Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett
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Speaker 1: launch data in the palm of your hand. I think
Speaker 1: I need to do a bit more of a fleshed
Speaker 1: out intro here than we usually do. So Bob Crosby,
Speaker 1: my guest today, is a golf historian currently working on
Speaker 1: a book about John Lowe. Lowe was one of the
Speaker 1: most influential figures in golf from the eighteen nineties to
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties. He was a writer, a golf course designer,
Speaker 1: a golf course critic, and a major force on the
Speaker 1: RNA rules Committee. He was basically everywhere. And Bob has
Speaker 1: actually been on this podcast before to discuss John Lowe.
Speaker 1: We did an episode towards the end of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: and then another one that was part of the History
Speaker 1: of the golf Ball series that we did last year,
Speaker 1: and so if you've listened to those episodes, you'll know
Speaker 1: that what makes Bob's work about John low so great
Speaker 1: is that he gives a sense of not only who
Speaker 1: low was and what he did, but also of the
Speaker 1: overall picture of the debates around golf in that period,
Speaker 1: debates about rules, about technology, and about golf courses. And
Speaker 1: we're still essentially having the same debates today. So I
Speaker 1: thought Bob would be a great person to talk to
Speaker 1: about the early history of royal Saint George's Golf Club, which,
Speaker 1: as you probably know, is going to host the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one Open Championship next week. Early in its life,
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, Royal
Speaker 1: Saint George's looked a lot different than it does now,
Speaker 1: and it was pretty controversial. The course became part of
Speaker 1: these intense golf world debates that Bob Crosby writes about. Now,
Speaker 1: neither Bob nor I has looked super closely into the
Speaker 1: architectural history of the course. We know the basics, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure you could find a more detailed account of
Speaker 1: that elsewhere. Our basic intention here was to each of
Speaker 1: us do a little research on our own, then come
Speaker 1: together and discuss it. So this is really kind of
Speaker 1: a collaboration between me and Bob more than an interview.
Speaker 1: We just wanted to team up and tell a story
Speaker 1: about Royal Saint George's in its early days, talk about
Speaker 1: where the course started, how it was truly a product
Speaker 1: of its time, and then why it evolved into what
Speaker 1: it is today. All Right, let's get to it. Here's
Speaker 1: Bob Crosby and me on Royal Saint George's. I miss
Speaker 1: a green.
Speaker 2: For example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 1: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a fried egg
Speaker 2: Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida egg Frida egg,
Speaker 2: Brian egg Frida egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready
Speaker 2: to run off the golf course.
Speaker 1: The original architect behind Royal Saint George's was a gentleman
Speaker 1: by the name of doctor Laidlaw Purvis. Bob, could you
Speaker 1: tell me what you know about Purvis?
Speaker 2: Purvis was a prominent doctor in London. I want to
Speaker 2: say he was an i ear nose and throat doctor
Speaker 2: who made some breakthroughs and treatments of various kinds. Purbos
Speaker 2: grew up in Scotland and learned to play golf in Scotland,
Speaker 2: and he was a fairly accomplished golfer. From his home
Speaker 2: base in London, he decided to build his own golf course,
Speaker 2: formed the Royal Saint George's Club, and part of what
Speaker 2: he wanted to do there was a very distinct idea
Speaker 2: about how hazards on a golf course ought to work,
Speaker 2: and that's what he built there. He built one of
Speaker 2: the early and one of the most classic Victorian golf
Speaker 2: courses in the world at the time, although there were
Speaker 2: others that were to a lesser degree quote Victorian, but
Speaker 2: Royalt George has always stood out among everyone at the time,
Speaker 2: as at least in its early iterations, as a classic
Speaker 2: Victorian golf course for a lot of reasons. One was
Speaker 2: the prevalence of cross hazards. Some of those were water,
Speaker 2: some were most rabunkers, some were just rough areas. But
Speaker 2: it was thought to be at the time one of
Speaker 2: the most challenging golf courses in the world.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people will be surprised to hear that,
Speaker 1: given the current form of the course doesn't look much
Speaker 1: like how it's described early in its life. It was
Speaker 1: built in eighteen eighty seven, eighteen eighty eight, and it
Speaker 1: evolved tremendously over the next forty years or so, and
Speaker 1: then indeed after that. But before we get into some
Speaker 1: of the specifics of Royal Saint George's architectural history, which
Speaker 1: is very interesting when you say Victorian golf architecture, when
Speaker 1: you talk about the Victorian kind of philosophy of golf
Speaker 1: course design, what generally do you mean.
Speaker 2: The theory of Victorian golf architecture was a well articulated,
Speaker 2: sophisticated theory of how a golf course ought to be designed.
Speaker 2: I think the clearest expression of that was made by
Speaker 2: Horace Hutchinson. It was in eighteen ninety in one of
Speaker 2: the Golfing annuals. The key concept in Victorian golf architecture
Speaker 2: is whole distance. The notion is that holes should be
Speaker 2: built at such a distance that it requires two well
Speaker 2: executed shots. In the case of what we would call
Speaker 2: to day par fours, it would take two well executed
Speaker 2: shots to get to the green. If you didn't execute
Speaker 2: either one of those shots well, you would not be
Speaker 2: able to reach the green. Hence the importance of distance.
Speaker 2: The problem they had to deal with, though, was before
Speaker 2: fairways were irrigated, people could hit top shots that would
Speaker 2: roll out as far as a good shot and they
Speaker 2: could reach the green even though one of their shy
Speaker 2: was terrible. So the solution that they came up with
Speaker 2: was cross hazards to catch top shots. And that was
Speaker 2: really the genesis of the proliferation. And I'm using proliferation
Speaker 2: understates how often cross hazards were used in Victorian golf courses.
Speaker 2: But that's where they came from. On the flip side
Speaker 2: of that is that any well hit ball, more or
Speaker 2: less straight would engage no hazards whatsoever. Fairways were very wide.
