[ForkaB]

Donald Steele and Tom McKenzie have made some changes to "The Carnegie Links" at Skibo Castle.  I played there last week and wanted to report back on these changes, which were:

1.  New routing.  Rather than heading relatively immediately over to the two holes next to the Dornoch Firth (old 4 and 5), the course goes "inland" after 2 and plays the old 10th, 11th and 9th before linking up with the old 3rd and then playing the old 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

2.  New holes.  The old 12th (an inland 555 yarder, parallel to the other 5's (old 9 and 11)) has been replaced by a 420 yard hole dog leg right adjacent to Loch Evelix.  Then, from short of the greensite of the old 12th, there is a new short hole (180 or so) back towards the Loch to about where the old 13th tee used to be.  Then, there is a new tee for the 14th, fairly near the old 12th geen which changes the hole from a long (460) straight 4 to a shortish (520) dog leg left 5.

3.  General maintenance.  The construction of the new 12 and 13 led to the clearing out of a lot of gorse and the course looks more "Muirfieldish" than it used to.

4.  New Clubhouse.  Much larger, more accommodating (ability to separate the riff raff from the members), maximizing the views over Loch Evelix.

Comments?

1.  The new routing is an improvement.  The quirky "Two Holes for the Price of One!" old 4 and 5 fit better slightly later into the round.  Eliminating the old 9-12 slog of 3 fairly pedestrian "par" 5's punctuated by a "3" works better with the elimination of the old 12.  The removal of the old 12 also allows for a new(?) split fairway on the old 9 (now 5).  They've also moved the tee (I think) on gthe old 8 (now 11--the Cape hole across the Loch).  It has become a slightly goofy hole (6-iron/9-iron) or drive the green...).  The course flows better, but just a little bit.  Still too higgledy piggledy for my liking.

2.  The new holes are a net improvement.  The new 12 is potentially a good hole but it needs a lot more work--more clearing of the scrub by the edge of the Loch, more subtle treatment of the bunkers at the outside "elbow" of the dogleg.  A newly laid green.  13 is a neat short hole, but still a bit young.  It should mature.  As for 14, it is "better" as a 5 than a 4 in that the green, with a vertical spine makes a wedge approach difficult (much less a 5 iron!), and the new bunkering in the new driving area is good.  However........., I really miss the old 13th.  217 yards of seeming impossibility.  Only a world class iron shot would hold the front of the green, and yet, if you were (inevitably), long or short, the mini-punchbowl of the green front would offfer potential salvation.  I also liked the idea of routing away from the eye-candy (the Loch) towards the center of the course.  The new 13th is prettier, but is it better?  Don't know.

3.  The middle of the course now does look more like Muirfield, but is that a good thing?  Skibo has always skirted on the edge of silliness with the extent and depth of its rough.  It is desparately near that edge now.  The essence of links golf is NOT "hit it straight or you are screwed!"  At least IMHO.

4.  Love the new Clubhouse.

Overall.........

....In the past I've defended Skibo against the slings and arrows of the purists/sceptics, and will continue to do so.  It's a very good golf course--better than Brora as a 2nd course if you are visting the Highlands.  Better than most golf courses built in the last 10-15 years.  But, it's not that much better than Brora or Golspie, or even the Struie course at Dornoch, and if you can't get on when you are there, don't despair.  Skibo is an experience, but it is not a life-changing one.  Dornoch is, and Brora can be.

There is a difference here that I find hard to measure with any mathematical calculations...........

[BCrosby]

Rich -

Thanks for the update. I skipped Skibo the last time I was in Dornoch. Doesn't sounds like there is any reason to change my routine.

Why are there so few really good new courses in Scotland? I can think of Kingsbarns. Would you include Loch Lomond? But there aren't many other candidates.

I ask because it sounds like even the best new courses barely match the quality of second tier older courses (Brora, for example). That strikes me as very odd. The designers of these new courses have the benefit of (i) accumulated wisdom gleaned from growing up on dozens of great, older Scottish courses, and (ii) a palette of reasonably linksy land (e.g. Skibo).

