Routing and designing a golf course!

[Mike_Cirba]

"Did Merion own all of the land that they used for the course at the time that CBM was actually on site?"

Kirk:

Intesesting question and the answer is not exactly, depending on which of the two one day visits by Macdonald/Whigam you're talking about. When the first one occured (June 1910) they didn't own any of the land and when his second visit occured (April 1911) they owned all the land except for that three acre tract behind the clubhouse he recommended in 1910 they buy; the same small tract he recommended they buy again on April 6, 1911.

Tom,

I asked this before and I think you told me that the bolded part above is something you merely inferred...not something that was actually written in the minutes.   Is that correct?

[Philippe Binette]

A routing is only as good as what you make of it

I totally agree with Brian Phillips here

Proof:

Take the routing at Merion, which is really a great one, and then:

1) put symetrical mounds on both side of the fairway (especially to hide the houses and block the ball for going OB)
2) flatten out the sidehill fairway at 5, make an elevated 2-tier green and put a bunker between the green and the creek.
3) built round flat bunkers, put one left and one right of each fairway at 265 yards.
4) built all the greens with 3 flat tiers and steep banks in between
5) fill the quarry short of 16th green because it's an unfair hazard.
6) remove all the bushes and tall grass and mow everything the same height
7) Plant colorado spruces between the putting green and the 14th tee

you get the point...

what do you end up with: a terrible golf course where nobody cares about the routing

[Brian Phillips]

Although the routing is one of the most important parts of the puzzle it is nothing without great features being designed and built.

So my answer would be no he does not become an architect just because the routing was done by him."


Brian:

You never saw the plan. Everything was in it---it was a routing (whatever that means to you) and total design plan, bunkers, green designs and all. I'm not much of an artist but the plan was complete, and I still have it. It was never built obviously but who's to know how good it was? Ask Bill Coore about it sometime---he looked at it all the way from Hidden Creek to the Philly airport.

In my opinion, it didn't even take much making, at least a fair portion of it, and that includes what would've been the 12th hole. It's still there and I could show anyone anytime what it could be or is. In my opinion, right out of the box with about two tablespoons moved that hole would've been one of the greatest in the world. It was definitely the biggest hole I've ever known---there would've been so many things to do and ways to go no matter where you were on it.

Mr Paul...

Sorry but I must have missed something as I don't know what plan you are talking about sorry...my answer was just based on a general question.  I did not realise it was based upon an actual routing you had...
 

[DMoriarty]

A routing is only as good as what you make of it

I totally agree with Brian Phillips here

Proof:

Take the routing at Merion, which is really a great one, and then:

1) put symetrical mounds on both side of the fairway (especially to hide the houses and block the ball for going OB)
2) flatten out the sidehill fairway at 5, make an elevated 2-tier green and put a bunker between the green and the creek.
3) built round flat bunkers, put one left and one right of each fairway at 265 yards.
4) built all the greens with 3 flat tiers and steep banks in between
5) fill the quarry short of 16th green because it's an unfair hazard.
6) remove all the bushes and tall grass and mow everything the same height
7) Plant colorado spruces between the putting green and the 14th tee

you get the point...

what do you end up with: a terrible golf course where nobody cares about the routing

I think you have just proven the opposite point.    Merion's routing is brilliant because of how well the routing utilizes the natural features.   The slant of the 5th fairway and green are a perfect example of this.     Taking away the natural features ruins the routing and therefore ruins the course.   One could make an argument that Merion would still be great even if many of the fairway bunkers had never been built. 

[One exception, widening the fairways and cutting the rough would bring out the greatness of the routing, not diminish it.]


TomPaul,

Let's talk about this round you now owe me . . .

[Bill Shamleffer]

When it comes to Macdonald actually routing (and or designing) the holes of Merion you guys are about to see it would have been impossible for him to do that even if MCC asked him to which I have never seen a scintilla of evidence or even the implication of it anywhere that they ever did.

Why would it have been impossible for him to route and design Merion East?

Who wants to guess? The first correct answer gets a round at Merion arranged and paid for by me through the Pissboy! If the Pissboy doesn't want to do it I'll call up my neighbor across the fields and get him to do it! If he doesn't want to do it, I'll call up..... and if he doesn't want to do it, I'll call up.....and if he doesn't want to do it, I'll call up.........believe me this can go on for a long, long time!

