[TEPaul]

Dan Kelly:

I find the terrific thing about Golfclubatlas is the conviction of opinion! Things aren't what most people think they are they're only what some of us say they are! And that's final---end of discussion!!! It's a shame people like MacKenzie, Tillinghast, Cliff Roberts and John Arthur Brown couldn't be on here.

[Paul_Turner]

Tom Paul

Is Mackenzie the architect of your "soul course", Malone?

[TEPaul]

Here's a little trivia question to momentarily take your minds off what Darwin meant by "home".

Who was the only man to lose an overtime match in the Walker Cup?

(Hint--Darwin was there).

[TEPaul]

Paul Turner:

I really am losing my mind. I didn't mean Malone G.C. (although I did go there last year). I meant Mallow G.C in Mallow Ireland. Apparently it was remodeled with nine added by John Harris. As to who built the original nine--I have no idea--maybe the local bartender.

[Michael Moore]

Mr. Paul -

As we all know, J.W. Sweetser lost to C.V.L. Hooman in overtime at the 1922 Walker Cup.

I am unemployed and snowbound.

[TEPaul]

You're the man, Michael.

[Dan Kelly]

Think of George Carlin's bit comparing baseball and football.  In football, you SCORE!!!!  In baseball, you come home.......

Rich --

I'm thinking of it -- and it's not helping me understand this one little bit! (Of course, I keep thinking of the Seven Dirty Words.

Tom I --

Sorry, pal, but it's not "You're the man, Michael."

It's "You da man, Michael."

Even Patrick/Perry knows that.

[Bob_Huntley]

Dave:

Dammit, you are right again. Not since Professor Pilkington-Smythe at St. Albans in the  Marsh have I read of a better description of  'spiritual home.'

[ForkaB]

Dan

Let me help you out, ole' buddy!

"Scoring" is a one night stand, "Coming Home" is a marriage bed (for better or for worse....)
"Scoring" is playing 36 holes on one day at Rye, "Coming Home" is playing no holes on a rainy day at your "home" course
etc.

If you aren't familiar with Carlin's Baseball/Football series of analogies, do so.  It is one of his best routines.

You were right about one thing--Darwin was a gifted writer.  It was not for nothing that he compared the feelings he got on his annual train ride to Aberdovey to the feelings he had when a schoolboy returning home for the holidays.  It was not for nothing that he used the words "blind and unreasoning affection."  It was not for nothing that he used the word "home" twice in that short paragraph, with subtly different usages of the word.

I never meant to propose or imply in my replies on this thread that "the course that (one's) soul loves best" has to be one's home course, which is why I used the quotation marks.  However, I think that Darwin was not saying, in effect:

"Golly gee, I've played a lot of great tracks around the world, but that Aberdovey is just somethin' else.  Can't wait to play there again!"

I personally think that he is saying something much deeper, which relates to the different values which we all place on familial and familiar things vs. those things which we know to be transitory or just give us momentary pleasure.

That, at least to me, is the difference between "scoring" and "coming home."

Dave

In your initial post you referred to Rye and then shifted your thoughts to Medina.  One this board, you once changed your sideboard from "...dreams of Rye..." to "....dreams of NGLA...."  Maybe you have not yet found your golfing "home," or maybe you are just a golfing polygamist!

Tom P

Being nearly as old as you, I forgive you for your confusion in the name or your soulmate course, but I must ask you--if Mallow is really to you what Aberdovey was to Darwin, why have you not gone back there since your original brief encounter?  Surely you have had the means and the opportunity to do so.  Obviously, you have not had the motive to do so.  If this is the case, how can it be the "course that your soul loves best?"

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Bernard Darwin at "The Cader"  on his beloved Aberdovey Golf Links

Bernard Darwin's passge on Aberdovey in Golf Course of the British Isles is one of my favorite chapters in golf literature. There is clearly an exhuberance and feel that he, unlike no other writer, is able to project. He speaks to reader (us) as if we are riding that same train as he has so many times before--looking forward to another trip to the Aberdovey Links, and, another magnificent challenge.

Darwin's soul is clearly part of this game, he  loved it so. However, Rich, I find it hard to beleive that you could so easily discount Max Behr, when, most of don't even know where to exactly find his equally wonderful written works.