Speaker 2: There were very few wing bunkers around greens, on the
Speaker 2: theory that all good shots should be warded and all
Speaker 2: bad shots should be punished. Bunkers around greens were set
Speaker 2: away from the greens, sometimes twenty thirty yards, on the
Speaker 2: theory that a good shot should have at least come
Speaker 2: close to the green and should be left alone. A
Speaker 2: bad shot that misses the green by some wide margin
Speaker 2: ought to be stuck in a bunker. It's the theory
Speaker 2: of golf architecture that's bathed in concerns about equity. Every
Speaker 2: shot deserves a certain sort of outcome depending on the
Speaker 2: quality of the shot. That was the theory that Hutchinson
Speaker 2: laid out. It's one that was followed by with remarkable
Speaker 2: amount of unanimity by everybody at the time. Literally thousands
Speaker 2: of golf courses were built, mostly in England but also
Speaker 2: in America during the eighteen nineties and into the first
Speaker 2: decade of the twentieth century following those precepts, and that
Speaker 2: it was so convincing to so many people for so
Speaker 2: long is a testament to the influence of a Victorian
Speaker 2: moralistic worldview. In other words, every aspect of your life
Speaker 2: in Victorian England had a moral component, and golf was
Speaker 2: no exception. All shots in golf, good or bad, should
Speaker 2: deserve their outcomes. It's a theory of golf architecture that
Speaker 2: actually still has many adherents. It hasn't entirely gone away.
Speaker 2: Oakmont was built as a Victorian golf course and it
Speaker 2: still is. I mean, the whole notion that any bad shot,
Speaker 2: phones would say deserves eternal punishment is a very Victorian idea.
Speaker 2: I would note in passing that Oakmond is one of
Speaker 2: the few great courses in America that has had no progeny.
Speaker 2: For that reason, I suspect, But yes, it was the
Speaker 2: theory of golf architecture that was very much of its age,
Speaker 2: of its time.
Speaker 1: So to give a more specific idea of what this
Speaker 1: might have looked like when someone thought through the principles
Speaker 1: of Victorian golf architecture point by point, we actually have
Speaker 1: a portion of an article from Laidlaw Purvis, the designer
Speaker 1: of Royal Saint George's from I believe eighteen ninety and
Speaker 1: he gives fourteen design principles. I won't read all of them,
Speaker 1: but I'll go to a couple of them just to
Speaker 1: give an idea of how kind of far he pushed
Speaker 1: this philosophy. So Umber five is that holes should be
Speaker 1: one or more drives in length. This means there are
Speaker 1: no short par threes, as we call them now. In
Speaker 1: other words, the shortest holes should be as long as
Speaker 1: a good driver drives the ball.
Speaker 2: A critical piece of the theory, the groundwork on which the
Speaker 2: rest of the theory is built, that you need to
Speaker 2: hit full shots well.
Speaker 1: And furthermore, I get the sense and correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong that there are a few holes at the
Speaker 1: original Royal St. George's that were one drive in length,
Speaker 1: and at that time that would have been what you know,
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy one hundred and eighty yards or
Speaker 1: something like that. But Purvis seems to have gone to
Speaker 1: an effort to make sure that there weren't many holes
Speaker 1: where a good player would drive the ball well and
Speaker 1: then have a short approach. He was trying to find
Speaker 1: holes where you would drive the ball well and then
Speaker 1: your approach would be another drive. Basically, another long shot,
Speaker 1: And so he was trying to find lengths of holes
Speaker 1: where if it wasn't one drive, then it was two drives,
Speaker 1: and if it wasn't two drives, then it was three drives.
Speaker 1: He wasn't looking for those in between distances.
Speaker 2: A critical component of Victorian golf architecture was exactly that,
Speaker 2: multiples of full shots on various holes. And let me
Speaker 2: just add it occurred to me when I was doing
Speaker 2: some work on this, well, well, if that was true,
Speaker 2: why did they like Saint Andrews so much? And it
Speaker 2: turns out the reason they liked Saint Andrews so much
Speaker 2: is they thought it was among the links courses, the
Speaker 2: one that had the most holes of the correct distance.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It wasn't the funky bunkers on the road hole, it
Speaker 2: wasn't Strathbunker, it wasn't all the things we now love
Speaker 2: about Saint Andrews. It was that the whole links, with
Speaker 2: some exceptions, were the right length. That's why it was
Speaker 2: a great golf course.
Speaker 1: And it was long for the day, it was the longest.
Speaker 2: It was longest of all the links courses in the
Speaker 2: open road of at the time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you see Horace Hutchinson right out Saint Andrews
Speaker 1: in the early eighteen nineties in his book called Famous
Speaker 1: British Links. It goes by a few different titles and
Speaker 1: went through a few different editions, but it's a book
Speaker 1: that's available on Google Books. Anybody can read it. That
Speaker 1: is the way, That is exactly the way that he
Speaker 1: talks about Saint Andrews. This is a nice long course.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to hit two full drives to
Speaker 1: get to most of the holes, and you know, more
Speaker 1: full drives to get to some of the other holes.
Speaker 1: And he's just noticing things about the old course that
Speaker 1: we no longer notice or think are important. Of course,
Speaker 1: things have changed because of technology. But his objection to
Speaker 1: the old course in that book, in fact, is all
Speaker 1: what he calls the banks and brays, in other words,
Speaker 1: the undulations of the course, which is one of those
Speaker 1: things now that we love about it. And so it is.
Speaker 1: The Links courses were their models, but for totally different reasons.
Speaker 2: Exactly, yeah, exactly. I mean you read those pages and
Speaker 2: you start yelling at Horace. You say, Horace, you're missing
Speaker 2: the best part of this golf course. What do you think.
Speaker 1: Yes, we mentioned Horace Hutchinson a few times. Maybe we
Speaker 1: should maybe we should explain briefly who he is.
Speaker 2: Horace Horace Hutchinson was one of the major figures in
Speaker 2: golf in the last couple decades of the nineteenth century
Speaker 2: and into the twentieth century. He was a prominent golfer,
Speaker 2: but he wrote prolifically and was one of the spokesman
Speaker 2: for Victorian type golf architecture. But he wrote on all
Speaker 2: sorts of topics, and he appeared frequently in magazines and
Speaker 2: wrote several books. Interesting speaking of Victorian architecture, he wrote
Speaker 2: a book called The Golfer's Progress, which was based on
Speaker 2: The Pilgrim's Progress, which was the most popular book in
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century other than the Bible. And it's the
Speaker 2: story of a fellow who goes through various tribulations to
Speaker 2: reach golf Mecca. Not unlike the Pilgrim's Progress, where I
Speaker 2: think his name is Silas goes through various tests to
Speaker 2: reach a higher level of virtue in Christianity. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just imbued with religious concepts, and Victorian golf architecture
Speaker 2: is also is similarly imbued.
