A Dune Hazard at Troon - Mackenzie? More info connecting Mac to Troon Old

[Neil_Crafter]

Sean and Tom
I have to agree with Tom's conclusion in this one, it certainly read to me that you (Sean) believed Mackenzie was in error to build such bunkers at Troon and its his own darn fault that they don't exist today! Mackenzie stressed over and over again the twin virtues of finality and economy and unfortunately finality was not achieved at Troon Portland. Whether the bunkers were progressively abandoned for reasons of maintenance difficulty, maintenance cost, playability or disrepair during the difficult times of WW2, I do not know and I suspect the club does not either - especially considering that they didn't even know who designed their Portland Course until I recently drew their attention to it!

As for being a 'MacHead' I've been called many things over the years but never this! I can understand though how someone with a surname starting with Mac might be a little offended by it. Perhaps you might like to come up with another term - Macophile perhaps? We don't want anyone getting Alisterical over it.

Neil

[Tony_Muldoon]

It must be the internet. 


I know Sean and I heard his voice through the post.  It's the type of typical astute comments he makes while playing.  The questions he raises are perfectly valid - are those bunkers suitable for such a site. What maybe doesn't come across is the sense of fun in the way he's expressing himself. 

His question are still to be addressed IMHO .


 

If I'm reading this picture right, it seems that the green has really shrunk in size.  IN the past it would have been possible to have the flag right behind the bunker at front right?  Aslo  this green appears (I've never been to Troon) to fall away from front to back?  If so loosing the back bunker takes away another great position especially as I believe the prevailing wind would mostly be over the right-handed golfers left shoulder.


This course is generally unloved by visitors who feel they are made to play it.  The club might turn that problem around if they could perform a full MacKenzie 'restoration'.

[Neil_Crafter]

Tony
I'm sure there was a twinkle in Sean's eye as he typed..........

Still, they are hard questions to answer and I personally do not know the answers. Were they unmaintainable in the form Mackenzie designed them? Looking at the ones around the 6th green they do not appear to have excessively high faces, although a couple of the fairway bunkers seen in the distance seem to have slightly higher ones. I'm sure there was wind blow and this may have caused some modifications to be made. This doesn't explain why they filled in so many bunkers however, from 5 or 6 around the 6th green and now just 2. If I had to guess I'd say they filled bunkers in for ease of maintenance and cost cutting.

The green surface looked larger back in 1923 but that's pretty much standard for green outlines to shrink considerably over time especially 85 years worth!

[Mark Bourgeois]

Paging Scott Macpherson...

Here's a cut line from his book on TOC:

Bunker Revetting: Revetting is a process whereby small turf sods are stacked upon one another -- usually slightly offset -- to prevent a bunker face collapsing.  This style has become a look closely associated with the links.  It is not known exactly when it started, nor when it started on the Old Course, but old photos show bunkers on the Old Course were not always revetted as they are today.

He then refers us to a picture from Hutchinson dated 1897 showing what appears to be a partially-revetted Hell Bunker.

Another picture in the book dated 1920s shows a very naturalistic, Mackenzie-esque Hell Bunker.  Of course, this may have been the work of Mac himself!

Mark

[Sean_A]

Tony
I'm sure there was a twinkle in Sean's eye as he typed..........

Still, they are hard questions to answer and I personally do not know the answers. Were they unmaintainable in the form Mackenzie designed them? Looking at the ones around the 6th green they do not appear to have excessively high faces, although a couple of the fairway bunkers seen in the distance seem to have slightly higher ones. I'm sure there was wind blow and this may have caused some modifications to be made. This doesn't explain why they filled in so many bunkers however, from 5 or 6 around the 6th green and now just 2. If I had to guess I'd say they filled bunkers in for ease of maintenance and cost cutting.

The green surface looked larger back in 1923 but that's pretty much standard for green outlines to shrink considerably over time especially 85 years worth!

Neil

Macophile???  Sounds like some sort of organizing system from the 80s.

Tony is probably right.  I am not nearly so serious as my comments on this board may suggest.

For sure I question the wisdom of building those Mac bunkers on a windy site, however, it is still a question!  Like you, I don't know the circumstances surrounding the reasons they were built that way or why they disappeared.  However, I strongly suspect that keeping sand in the bunker designed this way would have been difficult, though not impossible for sure.  Money can solve a lot of problems.  Who knows, perhaps the club committed to maintaining the bunkers as Dr Mac built them and then later found this to be unfeasible. 