Both men clearly loved the Game, and both have left a legacy on which to further construe the exact meanings of the Game itself. Read GCOTBI and it is clear that Darwin loved a lot of golf courses. Then get ahold of an excellent modern book--Mike Miller and Geoff Shackelford's Art of Golf Architecture to read some of the Behr quotes.

You will not be disappointed!

The Art of Golf Architecture--Max Behr
We are too apt to mistake which is pretty, or picturesque, for the beautiful. Prettiness, although pleasing, is a transient thing incident to the fancies of the moment; but beauty rests upon the fundamental--its lineaments are the surface revelation of a perfection that lies beneath. Where beauty is lacking there must likewise be a lack of intelligence. Indeed, beauty may well prove to be the economic solvent to that continual evolution in the he way of innovations and alterations to which most all golf courses are subject. If the holes have been most advantageously routed in the beginning, beauty practically always accompanies economy of structure. When we perceive it, we first become aware of truth; and only in the presence of truth do we recognize stability and permanence.

What, then, is art in golf architecture? What are the values we should seek, and the method we should adopt to arrive at them?

If we examine courses in general, we shall find that whenever the modifications of the ground have been so inwrought as to seem inevitably a part of their surroundings, not only are they liable to manifest beauty, but we can be relatively sure the work promises to endure. Experience has taught us that courses constructed with no higher end then merely to create a playground around which one may strike a ball, present the golfer with little more then a landscape brutalized with ideas of some other golfer.

We forget that playing golf should be a delightful expression of freedom. Indeed, the perfect rhythmic coordination of muscles to swing the club makes of the golf club an art. And, being such, it is apt to induce an emotional state, under the stress of which human nature is not rational, and resents outspoken criticism. It follows that when the canvas of Nature over which the club-stroke must pass is filled with holes artificially designed to impede the golfer’s progress, these obvious man-made contraptions cause a violation of that sense of liberty he has every right to expect. This accounts for the checkered history of every artificial appearing golf course.


But, if we look closely, we shall discover that the changes rarely involve natural hazards. Indeed, the vice veriest tyro is unconsciously aware that the golf is a contest with Nature. Thus, where he meets her unadorned, unblemished by the hand of man, he meets her without criticism.

Golf Architecture is not an art of representation; it is, essentially an art of interpretation. And an interpretative art allows freedom to fancy only through obedience to the law which dominates it’s medium, a law that lies outside ourselves. The medium of the artist is paint, and he becomes its master; but for the medium of the golf architect is the surface of the earth over which the forces of Nature alone are master.

Therefore, in the prosecution of his designs, if the architect correctly uses the forces of nature to express them and thus succeeds in hiding his hand, then, only has he created the illusion that can still all criticize.

[paul cowley]

pebble beach.....as a young greenskeeper in the early 70's,i was able to play every day ,thanks to the enlightened managements perception that if one played the game he would better care for the course he maintained.unfortunately most people can not afford that kind of access.this was a time before the rough was irrigated, wall to wall cart paths,etc......the sun rising over carmel...mist, rain and fog...seals barking in the bay ,worked 5:30 till 2 then off to play.moonlight permiting,we would play before work, carying just 5,8,10 irons and putter....balls lost in the dark  cost a stroke,regardless of location.......i doubt this course exists anymore.........

[TEPaul]

"Maybe you have not yet found your golfing "home," or maybe you are just a golfing polygamist!"
Rich Goodale to Dave Schmidt

Great stuff--amazing thread! This stuff should be copied and pasted into some graduate class somewhere for perusal and discussion!

Rich:

Good question about Mallow G.C. and why I wouldn't go back there regularly as Darwin might have to Aberdovey.

One reason may be that I took from Darwin's passage only what I felt like taking from it at the time I read it.

I too think Darwin was one great writer but I'm never that concerned about what others may think of what EXACTLY he MAY HAVE meant about something, some word or reference. I'm only concerned about what it means to me that seems important and then I just go with that. And I fully appreciate whatever it might mean to them, although maybe very different from me is what they should concern themselves with.

That is basically all the art of communication with a writer such as Bernard Darwin is to me--and the beauty is it can mean different things to different people and consequently create wondrerful dynamic of thought and opinion, any of which can touch various people in various ways obviously personally. That I feel probably is the best effect of great writing, like Darwin's.

