the likes of Myopia, Chicago GC and GCGC which were often mentioned as the three best in America early on or the three top ones before NGLA or say around 1910?

So, what could he have meant then when he said he was the first golf architect he was aware of?

I think he may've meant he was the first he was aware of who was actually attempting to copy existing holes or their significant architectural principles and therefore it was necessary to perhaps really move some earth to accomplish that. On the other hand if one really studies the likes of Myopia or GCGC that came before NGLA there really is a whole lot of what one would call "natural landform design" out there.

I also told you I couldn't really imagine he would engage a surveyor/engineer full time with NGLA if he did not intend to do some preconstruction surveying (contour mapping) in preparation for some significant earthmoving and building. After-all that is what engineers and surveyors do.

My next point to you was the one about who the first person in golf architecture was who used a PRE-construction topo (contour) survey map for PRE-construction design purposes. At the moment the earliest one I can find a reference to is ironically Merion East in 1911 but on reviewing Macdonald's book again it appears he is referring to the same thing at the beginning of NGLA when he talks about what Raynor did with contour maps and even if Macdonald did not use the term "preconstuction" what he actually said leaves almost NO doubt that is what he was referring to.

To wit:

      "Employing him to survey our Sebonac Neck property, I was so much impressed with his dependbility and seriousness I had him make a contour map and later gave him my surveyor's maps which I had brought back from Scotland and England, telling him that I wanted those holes laid out  faithfully to those maps.
       When it came to accurate surveying, contours, plastic relief models of the land, draining, piping water in quantity over the entire course, wells and pumps, and in many instances clearing land of forests, eradicating the stones, finally preparing the course for seeding, he had no peer."


Is that why Macdonald called himself the first golf course architect----eg because he was the first to think of using a PRE-construction contour maps for architectural planning because being the first to actually come up with the idea to comprehensively copy existing holes in architecture he knew he would have to get into more earthmoving to do it than anyone ever had before in golf architecture?

And then what he said to the MCC Search Committee in June 1910 about the fact he could tell them no more without a contour map before him really got me wondering if perhaps Macdonald and NGLA had been the first to ever use something like that in architecture again leading him to think of that as the first real "architecture" and himself as the first "architect" he was aware of.

I know it will be a maddenly hard research mission to truly document the very first example of PRE-construction contour mapping to be used for design purposes before anything is done to a site, but I think that is what we will need to do now or next.

I put a thread on here some time ago about the significance of PRE-construction topo (contour line) survey maps. Very few responded and I think the reason was they did not connect with the significance of it in the history and evolution of golf course architecture. Before that golf course architects probably just worked on the ground routing and designing and never really recorded any of what they were doing out there ro going to do with any drawings until perhaps some time after the fact and then prehaps just for illustrative reasons to hang on a wall somewhere.

By the way, I do not consider "stick routings" on paper (like that thing Barker called a "rough sketch" of the Ardmore land for HDC developer Joseph Connell) to be even remotely similar to PRE-construction topo maps with golf holes on them unless and until they actually have "contour lines" on them. The former only represents two dimension---length and width, while the latter represents the all important dimension of height or the vertical dimension. It may seem simple to us today but I bet it sure didn't to them back in the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th in golf course architecture!


« Last Edit: September 20, 2010, 05:05:58 PM by TEPaul »

Melvyn Morrow

Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #6 on: September 20, 2010, 06:32:05 PM »

Tom P

If you are being serious then you must look at Allan Robertson, Alexander Pirie and Old Tom Morris , starting with Allan. One of the first course recorded to have been designed was Carnoustie in 1842 and int included the above individuals, Then we have Panmure and Monifieth circa 1845 again linked to the above names. Allan & Old Tom at Carnoustie in 1848, Allan then improved the 17th on TOC and designer a 9 hole at Cupar G C in 1855. Old Tom at Prestwick in 1851 and again at Earlferry in 1858 and Westward Ho 1860. By the 1860's the design format had been established and more joined the in designing courses.

The basic of crediting the above is that they actually did more than just one and had a record of multi course designs by 1860. The standard of modern design was started in circa 1842 and from that humble start we get the modern concept of designing golf courses.

By all means seek credit for whatever you want but the concept of the modern design started in Scotland around the year 1842.

Some of the courses mentioned on other lists are after 1860 starting in the late 1870's through to 1890's

Melvyn     

 

Jim_Kennedy

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #7 on: September 20, 2010, 07:04:02 PM »
CBM used surveying, engineering and agronomy and blended them with his ideas of classic golfing stratagems, all the while maintaining a visually pleasing yet highly functional aesthetic. The architecture of buildings had already blended art with these same sciences centuries earlier (substitute continually evolving types of building materials for 'agronomy') but I think the evidence points to CBM as the first to conceive of bringing these professionals to the field of golf course construction.

