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mike_malone

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #25 on: October 04, 2007, 01:34:22 PM »
 My dunce cap is not for lending. I had my name engraved on it "MAIDAY".
« Last Edit: October 04, 2007, 01:37:40 PM by michael_malone »
AKA Mayday

TEPaul

Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #26 on: October 04, 2007, 01:40:35 PM »
Wayne:

You know how I feel about Fernandina Beach Municipal and why. I was serious on that list of unsung architects and unfortunately Tommy Birdsong doesn't exactly fit into that category.

On the other hand, Tommy Birdsong was a Timucuan Indian and that tribe was apparently remarkably unique in about three ways---eg they were apparently total giants all (more on why that was not true later), they had perhaps the gentlest dispositions anthropology has ever heard of and all of them were just about totally tatooed.

Fernandina Beach Municipal is pretty bland really but it does remain the only golf course I've ever seen or heard of that is fully tatooed, and for that reason alone maybe TommyB should be on the underrated list.

TEPaul

Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #27 on: October 04, 2007, 01:42:55 PM »
Mayday:

Too bad you didn't screw up the spelling as "IAMDAY"

You blew a beautiful opportunity kimosabee.

wsmorrison

Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #28 on: October 04, 2007, 01:45:41 PM »
Tom,

Tommy Birdsong also redesigned Dublin CC in Georgia.

Mike,

It is appropriate that the dunce cap permanently resides on top of your head.  By the way, the trees out between 13-9-12 at RGGC makes for a dramatic improvement.  Now if you'll only blow up that big rock and marker fronting the first tee and lengthen and lower it, add some back tees (9,12) change some back tees (11,14,17) and remove others (2,4,18), and recontour the cutout of the slope in front of 11 tee, that course will be a top 50 classic in no time.  Surely you are lending that dunce cap to others  ;)
« Last Edit: October 04, 2007, 01:46:33 PM by Wayne Morrison »

mike_malone

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #29 on: October 04, 2007, 02:03:28 PM »
 Wayne,

   Maybe you need a dunce cap since I agree with everything you said (except that you meant #9-#12-and#11).
AKA Mayday

wsmorrison

Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #30 on: October 04, 2007, 02:13:38 PM »
That error must be attributed to fast typing and a lack of proofreading.  But, and I rarely get to say this...you are right and I was wrong.  Man, that hurt :-\

Dave Bourgeois

Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #31 on: October 04, 2007, 02:32:08 PM »
Good call with Orrin Smith.  I recently walked the Hanover CC up in Dartmouth and was really impressed.

I realize that Hanover was recently re-designed, by Ron Pritchard... so If the green complexes are his work then add him to the modern list!

The only other Orrin Smith that I had played is Rivervale CC in NJ.  The greens/bunker complexes there where very interesting as well.


Kyle Harris

Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #32 on: October 04, 2007, 02:57:36 PM »
Mayday/Wayne,

Are there pictures!?

Those trees between 9 and 12 were downright awful!

wsmorrison

Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #33 on: October 04, 2007, 03:10:58 PM »
I don't have any...maybe YAMDAY can get some and I'll post them.  I played the course a week or so ago...it is in fine shape.  Kudos to Charlie Carr!

Peter Pallotta

Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #34 on: October 04, 2007, 03:26:16 PM »
Gents, some of you have already suggested a specific reason a given architect is underappreciated today, but can you give me some idea of what you think the deeper/more fundamental explanations might be (if any)?

Are these architects not part of the canon simply because they're not good enough to rank amongst the greats? Are they not part of the canon because the criteria for such inclusion was/is too limited, or perhaps biased in some way? In the case of one/more of the architects mentioned, is it simply because the expert/consensus opinion hasn't gotten around to them yet (but soon will)? In some instances has most of their work been changed so dramatically as to no longer serve as accurate benchmarks for their talents? Were some of the great (besides being great) also better self-marketers and promoters than the under-appreciated ones?

That sort of thing. Again, I'm not sure there is a deeper explanation, I'm just asking. But I find that in many other areas of life, true appreciation only follows after true attention has been paid; I'm wondering if we just haven't paid enough attention yet.

Thanks
Peter


Mike_Cirba

Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #35 on: October 04, 2007, 04:07:51 PM »

joe valentine?... i'm not sure you can call him underrated though seeing as he was only associated with merion and there's no indication whether he was involved in the design at all...

Ally,

It's a very little known fact that Joe Valentine also designed the Exeter Golf Course, near Reading PA, which opened 9 in 1952 and 9 in 1958.

He did it as a favor to Reading CC Professional Henry Poe, whose friend Jack Chiarelli, a music teacher by profession, had purchased a piece of property to build a golf course and was making a mess of it.  

With Valentine's assistance, by the early 60s Exeter evidently was the best conditioned public course in PA, particularly the greens.  So much so that when some friends asked George Fazio to design them a course, something he had never done and had no experience with, he called Chiarelli for a site visit.

