WEBVTT - Golf Architecture 101: The Golden Age 0:00:00.320 --> 0:00:04.320 What is the so called Golden age of golf architecture? 0:00:04.920 --> 0:00:09.639 For me, it's the result of three major innovations made 0:00:09.680 --> 0:00:13.120 toward the beginning of the twentieth century. That's what I'm 0:00:13.160 --> 0:00:17.360 talking about today with my colleague PJ. Clark in this 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:21.160 latest installment of our Golf Architecture one oh one series. 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:31.480 I'm Garrett Morrison and this is Designing Golf. PJ. Clark. 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:34.120 Are you ready to talk about the Golden Age of 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:35.000 golf architecture? 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:38.559 I think so. You pointed me in the direction of 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:42.519 a wonderful thread on golf course at golf club at List, 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:45.320 golf club at Lists, gal Club at List, Welcome to 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:48.360 golf club Aatlists, and it seems like people have takes 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:50.800 on this matter, so I'm ready to get into it. 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:53.720 It has been long debated on golf club at Lists 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:57.440 in particular, it goes back at least twenty five years 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:01.080 the discussion of this kind And so how do you 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:03.240 do just a little bit of reading to not not 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:06.560 to bring you completely up to date on it, but 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:08.319 but just to get a taste of it, just to 0:01:08.360 --> 0:01:10.960 get just to get a little sense of of what 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:13.959 the ideas are are about. And I hope it did 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:14.360 that for you. 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:18.360 I certainly did that. I mean, people are very uh 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:21.640 it's something I've noticed through our little journey through golf architecture. 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:24.600 What I want here is that people are very passionate 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:27.559 about these subjects, like to get some takes off, which 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:29.000 is good. I appreciate that. 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:32.240 So there's nothing that gets people worked up like an 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:38.040 extremely niche interest exactly golf architecture. So that's that's sort 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:40.959 of the nature of it. So I want you to, 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:45.440 you know, take yourself to a place. Before you read 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:48.480 this thread and and got a little sense for it, 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:52.600 you had probably heard the term golden age of golf 0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:56.080 architecture thrown around in a lot of podcasts, right, So 0:01:56.120 --> 0:01:59.400 what what had you already picked up about what golden 0:01:59.440 --> 0:01:59.920 age meant? 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:04.200 Feels like it was a long time ago. I want 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:10.200 to call it, like, you know, nineteen tens ish, maybe World. 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:11.840 War One sort of area in the middle of it. 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:14.680 Yeah, okay, that's if you told me to give you 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:17.120 a decade, I would have said nineteen ten. I have 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:19.720 a feeling the name like Donald Ross probably going to 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:22.880 come up in this at some level, maybe CB McDonald, 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:27.440 those types of guys. Yeah, it's probably, it's probably what 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:29.000 I have for you. I would have just guessed this 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:30.840 was around World War One and gone with it. 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:33.840 That's perfect. Yeah, well, I mean world War one is 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:38.839 definitely in it. I think probably the decade most associated 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:41.280 with the American Golden Age, at the very least is 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:44.400 the is the nineteen TWENTIESKA and if we're talking about 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:49.720 the British Golden Age, that's often more concentrated. The discussion 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:52.600 of it is concentrated around things that happened in the 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:56.120 nineteen hundreds, the first decade of the twentieth century up 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:59.640 until the outbreak of World War One, so that is 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:02.560 the dineral time period. You're right that CB MacDonald and 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:06.440 Donald Ross are two significant Golden Age architects, but I'm 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:09.239 glad that you didn't know much more about it, because 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:12.280 we can kind of build up from there, so you know, 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:15.799 in basic terms, the Golden Age of golf architecture occurred 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:18.680 in what I would call the first few decades of 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:23.640 the twentieth century, so from about nineteen hundred to about 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:26.960 nineteen thirty with the onset of the Great Depression, or 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.200 some people would argue nineteen thirty nine or forty with 0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:34.040 the outbreak of World War Two, but first few decades 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:38.200 of the nineteen hundreds is how I usually think of it, 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:42.040 and it was during this period that a lot of 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:45.280 the best regarded golf courses of all time were built 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:49.800 or