[TEPaul]

I spent a rainy day today with Ron Forse at Glen Ridge G.C in Glen Ridge NJ which is in the finishing stages of it restoration. This is a 1915 Willie Park Jr course.

The evolution of the club (1894) is interesting. Park's course has been somewhat changed, resequenced etc but the course has about 14-15 cool Park greens that have a fascinating combination of some semi-old fashioned over-all shapes and slopes and some really interesting and great looking nuancy little internal contours. I've never seen greens with little areas that look like they break one way but break the other. The routing is interesting--almost totally east-west parallel holes that have two softish ridgelines on either side of Broad St. that are beautifully positioned and perpindicular in the basic LZ of more than half the holes out there.

The bunkering is interesting--sort of bermy, meandering  surrounds with grassed down faces and basically flat-bottomed floors that give most all the bunkering an over-all shadowy look. Some bermy features with no sand too. A couple of bunker sets RonF says look like "Hebrew Hieroglyphics" (from the air). The course is only about 6100 yds but has to play a couple of hundred yards more.

This course is on 98 acres and it definitely doesn't have any wasted space--eg perhaps the shortest, narrowest practice range in the Universe. Ron was actually checking a section of the practice putting green directly behind the first tee for a level section so it can double as an alternative tip tee on #1.

Willie Park Jr. is certainly well recognized by some but I think  more should be known about his North American work. Of course he has the great break-through Sunningdale and Huntercombe in the English heathlands around 1900 but some think most architectural credit or architectural influence for those two hallmark English inland courses should more accurately go to Horace Hutchinson, Country Life magazine and the "Arts and Crafts" Movement.  



 

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

Sorry I couldn't join you, but other unexpected issues interfered.

It's a neat little course.

Great risk reward on a lot of the holes.

In the old days I used to play # 16 down the 3rd fairway to avoid the risk of out of bounds.

The par 3's are neat and going long on almost any hole inviteds disaster.

As you cross the road there's a great confectionery store, right next to the arts and crafts store, where we used to get sodas, milkshakes and candy bars.

I thought the use of the streams was very well done on par 3's, par 4's and par 5's.

There was another 9 just further north.

[TEPaul]

"As you cross the road there's a great confectionery store, right next to the arts and crafts store, where we used to get sodas, milkshakes and candy bars."

Patrick:

Would you say the greatest architectural influence on you was the "Arts and Crafts" Movement? Would you say those sodas, milkshakes and candy bars you used to get were of a vernacular aesthetic that could be directly attributable to a rejection of Victoriana and the Industrial Revolution?

[T_MacWood]

"Willie Park Jr. is certainly well recognized by some but I think  more should be known about his North American work."

TE
I would agree. Glen Ridge is an interesting and confusing example of his work....to me anyway. Somebody posted old aerials of the course a few months ago (I thought it was Pat), the course is really jammed in there, with handful of very odd bunkers.

The most common date for the course is 1913, but now 1915 seems to be the date. The strange thing is Park didn't move to the States until 1916. If he was involved at Glen Ridge in 1916 (which seems more likely), it would coincide with his work at St. Albans, Woodway and Shuttlemeadow. I believe he also began at Mt. Bruno in 1916, in addition to a couple courses in Michigan (Flint and Meadowbrook). Based on those courses I wonder if WP II inherited the routing at Glen Ridge.

[TEPaul]

Tom:

I'd say the Glen Rdge G.C. and the very dedicated guy who apparently oversaw the present Forse restoration, Dean Palucci, is probably not totally sure about the early evolution of the former Glen Ridge courses. There were some very early holes, perhaps beginning (1894) over 20 years before Park. But they were not on the same land as this course is, unless for some odd reason the streets in the neighborhood and their grid changed which is highly unlikely. One former early course had holes that constantly crossed streets including one hole that crossed two streets. The present course is Willie Park, although there have been some sequencing changes to the routing but using some of the old Park greens for other holes from other angles. Ron Forse has a list from somewhere that names the courses that Park apparently spent more time at and probably more time during construction. There appears to have been quite a bit of bunkering by Park on Glen Ridge, particularly mid-body hole bunkering that would indicate he may've spent more time on that one too. But the greens are really interesting. Have you seen this course? If someone mentioned to me that Park build Glen Ridge in 1915 (which I mentioned in the post above) it was probably "ball-parked". It does appear Park returned to the US in 1916. It also appears that Glen Ridge may've been more than 18 holes at one time but I'm not sure of that. A early aerial does show holes that were north of the present course on leased land and they definitely look to be very much the identical style.

[T_MacWood]

"During golf’s formative years in this country, when the typical workweek stretched into Saturday, the issue of Sunday golf was a burning one. In 1904, the members of the Golf Club of Glen Ridge voted 68 to 58 in favor of Sunday play. The vote was called because the owners of three separate tracts of land that made up part of the course would not allow golf on the Sabbath. In effect, the Glen Ridge members voted to abandon part of their golf course in exchange for an extra day of play.

The Golf Club of Glen Ridge was organized in October 1894, in the home of John Wood Stewart, a prominent member of the Essex County Hunt Club, who the previous year had helped found the Golf Club of Montclair. The first Glen Ridge clubhouse was half the gardener’s house on a nearby estate.

The first golf course was a nine-holer that played through "peaceful meadowland" off Ridgewood Avenue, crossing the road twice. The course underwent considerable evolution through 1911, as tracts of land were added or deleted, yet it appears to have straddled Ridgewood Avenue throughout this period. Indeed, the gas lamps that adorn Ridgewood Avenue to this day appear in the Club’s logo.

In 1911, the club purchased additional land one mile north of the original site, where it expanded to an 18-hole course, which was ready for play in 1913. The course consisted of five holes between Ridgewood Avenue and Broad Street, with the other 13 east of Broad. Of these 18, reasonable facsimiles of 10 remain in play today, as course revisions by A.W. Tillinghast (1920s) and Robert Trent Jones (1949-1950) have altered the course significantly."

TE
This is the course history from the MGA, I suspect WP II redesigned the 1913 course around 1916 and made it more or less his own.

With your obvious preoccupation with the A&C Movement I'm sure you vistied Max Behr's home near Bernardsville and Stickley's Craftsman Farm in Morris Plains while in the neighborhood.

[TEPaul]

"TE
This is the course history from the MGA, I suspect WP II redesigned the 1913 course around 1916 and made it more or less his own.

With your obvious preoccupation with the A&C Movement I'm sure you vistied Max Behr's home near Bernardsville and Stickley's Craftsman Farm in Morris Plains while in the neighborhood.

Tom:

Perhaps, or perhaps the club and consequently Ouirin are a little off on the year. Sometimes Quirin can't do more than offer what the clubs give him. But if Dean Palucci can find any additonal records of the club he said he'd be glad to let me know. Would you like to see them if he finds anything else?

Yes, I've been by Max Behr's old home many times which is ironically right down the road from the USGA headquarters. I believe Max Behr married one of Far Hills big-timer Reeve Schley's daughters. It's a heavy field- stone country style that’s a bit unusual. As for the Stickley Craftsman Farm--I have not seen it as I'm generally more interested in seeing golf architecture, not necessarily building, furniture and art and craft which had little to do with golf course architecture.  

I'm also right about in the middle of the beautifully layed out reprint of Hutchinson's 1897 "British Golf Links" by Sports Media Group (our publisher). To say the least Hutchinson is not even slightly critical of some very rudimentary man-made architecture of some of the courses he reviews—and the mere mention of the “arts and crafts” movement which you say is the primary influence on Golden Age golf architecture is, again, never to be found. Curious for a man you say was its major champion.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Toms,

There were additional holes north of the current 16th hole.

The club entrance is on Ridgewood Ave, but the entire golf course is east of Ridgewood Ave.

While I think the MGA club book is terrific, I don't know that I would cite it as the absolute authority on the history of each golf course in the MET area.  

Glen Ridge is a testy little golf course where accuracy is in high demand.

[T_MacWood]

TE
American Golfer reported Glen Ridge had moved to the new site in September 1912. Yes I would love to find out more about the course. Anything he uncovers would be of interest.

"Yes, I've been by Max Behr's old home many times which is ironically right down the road from the USGA headquarters. I believe Max Behr married one of Far Hills big-timer Reeve Schley's daughters. It's a heavy field- stone country style that’s a bit unusual."

I'd say so...the rustic home straddles a stream!

"To say the least Hutchinson is not even slightly critical of some very rudimentary man-made architecture of some of the courses he reviews"

I don't believe I wrote Hutchinson was critical in that book. The first criticism came a year later in Country Life...and the rest is history.

By the way, that Hutchinson book really is brilliant when you consider it was produced in 1897. To this day it is one the finest golf course photo essays ever produced IMO. Hutchinson was a man decades ahead of his time.

I commend you for your efforts to read up on early British golf.

[Jeff_Mingay]

Tom Paul,

I think Hutchinson's ideas on golf course architecture evolved after 1897. And, again, I agree with Tom MacWood. If you read Hutchinson's later writings at the turn of the 20th century, it's clear he was one of the first men to champion naturalness in golf course architecture.

[Mike_Cirba]

I had the opportunity to get out with Dean and some of his friends to Glen Ridge yesterday.   It's a fascinating example of early architecture, with certainly many lessons still applicable today for creating testing, intriguiging golf on limited acreage. 

The use of natural landforms was exceptional, and as Tom Paul mentioned at the start of this thread, the greens are just wonderful, especially now that the greenspace has been fully recovered out to the perimeters of the pads.

The bunkering is uniformly threatening, and penalizing, and a curious but delightful variety of sizes, shapes, and internal contouring.

For only 6100 yards, there sure is a ton of golf packed in that little space! 

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