Did Ross study Raynor?

[Kyle Harris]

The current Flourtown CC has nine holes left of Flynn's redesign of the original Sunnybrook CC site that was Ross prior to Flynn.  The only Ross work on a Flynn course was a new green (14) and new tee (15) at Huntingdon Valley CC.  Flynn redid a number of Ross courses.

Whoops, I meant Sunnybrook but thought Cederbrook from the NLE thread... Cederbrook's old course was a Tillie on the current site of Beave... Arcadia University. It survived as a par 3 course called Cederbrook Hills until a few years ago.

[TEPaul]

Kyle:

Regarding your post #65, one can pick apart anything piecemeal after the fact and claim that something proves the rule wrong but I think I've shown in spades how Ross used every high tee site and green site available on his front nine.

You asked that the excercise be continued on the back nine but what you don't seem to appreciate is that is very different topography compared to the front nine and in a real way on the back nine he was basically out of high tees, valleys and high green sites in a golf course routing sense except where he did find them and use them such as #13 and #14. The rest really isn't that kind of land and particularly perhaps in his variety and balance sense on the back nine.

Go out and spend about a hundred hours trying to route a golf course on fairly topographical RAW land and I think you will get the gist of what I'm saying here real quick.

[TEPaul]

Futhermore, Kyle, I believe that perhaps the primary reason architects can't or don't get maximum routing use out of golf course sites and their natural topography is because always in the back of their mind is the question of "balance" or what might be more appropriated termed "par balance".

I can tell you that on really interesting topographical land this can become both maddening and a real pain in the ass.

The fact is "par balance" just might not fit with the topography of a site or vice versa.

Seemingly "par balance" is very important to architects and golfers but how important should it really be if one type of par hole leads to the next naturally topographically?

Frankly, when I hear a top architect like Tom Fazio say that he knows that golfers will not put up with back to back par 3s or par 5s it basically makes me sick.

Why would he say something like that if he wasn't fixated on "par balance" or if he didn't think golfers are fixated with it? What if, in a routing the topography led from one beautiful par 3 landform to the next beautiful landform par 3 on the next hole? Should and architect avoid that because it was lacking in "par balance"? Some might even start all over again given something like that.

I hope you understand what I mean.

Bill Coore taught me one very important thing about routing and that is sites that have a ton of interesting topography and/or natural features are a whole lot harder to route than flat bland featureless land.