"I never beat a well man in my life" - Harry Vardon

TEPaul

Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #8 on: September 20, 2010, 07:17:12 PM »
Melvyn:

You said, "If you're being serious..."

What are you talking about me being serious about?

JC Jones

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #9 on: September 20, 2010, 08:55:04 PM »
Tom,

We did talk about it quite a bit today.  I wonder if the first time man imposed his will on the land (i.e. the building of the Road Hole green) is the first "golf course architecture" as Cornish and Whitten say or if that is the first instance of golf course "building".  The dictionary definition of "architecture" seems to require both the designing AND the building.

It could be that the use of pre-construction topo maps and plasticine models is the first instance where we had the design AND the build whereas prior to that date, we had various forms of building.

I get it, you are mad at the world because you are an adult caddie and few people take you seriously.

Excellent spellers usually lack any vision or common sense.

I know plenty of courses that are in the red, and they are killing it.

Mac Plumart

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #10 on: September 20, 2010, 09:05:27 PM »
The above post implies Carnoustie wasn't designed, rather it was only built?  That doesn't make sense to me.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2010, 09:07:41 PM by Mac Plumart »
Sportsman/Adventure loving golfer.

JC Jones

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #11 on: September 20, 2010, 09:14:16 PM »
The above post implies Carnoustie wasn't designed, rather it was only built?  That doesn't make sense to me.

Doesn't necessarily make sense to me either.  That's why I'm asking these questions, to try and figure out how to define "architecture."  I think the definition I tried to put together above is good except for what it might possibly exclude.

Should, however, we dismiss the definition because it does not fit within our present ideas of what was/wasn't "designed"?  Is there anything wrong with Carnoustie being "built" rather than being the product of "architecture"?  I don't necessarily see a negative implication made in saying a course was "built."
I get it, you are mad at the world because you are an adult caddie and few people take you seriously.

Excellent spellers usually lack any vision or common sense.

I know plenty of courses that are in the red, and they are killing it.

Mac Plumart

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #12 on: September 20, 2010, 09:21:44 PM »
“The object of golf architecture is to give an intelligent purpose to the striking of a golf ball”

Max Behr


To me anything that fits the above defintion fits the bill.  To me this isn't architecture in a skyscrapers and homes sense.  It is specific to golf courses.  If people gets praised for moving very little dirt, why not get heaps of praise for moving none.  Behr would be tickled.  Bill Coore apparently spends day and weeks simply walking a property and taking advantage of natural features.  To me this elimantes the need for maps, plasticine models, and/or anything like that.  Of course, it can be used...but isn't a necessity for an "architect" and/or "designer" to have to use.
Sportsman/Adventure loving golfer.

JC Jones

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #13 on: September 20, 2010, 09:39:11 PM »
I think you bring up some great points, Mac.  Although, I see a difference between stating what the objective (or goal) of golf course architecture is and stating WHAT golf course architecture is.

The former gives a purpose for golf course architecture and the latter tells us what golf course architecture is.  Much like finding out when golf course architecture began requires us to define what golf course architecture is, I think your (great) quote from Max Behr also requires us to define what golf course architecture is.  Stating the objective or the goal of golf course architecture assumes a definition for golf course architecture.

On to the second part of your post, I share the same struggles.  How can we celebrate "minimalism" on the one hand and argue that the less that is done, the less the course was "designed" or a product of "architecture" on the other.  I think it is important to note, however, that the struggle could very well come from our own biases.  For whatever reason, "architecture" carries a positive connotation and "built" carries a neutral connotation.  At least to me.
I get it, you are mad at the world because you are an adult caddie and few people take you seriously.

Excellent spellers usually lack any vision or common sense.

I know plenty of courses that are in the red, and they are killing it.

Mac Plumart

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #14 on: September 20, 2010, 09:45:30 PM »
JC...good stuff. 

You say, essentially, we need to start from the start.  (For bonus points name the Loverboy song that uses that phrase...for bonus bonus points name the album and the year it was released).

Per your words, define what golf course architecture is.

Golf course architecture is the process of designing, laying out, and building a golf course. 

Am I close?

Now...don't forget that bonus question!    8) 
Sportsman/Adventure loving golfer.

JC Jones

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #15 on: September 20, 2010, 09:52:42 PM »
You want a piece of my heart, Mac?  You better start from the start.  You want to be in the show?  Come on baby, lets go.  Everybody is working for the weekend.

