Brad Anderson’s New Gig Birmingham CC in Michigan (w/ course photos)

[Dan Moore]

GCAer superintendent Brad Anderson has a new gig as head super at Birmingham CC outside
Detroit.  Brad and I began exchanging emails last winter when we discovered we had a mutual
interest in the history of architecture in the Chicago area.  Recently he was kind enough to allow
me to stop by for a course tour and to snap a few pictures.  Brad most recently was head super at
Midlane Golf resort in Waukegan, Il. and before that worked at Old Elm CC.

Birmingham CC dates to an original 9 hole course by Tom Bendelow which he expanded to 18 in
the 1920's.  Later Wilfrid Reid and William Connellan did some work as did William Diddel.
More recently Robert Trent Jones and Arthur Hills touched the course.  Presently Dave Esler is
redoing the tees and consulting on a long range plan.  Birmingham CC hosted the 1953 PGA
Championship. 

My tour was relatively quick so I will simply present a few photos with minimal explanation.
Brad indicated he thinks the original Bendelow routing and original green pads are relatively
intact.  Many of the greens had a variety of small mounds around them similar to some of those
found on the South Course at Olympia Fields which Bendelow designed around the same time.
Natural attributes include  a stream running through the course and several ridges.  The routing
features an inner front nine and outer back nine which flow back and forth across the property
from a centrally located Clubhouse.  One very neat aspect of the course was the existence of
small 3" to 6" undulations in the fairways.  There is an interesting convergence point on a ridge at
the northeast section of the course where 8 and 11 greens and 9 and 12 tees are located.  My
initial impression was quite favorable with the caveat that a more consistent bunkering scheme is
needed.  While not over treed in comparison to many courses from the same era there were some
fairly egregious examples of misplaced conifers.  New square tees by Dave Esler add a welcome
classic look and feel.   

The club website has a nice hole by hole presentation with photos and diagrams of each hole in
the guest section.  www.bhamcc.com

Brad with the first hole in the background. 


The Course layout


The 5th hole shares a ridge with the 16th.  Both are doglegs right with 5 coming downhill while 16
moves dramatically up to a green perched atop the ridge. 

5 tee



5 green


16 tee


16 fw


16 green


8 green


9th hole with new tee construction in process


10 green


11 green


15 green


18 green


Clubhouse

[Bradley Anderson]

Dan,

That's a very green golf course. That Anderson guy must not know much about F&F.

[John_Conley]

Looks great Brad.  Maybe he knows something about CYA!

[mike_beene]

Interesting layout.It comes back to the clubhouse more than any other I can recall.

[Dan Moore]

Brad,

Maybe all the green had something to do with the all day rain the day before or settings on my camera, I'm not sure. 

I'm curious.  Which holes were the original 9 and which were added later? 

[Chuck Brown]

Congratulations Brad.  I was a BCC member some years ago.  It is a very nice club with a nice membership.   I imagine that you'll agree that you've inherited some very good quality green surfaces.  It could use a good dose of GCA in some other respects and it sounds like you will have some good support in that regard.  I like the look of the tee program.  Was there room to move the 9th tee back to create more length?  I can't picture it without causing some interference in the genereral confluence of 8 green and 12 tee.
The statement regarding trees (not too badly over-treed, some egregiously misplaced conifers) is exactly right.
For Detroiters, Birmingham falls into a category of courses all located more or less along the same or similar streams as part of the Rouge River tributary system; including Wetern Golf & Country Club, and Warren Valley Golf Course, both Donald Ross courses.  What Birmingham going for it obviously is its location in Michigan's toniest suburb, and some beautifully maintained greens.  I actually regard Western's golf course as an equal to Birmingham, and the public Warren Valley as being an equal layout, except that Western is about 100 times better-maintained, and Birmingham is about 1000 times better-maintianed.
Interesting to me is that in The Confidential Guide, Tom Doak indicated that Birmingham was a Ross design in 1916:  there was a time when Birmingham had a kind sketchy grip on its own architectural history, and if Tom was misinformed, he should not be blamed.  Tom wrote that "Though the bunkering is umistakably Ross' style, it is not as well placed as on some of his other works..."  I'm sorry but I can't help with sorting out the mystery.  When I was there, nobody had any good clear answers about Donald Ross.
One thing about the conduct of the 1953 PGA Championship at Birmingham (this year's PGA is about 2 miles away, at Oakland Hills): had Hogan played and won, it would have capped his sweep of all of the majors that year.  Hogan won the 1953 Masters, U.S. Open (at Oakmont) and the Open Championship (at Carnoustie).  Hogan did not play in the PGA Championship at Birmingham because it overlapped with Carnousite and at that time; Hogan's decision to play Carnoustie may have been influenced by the fact that after his car crash, Hogan had a lot of trouble with playing 36 holes a day, which is what the match-play format of the PGA required in those days.