Speaker 1: Yeah, makes it makes golf in a game a moralistic.
Speaker 2: Enterprise, deeply moralistic.
Speaker 1: Yess So a few other excerpts from Laylaw Purvis's design principles.
Speaker 1: He goes on to say that safe lies should be
Speaker 1: obtainable by all classes of drivers, but all should have
Speaker 1: hazards to negotiate to obtain these lies. And when he
Speaker 1: says all, he means every time you get a good lie,
Speaker 1: you should have to negotiate a hazard. You're getting the
Speaker 1: sense I think here of how repetitious these courses could be.
Speaker 1: You know, there are certain standard lengths, and every shot
Speaker 1: should be subject to many of the same hazards and challenges.
Speaker 1: There should be a hazard. This is number eight. There
Speaker 1: should be a hazard from every tee, the carrying of
Speaker 1: which gives an advantage cross bunkers.
Speaker 2: Cross bunkers. Every shot needs to be an airborne, presumably
Speaker 2: well hit shot to carry the cross bunkers. Part though,
Speaker 2: of the theory of Victorian architecture is that if you
Speaker 2: do that, you're in pretty good shape. You've got a
Speaker 2: wide open fairway, fairly flat terrain, and you should have
Speaker 2: you know, obviously you're in a good position to hit
Speaker 2: your next quote full shot. John Lowe had a great
Speaker 2: description of those golf courses. He called them gardens of inaccuracy.
Speaker 2: In other words, if you could carry the bunkers, you
Speaker 2: could hit it pretty much anywhere. The fairways on those
Speaker 2: courses were typically extremely wide. I'm talking sixty to ninety
Speaker 2: yards wide in a lot of cases. But the key
Speaker 2: test for everybody was whole length number one and number
Speaker 2: to carry the bunkers and if you or the hazards
Speaker 2: sometimes it was water. If you could do those two things,
Speaker 2: you really shouldn't engage the golf course that much. It
Speaker 2: was just a matter of executing shots.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And one of the things that I think we're
Speaker 1: starting to get close to right here in this philosophy
Speaker 1: is how easy these courses suddenly become for good players.
Speaker 1: Right if you're a player who's able to get the
Speaker 1: ball lofted, then you know these courses might become somewhat boring.
Speaker 2: They commit what we today consider the high send of
Speaker 2: golf architecture, which is their easiest for the good player,
Speaker 2: and they're the hardest for the bad player. Part of
Speaker 2: the revolution of strategic golf architecture, maybe fifteen or so
Speaker 2: years later, is they reverse that that good architecture should
Speaker 2: be the most challenging for the better players, and should
Speaker 2: be easier for weaker players if they so elect to
Speaker 2: play the golf course, you know, in a conservative way.
Speaker 1: So, just to give a couple of more samples from
Speaker 1: these design principles, Number ten is when any hazard is
Speaker 1: carried again, lies should be obtained again. You see this
Speaker 1: kind of mechanistic. If you carry the hazard, you should
Speaker 1: get a good lie. There's a perfect sort of rigid
Speaker 1: fairness to every shot. Number twelve is there should be
Speaker 1: a bunker in front of every green which cannot be
Speaker 1: avoided without the loss of distance and risk in front
Speaker 1: of every green.
Speaker 2: It yes, I mean we chuckled, and I think he
Speaker 2: lived up to the motto. But I would let me
Speaker 2: just note that the that the original maidenhole the sixth
Speaker 2: in its original iteration. It's all gone now, But in
Speaker 2: the original iteration you had to carry a thirty or
Speaker 2: forty foot dune. This is a part three thirty to
Speaker 2: forty foot dune. Beyond that was a slit bunker. So
Speaker 2: he lived up to his motto. This is this is
Speaker 2: a green that although you had to carry a sixty
Speaker 2: ft forty foot dune, you still had to carry a
Speaker 2: bunker in front of the green. It was a terrifying hole.
Speaker 2: You can still get a sense of it by going
Speaker 2: at to real Saint George's and the angle of the
Speaker 2: shot now is different, but you can sort of get
Speaker 2: a feel for what the way it used to have been.
Speaker 1: Basically, you can stand in the middle of the fifth
Speaker 1: fair way right exactly and looked toward where the sixth
Speaker 1: green currently is. Right you go straight over the tallest
Speaker 1: dune in that area of the course and that's what
Speaker 1: the Maiden Hole used to be. And it was a
Speaker 1: world famous hole, but it only lasted for twenty years about.
Speaker 2: Can I give you a quick story about the origins
Speaker 2: of the name. Absolutely, the name was was got from
Speaker 2: a medieval torture device called the iron maiden, and it
Speaker 2: was a device that they put on people's heads, I think,
Speaker 2: and they would basically ratchet it down until it got
Speaker 2: tighter and tighter and tighter, and you told whatever you
Speaker 2: are confessed, whatever religious sin you needed to confess. But
Speaker 2: it was it was a medieval torture.
Speaker 1: Device, and so that was the that was the tended
Speaker 1: effect of the golf.
Speaker 2: Hole, and it was good.
Speaker 1: The golf course was meant to be a torture TSK yes, right,
Speaker 1: and there were a number in the original Royal Saint
Speaker 1: George's there were a number of other one shot holes,
Speaker 1: these one drive holes right around one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: to two hundred yards that carried these big hazards dunes
Speaker 1: or big waste areas and were blind from the tee,
Speaker 1: and all of those have been changed or eliminated in
Speaker 1: the current version of the course.
Speaker 2: There was a Sahara bunker that's gone. There's a big bunker.
Speaker 2: Then the third or fourth hole you still have to carry.
Speaker 1: The fourth hole, there's a big bunker you have to
Speaker 1: carry off the tee. The third hole was used to
Speaker 1: be the Sahara hole. That's no longer.