I will take a stab in dark (having read no more of these Merion history debate postings than I can count on my hands).  Could Seth Raynor have been working on Sleepy Hollow when CBM visited the Merion site, and therefore since Seth Raynor was not there, no routing or design from CBM?

[Mike_Cirba]

Bill S.'

Maybe you can join Tom and David on the latter's tab at Rustic Canyon! 

Nice one!!

[TEPaul]

Brian Phillips:

No problem.

Yep, I still have it, and looking back on it all now, particularly as it relates to some of the realities that apparently took place way back when at MCC and Merion Ardmore, just makes it and the whole experience that much more interesting and valuable. I never really tried to calculate it but I would estimate it took maybe 2-3 years and probably 500-700 hours on site (actually two sites but primarily one particular site) where it all eventually came down to that important meeting where the plan was laid out in front of all the people who were the decision-makers from my club and the incredible farm that was the subject and object of a move of my own golf club.

[Brian Phillips]

One could make an argument that Merion would still be great even if many of the fairway bunkers had never been built. 

I disagree completely.

 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mr. Paul,

Is it because there are a number of out of bounds on the right side of the fairways?

Best answer yet to prove CBM's routing probably never occurred. Look at Chicago Golf.

[Mike_Cirba]

Let's not forget we're discussing the original routing of Merion, with three holes in a row crossing Ardmore avenue, a dogleg left first hole, and different greensites for 2,8, and probably 14.

[Philippe Binette]

To DMoriaty,

It depends what your define as routing and what you define as design.

Routing to me is a stick routing, meaning a dot for the tee a dot for the green and a line in between.

Therefore, you can have the same stick routing but demolish the site.

Merion's routing uses the natural features greatly,
but if you bulldoze the natural features and do what I've said above: YOU STILL HAVE THE SAME ROUTING... but created a terrible course out of it.
 

[Lester George]

Routed, designed, sold, built, still around.  THEN GO DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN.

Lester

[Charlie Goerges]

To DMoriaty,

It depends what your define as routing and what you define as design.

Routing to me is a stick routing, meaning a dot for the tee a dot for the green and a line in between.

Therefore, you can have the same stick routing but demolish the site.

Merion's routing uses the natural features greatly,
but if you bulldoze the natural features and do what I've said above: YOU STILL HAVE THE SAME ROUTING... but created a terrible course out of it.
 

I don't think so Philippe. You might be right about the features, but if the stick routing was done on the topo map and you change the topo by bulldozing it, the routing is no longer on the correct topo map.

[TEPaul]

"TomPaul,

Let's talk about this round you now owe me . . ."


David Moriarty:

No problem; let's talk about it and let's hope it doesn't take you about five years this time to understand what's going on here.

The question was:

"Why would it have been impossible for Macdonald to route and design Merion East."


You're answer for which you seem to think you won the contest was:

"He was only on site for two days."





In my opinion, that's sort of correct or at least fairly warm anyway but only partially correct because in fact he was probably only on site for a single day with a topo survey map anywhere around him that anyone could draw anything on, so maybe you deserve nine holes or perhaps just six holes.

But the thing that interests me the most is if you believe that's the correct answer to why it was impossible for Macdonald to have routed and designed Merion because he was on site for only two days how can you keep maintaining that you think Macdonald routed and designed Merion East?     

I suppose the answer to that one is you frequently say things and maintain things on here that you really don't mean and know to be not true, but I'm quite sure most people on here have figured that out about you long ago.

[TEPaul]

"there are a lot of courses that have built routed and built with the ''Architect'' on site for only 2 days."

Phillippe:

Sure there are. In the 19th and early 20th centuries there were numerous professional architects who routed courses in a single day (generally that's what was referred to back then as "Eighteen Stakes on a Sunday Afternoon" but that architect certainly could have done the designing of the man-made features and applied features such as bunkers and green designs and such in a single day.

Matter of fact, that was just about precisely what made Macdonald himself declare that the early architecture in American "Made the very soul of golf shriek" and according to him motivated him to go about GCA in about the polar opposite way which took a good deal of time, certainly a good deal more than a day or two.