renovated and turned into their permanent forms. A lot 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:54.400 of this action was concentrated around Great Britain and North America, 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:57.920 but there was plenty happening in continental Europe as well, 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:03.360 Australia and New Zealand, Japan, South Africa, so definitely a 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:07.160 global phenomenon here. The most famous architects of the Golden 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:10.440 Age include not only C. B. MacDonald and Donald Ross, 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:14.400 whom you already mentioned, but also Harry Colt, Herbert Fowler, 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:19.640 James Braid, Tom Simpson, Charles Hugh Allison, Alistair McKenzie when 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:24.600 we've touched on with his k Yeah, Seth Rayner, aw 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:27.960 Telling Hast, George Thomas, William Flynn, Perry Maxwell. You know, 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:31.920 basically all the big boys, and then you know the courses. 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:34.320 If you just go down any top one hundred list, 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:37.520 Golden Age courses are most of the top portion of 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:41.760 the list. So we're talking about Pine Valley, Cyprus Point, 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:46.040 the William Flynn design at Shinnecock Hills, National Golf Links, 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:52.560 Augusta National, Marion, Chicago Golf Club, Pinehurst Number Two. You know, overseas, 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:56.800 Royal County, Down, Royal Port, Russian Mirfield all date back 0:04:56.839 --> 0:05:00.279 to the eighteen hundreds but are probably best under stood 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:04.680 as nineteen twenties or thirties Harry Coult designs. You have 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:08.760 Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath. In Australia, you have Sunningdale 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:12.120 and Saint George's Hill. In England you have Herono and 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:17.880 Kawana and Japan, there really is an overwhelming dominance by 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:21.520 the Golden Age in that set of golf courses considered 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:24.320 to be the best in the world. So I think 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:26.920 it's really important to understand as you're learning about golf 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:29.680 architecture what the Golden Age is. It's a term that 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:32.840 people toss around a lot, Oh Golden Age, this Golden Age, that, oh, 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:37.080 it's a Golden Age gem. What does that mean? Sometimes 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:39.919 I think people who say it may not completely know 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:41.719 what they mean by it, but just kind of have 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:44.040 the vibe of it, which is okay, I'm not insulting 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:46.680 that approach to the term, but what does the term 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:49.559 really mean? What is this era, What made it so great? 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:53.200 What made it special? What were the main innovations of 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:56.800 that time, and why have the courses stood the test 0:05:56.839 --> 0:06:00.560 of time and continued to be massive, massive in influences 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:03.880 on current golf architects, Like the influence of the Golden 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:07.880 Age has been so overwhelming on current golf architects that 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:10.200 a lot of them feel that there's basically no way 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:13.640 to escape it. There's no way to surpass it. We 0:06:13.760 --> 0:06:16.599 might as well just give in to it. That's how 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:20.040 large the era looms right now. So that's what we're 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:22.279 getting into today. Does that sound good? 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:25.000 That sounds great. It feels like there were a lot 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:27.080 of names there that I had obviously heard of, a 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:29.320 lot of golf courses that have obviously heard of. So 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:31.800 this is good. I'm happy. I'm happy to dive into this. 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:36.360 It feels this feels like feels a little all encompassing here. 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:38.440 It feels like if there's one thing to really know, 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:40.640 this might this might be the episode. 0:06:40.680 --> 0:06:44.280 Now, it's a big subject. It's ambitious for this episode 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:46.640 to tackle this. I have ways of kind of narrowing 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:50.120 it down and maybe clarifying some things, of like focusing 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:52.640 on certain things that I think are useful, but there's 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:53.960 no doubt that we're tackling it. 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:55.960 They want today, Let's do it all right. 