Engineers in 1920

[Joe Bausch]

A series of hole diagrams and discussions of Engineers just before the 1920 US Amateur (and I guess before Emmet came in to do a remodel of the Strong work?).

(Click on a figure to expand it if your browser doesn't automatically do so!)

[Mike Cirba]

Wow...how cool is that?

The writeup of "2 or 20" is particularly interesting.

[Tom MacWood]

Joe
Thanks for digging this up and sharing it. Where did you find it.

[Joe Bausch]

Joe
Thanks for digging this up and sharing it. Where did you find it.

Brooklyn Eagle.

[Brian Potash]

"The most talked about hole in America"

[John Mayhugh]

Very interesting, and fun to compare with today's course.  The statement about the 16th - "the memory lingers" is still true!

I'm amazed at the extent of newspaper articles on golf courses from those days.

[Mike Cirba]

I'm amazed at the extent of newspaper articles on golf courses from those days.

John,

Sadly, most mass-media writing on the architecture golf courses today is somewhere between fluffy advertisement to cliched tripe, to non-existent.

[Chris_Blakely]

I wonder how the bunkering on these hole drawings compares with what was "restored" recently??

Great find Joe - thank you for sharing,

Chris

[Joe Bausch]

I believe the author of these articles, William E. Hicks, also did the drawings.  They look in the same style as those in the Brooklyn Eagle booklet for the 1916 Amateur at Merion where Flynn did the drawings.

I'm guessing ole Mr. Hicks was impressed by the Flynn figures and decided to mimic them for Engineers.

I believe Mr. Hicks lived to the ripe old age of 80 and died in the early 40's (single all his life, too).

[Joe Bausch]

An earlier June 1918 article from the Daily Eagle showed the routing.  It seems upon a quick glance not too much has changed between that and those 1920 Hicks' drawings, except for the 2nd hole (changed to a par 4).

[TEPaul]

Joe et al:

I'm not sure why the 2nd hole is listed at 558 yards on that 1918 stick routing; it's actually only around 400 from that tee placement on the other side of the divide between the 1st hole and that 2nd tee. Engineer's super DonS mentioned that they may've originally had a tee on the same side of the divide as the 1st hole and if that was true the 2nd hole could've been around 550.

I suppose because the short par 3 (2 or 20) was taken out of play, at some point Frank Duane created a par 3 third hole that runs in the opposite direction of the second half of the 2nd. The original 3rd hole is now used as the second half of the 4th hole, even though it's possible to play the original 3rd from a tee a bit to the left and above the 2nd green.

2 or 20 is now back in play and the course actually has 19 holes so there are technically two ways to play the course.

I grew up within about three miles of Engineers but it wasn't until last week that I saw the course for the first time on the invitation of RobertD who's a teaching pro there. A friend of mine from The Creek Club and I got a couple of hours tour of the course from the super and afterwards we met up and had a chat about it all with Ed Gibstein, the golf chairman, a really good player I knew from my tournament days. And to think that one of my oldest and best friends in life, A.T. Gray, grew up immediately contiguous to one of the holes of Engineers and not until last week had I ever seen the place (it actually took us some time to find the driveway).

I've seen a lot of really good courses in my life and travels but I've got to say Engineers is right up there near the top in my opinion. Its greens and their "internals" (slopes and contours), sizes and angles etc are just truly remarkable and from there the beat just goes on and on and on with some "through the green" turns and deceptive visuals and fairway rolls and slopes and undulations that just seems to make strategic ramifications and consequences almost endless.

The routing, the "designing up", the architecture (greens and overall fairway and hole movement), the property's rolling, plunging topography etc, etc, adds up to making Engineers one of the coolest golf courses I've ever seen and I've seen a lot at my age and at this point. You want to talk about a true "Hidden Gem"----Engineers is it! And I should add to that opinion that because of it I think Herbert Strong had to have been something of a real architectural genius!



 

[David Stamm]

Thanks, Joe. Once again you come up with the goods. It's fun to see something of a place I really enjoyed. Engineers is a treat to play and so cool to see. It must've been so tough back in the day!

[Tom MacWood]

The second hole could be played two different ways - par 4 or par 5 - depending upon which tee they used. The long tee was on the clubhouse side of the road, which necessitated hitting your drive across the road. Note the odd dome shaped hazard short and left of the 2nd green. Herbert Strong was a bold architect.

[Tom MacWood]

The photo of the 2nd is from the 1919 PGA championship.

[Mike Cirba]

Let me chime in with those applauding Engineers as a great golf course.   The greens are wild and should be studied by anyone interested in architecture just to see how far Strong pushed the envelope.

