Pine Valley vs Shinnecock Hills

[Gene Greco]

JS:

   That sure looks like #7 to me as well.

[JSlonis]

Phil,

That is exactly my point.  I think for a better than average golfer, a tree lined fairway is not that scary.  Obviously, there can be extremes of what is tree lined, but often the lack of trees, which brings about a wider focus off the tee can be even more uncomfortable.

I often find myself getting lazy with my focus off the tee on a course like Hidden Creek.  The corridors and the fairways there for the most part are quite wide, and sometimes I'll hit a tee shot and wonder how I could possibly hit it where I just did.  The width lulls you into a false sense of comfort and without proper focus you can end up missing even the widest fairways.

Alright...back to the topic.  PV  vs. Shinnecock.  I don't want to take this thread off course, but I can't chime in  on this debate because I've never played Shinnecock..  

[TEPaul]

Jamie:

That's HHA on #7.

See that mound on the far right corner? That's what they called an "alps".

When Crump died he was right in the process of transitioning that hole into a double dogleg whereby you'd drive it out into the fairway and from there the ideal line was right over that Alps mound on the right. He was going to take the entire left half of the fairway on the second half of the hole and flip it over to the right which is now off the fairway on the right. In it's place on the left was going to be more "rough country" like HHA.

Have you ever noticed the basic orientation of the 7th green and how far to the right it points? They'd already changed that green in preparation for the finalizing of the double dogleg concept I just described on the rest of the hole.

Back in that early day the tees on #7 were only where the left tees are now. Crump wanted tees over on the right where the alternate tees are now and that completed the double dogleg effect of playing left off the tee and then right to the second half over the Alps at the end of HHA. From there if you played the ideal line over the Alps you'd be right in line with the orientation of the green.

[TEPaul]

"Tom Paul,
This might be getting off topic but did Crump know the holes would (eventually) be isolated from one another and there would be no adjoining fairways?  Where'd he get the idea to do it this way?  Just the opposite of TOC."

PhilB:

That's one of the most interesting unanswered questions in the entire scope of the creation and style of Pine Valley.

It has been said for many many years that Crump wanted hole isolation and segregation where golfers on one hole couldn't see or would not be aware of golfers on other holes.

Personally, I've never seen anything written that this is what he wanted to do. Somehow that idea cropped up and it's been repeated for many decades.

The unfortunate thing is George Crump never wrote that much about what he was doing and wanted to do at Pine Valley. Luckily what he did do, though, is talk to particularly two guys all the time about all kinds of things he was thinking about and trying to accomplish. Some say those two guys were his best friends down there and he saw them both all the time.

They were Father Simon Carr, a Catholic priest, and W.P Smith. Both Carr and Smith were excellent players winning a few Philly Ams, Patterson Cups and Silver Crosses back in that day.

Luckily both Carr and Smith recorded what Crump talked to them about and that's the meat of most of the contemporaneous story of the creation of the course and what Crump was trying to accomplish.

The club used those records of Carr and Smith a ton after Crump died suddenly in Jan 1918 before the course was finished and all 18 holes were in play.

I call those Carr/Smith written records "The Remembrances" and again they were heavily relied on by Alison and the so-called "1921 Advisory Committee" that was charged with finishing off the course and getting the agronomy in decent shape. They completed their work around 1921-1922.

But if Crump had it in his mind to create real hole isolation via trees I've never seen that mentioned by him or Carr or Smith.

But with things like that that go so far back somebody must have seen something that indicated that that was what Crump wanted to do.

By the way, if Pine Valley has a model abroad it is definitely not TOC. Most think it was probably Sunningdale in the English Heathlands. I, for one, agree with that.

I'm almost positive Crump was there before he bought PV and built the course. It's probably logical to assume that he met Colt there too.

[JSlonis]

Thanks Tom.  That is interesting about the orientation of the second part of that hole.  It makes perfect sense that the green is angled the way it is.  

If it was known at the time of Crump's death that his intention was to have that hole play as you described, what stopped it from being built as he wished?  Were there other issues?

***By the way...are you planning on coming tomorrow?***

[SPDB]

TEPaul:
Has that structure to the left in front of the water tower been unchanged from the picture to the halfway house today?

[David Stamm]

By the way, if Pine Valley has a model abroad it is definitely not TOC. Most think it was probably Sunningdale in the English Heathlands. I, for one, agree with that.

 

Tom, you and I have discussed Colt's influence before, but you mentioned Sunningdale. I agree, based on the photo's I've seen, that Sunningdale has alot of similiarities. Does this in any way have to do with Colt's input with the course, in your opinion? They were roughly done at the same time. I know Crump is really the one largely responsible for the course, but perhaps Colt saw the likenesses of the properties and made some suggestions?  

