Golfing News & Blog Articles

If Dr. MacKenzie or Donald Ross or any of the other great architects came back now, I wonder what would they think of carts, equipment, and what they’ve done to their courses. I never knew them, but I’ve studied their lives, their courses, and their thoughts on the game. I think they’d take a dim view of it. For centuries golf had had a strong enough backbone to hold onto its beliefs. BEN CRENSHAW

New Year's Day--Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion. MARK TWAIN

The medium of the artist is paint, and he becomes its master; but the medium of the golf architect is the surface of the earth over which the forces of Nature alone are master. Therefore, in the prosecution of his designs, if the architect correctly uses the forces of nature to express them and thus succeeds in hiding his hand, then, only, has he created that illusion which can still all criticism. MAX BEHR

I think people watching golf want to see the unexpected, but we, too, often get the opposite…a blast off the tee, the ball doesn't bounce more than a few metros after it lands and the next one sticks in the green like a dart in the dartboard. That's boring; not like getting a bad lie and watching them get out of the predicament they themselves got into. That gives joy to people. PETER THOMSON

I think people watching golf want to see the unexpected, but we, too, often get the opposite…a blast off the tee, the ball doesn't bounce more than a few metros after it lands and the next one sticks in the green like a dart in the dartboard. That's boring; not like getting a bad lie and watching them get out of the predicament they themselves got into. That gives joy to people. PETER THOMSON

I also love Royal Melbourne, in the sand belt region of Melbourne – one of the greatest pieces of terrain on earth. Australians know how to take care of their courses, staying on the lean side, conserving water, and taking care of their native grasses. BEN CRENSHAW

Water hazards are among the best and most thrilling of natural strategy, and sometimes artificial water hazards are well conceived. Like everything else, such trouble should not be overdone. As noted before, diversity, and yet again, variety, is the spice of a golf course. GEORGE THOMAS

A golf hole, humanly speaking, is like life, in as much as one cannot judge justly of any person’s character the first time one meets him. Sometimes it takes years to discover and appreciate hidden qualities which only time discloses, and he usually discloses them on the links. C.B. MACDONALD

Anything stereotyped should be avoided on a golf course; all construction work should follow the irregular lines of nature. Any contractor who informs a committee that golf courses can be constructed on contract as they would build a clubhouse is either absolutely ignorant of golf course architecture or is trying to hoodwink the golfing public. It would be just as reasonable to expect an artist to estimate the amount he charges for a painting, according to the quantities of paint and materials he uses. ALISTER MACKENZIE