Ed
My answer to your question (Reply #26) re’ Land fit for Purpose’ can, I hope, well in part be explained by a recent PM I sent a friend
on GCA.com. It reads as follows
“I have no insight into the game but do know that one should stick to the standards and rules, for me that is the way my father taught me the game, with honour and faith in ones abilities - which encouraged me to take up my clubs. The game in its honest form on the correct environment just brings out the best thus rewarding the golfer whatever skill level. I have learnt to accept that Golf cannot be played in its true form on sites unfit for purpose, it waters down the game to the point that one has to wonder is this really golf I am playing upon this course.
Alas for the best part of 50 years the selection process for courses have gone out the window being replaced with the man with the deepest pockets – it’s as if clients are saying we have the money, so we can build anything anywhere, forgetting that the game is inherently linked the Mother Nature. And she can be a real Madam, penal is her middle name.
I am an old golfer crying warnings from the rough to the young bucks without much success, but then that’s life.”
As for the Castle, I know the land prior to its transformation into this Disneyland of a course. It was never a site for a course IMHO. The land had to have its guts ripped out before being re styled into what the site never was. It’s just a load of rubbish, terra-formed like a modern abstract painting, this time with very little character reflecting the original land or its surroundings which I believe if it is to be a golf course it MUST have. Golf is about playing the land, the natural land as much as possible, it’s like a Point to Point or orienteering, the land submits the challenge and the participants take on the challenge. Manmade courses just rip the spirit out of the land without reproducing much of which they removed. In other words manmade courses can be made anywhere without the need to examine the land in the hope of retaining that which made the land original suitable for the game of Golf. Money now dictates the site instead of the site being identified as ideal for Golf.
I have been spoilt, many of our courses are natural, but of late we have been manufacturing more International courses to please ‘THE PLAYERS’ rather than keeping faith with the game. Soon if not careful courses will be produced anywhere irrespective of its suitability for the game. Fit for purpose is a site that is screaming golf and has a pull on the golfer to the point that he wants to play the land even before a course is built. It’s all about definition, I suppose, of the game being the child of the land and not the other way round.
Perhaps over a few pints and some hours of good chatting you may follow my train of thought, but in the meantime I hope you have a better idea as to where I am coming from.
Melvyn