Why the dearth of great new courses in Scotland? Is it just a matter of talent? Money?

Bob

P.S. The status of new Scottish courses is even more odd when contrasted with the US. I can think of ten or so courses built in the US in the last 25 years that deserve to rank among the best here. I can think of one (Kingsbarnes) in Scotland.

[David_Tepper]

Rich-

Thanks for the comprehesive review & update. What is the public access to the Skibo course these days? A friend of mine recently contacted the Carnegie Club and was told that the course was not available on a daily fee basis. You either had to be a Carnegie Club member or be staying at Skibo to play the course. What is your understanding of the situation?
Thanks again.

DT

[mikes1160]

Rich,

Played Skibo in '01 while on business (actually did a photo shoot at the course). The re-routing sounds like a change for the better - the front side was too tight along the Firth and the gorse practically choked some of the holes. Is Jock still maintaining the course with his son? Wonderful man....

DT - I think you got it right in terms of access

[TEPaul]

Rich:

I was going to comment and say that it seems to me your architectural analysis and commentary of the changes at the Skibo Castle course seems absolutely brilliant particularly since I don't know one damn thing about Skibo Castle course (or most anything else about architecture in Scotland).

Matter of fact, I was beginning to get concerned about the changes to the clubhouse and then it occured to me I might have been thinking of the Loch Lomond clubhouse---or perhaps even that the Skibo Castle course and Loch Lomond course are one and the same. So I decided it'd be better if I just shut my big mouth!

You make sure they preserve that Loch Lomond clubhouse, though, or I'll come over there and let you have it. That clubhouse--Ross Dhu (or Du or Dew or Do, or scubby-do) was rented by my grandfather in the summer for many years and because of that fact alone it needs to be completely preserved! And if it isn't I'm going to personally form this "Society for the preservation of archtiecture" Tom MacWood keeps suggesting and I'm gonna make sure that "Society" sues the asses off whoever made any architectural changes to that clubhouse!  

[David_Tepper]

TEPaul-

FYI, Loch Lomond is not far from Glasgow and the Carnegie Club/Skibo Castle is about 3 miles from Dornoch, so these are two separate and very distinct properties about 200 miles apart.  The Loch Lomond clubhouse and course is the property of Lyle Anderson. I cannot imagine him making any changes to the clubhouse building there, but one never knows.

DT

[John_Cullum]

Why are there so few really good new courses in Scotland?

Because its filled with Scots.

[ForkaB]

Bob

Scotland actually isn't that bad vis a vis new courses.  Kingsbarns, Loch Lomond, Skibo, Dundonald, Craighead are all very good in their own ways. Given that the country is only the size and population of Indiana, and already boasts a highly disproportionate number of truly "great" golf courses, I do not think there is matter for concern.  Yet........

David

Access to Skibo remains variable.  Probably less variable than in the De Savary days.

TEP

Surely one of your great-grandfathers also used to spend time at Skibo with AC himself?  BTW, did you know that it was himself who punted up $200K to fund the construction of Yale?

Mikes116023skidoo

The two holes tight by the Firth remain.  As does Jock, although I saw him more at RDGC than Skibo last week.  Gary Gruber is the new super, and should do Skibo well.

[SPDB]

I've finally got Tom Paul beat on the swell scale. My ancestors built Rossdhu (and its replacement, the current Rossdhu). Loch Lomond is the ancestral home of Clan Colquhoun.

"Si je puis"

 

[Tom_Doak]

Rich:

Was there any reason that they didn't route the course that way to begin with, or did they just think of a better alternative after several years of playing it?

[ForkaB]

Tom

I think they always wanted to do the new/revised 12-14 holes/routing, but had permitting problems due to the proximity to the Loch.  In terms of changing the order of play of the holes, that could have been done with the old layout.  My guess is that they got enough criticism for the 5,5,3,5 routing of the old 9-12 to contemplate possible changes.  But, this is mostly speculation.

