A new Lawsonia fan

[Rick Shefchik]

After reading many positive comments about Lawsonia (William Langford, 1930) in Green Lake, Wisconsin, I finally got the chance to play it last weekend with my wife. Consider me a fan.

I'm not playing very well right now, and I didn't play well at Lawsonia, but I felt like a batter who goes hitless with two medium-deep flyballs, a hot grounder to third and a lineout to the pitcher. It was a comfortable 0-for-4.

By that I mean the course did not seem overly penal, and left me with the impression that I could score very well there after another round or two to familiarize myself with the features.

Langford likes to build ridges and cross-bunkers that obscure your line of sight to the proper landing area, and the enormous putting surfaces are pushed up, sometimes to ten or even 20 feet above fairway level, and the pins tend to be set near the edges of the greens -- short-siding yourself is a major mistake at Lawsonia, one I made several times, though the course was not to blame.

Has anyone else played there enough to confirm my suspicion that you can shoot a good number there once you've digested Langford's visual tricks?

I think Lawsonia is a rock-solid example of how an older-style golf course (links-like, but with some wooded areas) can protect itself, at least from the newcomer.
 

[ed_getka]

Rick,
   Nice to hear there is yet another fan of Lawsonia. It is WAY up on my list of courses to see. Can you pick one particularly favorite hole(s) and describe what you like about it?

[RJ_Daley]

Rick, ask Shooter Will Ellender.   He scorched the course, sight unseen, except for one hole...  

[George Pazin]

All this time, I had no idea what Shooter's real name was....

Lawsonia is in my top 10 must play, which means I'll hopefully get there before 2010.

Rick, could you pick out a specific hole and describe the challenges you faced and how you attacked it?

[Rick Shefchik]

Ed,

I'll pick a three-hole combination that convinced me Lawsonia was something special: 6-7-8.

Six is downhill par 4 that totally fooled me because of the cross bunker that extends from the right. I hit my best drive of the day, right where I wanted it, thinking I'd put my ball in the fat part of the fairway, but it turns out I was aiming at the 9th fairway beyond. I ended up in a fairway bunker:



Number 7 is a short but dramatic par 3 with a green pushed up much higher than you normally see greens today. A ridge runs in from the left side, obscuring the left third of the green. It's not a tough shot -- the green is enormous -- but the penalty for missing the green is huge. Besides, the green is tiered in a way you rarely see on 70-year-old courses, and if you hit the wrong tier, you've got putting problems:



Then number 8, a short par 4 that looked to have such a narrow landing area that I hit 2-iron off the tee, aiming at the big maple tree in the distance. I hit a good shot, but when I got past the cross-bunker on the left that hid the approach to the green, I saw that I had much more fairway behind the bunker, and could have hit driver (I understand from Ran's review, from which these phtos were taken, that it's best not to flirt with the right side, however):



Lots of amazingly fun stuff in that three-hole stretch.

[A_Clay_Man]

It's not easy picking one or three favorites there.
 They all work together so well in touchy feely way.
 I always loved the greensite on 1 the drive on two,
 the marvelous redan fourth and of course the stretch
Rick mentioned. #5 always caught either my eye or my
 gander. Even # 9 was a trick and treat to play. #10
formidable 11's humped in front green. The way 12 plays
 into the grove of trees.  etc etc.


Clearly a golf course greater than the sum of it's parts.
 Probaly not enough testosterone inducement for certain
 critics.

[George Pazin]

Probably not enough testosterone inducement for certain critics.

Maybe you haven't done the heavy lifting!!!!

 

Those pictures are awesome, Rick, thanks for posting them.

[Matt_Ward]

Adam / George:

Sorry to bust your stereotypical image -- I loved Lawsonia Links and believe it's one of the more underrated and more cost conscious public courses that exists in the USA. Anyone venturing to the immediate Green Lake area needs to be play it because the sheer enormity of the design details is clearly refreshing.

[ed_getka]

Rick,
   Thanks for the feedback. WOW, that par 3 is something else to miss short on. Where would you bail out on that hole? How are the internal contours of the greens generally? Is the short game tested in other ways than just hitting up onto the greens from down below?

