What's missing in this photograph? Why?

[Bill Rocco]

If Pine Valley did not want that bunker wouldn't they correct it? I think we would all agree the kind of course Pine Valley is, and knowing that they could fix any issues that was not intended?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Perhaps pictures lie , perhaps not! But doesn't the seemingly disjointed DA beg the question ....when did they connect the bunker to the green  

Absolutely.

And, we know that today's version is tight into the green area.
Hence, it would appear that the photo on page 60 is an earlier iteration of the DA bunker, one NOT created by compaction, heavy traffic, erosion, drainage or wind, but, by man's design

Surely there would have been some pictures of the connection, or a written record of the construction that conjoined the bunker and green..... the green appears identical to to the naked eye as it is today  so who thought to to redo it ..and when did it happen


I think you might have a better chance in stumbling upon photos than written records.

It seems to me, and tell me if you agree, that from a golfer's perspective, especially in the context of a championship course, that a more devilish, challenging location for a bunker is one right up against the putting surface rather than one offset from the green, especially if you accept that NGLA was an icon of American golf and that many,.... many of NGLA's bunkers were hard against the putting surface, producing rolloffs into adjacent bunkers for misjudged or mis-hit shots.  And that that juxtaposition between putting surface and bunker was a preferable architectural combination, versus, the bunker offset from the putting surface.

[Patrick_Mucci]

I don't know if this helps you guys or not or even if you already know this...but on page 215 of George Thomas' "Golf Architecture in America" there is a picture of the tenth at Pine Valley.  It looks like that bunker is being formed then, but it is not as well developed as some of the pictures on this thread.

I hope this helps in some way.

Mac,

Great find.

However, I think the picture on page 215 is a much later rendition, in that the putting surface comes down to, and appears to wrap around the left side of the bunker.  The entire bank appears to be putting surface.   Note the worn path to the left of the bunker.

Interestingly enough, look at the credit for the photo, "Crump and Colt"

[Patrick_Mucci]

If Pine Valley did not want that bunker wouldn't they correct it? I think we would all agree the kind of course Pine Valley is, and knowing that they could fix any issues that was not intended?

Bill, I tend to agree.
I don't think anything happened by chance at Pine Valley

[Tom MacWood]

Tom MacWood,

I see the red circle "into" the 10th green, and I suppose a reasonable argument could be made that this circle represented an intended bunker.

But, the photo that you posted, which appears to be the photo on page 60 of Geoff's book, shows a bunker detached from the putting surface, not into it as the schematic seems to suggest.  Any idea as to the date of the photo on page 60 ?

I agree with you. I do not see single detached bunker in front of the green. I see a series of bunkers connected to one another like many of the other bunkers on the map. These series of attached bunkers are meant to be a single large waste bunker. This map is inconclusive.

[Mike Cirba]

Here's the drawing blown up 5x.

Thanks for sharing it Tom M.  I'm not sure it's conclusive because the colors blend a bit at this magnitude, but perhaps someone with a better copy could tell us if there is separation.






Are folks contending that the DA and the red circle aren't in the same spot?

[archie_struthers]

 


Again I ask the question , if the picture in Geoffrey Cornish's book shows a DA that iappears to be separate from the green on #10 , whyy no pictures or references to the change to present day conditions.  There is no way the bunker could have migrated on it's own. Someone had to build it or it evolved ?   Pretty good mystery here boys ...

[Rick Sides]

Archie,
Which Cornish book does the D.A. appear?

[archie_struthers]

 

Sorry I was looking at the George Thomas picture ..my bad

[TEPaul]

On the "blue/red line" topo map, I think the point of the placement of that round circle (the DA) is more about the fact that the green was not built the way it appears to be shaped in that drawing. Given the way the front of the green was actually done the DA as it exists is in the right place.

Here's another item for you.

Colt did hole by hole drawings in a booklet. The holes are outlined as are his bunkers but generally the greens are fairly amorphous shapes and many of them do not have a solid line to demark their fronts with the exception of some of them that have a dimensional line (sometimes solid and sometimes ticked and sometimes with nothing but a dimensional number) showing the distance between left and right greenside bunkers or if there is a fronting bunker to the green (ex: Colt's version of #8 and #13, and apparently #18's green front demarked by water). #10 on Colt's drawing has no line to demark the green front and it has no fronting bunker that we see on the left front of the earliest photo of the 10th.

Crump's red line drawing of the green shape of #10 very vaguely resembles Colt's green shape and like Colt's Crump's has no line demarking the green front.