Mallow to me was a wonderful experience for a solid week at a particular time and place. It may be that it IS so precious to me that I may not want to go back and compare it to "returning home", even metaphorically. My feeling is I would love to have another experience something like that somewhere else, some other course in the world. It may not be the same, but it may be even better in some way, somehow. That's the way I look at golf and maybe even architecture--I love the differences it can apparently offer and maybe that's what I want to seek out.

Bamberger's section in "To the Linksland" on seeking the "essence" of the game and feeling he may have come near to it at Cruden Bay may be something similar--but I don't think what he found and felt about it is diminished at all because he may not have returned.

TommyN;

Thanks for that passage of Max Behr. Behr was not a writer on golf like Darwin was--Behr offered entirely different insights into the essence of the game. It doesn't mean to me it's better than Darwin, or Darwin was better than him--they are very different, and there are extraordinary things in what Behr wrote, at least to me--amazing insights.

Sometimes Behr's writing is convoluted beyond belief but if you consider it closely I think there's some wonderful meaning but obviously his writing can and does create huge differences in interpretation and opinion. So what?

Something like his mention or art (art in golf architecture) as not representation but interpretation is such a thing. Different people could and probably will have huge differences of opinion on that alone.

[ForkaB]

Tom

Great post.  I think you are really onto something in your "comparison" of Darwin and Behr.  For one, thing it is not at all "odious."  For another, you say convincingly that it is not a question of "D vs. B" or "D or B."  It is "D and B" both with their different insights and writing style.

Reading the Behr passage that Tommy N. posted, it seems clear to me that Darwin could never have written anything that complex, nor could Behr have written anything as simple as Darwin's paean to Aberdovey.  Maybe one or both was capable of copying the other's style, but I very much suspect that neither one of them really wanted to.  Looking at the picture of the Cader bunker, and remembering Darwin's description of it, which relates mostly to his play of the hole and the interplay of him and the caddies on the hill and very little of its architecture, I wonder how Behr would have described the hole.  Actually, my mind boggles at the thought.  I guess that every little hump and hollow in that massive dune facing the golfer would have been poked and prodded by Behr's fertile mind and the peice would have gone on for hundreds of pages.

To me, Behr represents the side of GCA that prefers to look at the details of golf courses and use this analysis to develop generalizations on what golf courses are and ought to be.  Darwin represents the side of GCA that prefers to look at the totality of the golfing experience, including architecture, but focusing less on GCA itself and more on how design interacts with players.  All of us--even me!--have some understanding of both sides of this continuum, but each of us probably has a preference for one side or the other.  Hopefully, each of us can learn from both Behr and Darwin and not tune our minds out to what either is trying to say.

[Dan Kelly]

Dan

Let me help you out, ole' buddy! ...

You were right about one thing--Darwin was a gifted writer.  It was not for nothing that he compared the feelings he got on his annual train ride to Aberdovey to the feelings he had when a schoolboy returning home for the holidays.  It was not for nothing that he used the words "blind and unreasoning affection."  It was not for nothing that he used the word "home" twice in that short paragraph, with subtly different usages of the word.

I never meant to propose or imply in my replies on this thread that "the course that (one's) soul loves best" has to be one's home course, which is why I used the quotation marks.  However, I think that Darwin was not saying, in effect:

"Golly gee, I've played a lot of great tracks around the world, but that Aberdovey is just somethin' else.  Can't wait to play there again!"

I personally think that he is saying something much deeper, which relates to the different values which we all place on familial and familiar things vs. those things which we know to be transitory or just give us momentary pleasure.

Thanks for all of that -- except for that "right about one thing" part. Hell, I've been right about a lot of things! (Goofy smiley.)

I certainly hope you never meant to propose or imply (because if you did, you'd be cuttin' me to th' quick, man!) that THIS is how I was interpreting Mr. Darwin's fine lines -- which wouldn't have merited posting if they'd meant, merely: "Golly gee, I've played a lot of great tracks around the world, but that Aberdovey is just somethin' else.  Can't wait to play there again!"

Here's the divide:

Like Mr. Darwin, you (and, I'm guessing, many others in this DG) have been lucky enough to find a "home" (note the quotation marks!) soulmate course -- a course that your soul loves best and that you also play regularly enough that it can give you the schoolboy-returning feel every time.