[Brad Swanson]

I played my last round of golf nearly a year ago at Lawsonia.  I had the place to myself, and it was a perfect evening.  Here are a few of the views of the back nine.






If I never touch the sticks again (a real possibility), that round at Lawsonia will be a fittingly great end.  

Cheers,
Brad

[Rick Shefchik]

Ed --

More good questions. The only bail-out on the par-3 7th would be left, but even that side falls off to four or five feet below the putting surface. You'd think from the tee that you could bounce a shot off the hillside left of the green, but it looks like Langford dug out a hollow left of the green to take away the easy bailout.

What I loved about the greens was the ridges and tiers, usually subtle and not evident from the fairway. I'm used to seeing flat, tilted greens on courses of this vintage, but Lawsonia has the kind of contoured greens that today's best architects are designing. On 7, for instance, the ridge bisects the green, with the left side higher than the right. We played a left pin, so the challenge was not to leave yourself a two-tiered putt. But had the hole been cut on the lower right half of the green, you'd bring an almost impossible recovery shot into the mix if you hit an aggressive shot.

I found the size of the greens to be the other major challenge to the short game. Not only did you have to deal with getting the ball up the slopes and onto the putting surfaces if you missed the greens, but you had to gauge what club to use. A wedge wasn't always the right play, because the ball needed to run a long way if you missed on the long side.

If you missed on the short side, you were dead -- and they was always a short side. I don't think we had a hole location in the middle of a green on any of the 18 holes.

One other nice feature of the course -- most of the greens had open fronts. You could bump, chip or flop if your approach came up short.

[RJ_Daley]

Brad, check your heavygen e-mail...  

Brad's photos are from interesting angles you don't often see,
and I had to examine them to figure out where he took them from.  

As for Lawsonia, Dan Moore is playing there the whole weekend.  
I hope we will hear from him after the holiday.

[Josh Smith]

Mike DeVries made sure myself and some other "restoration helpers" from Meadow Club made our way to Lawsonia when driving from Chicago to Michigan on a golf trip ending at Greywalls.

Lawsonia was to me like "raynor on steroids" with his engineered look,  and many of the greens surfaces were amazing, very well thought out and different especially with the use of large swales.  I would love to see and play that course when fast and firm with the rough up a bit.  One word of advice to anyone planning to go, try and arrange the earliest tee time and ask in advance to walk.  On weekends, as was the case when we were there, we had to "pull teeth" to have permission Not to take a cart.  It is so different, as you can see from these photos.  Amazing to think they took the time, expense, and effort back then to build these huge ridges and landforms.  Langford must have been very persuasive and really got people to believe in what he was doing.  Dirt was not moved easily those days as we all know.

i know Sean Tully was especially amazed and excited about the feel of the course.

[Rick Shefchik]

Just a note -- my wife and I played at noon on a 55-degree, sunny Sunday with few groups on the course. We walked, and received no opposition from the pro shop. Despite a few hills to climb and the elvated greens, it's an easy walk.

[ed_getka]

It is amazing that there is a course that cool that isn't crowded all the time. What more evidence do you need that golf is heading in the wrong direction?
   
Rick,
    It doesn't get any better than that, a great course, on a beautiful, and no crowds. A golfing dream come true.

[Josh Smith]

Rick,
    Thanks for the additional info.  It must have been a special weekend that we were there, may have been an outside tournament or something.  But we had to twist their arms to let us walk, and they made sure we were the first group out with a large gap before the carts were let loose.  Great to know carts are not always the norm there.  

[Sean_Tully]

For me, Lawsonia was one of the greatest golfing experiences that I have ever had. I went into it knowing that I would like it and hearing the praise given to it by Mike DeVries and some of its members (yes they have a membership). What surprised me was that after playing both Chicago Golf Club and Shoreacres prior to Lawsonia that I was SO taken by Lawsonia.

