Designed to create difficulty

`The heart of golf," observed Scotland's John Low, "lies in propelling the ball accurately from one situation to another. Each step in the journey should be hazardous; the links should be almost too difficult for the player; bunkers should more perfectly abound."

Though they date from the beginning of the last century, these rough guidelines remain a valid assessment of the course architect's craft.

It has been written that had the Old Course at St Andrews been laid out in the accepted sense, the name of the genius who did it would be revered in the annals of the game. But nature was the first golf architect, shaping the links terrain on the eastern Scottish shoreline out of undulating dunes.

In fact, that is the way things remained for about the first two centuries of the game's existence. Golfers adapted to shapes and contours as they found them. Then, in the latter part of the 19th century, Man decided to give Nature a hand.

But the transition was not as seamless as we would like to think. For instance, Tom Simpson, whose work in this country includes such celebrated layouts as the Co Louth links at Baltray and the Old Course at Ballybunion, was moved to remark that the early architects "failed to reproduce any of the features of the courses on which they had been bred and born".

This had to do with the fact that they were largely greenkeepers and professionals who, rather than working from properly drafted plans, relied largely on their instincts, incorporating often unsuitable features as they found them. So it was that the distinguished golf writer, Bernard Darwin, described Old Tom Morris as "a good and much loved man and a good golfer, but he was not a man of acute intellect and probably laid out his courses by a very simple rule of thumb".

Darwin went on: "No doubt it is fair to add that had he been possessed of true architectural talent, he would have had little opportunity of exercising it to the full. He probably came down on such missions for one day or at most two, surveyed the grounds, chose a few hills to drive over and hollows to pitch into and then departed having declared, according to the local newspaper, that the proposed course should be second only to St Andrews."

In 1894, Old Tom charged £1 per day plus travelling expenses to design a course. In the case of Royal Co Down, the cost to the club was a princely four guineas, which hardly bears comparison with the $1.25 million Jack Nicklaus received for designing Mount Juliet.

Given Co Down's status as one of the best courses in the world, and taking Darwin's comments on board, one is forced to conclude that the site, in the shadow of Slieve Donard and the majestic Mournes, was so superbly suited to golf that Morris had to do no more than establish a workable routing. And the same could be said for his work at Lahinch.

So, it is accepted that, for the most part, the work of the early architects depended on local turf which, inland, was far from suitable for the purpose. All of which emphasises the tremendous contribution which Willie Park made to the craft.

He is largely credited with taking golf away from its seaside origins, notably to sand-based heathland to the west of London where he laid out the Old Course at Sunningdale in the 1890s. It was later remodelled by the great Harry Colt, who also designed Sunningdale's New Course.

Meanwhile, there were some fascinating developments in the US. Earlier in this series, we wrote of Pau in the French Pyrenees as being the oldest club on the Continent: well, it appears that one of its members, a woman, had a hand in the development of the game in New England, through her design skills. We are told that "this young lady" was visiting friends in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1892 and, believing she would have the opportunity of indulging her passion for golf, she brought her clubs on the trip. As it happened, her hosts knew nothing about the game but were happy to have her unravel its mysteries.

The upshot was that she laid out a small golf course to give them a demonstration. And we are informed that one lesson proved to be sufficient to establish the merits of the new game which, accordingly, came to Boston via France. So, while most locations can point to an individual as being the father of the game in a certain area, Boston holds the distinction of having a mother.

Sadly, no records were kept of the woman's identity. Her legacy was in evidence last September, however, in the staging of the Ryder Cup at the Country Club, Brookline. For it was she who superintended the construction of a seven-hole course where, instead of tomato or chicken-soup cans for holes, she thought flower pots would serve the purpose more appropriately.

Back on this side of the Atlantic, the lack of aesthetic appeal in the early layouts led to golfcourse architecture being elevated to something of an art form, attracting such gifted enthusiasts as Colt, who was a qualified solicitor, and Alister MacKenzie, who was a medical doctor.

Apart from having what was termed an eye for land, they realised that successful course building incorporated such key elements as botany, soil chemistry, drainage, civil engineering, agronomy and surveying.

Though the seaside continued to be regarded as the traditional setting for a course, the game was taken to the outskirts of provincial towns and cities throughout these islands during the early decades of the last century. And from relying on sheep and rabbits to keep fairways and greens cropped, the introduction of the mower before the first World War marked a milestone in course development.

In conclusion, the essence of the architect's craft was, to my mind, set out beautifully by Tom Simpson when he wrote: "The object of design is to create difficulties (and in a modified sense illusions), not to explain them; to outwit the expert or at least to set his brains to work to find the best solution . . .

"It is very much as if one were attempting to reach a difficult harbour, where it is common knowledge that shoals of sandbanks lie in the neighbourhood of the entrance."