Seeing double at Eisenhower Park, East Meadow, New York

[Michael Moore]

As Green Light Special expands into Long Island, and as the door slowly closes on the Maine golf season, I have had too many occasions to "fly around" with the beloved Google Earth.

Last night I came upon Robert Trent Jones's Eisenhower Park courses in the heart of Nassau County.

At first I thought I had been staring at the screen too long. Then I thought I had been drinking too much. Then I thought that Google had misaligned the orthophotography tiles.

Each par three hole at Eisenhower Park has a clone right next to it - there are 22 holes on each course. It looks totally bizarre from the air.

What's the story on these doppelgangers? Are these holes flooded with so many golfers and ball marks that they need a day off from time to time?

[Mike_Cirba]

Michael,

We fault RTJ Sr. for his seeming relentless conformity to a particular style, yet his rationale for the doppleganger par threes at Eisenhower Park were that they allowed a faster group to play through a slower one (with permission of course) by playing an adjacent slightly easier version of the same hole.

It's actually quite a remarkably clever idea, though it clearly was swept into the dustbin of history.  

[Tom Roewer]

Mike:  This was also done at Raymond Memorial GC across the river from Scioto in Columbus.  I remember them saying it was to spead play.

[Phil_the_Author]

This was actually done at a number of Southern courses as far back as atleast the early '20's with each green having different grasses so that year round play would not be impacted.

An example was Tilly's Colonial Golf Club in Atlanta ca. 1928.

I believe that Ross did some this way as well. Brad?