Most Original or Radical GCA Idea of All Time?

[Jeff_Brauer]

I thought I would turn around Jason's thread to ask the same question another way.....

For its time, what was most Original or Radical GCA Idea of All Time?  Reading Cornish and Graves, I recall that doglegs, separate tees, courses away from the seaside, etc. were all radical departures from what went before.

As far as individual holes or features, the first things that come to mind are:

MacKenzie's Sitwell Park Super Contoured Green and 16th at Cypress Point

CB MacDonald's Lido Hole (with Cape Hole not far behind)

Alison's Double Green system in Japan.

Pine Valley's Double Green

Whoever used two separate tees, widely spaced for one hole to change its playing characteristics

C and C's huge, blind, par 3 green at Friar's Head.

First large scale use of lakes, such as in Florida

First Desert CourseDesmond Muirhead's Symbolism, although I hate to focus this thread on anything that is gimmicky.



What have I missed and what do you think were original for its time?

[BCrosby]

Holes 4,5,6,9,10,11,12,13 and 18 at ANGC circa 1935.

Bob

[John_Conley]

Joel Goldstrand's reversible "Double Eagle" in Eagle Bend, Mn.

[BCrosby]

Holes 14 and 15 at N. Berwick.

Holes 5 and 14 at Cuscowilla.

[TEPaul]

In the broad scheme of things in the entire evolution of architecture it very well may've been C.B. Macdonald's original and radical idea to build a golf course that was a composite of actual and conceptual copies of European holes and design principles at NGLA. It certainly got the attention of architects and burgeoning architects on both sides. It was all for the dedicted purpose of building the first course in the USA of 18 really good holes---a pretty radical and original idea for that time for sure!

[Mike_Young]

PD building TPC Jacksonville in a swamp

[Steve Lang]

 

How about Par 3 courses???

Aren't most of those ideas just the result of viewing the ground available with an experienced eye trying to reconcile options?

Is NGLA in its time, really any different than Tour 18 in its?

[A_Clay_Man]

Jeff, While it NLE, the original tenth hole at BWR, was radical. A steep final climb, that resembles as close to vertical, I have ever climbed to the flatest green, ever seen.

 It was so radical, it was chopped down 34' feet.

I'm also of the belief that chopping-up that original masterpeice should qualify as the MOST radical thing that ever happened in GCA.

What a pity!

[Bill Gayne]

The road hole at St. Andrews has to be high on the list. Everything from the tee shot over the railroad shed now the hotel to the bunkering around the green and the green itself.

[ForkaB]

OK, so this hasn't been built yet, but.......

How about the "Moe Norman" hole?

Tee off into a HHA sort of area with the only port of refuge a small raised and flat "green" sort of area 150 yards from the tee, but it is NOT a green!  No, it's the only bit of "fairway" for 150 yards on any side.  If you can hit that fairway/green you have a relatively simple 230 yard carry over a stream to a punchbowl green, with more gunge outside the bowl.  Moe would play it 8-iron/3-wood, and would expect a birdie (assuming he didn't hole his 2nd...).

How would you play it?

[TEPaul]

Rich:

Did you hear the story of Moe teeing off on the first hole of a tournament with a few world reknowned pros and to their amazement Moe took out his driver on a hole with a semi-blind pond and a bridge across it just after they all layed up in front of the pond. Moe's driver hit the bridge and bounced across it to the fairway on the other side. When they asked Moe if he knew this was not a driver hole he said;

"That's what the bridge is for, that's what the bridge is for!"

[ForkaB]

Tom

Like all others on this site, I know that story.  And, for all I konw, it could have been said of you, if you weren't so pitifully short off the tee......

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff,

You're going to have to take "Alison's double green system" off your list, because it wasn't Alison's system.

Hirono, Kawana and the original Tokyo Golf Club were all designed and built with one green per hole.  The alternate greens were introduced at Tokyo Golf Club just after World War II, by an American general who had been stationed in Atlanta, where apparently some courses had "winter" and "summer" greens.  The clubs in Tokyo were struggling to keep their greens alive in the summer, so the general suggested they build "summer" greens with korai grass.

When they started building courses in large numbers in the 1960's, everyone looked to Tokyo Golf Club, and all those new courses were built with the "two green" system.  Hundreds of them!  Even in Sapporo, which has the same climate as Traverse City, they built two bentgrass greens side by side!

[RJ_Daley]

Bunker in the middle of green at Riviera par 3, (6th?)

Island green Sawgrass

Radical GCA construction idea; the first draining a swamp or dredging a channel to fill one in to route a course in such an area.  Or, along those lines, digging a lake to get shaping material.

[BCrosby]

Tom Doak -

I recently found an aerial of East Lake taken in the late 40's that shows every green was double. The picture was taken in the winter. One half of each green is dormant, the other half alive.

My guess is that George Cobb's changes in the '60's for the Ryder Cup included the removal of EL's double greens. By then bents were availble that would survive the summer heat.

Most courses in the SE went through similar renovations at the time.

Bob

P.S. People forget how rough the early Bermuda greens were. Charlie Harrison, a fine amateur player and friend of Bobby Jones, was recently quoted in the Atlanta paper as saying that putting on Bermuda in the '30's was like putting across grape vines.  

[wsmorrison]

Bob,

Have you spoken to Barb Hall at the Hagley regarding the 5 aerials they have of East Lake?  I believe they were all taken at the same time, in the mid 1930s.  She can send you things by mail.  But if the weather stays this warm, you should come back up to see the Hagley and bring your clubs  

[BCrosby]

Wayne -

I plan on getting in touch with her soon. The picture of EL I found was in an old Ga. Golf Journal and credited to the Hagley.

Bob

[A_Clay_Man]

How about Neveille's hiring of an artist to design the 14th green at Pebble Beach?

Was that radical?

[BCrosby]

If the question is the single, greatest GCA idea of all time - if we are limited to one choice - I think that choice is easy:

The Redan.

Bob

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

My bad.

Upon reflection, I would have to agree with TEPaul - the idea of 18 great holes would have to trump the idea for any one hole or feature as being the most original.

It also seems to have sort of set the American golf design mindset up.  Whereas GBI accepted many holes as they fit dramatic land, in America, we were doing to do what it took to make the greatest golf courses in the world,  no?

[T_MacWood]

Japan's two green system began at Kasumigaseki in the mid-30's after Alison and Viscount Soma's experimental bentgrass greens failed.

Paton and Low's planting of a bunker in the middle of the 4th fairway at Woking.

[Andy Hughes]

If the question is the single, greatest GCA idea of all time - if we are limited to one choice - I think that choice is easy:
The Redan.

Was the Redan actually an original idea, or did the hole just sorta evolve/happen?  

[John_Cullum]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned that idiotic thing at Cour d'alene.

[BCrosby]

Andy -

I think it extremely unlikely that The Redan just happened. Someone back in the dim mists of time knew exactly what they were doing.

Bob
 

[frank_D]

For its time, what was most Original or Radical GCA Idea of All Time?  

brother Jeff_Brauer

it seems to me the "firsts" (ie  installation of an irrigation system, golf under lights to play at night, the GOLF CART (ugh), building residential homes purposely on the course, the first PUBLIC course design, the modern lawn mower, etc) would qualify as either radical or original architecturally influenced ideas