There are many positions by the seashore where a hole of this kind could be constructed, but it would be possible to make one of a similar type inland, especially if the subsoil consisted of sand and the lie of the land was favourable. The seashore could be replaced by bunkers, old quarry workings, hummocky ground, rough, or even land out of bounds.
Success in construction depends entirely on expert supervision. It is like all successful golf-course construction, a question of making the best use of natural features and the devising of artificial ones, indistinguishable from nature.
Plan of ideal two-shot hole of 420 yards.
CHAPTER IV
THE FUTURE OF GOLF ARCHITECTURE
As the future of Golf Architecture depends on the prospects of golf, it may be of interest to discuss the probability of its abiding popularity.
Golf has been played in Scotland for several centuries, and there appears to be no sign of any decreased popularity, but rather the reverse. The illusiveness of golf is sufficient to ensure its popularity. No one ever seems to master it. You imagine you have got the secret to-day, but it has gone to-morrow. This is so in all good games. There are some games, such as ping-pong and roller-skating, which become merely passing crazes, and the reason is that one obtains a certain standard which neither diminishes nor increases, and then the game becomes monotonous. Golf on a first-rate course can never become monotonous, and the better the course the less likely it is to do so. Golf on a good links is, in all probability, the best game in the world, but on the late-Victorian type of inland course, where there is a complete lack of variety, flat fairways, flat unguarded greens, long grass, necessitating frequent searching for lost balls, and mathematically placed hazards consisting of the cop or pimple variety, it not only offends all the finest instincts of the artist and the sportsman, but is the most boring game in existence. The advent of the golf architect is rapidly curing all these disabilities.
A good golf course is a great asset to the nation. Those who harangue against land being diverted from agriculture and used for golf have little sense of proportion. Comparing the small amount of land utilised for golf with the large amount devoted to agriculture, we get infinitely more value out of the former than the latter. We all eat too much. During the Great War the majority were all the fitter for being rationed and getting a smaller amount of food, but none of us get enough fresh air, pleasurable excitement, and exercise. Health and happiness are everything in this world. Money-grubbing (so called business), except in so far as it helps to attain these, is of minor importance. One of the reasons why I, “a medical man,” decided to give up medicine and take to golf architecture was my firm conviction of the extraordinary influence on health of pleasurable excitement, especially when combined with fresh air and exercise. How frequently have I, with great difficulty, persuaded patients who were never off my doorstep to take up golf, and how rarely, if ever, have I seen them in my consulting-rooms again! It is not suggested that golf is the one and only remedy. Men may get equal results from shooting, fishing, riding, cricket, tennis, etc., and may even obtain pleasurable excitement from gardening, politics, or their own business, but for the majority of men, golf is the most convenient form of pleasurable excitement and exercise to take. Those who rave against golf courses surely forget that many of the greatest politicians, thinkers, and business men conserve their health and their mental powers through golf. As examples we could quote President Wilson, Lloyd George, Carnegie, A. J. Balfour, Asquith, Winston Churchill, Lord Northcliffe, and scores of others. I hope to live to see the day when there are crowds of municipal courses, as in Scotland, cropping up all over England. It would help enormously in increasing the health, the virility, and the prosperity of the nation, and would do much to counteract discontent and Bolshevism. There can be no possible reason against, and there is every reason in favour of, municipal courses. They are all for the good of the community, and even from a financial point of view, at the small green fees of 3d. or 6d. a round invariably pay.