Maybe we can ask Donald S. if he comes to the 2005 GCA "Ryder Cup" as is hoped.

[TEPaul]

Sean:

Jeez, that's impressive. Obviously my ancestors could only manage to rent Ross-Scooby-du when your ancestors were off doing something even sweller! Next time I see you remind me I do need to suck up to you or at least your ancestors!  

All in all this is pretty depressing though. Just think about it, they're letting all that hoi polloi into our old house!  

[TEPaul]

"TEP
Surely one of your great-grandfathers also used to spend time at Skibo with AC himself?  BTW, did you know that it was himself who punted up $200K to fund the construction of Yale?"

Rich:

Nope, I don't think one of my two dozen grandfathers actually knew AC, but you never know. The closest I ever got to AC was working for your California Senator John Tunney in his campaign--but perhaps you're too young to remember that. Tunney's great grandfather was AC! How about that combo--the son of the granddaughter of AC and the son of World heavy-weight boxing champion Gene Tunney.

That's interesting that AC put up that kind of money for the construction of Yale---nice bit of historic info there--you little architectural genius!!

Did you know that Gene Tunney taught Shakespeare at Yale? Don't consider that a joke--Gene Tunney had some kind of mind on him---one of the most extraordinary examples of a photographic memory I've ever seen!

[BCrosby]

How did we get from Skibo to Gene Tunney teaching Shakespeare at Yale? Never mind. I don't really want to know.

Threads like this are why I love GCA. Great stuff.

Bob

[TEPaul]

"How did we get from Skibo to Gene Tunney teaching Shakespeare at Yale? Never mind. I don't really want to know."

Bob;

It's pretty obvious isn't it? This website has this guy TEPaul on it who has no earthly idea how to stick to any subject! I guess he just feels like it's not all that interesting to be sticky all the time.

[ForkaB]

Tom

I did know that GT did some teaching at Yale (inverted noblesse oblige and all that....), but I am ASTOUNDED to learn that none of the extended Paul clan ever met AC!  Surely this was not some sort of petty Pittsburgh/Philadelphia feud?  Even if so, I was always led to believe that (particularly in the good old days of the Robber Barons) money talked.  Have I been misinformed?

PS--in the article I recently read regarding Carnegie's funding of Yale, it said that he did so because (I paraphrase):  "There is no pastime nobler in the world than golf."  He must have been getting on in years when he said that.............

[Mike Hendren]

IF DONALD STEELE CAN RE-DO SKIBO, WHY CAN'T HE GO BACK AND CORRECT THE TRAVESTY AT THE EDEN?

Mike

[ForkaB]

IF DONALD STEELE CAN RE-DO SKIBO, WHY CAN'T HE GO BACK AND CORRECT THE TRAVESTY AT THE EDEN?

Mike

Maybe because the Links Trust hasn't asked him to?  Maybe they haven't asked him to because they know that once they took away the good linksland from the Eden to build a driving range and gave Steele some crap lowland to add 7 new holes, they were onto a loser and as much or more at fault than he was.  Just wondering.........

[Mike Hendren]

Rich,

That is a well-reasoned and better balanced post and I must admit my vendetta might be misdirected.  

Nonethless, the new holes are amateurish at best, pond or no pond.   Colt and the locals, not to mentioned visitors such as yours truly who put their first tee ever in Scottish soil on number one, deserve better.  To stand with one's back to the estuary and view the magnificant criss-crossing short holes on the front is as good as it gets.  

I'd be for plowing the new holes under but for the fact that they highlight the brilliance of the originals.

I do not understand how anyone who loves the game would not move to rectify this TRAVESTY given the opportunity.

