Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my.
Speaker 2: Ball in a fried egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg,
Speaker 2: Frida Egggggrid Egg, Bride Egg.
Speaker 1: Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump course.
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. My name
Speaker 1: is Garrett Morrison, and today we're talking about the evolution
Speaker 1: of the Old Course at Saint Andrews. With the Open
Speaker 1: Championship at the Old Course for the thirtieth time this week,
Speaker 1: we thought it would be fun to dig into some
Speaker 1: of the deep history of this place and it might
Speaker 1: surprise you to find out how different the course was
Speaker 1: in its early days and why it eventually took on
Speaker 1: the form that it has today. My guest is Bob Crosby,
Speaker 1: who has been on the podcast a couple of times before.
Speaker 1: Bob is a golf historian. He's working on a book
Speaker 1: project about John Lowe, a major figure in the golf
Speaker 1: world of the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and my and Bob's discussion touches on some of the
Speaker 1: very important contributions low made to the design of the
Speaker 1: old course at a critical juncture in its history. But
Speaker 1: our discussion also just sort of ranges through time and
Speaker 1: gives a general picture of the way the old course
Speaker 1: has changed over time. All right, let's get to it.
Speaker 1: Here is me and Bob Crosby on the evolution of
Speaker 1: the old forms. We have just kind of gotten through
Speaker 1: the first round of this year's Open Championship. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's still going on as we record this. Bob, did
Speaker 1: you catch any of the action this morning?
Speaker 2: Very briefly, I do note that the course is playing
Speaker 2: awfully dry and awfully firm, which is absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, delight to see the ball running along the ground
Speaker 1: like it like it does.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people took a lesson from
Speaker 2: Tiger Woods at Hoyle Lake, which has hit two irons
Speaker 2: off tees.
Speaker 1: We're seeing a good amount of like load trajectory shots
Speaker 1: today from the players who can pull those off, which
Speaker 1: is nice. So we were going to dive a little
Speaker 1: bit into the past of Saint Andrews. You know, most
Speaker 1: of our discussion is going to revolve around the Saint
Speaker 1: Andrews of the eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, but
Speaker 1: I want to make clear upfront that a lot of
Speaker 1: what we're going to discuss is significant for today's discussion
Speaker 1: and understanding of the course as it's probably going to
Speaker 1: play out over this Open Championship. I think we'll hear
Speaker 1: a lot of similar debates about the course and whether
Speaker 1: it's obsolete or not, what kinds of changes should be
Speaker 1: made to it or not. So just to put that
Speaker 1: out there up front, this discussion of Saint Andrews as
Speaker 1: it was in its you know, kind of not early days,
Speaker 1: but it's middle days, is I think directly relevant to
Speaker 1: what's going on right now. So let's rewind a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred years and just talk about what Saint Andrew's
Speaker 1: looked like before, say eighteen fifty, Like in the first
Speaker 1: half of the eighteen hundreds, I think people will be
Speaker 1: surprised to hear what the course was like before it
Speaker 1: was widened. So tell me about that.
Speaker 2: The course until about eighteen, I want to say, eighteen
Speaker 2: fifty six or something like that was a single corridor
Speaker 2: hole out and back. You played the same same holes
Speaker 2: on the outward side and then back towards the clubhouse.
Speaker 2: The outward nine that we play now was added gradually
Speaker 2: over about fifteen years starting about eighteen fifty, and work
Speaker 2: on it will continue to until about eighteen seventy. That
Speaker 2: outward that what we now play is the outward nine,
Speaker 2: was called the time the field course because it was
Speaker 2: basically carved out of winds and gorses gorse on that
Speaker 2: side of the fairway. It was very, very wild. For example,
Speaker 2: what's now the second green was a thick batch of
Speaker 2: winds and gorse that was burned off about eighteen sixty
Speaker 2: five or eighteen seventy to create that green, which gives
Speaker 2: you a sense of the kind of work they had
Speaker 2: to do to build at the same time they built
Speaker 2: the current first hole, but also it gives you a
Speaker 2: sense of the kind of work they had to do
Speaker 2: to clear the way for the second, third, fourth, and sixth, fifth,
Speaker 2: and sixth holes. They really were all new holes. The
Speaker 2: current back nine is essentially the same are essentially the
Speaker 2: same whole corridors and frankly the same bunkering as the
Speaker 2: original pre eighteen fifty course.
Speaker 1: So well, first of all, winds, you've mentioned those a
Speaker 1: couple of times. What are those? What are winds?
Speaker 2: Winds is thick wispy grass that if dense enough is
Speaker 2: literally impossible to hit out of and or impossible to
Speaker 2: find your ball in. I've lost many balls and winds.
Speaker 2: Gorse is a very nasty animal, which is lots of thorns.
Speaker 2: I don't recommend even if you see your ball in
Speaker 2: a gorse bush, don't reach him to grab it.
Speaker 1: Will rip.
Speaker 2: This happened to me a couple of times. You'll rip
Speaker 2: your glove off and gash your hand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I forget about playing it. You shouldn't even
Speaker 1: try to retrieve it.
Speaker 2: You shouldn't even try to retrieve it is. It was
Speaker 2: just basically unmaintained natural vegetation in the area that they
Speaker 2: had to that they had to I think apparently from
Speaker 2: what I understand, they burned a lot of it all off,
Speaker 2: but probably they took crude farm implements also and cut
Speaker 2: it back.
Speaker 1: And I want to make sure that people picture this specifically. Basically,
Speaker 1: the old course was half of today's corridor of the
Speaker 1: old course. You know that the back nine half of
Speaker 1: it with this impenetrable vegetation essentially on either side where
Speaker 1: you'd lose a ball, And so the essence of the
Speaker 1: old course as a kind of wide playground that you know,
Speaker 1: that's how we met imagine it today, was just completely
Speaker 1: the opposite in this era. That changed in the middle
Speaker 1: of the eighteen hundreds. And can you tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about why it changed. Why did they do this?