I, by contrast (along with, I'm guessing, many others in this DG), have not been so lucky as you and Mr. Darwin. The courses where I have played regularly do not thrill my soul in the way that I know a golf course can thrill my soul. This is my curse! Don't you understand that? (Rhetorical question.) The courses that my soul has loved best (Sand Hills, North Berwick, Hazeltine, Lahinch, The Old Course) -- the courses that my soul knows, as a soul can know the unknowable, would be candidates to be my "home" course if I had the opportunity to visit them enough -- are courses that, by necessity (certainly not by choice! I'd have married any one of them in a New York minute!), have been of the one-night-stand variety.

Would that it were otherwise.

[TEPaul]

Rich:

Very interesting! I was prepared to have you say I must have things totally mixed up--which may be true anyway and frankly is probably the only way I can manage with my inherent boneheadedness and mental feebleness.

But seriously, you aren't justa kiddin' that Behr's and Darwin's writing styles were poles apart. As for some of what they were writing about and trying to get at, I'm not so sure though.

I think both had a great facility for looking very deeply into what some of us might call the essence of golf (as well as how architecture effected it). But they certainly had different ways of going about that and styles of doing that.

You, of all people, should read Behr very seriously and with consideration because my feeling is that you and Behr share real similar thoughts and feelings about what golf or its "essence" may truly be.

Behr wrote about a lot of diverse things to do with golf (and architecture) but his articles that deal with the "restrictions" man has placed on golf--with or by golf's architecture are some of the best of him. He was probably the greatest of all the "non-restrictionist" thinkers who wrote about golf and golf architecture. His underlying principle seemed to be that man could and should play the game in nature (or what the golfer preceived to be nature unadorned and unrestricted by the architect's hand) with as total a "freedom of expression" as could possibly be achieved with architecture (and the regulatory bodies).

But he went much farther than that and tried to show why he felt that was necessary (to man) and also almost exactly how that could be done and at the same time still encorporating and considering the "necessary restrictions or limititions" of golf and it's architect on nature (particularly the necessary man-made elements and features of tees, fairways, greens and bunkering all of which he considered inherently site unnatural or just unnatural elements).

Behr's premise for all this was pretty simple really but probably very fundamental. He just felt that man was more likely to 'uncritically' face nature unaltered and unadorned by man (the hand of man) than he would if he perceived it (golf and courses) to be a series of obstacles that some other man placed before him!

In this way Behr's thoughts and writings were very much an allegory of man's varying relationships to nature on the one hand and to his fellow man on the other!

His ideas on "line(s) of charm" ("line of instinct") is one of the most ingenious but basically simple applications of how to achieve "freedom of expression" (for the golfer, not necessarily the architect) in the context of the inherent (but sometimes necessary) restrictions of architecture to nature's unquestioned primacy and probably dominance!

Of course, those of us who really are interested in Behr, like GeoffShac, TommyN and me are the first to admit that Behr's writing style is bizarre (but not the message). He was probably on booze or drugs when he wrote some of his articles the construction of his sentences are sometimes so tortured.

I heard that little Max Behr's elementary school English teacher said to him:

"Little Max, I don't know whether to give you an "F" or send you up to a class for truly gifted childern?"

To which Little Max responded:

"Madam, that would depend on whether you're talking about representation or interpretation, but in this case and class the freedom of expression on the meaning of that is yours, not mine because only you control the "inherent restrictions" on me and this chair I sit in at this particular time!"

And so it continued to go, I guess.

Did you know what a good player Max was, by the way? He was the proverbial second place finisher though, never winning the big one!

[TEPaul]

Rich:

As for what Behr's description of the Cader bunker (in the photo) may have been--on that I do diametrically disagree with you.

My gut feeling is he would have faced that bunker (and probably played over it with inspiration and freedom) wordlessly and joyfully. Why? Because it either is or certainly looks like nature unadorned by the hand of man.

That's the kind of feature or element on a golf course Behr would have approved of thoroughly and recommended architects use for inspiration to mimic the look of nature.

But if Behr faced a bunker with tons of sleepers supporting it, or probably immaculately maintained, with rakes and hand perfected maintenance within and such, he very well may have written hundreds of pages of how and why that insulted and corrupted the sensibilities of a golfer either concsiously or subliminally.

Behr would probably have had some choice words for the likes of Desmond Muirhead (at least something like Stone Harbor and his other ultra symobolic designs) and probably for an architect like Pete Dye too for fixating and concentrating on the obviously rudimentary aspects of early "man-made architecture" which was so obviously that!

