I see a thread on GCA asking 'how great "X" golf Pro is as an architect?'. It's a question I often get asked too. I find it very difficult to answer. My resistance to answering comes primarily because 1) I'm never sure how much say Nicklaus, Player, Els, Faldo etc are involved with any design and 2) I'm not sure what their personal level of design/visualisation ability is anyway.
The question becomes laced with complexity when it morphs into comparing golf Pro designers from different centuries.
Certainly I think we can better assess the abilities of our golf pro designers from yesteryear. Because the industry had less technical demands when Old Tom, Braid, Willie Park, Taylor etc where working, they could layout courses (sometimes in half a day!). So we can go and see their work, and be pretty sure (not always certain) that Braid or whomever was onsite and participating in the design. That is to say, the work was not outsourced to a face-less (in a nice way) design associate some where on level 3 of the design office. Also, because the design industry was in its infancy, these men often wrote at length on their design philosophies.
So how do you assess the ability of modern day professional golfer as an architect? Can you, or can you just comment on their company's ability to produce golf courses? And then, how do you compare a modern golf pro designer to the industries forefathers?
Scott