A last exchange from my recent conversation with Dr. Mike Hurdzan, recipient this year of the Donald Ross Award from the American Society of Golf Course Architects at the end of April.
He laughed when I mentioned the major championship winner who, the course owner boasted, had spent the WHOLE day overseeing developments at the new golf course.
Then he laid it all out quite succinctly, saying what many architects, skilled at their craft, must feel when they lose a bid to someone with the name but not necessarily the expertise.
“I am constantly amazed at the celebrity worship that we have not just in this country but around the world, where someone through their skills or good fortune has reached that celebrity status and are assumed to have some God-given powers. You know, I really resent that.
“I think it diminishes the real professional aspect. I guess it’s sort of like the people who assume that Chef Boyardee really makes the stuff that you find in the cans. It’s such a silly idea. And when we think of how fleeting celebrity is... You know, if I said we had a golf course designed by Olin Dutra, or somebody else who was a U.S. Open winner from the twenties, or the forties or fifties, everybody would go, ‘huh, who the heck’s that?’ So it won’t be long that we’ll have a generation that will go, ‘Arnold Palmer? Who the heck’s that?’
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