I wonder if M Fine addresses the reasons for the formalization of bunkers in his book?  In any case, knowing how frugal many UK club members are (and thus the Committees would be as well), I have to believe that money was a major reason for altering/eliminating bunkers. 

Also, there may be answers to be found at Cypress Point.  Weren't loads of the Mac sandy/waste areas there formalized? 

Ciao

 

[Paul_Turner]

Often bunkers survive for ages in their as designed state; then someone gets lazy, the bunkers disappear and "it was unmaintanable" is claimed.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

It's not necessarily relevant to Troon, but it's relevant to bunkers. I was talking to the former course manager at Mere the other day (1934/5 Braid) and during the 80s they took a lot of Braid's small bunkers and made them into one single bunker for cheaper maintenance. Talking with the course owner following that I gather they are going to make some of the single bunkers into smaller ones as they are cheaper to maintain (sic), simply in terms of raking sand from one end of a big bunker to the other. Mere is a parkland site, well sheltered and nowhere near as windy as a links.

I was also told my a Nairn member that they use heavier bunker sand in winter, and that it is a brute to escape from. Conwy certainly changed to a much heavier grained sand as the natural stuff they had been using was actually quite unpleasant blowing out of a bunker in any sort of wind.

MacKenzie may not have expected the bunkers to be maintained. It was not until February 1921 that the greenkeeper at Alwoodley was instructed to rake the bunkers once a week. This lack of maintenance is very apparent in the pictures on MacKenzie playing the course in its early days. MacKenzie was almost certainly not involved with construction of the new 10th green there in 1929/30 (he was by now in the US and considered a bigamist by Alwoodley members) and a photograph of the green in use for the first time (1930) shows incredibly simple bunkers, sunken and with little visual interest of the sort most clubs have gradually acquired over the years.

[Thomas MacWood]

Are we certain the Mackenzie bunkers at Troon Portland were not riveted? I've seen similar free-form bunkers on links made by Colt (Hoylake & Muirfield) and Simpson (Muirfield & Rye) that appear to be riveted on the highside. You really can not see the highside in this photo since it is taken from the back of the green, and the bunkers in the distance are too far away to make out any stacking.

In Wethered & Simpson's book what do you make of the free-form bunkers Simpson drew for Cruden Bay? Simpson considered himself somewhat of an expert on blowing sand, this is what he wrote in a 1920 article on the subject, "The dangers of sand blowing from bunkers guarding a putting green should be quite simply avoided. the angles of the banks of the bunkers should be carefully constructed having regard to the prevailing wind. the grass slopes running down to the sand should have a bold broken surface, and there should be but little expanse of sand in the bottom of the bunker"

I don't think Colt, Simpson & Mackenzie were idiots; I think they knew what they were doing on links courses. I reckon Paul's explanation is often what happened - inland as well as links. And who made the rule that a riveted bunker has to be a dopey pot.

[Neil_Crafter]

Mark
Good post, as is yours Tom.

Troon in 1921/22 was hardly Mackenzie's first foray into linksland by the sea so he should be given some credit for understanding about wind and sand. The bunkers in the 1923 photo of the 6th green could well have sod revetted lips. There is a semi circular face in the rear bunker nearest the camera that looks as if it was probably revetted, while the other rear bunker where the solitary spectator stands in front of has quite a sharp shadowy lip that could be 2 or 3 layers of sodding. So Tom's theory is entirely plausible. Whether this amount of revetting would prevent blowing sand escaping is another thing though. Big bunkers erode more than small ones which is why pots are more prevalent on windy sites. Particle size certainly has a lot to do with it also as Mark pointed out.

Mark interesting comments about the 10th at Alwoodley - I'd love to see those photos. Why did they need to build a new green I wonder?

And revetted bunkers don't have to be 'dopey pots' as Tom so nicely put it. Here's a more free form one I designed at Glenelg GC here in Adelaide.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Good post, Tom. The pic of Hell Bunker in Hutchinson's 1897 book is partially not completely revetted and not pot-like in the least.

Mark

[Sean_A]

First, who is not giving Dr Mac credit for knowing what he was doing?  I was asking questions and as yet noboby seems to know the answers. 

Second, I certainly wouldn't call a revetted bunker "freeeform".  Isn't the the point of creating a revetted wall to stop the sand from flowing?  Freeform to me is allowing the sand to do its thing.  Building a tongue between what are basically pot bunkers is another way to control the sand. 