Also, don't get me started on the Links Trust.  After a morning round over The Old Course and a bite of lunch back at The Dunvegan, I showed up at the clubhouse serving The New Course at 3:00 p.m., figuring I could easily get in 18 before sunset around 6:00 p.m.  I was adivsed that the starter had gone home and that I could therefore not tee off.  Three hours of daylight and nary a golfer in site.  Respectfully, I walked away but to this day wished I had headed over to the first tee and played away.  

Mike

[TEPaul]

Rich:

I don't know that the Paul clan didn't truck with Andrew Carnegie, maybe they did, I only said I didn't know anything in particular. Andrew Carnegie was a partner of the Fricks and  my stepmother from NY did truck around with them, that's for sure. The Fricks and the Phipps (other partners of Carnegie's) were related or originally in business together and my Dad played a lot of golf with Ogden Phipps (he ran the Jockey club and pretty much controlled American thoroughbred racing! Plus he was the partriach of the Phipps family company known as Bessemer---eg the name of the Carnegie steel making process!).

Some of those super industrialists and mega money people like the Rockefellers, Carnegies and the Astors were sort of in their own worlds, though. Anyway, Andrew Carnegie was a very serious minded man who may not have liked hanging around with a bunch of drunks like many in the Paul family were. Plus Carnegie gave away thousands of organs and my family would've thought that foolishly religious or something and not the kind of guy they wanted to hang around with.

Wait a minute, I'm losing my mind---of course the Pauls knew the Carnegies. I once asked my Dad why he named me Tom and he said he thought he either named me after the son of his parent's groom, Tommy Noonan, or after his old friend from before and after the war in his St Augustine days, Tom Carnegie.  Matter of fact when my father and mother heard about the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor they were with Tom Carnegie at that island in Georgia the Carnegie's owned---Cumberland Island.

I asked my mother in the last few years if she knew if I was actually named after Tom Carnegie and she said "I'd never name any son of mine, not even you, after a drunk like that!"

Then she told me Tom Carnegie was such a bad drunk that one day back then he actually lit a fire on the living room floor instead of the fireplace and burned the house down including himself!

Matter of fact, my wife and I took a tour of Cumberland Island about a year ago---a most interesting and beautiful but sort of spooky place. The island is now controlled by the US Park Service and the old mansion is still there but in ruins in a semi burned state. The lady Park ranger who gave a group of us tourists a tour of it said the Park Service decided to just keep it like that in a state sort of "locked in a time past".

This lady Park ranger giving the tour was going on about what amazing and wonderful people the Carnegies were. She also happened to be on the boat back to the mainland so I went up to her and told her about my mother and father being there with Tom Carnegie on Dec 7 1941 and I also told her that my mother said Tom Carnegie was probably the biggest drunk she ever knew, which I guaranteed the lady Park Ranger is really saying something.

That lady Park Ranger looked at me and said; "Oh my, we knew that but we sure as shootin' don't tell the public that!"

I said the drunken sot probably burned that mansion down and she said; "That is entirely possible!"

So anyway, there's another long post about a bunch of stuff nobody on here cares about or wants to hear and it's certainly nothing at all to do with golf course architecture!

But again, nice analysis of the changes at Skibo Castle, Rich! Did Andrew Carnegie really build or own that? If he did I guess he must not have felt comfortable letting his son or grandson Tom Carnegie come over there or that place would probably still be a burnt out ruin now!

[SPDB]

Tom - Wasn't Drexel & Co. (later associated with J.S. Morgan & Co.) bankers to Carnegie/US Steel?

[TEPaul]

Sean:

I don't know if Drexel & Co were bankers to Carnegie and US Steel--maybe they were. Drexel & Co, or A.J. Drexel was one of America's primary "financiers" in the old fashioned sense of the word. Drexel & Co wasn't just associated with J.P. Morgan and Morgan and Co., A.J Drexel basically made J.P Morgan what he became and frankly A.J Drexel was basically the only man in the world who J.P Morgan always answered to. There's a book out of a few years ago about the mysterious Anthony John Drexel---it's called "The Man Who Made Wall Street".  

