"Sorry, folks, that's called progress."

I enjoyed your comments on the first part of Ron Whitten's "rant" about the lack of modern architect originality. The second and more disconcerting comments I saved for today:

Architects embrace the past because it has been safe, marketable and easy to produce. (Mea culpa: I've done it myself.) Original ideas get men ridiculed, like Desmond Muirhead, who showed chutzpah in drawing inspiration from art, literature and Mother Nature but went off the deep end with fish bunkers and mermaid holes.

Instead of developing original golf holes to address 21st-century technology, time constraints and resource limitations, architects are preoccupied with decrying technology and clamoring for a rollback in ball distance. Sorry, folks, that's called progress. The same complaints were made in the Golden Age, when steel replaced hickory shafts. It didn't ruin the game back then, either.

The notion that design should just work around 21st-century technology is fascinating considering Whitten notes "resource limitations" in the same sentence. Wouldn't it figure that if you build longer courses for today's distance, that would put a greater strain on resources such as materials and land costs?

Most of all, his original premise that there has been a lack of innovation is correct, but this lack of progress stems in part from the ongoing distance chase.

Imagine you are an engineer and you've come up with new ways to build bridges out of modern materials that allow for faster and cheaper construction. And for the sake of a fun argument, these new materials and computer aided design can create more artistically appealing bridges. But your well-engineered plans depend on cars maximizing at a certain speed and weight. 

So along comes deregulation, that eliminates the speed limit and gas mileage standards. New faster, heavier cars will not be supported by your bridge's cutting edge design. In other words, the regulation of speed and size frees up the opportunity for innovation.

This is the conundrum facing golf design. It's hard to innovate strategically when a distance increase has thrown the entire thing out of whack. It's even tougher when the future is uncertain.

But other than that, I loved the column!