Who was the genius, Bobby Jones or Mackenzie?

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

When Bobby Jones told Mackenzie to style Augusta National after the TOC on a tract of land which is the total opposite of TOC, who was the genius? Bobby for seeing how to take the same concepts which made TOC greatness timeless or Mackenzie for implementing it with flawless execution. Or am I just getting loopy during LSU Florida week.

[Mike Nuzzo]

Seems like all 3.
Jones & Mackenzie were both needed to create what they did.
And you are currently loopy.

[David Stamm]

Did Jones ever do a course before? To me, there's the answer.

[TEPaul]

In my opinion, if it really was Bobby Jones who told Mackenzie to recreate the basic architectural principles of TOC in a fruit orchard in Georgia, it was Jones who was the conceptual genius! The specific reason I would give to prove his genius is he clearly understood the adaptability of the essential principles of good golf course architecture.

[Tom MacWood]

MacKenzie. Jockey and Bayside were precursors to ANGC.

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Tom, please help me with Jockey and Bayside?

[Bill_McBride]

I love the myth of the Old Course created in a very hilly terrain of clay soils.  I suspect this is just a marketing ploy, a very successful one.  How many doglegs are on the Old Course, how many on the Augusta National course.   Marketing I say, marketing!

The genius was indeed Bobby Jones, but for recognizing this British kilted doctor as the best architect of his day after seeing Cypress Point and Pasatiempo, two courses that had more to do with Augusta topographically than the Old Course.

[Tom MacWood]

Mackenzie began to experiment with the minimal bunkers, maximum mounding, expansive fairways, and large undulating greens at Jockey and Bayside prior to ANGC. ANGC was a continuation of his architectural experiment. The other thing he developed with those three courses was heavily mechanized construction method (which resulted in a very rapid turn around) - the perfect system for the economic reality.

[TEPaul]

"Mackenzie began to experiment with the minimal bunkers, maximum mounding, expansive fairways, and large undulating greens at Jockey and Bayside prior to ANGC. ANGC was a continuation of his architectural experiment."


I suppose the appropriate question might be----how familiar with and enamored was Bob Jones with the architecture of Bayside and the Jockey Club compared to TOC? I thought it was Jones who tapped Mackenzie for ANGC and not the other way around. It seems the connection was Jones's love of TOC and Mackenzie's known familiarity with it due to his comprehensive study and mapping of TOC!  

But who the hell really knows, perhaps Jones envisioned not the replication of the architectural principles of TOC but the replication of the architectural principles of Bayside and The Jockey Club in a previous fruit orchard in Georgia.

[Neil_Crafter]

Certainly Jones would not have been familiar with the Jockey Club in far off Argentina, but Bayside Links was in Queens NY, so no reason why Jones would not have known of it and possibly seen and played it. Jones and Mackenzie had known each other for a few years at least by the time the ANGC project came up, and I think both would have known that each other was equally enamoured with TOC and that there would have been almost an unstated goal to implement TOC design principles into the new course, which as Tom Mac has said, included wide fairways, bold mounding, large greens and minimal bunkering, and built by mechanised means. Engineer Wendell Miller's firm built all three of the courses mentioned for Mackenzie. While TOC philosophy could be seen as a marketing ploy, I don't for a second believe that Jones and Mac used this for that reason. They were devotees, and Mac built TOC 'copy' holes in many places equally as unsuited to replicating the St Andrews linksland in a figurative sense. it was more than that.

[Phil_the_Author]

Who was the genius who came up with the idea of no rough on the course?

[Neil_Crafter]

When Mackenzie came out to Australia in 1926 he at once criticised the courses he saw for having too much rough and he railed against rough in a number of interviews. Perhaps it was him, but in any event the powers that be at Augusta were the ones who implemented and followed this ideal. Jones and Clifford Roberts I imagine.

[Tom MacWood]

If one assumes Mackenzie and Jones were communicating, then certainly Jones would have known what Mackenzie was up to. And speaking of NYC, many of the principals involved were based there, including Cliff Roberts and Grantland Rice, Wendell Miller had an office there too. I recall reading in Mackenzie's correspondence with Ohio State him mentioning some preliminary meetings in NY. Here is an article of the NY Time (4/22/1931) and two adverts from golf magazines.

