Why Do The MidWest Tillinghast Designs Get No Respect...

[JakaB]

The recent thread about Kansas City and the exclusion of Kansas City Country Club makes me question why some works by Mr. T get no respect....I have to include Swope Memorial as another not getting proper props...are some Tillies just sub-standard..

I guess that because KCCC is not in Kansas City, MO it might have led to its exclusion from the other thread...oops.  I ignorance includes but is not limited to the field of geography.

[JakaB]

Some others in my very small world that get no respect:

Blackhawk CC....Madison
Cherokee GC...Louisville
Crescent Hill...Louisville
Glen Oak CC...Glen Ellyn...has gotten props before.
Johnson City CC....Tennessee
Seneca...Louisville
Shawnee...Louisville
Westmoreland CC....Illinois...Shivas home town.
Westwood...Clayton MO

Why..why..why.

[Mike_Sweeney]

Jaka,

They look like real nice courses to fly over going to and from California .

[Evan Fleisher]

Not sure exactly how much Tillie is in Blackhawk in Madison, but I have spoke highly of this fun, short, sporty (call it what you will) layout.  Tons of interesting shots, lightening fast, smallish greens to really make you question your approach shots and strategy on playing each hole.

I for one really enjoy the place, but you are correct that it gets very little "press" or praise compared to many of the bigger name courses in the area.

[TEPaul]

Barney:

I'm more than prepared to try to discuss the respect factor of some of those midwestern golf courses of Tillie's but before we do that would you mind telling all of us in a few carefully considered paragraphs how serious and/or deep-seated you think your midwestern inferiority complex is?

[JakaB]

I have started an outline for a book titled "The Lost Jewels of Tillinghast...Volume 1 the Midwest."  I need a ghost writer to help me with the field work and punctuation....if you own a camera and are interested please let me know.

[T_MacWood]

Most of the golf courses you listed were not designed by Tillinghast...he visted them during his PGA tour in the 30's. A cup of coffee and a recommendation of bunker removal...then on to the next course. In fact about half the courses listed under Tilly on the Tillinghast Assoc site fall under that one or two year tour.

Perhaps you should re-name the book:
Lost Jewels - How 10,000 bunkers vanished in 1937

[TEPaul]

JakaB said;

"I have started an outline for a book titled "The Lost Jewels of Tillinghast...Volume 1 the Midwest."  

Barney:

Do you think it would be more apropos if your book was titled---"Why the Midwestern Presbyterian/Methodist golf culture never came to understand or respect the East Coast's atheistic, madcap, dissolute, aristocratic genius--Albert W. Tillinghast."

I've also been meaning to ask you for some years now, Barney, if you support the gold standard or the silver standard?

[JakaB]

Tommy Mac,

That would be a great book...when can we start the field work...I need to go to Louisville and think visiting the many Tilles represented in name there as a great start.

[T_MacWood]

I'm game....to start why don't you retrace/reinact that tour (there is map of all his stops in the last of three Tilly books)....we will talk when you return in 2006-7.

Perhaps you can film your adventure....a documentary of sorts (that way my services would not be needed). I suggest you carry a symbolic bunker onto the grounds of each course...and request each club hold a candelight vigil.

[JakaB]

Tom,

Give me a name of a book I can get to see that list...I'm just going by what is in The Course Beautiful...For as nice a little book as it is...it seems to be misleading by your accounts.  There is not one chapter on the removal of bunkers for the PGA.

[RJ_Daley]

JAkaB, you'll need to grant yourself a BBGE award and get the other two in the trilogy, "Gleanings from The Wayside" and "Remenisences of the Links".  The photos  and graphics of Tillies hole drawings are great in both.  Or, perhaps the BBGE should hold associate memberships in the Tillinghast Society and or the Seth Raynor Society.  Both are very reasonably priced memberships... And, with Tillie's Society, I think you get your first book free...

[TEPaul]

"Give me a name of a book I can get to see that list...I'm just going by what is in The Course Beautiful...For as nice a little book as it is..."

Barney, what in God's name are you saying and doing?? We all know, as we thought you did too that it's highly dangerous for someone like you to start reading books on golf course architecture!! You're dangerous enough as you are but if you actually started learning something about golf architecture from even the best architectural books I can't imagine what we'd do about you!  

Look at it this way, my friend---if you started reading golf architecture books you might start to become more like many of us instead of way out in the outfield bullpen where you are now and then what would you do or say?

Do yourself and all of us a favor and shut the books and put them away and get back to contemplating why you aren't as good at golf as you thought you could be and why you hate playing golf with your friends and they with you!

[Mike_Cirba]

Not to change the subject too abruptly, but as per Tom MacWood's mention of Tillie's bunker removal work during the depression, I wanted to throw out there my belief that Mr. Tillinghast was actually the one responsible for the removal of most of Travis's bunkers at Hollywood.  

I know they were gone before Dick Wilson did work there in the 60s.  

The architectural record shows Tillie was there in the 30s, and not much done again to the course until Wilson.  Seems to me a case of "nobody else in here".  

