RTJ Senior - positives

[Mark_Rowlinson]

James Edwards's thread about Mijas is one of the few I've encountered on this site which has something positive to say about a course designed by Robert Trent Jones Senior.  The others have been praises of Spyglass Hill.  My own experience of his courses is very limited:

Stockley Park (near Heathrow Airport) - a very worthwhile use of an otherwise fairly useless piece of land which is a valuable asset in many ways, especially as a green space for local residents and workers who can use its footpaths, cycle tracks and horse paths without danger from or interfering with the golfers who pit their wits against his (in my opinion) cunning design.

Moor Allerton - a sprawling and very characterless meadowland complex north of Leeds built on the profits of selling their previous Mackenzie course adjoining Sand Moor and Moortown for housing development.

Bercuit - a peculiar course in a number of disconnected styles on a hilly site near Brussels, once a tour stop, but no longer.  A friendly place but a course which is architecturally neither flesh nor fowl.

Which are his good courses?  How many of them are great?  

[PThomas]

I played Champions In Ohio a few months ago and found it to be a good test regarding some demanding shotmaking

[Tom_Doak]

Mark:

My favorite courses by Mr. Jones would include (in no particular order):  Spyglass Hill, Peachtree, The Dunes G & BC in Myrtle Beach, and Firestone (North).  I believe Mr. Jones picked the first three among his own favorites, along with Valderrama (which I've never seen) and the Cashen course at Ballybunion (which I find interesting, but flawed).

His lasting contribution was simply to expand the business both in America and then around the world, and to raise the standard of golf course construction and design.  Golf wouldn't have boomed as it did after W.W. II if Mr. Jones had not been prepared to take on so many projects.

I got to spend a couple of days with him after I got out of school, and on a personal level, he was fascinating to talk to.  He was the last link to the Golden Age ... about the only person I ever spoke to who actually knew Stanley Thompson and Donald Ross and Alister MacKenzie (whom he met at Bayside Links in 1930 while Jones was a student at Cornell).  I am grateful that I did get to spend those couple of days visiting with him.

[TEPaul]

I just went back up to a middle era course of RTJ Sr's where I had my best success as a golfer to talk to them about the Maintenance Meld, and I realized the architectural interest of it. It's the London Hunt Club in London Ontario.

It's basically in the RTJ "BIG" era---enormous greens etc. But I realized looking at if carefully that that golf course and those greens and green-end bunkering arrangements actually offer far more potential strategies than many of the really good Golden Age courses we talk about and praise on here all the time.

London Hunt's architecture is a curious combination of the old and the new, at least strategically or optionally---and that, in my opinion, makes the course and certainly RTJ very interesting.

[Tommy Williamsen]

Mark,  RTJ's work is so vast and varied that is quite difficult to either love or hate him.  I would list the following as my favorite to play, not necessarily his best or most difficult.
Golden Horshoe (Gold)
Peachtree
Wilmington South
Crumpin Fox
Boyne Highlands (Heather)
Point O'Woods
Treetops (Jones)
Firestone (North)
Greenville CC (Chanticleer)
Ballybunion (Cashen)
Royal Dar es Salaam Morocco (Red)
Valderama

[Craig Van Egmond]

I think the big positive that RTJ Sr brought to the table wasn't necessarily about his golf courses but that he made it a legitimate profession. So many of the guys that proceeded him were rich guys or people for who golf architecture was a side thing.

He was really the first GCA who normal people heard of and raised the standard for the fees that GCA's got paid. Of course Fazio and Nicklaus blew the whole pay thing out of whack.

Hard par, easy bogey.

[Pete Lavallee]

We have 3 RTJ Sr course here in So. Cal., Valencia where Des Smythe (sp?) recently won on the Senior Tour, also the site of Tiger's only playoff loss to Billy Mayfair. It used to allow public access until the Japanese bought it; I would welcome a return game there. Pauma Valley is located 40 miles east of San Diego and was once rated in the state's Top 20. It is a man sized course in a secluded valley; a favorite winter get away. We also have the SCGA Members course near Temecula an hour north of San Diego. Another large layout both in terms of total acreage and green and tee size. All three are well designed in the heroic rather than stategic style, and as Craig said, offer a hard par or easy bogey. Although I'm not really partial to this style of architecture, I must admit that I have always enjoyed a round at these courses and would return for the test it puts on one's game.