From the first tee I knew that this course was for me, a blind tee shot and then a second into a deceptively perched green. What made the course for me was the fact that you could see the holes that you were about to play and they were very powerful views of some interesting greens and bunkering that dictated play off the tee(or implied such).

The greens approaches on a number of holes had just enough movement in some cases #3 and even more so on the 11th that only on having played the course one would consider before hitting an approach into the green. The greens where on another level from what I had seen at Shoreacres and CGC. When you stand on the 3rd green(especially in the morning) look over to the 17th green and it is an impressive sight.

My roots are toward the more naturalistic approach of golf course design so for me to play the three course that I did was a eye opener. I saw a timeline of sorts to the development of an "engineered" design that for me was at its zenith with Langford at Lawsonia. I have not had the luxury to see to many other great courses in the Midwest and East coast, but if they are to the same scale and feel that Lawsonia has, then I look forward to seeing them. But for right now I am trying to figure out how to get back and play Lawsonia again and again.

Some other things...

The one thing that surprised me during and after my round was how many of the shop staff and locals asked me about my round. After telling them that I came all the way from CA to play Lawsonia LINKS they were surprised that I was not going to play the woodlands course. Some said that it was a better course, blah blah blah, and although I only saw it through the trees I could never see myself wanting to play the course while the Links was right there. I know that it is a personal taste for some as it is for me. When I compare most courses to Lincoln Park in SF I get some weird looks, but I love the older stuff and the more quirk the better, I just wish that they would throw some $ into LP.

For me it was interesting how a course like Lawsonia, with its golden age design survives today with little to no modernization. I'm sure money was a large factor.

While there we heard a mention that there was a possible plan to move the clubhouse for the Links course to the maintenance building off of the 3rd hole. Has anything come of that? That building is one of the coolest maintenance buildings ever, so I hope that it does not go through for that reason alone. Also, that the 3rd would become the 1st and the 2nd the eighteenth, not as good of a finishing hole as the current 18th in my opinion.

I will post some of my pics when I get a chance. I think I spent more time taking pictures and taking in the course than I did playing golf.

Lawsonia is truly something special and I will get back sooner than later I hope!

Tully

[RJ_Daley]

Sean, I hadn't heard that rumor of moving the Links clubhouse
to the area of the maintenance facility.  You are right, that is
one of the all time great maintenance facilities. It is almost repulsive to me to think that anyone
would seriously consider such a switch in one of the really unique routings in golf.  By that I refere specifically
to the second nine that goes 3,5,3,5,3,4,4,4,5.  the front nine is a solid routing that is a medium long but easy par
4 dogleg to a remarkable green knoll
 that sets the tone of the day.  The next is the blind tee shot
 through a notch, and then dogleg right down through interesting FW bunkering and another excellent green.  
The third, would not be as good opening hole.  It is a good hole, but the setting wrong for an opener IMO.  Then followed by a
par 3 redan and a par 5 is not a good pace of opening holes.  

You are right about the oddity of the staff somehow being
 surprised about the idea that someone is more enthusiastic
 about the Links than the Woodlands course.  It is a sort of
microcasm of the lack of the general golfing public knowing what
constitutes a great golf experience.  They want woods, and
ponds, and flat greens and fair well maintained bunkers.

Perhaps the issue is the management of the course facility.  The
American Baptist Assembly is the owner-operator of the golf resort.  I doubt they have anyone truly knowledgeable on their
Board of Directors overseeing Lawsonia.  That is probably the reason
that they had allowed the course to become as tree infested and
the Links to get away from them in the first place, until the super
had the forsight to bring Ron Forse and Jim Nagle in to give them
a clue as to the gem they had, and how it should be presented.

I shutter to think if they are seriously thinking of a re-routing...
If they do, it is just one more  example of idiots running golf,
and ruining it.

[Mike McGuire]

If any of you Lawsonia bound want to play West Bend CC
please contact me. (IM or email) Its only nine of Langford
but the same look on a slightly smaller footprint.

West Bend is 45 minutes SE of Lawsonia (twoards Milwaukee).
And don't forget Erin Hills is scheduled to
open this summer. It's is only 20 minutes from WB.