But the great thing about some of the contributions and discussions on this website is after a while it becomes evident that many of these older architects we think of as thinking and working in similar veins, actually didn't.

I'm pretty sure that C.B. MacDonald took a few swipes at Behr (unnamed though) as basically thinking too damn much.

But the thoughts and dreams of some of them to somehow, someday go that extra mile to almost completely hide the "architecture's hand" in golf I find to be fascinating beyond almost imagination.

I'm not sure how they thought future facility (machinery possibly) could do it for them but I believe that's exactly what they dreamed of.

And I think one day it's going to happen. It'll take the right client and architect and the right type of golfer today but if and when it does happen it'll be interesting in just how it's done.

Somehow I can see architects like Doak, Hanse or C&C doing it and it may be somewhat different than some of us imagine. I say that because of something that happened at an Archipalooza when Doak was showing slides of the holes of an old golf course in Europe somewhere. About 3/5 of the way through the slides the old holes ran out and ceased to be recognizable as golf holes with mown fairways and greens and such but Tom kept on going as some of us looked at each other in amazement. What we were looking at didn't look like a golf course just unadorned nature. But they were old holes.

It seemed to me that Doak could have or would have recommended just taking a mower and a hole cutter and just go ahead and play them anyway.

If Behr had been there he obviously would have approved. But neither he nor Doak are so unrealistic as to say that it could never be recognized as a golf course, just one that looked as close to having been created by nature as possible or as close to hiding man's architectural hand as possible.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Aptly put, all.

Tom, I tend to think much differently on the Behr/Muirhead speculation. You see, Desmond and Behr both were more then likely alike in a lot of ways--well read; highly intellectual; had a verve for wanting the better things in life, and in some cases strove to the excesses to acheive them. I tend to think that maybe Desmond's highly controversial style would have never even been attempted if not for the one single fact--He was doing it for himself, to prove it that he could be controversial yet totally artistic. I have yet to play a BAD Desmond course, they are all highly strategic and in some cases pretty intense from a playing standpoint. Some of them are really good golf courses. I suspect Muirfield Village as one of the GREAT ones, and ultimately Desmond's work with Jack influence. However, I don't subscribe to the thinking of other courses with Viking Sun God bunkers to try to release an inner-vision I had from a previous life while married to the goddess Aphrodite'.

I do know that Desmond was on to something beyond Naturalism. I do think he was striking the boundries of human imagination, existence and golf architecture. And as some of us might know, the parallels are uncanny.

This is something that leaves NO doubt in my mind that Max Behr knew also.

[Tom MacWood (Guest)]

Rich
While I agree that Behr and Darwin's writing styles are quite different, I would disagree that Darwin did not delve into golf architecture in detail. I have read many Darwin's articles on golf architecture and there have been very few writers who have analyzed the subject more thoroughly. In fact I have my doubts that golf architecture, and the analysis of the golf architecture, would have progressed as it did without the thought provoking essays by Horace Hutchinson and Darwin - they were largely responsible for elevating the art.

[TEPaul]

TommyN:

I realize you knew Desmond Muirhead and I understand he was an extremely interesting man and probably very brilliant but some of his architecture needs to stand up to analysis on it's own despite all that about him personally. I've read some of his early writing and it's excellent but that was definitely before he built a course like Stone Harbor and that type of style which was obviously a vast departure from what he wrote about classic architecture.

Stone Harbor is without question golf architecture of real extremes. You're right, some of the holes there are very strategic in a sort of extremely slim "margin for error" sense.

Even some of his radically "symbolic" holes at Stone Harbor are strategic but they're an attempt to take golf architecture, certainly the look of it, to a vastly new dimension.

You're obviously right too to say it might explore the boundaries of human imagination and existence. But there's not a thing about that course and its architecture that comes within a million miles of an attempt to emulate a thing about the natural aspects of the earth or its random formations--very much the antithesis, in fact.

Personally, I'm glad it was done and I'm not even an advocate of having it "softened", as it has been. I think it should have be left as it was simply because it's one of the best examples of the extreme in architecture.

It was obviously a real attempt by Muirhead and his client--who asked for something wholly original--to get attention by its extreme originality.