Speaker 2: Well, they did it because of the volume of play,
Speaker 2: at least that's what the reports say, is that the
Speaker 2: volume of play was so high, and it was golf
Speaker 2: was growing so quickly in the last half of the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century that they needed some way to leave the traffic.
Speaker 2: And so the idea of building a different set of
Speaker 2: whole corridors to relieve that traffic, I think was a
Speaker 2: natural solution. Part of that though obviously, and this is
Speaker 2: unique to the old course, they didn't build new greens
Speaker 2: for those holes, the new holes, well, with a couple
Speaker 2: of exceptions, they did. They essentially expanded the old greens,
Speaker 2: right words, to accommodate the new holes. And so now
Speaker 2: most of the greens that august at excuse me, at
Speaker 2: the old course are massive, absolutely massive, but they have
Speaker 2: retained these wild contours that still come into play in
Speaker 2: terms of how you approach the greens.
Speaker 1: And this was done essentially to make play go two directions,
Speaker 1: you know, to to enable people to play the course
Speaker 1: on the outward nine and the back nine at the
Speaker 1: same time, instead of having to you know, run into
Speaker 1: each other on the way back as or on the
Speaker 1: way out as they would in a previous era.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, and you tend to for you know,
Speaker 2: we all tend to laud the Old Course as the
Speaker 2: sort of mother of modern golf architecture. We can get
Speaker 2: to that in a minute, but it's important to remember
Speaker 2: that before they expanded the course, it was a very narrow, tight,
Speaker 2: tough course with lots of what would have been carry
Speaker 2: bunkers you had going out the wall and the rail
Speaker 2: line on the left side. On the right you had
Speaker 2: basically unattended rough area, and it was it would have
Speaker 2: been a very very tough course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and pretty long for the area, which we can
Speaker 1: talk about as well, which is funny to think about
Speaker 1: now with all of these pros driving half of the
Speaker 1: par fours on the course. But in any case, the
Speaker 1: Old Course became wide in the middle of the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century essentially, And did this have something to do with
Speaker 1: the introduction of the guta percha ball and the way
Speaker 1: that that popularized the game and you know, made more
Speaker 1: people want to go out and play or do those
Speaker 1: timelines not quite match up?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. That might take is slightly different. I don't.
Speaker 2: In the stuff I've looked at, I don't see many
Speaker 2: references to the nature of the golf ball as having
Speaker 2: an effect on what they did. They needed to build
Speaker 2: a separate outward set of holes that ran parallel to
Speaker 2: the original inward nine. They did that because of play
Speaker 2: on the golf course. I don't think, and the authorities
Speaker 2: I read aren't clear on this. I don't think that
Speaker 2: outward nine was particularly wide. Initially. It got to be
Speaker 2: wide because of the volume of play and the fact
Speaker 2: that the gorse and the winds on the right side
Speaker 2: of those holes was, as Horace Hutchinson said, trampled down,
Speaker 2: and that became a problem. It was viewed as, as
Speaker 2: one commentator put it in eighteen ninety one, a paradise
Speaker 2: for while driving.
Speaker 1: So essentially they thought, like the more that you trample
Speaker 1: down the winds and the gorse, the less of an
Speaker 1: emphasis is put on accurate driving of the ball.
Speaker 2: Exactly the the the the whole defense on the right
Speaker 2: side of the outward holes was that gorse, and that
Speaker 2: and those wins and once they appeared to have disappeared,
Speaker 2: that defense was gone by the way. The the other
Speaker 2: the other factor in the trampling down of those winds
Speaker 2: and gorse was the construction of the new course, which
Speaker 2: ran parallel to a number of the outward holes. So
Speaker 2: you would have had players on two courses, trampling down
Speaker 2: the wins and the gorse on the old course, And
Speaker 2: that became by the late eighteen nineties, or at least
Speaker 2: it was perceived to be a very very big problem.
Speaker 1: So we're into the eighteen nineties at this point. One
Speaker 1: thing that happens in the teen eighties and nineties is
Speaker 1: that people really start to write about golf and golf
Speaker 1: courses at a higher rate than they did in the
Speaker 1: decades before. At least from what I've seen right, there's
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of golf literature that even really
Speaker 1: exists before the eighteen eighties. There's a little bit, you know,
Speaker 1: you can find references here and there. But eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties, suddenly there's entire magazines devoted to golf. And
Speaker 1: perhaps this has to do with the rising popularity of
Speaker 1: the game in Britain at the time. It's making its
Speaker 1: way down to England, making its way down to England
Speaker 1: from Scotland, and so perhaps that has something to do
Speaker 1: with this kind of print explosion. But when that writing
Speaker 1: about golf really starts to take off, what is your
Speaker 1: understanding of what people thought, what these writers thought of
Speaker 1: the Old Course and why they thought it was good.
Speaker 1: If they thought it was good.
Speaker 2: The curious thing about the writing at the time and
Speaker 2: by the time, I mean, let's say eighteen ninety, is
Speaker 2: that the Old Course was considered the best course in
Speaker 2: the world, not so much because of the reasons we
Speaker 2: think of today, which is this interesting arrangement of bunkers
Speaker 2: and other architectural features, but for the old Victorian reasons
Speaker 2: that the length of the holes were such that they
Speaker 2: required full shots, and it was at the time one
Speaker 2: of the longer courses. But the reason people thought it
Speaker 2: ought to be the primary rotor course for the amateur
Speaker 2: and the open at the time was for that reason
Speaker 2: that the holes required full, well executed shots to reach
Speaker 2: greens in the regulation number.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you see this specifically in the writings of
Speaker 1: Horace Hutchinson, who was would you say he was the
Speaker 1: best known golf writer of the late eighteen eighties and
Speaker 1: early eighteen nineties. Was he the pre eminent golf writer
Speaker 1: of that time?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Garrett, I guess so. I mean he did
Speaker 2: an awful lot of right, you know, you had though
Speaker 2: a lot of other figures that chimed in as well. W.