But the point is we can see in the earliest photo (on this thread) arguably from late 1913 or 1914 how Crump actually built the green and its front including the the left fronting bunker which he did not draw on the "blue/red line" topo. But dimensionally on that hole that little round red circle (the DA bunker?) on the "blue/red line" topo is about exactly where the DA actually is. 

[TEPaul]

"There is no way the bunker could have migrated on it's own. Someone had to build it or it evolved ?   Pretty good mystery here boys ..."

Archie:

Of course they actually built the DA into a formal bunker, at least at some point. By my calculations it looks like the earliest photo extant of it as a formal bunker may be 1923. But that does not mean it was not a formal bunker long before that, it only means we don't seem to have an actual photograph of it before 1923. The fact that the little red round circle on the "blue/red line" topo is right in the same place would indicate to me that Crump during his lifetime intended to put it there. Now, it certainly could have been because a depression was forming in that area through natural causes or whatever that inspired him to draw it onto the "blue/red line" topo and then create that bunker.

I think the fact that little round red circle right in the positon the DA is actually in appears on the "blue/red line" topo pretty much confirms that bunker was concieved of and very likely built during Crump's lifetime. I can't believe I never thought to look for it on the "blue/red line" topo before yesterday. I guess it was just a matter of the specific question never coming up, at least to me, before this thread.

[Tom MacWood]

Here's the drawing blown up 5x.

Thanks for sharing it Tom M.  I'm not sure it's conclusive because the colors blend a bit at this magnitude, but perhaps someone with a better copy could tell us if there is separation.

Mike
Thanks for blowing it up. When blown up what is being referred to as round bunker looks more like the tail-end of a rectangular bunker. The line outlining the green is what is creating the illusion of a round bunker. As you can see that line (the one outlining the green) has a stuttering affect or a dot-dot-dot affect and goes right through the rectangular bunker and continues on past it.

[TEPaul]

Mac:

The photograph that appears on p. 215 of Thomas's book is the same one that appears on this thread on post #16 (Jim Kennedy's). It is a photograph taken by a man by the name of Rau. It is not the same photograph as the one on post #77 (Tom MacWood's) although for numerous reasons it is very easy to see those photographs are not separated that much in time.

The photograph in C&W's book of the 10th hole was taken many, many years later, possibly as late as the early 1990s unless it happens to have appeared in their first edition in which case it could've been taken as late as 1980 or 1981.

Actually strike that---I think it would have to have appeared only in the second addition because of those cedar trees planted to the left of the left bunker. Dick Bator put those in and I don't believe he got to Pine Valley until the mid 1980s at least. Archie Struthers could probably confirm or deny that.

[TEPaul]

Another interesting item on #10. It looks like it might be true to say what I was surmising yesterday or so that the actual green surface on #10 was probably close to what was natural grade pre-construction and that they just reamed out natural grade around it. It looks like the textual notation's on Colt's hole by hole drawing booklet would indicate that.

Next to the right bunker is the notation; "sink "B" 2' deep with side face."

Next to the left bunker is the notation: "deep "B" with face torn from hill 5'7" deep."

"B" would be his key for the hole's bunkers.

Behind the green Colt called for a deep hollow in grass. He did a lot of that in his hole by hole booklet but it appears in almost every case Crump put those areas into sand and bunkers. It seems with that item fairly prevalent on Colt's PV hole by hole plan he was into an early version of greenside chipping areas because behind #3 he actually notated it should be "kept mown."

[TEPaul]

"Bradley, TEPaul .... "right"   you must be kidding.
Do you know that when he was a teenager trying to date young debutantes from the Main Line, Palm Beach and the Gold Coast that he used to wear a big sign around his neck that had one word written on it ?   The word " LEFT "    And, when girls approached him and said what does that mean ?  He replied, "will I do until the "right" one comes along?"

Patrick:

That is absolutely hilarious. I wish I had thought of that when I was a teenager and I inevitably would've gotten more booty than I did. With the gals you are definitely the all-time king of clever pick-up lines and other situational evocations in that particular vein.

I was pretty shy as a teenager and I think the only type of pick-up line I used on the gals and young debs was basically borrowed from Henry Higgins/Rex Harrison in "My Fair Lady." To explain or describe myself I would tell 'em---"Im just a sensitive and ordinary man, who never would and never could...blah, blah, blah."

I guess I figured that might appeal to their maternal instincts or something like that. It wasn't until many years later that I finally realized most of the young debs I met as a teenager probably hadn't developed much in the way of maternal instincts; they were probably pretty much into the experimental trial and error stage of what it took to even think about developing maternal instincts. Do you remember---eg things like "petting."

