[Thomas Dai]

With lousy weather about and thus limited golf I’ve been scrolling through some recently taken photos posted on social media. Magnificent photos all. Can’t fault the quality of the photos at all. But jeez, do they show golf to be ostentatious.
A game, a pastime, that started with a stick and a hole and something to hit into the hole played over scruffy ground that shifts with the sea and the salty wind grazed by animals and where crops can’t be grown. And now look at it. So much manicured greenery of various shapes and sizes, non-native arboretum like vegetation, widespread irrigation, ornate clubhouses, buggies and buggy paths, pristine artificial hazards (that don’t play as hazards) and features.
Thoughts?
Atb

[John Kavanaugh]

Don’t be a looky loo at life.

[Peter Flory]

With lousy weather about and thus limited golf I’ve been scrolling through some recently taken photos posted on social media. Magnificent photos all. Can’t fault the quality of the photos at all. But jeez, do they show golf to be ostentatious.
A game, a pastime, that started with a stick and a hole and something to hit into the hole played over scruffy ground that shifts with the sea and the salty wind grazed by animals and where crops can’t be grown. And now look at it. So much manicured greenery of various shapes and sizes, non-native arboretum like vegetation, widespread irrigation, ornate clubhouses, buggies and buggy paths, pristine artificial hazards (that don’t play as hazards) and features.
Thoughts?
Atb

You just need to combat that with sexy and scruffy pics. 

[John Kavanaugh]

If you look past the image and into the mind of a photographer you see sadness awash in ostentation. They are playing make believe. Make believe anyone cares.


There are rare examples such as Joe Bausch and Mark Kiely. Please show me one ostentatious photo in Joe’s collection of thousands.


http://myphillygolf.com/gallery.asp

[Mike Sweeney]

You just need to combat that with sexy and scruffy pics.

With Ran posting all his content on Instagram these days - https://www.instagram.com/golfclubatlas/, I sort of feel like a Old Dead Queen squeezing in a last trip to Scotland while Meghan and Harry are in Hollywood!   

From Maine, USA - Fall of 2022:





It was a good run, but I think we are pretty much dead here on the old GCA Discussion Group!!

[Peter Sayegh]

I’ve been scrolling through some recently taken photos posted on social media. 
A game, a pastime, that started with a stick and a hole and something to hit into the hole played over scruffy ground that shifts with the sea and the salty wind grazed by animals and where crops can’t be grown. And now look at it.
Thoughts?
Atb

So lovely to hear someone bemoan the good old days after perusing social media (via tin cans and a long string, I assume).
Somewhere, James Braid silently weeps upon his Blackberry.

[Charlie Goerges]

With lousy weather about and thus limited golf I’ve been scrolling through some recently taken photos posted on social media. Magnificent photos all. Can’t fault the quality of the photos at all. But jeez, do they show golf to be ostentatious.
A game, a pastime, that started with a stick and a hole and something to hit into the hole played over scruffy ground that shifts with the sea and the salty wind grazed by animals and where crops can’t be grown. And now look at it. So much manicured greenery of various shapes and sizes, non-native arboretum like vegetation, widespread irrigation, ornate clubhouses, buggies and buggy paths, pristine artificial hazards (that don’t play as hazards) and features.
Thoughts?
Atb

I see it too Thomas. It's funny because when I hear golf come in for criticism along these lines, I make the same points you covered about golf's beginnings and egalitarian history and so on. I think it's fair to say that if someone doesn't already love the game, those historical points don't carry much weight. Lots more thoughts, not sure if this is the place.

[John Kavanaugh]

Do you see it in person or mostly in pictures? You guys are killing yourselves believing what you see.

[Charlie Goerges]

Do you see it in person or mostly in pictures? You guys are killing yourselves believing what you see.

I'm not certain we're talking on the same wavelength here John. Do I see it in person? Only when I'm on the golf course myself. Look, you can redefine "ostentation" as "conspicuous consumption". At a minimum a golf course is a conspicuous consumer of space. Even the most modest of courses can look totally ostentatious to someone who doesn't know much about golf (and that would be most people). I suppose it wouldn't matter whether golf is or seems ostentatious except for the fact that non-golfers' perceptions of the game can greatly affect the game's ability to exist. I want golf to be a good neighbor and a good partner to communities so that it can continue to exist in its current, robust form. So that means golf needs to curb its actual excesses and needs to communicate and inform about its perceived excesses. Neither of which is being done very well right now.

[John Kavanaugh]

Charlie,


Could you please give me a specific example because I have never seen it in person.

[David Bowen]

When a single club can cost $600, shoes $250, a shirt $100, green fees at "public" courses over $100, and green budgets in the millions, images of the playing fields damn well better be ostentatious.

[David_Tepper]

I question the notion of golf's "egalitarian history." If what is written in Tommy's Honour (and shown on the screen) is to be believed, golf has from almost its very beginning had certain elements of elitism and snobbery. Nothing much has changed over the years.

The great Scottish golf resorts such as Gleneagles and Turnberry were plenty ostentatious when they were built a hundred or so years ago. 

[Charlie Goerges]

Charlie,


Could you please give me a specific example because I have never seen it in person.

A clubhouse and parking lot much larger than needed for the number of players, extra ponds (not used for irrigation or even as hazards), a waterfall. And that's just from the course I grew up playing/working at as a kid. But these things are stupid and easy to make fun of. I meant to get more into the culture of the game, especially here in the US.