[ForkaB]

Thanks, Tommy.  I knew I could count on you for a good story or two!

Yes, Carnegie built (actually rebuilt) Skibo Castle, and it was his summer home up until 1914.  He called it "Heaven on earth" and also "Frick's little gift to me!"  The latter arose from the fact that the $2 million deposit that Frick and Phipps forfeited to him in their failed attempt to buy AC out in the late 1890's essentially funded Skibo!

Carnegie got the golf bug while at Skibo, but felt he was not good enough to play at Dornoch, so he had John Sutherland, (the RDGC Secretary and the person probably most responsible for the quality of that course today) build him a 9-hole course out by the Castle so he could practice.  It occupied the land at the middle of the course (where the new holes have been built this year), and a few of the bunkers and other features remain.

As for Tom Carnegie the drunken arsonist, he was probably AC's nephew, as Carnegie's brother Tom was a partner with Frick in Carnegie Steel.  Carnegie had only one child, a daughter (Margaret), who owned Skibo up to 1981.  I played a round at Dornoch in full Arab regalia that summer when it was up for sale to give the locals a fright, and it worked!

Now here's the interesting bit.........

The original Skibo clubhouse burned down just prior to WWII.  Do you think that just maybe young Tom was staying out there with his Cousin Margaret around that time............

[TEPaul]

"I played a round at Dornoch in full Arab regalia that summer when it was up for sale to give the locals a fright, and it worked!"

Rich:

I just know I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night and start laughing about that all over again.

"Now here's the interesting bit.........
The original Skibo clubhouse burned down just prior to WWII.  Do you think that just maybe young Tom was staying out there with his Cousin Margaret around that time............"

As that US Park Ranger from Cumberland Island said to me when I told her about Tom Carnegie and that burned out mansion on the island.

"That's entirely possible!"

[BCrosby]

Tom -

Did you know Miss Lucy on Cumberland? She was a Carnegie and lived alone on the island among a menagerie of wild animals she collected. (My guess is that she was your namesake's brother or cousin.) At Greyfield Inn there is a portrait of her in the library as a young woman. In the portrait she is holding a rifle and wearing an ammo belt. She was fall to your knees gorgeous.

My family was visiting the Fergusons at Greyfield in the late 60's and I was fortunate enough to spend an afternoon with the mysterious Lucy in her cabin. (How that happened is a long story.) She was very old at the time but still beautiful. She told me island stories for hours.

She told me that Dungeness(sp?) burned down in the '50's because whichever Carnegie lived there would not let the locals from Fernandina hunt, fish or put their moonshine stills on Cumberland. So one night after the Carnegies had left for the summer, they torched the place. There was nothing to fight the fire with, so Lucy and the rest of the family still on the island stood around all night and watched the mansion burn.

Given local sensitivities, I suspect that story is one the park ranger does not want to tell.

You are right about Dunguness being spooky. But you should have seen it circa 1969 before walls started collapsing. There was a stuffed marlin that had fallen off the wall into the indoor pool. Through the murky green water a huge eye stared back at you.... There were rusting limosines in a shed with the keys still in the ignition...Under a tree we found old badminton rackets.

But back to golf architecture. There was once a golf course on Cumberland. One of its fairways is now used as the landing strip. I was told that the Carnegies brought in "a Scot" to do it in the teens. No one knows much about what it looked like, though you can still see the outlines of hole corridors through some of the pines. My guess - and I don't think this is a crazy guess - is that Walter Travis laid out the course at the same time he did the Jekyl Island course just a couple of islands north.

Cumberland Island is a very special place. You brought back lots of memories.

Bob

P.S. The Dunguness mansion was built on the site of a mansion originally built by that old reprobate Lighthorse Lee. By reputation Lee's original place was a center for smuggling, booze, women and gambling. I suspect that when the Presbyterian Carnegies arrived the action was cranked down a couple of notches. Maybe the locals never forgave them. Maybe that is really why they finally torched Dunguness.

 

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