[Phil Benedict]

Tom Paul,

Thanks for responding in such detail.  Regardless of Crump's intent, I think the isolation of the holes has contributed tremendously to Pine Valley's mystique.  One comment I've often heard is that "you remember every hole" which is not always the case even on great courses where the holes are mixed together.  It's easier to remember a hole, regardless of its architectural merit, if it's the only thing in your visual field.

Oddly enough I have a good visual recollection of Oakmont on a hole-by-hole basis just from having walked the course for one day during the Open, and this is at the other extreme as far as trees creating hole separation.  I don't think this recall needed to be reinforced by television either.  Of course my focus on the course wasn't disturbed by trying to play it.

[TEPaul]

Yes it has.

The water tower went by the boards, I think, when they developed and perfected the lake and the waterworks down behind the 17th tee.

[TEPaul]

"Tom, you and I have discussed Colt's influence before, but you mentioned Sunningdale. I agree, based on the photo's I've seen, that Sunningdale has alot of similiarities. Does this in any way have to do with Colt's input with the course, in your opinion? They were roughly done at the same time. I know Crump is really the one largely responsible for the course, but perhaps Colt saw the likenesses of the properties and made some suggestions?"

David:

That of course will probably be an everlasting question.

The fact is there are some real similarities in look between the English Heathlands and the site of Pine Valley. They aren't identical, of course, but they do have that similar sandy/piney/scrubby look to their natural sites.

The fact is Pine Valley was well underway when Colt made his one and only trip to Pine Valley in May/June 1913.

Colt remarked about the similarity and that's recorded.

Colt made a lot of suggestions for Pine Valley and he left a lot there such as that hole by hole booklet.

At this point, I don't think it's a matter any longer of whether to assign design credit for the course to either Colt or Crump. The fact is it can now pretty much be determined what each did in detail that became Pine Valley. A lot of this story basically has to so with basic "timelining" since the course took Crump a number of years to work on (five to be exact) and even in that extended time the course was still not complete. This timelining can really lock in a lot of details by the fact that Colt was only there once and also through the constant reporting of Tillinghast. The last piece is those "Remembrances" of Carr and Colt.  

[TEPaul]

DavidS:

As time goes on my suspicion continues to grow that guys like Crump and Hugh Wilson and others like Myopia's Leeds were really into the fact and creation of a couple of courses in the English Heathlands as their model far more than they were into the Scottish seaside links courses.

I can't prove this right now but I think I can get closer to proving it as time goes on and stuff that can document it continues to resurface.

The reason I think that is something that was probably so basic to those guys back then that they may never have even mentioned it.

That reason is those guys were trying to build great courses and great architecture INLAND!

Back in that day there really wasn't any good man-made architecture inland. I think it happened first in the English Heathlands with the likes of Sunningdale and Huntercombe and Woking, Swinley Forest etc.

This is what got these guys attention and they made the pilgramage over to the Heathlands too to see what it was all about to basically MAKE good man-made INLAND architecture and not just find it on the coasts as had been done basically with links golf.

The fact that I can put all those guys in the English Heathlands BEFORE they built their courses say a lot though, in my opinion.

But the real key, I think, is INLAND architecture that was representative of some of the best of the basically GOD-made linksland features.

Before that amazing happenstance in the English Heathlands around the turn of the century most all inland golf courses looked like steeplechase courses and after a while some of these new and innovative "sportsmen" architects like those guys realized those early inland precusors both over there and over here looked and played like shit and that they could do a whole lot better if they used those first great heathland courses as their man-made architectural models.

Of course the other fundamental question is why and how did that first great INLAND architecture happen in the English Heathlands outside London in the first place?

I think a lot of factors went into that happenstance but a lot more than we might think had to do with the soil makeup and structure of the English heathlands.

The fact is those early rudimentary steeplechase style courses in GB and even America were on ground and soil not remotely conducive to golf or golf's basic agronomy of bents and fescues.

The fact is the soil makeup and structure and drainage of the Heathlands was remarkably like the soil makeup and structure and drainage of the Scottish linksland.

Obviously it took those early GB golfers and early architects some time to discover that fact. It was made more difficult by the fact that the raw heathlands before golf was basically covered up by heather and gorse and such and its soil and drainage and such just couldn't be well seen.

[David Stamm]

DavidS:

As time goes on my suspicion continues to grow that guys like Crump and Hugh Wilson and others like Myopia's Leeds were really into the fact and creation of a couple of courses in the English Heathlands as their model far more than they were into the Scottish seaside links courses.

