What's missing in this photograph? Why?

[Mike Cirba]

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

[Tom MacWood]

Does that look like a circle to you? Its bottom edge looks squared to me, as does the top edge of the bunker above it.
IMO that bunker and the bunker above are a single rectangular bunker. The illusion of single small bunker is created by
the line delineating the green. In fact that line appears run right through that rectangular bunker.

[Mike Cirba]

Tom MacWood,

Honestly, I'd have to see the drawing in person...it's too distorted blown up photographically.

I can't tell if someone drew a red circle/block over an original blue line drawing or if that red is other marking.

I was talking about location, which looks pretty exact to me.

I'm generally of the school of thinking that the front left of the right side bunker got expanded through wear and washout, split, and was built back up and formalized into a DA.

I think that's what Joe's pic from about the same angle seems to suggest.

[JESII]

Tom,

It looks like a single circle to me, not an extension of the right side bunker. If it were intended to be all one bunker, why wouldn't that extension have made it into the initial iteration posted at the beginning of this thread? And why would the line gelineating the green have cut through it?


Pat,

In looking at the aerials of today, the DA is not exactly right in against the green. There is a bit of separation even if it's only a couple yards. From the photo of where a bunker first was there isn't much movement required to get to today's presentation.

[TEPaul]

"Does that look like a circle to you? Its bottom edge looks squared to me, as does the top edge of the bunker above it. IMO that bunker and the bunker above are a single rectangular bunker. The illusion of single small bunker is created by the line delineating the green. In fact that line appears run right through that rectangular bunker."




Not really, and that's why I don't believe in the analytical efficacy of blowing something up like that map and that marking to some factor far greater (like 5x or 10x)  than people were looking at who actually made those maps and their markings and those who actually used those maps back then.

I prefer to use the same size and scale of the orginals they used frankly and on my photograph of this particular "blue/red line" map that little round circle does look pretty exactly like what that bunker came to be. Ideally, I prefer to use the actual original itself and I'm aware you've never seen it because you have still never even been to Pine Valley where it is.

It's all a learning experience I guess and as I've always said to you on here I think you are a really fine expert on finding research material but I have never thought, and still don't think, that that talent transfers very well to your ability to actually analyze some research material.

I realize you think that I even mention this is intended to be some personal insult or cut towards you in the way you analyze some of these things. I assure you it has never been that and it isn't now----I truly believe that about you (or anyone else who ONLY does this analysis the way you do) and I always have and I've given the primary reasons for it over the years. Generally you do your analyses of research material on your computer and you just don't have enough experience with the original material and in that context I also very much include and mean the golf courses themselves, as you know. I don't think anyone would be capable of doing analysis any better than you do if they ONLY did it in one way, as you do.

I have always done it both ways----with the actual material including real familiarity with the details, and on the ground, of the subject golf courses and for that reason alone I really do understand the important differences in BOTH, and in the real differences between trying to do it only one way---via a computer, compared to the true value of actually being with the real thing in front of you and in studying the real thing in these ways.

[Tom MacWood]

Tom,

It looks like a single circle to me, not an extension of the right side bunker. If it were intended to be all one bunker, why wouldn't that extension have made it into the initial iteration posted at the beginning of this thread? And why would the line gelineating the green have cut through it?

Jim
Obviously there was a change in the plan, and it was impossible to erase the red line. Who knows if the line delineating the green or the rectangular bunker was drawn first.

There were numerous red bunkers that were not executed. Here is the complete plan. There are several of those strange looking bunker complexes that look like spiderwebs or stained glass windows, and I doubt if the author intended each of the rectangular bunkers in the spiderweb complex to be an individual bunker. They look like large waste bunkers to me rather than a series of individual rectangular bunkers.

Also it looks to me that there red bunkers all the way around the 10th green. 

[TEPaul]

There were numerous red bunkers that were not executed."


Tom MacWood:

Please keep making statements like that on here and particularly about Pine Valley because it just continues to make and reinforce my point about you as I articulated it on Post #229 about your inablility to do competent architecture analysis. Again, you're production of resource material is particularly impressive but your ability to analyze it is bizarre to say the least.

Show me a bunker drawn in red on that map that was not constructed and executed on the holes that were actually built and in play before Crump died. Do you even know which they are?

There is really only one I can see and that is that leftside fairway thing on the 6th hole that looks like one of his big bunkers that really were what we today refer to as "waste areas" even though no one back then referred to them that way.

This really is what happens when you try to act as if you really know this course or any other one without ever having actually been there or seen it. In fairness to you the same thing would probably happen to anyone who tried to analyze some of this stuff that way----eg without even going to a course or seeing it.

