My passion is golf architecture, and I may have read every book and heard every podcast that exists. For those that don’t follow it so close, architecture has been in a restoration movement for the last 20 years. Too expensive to build new courses!
In the early 1900’s there was a Golden Age of Design. The guys you’ve heard of…Ross, McKenzie, Raynor, Travis, Park, Colt, Flynn, and Maxwell are regarded as the best architecture had to offer. Today, if you happen to have a course designed by one of these guys, it’s really in vogue to put it back exactly as it was when it was first designed. You see trees clear cut, bunkers getting frilly edges, green’s pads extended, irrigation simplified, some even try to make their “new” grass look old.
Clubs are spending millions of dollars to go back in time. There is a belief that everything back then was better, and that these designers from our past should be revered for what they accomplished. How did they do so much, with so little?
But wait….then I come home, turn on the news, and I’m told that everything from the past needs to be removed, taken down, destroyed and forgotten. History is evil. The irony is unbelievable.