[TEPaul]

Mark:

I was thinking of another thing about this thread and question of yours on the fact that RTJ Sr's architecture is not that popular on a website like this and why that might be.

As I said about the London Hunt Club---eg it really is very interesting to play in the way it's designed and the optional possibilities about it's architecture and I see no reason why anyone on here would not pick up on that. One of the things, though, that may draw RTJ's courses down in the opinions of those on here is his courses really don't have much of any of that real natural look to them the way so many of the older courses that are loved on here do.

RTJ's courses are pretty much modern age LOOKING and they basically always have been. Ultimately that may even be the primary reason his architecture isn't that popular on here and few have much in the way of "positives" to say about it.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Tom,

This is not a criticism of your answer.  RTJ died in 2000.  He had built hundreds of courses fom the 1930s.  Let's be charitable and say that his influence lasted 50, if not 60, years.  Some of his courses were downright modern when built (I presume), while others were in the classical tradition; A number may have been formulaic, others routine - what do you expect from 101 different commissions and briefs?  When and where did he show genuine genuine flair?

It's interesting to see the various responses to this question - Firestone and Peachtree seeming to occupy totally different areas of the brain - yet they enter the architectural subconscious: no course received stronger recommendation for removal from the World Atlas than Firestone.

You see the difficulty of finding positives, yet this man designed more golf courses than anyone in history.

[Tom_Doak]

Mark:

The Firestone which I liked was the NORTH course at Firestone -- not the South, home of the World Series of Golf.  

The South course was always terribly overrated because it hosted that event ... nothing more than a series of long holes with big greens running back and forth across some dullish parkland terrain.  

The North course is laid out around a series of large lakes and afforded lots of opportunities for Mr. Jones to pick out holes from his "heroic" playbook, which he used far too infrequently in my view.  

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Tom,

Interesting that you should use the word heroic without slaughtering it.  This site seems obsessed with strategy and options.  Have we missed the point?

[Matt_Ward]

Mark R:

Another course you need to include is Mauna Kea on the Big Island in Hawaii. Well done layout indeed.

Ditto his work at The Dunes Golf & Beach Club in North Myrtle Beach, SC. The famed 13th hole around Singleton Lake is much better in person than what any photo can convey.

It's also important to point out that in RTJ later years his position in the field was helped considerably by the contributions of Roger Rulewich.

Courses like the Alabama Golf Trail, Metedeconk National and Crumpin Fox really are the work of Rulewich more than Trent. In later years Trent became a "branding" element because of his long time involvement and reach throughout the globe.

One thing you can say for sure that has been pass on to his sons is the development of a top shelf rolodex of contacts. The networking that Trent developed and that has since been passed on to his sons is very well developed to this very day.

From a business development perspective one has to give Trent an A+ but from the standpoint of courses that really have some measurement aspect of real greatness I'd have to drop the grade to no more than C+ at best.

P.S. One other thing -- it was Trent (for good or bad) who really expedited the process in changing / modernizing the courses used for major events like the Masters (the 11th & 16th are his hole changes), the US Open (numerous sites with Oakland Hills in '51 being the big time one) and the PGA.

[Tom_Doak]

Matt:

I didn't omit Mauna Kea by accident from my list ... I played it and didn't like it very much.  

There are two GREAT par-3 holes (the 3rd and 11th) which keep it in memory, but for each of those there was a terrible uphill par-4 to get away from the beach.

But, we're entitled to differ in our opinions on that one.  (I hope.)  I wouldn't argue that it was one of the courses which helped put Trent at the forefront of the profession ... carving Mauna Kea out of a lava field was just as impressive in its day as Shadow Creek was in the 90's.

[Matt_Ward]

Tom:

There's more character to Mauna Kea than you see with other rated RTJ courses like Point O'Woods and the like. Spyglass Hill benefits from being near Pebble and Cypress -- I also think the finished routing is backwards and should have included the starting holes as the ending holes.