Speaker 2: Laid Law Purvis was a very cantankerous guy, with strong,
Speaker 2: sharp elbows about views. He was a classic Victorian golfer
Speaker 2: who believed in very rational, predictable rules. He was the
Speaker 2: first person to formulate what he took to be a
Speaker 2: scientifically designed golf course, which is what we would now
Speaker 2: consider a classic Victorian golf course with cross bunkers at
Speaker 2: intervals here and there and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And he was behind Royal Saint George's. When we talked
Speaker 1: to you and I talked about Royal Saint George's in
Speaker 1: its early days, that was sort of representative of Purvis's principles.
Speaker 2: The first iteration of Royal Saint George's was almost the
Speaker 2: definition of a Victorian golf course. But Hutcheson was important too.
Speaker 2: I mean, he had won the Amateur twice I think
Speaker 2: early in the eighteen nineties. He was a prolific writer,
Speaker 2: was actually one of the first proponents Ofvictorian architecture. He
Speaker 2: lated changed his mind, but he said laid law purposes
Speaker 2: ideas embody the quote Procrustian axioms of golf architecture, which
Speaker 2: will live forever?
Speaker 1: The Procrustian axioms.
Speaker 2: Right, the Procrustian axiom.
Speaker 1: I know what axiom means, but I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: know what Procrustian means.
Speaker 2: I think it means basically timeless forever, going back to
Speaker 2: the Greek era.
Speaker 1: Something perfect. Yeah, I mean this is sort of how
Speaker 1: Hutchinson writes too. But you know something that's striking about
Speaker 1: Hutchinson's writing about golf courses in the early eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of his book Famous Golf Links in particular,
Speaker 1: where he has an extended description of the old course.
Speaker 1: And you realize two things as you go through this
Speaker 1: description of the old course. One is that he's describing
Speaker 1: what we would now call the reverse routing. You know,
Speaker 1: you sort of get that if you holds in, it's like,
Speaker 1: oh okay, so that you know the out of bounds
Speaker 1: are the the course is on the left as he's
Speaker 1: describing it here, So all the famous holes that you're
Speaker 1: thinking he's going to get to he just doesn't get to.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing you realize is that what
Speaker 1: he likes about the course and what he doesn't like
Speaker 1: about the course are just sort of the opposite of
Speaker 1: what many people like about the course or don't like
Speaker 1: about the course today. What he liked about the course
Speaker 1: was its length, as you said, you know, nice full shots.
Speaker 1: There's you know, all the holes are the right length
Speaker 1: where you you know, you have to have a full
Speaker 1: stroke with this or that club, and it really tests
Speaker 1: your ability to hit the full shots and make those carries,
Speaker 1: et cetera. What he doesn't like about the course is
Speaker 1: all the random what he calls banks and braves, the undulations.
Speaker 1: So he was not a fan of the kind of
Speaker 1: chaos of the old course, which is something that most
Speaker 1: people today sort of embrace about it and think of
Speaker 1: as part of its.
Speaker 2: Charm al A central tenet of Victorian golf architecture, and
Speaker 2: a tenant still debated today, is the role of luck
Speaker 2: and chance in golf architecture, and the Victorians were absolutely adamant,
Speaker 2: adamant that luck and chant should be eliminated in a
Speaker 2: golf course to the extent possible. We still argue about
Speaker 2: that today. I think I might even argue that there's
Speaker 2: nothing new we ever argued about in golf that doesn't
Speaker 2: find an echo somewhere back in the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties.
Speaker 2: But that's that's coming from a historian's perspective.
Speaker 1: For heaving, well, I think you're right, and it's not
Speaker 1: surprising given the volume of writing about golf and discussion
Speaker 1: about golf that was produced during this era. They had
Speaker 1: seemingly time and room enough to talk about nearly everything,
Speaker 1: and so it's tough to compete with their sheer output.
Speaker 2: And let me just make a quick note, the volume
Speaker 2: of writing was prodigious, but it is absolutely fantastic writing.
Speaker 2: These guys were well educated. They had classical they studied
Speaker 2: Latin and Greek. Their language sentences are eloquent, and they
Speaker 2: it really repays reading. There is a prejudice among people
Speaker 2: that are interested in golf that any debates that took
Speaker 2: place that far back in time can't possibly still be relevant.
Speaker 2: They are profoundly So just pick up the stuff you
Speaker 2: haven't been skipping over and not reading and read it
Speaker 2: because it's absolutely fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, All right, So we were talking about their
Speaker 1: ideas about architecture. Okay, Horace Hutchinson had kind of representative
Speaker 1: ideas of the time about the old course. It was
Speaker 1: a good length. I'm not sure about the undulations, but
Speaker 1: you know, you have to take a lot of full swings,
Speaker 1: so it's a good course. A very strange way to
Speaker 1: view the old course and something that we don't quite
Speaker 1: recognize now. But within about fifteen years the most popular
Speaker 1: way of thinking about the old course definitely shifted. And
Speaker 1: could you just tell me about that shift and why
Speaker 1: you think it happened.
Speaker 2: Let me begin by saying that about ten or so
Speaker 2: years ago I had a series of conversations with Peter Lewis,
Speaker 2: who I want to thank for plining me in the
Speaker 2: direction of a lot of things and for the things
Speaker 2: he has written in things he's found.
Speaker 1: I'd highly recommend if I can interrupt Why eighteen Holes?
Speaker 1: His book Why eighteen Holes? Yeah, excellent, you know you can.
Speaker 1: It's pretty easily accessible, I believe, and fantastic account of
Speaker 1: why we have eighteen holes on golf courses now. There's
Speaker 1: some really interesting history there.
Speaker 2: Which won the Herbert Warren Wind Award from the USGA
Speaker 2: for the best Book of the Year. So I was
Speaker 2: a co winner that year is absolutely worth finding and buying.