I have no idea how close you are because I have no answer to my own questions.  I like your definition, however.  Golf course architecture is the process of designing, laying out and building a golf course.  I think the definition necessarily requires all three: designing, laying out and building.  Otherwise we should use the disjunctive "or" instead of "and."

Another thing to note with the definition is that it will exclude courses we (probably) have included in the past as being products of "golf course architecture."  It might also make people we previously thought of as golf course architects no longer being labeled as such (i.e. Leeds).

Is there anything wrong with a definition that excludes some potentially great courses?
I get it, you are mad at the world because you are an adult caddie and few people take you seriously.

Excellent spellers usually lack any vision or common sense.

I know plenty of courses that are in the red, and they are killing it.

Peter Pallotta

Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #16 on: September 20, 2010, 10:41:50 PM »
Good thread, lots of ideas.

Groundbreakers often need to create the framework by which to understand/conceptualize/explain that new vision and practice. In some sense, CBM was the first golf course architect simply because he said he was the first golf course architect, i.e. because he claimed it for himself.  He had a new vision and practice, and understood himsef as being the purveyor of this new vision/theory and practice, and so he created the framework of golf course architecture as a means to codify this praxis.  And part of that codification seems to involve the use of pre-construction topo maps, which indicates a new 'wholistic' approach to design - for lack of a better word. That is, CBM was aiming at a concept of design that wasn't a piece-meal hole-by-hole approach but more of a birds-eye view, an overview of the potential golf course as a whole, and an ideal golf course at that.  (Perhaps he believed that if you did not design the golf course as a whole, with individual golf holes - none of them weak, all of them manifested some timeless principle or concept -- fitting together so as to be more than the sum of its parts, it could never be ideal. And now that I think of it, another element of his codification may have been the very concept of concepts, which CBM consciously recognized as such and articulated).  And further, this overview needed to see both the land/site as it naturally existed and the land as it could be made to exist by the hand of man -- to see both the holes that were there and the ones that could be there. All in all, serviceable definiton, it seems to me.   But as the creator of that definition, I wonder how many others CBM would've seen fit to apply it too.

Peter  

Just thinking out loud, as I could remain silent no longer!
« Last Edit: September 20, 2010, 10:55:51 PM by PPallotta »

Sean_A

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Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #17 on: September 21, 2010, 02:12:58 AM »
How can we have golf courses without architecture? 

Okay, we are using a lot of fancy ideas which get archies paid a load of dosh these days.  Of course I totally disagree and would most defiitely say that using natural landforms as elements of design is architecture - regardless if the hand of man altered these landforms in any way.  The key aspect is not how the land is changed, but how it is used.  

Even using CBM's definition there were most certainly guys that came before him who gave this stuff a lot of thought. Witness chaps like Dr Mac, Fowler, Colt & Park Jr.  Do you lot think CBM came up with his idea out of the blue?  Hell no and I don't care if it was written about in some dusty magazine.  Sometimes we just have to rely on common sense. CBM would have had to have been a complete knucklehead not to know about major developments in design with courses such as New Zealand, Sunny Old, Huntercombe, Alwoodley and the alterations of Woking coming before he got his job done.  CBM just thought he could improve what was going on. He is another development in the long process of architectural history.  

No matter how you slice it and dice it, architecture and the concept of the beginnings of modern architecture start in GB&I.  CBM stood on a great many tall shoulders to look a giant in the US.

Ciao  
« Last Edit: September 21, 2010, 02:59:40 AM by Sean Arble »
New plays planned for 2024: Nothing

Colin Macqueen

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Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #18 on: September 21, 2010, 02:42:30 AM »
JC / Mac,
Could golf course architecture be thought of as the soul behind “the process of designing, laying out, and building a golf course”. The creative, inspirational aspect of routing and green complexes before a “build” has actually started?

Colin
"Golf, thou art a gentle sprite, I owe thee much"
The Hielander

Melvyn Morrow

Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #19 on: September 21, 2010, 05:19:21 AM »

To build requires a design requirement to enable the build to proceed.

Carnoustie was built to a design twice in the 1840’s.

Why make it complicated, why give credit to late generations for a design and build process that started in Scotland circa 1840’s.


Melvyn


TEPaul

Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #20 on: September 21, 2010, 05:37:05 AM »
"To build requires a design requirement to enable the build to proceed.
Carnoustie was built to a design twice in the 1840’s.
Why make it complicated, why give credit to late generations for a design and build process that started in Scotland circa 1840’s."



