Golf Architecture: Economy in Course Construction and Green-Keeping

by A. Mackenzie

There is an extraordinary resemblance between what is now known as the camouflage of military earthworks and golf-course construction.

The writer was fortunate during the war in being asked to give the demonstrations to members of the Army Council which were the foundation of, and led to the establishment of, the first school of camouflage.

These demonstrations were evolved from his experience as a golf-course architect in the imitation of natural features.

Successful golf-course construction and successful camouflage are almost entirely due to utilisation of natural features to the fullest extent and to the construction of artificial ones indistinguishable from nature.

It is clear that if a gun emplacement or any other object of military importance is made indistinguishable from the most innocent-looking feature on the landscape, it will escape the disagreeable attention of the enemy. And what can appear more innocent than the natural undulations of the ground? Therefore in camouflage, as in golf-course construction, the ability to imitate natural undulations successfully is of special importance.

There are many other attributes in common between the successful golf architect and the camoufleur.

Both, if not actually artists, must have an artistic temperament, and have had an education in science.

Surprise is the most important thing in war, and by camouflage you are able to obtain this not only on the defence but in the attack.

In golf architecture and camouflage a knowledge of psychology is of enormous value. It enables one to judge what is likely to give pleasurable excitement to the golfer and confidence and improvement in moral to the soldier. The writer feels most strongly that his experience in the Great War in visualising and surveying miles of sites for fortifications in this country and abroad, in map-reading, in the interpretation of aerial photographs, in drainage and labour-saving problems, and particularly in the mental training of strategic camouflage and devising traps and surprises for the enemy, was by no means wasted even from a golf-course point of view. The only man he has been successful in initiating rapidly into the mysteries of golf-course architecture was not a golfer but an artist, and one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of experts on camouflage.

A little knowledge is a specially dangerous thing in links’ architecture. One of our greatest troubles in dealing with the committees of the old-established seaside courses is that their world-renowned reputation (not due to any virtue of their own, but entirely owing to the natural advantages of their links) makes them think themselves competent judges of a golf course.