Speaker 2: But Peter and I began a series of discussions, and
Speaker 2: the discussions were triggered because he called me at some
Speaker 2: point out of the blue by what I think is
Speaker 2: one of the most interesting questions in the hit history
Speaker 2: of golf, which is, how did the old course get
Speaker 2: so good? Spoiler alert. I don't have a great answer
Speaker 2: for that. But if you think it got so good
Speaker 2: because a bunch of sheep dug out burrows to protect
Speaker 2: themselves from the wind in the rain, I've got a
Speaker 2: bridge for you in Brooklyn that you might be interested
Speaker 2: in buying.
Speaker 1: That's sort of the romantic idea, right. People are just like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a completely natural you know, just the bunkers are where,
Speaker 1: you know, they dug it out, and yeah, it's there
Speaker 1: was a little more human intervention than that, wasn't there?
Speaker 2: There was a lot of human intervention. No one knows
Speaker 2: that history better than Peter Lewis, and Peter doesn't know.
Speaker 2: So I don't pretend to know. How did the road
Speaker 2: hole get so good? I don't know, and nobody does.
Speaker 2: How did the edenhole get so good? We don't know,
Speaker 2: but it is there are remarkable holes. I mean, I
Speaker 2: have a theory that maybe some of it was put
Speaker 2: together by Scottish gentleman there on the scene who thought
Speaker 2: wagering was really important, so they wanted holes with potentially
Speaker 2: catastrophic outcomes that would settle bets. That's but that's pure speculation.
Speaker 2: Somebody designed those holes and they are lost to history.
Speaker 2: Having said that about some of the better holes and all,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of those tend to be on
Speaker 2: the inward nine. The outward holes. The newer holes were
Speaker 2: ones that we know a little bit more about. Peter
Speaker 2: was able to uncover and he gets I want to
Speaker 2: give him full credit for this, the story of I
Speaker 2: think it was seventeen bunkers that were added to the
Speaker 2: outward holes in nineteen hundred. I can go into as
Speaker 2: much detail about that as you want. He wrote a
Speaker 2: wonderful article about that in Through the Green a decade ago.
Speaker 2: But the idea at the time was that because of
Speaker 2: the because of the absence of gorse and winds on
Speaker 2: the right side of those holes, as we talked about earlier,
Speaker 2: they've been trying by multitudes of golfers that they needed
Speaker 2: to do something to protect erratic play on that side
Speaker 2: of the golf course. So the decision was made to
Speaker 2: build about sorry about seventeen bunkers on that side of
Speaker 2: the course. That is not well known and there was
Speaker 2: a very little commentary about it at the time, but
Speaker 2: it is notable that a special committee was formed at
Speaker 2: the time to look into the possibility of building those bunkers.
Speaker 2: A twenty nine year old John Lowe was on that committee,
Speaker 2: that special committee. His good friend Freddie Tate, who would
Speaker 2: die about a year later, was on that committee, and they,
Speaker 2: along with the rest of the committee, helped set out
Speaker 2: those bunkers on the right side of the outward holes
Speaker 2: that's risked really just to the second hole through the
Speaker 2: sixth hole. Their plan also included the addition of three
Speaker 2: or four bunkers on eight and nine. Nito was called
Speaker 2: the end hole. They wanted bunkers in the end hole.
Speaker 2: What's interesting to me, and this sort of follows through
Speaker 2: the other large bunker building epoch five years later, was
Speaker 2: that what they were trying to do in nineteen hundred,
Speaker 2: and they were doing more of it again in nineteen
Speaker 2: oh five, was to make the hole those holes quote harder,
Speaker 2: but and this is the interesting twist here they wanted
Speaker 2: to make it harder because players were complaining that the
Speaker 2: best approach into the greens was from that old trample
Speaker 2: down gorse. In other words, a ball hit down the
Speaker 2: middle of the second fairway, it was not where ideally
Speaker 2: you wanted to be. You wanted to be over in
Speaker 2: what used to be the gorse. So while they're talking
Speaker 2: about making the course harder, I want to argue that
Speaker 2: it was John Low's brilliance to figure out what was
Speaker 2: really going on here and to use that's those sorts
Speaker 2: of concepts as the basis for a whole new way
Speaker 2: of thinking about golf architecture. That is to say, if
Speaker 2: you were trying to put bunkers in the places where
Speaker 2: you would ideally want to hit a drive to make
Speaker 2: the next shot easier, maybe that ought to be a
Speaker 2: principle around which you use that you use to place bunkers,
Speaker 2: Maybe that's exactly where they ought to be. Those bunkers
Speaker 2: were built on the old course, on the outward holes.
Speaker 2: In nineteen hundred, Low publishes his first sort of sketch
Speaker 2: of what we would call today strategic golf architecture. The
Speaker 2: next year, in a discussion in Golf Illustrated about the
Speaker 2: best holes in Golf. He follows up with his book
Speaker 2: Concerning Golf, where he lays out what amounts to a
Speaker 2: theory of strategic golf architecture more tail. But I like
Speaker 2: to think that the thought process that was going on
Speaker 2: about nineteen hundred was absolutely seminal in low developing those ideas.
Speaker 2: And he did it at the time pretty much alone.
Speaker 2: I mean, there was you know, he was uniquely brilliant
Speaker 2: because nobody else was thinking along those lines at the time.
Speaker 2: Now they caught on quickly, his friend Harry Cole, Tom Simpson, Mackenzie,
Speaker 2: the whole clatch caught on pretty quickly. But Lowe was
Speaker 2: out there at the beginning thinking and the context was
Speaker 2: the Old Course. We're not just make you know, we
Speaker 2: don't want to make these shots merely harder. We want
Speaker 2: to make them more interesting. And the Old Course set
Speaker 2: up made that kind of thinking possible. It was just,
Speaker 2: maybe purely by chance, that the best approaches to the
Speaker 2: outward holes was from the right sides of the of
Speaker 2: the of the whole corridors, which happened to be Old gorse.
Speaker 2: And that leads, you know, it's it fairly thins the
Speaker 2: fair short step from that to thinking about strategic golf
Speaker 2: architecture and how in theories of how bunkers are to
Speaker 2: be placed.
