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Greg Murphy

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Re: Exercise: What is beauty? Please read Original Post before posting
« Reply #25 on: February 24, 2012, 10:35:27 PM »
Tony - a great question - what is beauty? Beauty is the most important distinguishing and lasting factor in golf courses and golf course design. There is beauty within and beyond the hole. Within the hole beauty is usually a function of broken and heaving ground, accentuated by bunkering. Angles and green complexes are more related to "interest" than beauty. Beauty is something you play over or around. Not on. Beyond the hole beauty is far more important than most want to admit, probably more important than within the hole beauty. Since these features are not in play at all, or only for extremely misplayed shots, some like to pretend they are irrelevant but there is a reason players flock to courses by the ocean, large bodies of water. or some other massive feature of nature like desert or prairie or mountain or forest They are attracted to their beauty. The following is a quote from Forrest Richardson in a previous GCA thread I never made specific note of, but one which captures the essence of beauty and golf: "Any decent course needs an "ocean"—whether it be a body of water, an endless plain, a gentle valley, fields of heather, or an adjacent mountain . . . these settings make up the great sites for golf, and without a great site there is rarely great golf."

Garland Bayley

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Re: Exercise: What is beauty? Please read Original Post before posting
« Reply #26 on: February 26, 2012, 11:02:24 AM »
Bump
"I enjoy a course where the challenges are contained WITHIN it, and recovery is part of the game  not a course where the challenge is to stay ON it." Jeff Warne

Mark_Rowlinson

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Re: Exercise: What is beauty? Please read Original Post before posting
« Reply #27 on: February 26, 2012, 03:48:43 PM »
No photos to prove the point. Well done everybody!

Garland Bayley

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Re: Exercise: What is beauty? Please read Original Post before posting
« Reply #28 on: March 06, 2012, 01:56:20 PM »
Tony:

Here's the quote I was going to remember to look for the other day; it's from Herbert Warren Wind's essay at the front of the original WORLD ATLAS OF GOLF:

"In golf, because of the nature of the game, a beautiful hole is not one that has a lovely stream flowing across it.  It is a hole that has a lovely stream flowing across it at the right place.  It would be wrong to deny that a golf course benefits from a charming setting, but a beautiful golf course is one whose beauty is as functional as L'Enfant's Washington and Haussmann's Paris."

Perhaps Tom can explain to those of us that don't have the benefit of a Cornell education what the significance of L'Enfant's Washington and Haussmann's Paris is.
"I enjoy a course where the challenges are contained WITHIN it, and recovery is part of the game  not a course where the challenge is to stay ON it." Jeff Warne

Jeff_Brauer

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Re: Exercise: What is beauty? Please read Original Post before posting New
« Reply #29 on: March 06, 2012, 02:02:32 PM »
Actually, with all those damn traffic circles causing numerous accidents in Paris and DC, I am not sure many would argue that L'Enfant's plans were as practical as they are beautiful.  

Whenever I drive through a modern traffic circle, I think of how a new generation of designers has forgotten the hard lessons of the past in favoring art over function.

I had the same feeling the other day, while touring one of my own courses in a bunker reduction mode for the Owner.  In the 90's, we let bunkering for aesthetics sake, and little details - like letting water drain in bunkers - go in the name of aesthetics.  The 1950's guys this site thinks were dull designers certainly were more practical and they paid more attention to those kind of details.  That attention is returning again.

BTW, I do believe in functional beauty.  I find grain elevators, railroad coaling towers, and many buildings in small towns built for function are still very aesthetic and charming.  Even the quonset hut has a certain charm.  On golf courses, that translates to some of the old, very functional square or round fill pads doing just enough to fulfill their function.

BTW II, I always find golf courses at sunrise and sunset to be the most beautiful places on earth, even if just walking.  I tend to believe that the need to open the forest and create intimate spaces (I think par 4 openings replicate nature pretty well at 400 yards long and 90 yards wide) artifically but effectively creates spaces we just feel comfortable in.  Old English Landscape Architects like Capability Brown wrote about the human need to "see around the next corner" and golf course clearing (or artifically planted courses) tend to create that feeling and its soul satisfying.

Other than that, I don't analyze too much, I just try to enjoy.

BTWII, as requested, I typed that without reading all the posts, although obviously, I did read the one above.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2012, 02:08:15 PM by Jeff_Brauer »
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach