Who is Responsible for the Grass Island in the Bunker on 18 at Muirfield?

[Mike Cirba]

There have been some great threads here over time, and some of my favorites include the current one on the genesis/evolution of the DA bunker at the 10th at Pine Valley.

One of my favorites, and one I've always wondered about, is the right side bunker along the 18th green at Muirfield, with a pronounced grass island providing just a beautiful one-off touch to the finale of the course.

Muirfield has had a number of hands in the architectural mix over the early years but can anyone help track the origins of that cool feature, as well as the rest of the 18th hole?

Thanks in advance to the wonderful folks here who provide such in-depth research and insight.



From Tony Muldoon's excellent recent thread;

[Tony_Muldoon]

 Thanks you Mike, it’s normally credited to Colt in his revisions   I haven’t time to check the date but it’s about 1930.

Oddly I discovered that Belfair’s near Southend, a ‘muni’ course, was also his and 10 years earlier he put one either side of the 18th there.   He must have felt it added sport to the bunker.   If a ball just rolled off the central island it could produce a tough next shot, and although it must be hell to maintain I think that’s why HCEG keep the grass short.

[Niall C]

Tony

If it was Colt, it was probably when he revised it in 1923 (?).

Niall

[Bill_McBride]

There's a nifty island in the greenside bunker to the right of the 10th green at Lundin Links south of St Andrews.  Anybody have a photo?  I assume Braid may have had something to do with this but not sure if he did more than add the upper nine holes.

[Tom MacWood]

I believe that bunker was added by Tom Simpson in the 1930s. The bunker did not exist on the detailed map made in 1928, and Simpson recommended a complete new bunkering scheme for the 18th green in his 1933 proposal (although he didn't specify how he would rebunker the green in his report). Here is a photo from 1935 showing the new greenside bunkering at the 18th green, and although you can't really make out the bunker in question, I think its reasonable to conclude it was part of his overall scheme. Simpson was also known to use the grass island from time to time.

[TEPaul]

One can see in Reginald Beale's article on bunker construction that includes numerous drawings that at least one of the diagrams (Fig 6) does include what must have been a grass island (identified as "B" which keys to "grade" in his article) in the middle of a sand bunker. That article was published in 1909 (I'll check but I believe it was published in the British Golf Illustrated).

Niall Carlton sent me the article recently and I think I recall he sent it to Mike Cirba too who might've posted the article on a fairly recent thread.

When this first happened and who was responsible for it seems to me an interesting architectural subject worthy of investigation sort of akin to the investigation to determine if it was Hugh Wilson at Merion East who first developed and used the constructed earthen "easy slope" (then sand covered) fairway bunker on inland clay/loam sites-----that became, according to Ron Prichard as the "prototype for the generic American bunker style."

[Scott Macpherson]

There is no indication that the island was built prior to 1928, as the plans of the course (as found hanging inside the Muirfield locker room) show no such bunker.

So who did it? I'm not sure, but start looking at those architects/designers/greens committees involved with the course post 1928.

scott

[Jim_Kennedy]

This is a 1936 photo, and there seems to be a grassy knoll in the bunker, but nothing that looks like what’s there in tony's photo.



I do wonder though, what the heck's the matter with what's seen in this photo, and why change it?

[Mike Cirba]

Cool information.

Thanks for the old pics Tom and Jim!!    

Can anyone tell us the first time it's seen on a course drawing or map?


EDIT>>>>I blew up the 1936 photo and it's definitely there at that time.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mike,
Did you take the time to notice the another difference between the two photos? 

[Mike Cirba]

Jim,

I was in too much of a hurry to notice the time!   Tick tock.. 

[TEPaul]

Since there're so many good researchers on here who can post photos I would just love to see the very first photographic evidence of a grass island inside a bunker----any photographic evidence from anywhere in the world of the first sand bunker like that. It would be pretty interesting as earlier and earlier photos came onto the thread. After a while we will have perhaps the earliest and can then perhaps suggest it was that architect's idea.

Again, Reginald Beale drew one in an article with Illustrative diagrams as early as 1909. It wasn't a hole though, just and architectural diagram example of a bunker that appeared to have an island (grass?) in the middle.

[Jim_Kennedy]

TEP,
I don't think that's possible as the first instance would no doubt be somewhere on the linksland and the product of nature, be it animal, wind, water, or a combination of the three.

If you mean a photo from somethng an architect built, then maybe.

[TEPaul]

"If you mean a photo from somethng an architect built, then maybe."


That's all I do mean; that's all I've ever meant. I don't know about others but in the context of what we do here and discuss here my definition of golf course architecture is that which man builds in the sense of making alterations to sites as he finds them before golf is played there.

Others may have different definitions of golf course architecture and they are more than welcome to them but that has always been mine----eg what man actually makes for golf.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Since there're so many good researchers on here who can post photos I would just love to see the very first photographic evidence of a grass island inside a bunker----any photographic evidence from anywhere in the world of the first sand bunker like that. It would be pretty interesting as earlier and earlier photos came onto the thread. After a while we will have perhaps the earliest and can then perhaps suggest it was that architect's idea.
Again, Reginald Beale drew one in an article with Illustrative diagrams as early as 1909. It wasn't a hole though, just and architectural diagram example of a bunker that appeared to have an island (grass?) in the middle.

