How odd to meet such polarised opinions within the same context: while golf equipment makers press on relentlessly for more distance, oblivious to the great courses that are neutered by their blinkered fetish, here's course designer John Fought with an interesting aside while discussing his creation at Glaze Meadow Golf Course...
"I learnt quickly that some of the things we were doing were too modern. Yes, we had modern implements but we wanted it to look more natural...As we get back to that...the designs are better, the golf holes are better; they turn naturally with the land...That's the difference [in] that Golden Age - they didn't force anything; they couldn't. They didn't have big earth movers...
"I tell shapers all the time...I'll go, 'Do you think a horse could have built that?' and they get very quickly what I'm saying..."
In an age where politicians and business people bandy around the phrase "going forward" as much as we once did "please" and "thank you", something initially jars about such an emphatic covenant being made with the past as opposed to the future, particularly when it comes from a man with a living to make.
Yet when your raw material is a planet that tends to look best in its untouched form, what other philosophy is there? I remember being struck last year by the breathtaking work plastic surgeons performed on a casualty of the 7/7 London terrorist attacks, leaving merely the tiniest, faint scarring as the sole reminder of what their patient had been through.
What struck me was the contrast between the near-miracles achieved by doctors who work with Nature, merely seeking to restore it and the grotesque parodies of beauty that frequently result when their cosmetic brethren fight Nature, in their bid to turn the ageing process on its head.
Maybe the stakes aren't so high when you're designing a golf course but the parallel is nevertheless there. Golf architecture could be one of the few trades where sounding like a Luddite is the mark of a progressive.
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Pic of the Day - 11th at Kingsbarns Golf Links
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