Speaker 2: That's no longer there. And then you still have to
Speaker 2: carry there's a par five in the back what is it,
Speaker 2: fifteen fourteen the Suez you have to carry, which is
Speaker 2: basically a muddy creek in front of the green.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But most of most eighty five percent of them were gone.
Speaker 1: So there's some vestiges of those old carry hazards, but
Speaker 1: they're not really a big part of the course anymore.
Speaker 1: And they were certainly a huge part of the course
Speaker 1: early on, and a reason why it was respected and
Speaker 1: feared early on. So the final design principal number fourteen
Speaker 1: from Purvis kind of sums up a lot of it.
Speaker 1: He says, a typical hole is one having a hazard
Speaker 1: from the tee requiring a fair shot to carry it,
Speaker 1: a hazard for the shot through the green, the carrying
Speaker 1: of which hazard makes the player, and a drive into
Speaker 1: the putting green carrying the hazard in front of it.
Speaker 1: Where each of these shots is properly played, a good
Speaker 1: lie should be obtained. That's pretty much it. A carry
Speaker 1: hazard off the tee, a carry hazard on the approach.
Speaker 1: If you make the carry, you should have a good outcome.
Speaker 1: Whether the original Royal Saint George's really lived up to this,
Speaker 1: I don't know. We can talk about that. I think
Speaker 1: the wildness of the terrain sort of got in the
Speaker 1: way of these principles being perfectly embodied by the course.
Speaker 1: But certainly there was an attempt to put these hazards
Speaker 1: in the way of players on a consistent I have.
Speaker 2: Seen some drawings of what must have been close to
Speaker 2: the original golf course, and it did live up to
Speaker 2: those ideas. It was just replete with crossbunkers that just
Speaker 2: lacerated the golf course. All over the place. Now, all
Speaker 2: those they tended to be tamed down. It must have
Speaker 2: been a miserable golf course for a bogie golfer to play,
Speaker 2: who literally or almost literally every hole would have feared
Speaker 2: and trembled about being able to carry whatever the drive
Speaker 2: cross hazard was, and whatever the cross hazard was in
Speaker 2: front of the green. It couldn't have been fun to
Speaker 2: play for a weaker golfer.
Speaker 1: So, now that we've gotten an idea of the Victorian
Speaker 1: philosophy of golf architecture, how does this philosophy contrast with
Speaker 1: that of John Lowe and the strategic school? Could you
Speaker 1: get just give me a kind of a primer for
Speaker 1: what the strategic school is in opposition to the Victorian mindset.
Speaker 2: Let me come at that with a story about the
Speaker 2: old course in circa nineteen well eighteen ninety nine, and
Speaker 2: then they added some bunkers, and then they added more
Speaker 2: bunkers in nineteen oh four over the winner of four
Speaker 2: to five. John Lowe was involved in both of those.
Speaker 2: He was on the rules committee at the time and
Speaker 2: also for part of that time on the Green committee.
Speaker 2: There were proposals at the time because a lot of
Speaker 2: the gorse to the right side of the outward nine
Speaker 2: had been trampled down and died, and which made the
Speaker 2: right side of the outgoing holes very, very wide. So
Speaker 2: there was a feeling at the time that we need
Speaker 2: they needed to narrow those holes. One of the proposals
Speaker 2: was classically Victorian, let's just build a lot of cross bunkers,
Speaker 2: and there were a lot of people that thought, well,
Speaker 2: of course, that's what we do. I like to think,
Speaker 2: although the record is spotty, I like to think that
Speaker 2: my man low was the one that stood in front
Speaker 2: of that train and said, no, we're going to build
Speaker 2: some bunkers on the sides of those holes, exactly where
Speaker 2: you would want a perfect drive to land. And that's
Speaker 2: what they did. Over the course of two rounds of
Speaker 2: changes in nineteen hundred and then later No. Four oh five,
Speaker 2: they built fifteen or sixteen new bunkers which were still
Speaker 2: there along the right side of the outward holes, mostly
Speaker 2: on two, three and four. They were extraordinarily controversial. First
Speaker 2: of all, they weren't cross bunkers, and second, as I
Speaker 2: mentioned the second ago, they were right where you wanted
Speaker 2: to hit you drive, What were you thinking? What were
Speaker 2: you thinking? And Lowe's response was well, a good player
Speaker 2: will skirt the bunkers, but that's the best way into
Speaker 2: the green, and so he'll take that risk. If he
Speaker 2: pulls it off, great, If he doesn't, he's going to
Speaker 2: be hammered. But the whole idea of building cross hazards
Speaker 2: around there was it apparently was rejected out of hand.
Speaker 2: I didn't I don't know of any discussion of the topic.
Speaker 2: But it relates back to Lowe's idea that the Victorian
Speaker 2: golf courses were gardens of inaccuracy and he wanted to
Speaker 2: present a challenges to the better golfer. And I think
Speaker 2: he worked out in a sort of a stumbling way,
Speaker 2: the idea that you know, we want to challenge the
Speaker 2: better golfer, We're going to do that on the old course.
Speaker 2: He carried that over to Woking, which was his home
Speaker 2: course in London, and presto Chainjo, his friend Harry Colet
Speaker 2: sees what's going on, likes it, a bunch of other
Speaker 2: younger architects, and a new school of architecture was born,
Speaker 2: and with remarkable rapidity, I mean remarkable rapidity, Victorian ideas
Speaker 2: about how a golf course ought to be designed disappear
Speaker 2: with almost as much rapidity, the courses themselves start to disappear.
Speaker 2: They start to be rebuilt fairly quickly. Now, part of
Speaker 2: that was the Haskell ball had come along, which required
Speaker 2: virtually every course in Britain to be lengthened. But that
Speaker 2: alone wouldn't explain why they redesigned and repurposed bunkers and
Speaker 2: other hazards. I mean, there was a complete change in
Speaker 2: how they looked, how those courses looked, and how they played.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't just a matter of moving teas back.
Speaker 2: It was a whole new system of bunkering and other hazards.
Speaker 2: And that had to do with low cult and other
Speaker 2: younger Edwardians revolting as other Edwardians were in other contexts
Speaker 2: against the moralistic universe of their Victorian forefathers.
