![\"Clashing](\"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2010\/04\/Stone_Harbor_7th_old.jpg\" "\\"Stone_Harbor_7th_old\\"")
<\/a>The Original Clashing Clashing Rocks at Stone Harbor<\/p><\/div>\n
Desmond liked telling stories on himself, concluding most with a great guffaw.\u00a0 In the mid-sixties he\u2019d been on top of the world of golf course design, the only architect to rival, if only for a brief while, the redoubtable Robert Trent Jones.\u00a0 Desmond was reviewing work on a course under construction back then in Florida, he told me, when the irrigation superintendent said to him, \u201cyou must be a great golf course architect.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd why do you say so?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, they always told me Trent Jones was the world\u2019s greatest golf course architect, and he\u2019s an SOB.\u00a0 But now that I\u2019ve met you, I see you\u2019re an even bigger SOB, so I figure you must be the best golf course architect now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Desmond visited Portland not long after we met, a city where he had worked as a consultant on tree planting for a local electrical utility in the 1950s. \u00a0He wrote a booklet on the appropriate trees to plant in boulevards and rights-of-way, helping create the leafy canopy gracing Portland\u2019s streets and neighborhoods. \u00a0He was living in British Columbia at that time, working as a landscape architect, and had not yet started the golf design practice that would propel him to prominence a decade later.\u00a0\u00a0 His ascent was as swift as his departure would be abrupt and unexpected.<\/p>\n
He reached the pinnacle of the profession as Jack Nicklaus\u2019s partner in the early 70s, but rather than simply striking out on his own when they had a falling out, he stopped designing golf courses altogether.\u00a0 He moved to Sydney and sold exotic glass and \u201csymbolic art.\u201d\u00a0 The Australian walkabout lasted just over a decade.<\/p>\n
He resumed his golf design practice in the mid-80s.\u00a0 \u201cI just got worn out with the golf scene,\u201d he said, by way of not explaining. \u00a0When he came to Portland, Desmond stayed at our house, and admired the watercolors my wife had painted.\u00a0 She was a full-time social worker then, but Desmond encouraged her to continue with her art. \u201cYou have a wonderful sense of color,\u201d he told her.\u00a0 The day after he left the most enormous bouquet we\u2019d ever seen was delivered, with a sweet note from Desmond thanking my wife for her cooking and hospitality and urging her to keep painting.\u00a0 She\u2019s been a full-time painter for years now.<\/p>\n
Desmond was not a modest man, but his ample ego never hindered his sense of empathy.\u00a0 When he was ready for college, he told me, he\u2019d \u201cgone up to Cambridge with a man,\u201d \u00a0but with no particular goal nor much ambition.\u00a0 \u201cWhat do you mean,\u201d I asked him, \u201cthat you\u2019d \u2018gone up with a man\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a valet,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201ca servant.\u00a0 He put me to bed when I came home drunk and roused me to go meet with my tutors.\u201d\u00a0 Desmond would leave Cambridge to join the RAF.<\/p>\n
A mate from Desmond\u2019s six-man bombing squadron came to his memorial service in Newport Beach, held at Desmond\u2019s house along the Back Bay.\u00a0 In the fall of 1944, not long after the Allied invasion of Europe, Desmond\u2019s crew had to abandon its plane on a bombing run over France and parachute to safety.\u00a0 They were inside their own lines, so the upshot was a trip to Paris. \u00a0Desmond had a great time, his \u201czest for life and contempt for authority\u201d perfectly suiting him to survive even the grimmest experience. \u00a0The crash was an portent of the trajectory of Desmond\u2019s life\u2014thunderstorms loaded with silver linings, if one had the wit to see them.<\/p>\n
