Cool Green Site

[Paul_Turner]

North Wilts looks to be a pretty basic layout high up on the Downs.  But Harry Colt did some work on the course in 1933 (then 9 holes) and I like this greensite.  Some of those curves might have pre-dated the course?  It looks to have a bit of Painswick in it!





The Second



Sixth, looks interesting too.

[John Foley]

Paul,

Where do you find this stuff!!!!

Simply amazing!! How short is that 6th hole? Looks like a GREAT challange.

Thanks to your pics, Colt has become far and away the one architect whose work I've never seen and want to know much more about! Keep them coming!

[SPDB$]

Paul,
these are dazzling.
on the first pic, can you tell me how long is that hole? are the two forms that appear in the front of the picture, are those cross bunkers? berms? do they obscure the green, similar to an alps hole strategy?

inquiring minds want to know

[Jeff Mingay]

Very cool, as usual, Paul!

That first photo has "Mike Miller Painting" written all over it!

[redanman]

PAul

Brilliant find (As usual).

Are you working these days?  

[Paul_Turner]

Bill

Er, sporadically!

John

Just surfing.  

The 6th is 120 yards, and it's likely to be very windy up there.

SPDB

The 2nd is 330 yards. Those mounds are just grass, which were once bunkers (I think).  I have a copy of Colt's quick report on the course.  Most of which was on the bunkering and greens.  I believe he worked on the second green above and wanted those cross bunkers remodelled.  Doesn't look like it ever happened.

Not sure about the 6th.

Wonder where a pulled tee shot ends up on the 6th?  BATH??

[redanman]

I've seen living rooms larger than that sixth green.

Way cool.  Maybe you could run one in from the right when it's really windy.

[ChipOat]

Both are awesomely creative.

However, as to the 2nd hole, I've never been fond of mounds so close to a green that you can carom an errant shot off them and onto the putting surface.  With little or no penalty for a (slightly) crooked approach, such mounds seem like they're the inverse of a greenside bunker.

The solution, of course, is to grow the grass much higher on those mounds such that a favorable bounce is unlikely and a close recovery becomes problematic.

However, deep rough (like PENAL deep) is second on my list of pet peeves regarding "lazy" architecture.  The primary offender, of course, is Stupid Trees.

In fact, I have just this moment "coined" a new phrase - "Stupid Rough".

Anyway, I'm not totally fond of the 2nd hole but think the 6th looks fantastic.

[Doug Siebert]

chipoat, the 2nd is only 330 yards long, I say if you need help from the mounds to bounce an errant LW back onto the green, more power to ya!

I like them both, at 330 and apparently downhill the 2nd looks on the card like a great opportunity to drive the green.  But with that terrain it would require a hard fade or some lucky bounces from the right.

That 6th does indeed look nasty, I have a feeling that if I played that I'd be putting from the hardpan to the right of that an awful lot, because it sure looks like a pulled approach could finish quite a bit further from the hole than where you are starting from!

[MBL]

Is that a temporary (or mat??) tee in the foreground of the pic of #6?

Great pics.

[THuckaby2]

If it's not already, that 6th hole really needs to be called the Hobbes.

If ever a hole was nasty, brutish and short, that's it.

TH

[Mike_Cirba]

The picture of the 6th in particular calls to mind what used to exist on George Thomas's 12th hole at Whitemarsh Valley, a par three of about 175 yards.

It is pictured in Geoff Shackelford's "Golden Age of Golf Design" (not sure the page because I'm at work) and the left side had a steep fall off where your ball would presumably run away "forever".

Unfortunately, recent "restoration" work done on the course has created a series of earthen "steps" left of that green, which purposefully act to slow down and stop a descending ball before it runs too far away.  Ahh...modernism.   :-/

The play is still tough from the left side, but nothing like it was when Thomas built it.

[Paul_Turner]

Yeah, it's a winter mat, the scourge of British inland golf at smaller clubs.  I grew up playing off those, if you hit it fat you get a mouth full of grit.  Yet to see them here in the US even on munis.

No Lob Wedges on that hole, look at the flag!  The required shot is obviously an 80 yard putt!

[Mike Hendren]

Paul,

Add the 6th to the recent thread re "What are you afraid of?"  One look and I wondered what happens to a slight pull, as you noted.  Rest assured, if this was my home course I'd be dropping grass seed and starter fertilizer over there during every round and praying for rain  I'd take front bunker every time.

This reminds me of the tilted built-up greens on the non-irrigated nine holer I grew up on.  Once the grass thinned out in the August heat, any shot missing the tiny greens ran at least thirty yards away.  

Fascinating stuff.  Thanks again.

Mike

[MBL]

Another interesting thing about that 6th green complex...it is vaguely similar to the 10th at (soon to be NLE/destroyed by Hale Irwin's "renovation") Forest Park GC in St. Louis, designed by the Foulis (sp?) Brothers, I think, around 1913.  Although the 10th is a blind tee shot of ~ 200, with a trap on the left greenside...miss the trap or deep and you're down a large (hardpan) hill.

JakaB or Buck, if you're out there, would you agree re the similarity???