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:58.760 So before we get into how the Golden Age began, 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:02.120 what these innovations were that I've referred to a couple 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:05.080 of times, let's talk about our sponsor for this episode, 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:09.400 Club Champion. Every Club Champion built club comes with a 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:13.000 perfect fit guarantee that ensures what you saw in the 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:16.960 fitting bay is what you'll see on the course. On average, 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:20.920 Club Champions customer see twenty one plus additional yards off 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:25.280 the tee, sixteen yards better dispersion with irons, measurably more 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:29.520 fairways and greens in regulation, and fewer three puts. Club 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:34.000 Champion has five thousand plus five star reviews, and the 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:36.600 last third party study found that seven out of eight 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:39.920 golfers lowered their handicap by an average of five strokes 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.880 after just one season with their fitted clubs. So significant 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:46.480 impact here. Now, if you get your clubs, take them 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:48.960 out on the course and don't get the results that 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:52.080 you saw when you were being fit to them, you 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:55.000 can take them back to a Club Champion, the Club 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:58.200 Champion location where you got fit within ninety days and 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:00.960 they will make it right. So here's the deal for 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:04.720 designing golf listeners. You can get a free driver or 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:08.640 iron fitting with a club purchase using code Frida Egg 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:12.520 at club champion dot com slash Frida Egg. So again, 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:15.760 free driver or iron fitting with a club purchase code 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:20.840 Frida Egg Club Champion dot Com slash Frida Egg. All right, 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:24.520 So to prepare for this episode, PJ. As you mentioned before, 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:28.680 you read a recent thread on the messageboard golf club 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:32.280 at list. This thread was started by the architect Tom Doak, 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:37.160 and he was asking what is a Golden Age? His answer, 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:41.800 which I found very interesting, was people developing golf courses 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:45.960 on interesting land. Basically, dok is arguing that what made 0:08:46.000 --> 0:08:50.199 the Golden Age different from other eras was that architects 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:53.800 had an unusual number of great and distinctive properties to 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:57.400 work with. And by the way, he's also indicating that 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:01.800 this is what connects the First Golden Age with the 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:05.520 current era of golf architecture. You know, sometimes people call 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:08.360 the current era the second Golden Age, right, Architects like 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:12.760 Corn Crenshaw, Gil Hanson, obviously Tom Doak himself have started 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:16.200 to work on really exciting land again, so that was 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:18.800 his argument, and then he opened it up for discussion, 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:22.080 and some form members chimed in with it with their 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:24.880 own takes. What did you make of all this? Were 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:27.720 there any ideas that appealed to you in this any 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:30.760 ideas that seemed confusing? How did you process it? 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:36.840 My main takeaway. And I don't remember the member who 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:39.720 said this, but I like the point is that I 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:43.000 feel like somebody alluded to him just going to paraphrase 0:09:43.120 --> 0:09:46.840 that we are only considering these courses golden age because 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:51.400 they've stood the test of time for one hundred plus 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.920 years now. In some cases that it's hard to really 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:58.680 judge what is a current golden age until we're further 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:01.280 away to see if these plays are still relevant in 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:05.200 fifty sixty one hundred years. That I think is my 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:06.000 main takeaway. 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:10.640 Absolutely, hindsight is twenty twenty on this stuff. People living 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:14.080 through the first few decades of the twentieth century did 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:17.280 not say we're in a golden age of golf architecture. 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:22.640 That term was applied back to the era starting maybe 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:25.160 thirty years ago. I've tried to figure out exactly who's 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:28.360 responsible for the coinage of the term the golden age 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:30.959 of golf architecture. My impression is that it was kind 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.720 of in common discussion by the late nineties, and then 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:37.760 Jeff Shackelford wrote a book called The Golden Age of 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.920 Golf Design. The exact wording of the title I'm not 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:43.959 sure of, but it was a book about the Golden 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:46.600 Age that kind of surveyed the different architects and courses 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:51.480 that were relevant, and I think that had a big 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:56.040 role to play in popularizing the term. But this sense 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:59.640 that there was a golden age towards the beginning of 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:03.439 the twenty century, and golf course design was really information 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:07.680 in the eighties and nineties, but but not so much 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:12.440 before that. So it's only retrospectively that that this stuff 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:16.280 becomes clear or starts to take on certain labels. And 0:11:16.320 --> 0:11:20.000 obviously we're prisoners of our own time. We label eras 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.439 how we feel like labeling eras. We call the Renaissance 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:26.120 the Renaissance, right, But you know, William Shakespeare didn't say, 0:11:26.240 --> 0:11:27.840 I'm this is the Renaissance. 