As I said, even the most modest course is a pretty conspicuous consumption of space and water. Often in places where both are at a very steep premium. So it needs to go beyond just eliminating the stupid or asinine features and be a real asset to the community. I know it's possible, but we often don't help our case.

[Tommy Williamsen]

Almost every endeavor has the extremes of very basic to ostentatious. In my field, they go from little country churches to St. Peter's. I live in the Shenandoah Valley of VA. There are plenty of very basic courses and clubs.

[John Kavanaugh]

I’ve never seen the clubhouse at Newport in person. Since I have only seen photos from the best perspective I can imagine being offended.


Charlie, why can’t you give a specific example?

[John Kavanaugh]

Almost every endeavor has the extremes of very basic to ostentatious. In my field, they go from little country churches to St. Peter's. I live in the Shenandoah Valley of VA. There are plenty of very basic courses and clubs.

Did you find St. Peter’s ostentatious? Did Martin Luther?

[Charlie Goerges]

I question the notion of golf's "egalitarian history." If what is written in Tommy's Honour (and shown on the screen) is to be believed, golf has from almost its very beginning had certain elements of elitism and snobbery. Nothing much has changed over the years.

The great Scottish golf resorts such as Gleneagles and Turnberry were plenty ostentatious when they were built a hundred or so years ago.

Those are facts, though bear in mind that golf had a couple hundred years of history before that. Additionally, those kinds of places did not represent the majority of golf courses even at the time. Also bear in mind, imagine me using that phrase to defend a golf course in the comment section of the local newspaper website. I know golf's history is way more complicated than that, but it's a way of keeping the conversation going.


And some ostentatious displays can be fine and fun. But acres of emerald green rough is almost always a stupid waste and more besides.

[Charlie Goerges]

I’ve never seen the clubhouse at Newport in person. Since I have only seen photos from the best perspective I can imagine being offended.


Charlie, why can’t you give a specific example?

I thought I gave at least four specific examples from the course I grew up on alone.

[John Kavanaugh]

Charlie,


I’ve never seen an empty parking lot that didn’t make me smile. Can you say where you grew up playing without doxing yourself?

[John Kavanaugh]

I recently played a course where all the caddie wanted to talk about who lived in what house. I think the musician Hump Day had just payed 77 million for a place. When I asked him if the babbling brook was artificial he immediately became bored with the questioning. I personally didn’t find the “waterfall” ostentatious. How could I in a world wrapped in a cocoon of look at me.


Now the artificial stream at Barona did offend me. Maybe it was the surrounding poverty of the course’s stewards.

[Adam Lawrence]

I question the notion of golf's "egalitarian history." If what is written in Tommy's Honour (and shown on the screen) is to be believed, golf has from almost its very beginning had certain elements of elitism and snobbery. Nothing much has changed over the years.

The great Scottish golf resorts such as Gleneagles and Turnberry were plenty ostentatious when they were built a hundred or so years ago.

Golf has gone through different stages in its evolution. It may have started, many centuries ago, with shepherds whacking stones with sticks, but once it had evolved into a formal game, it was rather exclusive -- feathery balls were very expensive, and out of reach of ordinary people. It was the invention of the gutty that brought about the game's first great expansion, and democratised it to a degree, because gutties were so much cheaper.

[Charlie Goerges]

I think I see what you're saying John and I don't totally disagree. In fact, part of my point was that while the silly ostentation of what was done with the course I grew up on (Breezy Point Resort's Whitebirch Course) can seem way over the top, it might not be the biggest of deals. Rather it's the use of space and water that's perhaps even more ostentatious. I hate to go too deep in the weeds, especially when Thomas' original post may have been written as more of a meditation and I'm turning it into something else. Then again, where else to talk about it.


I'm sure Malcolm Gladwell's quasi-screed of a podcast about golf in Los Angeles has been brought up here before, but like it or not, he made some good points. It's those kinds of issues, (about how golf fits into the community and uses resources, including space) that cause me worry and are more interesting than a high-end course building a palace of a clubhouse. It doesn't take much extra water usage for golfers to start sounding like Marie Antoinette declaring Let them Eat Cake!

[Kalen Braley]

I think we can't really get away from what David T pointed out, that like it or not golf is tied at the hip with the perception of wealth and massive amounts of disposable income being tossed at it.

So in that context, I would also concur with the other David that courses damn well better be ostentatious if nothing else to justify the large sums of money spent to play them.

Don't know about you, but the Bandon Resort is one of the most beautiful things I've seen.

[John Kavanaugh]

The only thing I saw at Pebble was the guy flying a Ferrari flag above his home. Talk about a hat on a hat.

[Charlie Goerges]

I think we can't really get away from what David T pointed out, that like it or not golf is tied at the hip with the perception of wealth and massive amounts of disposable income being tossed at it.

So in that context, I would also concur with the other David that courses damn well better be ostentatious if nothing else to justify the large sums of money spent to play them.

Don't know about you, but the Bandon Resort is one of the most beautiful things I've seen.

Not to play word games too much, but I hope you're not equating ostentation with beauty Kalen. Ostentation can be fun but it's rarely beautiful. I think Bandon gets around my own specific definition regarding use of space by being in a sparsely populated area.




Edit: And yes a Bandon-like resort built through Los Angeles would be pretty vulgar in my opinion.

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