Speaker 1: To give an idea of how quickly this shift you're
Speaker 1: talking about happened, the Haskell ball was introduced in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds and it went much farther than the
Speaker 1: previous got a purch a ball much farther, instantly changed
Speaker 1: how the game of golf was played. I believe it
Speaker 1: was around nineteen oh three nineteen oh four that the
Speaker 1: powers that be in the game really started realizing what
Speaker 1: was happening, and the courses would need to be changed.
Speaker 2: A little earlier than that, but go ahead.
Speaker 1: A little earlier. Yeah, so what would be what would
Speaker 1: be a better date?
Speaker 2: The gut approach of ball? I mean, excuse me. The
Speaker 2: haskeball was introduced in late to Britain. At least it
Speaker 2: came to America earlier because it was an American invention.
Speaker 2: But it was introduced in Britain first in late nineteen
Speaker 2: oh one. Right, Okay, The RNA indicates early on it's
Speaker 2: in the next year, says we're going to we have
Speaker 2: to do something about this is too long, and then
Speaker 2: they back off in nineteen oh three. But by nineteen
Speaker 2: oh three oh four, the the debates are ferocious about
Speaker 2: the ball. You're generally right in a sense that by
Speaker 2: three oh four, when it's clear the RNA is not
Speaker 2: going to ban it, and they completely chickened out on that,
Speaker 2: everybody said, well that we've got to do something about
Speaker 2: our golf courses.
Speaker 1: And so that's why you see golf courses starting to
Speaker 1: change around nineteen oh four, nineteen oh five, nineteen oh six,
Speaker 1: and through the end of the decade. And it seems
Speaker 1: like when it came time to make these course changes,
Speaker 1: not only were they lengthened, but many of the courses
Speaker 1: were changed philosophically. The old cross hazards were taken away
Speaker 1: and strategic bunkering, sometimes done by the likes of Harry Colt,
Speaker 1: was installed. You see this at many many courses in
Speaker 1: England and Scotland, and it is a remarkable thing because
Speaker 1: it was just in again the early nineteen hundreds that
Speaker 1: John Lowe went to Woking and made those changes to
Speaker 1: the holes there that kind of transformed their strategic character,
Speaker 1: and that idea just proved to be very contagious.
Speaker 2: Quick story if I can sure. Woking was designed originally
Speaker 2: by Willie Dunn as a classic Victorian golf course replete
Speaker 2: with cross hazards everywhere. Lowe and Stuart Payton, his buddy
Speaker 2: at Woking, said this isn't working. They reposition a lot
Speaker 2: of bunkers. They build a famous center line bunker on
Speaker 2: the fourth hole. Huge controversy among the members. They can't
Speaker 2: believe that he's putting bunkers where people wanted to put
Speaker 2: their best drives. Huge controversy. Tom Simpson is at the
Speaker 2: time a young solicitor in London, and drives out to
Speaker 2: Woking to see where all the fuss is about, walks
Speaker 2: around the golf course with a couple of members who
Speaker 2: expressed their outrage about the work that Low had done
Speaker 2: at Woking, goes back and decides that day that golf
Speaker 2: architecture is so interesting. I want to become a golf architect.
Speaker 2: Leaves his legal practice and starts out as in the
Speaker 2: business of designing golf courses because of what he took
Speaker 2: to be a really interesting intellectual breakthrough at Woking.
Speaker 1: And became one of the most interesting architects and writers
Speaker 1: of the era. I think that Americans underrate Tom Simpson
Speaker 1: or don't know enough about Tom Simpson. I believe our
Speaker 1: friends in Britain and Europe know more about him. But
Speaker 1: he was a fascinating and brilliant.
Speaker 2: Figure, fascinating figure, he really got it and I couldn't
Speaker 2: agree more. He didn't do any courses in the States,
Speaker 2: which is part of the problem, right, And he didn't
Speaker 2: do actually all that many courses in Britain. He did
Speaker 2: a lot more in France and in Europe. More. Fontain,
Speaker 2: by the way, is the best day of golf anyone
Speaker 2: could possibly ask for. His best course in France. But
Speaker 2: Tom Simpson got it early on, and not only did
Speaker 2: he get it, he decided to change his life almost
Speaker 2: on the spot when he saw what was going on
Speaker 2: at Woking.
Speaker 1: All right, so we've got a sense of where the
Speaker 1: philosophy of golf architecture ends up going in the first
Speaker 1: decade of the twentieth century. But going back for a
Speaker 1: minute to the original iteration of Royal Saint George's, which
Speaker 1: was built in the late eighteen eighties, you know this
Speaker 1: is there are so many interesting things about this course.
Speaker 1: I've been looking into it a little bit over the
Speaker 1: past few days, and so I'm by no means an
Speaker 1: expert on its early history. I'm sure the club histories
Speaker 1: do a better job of accounting for how the course
Speaker 1: evolved in its early decades. But you've talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about it. The early maps indicate that this was
Speaker 1: very much an attempt to embody the Victorian philosophy of
Speaker 1: golf course design. You had these carry hazards, you had
Speaker 1: these standard whole lengths, and it was all meant to
Speaker 1: be a test of golf in the way that the
Speaker 1: Victorians thought tests of golf should be. But I wanted
Speaker 1: to add one more wrinkle here. It's something I discovered
Speaker 1: in an article from the Golfing Annual. Here's how an
Speaker 1: anonymous author describes Royal Saint George's in its very early days.
Speaker 1: Right this the course was just a year or two
Speaker 1: old at this point. This author says, a tall red
Speaker 1: flag is placed at the spot beyond which a scratch
Speaker 1: player ought to play his tee shot and shows the
Speaker 1: line of the bunker which should be carried from the
Speaker 1: tee by a well struck ball. For those who doubt
Speaker 1: their ability to carry the tea bunkers, a tall blue
Speaker 1: flag shows the spot for which the ball should be played.
Speaker 1: To arrive at this the refuge, a hazard must be negotiated,
Speaker 1: and generally another hazard must be crossed from it. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's this little place that they called the refuge.
