Starting a Club History

[Eric Pevoto]

Originally, I was going to pose this question through personal messages to a few of the club historians and such, but I've decided it would be interesting to get a variety of views.

I'm a golf professional and I work for a group that's developing Gil Hanse's latest project, French Creek Golf Club, outside Elverson, PA very near Stonewall.  I'd been at another Hanse renovated course, Downingtown CC, for the past five years.  

As someone who loves gca, I'm thrilled to have seen and been a part of the planning for the past 4 or so years and excited to be able to see construction from day one.  

Outside of building a membership and club, part of my "mission" is to chronicle the happenings so that people like us fifty or a hundred years from now will have an accurate history to look back upon.  I mean this from the point of the course and the club. Once the club is established I expect this job will be passed to a member.

Does anybody have any advice as to things that are often overlooked?  

How should these chronicles be compiled so that they will be preserved and remain intact?  

What clubs serve as models?

Thanks in advance.

[Craig Rokke]

Eric,

I'm not particularly knowledgable about club histories, but I would think two goals should be foremost: 1. To chronicle
the aims of the club founders, and, perhaps more importantly,
Gil Hanse's intent with the design, and maintenance practices.
A hole by hole commentary would probably prove to be valuable at some point. 2. To help establish a sense of pride in the history of French Creek GC.

Sorry I can't be more helpful, but I think it's great that you are establishing a history for the club. I hope you'll share some construction photos with us here on GCA. Good luck!

Craig

[Patrick_Mucci]

Eric,

I would suggest that you obtain a copy of:
"Miracle on Breeze Hill" by Lowell Schulman.
A story by the founder and the key people in the design and development of ATLANTIC Golf club.

It is a journal of sorts, but told in a fascinating way.
This may provide you with some ideas on how to best chronicle your club's history.

Good Luck.

[George Bahto]

I've researched a lot of clubs and courses and the loss of early material has always been a major
problem.

Club houses burn down (often more than once), records and photos are borrowed and never returned,
even basements "cleaned out" by well-intentioned members and committees and invaluable material
(even models of the original greens) discarded or destroyed.

In today's great communication age it is a lot easier to document what is going on.

Keep the all the plans, minutes, the photos, the videos in a safe, secure and dry place. Keep records of
what you have, as best you can - things disappear.

[Tom MacWood (Guest)]

I'd collect as much photographic documentation as possbile - including aerial photos. I'd also ask the architect to share his thoughts on every hole - describing his vision or original intent, what features were important to the design and why.

[Lou Duran]

Adding to what George and Tom noted, get a lot of before, during, and after photos from the air and the ground.  Also annually. by season, for at least the first 10 years, shots of special holes to see how the course has matured.  These photos can be digitized and stored efficiently and safely.

In addition to the architect's thoughts, also document the developer's/founding members' explicit objectives/dreams for the course.  Information on the construction process, including the major contractors, special circumstances or difficulties encountered, as well as a time line of major milestones would be interesting.

As a financial guy, I would like actual costs vs. budget, for the total project and by major component (e.g. land, design, clearing, drainage, construction, irrigation, clubhouse, etc.).  However, the owners of some non-equity clubs may not want this information for public consuption.

Continuous records should also be kept of significant events such as capital improvements, important tournaments, club awards, special visitors, and very unusual weather conditions (and their impact on the course).

[Geoff Shackelford]

Eric,
Great question, I'm still thinking of some possible things that George et. al. didn't mention. As much as it will pain them, when the project is over you should make Gil, Rodney, Jim, and Bill K sit down for a digitally taped interview or interviews about how each hole came to be, why things are the way they are, etc... Collect all the photos and documents of construction and the completed course that you can and put them in a safe to start the archive.

Also, I'd consider on opening day burying a time capsule with a plaque or marker signifying the location and date it should be opened. Inside I'd put miscellaneous items ranging from photographs of construction/the course around opening day to newspapers, to original merchandise with the club logo, and finally, definitely have scorecards, yardage books, etc... All things that 50 years down the line, they will open up and say, wow, look at this.

I wish I could tell you of a club that served as a model, but there isn't one. Even if a place has kept most of their historic artifacts and old club magazines, it's rarely well organized. Oh, and one other thing, donate all scorecards and photos to Golf House for their files.
Geoff

[Chris Kane]

Regarding photos of the course, a model to follow is Royal Melbourne.  They have put 150 markers around the property, and then taken photos from those markers in eight different directions.  

They repeat this process every few years.  It'll be invaluable for them in the future.

There is more detail about it in their history book.

