PhilY said;
"TE, who knows the course and its history as well as anyone, has stated that, "Pine Valley's 3rd had alpinization around the right and back right of the green but it was removed pretty quickly. Tillinghast would basically be wrong about "alpinization" that had to be carried over in front of the green. He wrote that in March of 1913 and at that point the first four holes were probably in a state of what architects call "roughed in"."
I must disagree with your analysis on this. In December of 1913, Tilly wrote, "December, 1913 – “It is quite impossible now to describe Pine Valley as a completed course, for many of the holes are in the embryo. Those which have been played are entirely satisfying. Not long ago the discoverer and developer of Pine Valley, Mr. George A. Crump, accompanied by Mr. Howard W. Perrin, Mr. Richard Mott and A.W. Tillinghast, played golf there for the first time… Mr. Tillinghast secured the first par, a 4 on the first hole played and likewise the first bird, a 2 on the third. To the same player must be given the rather doubtful distinction of slapping first into the lake in front of the fifth teeing ground, which he did to his great disgust on this history-making day.
Just a few months after writing of the alpinization of the hole, he records the first Birdie on it.These are finished holes at this time. Are you stating that between March & November the hole was radically changed to remove whatever "Alps" like obstacle was in front of the green? That might have happened, but without offer of concrete proof that it did in this time period, to state that "Tillinghast would basically be wrong about "alpinization" that had to be carried over in front of the green..." is at best a stretch that lacks all foundation. I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that it appears unlikely to have occurred at that time.
If this is the case, then the idea that "Alpinization" on the early courses of America required mounding to obscure the front of the green is incorrect!”
Phil:
I’m not questioning Tillie’s veracity----it’s just that some of these accounts have to be looked at in a pretty detailed “Time-line” sense, if you know what I mean. When Tillie was writing these original accounts he couldn’t have been looking at the creation of PVGC in any “Time line” sense, if you know what I mean. He was just reporting what he saw at any particular time as the project went along. This overall account we’re referring to was written or “prefaced” by Tillie in the 1930s and he obviously just included his earlier articles of his observations of the progress of PVGC right from the beginning as references to his 1930s preface.
As I told you on the phone, thank God for all Tillie’s accounts of PVGC from the very beginning onward. If we didn’t have those constant written accounts of his creating a “Time-line” today on various holes and frankly the entire project would be really hard to impossible to do. The most valuable aspect of Tillie’s written accounts of the progress of the project of PVGC is he makes it possible to really do a before and after regarding Harry Colt because Tillie was reporting on PVGC from the very beginning to the end of Crump life.
The fact that Colt never saw the place until late May or early June is obviously significant as Tillie’s accounts can document what Crump had done before Colt ever got there. And to a lesser degree things that came after Colt left can be quite accurately assigned as Colt was only there for a week or so and he never again returned. So when I plug in all of what Colt left with PVGC in a design sense, the blue/red topo, the hole-by-hole Colt booklet and now this heretofore Colt whole course drawing we picked up off eBay it’s possible to assign to others what departs from what Colt offered.
If Harry Colt had come and gone constantly throughout those 5+ years while Crump and others worked on the place this type of fairly precise “timelining” would be really hard to do, and again, without Tillie’s constant written accounts as the project progressed it would be virtually impossible because other than Smith and Carr no one I know of kept much of a record of the architectural progress of the place from the very beginning to near the end.
So in this sense all I can say is thank God for Tillie and his constant written record.