Desmond called me while I was writing Driving the Green<\/em>, the project that had brought me to Florida, where I had originally met Desmond.\u00a0 \u201cA golf pro from Texas has sent me a manuscript,\u201d Desmond said.\u00a0 \u201cWould you take a look at it?\u201d<\/p>\n The last thing I wanted to do was read some na\u00efve scribbling by a golf pro from Texas, but Desmond was hard to refuse, so I swallowed hard and said, \u201cOK.\u201d\u00a0 Much to my surprise, the manuscript that came was not just serviceable, it was really good.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0It would be published under the title The Eternal Summer<\/em>, and its author, Curt Sampson, would go on to write a small shelf of insightful, irreverent but thoughtful books on golf and its cast of stalwarts and minions.\u00a0 Curt and I both savor the fact that we owe our friendship to Desmond.<\/p>\n In the wake of the collapse of the golf industry in the US, I thought it fitting to imagine what Desmond\u2019s response might have been.\u00a0 He had explained golf\u2019s role in the detonation of the Japanese property bubble in the early 1990s better than any other commentator I read, explaining what had happened in the columns he wrote on the subject for Executive Golfer<\/em>.\u00a0 He would surely have had interesting things to say about our current predicament.<\/p>\n The Formal Desmond<\/p><\/div>JS:\u00a0 How are you?<\/p>\n DM: \u00a0\u00a0Still learning, if I may say so.\u00a0 Jung, it may not surprise you to learn, is in fact an insufferable ass.\u00a0 All the archetypal symbolism\u2014total bollocks, as he told me himself.\u00a0 Well, I told him, don\u2019t think I fell for it\u2014useful it was, but no more.\u00a0 Stuck his nose up, he did.<\/p>\n JS:\u00a0 No point in illusions there, surely.<\/p>\n DM:\u00a0 I think the fantasies are richer, polished and serene.\u00a0 Lovely, all in all.<\/p>\n JS:\u00a0 Are you surprised, Desmond, from your vantage point, at how bleak the US golf scene is?<\/p>\n DM:\u00a0 It\u2019s a symptom, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 It\u2019s not a cause, really, although I assume borrowing against the equity in their primary residences to finance a vacation home on a golf course in Florida or Arizona got some people in over their heads.\u00a0 But did we build too many golf courses?\u00a0 Of course we did.\u00a0 And who\u2019s the man to say \u201cno.\u201d\u00a0 Not I, and not you.<\/p>\n JS:\u00a0 The National Golf Foundation reports that there are 1,500 or so courses experiencing operating losses, and that \u201cOur best estimate is that 5% to 10% of the 1,500 courses in trouble will close per year until supply and demand reach equilibrium.\u201d\u00a0 And that is looking at it very narrowly\u2014just through operations at daily fee courses.\u00a0 What about all of that real estate around golf courses that is either sitting empty or has lost a huge portion of its value?\u00a0 How long will that take to recover?<\/p>\n DM: It\u2019s much bigger than the S & L fiasco in the early 90s, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 And that took about four years to sort through.\u00a0 But the underlying economy was not in shambles then as it has been the last three years either, so that recession is looking like a minor temblor compared to the earthquake we\u2019re feeling now.<\/p>\n JS:\u00a0 Well, the big picture shows that the total value of home in the US fell $489 billion in the first 11 months of 2009.\u00a0 Sounds horrible, but compared to 2008, when US home values dropped $3.6 trillion<\/em>, or an amount roughly equal to the GDP of Germany, the fourth largest economy in the world, that\u2019s a big improvement!<\/p>\n DM:\u00a0 That predicts a very long trail between the market\u2019s collapse and a recovery strong enough to stimulate any demand for new golf courses.\u00a0 Remember what I told you in 1991, when the Japanese bubble exploded\u2014that it would take decades for it to recover? \u00a0Twenty years on and Japan\u2019s economy is still stalled.\u00a0\u00a0 When we were in the midst of what Greenspan called our \u201cirrational exuberance,\u201d no one wanted to stop, did they?\u00a0 Who wants to leave the party early?\u00a0 You might miss out on some of the fun.<\/p>\n JS:\u00a0 But we stayed, drank too long, and now we\u2019ve got what feels like a terminal hangover.<\/p>\n DM:\u00a0 It will pass.<\/p>\n JS:\u00a0 That\u2019s easy for you to say!\u00a0 I\u2019m still down here chasing work.\u00a0 Thank goodness for China.<\/p>\n DM:\u00a0 Now there\u2019s a country that understands symbolism.\u00a0 You\u2019ve studied feng shui<\/em>, have you?<\/p>\n JS:\u00a0 I know the term.<\/p>\n DM:\u00a0 It\u2019s what I always tried to do\u2014getting things in the right place.\u00a0 Thinking about where you are in the world.\u00a0 Golf\u2019s a strange activity, if you think about it.\u00a0 Takes a lot of land and resources, requires years to learn to play well, and has almost no spiritual significance or higher purpose.<\/p>\n JS:\u00a0 Wait a minute\u2014it reflects the character of the people who created it, doesn\u2019t it\u2014fair play, honor, decency, an acceptance of fate in the face of arbitrary effects, like your perfect layup funneling into Hell Bunker?<\/p>\n DM:\u00a0 But isn\u2019t the greatest golfer in the world a confessed liar who cheats on his wife?\u00a0 Where was the character building?