Another Mackenzie copy of the Road Hole

[Neil_Crafter]

Interested Mac-o-philes will have noted a thread I started a little while back about the Road Hole copy that Mackenzie built at Weston-super-Mare. Well, one Road Hole copy could be a whim on his part, but two copies could be the start of a pattern.

Our research in the British Library (through Nick Norton, an EIGCA architecture course student) into Mac's course for the London Flying Club at Hendon, has turned up this little gem in the March 1920 issue of 'Golfing'.

"Dr. Mackenzie, the architect in charge, is satisfied that the ground available is suitable for laying out a course with fascinating features, and is giving nothing away to say that amongst these will be a perfect facsimile of the famous seventeenth at St. Andrews."

What is interesting is the reference to a "perfect facsimile". Not that he was using the hole as an inspiration but that he was endeavouring to make a perfect copy.

This version likely pre-dates the one he did at W-s-M by a year or so. We don't yet know which hole it was at LFC.

I wonder if we can find a third? Then there will definitely be a pattern!

[Tom_Doak]

Neil:

I'm not sure where you are going with this.

I've built four or five versions of the Redan, and three of the 13th green at Crystal Downs.  Out of 27 courses.  What is the pattern?

[Chuck Brown]

Tom - How about the Road Hole?  Given the odd history to the property you were tasked to work with at Lost Dunes, did the possibility of a "Road Hole" present itself there?

I always thought the Road Hole was most worthy of imitation whereever the opportunity presented itself, but some of the most noteworthy features (a blind drive to the prime landing area, and the road-and-wall complex were pretty odd features to repeat.

Neil I don't suppose there is any shortage of stone walls in Britain, but how "exact" was Mackenzie's copy set to be?

[Tom_Doak]

Chuck:  We are of course building a version of the Road hole at Old Macdonald, minus the blind tee shot and minus the wall and road behind the green ... we have only a chipping area back there.

I have toyed with building versions of the Road green on other projects, but the only one I can remember doing was that short par-4 at Cape Kidnappers, the 14th, which turned out to be the most interesting hole to watch in the Kiwi Challenge.

The second hole at Lost Dunes has the same strategy as the Road Hole ... with the nasty little dune front left substituting for the Road bunker ... but I didn't notice the resemblance until after the hole was built.

[Neil_Crafter]

Tom
I'm not sure where I am going with it either!

Mackenzie is not generally known as an architect who copied any of the famous holes, although he was undoubtedly influenced by them. I thought it was interesting to find two examples of him copying the Road Hole and clearly promoting the fact to the writers of these articles in 'Golfing".