Cops .... and not

[Bryan Izatt]

Last month I had the opportunity to play the Links Course at the Lake Placid Golf Club.  Designed by Seymour Dunn in 1909.  It wasn't much linksy being in the mountains and forests.  But, one interesting feature for me was the presence of cop bunkers.  I'd never seen one live before.

From the aerial view the 5th hole had two cop bunkers on the left of the fairway that reminded of nothing so much as flippers on a pinball machine.  The serpentine cops funneling up to the green with a thin strip of sand fronting each was kind of neat.



The 6th the green was protected on the left side by a cop bunker, where the bunker was a deep pit.  



In jarring juxtaposition, right behind it and invisible from the fairway side was a flat saucer bunker.



Now, could this be a design feature from 1909?  Or is it a botched renovation or restoration attempt.  Or just plain odd design?

[paul cowley]

Bryan......my guess is that that the age of the flat saucer bunker is probably within someone who works there's memory bank.

Tell us more about the course.....it looks intriguing [except for that bunker].

[Bryan Izatt]

Paul,

The course is in a mountain meadow on the outskirts of Lake Placid.  It looks like it was carved out of a forest, but there are few internal trees, I guess in deference to its supposed linksiness.  There look like some recent additions of a few internal evergreens to delineate fairways, but I think the long fescue would be a more appealing look.

Unfortunately I didn't get a lot of pictures as we were rushing through to catch our son coming through on one of his loops in the Ironman USA.  The most notable feature to me was the extensive use of cops bunkers.  Oddly there were many other bunkers that were essentially flat, but in odd geometric patterns.  I thought the juxtaposition was jarring.

Jay Flemma wrote the course up on his blog and was kinda critical. The conditioning has improved a lot from when he was there and from the satellite pictures.

Although the course will never make anyone's top 100, it still has some neat features.  I particularly liked the 10th, below, a long par 4 at 470 yds.  It must have been a brute back when.  The tee is just off the bottom right corner and the tan area abutting the narrow fairway at the bottom is really a knobby ridge which creates a blind tee shot.  The odd shaped cop bunker in the LZ left and the serpentine cop bunker nearer the green on the right were really neat visually.  But then there is the very geometric, not cop, horseshoe bunker around the green!



Another neat hole was the 14th a long par 3 at 187 yds.  In the picture below you can see a cop in the middle of the left bunker.  It must have been 6 or 8 feet high and certainly was visually intimidating from the back tee to a back left pin (and, yes I was in that bunker, behind the cop).



The last hole was also an appealing hole, an uphill mid-length par 4 to a fortress green set on a plateau well above the fairway landing zone.  Here's a picture looking back over the 18th green down towards #1 fairway and green.

[wsmorrison]

That looks like an extremely interesting golf course from an intriguing era.  I wonder if there is a course history.  Maybe Craig Disher can dig up an old aerial, that would be fascinating to study.
Thanks for posting the photographs!

[Bryan Izatt]

I haven't seen anything in the way of a course history.  The course's web site has a very limited write-up as follows:

"LAKE PLACID CLUB ~ LINKS COURSE

        The Lake Placid Club Links Course was designed in 1909 by the master Scottish golf instructor and club maker, Seymour Dunn. Though settled in the U.S. at the age of twelve, Dunn designed golf courses in both America and Europe. Among his best known European designs are the private courses of King Leopold of Belgium (1906), the Rothschild Estate in France (1908), and King Emmanuel of Italy (1908).

        Dunn remained true to his origins, and the Lake Placid Club Links Course is laid out in true links style, with wide open fairways and large undulating greens. True links golf requires guile and cunning more than strength, and the Lake Placid Club Links Course is a classic example of such a challenge. Both men and women golfers will enjoy this course.

        The Lake Placid Club Links Course has six testing par three holes. Dunn's forte was par threes, and these demand well struck shots to each, of medium to long carry. The 9th and 11th are the shortest, and they are among the prettiest par threes any golfer will play. The 11th is well guarded by bunkers on three sides, and a mis-struck shot to the right will result in a pitch to a green 30 feet above.

        The 8th, a 337-yard par four, offers the most spectacular view from the tee, while the 10th is true Adirondack terrain, a 445-yard hole requiring a blind uphill tee shot into the wind.

        The 5th, a par five, might well be in Scotland, with two mounds to be carried on the fairway but fairer greens as compensation. The 6th, a par four, double dips, calls for a great drive, and will delight a long-ball hitter, who can reach the green in two.

        The 18th is perhaps the best hole of all, deceptively long, it has the smallest green of the course, with the lie of the land its sole but substantial obstacle. A par here is well earned, and a birdie hard to come by.

        The Lake Placid Club Links Course is Scottish-style golf at its best, links design set in the spectacular scenery of the Adirondack Mountains. It will challenge and delight golfers at all levels."

If I were guessing, I'd think that its current design is probably pretty close to its original design.  Hard to imagine anyone adding those serpentine cop bunkers in any recent times. An old aerial would certainly help confirm that.

[Brad Swanson]

Bryan,
   Please post more pictures of this course if you have them and are able to.  It looks very interesting.

Cheers,
Brad

[Dan Herrmann]

Check out page 197 here:  http://photoarchive.usga.org/mbwtemp/GolfUSGABulletinApril1909.pdf

Warning - you'll need broadband!

[Mike_Cirba]

I like the look of the cops, particularly as a historic artifice.

Wayne...don't they seem a bit like what Flynn drew for PM?

[TEPaul]

It's always been my impression that the term "cop" bunker in early golf architecture was the term used to describe the type of rectangular bunker that stretched all the way across the golf hole.

I don't know that the type of bunker showing in that photo above was what was referred to back then as a "cop" bunker.

[Mike_Cirba]

Tom,

I had always heard of the parallel embankments defining OB at Hoylake referred to as "Cops".   I recall that Bobby Jones called them that in his book, if my memory isn't completely shot.

[TEPaul]

Mike:

There was a pretty long thread on the cop bunker on here about three years ago. Frankly, from that and otherwise I don't think anyone is too sure of the derivation and etymology of the "cop" bunker. My recollection is the word had some derivation in South Africa, perhaps a form of Boer word.

Read the JH Taylor article contained in TommyN's "In My Opinion" article entitled "In Praise of the Ralph Miller Library".

Taylor doesn't seem to mention the term "cop" but he does go through a pretty comprehensive evolution of bunker styles in the early days of golf architecture. Taylor is one who most definitely would've known---eg he was there throughout.

In my opinion, the early "cross" bunker he describes is what was generally referred to as a "cop" bunker.

[Bryan Izatt]

Tom,

If not "cop", then do you have another name for this style of bunker?  It seems to have been popular in a bygone era, and these were the first of that sort I'd seen still in use.

[Dan Herrmann]

So, a "cop" bunker <> "top" bunker, right?

[TEPaul]

Bryan:

Bunkers that looked like those in the photo may not have had a name per se; they were just a particular style of that era.

Dan:

I thought for some reason that I was the only one to use the term "top shot" bunkers when I started using it about ten years ago (my course had them on a majority of the holes before they were removed in the 1940s).

However, I found a form of a master plan ten years after the course was built by Ross himself. In that 1927 report Ross actually called them "top shot" bunkers.

[Dan Herrmann]

Thanks, Tom..

I've called "top" bunkers on our #6 "cop" bunkers, and folks looked at me like I was nuts

I'm in good company!