[Phil_the_Author]

Neil,

In 1928, Tilly designed the Colonial Golf Club in Atlanta. Construction began on 10/1 & by Spring of 1929 the course was finished. It would close a year later after the bonds which were floated to finance it lost all of their value during the market crash later that year.

The reason I bring this up is that Tilly was quoted in the Atlanta papers that October describing the features of the course and stated that it would have "No Rough" at all. The writer of the article claimed that it would be the first course in America designed specifically to have no rough. Now whether that is true or not, it becomes part of this discussion in that AFTER the design was done and this statement was written, Bobby Jones was then invited by Harry Ainskley (the club's founder) to be part of the Board of Director's.

It MAY, and I want to STRESS that I am ONLY stating MAY be that this idea of designing a course in America without rough came from that.

The reason that comes into play in the discussion is, if it is true, then it may serve as proof of Jones genius and that it was similar to George Crump's type of getting input from ALL of the best design minds that he knew.  

This is simply a thought as to how the design process of the course MIGHT have evolved between these two men...

[Mark Bourgeois]

Cliff Roberts in his book mentions taking Mac up to Whippoorwill to get his opinion.

Can't recal if there's a ref to Bayside but surely Roberts at least ventured from Manhattan into then verdant Queens.

[TEPaul]

"Who was the genius who came up with the idea of no rough on the course?"


Phil:

Good question indeed. I guess it depends on whether you mean no rough just at ANGC or the concept of no rough generally in golf course design.

On the latter, there is no question that Max Behr had been writing about this revolutionary architectural concept before ANGC was concieved and it also appears he had been thinking about it (and talking about it) along with Alister MacKenzie and perhaps even Bob Jones.

The concept of no rough appears to have been an architectural application and expression that they felt could or would create perhaps the ultimate example of truly strategic golf architecture and golf. As far as I know the articulation of this concept was done best from the mind and pen of Max Behr!

ANGC was obviously an example of this surprising and radical concept but it appears not to have been the only one. It also appears that the concept at least over the long haul was pretty much misunderstood or underappreciated!  

Furthermore, those who resisted this kind of concept or spoke against it Behr tended to label them with descriptions such as direct tax "moralists," advocates of "The Game Mind of Man" or "Mrs Grundys."  

In my own personal opinion, it is true to say that this radical concept really was the ultimate expression of truly strategic golf architecture but it was not the only thing that served to produce it. It had to be combined with such concepts as "Line of Instinct" and "Line of Charm" and even Behr's articulation of the nature and use of the concept of penalty itself which admittedly really was something of a "glass half empty/glass half full" idea!

[Anthony Butler]

"Who was the genius who came up with the idea of no rough on the course?"


Phil:

Good question indeed. I guess it depends on whether you mean no rough just at ANGC or the concept of no rough generally in golf course design.

On the latter, there is no question that Max Behr had been writing about this revolutionary architectural concept before ANGC was concieved and it also appears he had been thinking about it (and talking about it) along with Alister MacKenzie and perhaps even Bob Jones.

TIMELINE ADDENDUM:
Mackenzie had already designed Royal Melbourne and New South Wales on those principals during his trip to Australia in 1926. And CPC in 1928 which was the project that prompted Bobby Jones to hire him for Augusta. These three courses were 'case studies' that proved you could take the architectural principles of TOC and apply them in different locales and different terrain. (Admittedly, two other seaside locations and another sandy piece of land that was probably in the sea at some point in time (much like TOC).

The truly unique thing about ANGC was not that it was an application of TOC principles, but that it was a proof point on how far those principles could be stretched and still produce a world class golf course. I would imagine that the credit for recognizing that would belong to both men.

[Anthony Butler]

"Who was the genius who came up with the idea of no rough on the course?"


Phil:

Good question indeed. I guess it depends on whether you mean no rough just at ANGC or the concept of no rough generally in golf course design.

On the latter, there is no question that Max Behr had been writing about this revolutionary architectural concept before ANGC was concieved and it also appears he had been thinking about it (and talking about it) along with Alister MacKenzie and perhaps even Bob Jones.