\u00a0 What I think is exciting about golf is how when new countries or groups adopt the game they change it, make it fit their own culture<\/p>\n JS: Like courses that advertise good wireless connections?<\/p>\n DM:\u00a0 Be cynical, then.\u00a0 I was thinking about how Japan has wrapped the game in courtesy and ritual, so it\u2019s not simply change your shoes in the parking lot, rush to the first tee and off you go, chewing on a hot dog and whistling at the cart girl for a beer.<\/em><\/p>\n JS:\u00a0 But that reflects our<\/em> culture\u2014I\u2019m a gringo, remember?\u00a0 Don\u2019t be such a prig.<\/p>\n DM:\u00a0 Remember the grand opening of Shinyo in Kysushu?\u00a0 A lovely course, if I do say so.\u00a0 They had a performance of Noh theatre, with a lovely stage erected below the clubhouse and the hayashi<\/em> playing drums and flutes, the actors declaiming and nodding in those lovely masks, tilting their heads to and fro\u2014all to help inaugurate the course. Have no idea what the play was about, but what a great ambiance, no?\u00a0 The clubhouse roof shaped like a samurai helmet\u2014lovely.\u00a0 And that reverence for form suffuses Japanese golf, gives it a formality American golf never has.\u00a0 When I designed courses in Japan, I tried to understand and respect the underlying dignity in the Japanese aesthetic, its reverence for form.<\/p>\n JS:\u00a0 Didn\u2019t translate so well into the US, did it?<\/p>\n DM:\u00a0 The forms translated fine, but the spirit was wanting.\u00a0 It\u2019s like the difference between Japanese baseball and American baseball.\u00a0 The rules are the same, but the approaches are distinct.\u00a0 Still, at the highest level someone like Ichiro has a genius for the game that transcends cultural settings, like any great artist.\u00a0 I tried to break boundaries, but I think now the golf designers are stuck in a kind of romantic nostalgia that undercuts innovation.\u00a0 Golf is a conservative sport in general, and designers are happier looking back than forward.<\/p>\n JS:\u00a0 Is respect for the past bad?\u00a0 And aren\u2019t the forms pretty constraining\u2014you have to have 18 holes, playing to certain lengths, and so on?<\/p>\n DM: But great artists can innovate within the formal constraints set for them\u2014whether painting a ceiling or chipping stone, or dripping paint on a canvas.<\/p>\n JS:\u00a0 Do you have any successors?\u00a0 Any legacy?<\/p>\n DM:\u00a0 No\u2014I was sui generis<\/em>.\u00a0 I had a liberal education.\u00a0 I came of age when Englishmen learned reflexively that we ruled the world for good reason.\u00a0 Shedding that belief was my real education, but I never relinquished the sense that I belonged in this world.\u00a0 All of it.\u00a0 And golf was a great scalpel with which to operate.\u00a0 \u00a0The education of the architects now is narrow and conventional, and emphasizes commerce over art.\u00a0 Real estate has been driving all this golf development for fifty years or more. You see where it\u2019s gotten us.\u00a0 \u00a0But I do think having stand-alone golf courses again is a great restoration of first principles.<\/p>\n JS: But without all that real estate pushing development there would still be a handful of golf pros pounding stakes in the ground on a weekend for 750 bucks, not great studios with large staffs and big brand names changing millions.<\/p>\n DM:\u00a0 There is that\u2014but I thought we were talking about art<\/em>.<\/p>\n JS:\u00a0 In the world of golf, art and commerce are conjoined\u2014one doesn\u2019t exist without the other.<\/p>\n DM:\u00a0 I tolerated the commerce, but I loved the creativity.\u00a0 It was like a boy in a sandbox for me\u2014a wonderful life.\u00a0 And don\u2019t worry, we\u2019ll get through this, too.\u00a0 You\u2019ve read history. Mankind has created worse in the past\u2014nothing here extinguishes my optimism.<\/p>\n JS: Thanks, Desmond.\u00a0 We need to do this again.<\/p>\n DM: You know where to find me.<\/p>\n END<\/p>\n For more on Desmond Muirhead,\u00a0 see Geoffrey Cornish and Ron Whitten, The Architects of Golf<\/em>, pages 132-140.<\/p>\n Forrest Richardson, a practicing golf course architect and a leading scholar of golf design, wrote a delightful sketch of Desmond Muirhead in Golf Course Architecture, <\/em>April, 2008.\u00a0 Go to: http:\/\/www.golfcoursearchitecture.net\/Article\/Desmond-Muirhead\/1439\/Default.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n Finally, Curt Sampson wrote a wonderful peice on Desmond in the late\u00a0lamented\u00a0Travel and Leisure Golf<\/em>,\u00a0 called “Eccentric Genius.”\u00a0 http:\/\/www.travelandleisure.com\/articles\/eccentric-genius\/1<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/a>