Speaker 1: If you can't make the carry off the tee, go
Speaker 1: ahead and play for the refuge. But it's kind of
Speaker 1: tricky to get there, and then you have another hazard
Speaker 1: to carry from the refuge, and there's a tall blue
Speaker 1: flag that marks the spot. There By, carrying the scratch
Speaker 1: bunker from the tee, a great advantage is gained, as
Speaker 1: in most instances, the player who has sought the refuge
Speaker 1: cannot reach the green in the same number of strokes
Speaker 1: as he who has successfully negotiated the far bunker. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we've got the red flag in the in the
Speaker 1: ideal landing zone, we've got the blue flag marking the
Speaker 1: refuge for the cowardly players, and then the putting greens
Speaker 1: are shown in all cases by tall white flags and
Speaker 1: the holes by short ones of the same color. And
Speaker 1: so once again you have a tall white flag marking
Speaker 1: the spot where the green is, and then you have
Speaker 1: the regular flag for the hole. So you're I'm just
Speaker 1: imagining this as a kind of grid right where you
Speaker 1: have these different points and literally you're being shown by
Speaker 1: flags where to play your ball. It doesn't get much
Speaker 1: more prescriptive than that.
Speaker 2: You don't see that anymore, and people would almost laugh
Speaker 2: at it, I suppose, but that was I didn't know.
Speaker 2: That's new to me. But that was totally in character
Speaker 2: for Purvis. He was a very very strong character. Saw
Speaker 2: at the same time he was writing that to establish
Speaker 2: a British Golf Union that would usurp the RNA's role
Speaker 2: in rules administration, and it would be basically a golf
Speaker 2: union that he or courses in England would control extremely
Speaker 2: powerful force in the game that it took the Scots
Speaker 2: almost a decade or more to figure out how to
Speaker 2: respond to to shift the subject slightly. There was this
Speaker 2: huge split between the conservative Scottish golfing contingent and the
Speaker 2: English progressives, and Purpos was one of those progressives, which,
Speaker 2: I have a better way to play golf. The Scottish
Speaker 2: game is sort of a primitive, provincial game. We here
Speaker 2: in England know better and we're going to show you
Speaker 2: how to do it.
Speaker 1: And when we say a Scottish conservative golfer, maybe traditionalist
Speaker 1: would be the word. Whereas the Victorian English of the period,
Speaker 1: you know, in all domains of society, we're very interested
Speaker 1: in progress, very future oriented as opposed to past oriented. Right,
Speaker 1: there was a real idea that they were going to
Speaker 1: perfect society, that it was possible to perfect society, and
Speaker 1: they were currently engaged in that project. And this sense,
Speaker 1: you know, suffused a lot of society at the time,
Speaker 1: and it certainly made its way into golf, where this
Speaker 1: group of Victorian primarily English golfers were saying, we can
Speaker 1: figure out a way to perfect this game, we can
Speaker 1: make progress. You know, we're smarter than people were in
Speaker 1: the past, and so we're going to make it better.
Speaker 1: And Purvis was really trying that at Royal Saint George's
Speaker 1: with these innovations with the flags and just trying to
Speaker 1: make the game perfect.
Speaker 2: To understand Purvis is to just to get a window
Speaker 2: on the Victorian mindset in the sense that he brought
Speaker 2: to golf the same zeal Victorian reformers brought to cleaning
Speaker 2: up the sanitation systems in London and straightening old medieval
Speaker 2: streets in Lon, in building hospitals and establishing police forces,
Speaker 2: in other words, in rationalizing what had been a sort
Speaker 2: of a helter skelter mess in London and in other
Speaker 2: cities in England at the time. They brought that same
Speaker 2: zeal to golf. They were going to straighten it out,
Speaker 2: they were going to fix it, and they knew how
Speaker 2: to fix it. There's an underlying hint that I won't
Speaker 2: get into of. They used similar arguments to justify some
Speaker 2: of the English imperialism at the time. We're going to
Speaker 2: bring civilization to India or Ireland or Kenya or whatever.
Speaker 2: And they viewed Scotland as a backwater in the same
Speaker 2: sense we're going to fix your sport, and they had
Speaker 2: no doubt they could do it right. None.
Speaker 1: That said, there were definitely some figures in this next
Speaker 1: generation of golfers who pushed back against Victorian golfers who
Speaker 1: liked Royal Saint George's. Bernard Darwin was particularly affectionate of
Speaker 1: the course, and I think that he recognized its flaws
Speaker 1: while at the same time, in spite of himself enjoying
Speaker 1: playing there. And here's what he says about it in
Speaker 1: his book, The Golf Courses of the British os, which
Speaker 1: is the greatest I think is the greatest golf travel
Speaker 1: book ever. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 2: It's wonderful. It repays rereading.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, so he says, this is nineteen ten, right,
Speaker 1: this is nineteen ten. Yeah, so this is moving forward
Speaker 1: a good bit. We're kind of going backwards and forwards
Speaker 1: in time. Here he says, Sandwich has a charm that
Speaker 1: belongs to itself, and I frankly own myself under the spell.
Speaker 1: The long strip of turf on the way to the
Speaker 1: seventh hole that stretches between the sand hills and the sea.
Speaker 1: A fine spring day with the larks singing as they
Speaker 1: seem to sing nowhere else, the sun shining on the
Speaker 1: waters of Pegwell Bay and lighting up the white cliffs
Speaker 1: in the distance. This is as nearly my idea of
Speaker 1: heaven as is to be attained on any earthly links.
Speaker 1: Confound their politics, one feels disposed to cry frustrate their
Speaker 1: knavish tricks. Why do they want to alter this adorable place?
Speaker 1: I know they are perfectly right, and I have even
Speaker 1: agreed with them that this is a blind shot, and
Speaker 1: that an indefensively bad hole. But what does it matter?
Speaker 1: This is perfect bliss. Of course, sandwich is capable of improvement,
Speaker 1: and will doubtless be improved. Whatever happens. The larks will
Speaker 1: continue to twitter, the sun will still be shining on
Speaker 1: Pegwell Bay. The charm can never be gone. It is,
Speaker 1: at any rate, very delightful now. And so let us
Speaker 1: go and play the first hole and enjoy ourselves without
Speaker 1: being too desperately critical. I think that's a wonderful description
Speaker 1: of loving a course that you know is flawed. And
Speaker 1: it seems that what Darwin loved about Royal Saint George's
Speaker 1: was the piece of land, which is an extraordinary, extraordinary
Speaker 1: piece of lynx Land, and it strikes me that Purvis
Speaker 1: was trying to make this kind of mechanical course, this
Speaker 1: perfectly fair course, but he was working with one of
Speaker 1: the most unruly pieces of land that you could find
Speaker 1: in England, right, and so it seems like the land
Speaker 1: was resisting him at every turn, and yet he chose
Speaker 1: to put the course there. But the charm of the
Speaker 1: land and the wildness of it, and the unfairness that
Speaker 1: crazy terrain introduces to the game was always there in
Speaker 1: spite of the efforts of the designer to mute those
Speaker 1: unruly characteristics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's just so much he could have done.