[TEPaul]

The greens are wild but there's a lot more to that course than just those wild greens. A number of the fairways are fantastic when it comes to the visuals or visibility or lack of it on the next shot. Holes #5, #6, #10, #16, #17 and #18 jump out at you that way.

Bill Coore used to mentor me about the importance in architecture of what he called "top lines." That Engineers has just a ton of really great "top lines" of all kinds and all over the course.

[Mike Cirba]

Tom,

Oh, no question...the course itself is terrific, and the fairway land forms are very well utilized, but those greens....

Let's just say there ain't many like them, anywhere.     They have a sweep and grandeur that is expressive and strategically-provoking.

[TEPaul]

The only ones I know personally from that list that are not all that much changed from that date are Maidstone (before Willie Park, however, who did a lot), North Shore, Nassau and Piping Rock.

For the survival of golf courses and architecture from that particular time obviously it is not conducive to preservation to have one of the biggest and most burgeoning cities in the world pumping expansion and development right at you.

[Tom MacWood]

Speaking of Engineers, there were several interesting threads on the course, and the renovation of the courses, about five or six years ago.

[TEPaul]

I don't know how to post or attach newspaper articles onto this DG but for those who do there's an interesting article from the New York Times of Jan. 10, 1920 about the annual meeting of the USGA in which the US Amateur was awarded to Engineers.

There's a bunch of interesting info in that article about a lot of things and there is also a ton of names in it of the men connected to various clubs from that time.

One of the reasons I was looking is because eventually I need to come up with a list of all the men who ever played on the Lesley Cup who also served on the USGA's board. In that vein, I'm having a very hard time figuring out if Robert Lesley himself ever actually served on the USGA's board. I certainly know he was the president of GAP for many years, and he may've been a USGA delegate that went abroad in that conference in 1920 with the R&A to work out various rules and other issues between the two associations (USGA and R&A).

This was also the time when George Herbert Walker became the USGA president and around the same time the Walker Cup was conceived. Walker of course was the grandfather of our US president #41 and the great granfather of #43. He was also one of the 2-3 men who ran Brown Brothers Harriman, the massive US financial company who pretty much ran into a ton of shit in 1942 for essentially being the American financial representative of various German companies and including Hitler's Third Reich. The US Congress essentially grilled those guys in 1942 in what was known as the "Enemies Act" hearings but somehow "Uncle Herbie" and #41's father Prescott Bush slipped through the cracks. One of the reasons they may have is they were also part of the emanating American Intelligence community that was then known as the OSS and later became the CIA!

I also mention it because in an article posted this morning on a thread about the death of Crump in 1918, the reporter, John Anderson, mentioned that Lesley offered a remembrance at the 1918 USGA board meeting for Crump. It has been my impression that it was Howard Perrin who did that at the time. At that time Perrin was the president of the USGA and also the president of Pine Valley (something Crump who basically owned PV never seemed to want to be).

PS:
As a bit of trivia, that particular article also mentions that Merion's Hugh I. Wilson has been niminated to the USGA's board in 1918. Eventually, Hugh Wilson would beg off the board essentially stating he did not think it a good idea for two brothers to serve on the same boards or committees because of course his brother Alan was also going to be on the USGA board and would be the man mostly responsible for the creation of the USGA's Green Section.

[Brian Potash]

i had the opportunity to play Engineers this past Sunday.  It was my 4th time playing the course.  What I like so much about this course is that it is challenging yet fair, the greens are quick and undulating, there is such a variety of holes, and the anticipation and ultimate reward as you approach the old 14th - 2 or 20.

I bought a new camera this weekend and this is my firs time posting pics to the site.  So please bare with me and enjoy!

Brian



#1







# 4 - Uphill dogleg right par 5





# 5 - 1 handicap



#5 green and # 6 tee


# 6





# 7 short par 4





Author putting for par on 7 - He made it!

[Brian Potash]

See 1 post up - Brian

[Brian Potash]

8-18

# 8



# 10 dogleg right par 5



# 12 green



# 14a - 2 or 20











# 15



# 16 Green





# 18 Green

[Brian Potash]

[TEPaul]

Brian:

Your photographs of Engineers are very good (and taken from some important places) but having just been around that course the photos remind me of how much photography tends to flatten out certain things such as green movement.

The thing that really impressed me about Engineers is how the architecture of the course just constantly plays games with one's visuals, and particularly the depth perception of various things such as many to most of the greens. In other words, what you see from the fairway and the approaches is very often so much different when you get up there.

I just love that kind of thing and I feel that's essentially the ultimate sophistication of really good golf architecture.