I sure don't think that everything C. B. MacDonald felt and said should be considered gospel by a long shot but in hindsight Muirhead and his client with Stone Harbor probably should have considered this remark by MacDonald;

'Don't seek an original idea in building a golf course. John La Farge somewhere has said if "an idea were an original one it is safe to say it would not be a good one." '

Muirhead in some of his architecture akin to Stone Harbor sought a very original idea in architecture and it turned out, without question, to be one that was unique but clearly not in the slightest bit enduring.

[ForkaB]

Dan

I never set out to find a "home" course, but, like shit, it happened.  You are right that I am lucky.  One important caveat.  The reason that my "home" course is such has about 2% to do with the course itself and 99% to do with all the exogenous factors--people, smells, people, shower heads, people, skies, people...... (and yes, it does add up to 101%--the je ne sais quoi factor at work.......)

Dave

Hopefully you will not go into as deep a funk as JakaB has since I reminded him that the caddies would probably be the first to die in a "nuclear winter."  I absolutely love the idea of "Burningbush" as one's home course, although I would say "Bushwood!"  No, in the New Year's spirit, let's compromise, "Burningbushwood."  None of this Carthage Club/Redan Hills/Strathwhinn purist crap, but a real golf club, with mysterious and often dubious architecture, but real people.  Where would you rather spend your time?  At some GCA designed club where the evening entertainment was watching a slide show of the thoughtful restoration of the foozle bunkers at some course that Donald Ross located on a topo map 80 years ago?  Or at Burningbushwood, where you had a chance to watch Shivas Irons goosing Mrs. Smails when the Judge wasn't looking?

Dan and Dave

Some of my best friends are midwesterners, and they are not slouches either.  Think of Dorothy.  There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like Prairie Duens, there's no place like Sand Hills, there's no place like Wild Horse, etc. etc.

Tom MacW

I'll take your word on Darwin's GCA credentials.  Any particular references that might further enlighten me?

Tommy N and Tom P

I agree that Behr's writing is interesting, but it is very hard going for the reader.  Kinda like "Finnegan's Wake" without the pedigree.  It is a style of writing that forces one to read and re-read every sentence whilst scratching one's head and thinking--"That sounds OK, but what is he really trying to say?  Is it something with deeper meaning, or just some sort of superficial overeducated sophomoric crap?"  I'm just not sure, yet, with Behr, or even with Joyce, for that matter............

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Tom,
One of the points I was trying to make was that Desmond's exotic work was anything but Natural. Now please note, I'm speaking of the exotic stuff.

This is the type of architecture that got him a lot of praise in many architectural publications throughout the world and while it maybe not what Max, Doc, CB and all of us may think of as being paticularily groundbreaking, it was for the most part original and to the point. It was celebrated for its originality.

I have said this time and time again, and maybe Doug Nickles or Forrest can add a thing or two, but IMHO, I think Desmond did all of it simply because it was on his terms KNOWING what was going to happen with the game and the business. He left for several years--building one single course--Koralybyn in Australia (And actually designed the city to go with it) then came back to America rejuvenated to start all over again, once again--on his terms. Not Jack Nicklaus', not Gene Sarazen's, and not Arnold Palmer's. He hated gross commercialism and feared it would in fact wreck the game and the art.

When Desmond came back to America, before the first symbolic hole was ever constructed, Desmond felt the need to write about his views on Golf Architecture, and started writing, all the way up to his death, for Executive Golfer magazine.

Not unlike Max Behr, Desmond wrote his views and experiences on the subjects that intrigued him the most, and upon returning to Newport Beach fulltime, (He actually never really left, instead opting to tell everybody he was living in Australia full time, he was in fact spending a lot of time down-under, but never really moved his residence.)

Also, not all of Max Behr's writings were concerning architecture. There were a lot of them that were about the health and the future of the Game of Golf, and interestingly, they were very protective of the Game and its origins, not unlike some of us on GCA today.

There is a lot more I could say, but feel that is probably better left unsaid, simply because no matter what, the character of Desmond Muirhead was original as any man I have ever met. From my reading of Max Behr works, I think it would be safe to say that it would have been just as comparable.

[TEPaul]

TommyN:

I hear you on what you're saying about some of Desmond Muirhead's ideas and contributions to architecture. I'm not sure what you meant when you said 'he did it KNOWING what was going to happen to architecture', though.

