[TEPaul]

I don't know about the rest of you guys but I just can't tell you how many times I've been just blown away to see what a golf course routing looks like on an aerial (the shape of the whole course on an aerial photograph) compared to the way you think it is or is shaped when you play it on the ground---ie how different it can seem.

Have most of you had as many surprises that way, even with courses you know so well (when you see them on an aerial), as I have?

[C. Squier]

I think some people are better at laying out a course in their minds than others.  I try to make a mental map of a new course as I play and then test myself when I get home on Google Earth.  I'm usually pretty good on a tighter course, but when a course has really large spaces between holes on the interior, I fall apart. 

I was also pretty good at looking at blueprints and "walking" through our house before it was built by the 2D drawings, whereas my wife wasn't.  I chalk it up to me being right-brained.  I can do pictures, words I struggle with 

[Mike_Cirba]

Tom,

I'm not sure I can say I've been shocked by the way a routing looked, but I have been shocked to see sometimes how different features like bunkers, fairway widths, and green orientations look in two-dimensional from above.

Over this past winter Joe Bausch and Kyle Harris turned me on to an online site that has aerial surveys of PA from the late 30s and early 70s called

http://www.pennpilot.psu.edu/

that is just a tremendous resource and has been extremely valuable to some of our research....much like the Dallin Aerial collection at the Hagley Museum in DE.

I have to tell you that the first couple of weeks after they showed me that site was probably the closest I ever came to having Jen leave me and work fire me at the same time!    

It takes some getting used to, but it's fascinating and addicting.   it's really great for looking at NLE's like Trydeffrin, Roxborough, the old Huntingdon Valley, the old Olde York Road, the old Cedarbrook, Chester Valley pre-George Fazio, and a slew of others.

[Tommy Williamsen]

Routings always astonish me.  I find routing the course to be both an art form and the result of good science.  The architects need to work with the terrain, think about drainage, wind, where the sun sets, etc. yet make it interesting.   Most of the time I can keep the routing in my head as I play the course.  But I am right brained and find it easy to visualize things.  There are some exceptions, however.  I found Ballyneal, Sand Hills, and Dismal River almost impossible to figure out the routing.  I was astonished to see it.

[Mike_Cirba]

Here's a little example...

If you blow up the picture at this link, and look in the top left corner, you'll find two adjacent courses;

The just-defunct Ashbourne CC, which Joe Bausch discovered yesterday had Willie Park involved with Franklin Meehan and others building it, and just southeast of that, almost touching, is Perry Maxwell's Melrose CC, with some really interesting, almost ghost-like bunkering.

http://www.pennpilot.psu.edu/photos1940s/montgomery_1942/montgomery_1942_photos_jpg_800/montgomery_100842_aho_1b_22.jpg

[Thomas MacWood]

I've studied a lot of aerials over the years and you are always surprised to a certain extent, but not necessarily completely taken back. The one exception was Yale - that is one dramatic site and dramatic sites do not come through on aerials.

[wsmorrison]

The holes at Sand Hills flow so well together and the overall topography is pretty homogeneous, so while I was playing my two rounds there, I had no idea where I was in relation to other non-contiguous holes.  I purchased a watercolor painting of the routing and was shocked at how expansive the golf course is.   I've studied a couple of thousand aerial photographs and routing maps.  The most remarkable feature of all those routings is how much acreage was used at Sand Hills.

[BCrosby]

Older aerials almost always surprise me not because of the routing but because of what is or isn't there vs. what is there now. Even if I've previously read accounts of what was supposed to be there.

East Lake is a good example. I know a fair amount about the history of the course, but you have to see aerials to appreciate how EL's summer/winter greens worked and how the greens there now evolved out of them. There is no good way to describe that in a written narrative.

Bob

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