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Bernie Bell

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Re: Robert Bruce Harris
« Reply #25 on: April 20, 2020, 10:52:08 AM »
Did Mr. Harris leave behind any writings? 

Lou_Duran

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Re: Robert Bruce Harris
« Reply #26 on: April 20, 2020, 11:53:51 AM »
Mr. Huestis describes the type of course that we need, at least at the municipal level.  In reading the characteristics of Valley Oaks, I am reminded of MacKenzie's writings- ease of maintenance, economical, enjoyable to most, good pace of play.


Question: what happened to Shivas's comments?  He usually makes cogent points and it is hard to understand the replies fully without the reference.


Jeff Brauer- any similarities between RBH and Ralph Plummer in their approach to GCA?   How about with Joe Finger?

Sven Nilsen

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Re: Robert Bruce Harris
« Reply #27 on: April 20, 2020, 11:57:42 AM »
Finkbine was originally a Bendelow dating back to 1923.
"As much as we have learned about the history of golf architecture in the last ten plus years, I'm convinced we have only scratched the surface."  A GCA Poster

"There's the golf hole; play it any way you please." Donald Ross

Jeff_Brauer

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Re: Robert Bruce Harris
« Reply #28 on: April 20, 2020, 01:30:01 PM »
I have copies of 3 articles by RBH, all in Golfdom, dating to May 1945, April 1947 and one not dated.


Says pretty well what you would expect. Most interesting is a call to totally divorce American course from the idea of copying Scottish courses.


Also have a few of his routing plans.
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

Bernie Bell

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« Last Edit: April 20, 2020, 02:00:56 PM by Bernie Bell »

Jim Hoak

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Re: Robert Bruce Harris
« Reply #30 on: April 20, 2020, 02:23:55 PM »
Sven, I'll let someone more knowledgeable than I answer in detail, but I believe the Finkbine from 1923 that you reference is a totally different course than this one.  In the late '50's the University of Iowa abandoned the Finkbine course then used and turned the land into other University purposes.  The new course, built a couple of miles away on totally different land, was also called Finkbine.  As I recall from my youth, the old abandoned Finkbine was no loss--a flat, short course with no particular architectural features.  The new one is functional as a college course.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2020, 02:53:06 PM by Jim Hoak »

Jeff_Brauer

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Re: Robert Bruce Harris
« Reply #31 on: April 20, 2020, 02:40:06 PM »
Jeff Brauer- any similarities between RBH and Ralph Plummer in their approach to GCA?   How about with Joe Finger?



Lou,
Thinking back to when we renovated Eastern Hills and Great Southwest (both now closed) the bunkers were similar clamshells in most cases.  Not sure if they evolved that way or he designed them that way.


His greens were smaller and contoured similarly (i.e., 5% in the 50's, 4% in the 60's) except Harris always had a portion of the huge green draining off the back, with a mound 10 feet in from the back edge. I think Ralph mostly started his mounds outside the greens and tied contours across. 


Even if Ralph was affected by the 50's design mentality, he never took it to the Harris extremes!
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

Sven Nilsen

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Re: Robert Bruce Harris
« Reply #32 on: April 20, 2020, 02:44:18 PM »
Sven, I'll let some more knowledgeable than I answer in detail, but I believe the Finkbine from 1923 that you reference is a totally different course than this one.  In the late '50's the University of Iowa abandoned the Finkbine course then used and turned the land into other University purposes.  The new course built a couple of miles away on total different land was also called Finkbine.  As I recall from my youth, the old abandoned Finkbine was no loss--a flat, short course with no particular architectural features.  The new one is functional as a college course.


Jim:


Thanks for the clarification, I should have been a bit more clear.  Dove into my files and came up with the following.


1925 Photo of the old course -





1950 Scorecard of the old course (archived in 1953) -





1953 Plan of the new course -


"As much as we have learned about the history of golf architecture in the last ten plus years, I'm convinced we have only scratched the surface."  A GCA Poster

"There's the golf hole; play it any way you please." Donald Ross

Doug Siebert

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Re: Robert Bruce Harris
« Reply #33 on: August 31, 2020, 04:24:03 PM »
Jim Hoak is correct, the Finkbine that exists today was built around 1953. The old course was on the other side of the Interurban RR tracks, stretching from Highway 6 in Coralville (where the soccer fields along the Coralville strip are now located) up to the area where Kinnick Stadium and the Children's Hospital (which some of you will know from "The Wave") are located. That's why there's a Golfview Ave in University Heights directly across the tracks from Kinnick, something I had always wondered about previously.


Never seen a scorecard for the full 18 holes before, that's a nice find! When I first started playing there were 4 or 5 holes remaining of the original course along the Coralville Strip, which was referred to as "lower Finkbine". They were mowed but not otherwise maintained and with free access. Good place to hack it around as a 10 year old to learn the game. I remember there was a bad drought that year, not only was the "course" uniformly brown there were huge cracks in the sod even in the "greens". I remember losing my ball down one at least once!


I had been under the impression the "upper" holes were removed when Kinnick Stadium was built in 1930, and it had become a nine hole course. Obviously that was not the case, based on that 1950 scorecard reproduced above, so there must have been some re-routing done. At any rate once the new Finkbine was built I'm pretty sure the upper half was abandoned, and sometime between then when I first visited there in the mid 70s several of the lower holes had been abandoned and become overgrown due to repeated flooding. The soccer fields were built sometime in the early/mid 80s I believe, removing the last vestiges of the original Finkbine.

One thing of note - I have no idea how the routing worked and where the 1st and 18th holes were located. Given the distance involved I'm not completely convinced it was an out and back routing, but might have been more like Dismal's Red where you start in one place and end in another. The distance between two points where I know part of the course existed is about 1.25 miles, and the layout I know about from the lower part doesn't leave much room for an out and back. I know that's by far more likely, but I have trouble seeing how it worked based on what I know, its length shown on the card, and the fact you wouldn't have had long green to tee walks in a course designed over a century ago.
My hovercraft is full of eels.

Rick Shefchik

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Re: Robert Bruce Harris
« Reply #34 on: September 02, 2020, 12:11:43 PM »

In the 50th anniversary book I wrote about Hazeltine National Golf Club back in 2012, there's a map of Robert Bruce Harris's original routing plan for two 18 hole courses, a Red and a Blue, on the 725-acre site, circa 1959. Sure enough, the first three nines followed the 4-5-4-3-4-5-4-3-4 formula. Only the back nine of the Blue course had a slight variation, going 4-4-5-3-4-5-4-3-4.


Unfortunately, I can't make that map show up here using Flickr, but here's the link:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/139516668@N05/50298311386/in/dateposted-public/


Hazeltine founder Tot Heffelfinger ultimate chose to go with one 18-hole course on the site, designed by Robert Trent Jones.
"Golf is 20 percent mechanics and technique. The other 80 percent is philosophy, humor, tragedy, romance, melodrama, companionship, camaraderie, cussedness and conversation." - Grantland Rice