An ancient one on LI

[Craig Disher]

If this one still exists, anyone who has seen it would immediately recognize this aerial. The course looks like it was designed with a T-square and ruler - perhaps it dates from the late 19th century. The aerial was taken in the late 30s on the eastern end of LI. I'm betting it is NLE.

[SPDB]

Craig -
Whereabouts is this on the East End?

[Craig Disher]

I was afraid someone would ask me that. All I can tell from my records is that it's somewhere between Westhampton and Montauk.

[TEPaul]

Cool looking old course and it just shows that there's nothing really new in this world.

Look closely at that course and it's unique bunkering features and it looks almost exactly like the random placement of the little "icon faces" that are available to us to place within our posts!

I've never before seen that kind of architectural style shown on that aerial but we might want to call it the "smiley style"!

[TEPaul]

Actually this thread makes me think of a potentially interesting new wrinkle in golf architecture for the truly clever designer!

Do you think it would be possible to come up with a design that on the ground appeared wholly novel and played wholly novel while at the same time when viewed from the air could send some kind of interesting message to the UFOs flying around up there?

Tom MacWood, I'd pick you to analyze this possiblity! Rich Goodale, don't even go there because I don't want to hear it!

[corey miller]

This one may still exist as I think it is the Quoque Field Club.  I drove through the course recently and mentioned it to a few people who had never heard of it.  Could not see much from the street but the "westhampton" clue seems to fit.

[Rich Goodale (Guest)]

Tom

Don't wave a red flag out in the middle of a field if you don't want a bull to make a charge at you!

To those of us in the know, Craig's pictures are, in fact--just as are all these old "golf course" aerials--examples of early alien attempts to create "crop circles."  Golf was not invented in Scotland or even the Netherlands, but by chance on the planet Mongo, by Alex Karras's great-great-great grandfather.  Travelling through time and space he glommed onto the Pilmour Links 500 years of so ago as a fine place to take an intergalactic holiday--few humans around, lots of sheep and rabbits to keep him "company" and copious gorse bushes to satisfy his inner needs. To mark the spot for future reference he zapped the formless fescue and created humps and hollows and sand pits that could be seen from outer space.  Little was he to know that a local Scot, Angus Podgorny (one of whose descendants was to play a famous match at Wimbledon in the early 70's against a blancmange from the planet Skyron) would immediately start battering bits of sheep dung around the links with a shillelagh, shouting "Four!" at intervals to let his inner demons help him keep score.

As we all know, the unfortunate CB McDonald fell for the ruse of the Mongonians, and tried to replicate their holiday camp at various sites in the New World.  Others followed in his footsteps, and the primitive scratchings shown in Craig's phottie are just one of those tragic results.......

[Scott_Burroughs]

Corey,

Craig already did Quogue about a week ago.  It used to be 18 holes, but is just 9 today.

[SPDB]

Craig,
This might be the Bridgehampton Golf Club. What is the orientation of the aerial, i.e. are we looking at it north-south, or east-west?

[A.G._Crockett]

TEPaul,
Your idea is almost what Desmond Muirhead did on several of his courses.  One bunker complex like a shark, one in a circle of trapezoids, etc.

[Craig Disher]

SPDB,
Enough of the tough questions, please! The aerial routes are usually directly NS or EW and I usually align my camera along the horizontal axis. However, in my slipshod record keeping, I didn't note the direction of the aerial route. Based on the position of the tree shadows and the alignment of the main road, my best guess is that the top of the picture is N.

This course reminded me of the picture on p2 of Golden Age, typical of the geometric designs Shackelford points out were characteristic of US courses in the late 19th century.