Golf Course
Originating in Scotland the game of golf is played throughout the world today.  Because it was seen as mere play the King’s archers in fifteenth century Scotland were forbidden to play it.  Although even today golf is seen as a non-productive diversion, a real loss of productivity, it is an integral part of business life.
 
Golf is a form of mapping in which the player charts a course between two points, avoiding hazards along the way.  The chart is drawn by following the projectile and keeping a record -- the scorecard -- of the number of shots for each pair of points within the course.  Related to this scoring but unwritten is a narrative made as a consequence of where the ball landed and the territory the player traverses on the course.  On many courses, these places are identified with symbolic titles; the most extreme version of this identification is found on the miniature course where the holes and hazards are given images such as the windmill, maze, and vortex. 
 
The Royal and Ancient course in St. Andrews, Scotland, used in this project, names the hazards and greens based on their apparent shape: the scholar’s nose, the pulpit, the Elysian Fields, and other titles related to academics and the church.  In this implied game the golfer moves through the course connecting different references; significance is given to one’s path rather than to a numerical accounting of the shots made.  In the hidden narrative game the trajectory of the ball delineates a path for the player’s movement through the artifice of maintained nature.  A walk in this country is not simply a walk, but a movement pre-directed by strategy, skill, exigency and error; and this country is not nature separated from production or art.  The game is a narrative play, a physical challenge, a symbolization of nature and the measuring of the player’s powers.  The golf object -- an enfolding surface -- engenders.