The impetus for doing that interview with Tom Coyne was an exchange we'd had the year before. Someone had sent me a copy of his book "A Course Called America", and in reading through his write-up of The Loop at Forest Dunes, he prefaced it with this paragraph:"I wanted to nitpick and find the course inferior to Hixson's two-way in Oregon. Dan had been such a gracious host and playing partner, while I had reservations about Tom Doak. 'Socially remote' would be a politic way to sum up what I'd been told about his demeanor, but he was given a pass for being aloof because he was golf's wunderkind. I was less convinced, and preferred Bob Ford's 'It's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice' perspective. But then I played The Loop, and I found myself reconfiguring my thoughts on Doak. Dammit, he
was a genius. And plenty of savants have rubbed people the wrong way."
I thought that was a bit strong, from someone who had never actually met me or even reached out to me for an interview. I even reached out to a writer I know, a fan of Mr. Coyne's work, to ask him if he didn't think that was a little overboard, and the response was that it was really out of line, and whoever he'd spoken to about me must really hate me for some reason.
So, I reached out to Mr. Coyne, and we talked about it at length, and found that maybe we had some things in common. And I thought that maybe we should talk about some of those things on his podcast, since they affect so many people. I would guess, based on recent experiences and conversations, that as many as 25-50% of adults have trouble dealing with emotional issues that go back to some family history of alcoholism. Whether your parents were raging drunks [which mine were not] or teetotalers or religious zealots [which mine were not], or somewhere in between, they might well be that way because they're afraid of being like their parents, and they still have many of the behaviors they learned as kids to avoid trouble -- things like isolating themselves, struggling with authority figures, perfectionism, and other addictive behaviors. [It is much more complex than that, of course; I'm just giving you a taste of it to see if you can relate.]
Certainly I didn't do the podcast because I want anyone to feel sorry for me. Golfers care mostly about the work I've done, and some of these personality traits have led directly to a lot of my success in writing and design, even as they have caused struggle for me and for others around me. Many people with similar issues are afraid of what others think of them and go out of their way to please everyone. I was the opposite somehow; I came of age kind of expecting other people not to like me, so there was no point worrying about what they thought.
Unfortunately, there are only a handful of writers who know enough about golf architecture to write about the work, so they try to write about us as people instead, based on very limited interactions [or even NO interaction, in the above example]. And most architects are happy to sell their product that way, via a mutual, insincere flattery. Honestly, I'd prefer to remain misunderstood, if that's the only other option.