It wasn't until I was in my mid-twenties and into dating married women or at least divorcees that I figured out married women and such with real maternal instincts weren't into "petting" anymore. Lucky for me in my life that I had some really great mentors in the ways of life and love and they were pretty much exclusively women older than me who had what we called "experience."

[Mike Cirba]

Tom MacWood,

I don't even want to say what I think this looks like...




Did any of these guys draw graffiti as kids?  

Perhaps it was just shorthand symbolism for "if you hit it here, you're screwed!" 

[TEPaul]

Mike:

I wouldn't put too much stock in too much of the detail of what any of the red lines on that map look like, particularly blown up 5-10 times!

If the red lines are George Crump's and maybe 7-8 years ago I made that assumption/conclusion (including the blue lines being Harry Colt) for a variety of reasons I'd be glad to explain.

I should also add for historical clarity that map was not called "The Blue/red line" topo map by the club or anyone else. I named it that about eight years ago simply because it appeared at that time that noone had ever understood the difference or significance of the blue and red lines on that map or what they meant. I'm afraid the last PV history book writer might have mistakenly assumed everything on that map was done by Crump and even that he may've finished the map before March 1913----the actual surveyor's date on the map.

Crump may not have been much of a drawer and I doubt he'd ever previously tried to do golf architectural drawings so we shouldn't expect the same things from them as we might a professional architect who needed to be detailed with his drawings for crews and foremen when he was not there.

When that map was begun (arguably right around May/June 1913 during that one and only week Colt was at PV) that particular "blue/red line" map was definitely a work in progress that would progress for a number of years. I know that because there are various things drawn on that map that I know did not take place for some time to come. Actually trying to figure out how long Crump used it to draw on is an interesting investigation in itself. In that vein, he may not have put that much on it in late 1916 or 1917 because some of the things that had taken place at that time (ex. the final development conceptually and actually of the 14th hole) do not really show very well or in detail on that map. There is probably a logical reason for that----eg America's entry into WW1 and the lose of crews and the virtual shutting down of PV's construction until the war was over and Americans came home---unfortunately after Crump died.

The other thing viewers of that map and PV's course's long-going development and creation should remember is the way Crump worked at Pine Valley---eg he was basically there most all the time with his pro/foreman Jim Govan so it wasn't as if either of them needed to perfect that map and the details of the drawing on it to such an extent that it could be interpreted by someone else without either of them around. In other words, generally both of them were there to just show the crews what they wanted to do even if it may've departed on the ground from what Crump put on his map. Most of the early years there were only two abodes on that property---Crump's bungalow and the Govan family's next to the 2nd hole. Govan was there all the time---it was his job, and apparently Crump left fairly infrequently.

I do not think it would be too much to say that in the annals of golf architectural projects, and perhaps anywhere in the world,  Crump's life and his experience there at PV was more of a sort of "Waldon Pond" thing than anyone else like him had ever done before or since and by a considerable factor to boot.

Hope that helps you interpret that map compared to what got on the ground architecturally when George Crump was there. And in that vein, when studying the details of that map it sure does help to be intimately familiar with not just all the little architectural details of the course itself today but particularly the details of how it got built and the way it was in Crump's time, and shortly thereafter.

[Kyle Harris]

Was the red circle in question drawn at the same time as the rest of the plan?

Does this plan represent a conceptual diagram, or an as-built?

[TEPaul]

Kyle:

The blue lines of Colt were put on that map in something like a week's span in May/June 1913. The red lines of Crump were gradually put on that map over a period of probably 4-5 years. If you look at it carefully on some holes you can see where green positions were Xed out and moved etc. You can also see where Crump did not go with some of Colt's green positions and such (ex. #2, #7, not to mention Colt never got within 200 yards of #13 or 14 green. And when one compares that map to the first one Crump did probably mostly on his own before Colt ever got there you can pretty much see the whole evolution of the thing in Crump's lifetime. Of course, Crump never saw the entire 18 holes in play; he only saw 14 of them. The last four (12-15) were in various states of development and construction when he died suddenly on Jan 14, 1918. The entire 18 holes would not open until 1922.

[Mike Cirba]

Mike:

I wouldn't put too much stock in too much of the detail of what any of the red lines on that map look like, particularly blown up 5-10 times!

Tom,

I take it you aren't requesting that I zoom in further and blow it up much bigger at this juncture?

[TEPaul]

"I take it you aren't requesting that I zoom in further and blow it up much bigger at this time?"

Sure, no problem, blow it up as much as you want, particularly if you want to make Crump's seemingly amateurish red-lined drawings into a cool rorschach test exhibit on here.  

