Lorne: Advocating Golf Architecture Appreciation
The appreciation for good golf architecture and the role it plays in our enjoyment of the sport has, dare I say, never been greater.
How's that for recency bias!
I grant you that I was not alive during the mid and late 1920s when so many masterpieces were created, but having studied numerous magazines and books from the era, it was clear that the golfing public still needed urging to appreciate the incredible golf architectural creations.
Pinpointing what has the public so engaged in golf architecture today is tough. The influences range from social media to Bandon Dunes to golf course rankings to short par-4s to really awful designs, with many more inspirations in between.
Not to sound like a telethon, but we need more golfers to appreciate architecture and Lorne Rubenstein at Score uses Kapalua week and the emotions Coore and Crenshaw's design conjures up to make his case. Rubenstein bolsters his plea with sources for golfers to enhance their connoisseurship. So bookmark this for next time a friend says they want to learn more about golf course design.
Lorne writes:
Uneven lies make the golfer think. Slopes carry a ball away. Miss a shot by a little on ground that undulates and you will have effectively missed it by a lot. The golfer who plays, oh, Royal Dornoch or the Old Course in Scotland, and who doesn’t fully understand the effect of slope, will miss so much. To appreciate architecture is to flat-out (excuse me) get more out of the game.
That’s my view and I’m sticking to it, even if it takes only a minute to realize when a playing companion’s eyes are glazing over while I inform him about the details of a hole’s design. I try not to be a design bore but I do succumb. I want to say, “Come on, there’s so much more to golf than how far you can carry a drive. How about trying to sling a low bullet into that slope on the right so that the ball will carom back into the middle of the fairway and run along?”
You get my point. I advocate architecture appreciation.
Thursday, January 4, 2018 at 01:59 AM
Reader Comments (21)
PGA TOUR Player- "I advocate making courses boring and flat so I can shoot 25 under. Make the greens flat too so I don't miss a putt. And let me use a book to read greens to take 98% of the skill our of the game".
OK, not fair to put all TOUR players in the same bucket, but I would bet it's the majority.
Really, I would not agree, in fact for over the last few decades I have been trying to get clubs and their Pros to teach GCA to those they teach how to hit a ball.
The quality of many a course as lost so much since WW2, the ideas behind design these days is to aid the player while destroying the game for the Golfers. This site used this header only a few days ago “traps and bunkers that afforded better lies and easier strokes than the fairway” which speaks volumes about modern design.
TOC is still a history of GCA in its own right. Golf is suffering from modern Mans sickness of requiring help to play by using all forms of aids, now the designers and Green keeper are aiding them with “traps and bunkers that afforded better lies and easier strokes than the fairway”.
That's a pretty high bar on a wish list unless one believes the majority of players wielding a 460 cc canon can favor one side and sling a bullet as if they can actually pull it off. I'd have to assume the quote was intended for the more proficient player? And if that's so, they're hardly the players architects should worry about understanding the nuances of their work. Appreciation is defined as a full understanding of the situation. Having it will not be the main concern for the less accomplished, higher hdcp player. Although they might appreciate the strategy of different architects, the first order of business will be making solid contact enough to enjoy the game.
I'm a single digit with 25 years of golf experience and it's still VERY challenging to achieve that "zone" where you start really studying the nuance of terrain, selecting between different curvatures and trajectories, playing sawed-off and in-between shots, and really taking advantage of the terrain and the options presented. Now maybe it's chicken and egg, where if I had learned to try this earlier and practiced it more, it would now be easier to achieve. It's always funny to me when I see people play new courses with a host and the host shows them the hole off the tee and spends 2 minutes going through the options "speed slot on the left, safe spot on the right, slight fade is optimal, you want to approach the green from the right-center of the fairway...." --> golfer tops it and it dribbles 30 yards.
I'm probably just being a grouch.... the aim is admirable. It's just better to learn it when following a pro or watchign on tv or reading a book about GCA than to explain to your 18 handicap partner how to hit a stinger.
Did Lorne not bother to think about the feelings of our millennial crowd? Uneven lies are so "un-fair" .
We're going to hear a lot of griping about Bellerive over the next eight months. There is nothing wrong with the course and it has a thriving membership. But it doesn't have a golden-age designer, lacks an ocean, lacks slope (simply because it was built on flat land), doesn't have a 500 year old castle adjacent to the fairway, and wasn't reno'd by a Crenshaw or Hanse. Ergo, it "sucks" as the narrative will go. If you keep pounding your fist that there were millions of illegal voters, well then, there must be millions of illegal voters.