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Speaker 1: dot com slash tf look good golf guder. So I
Speaker 1: know that this is probably speculation here, but how do
Speaker 1: you think John Lowe came up with the idea that
Speaker 1: hazards should be placed where an ideal drive ought to
Speaker 1: end up? In other words, was he learning that from
Speaker 1: the old course as it existed before nineteen hundred? Did
Speaker 1: he see that there were bunkers on the old course
Speaker 1: that were kind of in those places where the ideal
Speaker 1: approach to the green was. You mentioned that there were
Speaker 1: winds and gorse along the right side of the outward nine,
Speaker 1: which is often the ideal line for those holes to
Speaker 1: attack approaches. So do you think he came up with
Speaker 1: this idea that hazards should guard those best angles instead
Speaker 1: of merely catching bad shots, which was the dominant idea
Speaker 1: of the time. Do you think he came up with
Speaker 1: that idea by studying the old course as it was,
Speaker 1: or do you think he came up with it by
Speaker 1: philosophically thinking it through?
Speaker 2: I who knows number one?
Speaker 1: Yeah, right now.
Speaker 2: I tend to think that he was trying to solve
Speaker 2: and help a group work through a very practical problem,
Speaker 2: the solution to which led him to think more broadly
Speaker 2: that maybe we're working here with a different principle of
Speaker 2: golf architecture, at least the one we haven't talked about
Speaker 2: much before. Let me note that at the same time
Speaker 2: those discussions were going on, probably in the winter of
Speaker 2: nineteen hundred, Victorian golf architecture was at its peak. It
Speaker 2: was the dominant theory of how you designed golf courses.
Speaker 2: There were proposals at the time to deal with the
Speaker 2: problem of the gorse or the absence of gorps on
Speaker 2: the right side of the Howard holes. There were proposals
Speaker 2: to build trench bunkers all along the right side of
Speaker 2: the course and all along the left side of the course.
Speaker 2: There were other proposals to build trench cross bunkers across
Speaker 2: the course. Oh my god, classic Victorian ideas that, interestingly
Speaker 2: were all rejected at a time when those ideas were
Speaker 2: common currency in golf architecture.
Speaker 1: That's what's so fascinating to me about this is that
Speaker 1: those Victorian ideas, and when you say Victorian, you're referring
Speaker 1: to the historical era that's normally thought to last from
Speaker 1: about the eighteen thirties through the end of the eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds Queen Victoria's reign, which was very long in the UK.
Speaker 1: But in any case, that's the Victorian period, and when
Speaker 1: you talk about Victorian architecture, you're talking about kind of
Speaker 1: the popular modes of new course construction and old course
Speaker 1: renovation in the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties, which had
Speaker 1: a lot to do with penal ideas, right, that you
Speaker 1: would catch bad shots by putting bunkers in front of tees,
Speaker 1: you know, so that if you kind of thin the
Speaker 1: ball that it would catch the bunker and stay in
Speaker 1: the bunker. You would put bunkers along the sides of
Speaker 1: holes so that if you sliced it or hooked it,
Speaker 1: you would be in a bunker. The idea was to
Speaker 1: penalize shots by putting bunkers where bad shots ended up,
Speaker 1: and that was absolutely the dominant idea in you know,
Speaker 1: in nineteen hundred when these changes were being made to
Speaker 1: the old course. So you would assume that those would
Speaker 1: be the changes that would be made to the old course.
Speaker 1: But somebody, maybe John Lowe, your man, stood in the way,
Speaker 1: and said, no, that's not what this course is about.
Speaker 2: The paradox of the changes in nineteen hundreds of the
Speaker 2: old course, and the paradox continues in nineteen oh five,
Speaker 2: is that in an attempt ostensibly to make the holes harder,
Speaker 2: they were also making them more strategic. And I think
Speaker 2: John Lowe saw before anybody else did, and that I
Speaker 2: think it led to the further elaborate It took him
Speaker 2: a couple more years, but I think he sorted it
Speaker 2: out finally and came to a fairly concise, clear articulation
Speaker 2: of the principal strategic golf architecture that I think flowed
Speaker 2: out of all of these flowed out of trying to
Speaker 2: solve that very practical problem.
Speaker 1: So could you briefly explain, just in basic terms, why
Speaker 1: placing bunkers in the way that low promoted and in
Speaker 1: the way that it was done during these old course
Speaker 1: renovations in the early nineteen hundreds, where you put the
Speaker 1: bunkers where you really want to place your ball in
Speaker 1: order to attack the green, instead of putting the bunkers
Speaker 1: where bad shots end up, you're putting the bunkers where
Speaker 1: good shots might end up. Why is that more strategic?
Speaker 2: It's more strategic because the hazards on a golf course
Speaker 2: on a strategic golf course, that is, are problems that
Speaker 2: you engage voluntarily. You elect to play close to the
Speaker 2: bunker to obtain the benefit of an easier shot into
Speaker 2: the green from near that bunker. The hazards and the
Speaker 2: problems that they give you are not forced on you,
Speaker 2: and penal architecture, what we today call penal architecture, and
Speaker 2: to some extent of Victorian architecture at the time, forced
Speaker 2: hazards on you. You had to negotiate them whether you
Speaker 2: wanted to or not. In the case of Victorian bunkers,
Speaker 2: you typically had to carry them, and if you couldn't
Speaker 2: hit the ball well to carry them, you were a
Speaker 2: dead man. You were in the bunker and it would
Speaker 2: take two or three shots to get out of these
Speaker 2: cop bunkers with huge lips that were just disasters. And
Speaker 2: so the idea of introducing the concept of elective difficulties
Speaker 2: essentially is I think at the heart of strategic golf architecture,
Speaker 2: you take on as many problems as you have an
Speaker 2: appetite to take on. You can avoid them too. If
Speaker 2: you have no appetite, then don't take them on, but
Speaker 2: you may find yourself with for more difficulties on the
Speaker 2: next couple of shots if you do. But those are
Speaker 2: choices the strategic golf architecture creates, and I think why
Speaker 2: strategic golf courses are so wonderful to play.
