From the Hearth:

Course architecture, despite several recent noteworthy books, remains a blind spot for many golfers. The explanation may be simple enough that golfers are too busy looking for their balls, and a swing, to notice the setting unless it overpowers them. They truly have to be bowled over, and thus the subtleties of design are overlooked. The corruption of carts must also take responsibility for pulling and disjointedly directing golfers away from the natural features of a course back to the pavement in the interest of traffic flow. (Don't get me started.)

The following treatise was similarly lost in the forest from the trees of my files. The fax dates it precisely to April 7, 1994, 2:41 p.m. The author, Desmond Muirhead, was kind enough to respond to a query on behalf of an article on design philosophy. All of the replies I received, from many of the familiar names of the business, were interesting in their way. None, however, excepting the following, referenced Churchill, Van Gogh, and gestalt, or pondered the meaning of art.

My Design Philosophy
By Desmond Muirhead

Any philosophy of design must first relate to a philosophy of life which will in turn reinforce the original philosophy of design.

As a designer in several different fields, I believe in the democratic freedom of man, his individual rights and government by the consent of the governed. I also believe in the right to own property (at least one's own home or farm); the right to choose, to have a job and a decent standard of living.

I believe we have a need for a state of law and order and a desire to live in a stable and peaceful society.

The right to choose and self-determination were life-forming ideas emphasized by the Danish philosopher Kierkegaarde in the last century. Thanks to the ancient Scottish university of St. Andrews with its high standards of learning, these two ideas were incorporated in the Old Course at St. Andrews, the source of so many of the principles of golf course architecture. Thus a philosophy of life is already entwined in the basic principles of golf course design. To carry the metaphor further, golf itself is like life which is part of its fascination. A satisfying round of golf should embrace all the trials and tribulations of a lifetime lived in a single day. When you play a well-designed golf course for the first time it should provide an adventure in self-discovery which culminates in one of the best and most memorable days of your life.
When you play a well-designed golf course for the first time it should provide an adventure in self-discovery which culminates in one of the best and most memorable days of your life.
Like the patterns of life and living the architecture of a golf course has a very broad compass, although that part of the design which involves the actual playing of the game of golf is relatively straightforward. It is a process which can be learned; a set of tangible ideas which can be programmed into the mind. These ideas can nearly all be found in three Scottish links courses; St. Andrews, Muirfield, and Carnoustie, courses with which I am very familiar. It is the adaptation, arrangement and expansion of these ideas which must be given coherent form and sequence in our new golf courses. For anything approaching a masterpiece that rare ingredient imagination must also be forthcoming. Together these various features can lay the foundation for a design that is profound, that touches the country of the mind.

Everybody asks me about nature, but I don't believe nature can be bought in a supermarket. We wince at the statement "all natural" on a grocery package and I feel similarly uncomfortable when the words are applied to golf. St. Andrews for instance is far from natural. To the contrary, some of the best minds in Christendom were involved with its design. These scholarly men were responsible for the placement of several hundred new bunkers, and how did nature do that? We should never try to imitate nature lest we end up with a cemetery. We should try to celebrate nature's vital force and then attempt to translate the quality of nature into a legible visible form. Nature then becomes a guide which must receive the aid of art, for a golf course as well as being technically sound and naturally inspired must also be a work of art.

What is a work of art?

The famed scholar Kenneth Clarke called art the outward form of an inner spiritual energy. To fulfill this definition a golf course must reflect the spirit of the land where it is build as well as that of the owner and the designer. While I recognize this spirit and try to harvest it rather than mine it, I like to think that I put my energy into the design and then into the land of the original site. If I am successful this energy will radiate out of the created landscape forever afterwards.

When I first started to design golf courses I was interested in their integration into the surrounding community as at Mission Hills in California and Boca West in Florida. After that I was primarily concerned with the quality of golf and the need to give the course a collection of sound golfing principles, including a careful relationship to earth form and wind, together with length, rhythm and playability. My Scottish connection told me that the tradition of golf was plebeian as well as royal; that the game should be made available to working men as well as aristocrats, to high handicappers as well as scratch amateurs and professionals. I like to say that I provide a violin, that you can play any tune you like on it in any key, and that we should always aim for a Stradivarius.