[TEPaul]

"There are several of those strange looking bunker complexes that look like spiderwebs or stained glass windows, and I doubt if the author intended each of the rectangular bunkers in the spiderweb complex to be an individual bunker. They look like large waste bunkers to me rather than a series of individual rectangular bunkers."




That's because that is precisely what Crump built in those areas and what he intended them to be and precisely what they still are. They pretty much look just like what some clubs and golfers today refer to as "waste bunkers" in which golfers can ground their club because they're considered to be "through the green" by a local rule designation on the scorecard. However, Pine Valley does not play them that way, never has, and I doubt ever will.

All of the above are items you may've had some chance of already knowing if you'd ever been there. Matter of fact, some of the things you say in the majority of your posts on Pine Valley are misinformed and/or clearly historically inaccurate. That you can never seem to admit this or ever even acknowledge it has absolutely nothing to do with the actual facts and accurate architectural history of Pine Valley.

[Steve Curry]

If memory serves me, when I was at PV in 89 and had the timber story relayed to me it was prefaced with a story of a tremendous rain event that got down to the timbers and also that the DA had been at one point closer to the green surface, such that a missed putt could roll in or off to the side.  This is clearly hearsay, but for me was very interesting.

Cheers,
Steve

[TEPaul]

Steve:

I would love to hear all you know and are willing to tell about the fact the verticality of some of those bunkers like on #10 may've been originally supported by wooden timbers behind sand flashing or turfing. I have never heard anything like that or seen any photographic evidence of it on any hole. God knows, though, that they surely did have a ton of lumber around that golf course when they were designing and constructing it----22,000 trees down when they finally stopped counting.



1989 huh? That would have been the time that madman Dick Bator at PV, right? That guy was something else and arguably one of the best "quick fixers" and grass-growers ever.

We had him over to speak to our green committee when he was at Merion and we were considering going from our odd fairway mixture to bent fairways. Somebody sitting behind him asked him if we should consider rye fairways. I watched his blood pressure rise and he said; "That Fuckin' Rye grass....." and had only got that far when he swung around to the person behind him who asked only to see it was a woman, at which point he stammered, "Ooops, sorry about that language ma'am but I really hate rye grass."

[Jim_Kennedy]

That's quite interesting Steve, and makes it more plausible to believe that the earlier photo of the steeply flashed bunker that I posted shows it as part of the slope of green, or at least close enough to have the effects that you mention.

[JESII]

Tom P,

That cluster bunker on #6 is there...next time you're on your way to the range just look to the right as you're passing the 9th regular tee.


Tom M,

The full course drawing only strengthens my belief that the circle was an independent feature.

[Tom MacWood]

Jim
Circle? It looks like a square to me. In fact the great majority of red bunkers are angular aren't they?

[Tom MacWood]

[TEPaul]

Would you care to say something about your understanding of the "province," history, timeline etc, about that second or lower drawing?  

There is also another "asset" very similar to that one (which is just the 10th hole part of a whole course drawing) in the second example in the post above which appeared in an early local newspaper article. Given the particular era involved just try to begin to imagine how that may've actually happened----that whole course map got into a Philadelphia newspaper article in 1913 (1914?)?  

The differences in the two "assets" actually tell a fairly interesting evolution timeline story about not just the course from the earlier point to the later point but also about who may've actually drawn one or both of those two separate "assets" and even why there are a few various differences on them.  

[Patrick_Mucci]

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

Mike,

That's a disengenuous post.

Why would you choose to deliberately ignore the lines denoting the green in the schematic, and the bunker's position relative to the lines defining the green and the area designated as the green ?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mike Cirba, Jim Sullivan, et. al.,

I only refered to the "red circle" because that's how others previously refered to it, but, upon closer inspection I'd have to agree with Tom MacWood, it looks more rectangular.

Mike, I'd like to address your attempt to support the theory that the red circle/square represents the DA in its conceptualized, but pre-built stage.

If we accept that theory, then every other theory promoting the D.A.'s origin as a product of either:
wear and tear,
compaction,
erosion,
and foot traffic 

has to be wrong.

Would you agree to that ?

Is there universal agreement on that ?

[TEPaul]

"That's a disengenuous post.

Why would you choose to deliberately ignore the lines denoting the green in the schematic, and the bunker's position relative to the lines defining the green and the area designated as the green?"


Two good and primary reasons why we can ignore the lines you say were denoting the green in the schematic is #1 we know from the first photograph of that hole that the green front was not designed or constructed as you seem to think it was indicated in that schematic, and #2, I already explained why most all the greens that essentially Colt drew for that course did not have lines drawn accross their fronts and I even explained precisely why some of them did and others didn't. I guess you missed that too or just want to argue about it anyway.