My only real exposure to Desmond's architecture has been Stone Harbor, fortunately or unfortunately. And again, it's without question original, it certainly can be very challenging and some holes are interestingly strategic.

But unfortunately to be an honest analyst about architecture it should be said that other of the holes, many actually, are shocking architecture, surely some of the most shocking created in modern times. Some of the hideous parallel mounding on about six of the holes is shocking and some of the other earthwork is akin to going so far towards a bad joke as to actually be sort of interesting if not laughable.

Unfortunately, there's just no other way to describe it and explain it.

In an analogy to building architecture a course like Stone Harbor would be analogous to the worst modern residential architecture created in the last fifty years. The value of that type of residential architecture today is virtually nil and I doubt it will ever recover for any reason. I sold real estate and generally if one was to buy a house like those types today they would tear it down and start again.

That won't happen with Stone Harbor, in my opinion, but only because it is so unique, one of a kind--in other words no one else really tried to copy it to that extent and obviously for a very good reason.

But I'm not suggesting that it should wash away or disqualify other things that Muirhead did in his career. Stone Harbor should always be looked at on its own and one needs to consider what he was trying to do and its value to the consideration and study of architecture--if any.

It's no different really than asking the serious question;

"Did the Edsel add anything to automobile styling and its evolution?"

[TEPaul]

TommyN;

Just because some people take a specific criticism of a golf course to mean a total pan which I don't mean it to be--I should get into some of the more notable holes at Stone Harbor in some detail.

Holes #4, #6, #7 for instance.

#6 is really a shorter version of MacD/Raynor's Channel hole at Lido with a different green-end and a vastly different look, and with a basic strategic offering that probably doesn't work quite as well as the Lido's #4 might have but I really don't know that (since I never played the Lido). The look of #6 though, although working basically the same as the Channel hole is a vast departure from it in total man-made architectural lines as opposed to probably very natural lines (Lido).

#7 must have been the hole that the client and Muirhead too realized beyond any doubt would get the attention of the golfing world, regardless of the golfing world's impression of it being unbelievably radically bad on the one hand or remarkably interesting for uniqueness on the other.

But I think #4 is probably the most interesting. It really is one of the most strategically interesting and strategically meaningful 175 par 3s one can find. There's a ton of varied shot demand and real visual deception to it too and one of the most unusual tee/walkway designs one will ever see in golf architecture.

But the construction and architectural "lines" of the hole are at the other extreme from natualism. The teeing area and the green is propped up radically in a basic flat grade area may 15 feet or more. As good and interesting as the hole might play (particularly considering the often present wind) the look of the hole gives any golfer a sense of Muirhead saying; "Look how far I can depart from the idea of naturalism in architecture with the blatant use of machinery and some sort of fad-like stylizing.

There's just not another way anyone would describe it--although, again, it really can play great!

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Tom,
By saying KNOWING, I was refering to the blanket commercialism of the Game itself. (i.e. The PGA Tour(Reg. TM) TV, Equipment, etc.

I, personally have never seen in person any of the Symbolism stuff that he did. The closest any of that ever got to California was probably at Big Canyon CC in Newport Beach, which, if I remember correctly, he had redesigned one hole. (I believe it was the par 3 12th) It was met with some pretty unfavorable criticism.

There is one course that I would like to hear some review about that is in Atlanta--Covington Plantation, which from my memory semed to be a mix of some pretty very natural looking golf holes and of course, some symbolic ones too. (A green surrounded by bunkers looking like a sunburst. a eagle-headed shaped bunker, etc.)

[Tom MacWood (Guest)]

Rich
I'm not sure how much of Darwin you've read, but Golf Between Two Wars has an entire chapter on golf architecture, he touches on it in his autobiography (in particular Woking his home course), he contributed to M.Sutton's Book of the Links(1912), wrote the introductions to MAF Sutton's two books on golf design (1933 & 1950), you'll find him in the Wethereds' book The Game of Golf along with Simpson and Hutchinson, he wrote a chapter on golf design in Braid's biography, The History of Golf in Britian with Guy Campbell is another and I'm sure there are others I've missed. He wrote a weekly column for both The Times and Coutry Life (for over four decades) in which he often wrote about golf architecture, golf architects and their newest works. In fact he was largely responsible for making Colt, Simpson, Fowler, Abercromby, Hutchison, etc into mini celebrities.

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