The writer has just returned from a most delightful sand-dune country which he chose for his holiday in great part owing to the fact that he had seen it before and had also seen Mr. Colt’s plan for the constructing of what should have been the finest eighteen-hole course in England.
On arrival he found the secretary or the committee had, through motives of false economy, refrained from getting Mr. Colt to supervise the work and had done it themselves. The outcome was an expenditure of three or four times as much money as Mr. Colt would have needed, the destruction of many of the beautiful natural undulations and features which were the making of Mr. Colt’s scheme, the conversion of magnificent visible greens into semi-blind ones, banked up like croquet lawns, and a complete absence of turf owing to wrong treatment, and alterations in the placing of the tees, bunkers, and greens, and a total disregard of the beginner and the long handicap player. On a seaside course in particular little construction work is necessary; the important thing is to make the fullest possible use of existing features. £500 in labour expended under expert supervision is better than £10,000 injudiciously expended.
Surely in the case of a golf club it is more important to have an architect for the course, and any new work on the course, than for the club-house. Much greater mistakes are made in constructing the former than in building the latter.
One can readily imagine what would be the ultimate result of a course laid out by an average committee composed of scratch, three, four, and eight handicap men. They are, most of them (probably subconsciously), prejudiced against any hazard being constructed which they are likely to get into themselves, but they are all unanimous in thinking that the poor devil with a twenty-four handicap should be left out of consideration altogether. The final result is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor even good red herring.
THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE EXPERT
The expert in golf architecture has to be intimately conversant with the theory of playing the game, but this has no connection with the physical skill in playing it. An ideal golf expert should not only have a knowledge of botany, geology, and particularly agricultural chemistry, but should also have what might be termed an artistic temperament and vivid imagination. We all know that there is nothing so fatal in playing golf as to have a vivid imagination, but this and a sufficient knowledge of psychology to enable one to determine what is likely to give the greatest pleasure to the greatest number are eminently desirable in a golf architect. The training of the expert should be mental, not physical.
My last principle is one which particularly affects the green-keeper:—the course should be perfect all the year round.
It is quite a prevalent idea that courses on a clay subsoil can never be made into good winter links. It does not matter so much as might be expected, what the subsoil is like, provided it is well drained and the turf on the top is of the right texture. Muddy courses are entirely due to insufficient drainage, worms, and the wrong kind of turf.
Worms can be got rid of and the right kind of turf encouraged by adopting modern methods of green-keeping. Many examples of what can be done in converting really bad winter courses into good ones can be seen in the North. Surface drainage, such as mole draining, gets rid of worms by making the land so dry that they cannot work.