 

Tom, I myself have thought about this quite a bit. It just makes sense considering what sort of suitable ground was available then. While the influence of the links courses is evident throughout American golf, I don't think enough attention has been paid on what the heathland courses role has been and the level of infleunce it had on early American golf. I think from a practicality standpoint, one would think that when trips were made across the Atlantic, the heathland courses would've made a more profound impression on these men simply because of the similarities of terrian.

[TEPaul]

"I think from a practicality standpoint, one would think that when trips were made across the Atlantic, the heathland courses would've made a more profound impression on these men simply because of the similarities of terrian."

I agree. But I think the thing that got their attention is the far more natural and sophisticated look of the man-made architectural features of those few Heathland courses.

I think that was what those guys went there to study and use as their model on their INLAND projects.

The ramifications of the agronomy would actually come a bit later, in the later teens and early 1920s.

A lot of the early great INLAND American architecture like Myopia and Merion East were built on old farm fields that weren't very conducive to growing good grass for golf or for good playability.

Crump, on the other hand, whether it was luck or foresight very much wanted his course to be and do what some back then called "getting into the sand".

[Sean_A]

This conversation is interesting because I always assumed that a guy like Crump & perhaps to a lesser extent Wilson were using Scottish links for models (as it were) as interpreted in heathland golf.  It never occurred to me that they would skip the influence of heathland golf and directly use links as models (or whatever one wants to call this influence).  

Tom P, you forgot to mention Walton Heath in your list of early heathland courses. Fowler (who was considered one of the Titans of design not long after he completed Beau Desert in 1913ish) finished Walton Heath in break neck speed to get it ready for play in 1904.  Of course, WHO has been changed substantially in detail, but the broad strokes remain the same.  

As you rightly state, where Pine Valley has the edge on previous American designs is in at least some part due to its soil.  I don't think Myopia has that heathy feel to it.  As an aside, was Myopia a sort of long term project for Leeds?  I get the impression he hung around a bit and made continual changes.  Did he make an influential trip to England?

Ciao

[David Stamm]

 

   

   As an aside, was Myopia a sort of long term project for Leeds?  I get the impression he hung around a bit and made continual changes.  Did he make an influential trip to England?

Ciao

Sean, I too would like to know a little more about Leeds and Myopia Hunt.

[TEPaul]

"Thanks Tom.  That is interesting about the orientation of the second part of that hole.  It makes perfect sense that the green is angled the way it is.  

If it was known at the time of Crump's death that his intention was to have that hole play as you described, what stopped it from being built as he wished?  Were there other issues?

***By the way...are you planning on coming tomorrow?***"

Jamie:

Yes, I'll see you there tomorrow with Wayne.

It may be a bit hard for us to understand the evolution of PV when Crump was alive and working on it basically daily.

When he died so suddenly (fortunately or unfortunately we now know the old sort of sub rosa rumor that he committed suicide is the truth) it's hard for us to imagine, I guess, what a shock that was to the club. Also not just the club but the world of architecture too. When I finally figured out how shocked so many seemed to be over his death it really did get my attention. I began to wonder what that all really meant.

As most know Crump basically owned the place but in some ways he didn't care to actually run it. He left that to Howard Perrin. He didn't seem to want to have much control over membership and such either. All he seemed to want to do is work on the course constantly and that's what he did until the end.

When he died like that so suddenly basically everything shut down for quite a while . It was also during WW1 for the USA (19 months altogether) and things inherently slowed down on things like golf projects for that reason too.

Even if the financial records are a bit vague around the creation of Pine Valley it appears Crump apparently paid for most things there and particularly for what went on with the golf course. Fairly reliable records indicate he spent something like $250,000 on the course. That was a ton of money in that time.

So logicially some of the things he said to Carr and Smith he wanted to do never got done after he died. Also with him gone the money for the course was gone too.

Matter of fact, the "1921 Advisory Committee" report contains some things that were approved by that committee and were never done. I don't know why that was but I guess they had other concerns and never got around to some things they'd approved.

The things Crump said he was going to do with the course are very interesting to consider today. The alterations on #7 was just one of many.

I know I've reported this on here about half a dozen times but if you missed it one sure can't say it's not interesting, particularly for an all male club like Pine Valley.

It's funny how some of these old newspaper reports have been long forgotten but one from 1917 indicates in Crump's own words that when he was done building Pine Valley he was going to do another course on the property JUST FOR WOMEN. He'd even interviewed Alexa Stirling for ideas. That newspaper report claims that next course is why Crump bought another parcel of hundreds of acres from Sumner Ireland.

[TEPaul]

"As an aside, was Myopia a sort of long term project for Leeds?  I get the impression he hung around a bit and made continual changes.  Did he make an influential trip to England?


Sean:

Yes to all