Don states:
We know people enjoy manicured turf and perfect golfing conditions. But as we get better at providing those conditions, and they become more common place, more developed, is that clean manicured look what really touches us? There has always been this belief that the modern natural look of golf architecture is a throw back. The architects talk about studying old classics and using them for inspiration. But is that why the look is popular? Because it is traditional look, because it looks great in all the old photos? Or, in our modern times, do we crave the natural outdoors? Do we just like golf more when presented in a natural looking setting? We talk about the sports on the rise among young adults, and many of the outdoor sports get mentioned. Is golf losing young adults to mountain biking, skiing, hiking, and other outdoor activities? I don’t know the answer to that, but I feel like the answer is yes. And I feel like the future of golf should be courses even more integrated into nature. Course design inspired by nature and maintained more naturally.
And, Greg Murphy points us to 'biophilia hypothesis' :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biophilia_hypothesisI think the phenomenon of a process of 'getting back to nature' (within the golfer context) is a process or journey by degree and incriment.
First, when I think of this concept, I always remember back to a passage in John Strawn's book, "Driving The Green" where he ponders the yearning to the fields of play that he posits that golf represents, as an ancient subconcious part of our human evolved psyche. Somewhere down in our genetic soup, is a trait and affinity for the fields of abundance that produced the resources of food and water, and survival of we as a species. The learned skills of the hunt, targetting, travel across the Savannah grasslands was the alluring path and use of skills that was our superior intelligence to master and flourish. Now that we are not primitive, we still have a yearning in us to employ these deep down skills and seek out what our learned aesthetic emotion for landscapes calls to us, that now look like fields of golf. (all - a feeble paraphrasing of what Strawn wrote, of course)
Well, I think that there is an entry level of those sorts of triggers when a modern 'urban' dweller discovers golf. That new afficianado of the game goes to some 'field of play' most likely one of the unnatural begining courses near the urban home (as we more refined golfers understand naturalism in golf design) and begins to well up those subconcious yearnings and affinity for the 'fields' and targetting game skill sets. And, that experience satisfies the inner need for a while.... until they discover even more natural and alluring settings for playing the game. Sometimes they get off on the wrong track and pursue that wrong track of 'ideal golf course design and presentation' as the lovely garden of landscape delights, and begin to think of golf in an Augusta Syndrome mentality. They may stay on that path for many years.
But.... how many of us who are fanatics on this site, have seen the process in our golf friends- or experienced it ourselves, when that real 'biophiliac' response sets in?? That is the time, when the enthusiastic golfer has reached a saturation point of 'unnaturally manicured' fields of play (that they 'thought' represented an ideal commune with the outdoors, nature, and game skill set) but suddenly they discover the 'natural' they were embracing was an illusion, and there exists designs and construction methods, along with presentations of the more actually natural fields that harken our subconcious back to the real savannahs of our ancient beings?
I've seen it in many of us urban dwellers, who never saw anything like, 'the sand hills'. On their first rides up to SHGC, they have an enlightment, an introduction to the grassland prairies, and then see a whole different kind of golf course setting, that they hadn't previously contemplated, because they were so hung up on usual urban presentations of greenism and manicured idealic maintenance practices.
However, there are the many golfers who got to start their experiences on the real links in the first place. They are not as subject to this 'awakening' and discovery of natural fields of play. They are the lucky portion of the golfing world that sort of knew it all the time because that is where they began. But, the urban golfers, who reinforce unnatural idealic marketed notions for years, but finally get a chance to go to the real links, or sand hills, Oregon coast, Cabot links, perhaps even the more manufactured illusion of Streamsong... but where more naturalistic presentations harken that subconcious affinity to naturalism; that is when and where they 'get it'.