Bunker Work at The Meadow Brook Hunt Club

[Chris Munoz]

Heard some rumors going around that The Meadow Brook Club will be actually doing some bunker work this upcoming fall...Just wondering if anyone knew who the architect was.  I heard it was the same person who did work at the Engneeirs Club.  I work there for 2 summers, and I can tell you that those bunkers need work.   Too many rocks and the bunkers need some new shapping done to them..

Muni

[Tyler Kearns]

Muni,

If it is the same architect that recently renovated Engineers, then it is Tripp Davis.

TK

[TEPaul]

I used to play that course all the time years ago but that was well before I cared a whit about golf course architecture. Meadowbrook was something of a novel course and in my opinion it is an example of the best and the best era of Dick Wilson---eg in the early to mid 1950s. The real difference with a course like Meadowbrook was how enormous some of the greens were.

Matter of fact, that whole place belonged to my mother's best friend. I can still remember when the course was under construction and Herman Whiton and I got in his milk-truck and roared through the roughed out bunkers and up onto some of the roughed out greens. They must've loved us little weisenheimers the next day. We were not any older than about twelve back then.

The clubhouse today was the Whitons house for a few decades and before that the place belonged to a good friend of my grandmother. Ironically that lady had a little golf course around that house that had nothing whatsoever to do with Meadowbrook golf course that was to come one day.

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

Did you play the old course, before they either sold off some land and reconfigured the front nine ?

Are there any aerials that show the course as originally designed by Wilson, and today's course ?

[TEPaul]

Patrick, you duffus, how in the hell many times do I have to tell you those holes you or someone else thinks were original holes were nothing more than basically some land they used for practice holes with a few roughed out forms that looked like fairways and greens. If you'd just try a bit harder to listen to me in the first place you wouldn't have to stay after class like this so often. They may've even been some precursor holes that were routed before the courses was finished simply becuse Mr and Mrs Whiton did not move out of the house that's now the clubhouse and the place until Meadowbrook was well on the way to completion. There was a little shack out there next to the second tee where people went to practice or maybe even play some holes before the course was completely finished. The reason they were never used after that, in my recollection is they thought it was too noisy that that area was so close to Jericho Turnpike.

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

The club at the new Jericho location, designed by Dick Wilson, opened for play in 1955.

In 1967 the club sold off a considerable amount of land near the Jericho Turnpike.   I believe you can see the resultant commercial development from the 2nd and 4th tees.

Dick Wilson was asked to return and rebuild, revise and reroute the golf course, which he did, building SIX (6) new holes.

Some of the abandoned holes remain for practice purposes, and that's probably what you remember.

So, I'd guess that you played there after 1967,
Or, that your memory shorts out, circa 1967  

[TEPaul]

Pat:

I remember the course from 1955 before it was even opened but I didn't play golf but maybe two or three times a year in those days so I don't remember something like the routing. What you said about 1967 could be true but I remember playing there well before 1967 and it seems to me the routing and the course was what it is today. Do you remember Shelley Mayfield? Was that before 1967? I think so.