Speaker 1: All right, So another thing that's happening at this time
Speaker 1: is the introduction of the Haskell ball. Do you think
Speaker 1: that the introduction of this new and very much more
Speaker 1: powerful ball had an impact on how the old course
Speaker 1: at Saint Andrews evolved in the early years of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Now, my understanding is that these initial changes
Speaker 1: to the old course that you're talking about in nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: those would have taken place like before the Haskell really
Speaker 1: took over.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, you know, I have trouble convincing people that
Speaker 2: the Haskell didn't play a huge played maybe some role,
Speaker 2: but I number one, the Haskell didn't appear in England
Speaker 2: or Britain until November of twenty nineteen oh one. Okay,
Speaker 2: the changes made at the old course in nineteen hundred.
Speaker 2: Low's initial articles on strategic golf architecture appear early in
Speaker 2: nineteen oh one, essentially a year later. The Haskell appeared
Speaker 2: after all of that. Clearly, by nineteen oh there was
Speaker 2: another round of changes in nineteen oh five to build
Speaker 2: yet more bunkers, essentially in the same areas as they
Speaker 2: had started to do in nineteen hundred, for the same reasons.
Speaker 2: Essentially they didn't think there were enough bunkers there to
Speaker 2: have an effect on play, so they built more bunkers there.
Speaker 2: There was some talk in nineteen oh five about the
Speaker 2: RNA being concerned that the Haskell ball would overwhelm the course,
Speaker 2: and teas were moved back in some cases, but the
Speaker 2: theory of bunker plays at the old course the new
Speaker 2: ones in nineteen oh five, I just don't read much
Speaker 2: about people thinking that the Haskell had much bearing on
Speaker 2: that at all. It's just it's a question of where
Speaker 2: you hit the ball. They you know, teas were moved
Speaker 2: back on I think three or four holes that year,
Speaker 2: the beginning of tea extensions that go on till today,
Speaker 2: I guess. But I don't think the Haskell had a
Speaker 2: lot to do with the with the development of theories
Speaker 2: of str teaging golf architecture.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, so you have made arguments against the impact
Speaker 1: on the architecture of the old course of both the
Speaker 1: Guttapercha and the Haskell ball and those are pretty common
Speaker 1: narratives that those technological advances had a profound impact on
Speaker 1: golf architecture at Saint Andrews.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that they had an impact on golf architecture
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the way that new courses were built, especially
Speaker 1: the Haskell you know, courses had to be lengthened and renovated.
Speaker 1: But maybe the impact is a little bit less at
Speaker 1: the old course. By the yeah, go ahead, I was.
Speaker 2: Gonna say it had some impact. I mean the the
Speaker 2: you know, there was some concern that the bunkers on
Speaker 2: the right side of number two, for example, could be overdriven,
Speaker 2: and so they added a couple of bunkers to handle that,
Speaker 2: which are now well, you know, completely obsolete.
Speaker 1: It's the green side bunkers that are in play for drives. Well,
Speaker 1: the green side bunkers, they were added a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, right, they.
Speaker 2: Were added under the Peter Dawson regime. I vehemently rejected
Speaker 2: objected to them at the time because that is the
Speaker 2: bailout side of the hole. And I think those bunkers
Speaker 2: turned the second green into something more like a penal
Speaker 2: approach shot rather than a strategic approach shot. The second
Speaker 2: green is I'm sure you know, has huge landforms both
Speaker 2: front left and in the front and in the left
Speaker 2: side of that green. You do not want to approach
Speaker 2: that green from the left side. It's very hard to
Speaker 2: hold from there.
Speaker 1: Makes it equally bad to go left and right. In
Speaker 1: other words, yeah, well said, well said. So okay, let's
Speaker 1: go back to nineteen oh five. Now, from what you
Speaker 1: were saying before, my understanding is that the changes for
Speaker 1: the nineteen oh five Open Championship at St. Andrews were
Speaker 1: essentially extensions of the changes that were made in nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: where bunkers were being added in the ideal positions in
Speaker 1: fair ways in order to make the course more difficult
Speaker 1: for the best players in the world at the time.
Speaker 1: Is that an accurate characterization, Yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 2: The sixteen more bunkers were added in nineteen oh five.
Speaker 2: Let me just know that with a couple there were
Speaker 2: a couple of more bunkers built a couple of years
Speaker 2: after that, won by Bo's Boase who was the one
Speaker 2: of the chairmen of the Rules committee at the time,
Speaker 2: And there was another bunker that Herbert Fowler wanted built
Speaker 2: on the fifteenth toll, but essentially, that was the end
Speaker 2: of the addition of new bunkers to the old course
Speaker 2: nineteen oh five, that is, and the end of any
Speaker 2: major structural changes to the course. Now I'm not counting
Speaker 2: moving te's back as a structural change to the course.
Speaker 2: We can argue about that if you want, but that
Speaker 2: was it. The map Mackenzie does in nineteen twenty four
Speaker 2: of the old course shows all of those new bunkers,
Speaker 2: and there really have been none sent, none built. New
Speaker 2: new bunkers at least built since some of the shapes
Speaker 2: have changed, but the basic locations of those bunkers have
Speaker 2: remained essentially unchanged since nineteen twenty four. Well that's when
Speaker 2: the map was done. I would argue that they really
Speaker 2: essentially remained unchanged since nineteen oh five, and it was
Speaker 2: so it was a major, major event.
Speaker 1: Why do you think it was that the old course
Speaker 1: stayed so for many many decades since at least nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty four, and maybe in nineteen oh five.
Speaker 2: The greens, the greens and green and the green surrounds
Speaker 2: are extreme enough to make it absolutely essential to play
Speaker 2: off the tee into the correct side of the fairway
Speaker 2: to approach them. And if you can't do that. You
Speaker 2: simply can't score at the Old Course. There are very
Speaker 2: few other courses that have anything like the extremities, the
Speaker 2: extreme landforms in and around the greens that the Old
Speaker 2: Course has. That's where everything starts, and you modify the
Speaker 2: rest of the course to enhance the power of those
Speaker 2: extreme contours on the golfer trying to play the course.