[Bradley Anderson]

Chuck,

Birmingham's architectural pedigree is as follows:

Bendelow - 1916, 1920 ... original route intact ... original native grades on roughs and fairways are all intact ... many green pads still have the trademark Bendelow body bag mounding and steep fall offs on the back sides to grass hollows which where probably bunkers at one time.

Wilfred Reid and William Connellan, 1928 ... I believe Reid was a Ross protege

Robert Trent Jones Sr., 1952 ... remarkably very MacKenzieish bunkering for the 1953 PGA championship ... the placement of these bunkers mostly remain, but the serrated edges have been rounded off.

Bruce and Jerry Matthews, 1963 ... three, maybe four new greens

Arthur Hills, 1985 ... I think Hills was here again in the early 1990's to redo our 6th green, and the grassing lines are not right - we're fixing those this week to make them consistent with the rest of the greens.

Dave Esler, 2007-2008 new tees

The greens are very sporty and challenging. The 4th green has three sawtooth ridges that are just incredible. Every hole has something special about it. It's a very very cool golf course, and it shows it's vintage well.

The 16th is one the best short par fours I have ever seen.

[Bradley Anderson]

Dan,

I'm not sure which of the 18 holes constituted the original 9.

[Chuck Brown]

Yes, Brad, the 16th is a dandy short par 4.  I also think that the 5th, a similar short dogleg 2-shotter, in the same corner of the property, is a sporty par 4.  The fifth is one of the holes pictured above.
And for the recreational player, I always thought that the 18th at Birmingham is a remarkably fun short par 5 that is hittable in two shots but the risk is a stream fronting the putting surface by about 30 yards.  It is sort of cross between the 13th and 15th holes at Augusta.
Tom Doak rightly loved the short 11th hole, a short one-shotter to a narrow and difficult green surface, and Brad you are quite right in your praise of number 4's ridged green surface.
It is an exceedingly pleasant environment to play in.

[Will E]

I hope the club will continue on with Esler's plans.

I think Brad has a slide of the 11th hole as an example of trees gone wild.
Is this still a field goal par 3?

http://www.bhamcc.com/club/scripts/golf/View_Course_Hole.asp?CID=351&HNO=11&GRP=7&NS=PUBLIC

[Brad Klein]

Brad Anderson, congratulations on landing at a club with such an architectural history. I know you've always taken that seriously, and we always welcomed your occasional articles on design/maintenance for us in SuperNews back a few years ago.

If send me your new email I'll send you something I wrote on BCC in Oct. 2003, along with the photo of the field goal shot on No. 11 that Ellender referred to.

[Dan Moore]

Here is another shot of 11 from closer to the tee.

[Mike_Cirba]

Dan,

It looks like there are some really good landforms under all those trees.

[kgrace]

Hi Dan - not to be that guy but your last picture is the approach to the 8th green from the left rough.  It's been a while since I have played BCC but I'm pretty sure I have been in every bad spot on that course.

[Chuck Brown]

Yeah, the picture labeled as 11 immediately above is actually 8 green.  11 green is at the far left of the frame, just out of view.

[Dan Moore]

Thank you pointing out the errors of my ways; given our haphazard trip from hole to hole in no particular order I'm not surprised.