Speaker 2: I mean because of the land, the land he was
Speaker 2: working from, and it is just a gorgeous spot. It's
Speaker 2: whatever you feel about the golf course, A day at
Speaker 2: Sandwich is just like no other. It's just fantastic. But
Speaker 2: getting back to the Darwin piece, I've often wondered if
Speaker 2: Darwin wasn't writing to his good friend Low because Low
Speaker 2: didn't like Royal.
Speaker 1: St George What did what did John say about Royal
Speaker 1: Saint George's.
Speaker 2: It was only in passing and he objected to the
Speaker 2: carry features. He said it too much of that and
Speaker 2: he just didn't think it was interesting. In fact, he
Speaker 2: didn't want to have it as an open rotor course.
Speaker 2: He thought the open road of courses should be limited
Speaker 2: to what he took to be more traditional linxy type
Speaker 2: courses like Saint Andrew's. Obviously pressed week at the time,
Speaker 2: Hoylake he was a big fan of. But I wonder
Speaker 2: if Darwin wasn't sticking low in the ribs with that
Speaker 2: a little bit.
Speaker 1: Well, it's almost like the current debate about Tory Pines.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that Royal Saint George's is really anything
Speaker 1: like Tory Pines, but the structure of the debate is
Speaker 1: really similar, where there's a group of people who insist
Speaker 1: on pointing out the design shortcomings of Tory Pines. But
Speaker 1: then there's another group that comes back and say and says, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: like it's not the best design course in the world,
Speaker 1: But how about that piece of land, What a wonderful
Speaker 1: piece of land, what a wonderful place to be. And
Speaker 1: then also how about the great championships that have been
Speaker 1: played there. They've always been dramatic and fun to watch,
Speaker 1: and so what are we complaining about? And it was
Speaker 1: so similar with Royal Saint George's where the Open Championships
Speaker 1: that were played there were generally, especially the first one
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety four, were very well regarded. We're thought
Speaker 1: to be good championships where a good test of golf
Speaker 1: was administered. And then furthermore, what a great place to
Speaker 1: spend an afternoon or an evening or a morning. It
Speaker 1: is so similar in so many ways to how we
Speaker 1: talk about Tory Pines now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, lunch at Ross Saint George's after a morning round
Speaker 2: and then you're heading off for an afternoon round is
Speaker 2: just wonderful, just wonderful.
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts about the course as it stands today.
Speaker 2: I played it eight nine years ago, so my memory
Speaker 2: is somewhat dimm but I loved it. A great time there,
Speaker 2: it was it was a beautiful day. I didn't play
Speaker 2: particularly well, but it didn't matter. On great courses, how
Speaker 2: you play is pretty much irrelevant. I think it's going
Speaker 2: to be a great test.
Speaker 1: Did you see any lingering indications of the course's origins
Speaker 1: as this kind of ultimate test case for Victorian design
Speaker 1: or has that pretty much gone away from the course?
Speaker 2: You know, the only the only part I saw that
Speaker 2: jump out of me was the Suez Canal hole. Carrying
Speaker 2: that water, that little body of water matters on your
Speaker 2: second shot in the par five, you know the current maiden,
Speaker 2: you still have to carry a little hole, a little hill.
Speaker 2: I mean I enjoyed the course at the time. To
Speaker 2: be honest with you, I didn't appreciate its significance in
Speaker 2: the history of golf architecture, and I wasn't paying attention
Speaker 2: as I probably should have been.
Speaker 1: Well, it is this sort of interesting example of a
Speaker 1: course that started firmly rooted, maybe as firmly rooted as
Speaker 1: it possibly could have been, in one philosophy of golf architecture,
Speaker 1: and eventually gradually over the years, got brought back to
Speaker 1: another philosophy. You know, it just shows how debates about
Speaker 1: golf course architecture worked in that period, Right, There was
Speaker 1: a real give and take. People were very invested in
Speaker 1: arguing about golf course architecture and the consequences of it
Speaker 1: of that debate were pretty easy to see. Changes were
Speaker 1: made to these courses, and so there were there were
Speaker 1: real stakes, right, and so you know who won the argument.
Speaker 1: I suppose that's too simple of a phrase to use
Speaker 1: because these arguments are ongoing, but it really mattered who
Speaker 1: was most persuasive.
Speaker 2: It mattered to them passionately because they viewed the arguments
Speaker 2: where we ran in parallel, arguments about golf courses and
Speaker 2: argument it's about rules, really ran in parallel into the
Speaker 2: eighteen nineties, into the next, into the twentieth century. But
Speaker 2: it mattered. It mattered to them deeply because it mattered
Speaker 2: the golf course determined the kind of game golf would be,
Speaker 2: and that's why it mattered so much to them. People
Speaker 2: don't appreciate how much of the history of golf is
Speaker 2: oppositional in that sense. It is not just a story
Speaker 2: of great champions following great champions and great rounds of golf,
Speaker 2: and all that beneath the surface were very serious arguments
Speaker 2: that articulate. Smart men took deeply seriously because they viewed
Speaker 2: their debates as instrumental in shaping the future of the game.