Speaker 2: And I think that, at least in my view, is
Speaker 2: the core reason why the Old Course is held up
Speaker 2: so well. It has a unique set of greens that
Speaker 2: don't tolerate not only mishits, but shots that aren't quite
Speaker 2: good enough. As Low put it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's part of the brilliance of the changes
Speaker 1: that were made to the Old Course in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds is that the bunkers that were added didn't
Speaker 1: have to do with penalizing the drive necessarily, right. It
Speaker 1: wasn't about the bunkers. Those bunkers were in a way
Speaker 1: about the greens, because what they did is that they
Speaker 1: changed the player's relationship to the greens. And that's why
Speaker 1: they were a smart move for the Old Course, because
Speaker 1: the Old Course is and always has been about the
Speaker 1: contours of the greens, and so when you're adding new bunkers,
Speaker 1: you should be thinking about how those bunkers relate to
Speaker 1: the angle at which players are approaching the greens. If
Speaker 1: you play away from them, the greens aren't going to
Speaker 1: be your friend. If you play near them, the greens
Speaker 1: are going to be much more friendly to you because
Speaker 1: of the way they're designed in all those fascinating contours.
Speaker 2: The greens, if you care to look carefully, tell you
Speaker 2: how to play them. They tell you there is a
Speaker 2: way to play them as better than other ways. Now,
Speaker 2: these guys playing the Old Course today can overwhelm a
Speaker 2: lot of that just by how high they hit the
Speaker 2: ball and how far they hit the ball.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else significant do you think to say
Speaker 1: about how the Old Course evolved in the early nineteen
Speaker 1: hundreds that we didn't get to so far.
Speaker 2: I just want to add that after nineteen oh five,
Speaker 2: the bunkers were put in place. In nineteen oh five,
Speaker 2: unlike the bunkers in nineteen hundred, they were incredibly controversial.
Speaker 2: Incredibly controversial. J. H. Taylor Garden Smith then the editor
Speaker 2: of Golf Illustration, Harold Hilton, Alex Smith Varden. Everybody hated them.
Speaker 2: They thought that they were brutally unfair. Golf Illustrated had
Speaker 2: a series of cartoons about the bunkers, and you know,
Speaker 2: they depicted them as the sort of Martian landscape out
Speaker 2: there on the old course. And in all these cartoons
Speaker 2: there's a bemused figure in the background looking on smiling.
Speaker 2: That bemused figures. Golf bag carries the initials j LLL,
Speaker 2: which is John lang Low. Terribly controversial. Why the changes
Speaker 2: in nineteen hundred were not controversial remained something of a mystery.
Speaker 2: Taylor writes an article condemning the changes to the course,
Speaker 2: which was an indirect attack at Low, responds in nineteen
Speaker 2: oh seven in Nesbitz directly to Taylor, and it is
Speaker 2: a further wonderful articulation of the basic theory of strategic
Speaker 2: golf architecture, where I think, well, my view is a
Speaker 2: low dismantls Taylor. But it's a remarkable exchange that the
Speaker 2: five changes were remained controversial for several years, for several
Speaker 2: maybe decades.
Speaker 1: Why do you think it is that they stayed the changes?
Speaker 1: You know, who was in power that allowed Saint Andrews
Speaker 1: and these new changes to stand up against the criticism?
Speaker 2: Good question, Good question. I think well. Number one, Lowe
Speaker 2: remained a very very powerful, powerful figure in the RNA
Speaker 2: until his death in nineteen twenty nine, so you did
Speaker 2: mess with the old course as long as he was alive.
Speaker 2: Number two is that there were in fact several proposals
Speaker 2: in the thirties, including one in the late thirties on
Speaker 2: the eve of World War two, to combine some of
Speaker 2: the holes on the old course with some of the whole.
Speaker 2: And I think it was the Eden Course and maybe
Speaker 2: the New Course to strengthen some of the old course
Speaker 2: holes at the turn eight nine ten, some of those
Speaker 2: holes back in there. Harry Colet through had some interesting
Speaker 2: ideas about that. This is thirty eight to thirty nine,
Speaker 2: the war comes, nothing happens, and the idea is dropped.
Speaker 2: So it was to some extent a matter of just
Speaker 2: chance that changes weren't made. But after World War Two,
Speaker 2: nobody had any money, nobody really had any money to
Speaker 2: invest in course changes. Maybe into the sixties or seventies.
Speaker 2: By that time, no one dared make significant changes to
Speaker 2: the course. And I think that's sort of the story.
Speaker 2: But people thought about it in the thirties.
Speaker 1: It was on the table, and history intervened. I mean
Speaker 1: maybe the changes would have been made if everybody had
Speaker 1: to sort of abandon golf for several years, and so
Speaker 1: maybe things would have been different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are many things that is spinning his grave
Speaker 2: since his death, but that's not one of them.
Speaker 1: He was smiling in his grave about right exactly. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: so fast forward to today. The old course is still
Speaker 1: essentially the course that Low defended in the early nineteen hundreds, right,
Speaker 1: the course as it stood in nineteen oh five. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how long the course played in
Speaker 1: the nineteen oh five Open, but in the nineteen eleven
Speaker 1: Open it was right around sixty five hundred yards, so
Speaker 1: I assume that's that's more or less what it was,
Speaker 1: which was, you know, a good long course for the day.
Speaker 1: Now the course is playing somewhere in the range of
Speaker 1: seventy three hundred yards. There are teas on other courses.
Speaker 1: I think I agree with you that this has not
Speaker 1: made a structural change to the course. That that's sort
Speaker 1: of cosmetic in a lot of ways, and maybe necessary
Speaker 1: given the links that guys are hitting the ball today.
Speaker 1: But you know, as you consider the way that the
Speaker 1: old course is being played, now, how do you you
Speaker 1: see the future of the old course playing out. Do
Speaker 1: you think it's going to stay essentially the same? I
Speaker 1: mean some rough has been added, as we've discussed on
Speaker 1: the website and article by Tony DearS is on there
Speaker 1: about rough that has been added on the sixteenth holes,
Speaker 1: the seventeenth hole, you know, so there's little things like that.