 If, as you said, the earliest photo will "...perhaps suggest it was the architect's idea", then I see we are in agreement.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Here's an early example of grass mounds in bunkers at Deal. The article is from 1903, Deal was built in 1898.

Go to page 8

http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/Outing/Volume_42/outXLII03/outXLII03b.pdf

[Sean_A]

I find the more natural bunkers to look really wild.  Muirfield is so famous for its stacked sod pots that it is difficult to imagine anything ever else existing.  

If I were a betting man, and I am, I would wager that Simpson slapped that stupid bunker in.  He was always thinking he do things better, unfortunately, that wasn't always the case.  That said, to be as bold as he was for his time, he was bound to make a few cock ups or just change shit for no good reason.  

Ciao

[Jim_Kennedy]

Sean,
What would have made them change those good looking bunkers in the old photos? Maintenance?

[TEPaul]

Jim Kennedy:

That is an awesome photographic find on the Deal course of an island grass bunker. To me that is decidedly early. I doubt there was a thing over here like that before Deal or earlier than that but who knows what someone might find photographically? I must say that is some pretty crazy Alpinized bunker surrounds and grass island but it sure is a grass island inside a sand bunker, nevertheless. Good for you. I think you just set the bar pretty high (pretty early) on this investigation.

I think Niall Carlton sent me some illustrative drawings of grass islands in bunkers perhaps that early but I don't think they were photos of the actual thing.

By the way, what did you mean about page 8? That photo looks like it's on page 296.

[TEPaul]

"If, as you said, the earliest photo will "...perhaps suggest it was the architect's idea", then I see we are in agreement."


Are we?

If this website and all its good and effective researchers all over the world really got into this kind of investigation and over time photographs were produced earlier and earlier, would you be willing to say after a good deal of time and research and investigation that the earliest example of a grass island bunker we found might be assumed to be the first example of it and even that the architect who did it may've been the first to do it or perhaps the first to even think of it?

[Jim_Kennedy]

TEP,
The photo of those bunkers at Deal in NJ are man made, without a doubt. There is an old photo that I've seen of the sand pit at Garden City where there are also tongues of grass intruding right up the face of the ridge. They could be natural or man made, but my guess is they are that way because maintenance wasn't so anal.

I don't think the idea of putting grass in the bunker, like the ones in NJ, was a wholly original idea. I think an early practitioner of course building saw that same type of situation on a links course, constructed it somewhere, and the element was added to the architect's palette, to be used sparingly.


edit: page 8 of the pdf.     

[TEPaul]

"I don't think the idea of putting grass in the bunker, like the ones in NJ, was a wholly original idea. I think an early practitioner of course building saw that same type of situation on a links course, constructed it somewhere, and the element was added to the architect's palette, to be used sparingly."


That sounds very possible and logical to me. I can even see some seriously veritical sand upswept bunkers on some early sandy sites (PV, NGLA etc) where something like a piece of the green came down into the bunker and they just left it there as a grass island in sand.

Matter of fact, take a look at that photo from the tee on the DA thread from #10 1921. That pile of material in the middle of the left front bunker might've been a piece of the green above. Of course they didn't leave it there but we sure can see it in that particular photo.   

[Jim_Kennedy]

http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/Outing/Volume_34/outXXXIV06/outXXXIV06m.pdf

Check out the "Natural" bunker at Easthampton on the first page of the pdf.
The one I was referring to earlier, at GCGC, is on the last page.

.....and how about the carry that the damsel faces on the 120 yard 10th at Maidstone, page 9. Poor lass.

edit: this article was dated 1899.

[TEPaul]

JIM KENNEDY!


Deal and Lawrence Van Etten in 1898. LAWRENCE VAN ETTEN!!! HE MAY BE OUR MAN! He may've come first and out-grass-islanded in bunkers everyone and he seems to have preceded Tilly and J.H. Taylor with a form of alpinization (sometimes called "Mid-Surrey" mounding).

Taylor said; "I claim conceit for having initiated Mid-Surrey mounding in 1911."


Bullshit! Our LAWRENCE VAN ETTEN beat him to the punch by maybe a decade and I think that article even said Taylor played once at Deal. That Taylor is a bold-faced liar in that case!

LAWRENCE VAN ETTEN!!! What do you think? Shall we crown him as the "FATHER" of American Golf Architecture, or at least the "GUIDE?"

He was a Princeton boy, by the way! Maybe he was Hugh Wilson's real mentor!

Great research fella----you just proved it photographically!

PS:
If you can also prove that Lawrence Van Etten was a member of the Ivy or Cottage Club at Princeton then he very well may've been part of the 200 year cabal (through Yale's Skull and Bones and Harvard's Porcelian) of that "Anglo-Saxon Malthusian English Amercan Moneycrat Intelligent Community Oligarchy." Since he apparently lived until 1951 I bet he was even one of those guys who helped finance the Third Reich like Averril Harriman, George Herbert Walker, Prescott Bush, William Farrish and Joshua Crane! It was all about racial purity with selective population control via sterilization and eusthanasia, don't you know?

[Mike Cirba]

Deal is on my very shortest list of courses to see this year. 

Wildly interesting history, and some of the original Deal holes are now on land that is part of Hollywood GC, and incorporated in the routing.