Speaker 2: And that's why Lowe felt so strongly about Royal Saint George's. Conversely,
Speaker 2: that's why Blaide law Purvis himself felt so strongly about
Speaker 2: Saint George's. He was trying to make a statement about
Speaker 2: where golf ought to go, among other things, and he
Speaker 2: ran into opposition of different sorts, but that sort of
Speaker 2: opposition that's sort of the tug of war back and
Speaker 2: forth between different conceptions about golf and how it ought
Speaker 2: to be played. Ideally, it was a thread that goes
Speaker 2: all through the early years of golf. One of the biggest,
Speaker 2: most consequential events in golf that has talked about almost
Speaker 2: never is golf's huge popularity. It's exploding popularity in England
Speaker 2: starting about eighteen eighty because the English brought to the
Speaker 2: game a different conception of how it ought to be played,
Speaker 2: and that set off a chain of arguments that went
Speaker 2: on at least into the nineteen thirties. Arguably, I think
Speaker 2: it's still going on, but the love of the game
Speaker 2: had huge consequences for how it played out over the
Speaker 2: next one hundred years.
Speaker 1: Then the English can that they could improve the game,
Speaker 1: that they had a better idea of how golf could
Speaker 1: be played, and they're really determined efforts to bring that
Speaker 1: philosophy into being in the courses they built and in
Speaker 1: the rules that they attempted to establish, and that it
Speaker 1: seems like that created that was the seed that sort
Speaker 1: of created this lively back and forth that we see
Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties and the early nineteen hundreds. But
Speaker 1: certainly this is ongoing now. I mean, you know, we've
Speaker 1: talked previously about how discourse about golf has degraded since
Speaker 1: this period. You know, this was a high point of
Speaker 1: discussion of golf. Writers defended their positions eloquently, wrote about
Speaker 1: the game beautifully in a way that we just don't
Speaker 1: do anymore. But aside from the fact that the quality
Speaker 1: of the debate has declined significantly since this period, do
Speaker 1: you see this fight kind of ongoing in discussion of
Speaker 1: the game today.
Speaker 2: I see it all the time. I think there's a
Speaker 2: modern assumption that golf is pretty much what it is,
Speaker 2: although people have trouble nailing down exactly what it is means.
Speaker 2: There is for that reason, I think a reluctance to
Speaker 2: get into debates today over foundational issues. I think in
Speaker 2: the eighteen nineties into the nineteen hundreds, that was exactly
Speaker 2: what they were arguing about, and they knew it, and
Speaker 2: they were passionate about that, and in that sense, the
Speaker 2: rules in golf architecture were sort of bound up in
Speaker 2: the same ball of wax. I think that they're basic
Speaker 2: tensions between those progressives like Purvis and traditionalists like Low
Speaker 2: Cold and other people that favored the older Scottish game.
Speaker 2: Those tensions track through the history of the game into
Speaker 2: our time. You know, there are debates today about, for example,
Speaker 2: when a ball moves when you address it. They've changed
Speaker 2: the rule about that. That debate could have been taken
Speaker 2: out of the debates over the rules in nineteen hundred.
Speaker 2: You know, do we do a separate factual finding about
Speaker 2: whether he intended to move it? Or do we just
Speaker 2: if you've addressed the ball. There's the penalty that sort
Speaker 2: of thing. Low would have been on the side the
Speaker 2: traditionalist side, purpose would have been on the side of
Speaker 2: the list of a factual finding about intent. They play
Speaker 2: out in golf architecture in similar ways, and arguments about
Speaker 2: what makes for a good hole what makes for a
Speaker 2: bad hole. Tom Doak stirred that pot with his Confidential
Speaker 2: Guide to Golf Courses ten or fifteen or twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: That pot is still being stirred in golf sites like
Speaker 2: Golf Love Atlas and other places, so they're still going on.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think you can argue that the beginnings
Speaker 2: of modern golf can be traced to three events that
Speaker 2: happened over about eighteen months. One was the promulgation of
Speaker 2: the first uniform code by the RNA after a big
Speaker 2: fight over whether we should have a British Golf union.
Speaker 2: That happened in late eighteen ninety nine, essentially nineteen hundred.
Speaker 2: John Lowe a year later articulates for the first time
Speaker 2: the basic principles of strategic golf architecture and sets off
Speaker 2: a firestorm. Three months later, the Haskell ball appears in
Speaker 2: Britain and that sets up a firestorm. Arguably all three
Speaker 2: of those debates, rules, golf, architecture and balls, those debates
Speaker 2: are still going on. They've changed character, they're different vocabularies,
Speaker 2: different players, some more articulate than others. But the basic
Speaker 2: issues still haunt the game, I don't know, haunts the
Speaker 2: right word, are still at the heart of the game.
Speaker 2: But over that remarkable eighteen month two year period, everything
Speaker 2: falls into place that sets up the debates we've had since,
Speaker 2: and it was just well. Saint George's was part of that.
Speaker 2: He was part of the architecture debate, but Purbos was
Speaker 2: at the time actually more famous for his views on
Speaker 2: the rules. He had a very strict sort of equity,
Speaker 2: reasonable rules, simple rules based on a couple of equitable ideas,
Speaker 2: and ran headlong into RNA on that and then the ball.
Speaker 2: So it was a remarkably fertile moment in the game
Speaker 2: that historians I don't think have fully appreciated because they
Speaker 2: tend to get focused on Harry Varden's great victories. Here
Speaker 2: they are Jade Taylors or whatever it was, and it
Speaker 2: was deeply opposition, deeply they fought like cats and dogs.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good place to finish up. Bob,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate
Speaker 1: it and hope you enjoy that open.
Speaker 3: Thanks, delightful, thank you.
Speaker 1: Before we go, I want to give a quick shout
Speaker 1: out to Lee Patterson, who tracked down some of the
Speaker 1: primary sources that Bob Crosby and I mentioned in this episode.
Speaker 1: Lee finds a lot of cool golf related stuff in
Speaker 1: old newspapers and magazines, so I'd recommend giving him a
Speaker 1: follow on Twitter at Golf Chronicle. One more thing to
Speaker 1: accompany this episode, we made a post on the Friday
Speaker 1: dot com that features a variety of materials on Royal
Speaker 1: Saint George's We've got vintage photos, We've got excerpts from
Speaker 1: contemporary articles, and best of all, we've got some additional
Speaker 1: thoughts from Bob about how Victorian golf architecture is often
Speaker 1: misunderstood as primitive or rudimentary, when in fact it was
Speaker 1: based on a very sophisticated theory, a very intentional theory.
Speaker 1: As always, really interesting stuff from Bob. All right, we
Speaker 1: should be back soon with an open Championship preview podcast,
Speaker 1: so I see you then, and thanks for listening