The Architectural Sine — iif Golf -
The Architectural Side of Golf. By H, N, Wethered and T. Simpsonr,-(Longmans. £3 3s.)
-" kr was lost;the-bel-ccrnto," cried Svengali, but I found it in a dream.".,..So might Mr. Simpson and his brother archi-
tects exclaim, in a rapturous chorus, of their art. They have
found something that -was lost in the 'eighties and 'nineties, when golf courses were being laid out wholesale in England,
dull, cut-and-dried courses with squa greens and rectangular rampart bunkers, - re of which their creators invariably declared that they would be " second only to St. Andrews." The art was certainly lost in those days 'of the first golf " boom," but had it really ever existed or were the great early courses the result not of genius but of gradual growth and happy accident ? That we shall never quite know, but we may be tolerably sure that the makers of old courses proceeded on no fixed principles. They probably cut their holes wherever there was an open stretch of turf, free of heather or whin ; they reeked little of ideal lengths or two-shot holes and they cut no artificial bunkers ; if they saw some natural difficulty— a sand-hill or a stream or a clump of rushes—they thought it would be good fun to hit over it. Yet by this simple method they produced such' inimitable holes as the Road hole at St. Andrews or the Sea Hedrig at Prestwick, of which the abiding splendour is proved by the fact that many people call them " unfair." And to-day it is largely by studying these fortuitously great holes that the modern architect has been able to accomplish all that he has.
The task that is set him in designing a course is a complex one. He has first of all to preserve, so far as he can, the nat- ural beauties of the ground, and so must be a landscape gar- dener as well as a golfer. He has often to bear in mind the requirements 'of a building estate as well as of a golf course. He must try to please players of very varying degrees of skill, so that the local " tiger " may boast of his course as fit for a championship, while the " rabbit " enjoys himself and does not dwell in a vale of bunkers. To read such a book as Mr. Wethered and Mr. Simpson have written, and to pore over their excellent diagrams is to discover how much thought and ingenuity are needed in reconciling the needs of all classes of golfers.
The authors are emphatically of the " strategic " rather than the "penal" school, that is to say they do not think that every ill-struck ball should have a bunker ready to catch it. Especially they do not desire thus with cold, unimagin- ative justice to punish the bad player who punishes himself quite sufficiently. They direct their efforts chiefly against the good player, so that " either his good shot, which is not quite good enough, is trapped by a bunker placed at roughly 210 yards from the tee, just off his most favourable line to the hole, or his bad shot is in such a position that unless he brings off a very exceptional shot he cannot reach and remain on the green." Any man armed with a shovel can, by ruthless digging, make a difficult hole ; but he will not be an artist nor will his hole ever give the player a thrill, such as belongs to a hole which provides, in the late Mr. John Low's words, a " contest of risks."
Mr. ,Simpson scorns the mere multiplying of bunkers as a sign of weakness ; should he descend to it he would regard himself as schoolmaster who could only maintain a sullen discipline by the use of the cane. What he likes is one small bunker that shall dominate the play to the hole and, apart from his tenderness of heart toward the " rabbit," he has a subtle reason for liking the minimum of obvious trouble. Most bunkers, he holds, are to the good player mere " light-houses " ; they guide his eye, point out to him what stroke he is to play, and. save him the bother of thinking. " With an iron club, of which he knows the effectiveness to a few yards, and the assistance of a perfect method drilled into his system with Which to back it up, the result is, as nearly as may be, a foregone conclusion. Let him, however, see a green in the middle distance with a clear and open space before him and he will feel "acutely the want-of exactly that kind 'of Obstacle he would wish 'to be compelled to carry." This doctrine may come as a revelation to humble golfers who breathe a sigh of relief whenever they see an open space - in front of them and are far from desiring any compulsoPy carries. -It-will-make them do -what Mr. Simpson wants to make the arrogant " tiger " do, namely, think, and his book will give them plenty of amusing things to think about.
BEIT:ARD DARWIN.
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