We do see eye-to-eye on The Dunes but frankly Peachtree is really a boring stroll through some lovely property for me. Gets a big plug because of the connection to Bobby Jones.

Frankly, what Trent did for the 11th and 16th holes at Augusta are two elements that really helped the course a good deal IMHO but he's often give little fanfare for it.

[Evan_Green]

RTJ has also teamed with son RTJ II on some designs which have been quite good. The one that immediately comes to mind is Winchester CC in Auburn, CA- a superb course.

[Ari Techner]

I have not played too many RTJ courses but I will mention Eugene CC as a great RTJ design one that I never grow tired of and could play every day.  The Heather at Boyne Highlands is another good one.  

[Mike_Sweeney]

Which are his good courses?  How many of them are great?  

Mark,

In general, of the courses that I have played, all of them are good. Finding greatness is tougher with Spyglass coming closest for me.

When you are on Long Island, Montauk Downs is 30 miles past Southampton, but probably not doable in summer traffic. It is having work done now by Rees, who I think did a good bit of the original with his father. Beautiful spot with vistas over Montauk Harbor. Probably the best that I have played of RTJ in New York. Fox Hill is a mile or so from Friars Head with also similar location to Long Island Sound, but completely different land (no dunes). I have never played North Hills CC which is closer to NYC and The Creek, and it sounds also in good not great territory.

Up on your way to Yale in CT, there is The Patterson Club in Fairfield, and Rockrimmon in North Stamford, again never played, probably good not great.

Montauk is the only one I would go out of your way to see, but the traffic from Southampton to Montauk on a Friday might kill you.

If you wanted to see a Rees Jones course when you were here, Atlantic in fairly close to Southampton would be the one to see.

Here is a list of his early work, which is mainly Upstate NY. The only one that I have played is Cornell and Colgate University courses, which fit into the good not great theme.
http://bigred2.athletics.cornell.edu/golf/rtjones.html

[TEPaul]

Mark:

Regarding your post #8;

I'm sure you're aware of this but many golfers, perhaps a vast majority of them equate the volume of courses built by an architect with the quality or talent of an architect. Is that a reasonable thing to conclude? Certainly it isn't on this website, matter of fact, perhaps the opposite. I think the reasons that's not a reasonable thing to conclude are obvious.

Ross was remarkably prolific in his career. So was RTJ. So is Fazio, and Nicklaus and Rees Jones. Does that all equate to great talent? Not necessarily. Does that mean that since they did so much that they did nothing really good? Of course not. But not everything any of them did was really good and for obvious reasons.

I saw some really intersting design work at London Hunt Club. I'd be glad to explain why I think that's so. It was basically for a form of democratic strategic possibilities.

RTJ Sr. obviously liked to coin his own phrases and terms for his architecture. One of those terms was "heroic". That was his combination of "strategic" and "penal". I believe he actually did that remarkably well at a golf course like London Hunt.

I think RTJ probably did too much to have some of his courses be considered really good but some were really good and the interesting thing to me about him is he did develop a certain style---almost an entirely new "wrinkle" or "principle" in golf course architecture and it probably was his creation of the design style known as "heroic".

You can see that particular style or principle of his on almost every single hole at the London Hunt club---and in my opinion that's pretty special in the grand scheme of golf course architecture.

[Keith Durrant]

On the Cornell site above, it notes that this 9 hole course was done by RTJ and Thompson in 1934 in Brazil:

http://www.terenet.com.br/~tgc/FotosdoCampo.html

Looks like quite a spectacular site. Samba golf!!

Mark, does Brazil have an entry in the new World Atlas...?    

[TEPaul]

Mark:

I don't want to take this thread off the topic but the London Hunt club's architectural evolution is a pretty danged interesting case study.

This golf course may have been somewhat special to RTJ Sr. He built it in 1962 and it was one of only four he ever did in Canada. The other three were not done until the 1980s!

Apparently he really stuck with the London Hunt club as he did keep coming back. But for whatever reason the club apparently decided not to listen to him and they started  doing their own thing with the golf course architecturally.

Eventually RTJ wrote the club a letter and told them to take his name off the course because he hated what they'd done to it.