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:32.800 No, No, you have to the future generations get the 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:36.360 the benefit of knowing what already happened and can use 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:38.560 that to however they want to shape things. I guess. 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:42.520 So you know, I'm a big Bob Crosby guy. Yep, 0:11:42.559 --> 0:11:44.720 he's been. He's been on the podcast a few times. 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:50.040 He's he's extraordinarily intelligent in his u in his uh 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:55.000 it takes on golf architecture. So he contributed to the thread, 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:58.679 and I particularly loved what he said. He said that 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:01.880 a golden age is a time when people are working 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:05.760 through the ramifications of a new idea, and I think 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:08.800 there's a lot of truth to that, right. It's an 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:12.120 insight that goes across art forms as well. So I 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:15.400 mentioned the Renaissance. You could say that the European Renaissance 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:17.839 was a time when people were working through the ramifications 0:12:17.880 --> 0:12:20.040 of a new idea, and that new idea, or at 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:23.920 least one of them, was humanism, right, an interest in 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:27.960 the individual, a willingness to put individual humans at the 0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:31.319 center of plays and paintings and other forms of art. 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:35.480 That was a massive, massive idea of the Renaissance, and 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:38.520 the excitement of that idea that the possibilities of it 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:42.240 gave the art of that era a lot of vitality 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:44.679 and staying power. You know, there are other reasons that 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:46.440 we call the Renaissance and restaurant. There was also an 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:49.520 economic renaissance and people were becoming wealthier, and that's part 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:51.160 of the reason why they were able to make art 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:53.600 and have fun and you know, do cool stuff. 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:54.240 Yes, but. 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:59.160 Certainly part of it is working through the ramifications of 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:02.120 a new idea. So I think when you pair Bob's 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:06.600 insight with Tom's, you have something close to the answer 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:09.120 that I like for the Golden Age of golf architecture. 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:12.040 The Golden Age was a time when golf architects were 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.679 working through the ramifications of a new set of ideas 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:19.960 and they got to apply those ideas to really good 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:25.520 pieces of land. So let's dig into what the new 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:27.520 ideas were, or what I think they were. This is 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:31.400 kind of my interpretation and processing of all this, and 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:35.720 I've boiled it down to three big ones. One the 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:38.600 idea of spending a lot of money on the construction 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:42.640 of a golf course. Two the idea of strategic design, 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:47.360 which you're familiar with from past lessons, so to speak. 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:52.960 Three the idea of building artificial features that appear natural. Again, 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:56.280 a concept that we've touched on before, maybe haven't dug 0:13:56.360 --> 0:14:02.800 into super deeply yet. So basically, money strategy and naturalism. 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:06.120 Those are the three ideas that we're going to cover. Now. 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:09.200 It's obviously pretty hard to nail down the time and 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:13.319 place when any given new idea begins. Ideas are always 0:14:13.360 --> 0:14:17.160 sort of in the process of development. So you know, 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:19.480 we could trace this back to ancient Rome if we wanted, 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:22.520 I'm sure, right, But in the case of the Golden 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:26.240 Age of golf architecture, I think nineteen oh one in 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:30.800 the suburbs southwest of London is a really good starting point. 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:35.320 It's very specific, right, and that's because three big things 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:41.120 happened in that year in that place. First, Sunningdale Golf 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:47.000 Club opened. Second, nearby at Woking Golf Club, a pair 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:50.640 of members named Stuart Payton and John Lowe started to 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:54.520 make changes to the course. And later in nineteen oh one, 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:59.200 back at Sunningdale, Harry Colt became the first secretary of 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:03.760 the club. And these three events kind of launched these 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:08.880 ideas of money, strategy and naturalism, which in turn I 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:13.680 think powered the Golden Age of golf architecture. Okay, so 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:18.040 I've set up a framework, right, three events, three ideas. 