"Were the golden age Scottish links courses a result" not a or b but of the design work of those from the real Golden Age of Golf and Golf Course Architecture from the 19th Century.
Much that was used in the second Golden Age 1910-1930's was just copied from the 19th Century designers - just have to read the books from those second Golden Age guys to understand that their design input came from the knowledge of others which they used within their own designs. Remember they modified many of the old courses by extending their length, leaving many of the old Holes/Green intact. Look at Braid, thanks to him we have many of Old Tom's original designs and Holes still in place.
Some like Tom Simpson took credit from the19th Century designers while criticising them for failing to do much - yet still he copied and used many of the early designs as his own. Even Harry Colt was known to do such things too but he had to because of the mess he many of many a course/Hole i.e. his modification to the New Course at St Andrews in the 1920's was to destroy a course that was once equal if not better than The Old Course.
Sorry but to call this age a Golden Age when many just copied the ideas of the 19th Century guys is ridicules.
He’s basically telling us that if we study concert footage of Jimi Hendrix, we’ll play better air guitar.
If there was a "like" button. !!!
Melvyn, if we listened to you, all of my science would have stopped with the Golden Age of Darwin, Haldane the First, Claude Bernard, Pasteur and Koch (not one of the Current Brothers). Give it a rest, without telling me how Marion Hollins's vision was derivative of whoever.
You have the right to your opinions, comments and freedom of thought. However, to form such, you have to delve deep into various sources of information. If any of that acquired knowledge comes from questionable materials, then, would that in its self not make you doubt the fundamental basis of your own opinions.
All I try to do is correct errors that I have uncovered in my research on the early history of modern golf.
Remember that the 19th Century was a great age of development and achievements, i.e. home lighting first by gas then electricity, great steps in medical advancement, much industrial and transport was revolutionised and a time of great developments such as the Suez Canal. With all these great Manmade advancement, why should design be left out, it was not as we had the likes of Isambard Kingdom Brunel to name but one of the 19th Century designers.
Perhaps its fitting that I quote from Ran’s ‘Golf Club Atlas’ site which shows you that opinions formed by others based on questionable information can distort the very fabric of our history – noting that I hold Ran in high esteem.
“ 1. Pre 1899: The ‘Architects’ of this era were largely golf professionals and they spent limited time on site to stake out the tees and
Greens. They didn’t have the ability to move much land or create hazards so incorporating natural features was paramount. The
lesson learned rom studying the works of Old Tom Morris and the likes is timeless: nature, as opposed to money, provides the most
enduring challenges.”
Questionable information was used to form this opinion – i.e. Time was not limited, courses did not get designed AM and ready to play PM, the records shown that courses took anything from 3 weeks to a year to produce, The Old Course was re-designed and double in size in the late 1860’s by reclaiming land from the sea, the Bruce Embankment (part of the 1st fairway) was reclaimed as was the car park and part of the site of the Golfing Museum – not bad for ‘didn’t have the ability to move much land – then this was around the time of the Suez Canal dig. The 19th Century doubling the size of The Old Course design took a minimal of 4 years. Muirfield took from November 1890 to April 1891 to form 16 Holes.
As for incorporating natural features, that was and is the basis of good design, as it requires that the ‘land was fit for purpose’, something today mainly ignored because of once selecting the site the land is stripped of all features before being re-shaped and re built – more’ terraforming’ than incorporated design of Nature and the Natural, classic example is the Castle Course St Andrews.
Perhaps when you can grasp the underlying history of golf and golf course architecture you might be able to learn about the game of golf its history and more so the real magic of golf course design that unlike today could work with Nature and the natural. If you listen to me you might actually get to form opinions based on some facts. Then it is your right to form opinions as you desire, how accurate they are – well who knows!
I disagree. An understanding of architecture can give even average golfers a better chance at scoring better. Knowing when the designer is trying to fool you into thinking a certain line to the hole is best and understanding the other options can help golfers. Playing within their own ability is a factor of course but knowledge helps. Even understanding the difference between penal designs and risk/reward designs can help them with the course selection, leading to more enjoyment of the game.
Specifically, understanding that aiming directly at the pin on a redan hole is not a good idea will reward golfers when they do make a good shot.