My God, are you ever either really obtuse or just completely uneccessarily argumentative. Believe me I have enough asset information on these things, some of which is not on this thread in its orginal form such as a actual copy, you really should either start just listening or else start trying to ask some intelligent questions about them rather than solely argumentative ones commonly prefaced by your horseshit---"That's disingenous."  

[Rick Sides]

Does anyone know who coined the phrase the "Devil's Asshole"  or who named it?  Maybe the origin of the phrase may shed some light on its creation?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Pat,

In looking at the aerials of today, the DA is not exactly right in against the green.

A lip on top of the bunker was added subsequent to 1964, probably just prior to or after the Walker Cup.
The lip was added to deflect surface water and to keep balls from running off the green, down, into the DA.

There is a bit of separation even if it's only a couple yards.
From the photo of where a bunker first was there isn't much movement required to get to today's presentation.

That's not true.
There's considerable movement.

One of the earlier photos shows the bunker as a relatively flat bunker sitting far offset, on it's own elevated foot pad, not into the footpad created by the bank as it is today

[TEPaul]

"I only refered to the "red circle" because that's how others previously refered to it, but, upon closer inspection I'd have to agree with Tom MacWood, it looks more rectangular."


Patrick:

Have you actually ever tried to look at it on the original map or a decent photograph of it? That's a rhetorical question, by the way, because I know you never have. No one even thought of that little round red circle on that hole in that area on that map until I did about 3-5 days ago, and like everything else I come up with that is considered analytically important to that club and its architectural history you and apparently MacWood seem to find some way to argue with it or call it speculative. One of the reasons for that is clearly you either have never looked at these original assets for that purpose or you just don't get it. MacWood has never even been to Pine Valley. What do you think about that Patrick? Aren't you the guy who claims that anyone needs intimate familiarity with courses to understand their nuances and architectural histories. You're the one who keeps using Macdonald's remarks about all kinds of winds and weather anyway.  

And that's one reason you don't think it's round----eg Crump didn't draw it and those who considered it on his map did not that little round red circle in 5x or 10x its actually scale and one could reason why they didn't is that back in the teens there was no particular technical or technological way to do that which obviously you never even considered you are so historically obtuse!

By the way, those maps are app. 4' by 2' or 5' by 3' in total size even when we look at them reduced from that 5x to 10x that some did on here on that hole. That would make those whole maps about 50' by 30' in size and nobody made or used anything like that---not ever.

My God you're obtuse but I've known that for well over a decade so what's new?  

[TEPaul]

"Does anyone know who coined the phrase the "Devil's Asshole"  or who named it?  Maybe the origin of the phrase may shed some light on its creation?"


Rick:

Nobody I've ever known and no story I've ever heard sheds any light on that and I've known plenty of both over the years. None of PV's history books shed any light on that term either and at least one makes mention that the term and its origins is mysterious, I believe. The people who wrote those three PV history books also have about 150 collective years of experience with and at PV. When I puts them, and their knowledge and experiences with PV up against a guy like MacWood who has never even been there or seen the place, I surely would think it would give anyone pause.   

[Bradley Anderson]

Pat,

In looking at the aerials of today, the DA is not exactly right in against the green.

A lip on top of the bunker was added subsequent to 1964, probably just prior to or after the Walker Cup.
The lip was added to deflect surface water and to keep balls from running off the green, down, into the DA.

There is a bit of separation even if it's only a couple yards.
From the photo of where a bunker first was there isn't much movement required to get to today's presentation.

That's not true.
There's considerable movement.

One of the earlier photos shows the bunker as a relatively flat bunker sitting far offset, on it's own elevated foot pad, not into the footpad created by the bank as it is today

Can someone put up a photo of the DA sitting on it's own elevated footpad. I just can't even visualize that.

[Rick Sides]

I think I found a date on the picture without the D.A.  According to Finegan's, A History of Pine Valley, on page 30 this pictures appears and Finegan labels it 1916.

[archie_struthers]

 


Hey guys Pat Gertner was the super at the Valley after Dick Bator and before Rick Christian , quite a good super also and he  may have been the guy in 1989  ...occasionally he checks in here and hopefully will again...Bator was gone after the Walker Cup in 1985

As to the DA memory tells me that the changes to the  green where done around '80., under Bator's supervsion....not only did they revet the bunker , they added material and a fringe to the green to keep the water out of the DA......it also ended the possibility of putting into the bunker , which is missed ....