[SL_Solow]

Westmoreland is hardly a Tilly.  Joe Roseman with revisions by Langford, Tillinghast (1925 before the WPA), Diddel (all pretty interesting names) Killian & Nugent, and finally Art Hills.  If there is any Tillinghast left I can't find it and what's there is hardly special.  Glen Oak is a lot more interesting but also has a varied history.  Bendelow, then Langford/Moreau(some of the features reflect their work),then Tillinghast then Gill and then Killian.

[Neil Regan]

The architectural record shows Tillie was there in the 30s, and not much done again to the course until Wilson.  Seems to me a case of "nobody else in here".

Mike,
  Maybe, but consider these possibilities.
   1. While the war effort was on, many courses radically changed their maintenance practices. Some actually went to seed or grew crops. Post-war restorations were, I assume, haphazard in many cases, and bunkers et al might have vanished down the memory hole.

   2. Supers and their committee bosses can effect all sorts of unrecorded changes. cf Yale.

   Is the record at Hollywood detailed (and known) enough to say that there was "not much done again to the course until Wilson" ? I recently discovered in club minutes from 1954 the details of a certain bunker removal that had disappeared from memory. I'm still searching for the history of some other bunker changes, that may or may not have been done by Tillinghast.

Neil

[ForkaB]

If Tillie really did remove 10,000 bunkers, I think he deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  What a visionary!

[Chris_Clouser]

JakaB,

To answer your question, the book Gleanings from the Wayside has more information about the tour that Tillie took around the country.  He often gets credit for doing work on many courses on that tour, but from what I've gathered on many of them he did exactly as Tom MacWood suggested.  He gave them recommendations and many didn't take them.

As for the Midwest not getting any respect, what else is new?  

[Mike_Cirba]

nregan;

No, I don't know the answer definitively re: Tillinghast and Hollywood.

What I do know is this...

Hollywood was perhaps the most bunkered course in history after Travis's work there.

Hollywood had scads of bunkers removed at some mid-point in its history.

At the time, Tillie was writing articles in how much money he was saving clubs by removing scads of bunkers.

Tillie worked at Hollywood during this time.

Circumstantial, yes, but a reasonable assumption.  

[Neil Regan]

Mike,
 I agree with you. But money might not have been the only reason. Tillinghast had a phrase for some types of bunkers that tended to obstruct the less but not the more accomplished golfer. I forget right now what the phrase was, something like Duffer's headaches. At Winged Foot, numerous bunkers were removed in the early years, some presumably for this headache reason.

Neil

[Mike_Cirba]

nregan;

I think Tillie was both innovative and pragmatic.  It's hard to imagine the guy who invented the "Hell's Half Acre" cross bunker on par fives having too much philosophical difficulty with bunkers that only affected hackers, but he did seem to have a major shift in thinking sometime after 1930.

Personally, I think he saw the writing on the wall about the future of heavily bunkered courses due to the economics of the Depression, as well as tried to become an advocate for the "less is more" brigade, simply because he was looking for work in a scarce economy.  

[Peter_Collins]

Although the discussion has gone a different direction, for what it is worth KCCC is not a Tillinghast course.  It was designed by Tom Bendalow (sp).  It is a great course nonetheless and any list of KC area golf courses that doesn't include KCCC is incomplete.  Access may be the problem as it is a very private club.  There are two Tillinghast courses in Kansas City metro;  Indian Hills C.C. a stones throw to the southwest of KCCC and Swope Park.  Indian Hills is a wonderful course with very tight fairways and interesting green complexes.  Unfortunately, Swope Park has been renovated so many times and the conditions are so poor one would hardly recognize any Tillinghast design elements.

[JakaB]

Peter,

Why do you say KCCC is not a Tillie...they say they are...I don't understand the negative vibe I have been getting about Mr. T throughout this thread.

[Steve Pozaric]

Re Westwood

The Westwood in the greater St. Louis area is in a suburb called Creve Cour rather than Clayton (Clayton is about 10 miles east), so I am not sure if there as an earlier Westwood or not.

I have played no Tillinghast courses, but I thought this was quite a good layout.  I do not think much is said about the Tillinghastesqness of this course (at least in the general golfing public of St. Louis).  IT is only an "E" for examined per the Tillinghast website, so I am not sure of his impact.  I have seen this referred to as a Keith Foster design, but it has been around since the 20's, per golfweb course guide.

I might be able to nose around and ask a member, but do not know if that will be of much use.

Steve Pozaric

[Peter_Collins]

John:
Your question caused my to do some quick research.  Tom Doak's Confidential Guide to Golf Courses lists the following pedigree for KCCC "Tom Bendelow, 1922 with revisions by Floyd Farley, Bob Dunning, and Rees Jones."  However, the A.W. Tillinghast Society web site attributes the design of KCCC to A.W. Tillinghast and lists it as a 1925 original design.  

The plot thickens . . .

Regardless, KCCC is a great classic course!!!