The 15th Hole, the Moat Hole, at Galen Hall (Tillie), Wernersville, PA

[Joe Bausch]

To dovetail off of Kyle's thread on the very interesting 2nd hole at Galen Hall, I present now the "moat hole" at GH, done by Tillie in 1917.  He came in and added a 2nd nine to the original Findlay nine.

This par 3 is the 15th hole and pretty much sits in the middle of a valley.  So as you are playing your round, you can get glimpses of the hole from other parts of the course.  For instance, while near the 8th tee you can see the green down between some trees:



From this same spot I took a series of photos and put together a QT VR movie, where you can zoom in on the moat hole green:

http://darwin.chem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/GalenHall/GH_pano.mov

On the 14th hole you are sort of on the other side of the valley and the green is really coming into view now:



Once on the moat hole tee box you see that it perhaps play a little bit downhill, but a couple of things really stand out:

1.  It really is a moat hole!  It is completely surrounded by water.
2.  When played from the tips, it is pretty tough at 193 yards.  That's just a wee bit longer than the 17th at Sawgrass.







Here is a picture of the hole from the June, 1927 edition of Golf Illustrated (thanks Phil Young!):



So it looks like the hole now is pretty much like it was many years ago.

After we exited the green using the bridge at the rear, we were just taking in the sunny day, then decided to have some fun and play the hole from the cart path and across the bridge:



Kyle's putt made it down the macadam and started along the wooden bridge, but took a bad bounce (rub of the bridge?!), popped up in the air, and stuck between two of the boards.  This put a lot of pressure on me.  I took my time to prepare:



I gave it a mighty whack.... then Murphy's Law was in action.  As my ball left the asphalt and started over the bridge, it hit Kyle's ball and we both ended up in the moat.  Laughter ensued and we moved onto the next hole.

Galen Hall is a pretty neat place.  I have a photo album of all 130 pics I saved if you really want to see it in full:

http://darwin.chem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/Galen_Hall/index.html

[Robert Kimball]

Wow -- VERY cool hole. Thank you for the picture tour.

It looks pretty spot on now as it did in the old picture, IMO.

I could see it was a pretty busy day on the course. Looks like you had the place to yourself.
The only reason I even bring that up is that it is a public facility.

Thanks, Rob

[Joe Bausch]

Rob, we started early as we planned to play another course nearby in the afternoon.  It was a toasty 34° when we teed off. 

By the time we finished at noon it had warmed up considerably and many other people had come out to play.  We're kind of hard core, plus I knew I wanted to photograph the course so a combo of the morning sun and lack of players in front of us makes for my favorite kind of pics for golf courses.

[Bill_McBride]

That's a blast from the past of early golf!  Talk about the Penal School!

[Anthony Gray]

  Were is it located?

  Anthony

[Kyle Harris]

  Were is it located?

  Anthony

Wernersville, PA - which is 20 minutes outside of Reading and maybe 1.5 hours out the Turnpike from Philadelphia.

[Rich Goodale]

Joe and Kyle

Any connection to Galen Hall the 1960's PSu QB?

Rich

[Mike_Cirba]

Rihc,

Kyle was so inspired by the Moat Hole that he named his son after the course while in a prior life.

[Tim Nugent]

So, that's waht it's called.  I did one at Green Bay Country Club.  Maybe RJ Daily can post a pic of it if he has one.  I didn't set out to make it a "moat".  Actually the creek wrapped around the back of a knob (like a shepards staff) which happened to be the only ground around that wasn't in the floodplain.  Worried that the potential hydraulic bottleneck backing up floodwater - it was at the tail endof the creek which bisected the entire course - I decided to cut away the ground in front of the knob to allow floodwater another way around the knob.  We wrapped the knob with huge boulders to armor it and whalla - moat hole. (See how I worked that name in?)

[Kyle Harris]

Joe and Kyle

Any connection to Galen Hall the 1960's PSu QB?

Rich

None.

Galen Hall is presently the PSU Offensive Coordinator.

[Ray Cross]

Kyle and Joe,
Thanks for these comments and pix of 2 and 15; particularly this moat hole! As I see and watch more old but interesting courses go away (Valley Forge plowed under, General Washington cut to pieces, etc) I've made a pack with myself to spend a great part of this year visiting  many of the older courses that I never got to before.
When we moved to Philly in the early 70's, we had the Philadelphia Bulletin listing of area public courses as a guide to see and play...got to most of them in those days but Galen Hall wasn't one.

Ray