Hollywood GC
NJ, USA
Just one look at the manufactured 150 yard 4th green complex lets one know that Hollywood is no ordinary design!
Golf course architectureimmediately captured Walter Travis’s imagination beginning with his 1899 collaboration with James Duncan atEkwanokCountry Club in Vermont. However, his playing career and then the founding of The American Golfer magazine in 1908 took up much of his time through 1915.
When Hollywood GC approached him in 1916, Travis had onlydesigned three eighteen hole golf courses. Nonetheless, the board at Hollywood clearly felt Travis was their man, in large part no doubt to his forceful writings in The American Golfer where he adamantly argued that the hazards onmost American courses were so poorly placed as to do little to challenge the tiger golfer. According to Travis, ‘A really good course should abound in hazards – and good courses develop good players.’
Hollywoodwas keen to convert their original Isaac Mackie designaway from hazards that penalized the poor golfer and into a rigorous test for the better golfer. First, according to Bob Labbance in The Old Man, the clubemployeed Seth Raynor ‘to correct some of Mackie’s mistakes’ butthe end result remained unsatisfactory and Travis was contacted.
From the start, the opportunityat Deal must have appealed immensely to Travis as the sandy, 300 acreblock of landwas within one mileof the Atlantic Ocean. The property wasnot heavily treed ( to quote Travis about his loved Garden City GC, ‘trees of any kindarenonexistent – as they should be’) and thus was exposed to the winds (quoting Travis again, ‘wind should always be an ever present factor’).
Reacting to the club’s stated desire for a first rate course, Travis gutted all of Mackie’s greens and bunkers, combined some holes, discarded others. The course drew immediate praise the day it opened, thanks in large part to the 220 bunkers of all shapes and sizes andits set of wild Travis greens.
Travis preferred seperating holes via bunkers than trees, such as here between the 6th and 7th fairways.
Hollywood is loaded with original features like this elevated bunker on the left of the 16th fairway.
While Hollywood’s unique bunkering has long drawn praise,its greens are ever bit as special. Some greens like the 9th and 16th with its diagonal swale through it have to be seen to be believed. Bob Labbance wrote in his November 2000 Feature Interview on this site:
There is no doubt that Travis wanted to test the ground game just as much as the aerial play, so special attention was paid to the subtle, yet perpetual movement of the green. Many times the slopes of the greenside mounds were reflected into the putting surface, and on every course there was one green with a substantial swale cut through it on a diagonal. So his greens were a challenging joy.’
These comments ring true at Hollywood.
Holes to Note
4th hole, 150 yards; A completely manufactured hole, and none the worse for it. Giventhe course’s proximity to the Ocean, Travis envisaged it as being links-like in nature. To that end, when stuck with this piece of flat property near the middle of the course, he built faux sand dunes and sandwiched the green in between them. Travis also put a sea of sand in between the tee and the green to emphasize the hole’s coastal setting but that sand has since been removed. Still, the seven bunkers cut into a pair of artificial hillocks – with two of the bunkers well above the green itself – is unique in the world of golf. Many love it, anda few hate it, but there is no denying that Travis the architect had the imagination and daring to create some of the game’s most distinctive holes.
A wicked false front sends many a ball back off the 4th green.
The 4th green complex, as seen from the right.
A view looking down onto the green from the left hillock.
7th hole, 550 yards; The kind of green complex that is curiously rarely seen today, this one is angled in such a manner as to best accept shots from a certain position in the fairway. An oval shaped green simply doesn’t offer as strategic a target as this green complex does and yet, the world is more full of thelater than the former. Such a green – and considering it was built in 1916 – is but another sign as to how innovative Travis was as a course designer. Pete Dye would subsequently use such a ploy and angle many of his par five green complexes (e.g. the 7th at The Medalist, the 11th at The Honors Course, the2nd atKiawah’s Ocean Course, etc. ) but too few other architects have followed the lead established by Travis 85 years ago.
The angled 7th green rewards the golfer who can advance the ball well down the right side of the fairway in two shots.
The view from behind the three tiered 7th green with the massive bunker that guards its entire left side.