[Will E]

I consider Lawsonia one of the most enjoyable
courses I've ever played.
There is magic in the air there, I think Dick
would agree that fall might be the best time
to see the course.
Langford's green work is worth the trip alone.
I wish we'd see more like greens like the wonderful
12th being built today. If any of you are going
to Kohler this summer and don't get over to see
Lawsonia you're nuts.
Mike- the front nine at West Bend is fantastic and I
hope you get to show it off. Number 8 stands out as a real roller coaster. How is the debate on the back nine
working out?
I'm hopeful that Langford gets more attention, it really pisses me off that a lot of his work has been softened and covered up. I almost threw up last week after seeing what has happend to CC of Lansing.

[Sean_Tully]

RJ

I hope it was just an idea myself as it would negate one of the truly special set of opening holes that put you to work off the tee almost immeadiatly. I love blind holes for the simple reason that you need to have a bit of confidence in your game to trust that you can put the ball where you need it to go. I spent alot of time running around trying to get pictures from the right angles as my golf game was not where I had hoped it would be. I have over 180 pics from that morning and I go back to them often.

To retrofit the building would cost a pretty penny and that does not even bring into account the need for a new maitenance building.

Maybe you or Mike M. could answer a question that I have? We were making our way to Lawsonia on 43 and passed a golf course on the left  hand side near Cedarburg that seemed rather interesting from the 3-4 seconds that I could see of the one hole. Any idea what course that was?

On our trip we played up at Greywalls to see DeVries and play the course with some other GCA'ers. I took the time to walk the Langford holes and could see some of the same stuff but it was horribly miss-placed bunkers that just hurt the eye. The greens were in need of some expanding in some areas something like 10feet or more. It would be great to see that course restored to Langford's original design as I would be sure to see the finished work as long as the right man is on the job .

Link to some of my Lawsonia pics from around Labor Day of 2005. The course was in good shape with the greens recently punched they were a little slow but under the circumstances they were perfect. I thought the bunkers were some of the more impressive looking bunkers that I have ever seen. They are truly monsters. I really liked the burnout look on the faces.

Lawsonia

[Dan Moore]

Just got home from a weekend at Green Lake and am happy to concur that the Links course is as good as ever.  Tree removal, fescue growth and conditions in general have the course playing as good as I can ever remember though the greens were a little slow due to above ave. rainfall in the area.  Looks like they are in the process of adding some new tees on the front 9.  

I am always amazed by this course.  There really isn't a weak hole.  All five par threes are strong.  The par fives are quite varied with 3 of them always looking like birdies that don't seem to materialize.  I love 2, 6, 8 and 17 among the fours.

I have played there quite a lot and don't think course knowledge helps that much when it comes to scoring.  Sure it will help with the drive on number two, with some of the angles off the tee and not getting suckered into going right on number 8, but the greens are where you need to score.  Missing them is a problem.  There is a fair amount of slope and undulation.  Some of the greens have significant tiers or ledges.  For example knowing there is a ledge at the front of #5 doesn't help you stop the ball there even with a wedge in hand.  

I also liked the new oil painting of William Boice Langford in the clubhouse that was donated to the course last year during their 75th anniversary.  If my pictures look ok I'll post some later this week.      

P.S.  Walking is now permitted at all times.  On weekends the rate is the same walk or ride until later in the day.  

[Sean_Tully]

Bringing this back up as it has lost on the second page.

I have added about 40 pics of Lawsonia to my site for anyone to look at.
Click on the first pic and you can see it in a bigger format.
The files are big so give them time to load and feel free to copy them to your CPU.

Tully

Lawsonia

[RJ_Daley]

Sean, you have absolutely captured the essence of Lawsonia.  Great work!  One correction... there is a pic that says view of 9thG from 6thG.  Actually that is a view of the 8thG from 6.

The maintenance meld was ideal in your photos with somewhat dry intermediate roughs, and bunker mound faces.  You really caught it right!

[ed_getka]

Tully,
    Thanks for the pix. I hope I can squeeze in enough time to get out there in the fall.