Saint Louis Country Club
MO, USA
Green Keeper: Tim Burch
Saint Louis Country Club is rich with classic Charles Blair Macdonald features. As seen at the Eden above, Macdonald's one reservation about the original one at St. Andrews was that the golfer could use his putter to play the entire hole. He got rid of that option here (!) with the deep Hill bunker walling off direct access to the putting surface.
From the time that Charles Blair Macdonald hired Seth Raynor in 1907 asan engineer to oversee the construction of National Golf Links of America, the two men formed a lasting relationship born out of respect for one another’s talents. Macdonald’s sense of grandness and flair added artistry to Raynor’sskills as an engineer and they did better work together than separate.
Apart from the overall excellence of their designs, Macdonald and Raynor enjoy an almost cult standing for another reason:they oftenreplicated strategic concepts from famous holes. To this day, the traveling golfertakes great delight in seeing howMacdonald and Raynor adaptedsuch concepts from site to site. As much as anyone, Macdonald helped Americans gain a sense of just howengaging golf could be byletting them appreciate first hand many of golf architecture’s most enduring dilemmas such as the Redan or Alps. His strong sense ofstrategic purpose gave American golf architecturea huge push in the right direction duringits infancy and helpedit move quickly past the basic courses that the Scots built in this country pre-1905.
In the case of Saint Louis Country Club,Macdonald (as architect)and Raynor (as construction supervisor)were blessed with ideally rolling terrain. From this promising start,they gave Saint Louis more than its fair share of the great versions of holes plus several original ones that are equally vexing in their own right. In fact, apart from Macdonald’s masterpiece National Golf Links of America, Saint Louis Country Clubhas as many ofMacdonald’s favorite features as any ofhis designs.
One manwith a long appreciation ofMacdonald and Raynoris Saint Louis Country Club’s former Green Keeper Jack Litvay. Fromwhen he saw his first Raynor course in Minnesota in the 1959 (!) to when he realized similarities with its architecture and that at the Dunes Course at Monterey Peninsula Country Club in the late 1960s, Macdonald and Raynor fascinated Litvay. When the green keeping opportunitypresented itselfat Saint Louis Country Club in 1977, he jumped at it and stayed there until he retired in 2005. During that period, he was instrumental in relocating the Punchbowl green to its original, charming location. More importantly, he helped raise awareness as to the special architectural gem that the clubpossessed. In 2000, the club approached Brian Silvafor a Master Plan. Silva, whowas just coming off a highly successful restoration at Seth Raynor’s Lookout Mountain in Georgia, was just the man to help guide the club in restoring all the fun, one-of-a-kind shots that Saint Louis possesses in spades as we see below.
Holes to Note
Secondhole, 220 yards, Double Plateau; Saint Louis Country Club possesses only three two shotters longer than 410 yards. However, its par of 71to coverthe 6,535 yards is anything but easy, thanks in large part to its difficult set of five one shot holes. Thesecond is a bear of an uphill Biarritz, which isn’t ideal only in the sense that the golfer can’t witness his balldisappearin the swale in the green before re-appearing on the back plateau. Nonetheless, this one shotter gives the course the kind of muscle that saw 282 as the winning score inthe 1947 United States Open.
As the second plays uphill, the three foot swale...
... that runs through the middle of the green isn't visible from the tee. As is frequently the case, the green for this Biarritz is the largest one on the course, measuring over 11,000 square feet.
As seen from back left of the green, this Biarritz green measures 55 yards in length. The swale in the green is evident; less evident is the ten foot deep bunker front right of this green complex.
Thirdhole, 210 yards, Eden; An unusually long Eden hole, thethird was selected as one of the greatest holes in George Peper’s The 500 World’s Greatest Golf Holes. Almost all the key Edenfeatures are present: deep bunkers cut into a ridge that the green sits upon, a false front, a green featuring a sharp back to front tilt, and death over the green. The only attribute missing is that the green isn’t a skyline one,a quality that is harder toachieve in the middle of this country than it is alongthe coastline in Scotland.