Third, an archie has choices on how to place and style the bunkers.  Some choose to use a larger style - Hell bunker being an example and some choose to use pots.  Both styles have their advantages and disadvantages, but neither really look great imo.  I prefer pots because they tend to be more hidden and thus don't scar the landscape so badly as other styles which sit up and say hello.    However, much more important to me is the decision to place a bunker a why.  IMO, at least some of the time spent on trying to make bunkers attractive (whatever that may be) could better be spent on devising alternative ways to make a course interesting and challenging.   I would rather the land sit up and say hello rather than the bunkering.  With very few exceptions, if the most positive thing I have to say about a course concerns the bunkering then that course can't be all that great.

Ciao

[Sean_A]

Doe sthis pass mustard as a pot?  I think so and that had to be no later than 1897.


Ciao

[Bill_McBride]

Mark interesting comments about the 10th at Alwoodley - I'd love to see those photos. Why did they need to build a new green I wonder?

Neil, when I was playing Alwoodley with Nick Leefe, he told me the club was able to buy a little additional land and moved the 10th green farther back up the slope.  There may have been drainage problems when the green was in its original position at the bottom of the hill.

The added length makes the 10th play about the same distance as the 13th at Augusta National, which some apparently think was inspired by the Alwoodley long dogleg hole with a similar downhill, sharply right to left design.

The additional land was also used to set the 11th tee a bit farther up the hill, making the hole about the same length as the Eden at St Andrews.

[Niall Hay]

This type of discussion is exactly what makes GCA so great!

[Neil_Crafter]

Just bringing my old thread forward as I have found a little more information connecting Mackenzie to Troon Old. In March 1923 Alister's brother Charles who ran the company that built many of Mackenzie's courses, (The British Golf Course Construction Co in which Charles and Alister were both shareholders), wrote to the Chatsworth estate agents for the Duke of Devonshire who were the clients for Mackenzie's course at Buxton, Cavendish Golf Club, regarding his company's services. In it he included a list of courses they had built and it included this entry:

"Troon new course and alterations to the old course"

This would certainly appear to support Mackenzie's involvement in altering Troon Old prior to the Open of 1923. Strangely the club appear to have no knowledge of this.

[Niall Hay]

Just bringing my old thread forward as I have found a little more information connecting Mackenzie to Troon Old. In March 1923 Alister's brother Charles who ran the company that built many of Mackenzie's courses, (The British Golf Course Construction Co in which Charles and Alister were both shareholders), wrote to the Chatsworth estate agents for the Duke of Devonshire who were the clients for Mackenzie's course at Buxton, Cavendish Golf Club, regarding his company's services. In it he included a list of courses they had built and it included this entry:

"Troon new course and alterations to the old course"

This would certainly appear to support Mackenzie's involvement in altering Troon Old prior to the Open of 1923. Strangely the club appear to have no knowledge of this.

"Troon new course and alterations to the old course" - it would be incredible to find the details of the alterations to the Old and the full plans of the Portland.

[Niall Hay]

If we told them restoration would "strengthen" the hole for the return of the Open, think they'd go for it?

It would be a very cool modification for the 2016 Open Championship....would it be the only Open Rota course with ties to MacKenzie?

[Niall Hay]

As to the question posed by Mark B regarding the photo of the Portland Course's 6th green from 1923, I think we can answer in the affirmative thanks to this photo taken from the same spot by Troon resident Colin Cotter. I've put the 1923 and today's photo together for a nice comparison. Certainly seems Mackenzie's bunkering has been neutered but the green complex still seems roughly the same.

These comparison pictures are great. It is amazing also how much the has shrink (though not uncommon as courses "evolve" over time. It does however appear as though the "bones" are there of the MacKenzie course.

[Sean_A]

I still find that photo of the old 6th at Portland fascinating.  Other than the very weird configuration of bunkers (I wonder if they ever made it to the "bed in" stage where they looked quite natural?), what is that odd bit of short grass behind the green?

Ciao

[Niall C]

Niall

Perhaps the best people to speak to for renovating the bunker at the 10th might be the R&A as they would be paying for it. It would be interesting if they did, it might even get grudging appreciation from the anti-Dawson brigade on here but I wouldn't bet on it  

Sean

Good point about the short grass behind the green. From what I recall there is now a road behind that green that comes down from beside the rail track. Perhaps that didn't exist back then and that shape we see in the old photograph might be a tee for the next hole ? We have a a plan of MacK's course but don't have to ahnd to look see.

What I find really interesting however is the lack of rough between this hole and the adjacent hole further down the fairway, as though MacK was trying to imitate TOC at St Andrews with double fairways. Not sure if that could work today, perhaps maybe if the fairway bunkers were restored ?!

Niall