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:21.120 It's important to note, by the way, you know, since 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:24.080 we're talking about land as well ideas being applied to 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:28.600 good land. Sunningdale and Woking both occupy a particular type 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:31.840 of terrain called heathland, right, and we don't won't get 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:34.360 too deep into the geology here. I think it's interesting, 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:36.320 but it would take us down at you know, different road. 0:15:37.120 --> 0:15:40.760 But essentially heathland is pretty well suited to golf because one, 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:45.400 the soils are sandy and drain well. A lot of 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:48.400 inland sites don't do that. Right, Heavy clay soils are 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:52.040 not as good for golf. Heathland soils are unusually good 0:15:52.760 --> 0:15:57.600 for inland golf. The best terrain tends to be seaside linksland, 0:15:57.600 --> 0:15:59.960 which is sandy. Heathland at least has a little bit 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:04.640 the sandiness to it. Right. Two, they're covered by these 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:08.640 this low scrubby vegetation called heather, which is a decent 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:12.040 natural hazard. You can find your ball in it, but 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:15.080 it's it's hard to play out of it. And three, 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:20.320 heathland generally alternates between open and wooded, which makes for 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:25.600 some nice variety in a golf course. But even though 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:31.560 heathland is a good landscape for golf, it's not Lynksland. Right. 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:35.040 And in order to make the terrain golfable. You usually 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:37.840 have to do quite a bit in heathland. At the 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:40.720 very least, you have to remove some trees and take 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:44.080 out a bunch of heather to make way for the 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:47.920 fairways and greens. On Lynksland, often you could just kind 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:53.040 of play golf right heathland. There there would be some 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:57.680 engineering required, like many inland sits, and and that's a 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:03.320 that's an important factor here. Okay, all right, so the opening. 0:17:03.480 --> 0:17:05.920 The first event is the opening of the old course 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:11.600 at Sunningdale Golf Club. Sunningdale was architecturally speaking, really the 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:15.679 first modern golf course, and that is that's a big claim. 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:19.239 But I think a major reason for it is that 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:21.439 it was the first golf course project to have a 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:24.720 large amount of money behind it. Now, in order to 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:29.480 understand why that was so important, I think you have 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:31.560 to know a little bit about how golf courses were 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:36.080 created before Sunningdale. So in the eighteen hundreds and before, 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:39.119 courses tended to be laid out very quickly. If a 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:41.880 designer was involved, he would spend a day or two 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:46.280 walking around the site and making recommendations. Sometimes these recommendations 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:49.199 would be really excellent. I don't want to discount you 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:52.320 know the expertise that goes into routing a golf course, 0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:55.600 But the reality is it would happen very quickly, no 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:58.280 offense to old Tom Morris, basically is what I'm saying. 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:03.080 And then the club members would usually complete the course, 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:07.439 they would build it and very little earth moving would 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:09.960 be done. So the quality of a given course really 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:13.359 depended on the quality of the routing and most importantly 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:17.359 the land. Where the land was good for golf, the 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:21.200 courses turned out well. Like Scottish Linksland. This is where 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:23.920 the game was invented, so the land was obviously perfect 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:27.199 for it, and many very old Scottish links courses are 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:33.080 still with us today and treasured today. But something important 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:36.760 happened in the late eighteen hundreds, eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties, 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:41.680 the late Victorian era, and that was that golf got 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:48.879 popular in England. The historian Michael Morrison no relation calls 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:53.600 it the great English golf boom. So English people start 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:57.240 establishing a lot of new courses very quickly, and often 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:00.800 these courses are not on Linksland. For the first time 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:04.240 in golf history, new courses were by and large being 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:07.840 created Inland, and it's hard to express how big of 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:10.119 a change. This was golf was moving away from the 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:13.080 land that inspired the game to be played in the 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:17.639 first place. Golf was a way of using linksland. The 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:21.600 game and the land were very intertwined, right, So when 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:25.320 English people started trying to move the game inland in 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:28.239 the eighteen eighties and nineties, they kind of had to 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:32.720 reinvent what a golf course was. Now. At first, the 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:36.240 attempts at creating inland courses were pretty rudimentary. Basically, the 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:39.280 same method was used that had always been used. A 0:19:39.280 --> 0:19:41.440 golf professional would visit for a day or two, tell 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:45.120 the members what to do, et cetera. Courses were built 0:19:45.200 --> 0:19:49.399 very cheaply, partly because no one knew whether the enthusiasm 0:19:49.440 --> 0:19:52.800 for golf would last. Right, if this fad goes away tomorrow, 0:19:52.840 --> 0:19:55.640 I don't want to be stuck holding a bunch of debt. 0:19:56.119 --> 0:19:58.359 Yes, right, understandable. 