If this Eden green complex seems a long way away, it's because it is! At over 200 yards, this Eden is approximately forty-five yards longer than when the course first opened. Of course, in Macdonald's day of hickory shafted clubs, this 165 yard hole required a mashie which is the same club (a.k.a. a five iron) that top amateurs hit into this green from today's 210 yard markers.
As seen from behind the green, any tee ball that goes long leaves a desperately difficult recovery from the four foot deep back bunkers to a green sloping sharply away and toward the front.
Fourthhole, 410 yards, St. Andrews; As part of Silva’s Master Plan which was adopted in 2005, the Road Bunker was recently restored to its right central, gathering location alongthis green, which angles from front left to back right. Equally noteworthy though is the diagonalvalley that runs through the fairway: if the golfer can carry it long down the left, he is rewarded with a level stance and a perfect angle into the green. Otherwise,the twenty yard widevalley has a way of gobbling up tee balls, thus making the approach shotblind to semi-blind.
Adhering to Macdonald's original drawing, short cross bunkers have been restored on three of the first four holes, including here at the fourth as seen above. In fact, twenty-seven bunkers have been restored per Silva's Master Plan, many of them being of the central or cross hazard type. Note the valley that Macdonald put to brilliant use further ahead in the fairway.
This long back bunker replicates the road behind the seventeenth at The Old Course at St. Andrews.
Fifthhole, 510 yards, Punch Bowl; Macdonald and Raynor frequently combinedan Alps approach with a Punchbowl green with spectacular examples being the fifteenth at Sleepy Hollow and the fourth at Fishers Island. Such is the case here, thoughuniquely, this time the hole is a three shotter. Also, another of theirfavorite features was brought into play, aPrincipal’s Nose bunker 140 yards shy of the greenwhich influences the layup shot. Shockingly enough, this Punchbowl green was relocated in the 1950s to the far hillside in the misguided interest of ‘fairness’. Thankfully, Silva oversawthe return to its original spot in 2001 with the cinders underneath the ground acting as ahelpful guidein recreating the size and slopes of theoriginal green. Once again, golfers going for the green in two take great delight in trying to land their approach shot just past the crest of the hill on the right and have it chase down onto the putting surface. The thrill of making the 200 yard plus walk wondering just how close your ball might be to a hidden hole location is – sadly – rarely found in inland golf.
Straight from tee to green, the fifth gains its playing interest thanks in part to its fascinating array of bunkers. This one is cut into the hillside 240 yards from the back markers and was recently edged more into the fairway.
On the left of the fairway, these fifty yard long 'snake' bunkers need to be avoided.
Most famously, this Principal Nose bunker complex 140 yards from the green dominates play down the middle of the hole. It was restored to its original Macdonald location by Green Keeper Tim Burch who uncovered clay tiles and sand in this area after studying an old photo of the Crater hole that showed this bunker complex in the background.
Looking back down the fifth from behind, one sees the Punchbowl green and the right portion of the fairway that feeds onto it.
Sixth hole, 360 yards, Blind; An original drive and pitch hole of great merit, thanks to the site’s rolling topography andits wild green contours. In 1915, the year after Saint Louis opened, Raynorbegan designing courseson his own but by and large, his solo greensnever achieved the same boldness of characteras when Macdonald was present. Thesixth green complexillustrates how well the two men worked together and makes one lament the fact that they only didtwelve eighteen-hole courses together.
One of the game's great green complexes is the sixth at Saint Louis. Better to use the bold green contours as a backboard than to come up short on one's approach.
Seventhhole, 155 yards, Shorty; A superb Short Hole with its thumbprint or horseshoe green contours helping to make it more engaging than either thefourth at Brancaster or theeighth at St. Andrews from which the name ‘Short’ derives.
The built-up green complex makes it one of the most fortified Short Holes in the game, though at 7,800 square feet in size, the green is more than a reasonable target.
The true challenge of the hole is best appreciated when one considers that when the course opened for play in 1914, golfers only had a niblick (or nine iron) as the sand iron had yet to be invented. The seventh green was truly a hit-it-or-else proposition as recovery from the nine foot deep front bunker was quite difficult.
As seen from behind, a shot over or a miss right of the green offers no solace either.