Golf Course Design

I just read an article in a magazine about the return of good golf course design. The article said that in the early 20th century, Donald Ross, Alistair McKenzie, etc designed great golf courses. But later on, Robert Trent Jones, Pete Dye, etc designed unplayable golf courses - I couldn't agree more. In fact, read my column on course design - TwinCitiesgolf.com has all of my columns on their web site.

Good golf design allows for different routes to the hole. Different routes allow for strategy and shot making - poor designs only offer one route to the hole ... not very conducive to strategy or shot making.

The ugly courses started popping up around the same time that ugly baseball and football stadiums started appearing. The country lost its taste in architecture (and about everything else) during those years. Bigger was better ... and massive was great ... talk about an immature culture ... it was really pathetic. I'm so glad that golf and baseball and football architecture is reviving the classical styles.

But ... the games themselves have put too much emphasis on "big". The long drive, the home run, the slam dunk, etc. Sports are about using physical talents to perform in a strategical way - not just be an ESPN highlight film. But too many "fans" just want to see the obvious, so the owners manipulate the rules so that the sports lose their strategy and skill players ... so they have a bunch of big steroided-out goofballs performing highlight film tricks instead of playing the game.