Cypress Point Golf Course
I approach this necessarily detailed response to criticism of one matter I raised in my article with the deep reverence and admiration I've held for Dr, Alister Mackenzie's work for over 45 years - I called him 'a course routing genius' - in that article, and that's just one of his attributes, for which, as other have noted, he displayed a healthy egoism and some 'exclusivity' in his possession of input into much of his design work.
Nothing I wrote in that article was therefore intended to disparage Alister Mackenzie¡'s work in his final Cypress Point creation. So let me state here my personal estimation of the situation quite clearly:
Cypress Point as designed and looked at today and through its history since construction is Alister Mackenzie's - its final routing, fashioning, its subtleties, grandeur, diverse strategic values and sheer beauty. (However, let's be open about this, can we? Are we going to assume that Robert Hunter Jnr. entrusted by Mackenzie to essentially control its construction program, or his father, then Mackenzie's partner, who was highly respected by Mackenzie as a course designer, and who worked closely with him in California at the time, or several others, fine golfers some of them, and close to the project, including Marion Hollins - played no part in the 'give-and-take' thrust of design ideas normal with any architect's on-site endeavours, no matter how great he is?)
Which brings me to the course routing situation. No, I personally have not seen Seth Raynor's original plan for the course, but it was clearly described in a detailed way to a group of us in 1978 by Bill Edgar (W.A. Edgar, 1909-1997), and I again raised the subject with him in 1990, when his astute golfing mind and memory continued to be sharp and clear.
Bill Edgar had studied a copy of Raynor's plan of Cypress Point with teammates, in a private home in Colorado in 1974 (Colorado Springs I think, for you sleuths), when he represented Australia in an international seniors teams' event. Bill was a great and thorough gentleman, a fine, always amateur golfer, a decorated Australian, and had a deep interest in golf with a scythe-like analytic mind for golf holes wherever. This is what I personally recall from Bill's discussion of the plan he'd studied, because it fascinated me (I wrote up notes that evening):
*The drawing was in two colours - black and red pencil, and was signed;
*There were no contours shown, but land features, treestands and the coastline and (then) roads were drawn;
*It carried the date X'24, and Bill noted that the use of a Latin numeral was surely uncommon with most people at that time, and suggested that Raynor was a man of letters;
*There were several yardage dimensions shown on critical land-use components;
*That it was apparently agreed in the 1974 discussions with teammates familiar with Cypress Point that Raynor seemed to have placed the clubhouse on a ledge seaward off the top of the knoll, allowing the 18th green to be quite a lot higher than Mackenzie's final location for it, and influencing the opening tees also;
*The drawing clearly showed a similar 14th, the par-3 15th, 16 as a short par-4 with a narrow shute driveline, then open, towards the 18th fairway, but the green shown where it still is;
*Holes 17 and 18 were broadly planned as at present, but Hole 18 was longer - perhaps 395 yards;
*That except in detail of some par values and hole extents, the course plan by Raynor was remarkably like the final Mackenzie layout in the corridors and zones used.
This clear description by a fine, interested golfer was the basis for my suggestion that we might be a little cautious in contending that Mackenzie paid absolutely no attention to Raynor¡¦s routing plan (which he clearly knew well) in devising his own for this fantastic site. My comment was simply intended to respond to a claim in this forum that it was only Mackenzie who had any input in Cypress Point's somewhat unusual layout. The majesty of Mackenzie's vision for how the site was exploited was never queried.
But we know that Marion Hollins discussed Raynor's plans with Mackenzie; we know Samuel Morse, Hollins and others were sufficiently happy with the Raynor layout that it may have been implemented had he not died; we know from Mackenzie himself that Raynor had 'discovered' Hole 16's sublime natural context for a golf hole, had discussed use of it with Hollins, and, by inference anyway, the complexion of the routing jigsaw around that specific situation, both ways, in the coastline format available.
Seth Raynor is acknowledged as a fine course routing designer. Before Bill Edgar's close description to us of the plan he'd pored over with golfing friends in Colorado, I had scant knowledge of Raynor's work, but had been an enthusiastic student of Mackenzie's oeuvre over many years already. So it intrigued me that some 2-year earlier plan seems to have shown a Cypress Point layout essentially similar to what was eventually realized on the point, and obviously it sticks in the memory of an architect with my deep love and interest in golf courses going back 45 years.
There has been a wealth of discussion generated on another forum about the simple cautionary comment I added to a far longer article about course routing matters. Some contributors are knowledgably open in their reaction to that comment, and sensibly do not automatically preclude a broader picture of Cypress Point's genesis, now shrouded in time.
Whatever the substance of the Raynor plan for Cypress Point, a copy of it (possibly onetime in the possession of Marion Hollins?) definitely still existed in 1974, was studied then, and discussed with us over tea at Commonwealth Golf Club in 1978 by a great golfing gentleman not given to prevarication or exaggeration. I have no reason to think it does not still exist.
Tony Cashmore
http://www.cashmoredesign.com
This thread is the reason why GCA is so great. People from all over the world connected only by enthusiasm for the design (or lack thereof) of men many of who have been dead for decades and their work tweaked to the point that they would be unrecognizable to the original architect/artist. Again it is fascinating and the Raynor vs. Doctor Mac at CPC may be the best mystery of the bunch. The main characters among the best we have to study with Hollins, Raynor, Morse, MacKenzie, etc. The mystery of the routing of Cypress Point is the holy grail of this kind of discussion, I can’t think of a course, architect or founder with more intrigue. Whatever happened to Cashmore and were attempts made to find the lost Raynor design in Colorado?
Another good summary below:
Cypress Point was then raised as an example of Mackenzie, that great course routing genius, making the most of a fabulous site – a mix of pine forests, great eroded sand flashes, jutting cliffs into the sea, and not caring about back-to-back par 5’s and par 3’s, because that’s what the site yielded most naturally. Let’s be a little careful here, however, and give credit where it’s due: the essential routing for Cypress Point was undertaken by Seth Raynor in September and October 1924, nearly two years before Mackenzie was asked by Samuel Morse, (the real estate developer of much of the Peninsula), on Seth Raynor’s untimely death, to finalize the golf course design on the point. Raynor’s routing plan (dated X.’24) shows that Mackenzie changed little in his plan, although the famous Hole 16 was a risk-what-you-dare 320 yard par-4 playing from tees further back and hugging the inner coast, the drive more towards the 18th hole. And the 18th green seems to be about up towards where the clubhouse now is – a hole of some 390 yards instead of the Mackenzie – realized 345 yards par-4. (Did Mackenzie ’compromise’ Hole 18’s length on instruction from the fledgling club’s board about relocating Raynor’s original clubhouse site, nearer the sea, up to the crown of the hill?)