[Mark_Fine]

If you could play a series of Dick Wilson or RT Jones Sr. courses which would you choose?  

[TEPaul]

Wilson

[Brad Klein]

Depends if it's Hawaii or Ketterling, Ohio

[Mark_Fine]

Design-wise do you favor Jones or Wilson.  Their styles had many similarities?  

[Willie_Dow]

Hi Mark
How can you say that Dick Wilson and RT have similar design characteristics?
Name your comparisons, I look at Bidermann vs Oakland Hills, vs Abaco & Baltusrol, yes they are remakes but the relationship designwise is out of character.
Give me the courses you are comparing as similar.
Willie

[T_MacWood]

Trent Jones had such a long career its difficult to pin a single stereotypical style upon him. His early work is very much in the Stanley Thompson vain, and from what I've seen and played is quite good. Similarly, later Wilson courses were often carried out by his associates and were not quite up to his early work. At their creative peak I'd give the edge to RTJ, for consistancy I'd go with Wilson.

[TEPaul]

Willie:

I can name some comparisons and some contrasts between Dick Wilson and RTJ. In the 1950s and 1960s both architects---who were probably the major players in golf architecture at that time and consequently architecture's major competitors got into a few type and stylistic similarities. The late '50s and '60s was the era of big----bigger, longer golf courses, longer tees, bigger scale and most interestingly some really, REALLY big greens.

The total green square footage as well as a few green examples of Wilson's Meadowbrook and RTJ's London Hunt, as examples, is remarkable and probably not coincidence. Wilson's Deepdale, in the same era, however, is very different, though, and might be some reason he was more varied and more interesting because of that!

[Willie_Dow]

Yes Tom - as you say inconsistancy is a good trademark!

RT fit in to the modern era with his redesign concepts.  I don't think Dick Wilson had this in his mindset.  He was more consistant.

[TEPaul]

The early era of the modern age in America (early 1950s to mid 1960s) seems to have been dominated by Dick Wilson and RTJ. The rest of the architects such as William Gordon were bit players in comparison, it seems. Were Wilson and RTJ in that era heavy-weights in architectural quality or did they basically benefit from lack of competition in America?

[Mark_Fine]

Willie,
Tom has covered a few of the similarities and yes of course there were differences.  Both liked water as a hazard and often built ponds and lakes in their designs.  Both liked large greens and the tougher pin positions were often only accessible with an aerial approach (sure there are exceptions).  I take it when you talk about Oakland Hills you are refering to Jones renovation of the course, not the original Ross design?  

I tend to feel the best of Wilson's designs had more character and charm than the best of Jones.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, Jones built many "great tests of golf" but in my opinion they are not necessarily "great golf" courses.  

I put Gordon in a lower class than both of these guys.  He was not nearly as creative and many of his designs were quite vanilla.
Mark

[Willie_Dow]

Tom Paul
My thoughts about that time were that the club did its thing.
Little thought was to higher an architect.
At Philadelphia Country it was Farnham, or at Merion - Valentine - who was at Gulph Mills ?
This was the time for change!  And we have it to deal with!

[Willie_Dow]

Yes - Mark
I concur with your thoughts.  I go back to a rememberance factor.  Can you remember the course ??
Willie

[TEPaul]

"This was the time for change!  And we have it to deal with!"

Willie:

Truer words could hardly be said. Yes we do have it to deal with and it seems like we have been for about 10 or so years now and the flood-gates are still not completely open.

'This was a time for change'. Again, that's precisely what it was. It had it's time, it was probably completely natural and normal in that time and one of the real on-going problems with this website and perhaps with too many in our time is to gratuitously BLAME that time and those of that time for the changes they made. I just can't help but thinking if my father could live in the times I do he'd feel as I do but if I lived in the times he did I'd probably feel as he did. It's irony---only in retrospect.  

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()