TIMELINE ADDENDUM:
Mackenzie had already designed Royal Melbourne and New South Wales on those principals during his trip to Australia in 1926. And CPC in 1928 which was the project that prompted Bobby Jones to hire him for Augusta. These three courses were 'case studies' that proved you could take the architectural principles of TOC and apply them in different locales and different terrain. (Admittedly, two other seaside locations and another sandy piece of land that was probably in the sea at some point in time–much like TOC).

So the most remarkable thing about ANGC is not the application of TOC design 'principles', but the fact someone recognized they could be stretched to a clay based nursery site 150 miles from the coast in the American South and still produce a world class golf course. The credit for that belongs to both men.

This, BTW, is  exactly the same conversation Apple diehards have about assigning  credit for the iPhone, iTouch, iPod etc... between Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ivie. Since Jobs was operating Apple on these principles back in the 80s when Ivie was still in high school, it's a little easier to see that Jobs deserves a larger slice of credit than Bobby Jones gets for ANGC.

[TEPaul]

AnthonyB:

Interesting stuff there; thanks.

Trying to determine who thought to transport some of the most important design principles from TOC elsewhere surely involved more than just a concept of "no rough" so we probably need to look at the particulars of that developing "no rough" concept, what-all it really did mean to them in practice and where the idea came from and how. I believe they did get it from TOC at least in theory, not because TOC had no rough at all but because they felt the demarcations or differences between what was fairway and what was rough at TOC was or could be pretty indistinguishable and even for a pretty fair distance and that that was a very good thing. I think one of the primary things those guys were fighting or resisting was the seeming ever increasing desire or tendency in golf and in architecture and probably even in The Rules of Golf to specifically and clearly define the demarcations between various areas and features of golf courses.

But just like anything else there is always more to it than just that! 

[Mike Hendren]

I have to suppose Mackenzie since Jones et al started making changes to the golf course before grass began sprouting on Mackenzie's grave. 

[Anthony Butler]

AnthonyB:

Interesting stuff there; thanks.

Trying to determine who thought to transport some of the most important design principles from TOC elsewhere surely involved more than just a concept of "no rough" so we probably need to look at the particulars of that developing "no rough" concept/

But just like anything else there is always more to it than just that!  

Tom,

To my mind, the design principle of the TOC that Mackenzie applied so well in Australia was the "location of the ball, not the lie determines the difficulty of the shot". I know there has been a number of conversations on this topic recently, particularly surrounding Geoff Ogilvy's comments after the PGA at Hazeltine. My contributions to these discussions resulted in Ogilvy henchman Michael Clayton calling me a moron and some guy called HUGGAN threatening to cause me bodily harm should we ever meet.

I don't think the notion of shaved chipping areas and superfast greens to add challenge to the short game played so heavily into the original design intent behind ANGC. For starters, agronomy and course maintenance practices did not make this set-up even possible until after WW II. I think the intention was to keep the playing corridors wide, yet reward correct placement of the drive by presenting hazards and unpredictable playing surfaces between the player and the hole once you strayed too far from the ideal line. The effect of these design principles on play obviously being far greater before competitors could hit a 180yd 7 irons that stopped on a dime.

[TEPaul]

"I think the intention was to keep the playing corridors wide, yet reward correct placement of the drive by presenting hazards and unpredictable playing surfaces between the player and the hole once you strayed too far from the ideal line."


AnthonyB:


I'd agree but also include that one of the truly fantastic added features of a number of the holes (the original 11th probably being the best example) was that so few could ever agree on what the ideal line was!   

If one really thinks it all through carefully I believe they will inevitably come to the conclusion----eg "How cool is that!?"

[Sean_A]

All this talk of no rough?  When was TOC ever free of rough?

Ciao

[TEPaul]

It was not that TOC had no rough at all that got their attention and perhaps led to their "no rough" concept but that the demarcations between fairway and rough at TOC was fairly indistinguishable and apparently for quite a distance (or width).

[Tom_Doak]

Jones and MacKenzie were both geniuses.  There is plenty of support for their stature prior to Augusta National being anything but a glimmer in Jones' eye.

As to which one was responsible for what, you are all just guessing, aren't you?  Was it Tillinghast?  Where is Wayne M. to tell us it was Flynn?  Or maybe it was Willie Watson!

New ideas are a dime a dozen, because most of them aren't really new.  Knowing how to use them = priceless.