So sure there were lots of courses that were routed in a single day (at best a stick routing) but none by Charles Blair Macdonald, that's for sure.

It's pretty important too when one considers why it was virtually impossible for Macdonald to route and design a golf course in a single day (all the time he had available to him at Merion East with a topo survey map around) even if they asked him to which of course there isn't a scintilla of evidence they ever did is the fact that Macdonald never did a routing and design drawing. Basically Raynor did that kind of thing for him.

Somehow when one considers that the Wilson Committee did numerous different courses and plans throughout the winter and spring of 1911, I really don't see him asking them to throw them all aside and follow him around in a single day while he routed and designed a whole knew plan for Merion East. Do you?

I can just see Richard Francis, the Merion member and professional surveyor/engineer who probably did the drawings for the Wilson Committee rushing around behind Macdonald trying to draw it all on a survey map;


"Charlie, wait a minute I haven't finished drawing the 12th hole yet, which way does it go and what were the bunker arrangements and green design?"

And, Charlie yelling back at him: "Forget it Dick(head), we're on the 13th now and there isn't that much light left for me to get all the way to 18, much less tell you how to fix the problems with the land around 15 green and 16 tee so you can create that stupid story about your brain-fart idea requiring a late night bike ride over to the "Hor" Lloyd's house."

[TEPaul]

"One could make an argument that Merion would still be great even if many of the fairway bunkers had never been built."


David Moriarty:

Of course one could make an argument for that. One could make an argument for just about anything no matter how illogical or preposterous it is. Not a very good argument but an argument nonetheless! I think we've seen over-ample evidence on that from you on these Merion/Macdonald threads for about four years and including your essay "The Missing Faces of Merion." 

[Charlie Goerges]

TEPaul,

Leaving aside the originator of the question; do you think that Merion would be a great course even if none of the fairway bunkers (or any bunkers for that matter) had been built?

[TEPaul]

Charlie:

No I do not. It would definitely not be the great Merion East including the "White Faces of Merion" that American golf came to know and love.

[TEPaul]

Charlie:

Ron Prichard has stated on a few occasions that he believes the prototype for what became the essential generic "American" bunker type came from the minds of Merion, likely Wilson. I guess Moriarty will figure out some way of trying to conclude that Macdonald came up with that idea too.

I know what Ron means because we've questioned him hard about it.

Let me tell you something pretty ironic, CharlieG and more than a little maddening. In our Merion files we have a number of drafts of the app. ten page article that Wilson did for Piper and Oakley for their book on golf agronomy in the mid-teens. No one has ever seen much of anything from Hugh Wilson on his ideas on golf course architecture but in one of those drafts for Piper and Oakley's book which was just supposed to be on golf agronomy, for some reason in one paragraph Hugh Wilson suddenly lapsed into what it took to conceive of and make a really good natural looking bunker by going down to the Jersey shore and sitting amongst the duney blowout shapes down there and just getting the essence of it all.

But then he apparently realized the article was supposed to be just on golf agronomy and so he just lined out what he had just written on bunker architecture, but luckily you can still read it. 

[Bart Bradley]

When it comes to Macdonald actually routing (and or designing) the holes of Merion you guys are about to see it would have been impossible for him to do that even if MCC asked him to which I have never seen a scintilla of evidence or even the implication of it anywhere that they ever did.

Why would it have been impossible for him to route and design Merion East?

It was impossible for CBM to have routed and designed Merion East because Hugh Wilson did it!   
No?

Bart

[Charlie Goerges]

Charlie:

No I do not. It would definitely not be the great Merion East including the "White Faces of Merion" that American golf came to know and love.

Thanks for the reply Tom, I take your meaning to be that it would be a mere shadow of itself without them.

As to your other statement, It's a shame that Wilson did not put more of his thoughts on the subject in writing. It's funny how his nonchalance about recording his own design ideas is inversely proportional to the desire of contemporary design aficionados to read them.

My point all along regarding what makes an architect has been that there are many ways to do it, and do it well. Apropos this discussion, it seems that getting into all the minutia about who did what can never answer the question as well as the historical attribution can. When deciding who is the architect of record, it's most important that the architect and the club agree on who that person is. In this case both have traditionally designated that person as being Wilson.