Melvyn:

What I'm talking about is the first use of a PRE-construction topographical survey map (with contour lines) used to route and design a golf course on before any construction on the ground. Are you aware of something like that with Carnoustie in the 1840s? If so I would love to see it or hear about it. That would definitely be quite the significant research find and truly important to the understanding of the history and evolution of golf architecture, in my opinion.

I'm talking about a drawing on a contour survey map before construction, not after the golf course is built.


Melvyn Morrow

Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #21 on: September 21, 2010, 06:02:13 AM »

No TOM, WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT IS SEEKING A CREDIT FOR AMERICA IN THE DESIGN PROCESS.

The title of the topic is "The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture. That first step to actually designing a course. The forming of Greens, Bunkers and other hazards as well as the construction of the Greens including re-turfing. The thought of utilizing a burn or railways track is very much part of a design process so merits the term GCA.

Let’s not talk of later refinement as we are meant to be talking about the Beginnings of GCA.

Melvyn 


Tom MacWood

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #22 on: September 21, 2010, 06:43:05 AM »
Golf architecture began when the first golfer laid down Point A and Point B, and then dug a hole. Since then there have been a series of incremental developments that have gotten us to where we are today. Some developments have been more significant than others but they are still a continuation of the developments that come before. I don't believe you can point to a date or project in the late 1890s or early 1900s and say this was the beginning of golf architecture.

JC Jones

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #23 on: September 21, 2010, 06:54:34 AM »
Golf architecture began when the first golfer laid down Point A and Point B, and then dug a hole. Since then there have been a series of incremental developments that have gotten us to where we are today. Some developments have been more significant than others but they are still a continuation of the developments that come before. I don't believe you can point to a date or project in the late 1890s or early 1900s and say this was the beginning of golf architecture.

Good stuff, Yom.  If I understand , you are defining golf course architecture as the laying out of golf holes on the ground.  This, ad opposed to some sort of pre-construction planning and design?
I get it, you are mad at the world because you are an adult caddie and few people take you seriously.

Excellent spellers usually lack any vision or common sense.

I know plenty of courses that are in the red, and they are killing it.

TEPaul

Re: The Beginnings of Golf Course Architecture
« Reply #24 on: September 21, 2010, 07:22:54 AM »
PeterP:

I would like to take your #16 and discuss most of what you said in it. It mostly has to do with C.B. Macdonald because he seems to be the one who first brought up the term or word or at least he seemed to think he was.

You said:

"Groundbreakers often need to create the framework by which to understand/conceptualize/explain that new vision and practice. In some sense, CBM was the first golf course architect simply because he said he was the first golf course architect, i.e. because he claimed it for himself."


I have just reread everything Macdonald had to say about architecture in his book and just for the record he did not seem to say that HE was the first golf course architect but he did say that he thought the concept of NGLA was the first example of golf course ARCHITECTURE that he was aware of and that he was not aware of anything that preceded it.

So, what did he really mean by that?

It is not hard to tell at all from the rest of what he had to say on the subject in his book that it was the actual copying of classical holes and/or their classical features and principles that made NGLA the first example of golf course ARCHITECTURE in his mind!

Macdonald made it very clear that he reverenced anything that was time tested and traditional----which he referred to as "classical." He went on to mention that architecture (building architecture) was one of the five Fine Arts and that the copying of Greek and Roman building architecture or its principles was what constituted classical building architecture. He also included Gothic, Georgian or even Colonial building architecture as he obviously felt all of them were "time tested" and traditional----eg "classical."

Macdonald condemned the idea of novelty and innovation in the Fine Arts and he used many quotations from famous building and landscape architects and other philosophers of the past to support his opinion.

Therefore, it had to be the fact that Macdonald felt he was the first in golf course history to comprehensively emulate pre-existing time-tested famous golf holes and/or some of their features or principles at NGLA that made that particular course the first example in history of golf course ARCHITECTURE.

It should also be noted that Macdonald did not pick which holes were actually designated the most famous and time-tested abroad. That was done by that London Golf Illustrated competition known as the "Best Hole Discussion" that was put to the leading golfers in Great Britain in 1900.

From that Macdonald said he was encouraged to create a "classical' golf course in America. With that idea he did use all the famous holes that were mentioned in that competition but with his three study trips abroad (1902, 1904 and 1906) he also came up with twenty to thirty other interesting features to be used with various appropriate natural landforms in America (or anywhere else presumably).

So this seems to be why he felt NGLA was the first example of golf course ARCHITECTURE ever done and it apparently eventually lead others after some time to disagree with him and his concept as it and he had also essentially condemned the entire idea of novelty and innovation in golf course creation and clearly that met with disagreement among some of what would become the best of the American golf course designers or what would come to be referred to as golf course architects!

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