In recent years after a ten year hiatus from golf architecture, while searching for an idea to make it more appealing and less repetitious, I rediscovered symbols. The Old Course at St. Andrews is full of them; bunkers called Hell and Lionsmouth, depressions called the Valley of Sin. I decided to make these symbols over overt and more literal and to attempt to make them into genuine art forms. I found a mermaid on the 11th at Aberdeen in Florida; Jason and the Argonauts in "Clashing Rocks," the 7th at Stone Harbor, New Jersey. A Japanese fan in the 7th at Shinyo in Nagoya, Japan. There were two women in the 6th hole at Long Lake Hill in Korea, a dragon in the 1th at Oak village near Tokyo, Japan, and so on.

These symbols were hard to forget. If memorability is an important aspect of golf architecture, you could remember all eighteen holes just by walking these courses. Among other ideas I added a theme, perceptions from gestalt psychology and a new concept orientation points which told you where you were. Every hole was different. There were eighteen signature holes instead of one. I believe that this has opened a door in the practice of the golf course design.

These golf holes with their sculptural forms led me out of golf course architecture into earth form art. Because of this, I am enjoying golf architecture far more than ever before. In the past I have had to design the surrounding community, even the houses to keep interested. At Boca West and McCormick Ranch it was this relationship which was almost as important as the golf course. Now I can concentrate on the golf course although we still design the surrounding community.

Today my designs may show a broad field of influences but relatively few of them are from golf. They are more often from art and opera, from poetry, philosophy and psychology. From Van Gogh, Uccello and Miro and their forms that stalk our dreams. I owe some allegiance to Moore and Lipschitz, Wagner and Donizetti, Sartres and Wittgenstein, Adler and Jung. I am fascinated by their symbols and archetypes and the associations they give off.

This type of design is not for everybody. These symbols have to have an authentic sense of art and an intelligent explainable reason for being there. There is a thin line between art and kitsch. Badly used and executed symbols become an embarrassment. Well-wrought symbols need content as well as form, essence as well as existence. Like Jung's symbols I wanted mine to have greater power than the experience they came from. Some of them like the 7th at Stone Harbor have almost limitless energy. Suddenly the whole course has acquired an underlying mystique developed from the mystery and the reality of the site.

I am often asked about the design of a great course. One can never design a great course, that takes time, adjustments, famous shots, competitive rounds, memorable tournaments. But we can always design a unique course, an original course, a course that is different.
One can never design a great course, that takes time, adjustments, famous shots, competitive rounds, memorable tournaments. . . . All we architects can do is lay the foundations.
Design in any field is a fruit of slow maturing. A great golf course evolves gradually like a tall tree filling out its branches. All we architects can do is to lay the foundations. A truly great golf course has an existential, intellectual underpinning, yet fills the senses. It is joyful, tragical, magical, mythical, rational, empirical. Such a course has great power and tenderness.

I only know of one truly great golf course. The Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland. It is at least five hundred years old. We newcomers can only hope that time will be as kind to our courses as it has been to the Old Course.

A unique course on the other hand requires originality, imagination, innovation; and this is where the need for art becomes most formidable. Art is a river both deep and infinitely wide. For those of us on the cutting edge, the river flows fast and you get caught up in it. Some of us swim against the current. There is rough water, rocks, rapids. Your experiments may be unfairly criticized, even pilloried, but there is a liberating sense of triumph when the trials are surmounted. And the way is filled with excitement, happiness, new friends and laughter. The innovator - if he lives long enough - usually also gets the last laugh, and that's the one worth having.

I like to quote Winston Churchill on the subject: "An art without a tradition is like a flock of sheep without a shepherd, but an art without innovation is a corpse."