Great What-ifs in Architecture History

[Jud_T]

What if people didn't need to change their Jockeys every time they had a view of a body of water from a golf course?  What would the course ranking lists look like?

[Josh Tarble]

What if they never changed the 16th hole at Augusta?

What if they never flipped the 9s at Augusta?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Some are pretty broad, but the Raynor building CP is a great question, as is, what if Bobby Jones didn't lose out early in the US am, allowing him to play CP as Mac built it, and thus chose Ross for ANGC?

What would architecture look like if there hadn't been a 20 year gap caused by WWII and the depression?  What if the GA guys kept working and got to use bulldozers to a larger extent?

What would the average course built in 1980-2010  look like if Pros weren't so prevalent as design consultants?

What would the average course built in 1980-2010 look like if Golf Digest had maintained difficulty as the prime component of their top 100 list?

On a more personal note....

What would fees be like if courts hadn't struck down standardized fee charts?

Had Bruce Borland not perished in that plane crash, what kind of golf courses might he have built for JN, himself, or others?

[David_Tepper]

"What if irrigation costs were so prohibitive that they were a non starter?"

Paul Gray -

If that was truly the case, I suspect a sizable number of courses in the mid-west, southwest and California would not exist. Many of those that were built would still have oiled sand greens.

DT

[Jeff_Brauer]

The irrigation question is really related to the bigger picture of what if the US hadn't become the pre-eminent industrial power of the early 1900's?  It certainly took over as the major stamp on golf, as gca's adapted it to a wide variety of climates, and it was a particularly "can do" attitude, focused on "improvements" that were basically unquestioned until golf club atlas came along......

And then, the biggest question of all, what if golfclubatlas.com had never been started?

[Peter Pallotta]

What if vegetables or grain grew well on linksland?

Lots of good 'what ifs' but this one strikes me as the most interesting and resonate with meaning. (Eric's redan-as-donut-with-quicksand is a close second, though the quicksand does gild the lily).

For me: What if CBM went not to Wall Street but to the city councils in New York and Boston to gamer support for creating the great American golf course?

 

[Eric Smith]

Peter,

The quicksand hole in the middle would've been employed during the ancient wars, eg the French yelling, "hey, come chase us - over this way - hee hee".

[Terry Lavin]

What if the first course at Bandon Dunes was poorly received?

This is a great one.  The response to the opening of Bandon Dunes was much more impressive than Keiser had hoped for.  Maybe he dreamt of it, but he didn't think they'd do any more than 8,000-10,000 rounds.  They quite simply killed it in the first year, which allowed him to follow through on his dream plan.  The rest is worthy of a chapter in any book on the history of the game in the States.  If the first year was a flame-out, it would have been written off as a rich man's folly.  The derivative effects on other resorts/clubs that opened later would have been significant, IMHO.

[Dónal Ó Ceallaigh]

What if Mackenzie was slain in the Boer War?

[Tom_Doak]

What if Tom Doak had not gotten a scholarship to tour the golf courses of the British Isles while a student at Cornell?

I can't imagine.  I probably would have gone over there anyway, but not for long enough to understand their attitude toward the game, which I think was the biggest push I had toward the style of design I practice today.

Oh, and none of the guys who followed me at Cornell -- Gil Hanse and Chris Monti and David Zinkand among them -- would have gotten the same scholarship I did, either.

[Doug Wright]

One architectural "what if" I'm familiar with: What if the Denver Country Club board of directors accepted William Flynn's plans for the DCC course in the mid 1920s?

The DCC board rejected Flynn's excellent plans (a copy of which I have) because it believed the course would be too difficult.  

[Jim Nugent]

What if Seth Raynor had never met CBM? 

What if Merion Hollins' drive had not carried the chasm at what later became 16 on CPC?

What if we never had the Great Depression, that seemed to put an end to a golden age of golf course architecture and usher in a new dark ages?

What if ANGC had not become the home of an annual, important golf tournament (that turned into  a kind of model so many other courses tried to emulate)? 

[Mark McKeever]

What if Ran didnt feel like creating a new website about golf course architecture.


Mark

[Tim_Weiman]

What if airplanes hadn't been invented?

[Lyne Morrison]

What if we did not live in a media era of digital communication? would this have led to more varied individualism with regards the adoption of new design practices?

Lyne

[RJ_Daley]

Without TV, we would probably have less focus on creating the visually stunning.  I think we'd obviously still have the incredibly beautiful sites like Cypress Point and all the others, obviously they were constructed before TV.  But, the effort to present the stunning vista and perfectly lush conditions may not be so intense.  Thus, the architecture might focus more on the design lay out on the land more naturally and without the extreme measures of earthmoving that is done to create the stunning on course sites that might have yielded an interesting but less bombastic visual canvas. 

We'd be back to great writers describing golf events, for the most part, and radio just don't convey the sense of location...

[Rick Shefchik]

What if the hole were 10 inches in diameter?

[Paul Gray]

The irrigation question is really related to the bigger picture of what if the US hadn't become the pre-eminent industrial power of the early 1900's?  It certainly took over as the major stamp on golf, as gca's adapted it to a wide variety of climates, and it was a particularly "can do" attitude, focused on "improvements" that were basically unquestioned until golf club atlas came along......

And then, the biggest question of all, what if golfclubatlas.com had never been started?

Now that really is the biggy.

For me, I suspect I'd be found hanging from a tree with a rope around my neck having heard one too many rave reviews about yet another mundane farm track. "Loads of water, par 72, 'Championship' course" etc. 

To this day I'm still unsure just how to react to this 'help.'

[RJ_Daley]

Rick, I might be able to break 80!  

[Niall Hay]

What if Raynor hadn't died of pneumonia in 1926.....what would Cypress Point be like?

[Jason Topp]

What if the Lido had survived?  Would it be highly regarded?

If driving distance had been held in check to 1990 distances - what courses be materially different today?

[Howard Riefs]

What if Dick Youngscap never bought land in Nebraska?

What if Tiger didn't win the 1997 with a score of 270, 12 strokes better than 2nd place finisher Tom Kite?

What if Raynor didn't die at a young age of 51?

[Will MacEwen]

What if Dick Youngscap never bought land in Nebraska?

Didn't Youngscap offer Sand Hills to Pete Dye as a courtesy, and Dye declined?  That is a pretty good "what if", in many ways.

[Will Lozier]

What if G. Crump had lived to see PV completed?

What if TOC remained 22 holes?

[Ben Sims]

What if--geologically speaking--clay was the predominant seaside soil classification?

What if--socioeconomically speaking--the great centers of wealth and power circa 1890-1920 were Miami, Charleston, Savannah, Atlanta and Charlotte instead of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Chicago?  How would golf architecture have been different?  Would northern courses be whining about trying to keep bermuda happy and alive up north rather than southern super's struggling with bentgrass?