The Father of the Golden Age of Golf Design

In last week’s SOCIETY Newsletter, I briefly mentioned John Low and how his ideas on golf course architecture helped kick off what many call the Golden Age of Golf Course Architecture. John Low’s life and accomplishments are too vast for the SOCIETY to cover in this newsletter, but I thought we could do our best to educate you on how his ideas helped start a revolution.

John Low’s Impact on Golf Design

By: Robert Crosby, Golf Historian

The architectural philosophy we call today ‘strategic golf design’ did not appear out of the blue. It first emerged out of unhappiness with golf courses built according to what we now call ‘Victorian’ design ideas. (Such ideas were usually called‘English’ in the period. The term ‘Victorian’ was not used then in the way we use it today.) St. George’s, the ‘Royal’ came in 1904, was the first course to fully embody those ideas. At their heart was the notion that a golf course should present ‘fair’ tests of golfing skills, understood at the time to mean pass/fail tests of a golfer’s ability to carry hazards with long, well-hit, airborne “drives”.

During the 1890s John L. Low and others criticized the forced carries required by Sandwich’s many cross hazards as making golf a ‘mechanical’ game. His criticisms had little effect on Sandwich’s popularity and its vast progeny. That progeny included more than a thousand new courses built during the golf boom in England, America and elsewhere around the turn of the last century. The proliferation of such golf courses was such that Low feared, not unreasonably, that they would change forever not only the look and feel of the game, but how the game would be played by future generations of golfers. He did not find that an appealing prospect.

Low first articulated the basic ideas that the underlay ‘strategic golf design’ in an essay in Golf Illustrated in early 1901. Low described the key difference between the then popular ‘English’ design ideas and his preferred design philosophy as the difference between designing a course that tested a player’s ability to hit “a ball over a mark” (think Sandwich’s cross hazards circa 1901), and a course that tested a player’s ability to “accurately place the ball” (think the Old Course). Low concluded his essay by contrasting how the Old Course and ‘English’ designs challenged the best players of the era.

“… when even [the] greatest of all players approach the teeing ground of the eleventh or seventeenth holes at St. Andrews—or holes of similar difficulty—it is worthwhile watching the play. Now something has to be risked, and moreover, most important from a philosophical point of view, the risk is self-imposed. The position of the match, the chances of success, and perhaps the nature of the opponent's previous shot, have all to be taken into account. The game has risen from the merely physical and mechanical, and has become as well philosophical and strategical. It is hinted that such holes are slightly “unfair," as a shot which is very nearly a good one may yet get punished. If they are “unfair", then I say by all means let us have more “unfair” holes.”

The paragraph contains the seeds of modern golf architecture.

A full account of Low’s architectural ideas is beyond the scope of this note. Relevant here is that Low’s earlier criticisms of Sandwich had gotten little traction. By 1901, however, Low had a design theory to support those criticisms. He pressed that theory home not merely as a rival to the architectural orthodoxy of the day, but rather as a replacement of it. And that is pretty much what happened. Low’s rethinking of the fundamentals of golf course design set the stage for a ‘Golden Age’ of golf architecture and went on to shape the look and feel of the golf courses we are familiar with today. A less well-known side to that story is that as Low’s ideas became ascendant, there was a concurrent withering and near extinction of steeplechase, Victorian golf courses and the design ideas that had fostered them.

       - Robert Crosby

John Low's Principles of Great Golf Design as described by Golf Course Architect Tom Simpson:

1. "A golf course should provide entertainment for every class of golfer, particularly the medium player and long handicap man who are the mainstay of the game. At the same time it should provide a searching and difficult test for the powerful player always provided he is prepared to take risks."

2. “The game has been waging a battle against the inventor. The one aim of the inventor is to minimize the skill required by the game. The inventor has been allowed too much license

3. "The center of the fairway, and/or the shortest most direct line to the hole should be fraught with danger, imminent or deferred to the powerful player. A feature of all the holes ilustrated, see in particular Fig. IV."

4. “The proper technique of the architect is to make the ground dictate the play. The good architect will see to it that the hole proclaims that the powerful player who wishes to register the par figure, must keep well to the right or well to the left with tee shot at two-shot and three-shot holes, and so in each stroke there shall be some special interest for him, some special maneuver as that prac-tised by the skillful billiard player who always has in mind the next stroke or strokes ahead; a characteristic of all four illustrations."

5. “A fairway requires to be properly orientated to both the tee and the putting green, thereby stressing the importance of placing tee shot in a position from which alone the green can be approached with any degree of safety.

6. “That as few bunkers as possible should be introduced, and no bunker at all within 200 yards from the tee, except of course at short one-shot holes.”

7. “That putting greens should, wherever possible, especially on seaside and heathland courses be of the low, narrow front to back, plateau type, with the plateau tilting away from the player, conveying to the golfer the impression he cannot be up without being over. This is a prominent feature of many St. Andrews greens.”

8. “A course should never pretend to be, nor it is intended to be, an infallible tribunal of skill alone. The element of chance is the very essence of the game, part of the legitimate fun of the game.

9. “That all the really great holes of the world involve a contest of wits, a contest of risks, and hover on the brink of the Heretical Precipice.”

10. "Inequalities of surface on a putting green should not be exaggerated. Moreover they embarrass the greenkeeper.A tilt from front to back. From left to right, or vice versa is legitimate, yea desirable.”

11. "'Le mieux est toujours l'ennemi du bien,' which being interpreted is, 'leave well alone, and that is just what green committees will not do, especially when they have a really fine course."

If you would like to learn more about John Low, my dear friend Robert Crosby is current working on a book on John Low and the birth of early modern golf. Crosby’s book will also touch on golf architecture, rules, regulation of balls and other things that made golf the game that we are familiar with today.

Assuming he accepts my invitation, Crosby will join us on the TalkinGolf History Podcast to talk about his book when it is published.

For more information on John Low, check out this link from our friends at Evalu18.

https://evalu18.com/architect/john-low/

You can also acquire John Low’s book: Concerning Golf, Published 1903

As always thank you for reading this newsletter and sharing it with your friends. It is my pleasure to share these little sometimes unknown stories with you.

Until next time…

Yours in Golf History,

Connor T. Lewis