Chiarelli evidently showed him the nuts and bolts of what to do and spent a few days transferring knowledge of what Valentine had taught him to George Fazio.   Interesting about the Italian angle as I think about it now...

After this education, apparently George Fazio decided to start designing golf courses and when on to fame and some fortune in that arena.   According to Chiarelli, he never got so much as a subsequent followup or thank you so he felt a little miffed.

But, the ironic thing in my mind is that Joe Valentine was directly responsible for Tom Fazio's career.    ;D

Sadly, only a badly butchered nine holes remain at Exeter, with much work lost in the past decade as a housing development was implanted in the middle of the property.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2007, 04:12:35 PM by MikeCirba »

Dan Moore

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #36 on: October 04, 2007, 04:55:50 PM »
In the Midwest I would add C.D. Wagstaff.  He designed the famous now mostly NLE Tam O'Shanter Course, the U of I courses and Seacrest/Twin Orchard Country Club among others.  
"Is there any other game which produces in the human mind such enviable insanity."  Bernard Darwin

Phil McDade

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #37 on: October 04, 2007, 05:12:12 PM »
Peter:

Good question; I'll take a shot.

For R.B. Harris, it's someone who is roundly criticized -- often fairly, I think -- for designing courses to fit maintenance practices (e.g., making the width between bunker and green the size of contemporary mowing equipment). But an early design of his, dating to the 1930s (Janesville Riverside, a muni run by the city in southern Wisconsin), shows plenty of interesting use of the terrain, interesting greens, and some true quirk (a 95-yard par 3 straight over an oak tree, a 185-yardish par 3 with a 3/4's collar around the backside of the green that keeps balls from flying over the backside). I've played some of his older courses, and while I think they are OK, they don't quite hold the interest of this interesting early work. It's short by today's standards, and has little room to expand. Still, it's a fun course; I've been seeking out other early Harris courses to see if they match Riverside.

Watson seems to fly under the radar, compared to other classic-era architects, perhaps because he was less prolific than some of his contemporaries.

I included Bendelow because so much of his stuff is still around, and -- although there are lots of reasons for courses good and bad to come and go -- I think it says something that so much of what the admittedly prolific architect designed survives. His original nine at Old Hickory CC in Beaver Dam, WI, is the foundation of a very good course that flies well below the radar.

Willie_Dow

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #38 on: October 04, 2007, 10:29:04 PM »
Ally:  Underrated is the word.  These landscape people had vision of drainage, some agronomy, but an awarness of what golf was all about, and how the people who found the game would react to the course it was played upon.

Unfortunately today the architects are trying to tell us, the players, as to how we should play their courses.

James Bennett

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #39 on: October 04, 2007, 10:50:52 PM »
Wayne,

   Maybe you need a dunce cap since I agree with everything you said (except that you meant #9-#12-and#11).

Mike

I was hoping that Wayne meant the two or three trees between #13 tee shot point and the end of the practice fairway - the 'lovely' specimen trees.  However, Kyle's later comment reminded me of the ugly pines on 9-11-12 that we hope Wayne is referring too - pinus radiata style pines.  Yuck.

James B
Bob; its impossible to explain some of the clutter that gets recalled from the attic between my ears. .  (SL Solow)

mike_malone

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #40 on: October 05, 2007, 11:28:40 AM »
 James,

   You guys are toooo tough! Evergreens that are out of play act well as barricades for practice areas.
AKA Mayday

James Bennett

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #41 on: October 05, 2007, 10:18:52 PM »
James,

   You guys are toooo tough! Evergreens that are out of play act well as barricades for practice areas.

The 'barricade'

Bob; its impossible to explain some of the clutter that gets recalled from the attic between my ears. .  (SL Solow)

Paul_Turner

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #42 on: October 06, 2007, 08:04:14 AM »
I think Tom Simpson.  Probably because he never built anything in the USA, most of his best work is in Continental Europe.  His surviving courses are a match for any of the other Golden Age guys.
can't get to heaven with a three chord song

Lester George

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #43 on: October 10, 2007, 09:39:32 PM »
Maurice McCarthy, some very cool stuff at Hershey.

Lester

David Stamm

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #44 on: October 11, 2007, 02:21:18 PM »
I agree with Bob's mention of Willie Watson and Behr. I would add Herbert Strong to the list as well. Chandler Egan and Norman Macbeth are some others, but this is all relative however.
"The object of golf architecture is to give an intelligent purpose to the striking of a golf ball."- Max Behr

Marty Bonnar

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Underrated Golden Age Architects
« Reply #45 on: October 11, 2007, 02:58:20 PM »
I second (or, maybe third or fourth) Bendelow.

Is it fair to say he popularised the game more than any other in his time?

Okay, maybe only average design skills, but quick, playable routings in an afternoon by the dozen? Pretty cool. Shame there's not more left. I bet the minimalists would be drooling...

Good salesman, too!

FBD.
The White River runs dark through the heart of the Town,
Washed the people coal-black from the hole in the ground.