Who the Hell knows---if you blow it up enough maybe we will actually be able to identify Macdonald, Whigam, HH Barker and Willie Campbell all together standing on the ground out there on PV somewhere. Maybe George doodled them in on the map in red when he had some downtime as somebody was shoveling out the beginnings of a golf architectural asshole.

But seriously, if you want it to be at all useful perhaps the ticket would be to reduce it or expand it to about the size and scale George Crump and the rest of the people out there back then saw it as and were looking at as they worked on and held that topo map. But you never know, maybe Crump had a computer back in the teens and he blew that hole's drawing up to 20 times its size or whatever and maybe that's why he came up with the name Devil's Asshole for that particular bunker. We've obviously got a lot of very enthusiastic and resourceful computer researchers on here, so is there any chance someone can blow up a photograph of a Devil's actual asshole so we can compare it to that bunker on PV's 10th at any point in time?

[Kyle Harris]

"I take it you aren't requesting that I zoom in further and blow it up much bigger at this time?"

Sure, no problem, blow it up as much as you want, particularly if you want to make Crump's seemingly amateurish red-lined drawings into a cool rorschach test exhibit on here.  

Who the Hell knows---if you blow it up enough maybe we will actually be able to identify Macdonald, Whigam, HH Barker and Willie Campbell all together standing on the ground out there on PV somewhere. Maybe George doodled them in on the map in red when he had some downtime as somebody was shoveling out the beginnings of a golf architectural asshole.

But seriously, if you want it to be at all useful perhaps the ticket would be to reduce it or expand it to about the size and scale George Crump and the rest of the people out there back then saw it as and were looking at as they worked on and held that topo map. But you never know, maybe Crump had a computer back in the teens and he blew that hole's drawing up to 20 times its size or whatever and maybe that's why he came up with the name Devil's Asshole for that particular bunker. We've obviously got a lot of very enthusiastic and resourceful computer researchers on here, so is there any chance someone can blow up a photograph of a Devil's actual asshole so we can compare it to that bunker on PV's 10th at any point in time?

Tom:

If you were to take every 18th letter from the Piper and Oakley papers from Hugh and Alan Wilson - you'd get an entire confession that Hugh Wilson actually went abroad to study bordello architecture instead of golf architecture.

[TEPaul]

I agree, Kyle, particularly considering who it might be who's analyzing every 18th letter of Hugh and Alan Wilson to Piper and Oakley. What this website has taught me over the years is just how much difference and variation of opinion there is not just on the same thing in architecture but on the same thing on pretty near anything in history.

It's a "Big World" out there, don't you know?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Again I ask the question , if the picture in Geoffrey Cornish's book shows a DA that iappears to be separate from the green on #10 , whyy no pictures or references to the change to present day conditions.  There is no way the bunker could have migrated on it's own. Someone had to build it or it evolved ?   Pretty good mystery here boys ...

I agree.

I also think this is what makes GCA.com so much fun.

Trying to piece together the architectural jigsaw puzzle in terms of configuration, location and authorship is an interesting challenge.

Very few, if any architectural alterations happen by chance at PV and I think the genesis and evolution of the DA is a fascinating study, especially since this feature became a legendary architectural feature.

I find the photo on page 215 of Hunter's book to be exceptional.
There's clearly a symbiotic architectural relationship between the putting surface and bunker, one that didn't exist originally, which doesn't exist today.  So, studying the cycle of that bunker, from creation to present day form is an interesting pursuit.

In terms of ascertaining the date of origin, I would think that dated photos will probably pinpoint that date, then, working backwards you can determine who was President, Superintendent and Green Chair if the position existed.  You might also be able to ascertain which consulting architects visited PV prior to the creation of the D.A.

What I like about this thread is how it evolved from a generalized thread to a thread keenly interested in details, dates and authorship about a famous architectural feature.

At this point, it would seem that identifying the date of creation along with the dates of migration to current day location, vis a vis photos, would seem like the first and best step on solving the mystery of creation and migration

TEPaul,

I know it sounds far fetched, but, at the right moment, producing a little sign that says, "left" and then answering the question that naturally follows, from the woman who sees that sign, with the $ 64,000 question, produces some great results.
I know, I've field tested that little sign and it's spectacularly effective.

[Kyle Harris]

I agree, Kyle, particularly considering who it might be who's analyzing every 18th letter of Hugh and Alan Wilson to Piper and Oakley. What this website has taught me over the years is just how much difference and variation of opinion there is not just on the same thing in architecture but on the same on pretty near anything in history.

It's a "Big World" out there, don't you know?

I meant individual l-e-t-t-e-r-s, not reports

Coincidentally, every 15th letter if you read them backwards is for a cracking Snapper soup.