[Thomas Dai]

Just an observation, perhaps an inaccurate one,
but it seems to me that the quality of the writing by golf architects over the decades/centuries is of a very high order.
Atb

[Peter Pallotta]

It is, and usually quite compelling reading -- but perhaps one reason for that is the lack of any inherent/necessary relationship between what they wrote and what they were actually able to put in the ground: the former restraint free theorizing, the latter hard nosed practicality with all manner of limits and constraints.
It's easy to tell a good story when you don't have to find the money and method to make it real.

[Tom_Doak]

Well, there are certainly also people who can write reasonably well about golf architecture in theory, but their theories might not work so well in practice . . .


Honestly a lot of our writing is self defense.  So many people misinterpret and misrepresent what we do and why we are doing it, that the only way to defend the work is to write about it. 


That sucks, to be honest.  I'd much rather just let the golf course speak for itself, and let you sort out the best way to play it, than write a 40-page yardage book telling you how to play each hole and not be fooled by any of the subtle features I have employed.  [Or, in the worst cases, expound on why all of my ideas are so cool.]      But I suppose there are a lot of movie producers who would prefer not to do advance publicity for their new films, too.

[Steve Lang]

TD,


so gca.com is a double edge sword? or mixed blessing in keeping your writing skills up?


what are you going to write about Memorial Park?

[Mike_Young]

"never get in the cage with the monkeys"

[Ian Andrew]

It used to matter ... but I'm not sure it will for much longer.

Podcasting opens up the ability to learn while doing something else.
I've listened to a lot of podcasts on architecture and read almost nothing from on line in the last two years.

I find friends are being drawn more to sites with drone based videos over magazines and written articles.

Love or hate the constant internet presence of Sweeten's Cove, but the easy bites and quick hits keep both the architects and the course front and center. In a world where only the Fabulous Four get written about, they are finding their own way to draw attention.

Times have changed dramatically and so has the importance of the written word.

[Sean_A]

Ian

Sadly, to a large extent I agree with you.  The next generation (who are now podcasters) basically podcast using the material they learned by reading the words of past generations.  The future podcast generations won't know the difference...in fact I am sure many who now listen to podcasts don't know the difference.  It will be like 20 year olds loving cover songs and not even knowing they are covers.  That has been going for three generations (at least) in music. The problem arises when we start to look for the next generation of writers.  While podcasters may be good, nothing really replaces the written word...if those words are good enough.

Ciao

[Peter Pallotta]

If you'll excuse the flight of emotion and quasi-religious sentiment:
What the written word did (or at least could do, at its best) was to point to the Word.
At its best, it 'spoke' of more and of deeper and higher things, of the Real, of the Transcendent.
Photos and podcasts are all on the surface -- a beautiful surface perhaps, and often 'factual'.
But who really needs more 'facts'?
As a mystic once wrote: Ideas lead to idols, only wonder leads to knowing. 
To my old fashioned sensibilities, we have indeed lost something.   
As I say, please excuse the heavy handedness of this
P 
 

[Kalen Braley]

The Fab 4?  Who are the fab 4?

[Ally Mcintosh]

The Fab 4?  Who are the fab 4?

Well I’m assuming it is Doak (Lennon), Hanse (Harrison), Coore (McCartney) & Crenshaw (Starr)

[Peter Pallotta]

Well, then there should at least be room for a 'George Martin', a 'Pete Best' and, (interestingly) a 'Yoko Ono'. 

[Kalen Braley]

The Fab 4?  Who are the fab 4?

Well I’m assuming it is Doak (Lennon), Hanse (Harrison), Coore (McCartney) & Crenshaw (Starr)

Hmm,

I was thinking Rees Jones, RTJ2, Nicklaus, and The Faz.... 

[Thomas Dai]

To add to the jollity, when the term 'fab' is mentioned my memory is of


- "F.A.B", as in - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdTBZhNVxco -




















Note the car registration number -



atb
F.A.B.

[Thomas Dai]

Back to seriousness for the moment, it was particularly the writing in the various classic architecture books, many written near a century or so ago that inspired by initial thread.
fab
atb

[Peter Pallotta]

And off my previous post about the written word, Thomas - is it only coincidental that Dr Mac titled his book The *Spirit* of St. Andrews?
Which is to say: I think the great writing about architecture was great in part because it (consciously) pointed to something *beyond* the architecture
P

[Colin Macqueen]

Thomas,


I don't really know but re-reading Wethered&Simpson's "The Architectural Side of Golf" there was a real sense of the written word coming into play.  Whilst the early chapters devote themselves to things "...architectoooral.." and the writing is clear and good the later chapters  allow Wethered to "..open his shoulders.." to use a golfing term and expand on St.Andrews, caddies, descriptions of "conviviality" around Leith and North Berwick and a wonderful description of the excitement and/or pressure as you close out a game on the eighteenth green! All this peppered with allusions to Samuel Johnson, Scottish poetry, The Rubaiyat of Omar Kayham, Smollett and Dickens! Now just as with T.S.Eliot I am sure there are plenty other allusions which I cannot decipher but none the less the reading of this writing is a joy. Apparently H.N.Wethered went to Corpus Christie College at Oxford and no doubt there learnt to put pen to paper in this enchanting way.


As an aside was H.N. Wethered a prolific golf course architect or was he just insightful and knowledgeable with regards to this dark art!!  Which golf courses was T. Simpson associated with?


Cheers Colin

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