Now the questions of who did what, when, where, and how are also interesting. Those questions (and their answers) tell a long and interesting story of how one of the great golf courses came into being. Macdonald could have been important or even integral to the creation of Merion without having designed the golf course. (That's just a hypothetical, I don't know whether he was or not.) Hell, he could have been absolutely necessary to the cause as, perhaps, an object of inspiration or of derision.

Best wishes,

Charlie

[TEPaul]

"As to your other statement, It's a shame that Wilson did not put more of his thoughts on the subject in writing. It's funny how his nonchalance about recording his own design ideas is inversely proportional to the desire of contemporary design aficionados to read them."


CharlieG:


I most certainly don't want to just assume Hugh Wilson did not put many of his thoughts on golf architecture in writing. It could be that we've just never found it. He did say a few times that he didn't really want to write articles and books on any subject because he felt he was a pretty bad writer (which I took to be more self-deprecating than anything else). It has always been totally amazing to Wayne Morrison and me that a man like that could write so many letters on the subject of golf course agronomy (we have hundreds and hundreds if not a thousand of them) for close to fifteen years and nothing commensurate on golf course architecture which he was also so involved in while also balancing a full time business as the president of his and his brother's insurance business.

It's funny how when you read so many letters from someone you feel you really know them and what they're like. It's that way with us with Wilson through those numerous letters we call the "agronomy letters."

To me Wilson was an immensely curious man about a whole lot of diverse things and he seemed to me to be a man who sort of wanted to get what he was doing done yesterday. From the extent of his agronomy letters it would not surprise me if he wrote 10-20 letters a day on all the things he was involved in and with the people he was involved with in his short life (he died at 45).

But I have the distinct sense that because he was the way he appears to us to have been he probably compartmentalized his life and the various things he was doing at any time pretty well and that would probably explain why he just crossed out that interesting paragraph on his thoughts on how to get the inspiration to make what he considered to be natural looking bunkers.

So maybe he did write as much about architecture in the form of letters and such as he did about agronomy and it's just lost now or we've just not found it yet. It is also not true to say that he never mentioned golf architecture in those numerous agronomy letters because he did but not in any philosophical way, pretty much only as it related to cost efficiency of architecture and how to make it less expensive over-all, and I definitely do mean over-all, as in nationally.

[Philippe Binette]

If I built a road in your backyard, whether it's 3 feet above or below the actual grade, the road is still in your backyard... 

[Tom_Doak]

Just how complicated does everyone think the routing for Merion really is?

Let's say it's a given that the first hole is on the clubhouse side of Ardmore Ave. and you come across the road from there.  From there you have to play a par-4 or a par-5 alongside the road or play backwards down #12 ... three options. 

So you choose the par-5; from there you've got to play a par-3 across the valley or a longer hole into the far corner (which I think was Wilson's original third) or backwards down #5 with the drive falling into a stream (not a great choice).

Once you make the decision to cross over #6 tee to play #3 instead, you have fixed a green location for #5 also.  And if you choose to place the green for #4 by the little creek, then the entire routing of the front nine has pretty much fallen into place.

The back nine has many similar constraints ... only the fact that they thought they could play across Ardmore Ave. on #10 and #12 gave them a different option which they used the first 13 years.

[TEPaul]

TomD:

You're right about that. For years those who consider the routing options of Merion East have recognized once you pick the start next to the clubhouse they planned to use anyway, and get across Ardmore Ave, the whole thing sort of flows by itself due to the narrowness. Richard Francis, the Wilson Committee's member surveyor/engineer and likely their plan drawer said as much in his 1950 story about the events of that time. He mentioned the bottom of the L was easy but things got complicated once they got back across the road into the top of the L. That was resolved by some pretty basic land-swapping on the north side with the proposed development to the west which Lloyd was completely prepared to affect and had put himself in the legal position to do just that on his own decision. That's what happened and the holes on the top of the L came into being basically providing the width on the left for holes #1, #14 and #15 specifically how they need that width up the corridor that would be Golf House Rd that was not even built or even particularly locked into place on the overall plan at that time.