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:02.119 Now, again, this wasn't a bad method for laying out 0:20:02.160 --> 0:20:05.159 a links course, but what English people found is that 0:20:05.240 --> 0:20:08.280 it wasn't as good for laying out an inland course. 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:11.639 Early inland courses in England were pretty poor for the 0:20:11.680 --> 0:20:15.920 most part because they were often muddy. You know, once 0:20:15.960 --> 0:20:18.680 you move away from Lynksland, it's much harder to find 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:23.080 naturally occurring close cropped turf. They weren't as interesting to 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:25.880 play as links courses because the land usually didn't have 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:31.760 the natural undulation and the natural hazards of links and 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:35.879 you know, so as obvious why they weren't as good. 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:38.919 But they were golf courses and people enjoyed them, and 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:42.520 the game kept growing in England. The fad did not 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:48.200 go away. So nineteen oh one rolls around. The game 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:50.800 is in a secure place. It's starting to be taken 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:55.320 more seriously as a permanent feature of British life. And 0:20:55.480 --> 0:21:00.119 two brothers Ta and Ga Roberts. Don't ask me what 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:03.400 Ta and Ga stand for. I think probably Tom and George. 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:05.160 But you know, who. 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:10.320 Knows, could be Harry Potter fans who knows. 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:14.280 They decided to found. They decided to found Sunningdale Golf Club. 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:17.360 They hire Willie Park Junior to design the course. Park 0:21:17.480 --> 0:21:21.000 was a well established golf professional and course designer, two 0:21:21.040 --> 0:21:24.800 time winner of the Open. So Park designed the course 0:21:25.200 --> 0:21:30.159 and helped to oversee construction starting in the year nineteen 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:33.760 hundred and This was a kind of golf course construction 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:37.280 project that had never been seen before. The course took 0:21:37.640 --> 0:21:41.000 a year and a half to build. At one point 0:21:41.040 --> 0:21:45.720 there were seventy men, thirty horses and ten plows on site. 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:52.159 In total, it cost four thousand pounds. This obviously seems 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:55.879 like a miniscule, minuscule amount now, and not just just 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:59.440 because of inflation, right, people just spend more relatively even 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:02.560 on on golf course projects now, but at the time 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:08.800 absolutely massive. It was way way more money than had 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:13.680 ever been spent on building a golf course, way more time, 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:18.639 way more effort. So, for example, to my knowledge, Sunningdale 0:22:18.680 --> 0:22:21.800 was the first course ever to be seeded all the 0:22:21.800 --> 0:22:26.600 way through. Before Sunningdale, courses would mostly just use natural 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:30.080 turf and sort of encourage it to spread and be 0:22:30.080 --> 0:22:34.760 be good. Right at Sunningdale they actually planted turf grass 0:22:34.800 --> 0:22:37.639 on all the teas, fairways and greens and that was 0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:42.520 just revolutionary. So how did they do all this? How 0:22:42.520 --> 0:22:44.240 did they have all this money to spend on a 0:22:44.240 --> 0:22:48.240 golf course project. First, Sunningdale was located in a region 0:22:48.240 --> 0:22:51.080 where wealthy people lived, and it was built by and 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:54.119 for these people. So the developers of the course, the 0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:57.639 Roberts Brothers, felt comfortable that they could earn back the 0:22:57.720 --> 0:23:02.199 relatively big investment that they made on the construction of 0:23:02.240 --> 0:23:07.200 the course. Secondly, and relatedly, Sunningdale was basically a land 0:23:07.200 --> 0:23:11.040 speculation scheme. So the Roberts brothers were going to build 0:23:11.080 --> 0:23:13.000 the course and then they were going to sell the 0:23:13.000 --> 0:23:18.439 surrounding lots to wealthy London suburbanites to build houses. So 0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:21.120 this gave them some confidence that they could they could 0:23:21.160 --> 0:23:22.640 make that initial heavy investment. 0:23:22.840 --> 0:23:24.960 It's always a land speculation scheme. At the end of 0:23:24.960 --> 0:23:28.399 the day, everything everything is a lance speculation scheme. 0:23:28.680 --> 0:23:33.600 Behind everything is real estate, right and so it obviously, 0:23:34.119 --> 0:23:37.080 you know, this became an important model for golf course 0:23:37.119 --> 0:23:39.800 development in the Golden Age and beyond. You know, something 0:23:39.800 --> 0:23:42.760 that people discount a little bit. People sometimes act as 0:23:42.800 --> 0:23:48.120 though real estate golf was invented in nineteen sixty, but no, 0:23:48.640 --> 0:23:54.000 it was there right at the beginning of modern golf architecture. Now, 0:23:54.160 --> 0:23:57.120 I think maybe the most important reason that so much 0:23:57.160 --> 0:24:00.679 money went into Sunningdale is that the people building the 0:24:00.760 --> 0:24:04.439 course were trying to solve the problems of inland golf. 0:24:05.000 --> 0:24:08.040