It’s amazing how much of Robert Hunter’s The Links (1926) resonates today. This book, along with the work he did in California with Alister MacKenzie, is his lasting legacy. We’re fortunate that a more natural, "minimal" style (as opposed to the residential-led "championship" style) of golf course is finally back in vogue and the golf course design industry is returning to many of the principals he discusses.
Following are some of my favorite passages from the book that are as applicable to the work of the golf course designers flourishing today as they were when he wrote them, during the “Golden Age” of golf course design.
“If there has been improvement in the art of constructing golf courses, it has been largely due to the willingness of the best architects to imitate humbly and lovingly what nature has placed before them.”
“The spice of golf, as of life, lies in variety… Really good golf holes are full of surprises, each one a bit better than the last. Like a first-rate dinner, as soon as you have finished one course with beaming satisfaction, something even better is placed before you…"
"… each hole should have a character of its own. Its physiognomy should be quite distinct from that of its neighbors, and it should be one not easy to forget. Its personality should awaken your interest and cause you to question how best to approach it. It should present some problem to you in vivid form, and, even though that problem may be solved in two or three ways, it should be quite clear from the beginning that a choice must be made.”
“Simply to make holes difficult to play is not at all the point. That would be quite an easy matter, and unfortunately it is too frequently done by the inexperienced. To make them thrilling to play, to make them force you to play certain shots, and even to reach certain positions in order to have a chance to play such shots – these superlatively fine qualities residing in first-rate holes are the result either of exceptionally desirable terrain or the product of an exceptionally talented architect.”
“The best architects seek, in placing their hazards, to call forth great shots. Some of their best holes reward handsomely fine golf, but have no obvious penalties for bad golf. Such holes are so cunningly laid out that those playing bad shots lose strokes by the position in which they find themselves. The best architects feel it to be their duty to make the path to the hole as free as possible from annoying difficulties for the less skillful golfers, while at the same time presenting to the scratch players a route calling for the best shots at their command.”
“All artificial hazards should be made to fit into the ground as if placed there by nature. To accomplish this is a great art. Indeed, when it is really well done, it is – I think it may truly be said – a fine art, worthy of the hand of a gifted sculptor. They should have the appearance of being made with the same carelessness and abandon with which a brook tears down the banks which confine it, or the wind tosses about the sand of the dunes. In nature, rock, tree-roots and turf bind the soil, and when wind or water assails it, the less resistant portions give way, forming depressions or elevations broken into irregular lines. Here the bank overhangs, while there it has crumbled away.”