Speaker 1: But do you see big changes in the old courses future?
Speaker 1: And if not, do you think that the Open Championship
Speaker 1: should continue to go back there or if it would
Speaker 1: be better maybe if it just let it be.
Speaker 2: Let's see how the scoring is this year. I do
Speaker 2: worry about that if somebody wins at thirty hunder par,
Speaker 2: are people going to cool on the idea of coming
Speaker 2: back to the old course? It is because well, with
Speaker 2: some exceptions it's out of land. There's just so much
Speaker 2: that they can do to extend the course. And by
Speaker 2: the way, if you do the math, and I'll keep
Speaker 2: this quick, if you want the course today to play
Speaker 2: the same length that it played, say in nineteen twenty,
Speaker 2: based on a comparison of driver links then to driver
Speaker 2: links today, the course today needs to be about eighty
Speaker 2: four hundred yards right eight, There's not eighty four hundred
Speaker 2: yards in the town of Saint Andrews to build that course.
Speaker 2: So we're going to have to live with what historically plays,
Speaker 2: even at seventy three hundred yards, a radically short championship course.
Speaker 2: Particularly it was dry and firm. So I worry about that,
Speaker 2: I really do. And maybe we just don't care about scores.
Speaker 2: We say that, but we really do care about scores.
Speaker 1: It becomes a part of the narrative every time. You know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people beforehand who say, oh,
Speaker 1: who cares if they're thirty five under, they're still all
Speaker 1: playing the same course. But you know, if they get
Speaker 1: to thirty five under, then that's the story of the
Speaker 1: week all of a sudden, and there Arena doesn't like that.
Speaker 2: I have a debate on golf Clube Ballast every six
Speaker 2: months over whether PARR matters. I think it does matter. Actually,
Speaker 2: I think there's this mystical entity that's PARR that you
Speaker 2: try to live up to and you can pretend you
Speaker 2: don't care, you care, you care, And the effect of
Speaker 2: par on people's thinking about golf courses. I think it
Speaker 2: would be can be problematical at the old course. I
Speaker 2: hope that doesn't happen, but I worried it might.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, so who do you think the old course
Speaker 1: serves now? Because it used to serve the best players
Speaker 1: in the world. Right, This was considered a test for
Speaker 1: the very very best players. It was a hard course.
Speaker 1: I mean, just looking up what the scores were at
Speaker 1: the nineteen oh five Open and keeping in mind that
Speaker 1: the year before, you know, Jack White had set what
Speaker 1: I believe was a scoring record at two ninety six.
Speaker 1: You know, various people had gone under seventy. On the
Speaker 1: last day of that Open Championship. At Royal Saint George's
Speaker 1: nineteen oh five, James Braid wins at three point eighteen.
Speaker 1: His low score was seventy seven. He won with rounds
Speaker 1: of eighty one. No, the low score of the week,
Speaker 1: I should say, was seventy seven. James Braid won with
Speaker 1: rounds of eighty one, seventy eight, seventy eight, eighty one.
Speaker 1: All right, Just this morning a sixty four was fired
Speaker 1: by Cameron Young. We are in a very different era
Speaker 1: of the old course, but the old course still serves
Speaker 1: the average golfer pretty well, right. The average golfer will
Speaker 1: still hit some longer irons into holes, you know, depending
Speaker 1: on how much clubhead speed they have, I suppose, and
Speaker 1: so have we just come to a point where the
Speaker 1: old course just shouldn't be expected to serve pros.
Speaker 2: I think we have probably no choice about that, Although
Speaker 2: I'm open to ideas. I think the principal constituency that
Speaker 2: the old course serves today is number one, regular golfer
Speaker 2: is like me and maybe you. But number two, and
Speaker 2: maybe this is even more important, It serves architects. It
Speaker 2: is a model of good design. Whoever the original architects
Speaker 2: happened to be, and again we don't know who they were.
Speaker 2: It is a historic model that has been written about,
Speaker 2: thought about, discussed for one hundred and fifty years or so,
Speaker 2: and for that reason alone it is an important golf course.
Speaker 2: It is for that reason, frankly, that I was shocked
Speaker 2: by the changes that were put on the new bunkers
Speaker 2: on the second hold. They've resloped I think the eleventh
Speaker 2: green back five or six years ago. It is such
Speaker 2: an important course as a marker for a certain kind
Speaker 2: of architecture that for that reason alone it needs to
Speaker 2: be left alone. Now, if you want to put Te's
Speaker 2: back an additional sixty yards, and you've got the room
Speaker 2: to do it. Have at it, but leave the greens alone,
Speaker 2: leave the b anchoring alone, leave you know.
Speaker 1: The.
Speaker 2: Defences alone. Just it is a It is a monument
Speaker 2: to golf architecture that everyone has aspired to one way
Speaker 2: or another and should be and should be preserved for
Speaker 2: that reason. And it seems to me that's the best
Speaker 2: possible reason. Whether you and I enjoyed is almost irrelevant.
Speaker 2: We will, but it's irrelevant. What matters is that it
Speaker 2: is a It is a placeholder for architecture and an
Speaker 2: important sort of touchstone that we always go back to
Speaker 2: and rethink and reanalyze and look at again. And that's
Speaker 2: a very rare sort of thing.
Speaker 1: All right, Bob. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being here today. And in case the message
Speaker 1: wasn't clear enough, leave the old course alone.
Speaker 2: A pleasure, Thanks, Garrett.
Speaker 1: This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast was edited by
Speaker 1: Meg Atkins. If you haven't visited the Fridagg Pro Shop
Speaker 1: in a while, we have some special Saint Andrew's themed merchandise.
Speaker 1: We've got a long sleeved tea, a ballmarker, a headcover,
Speaker 1: things of that nature. So check it out at proshop
Speaker 1: dot Thefrida egg dot com. All right, thanks for listening.