[TEPaul]

Eric:

Looks like others have advised you of all you should do. GeoffShac's remarks about the architecture and how and why exactly it came to be that way is interesting and could be something others would like to know in detail someday when looking back.

Just think of some course or club you wanted to look back on in detail, the architecture or whatever and struggled to find documentation, evidence, remembrances etc, all the things you wanted to know and couldn't find. All the things you wanted to find but couldn't are the things you should record.

I don't know that you mean to compile the history of French Creek at this point since it's just being built but you do want to record and safekeep everything that will be of interest to the one who someday writes that history.

Man, do I wish that George Crump thought to ask somebody the questions you're asking us! I'm sure people like the Wolffs (the Tillinghast chroniclers), Burbeck jr, and Ron Whitten wish the same thing!

[Paul Richards]

Eric:

As mentioned above, clubhouses burn down, valuable things
"grow legs" and walk off, things get lost, etc.  One of the
most best ways to preserve your clubs' history is to scan
articles into the computer, then put the originals in those
air-tight plastic bins.  If something happens to the bins, you
always have the scanned version.

Good luck.  

[David Wigler]

Eric,

Speaking for your membership fifty years from now, let me start by saying THANK YOU!!!  As a Club Historian, here is what I would want.  Get aerial photos of the course and the property.  Date each one of them.  Save the original routings and land plans.  Save all renovation plans and changes.  Save a copy of the local paper and the New York Times from the day the club opened and the day of the Men's Invitational each year (Fifty years from now, your membership will be curious as to the worlds events on the day their club opened).  Document each person involved in the process.  Gil's shaper might become the next Tom Fazio (I mean this in the good way of his general perception as the leading architect).  You will want to know he shaped you 5th green.  Most of all (Am I am going to disagree with Geoff here) do not put it in a time capsule.  Get a 10x10 (Or bigger if you can find space) room and store all of the information on walls, bookshelves and file drawers.  The Club Historian office can be a source of great pride for the club.  Let members have access to it.  Sorry for the long post, but I am very passionate about this one.  I wish our club had done all of these things.

[BCrosby]

All good ideas, but I think the key is having a set of definitive photographs of the way the course looked on opening day.

Specifically, there should be an opening day aerial, both directly overhead and from various fly-over angles.  Include areas just outside the course boundaries.

Then take close-ups of each green complex and important fairway bunkers as they appeared opening day.  These should be from as many angles as you can get.  Take then in the morning and in the evening to get different shadings to highlight contours.

Hire the best photographer you can afford to take the pictures.  

These photos will be your core historical reference point.  They document the starting point.  Everything else is gravy.

In the history I am working on none of the above exist.  Which means that my history - written 75 years after opening day - must engage in a lot of untidy speculation about how architectural features evolved.

Bob

[BCrosby]

All good ideas, but I think the key is having a set of definitive photographs of the way the course looked on opening day.

Specifically, there should be an opening day aerial, both directly overhead and from various fly-over angles.  Include areas just outside the course boundaries.

Then take close-ups of each green complex and important fairway bunkers as they appeared opening day.  These should be from as many angles as you can get.  Take then in the morning and in the evening to get different shadings to highlight contours.

Hire the best photographer you can afford to take the pictures.  

These photos will be your core historical reference point.  They document the starting point.  Everything else is gravy.

In the history I am working on none of the above exist.  Which means that my history - written 75 years after opening day - must engage in a lot of untidy speculation about how architectural features evolved.

Bob

[George Bahto]

The aerial of the course from different angles is very important.

As as aside: I was fortunate to have copies of the construction photos of two major courses that I was allowed to copy - one by Raynor and the other by Banks (Whippoorwill).  The photos were taken ( I believe) by the construction company and are invaluable. Of course there were the old trucks with solid tires, the drilling equipment and the steamshovels but what was very interesting was the look of the land while the courses were partically constructed.

At a Raynor course here in NJ another club one of the memberss had the foresight to have taken 8MM films during the construction of the course, opening day ceremonies and associated activites - all this in 1927!!!

The club had the film converted to VHS and it is a terrific piece.

It shows the entire process from dynamiting stumps, the logging process (they even set up a sawmill on site, trimming the logs and selling the lumber). It shows the shaping process with the pans and mules and the hand seeding of the greens.

A copy of this, I believe, is also in the Golf House Library.

The key is protecting what you have documented.

[Joel_Stewart]

The best book I have seen is the Pine Valley Book written by James Finegan.  It was published last year and is a complete history going back to day 1.  
To make a long story short, its 20 Chapters and over 200 pages long and no known story was left out.  
Unfortunately its only available at the club and costs around $100.