That apparently got their attention but nothing happened for quite some time. Eventually they must have decided that RTJ was right and that they'd screwed up his course. So what did they do? They apparently hired an architect to basically restore it. Who did they think would be the best and most logical person to do that? Well, obviously Rees Jones.

It was pretty fascinating walking around that course the other day with the people who run it. They told me it was something else to walk around the course with Rees and listen to him on that course. They said his sense of his father's architecture was simply remarkable---that even things that were gone or changed he picked right up on saying; "He would never do that" or "He would've done that and what happened to it?" They said it was almost spooky.

And so they hired Rees to restore the course but in the end apparently he told them that he wasn't going to do exactly that because there were some things he doesn't really agree with his father on architecturally and he explained to them his own philosophy on certain things.

It's interesting stuff that's going on at London Hunt Club---and in my opinion, for those reasons I gave above, it really is an interesting golf course in some architectural ways.

[Matt_Ward]

Mike S:

As an FYI -- the work at Montauk Downs really was the handiwork of Rees. RTJ clearly had the banner because of his reputation but Rees was the on-site guy who really made the course shine.

I also understand that NY State Parks is FINALLY getting off their fat behinds and will start to plow some needed $$ into the site. More often than not -- when you putt the greens there you need to make a full shoulder turn.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Keith,

No, Brazil hasn't an entrant in the World Atlas.  I have to admit that South America hasn't changed since the early editions, apart from losing two courses in Colombia (El Rincon and CC of Bogota).  There remain Jockey Club (Argentina) and Lagunita (Venezuela) amongst the main entries and Lagos de Caujaral (Colombia) amongst the gazetteer entries.  

The reason is simple enough - nobody seems to know much about South America, it's not a popular golf holiday destination for Atlas-buying Americans (and it is Hamlyn's American partners who very much dictate the editorial thrust), and those that remain do so as much as anything simply because I would not know where to find better replacements, if there are any.  Feel free to enlighten us!

[olivier]

Sperone is a good track with some interesting holes (16th to name one) in a marvellous - and windy - site

A few pictures here http://evm.vr-consortium.com/titres/bonifacio/zze/commun/slideshow.htm

or here
http://www.sperone.com/index2.html

[Jeff_Brauer]

Like Tom Doak, the time I got to spend with RTJ senior is among my most cherished memories.  You just don't get to speak to legends that often.  BTW Tom, have you ever spoken to Geoff Cornish?  He knew Stanley Thompson, I think.

Twice besides any normal interaction at ASGCA meetings - once at an ASGCA meeting and again at the 95 Ryder Cup - I got word that "Mr. Jones would love to say hello."  At ASGCA, he had some business to discuss, and then regaled me with great stories of the old days, but at the Ryder Cup, he simply told some old stories, which I always find fascinating.  BTW, some of them were about his education of his sons in the business, with Bobby and Rees standing right behind him signaling that it didn't really happen quite that way! I guess I will never know, but it is a great memory!

OT, but I still think a book of "Stories from the Road" by gca types famous and not would be a hoot.

As to his work, I think we have to put it into time perspective - as Tom notes, some of his courses were quite impressive technologically, and as Matt notes, he did set the stage for combatting increasing distance and Tour pro skills.  But I think his work was also exciting at the time (if not now) because it was a new paradigm in design - the larger scale and heroic shots of his work compared to what went before had to excite the senses because it had rarely been seen before.

He wasn't dumbing down the courses, as he was still building difficult tests that golfers were associating as nearly equal to the historically difficult tests at Oakland Hill, Augusta, etc. that he was also remodeling. And, the legions of new golfers after WWII had no chance to play those courses, so playing a new course by the gca who altered those courses was a great thrill.  

He found a style that adapted the best of traditional golf design to the obvious need to make courses suitable for more play than they had ever seen before.  The big greens and big tees were great innovations for adapability, and a test of golf.  

Say what you will, and favor other styles - knowing that the variety of styles now available from various gca's is at least partially a result of RTJ's expansion of the profession, too - but much of what he came up with is still bascially in use today, and still basically makes sense for most courses.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

In what way did RTJ refashion the 11th at Augusta?