TomH:
First, when I said; "So it seems that Golfclubatlas is two things really", I was talking not about golf course architecture (GCA) but Golfclubatlas, the website. I generally just write out the website's name so as not to confuse it with the other.
But as to what comes first or second to anyone, playing golf or having a singular interest and fascination in the art of golf course architecture, I don't think that's something that we need to get into in this discussion. They are two different things and can be looked at as such.
Of course we all recognize that playing golf and golf course architecture are interconnected in many ways that other art forms aren't. They are interactive because golf is the game and golf course architecture is the playing field the game is conducted on. But in many ways they are two different things and should be looked at as such, in my mind.
Golf, the game, may even be looked at as the master that golf architecture serves, I suppose. But even if that's somewhat accurate the master and the servant are not the same entity, they are two.
If one chooses not to see it that way then I suppose I could see them not making any distinction at all between golf the game and golf course architecture.
Possibly if one looks at it that way then a hole is a hole is a hole may become a reality to that person (this is what Rich Goodale has said on here). I'm not meaning to be rude to Rich about that, and I'm not trying to be uncivil either, but if he feels that way that's his own good right.
Rich has also said on here that he doesn't see that golf course architecture is an art form or even could be. That's his good right to think too. Do I disagree with him on that? Yes, of course I do, particularly if I'm understanding correctly that that's what he really feels and means to say.
Do I want to sit here and proselytize Rich and convince him to think the way I do about golf architecture? No I do not. If he asked me to explain something to him, as he did on the match play vs stroke play thread, I'll try for a while but if he doesn't understand me, doesn't agree with me or whatever else that's fine by me.
That's probably why I occasionally quote;
"Golf and it's architecture is a great big game and there's room in it for everyone".
By that I mean to say that I think that golf and golf course architecture are supposed to be different things to different people. I think the best architects understood that full well.
There's hardly any other way a rational mind could interpret something like this following quotation and not come to that conclusion (I happen to believe obviously that this quotation is perfectly accurate regarding golf and golf architecture);
"Whether this or that bunker is well placed has caused more intensely heated arguments (outside the realms of religion) than has ever been my lot to listen to. Rest assured, however, when a controversy is hotly contested over several years as to whether this or that hazard is fair, it is the kind of hazard you want and it has real merit. When there is unanimous opinion that such and such a hazard is perfect, one usually finds it commonplace. I know of no classic hole that doesn't have its decriers."
C.B.Macdonald
That to me is an example that is perfectly representative of all of golf architecture and maybe golf too. That's just as it should be, in my opinion.
But I completely understand where you're coming from when you say that golf comes first for you, the playing of it, and architecture, and the study of it comes second. And yes, I think ChrisB feels the same way and explained it very well. Maybe Rich does too.
That's fine with me and I understand it because that's the way I was--bigtime. But I'm not anymore. Still today playing golf and really noticing and appreciating architecture is hard for me to do, but I'm well aware why.
Studying architecture, walking courses to do it is now more important to me. That doesn't mean that one way or the other is better or worse, but it's different, at least to me. I even hope my former interest in playing golf will return, I really do but I see no reason to force it now--I see no reason to ever force it. Studying architecture now is a real interest that's probably supplanted playing to a large degree.
And reading those who built it and about those who built it and wrote about it interest me too--very much.
You mentioned a guy like Robert Hunter and his book "The Links" and you say that in reading it you really didn't learn anything you didn't already know from playing the game.
I don't doubt that may be true. But perhaps you view what you play and see as somewhat more static than you should or could. I don't think I do that anymore. I look at architecture (and even the game) as an evolution and a very fascinating one at that.
Although no great seminal truth may have jumped out at me either from Robert Hunter's book, it's important to me to realize and to really understand that that book was written in 1926, 77 years ago. And I look for and very much apprectiate how someone like Hunter and the others he worked with brought the artform of architecture from where it had been (extremely rudimentary) maybe not much more than 20 years previous to where they took it to.
And if someone was to tell me that that wasn't particularly important because the artform would have gotten to the same place they took it anyway I would definitely disagree with that.
And when I see that evolution, I sort of look very carefully at where it got to then and how and why and I look to see where it went to since then and how and why and examine that evolution for a number of reasons.
If you do it that way, I find it becomes fascinating in a comparative sense. And it becomes even more fascinating when one concludes that we may want to, even need to RETURN to much about that time, that era, that particular phase in the evolution of architecture.
It's certainly not just me that seems to long for a degree of restoration, even renaissance in architecture, and we can all see it happening now to an interesting degree.
That's probably why some of us read--not because their books hold some great truths that nobody noticed or completely missed. But it might be true to say that many forgot, unfortunately.
And then there's Max Behr. There's no question in my mind that he alone went maybe ten times farther into the pysche of the golfing man and came up with some fundamental truths concerning what the sport of golf (as opposed to man's construction of the "game" of golf) can do to the pysche of the golfing man in particular ways revolving around the way the game is both played and the architecture it's played on.
As far as I'm concerned Behr gets right to the heart of man's (in a general sense) overall relationship to both Nature and his fellow man in this context.
Obviously some don't see it that way. Perhaps they don't want to see it that way. Behr would probably be the first to admit that the world he was delving into in some of his writing about golf and architecture was almost wholly the subliminal world of the golfing man.
But even though it might have been subliminal or even because it probably was makes it no less valid--maybe even more so.
Those architects that made some of those enduringly fascinating courses back then and those that may be doing the same today are probably plying an artform that has a great deal of pleasurable subliminal stimuli in it but mostly based on the truths that a man such as Behr explained.
Frankly, I think the best architects both then and now ply that very subliminal world of architecture far more than others. I'd even try to get into some of the whys and hows sometime.
But I recognize that some don't want to see these things or care to, and that's fine, because,
"Golf and its architecture is a great big game and there room in it for everyone (to see it any way that makes them happy)".