The Original Six

[Tom MacWood]

Pinehurst #2? It was considered a superior design around the turn of the century?

[Gary Slatter]

If it were all of America would Brantford GC and Royal Montreal be considered?   And Manchester GC in Mandeville Jamaica (1865).

[Mike Cirba]

Pinehurst #2? It was considered a superior design around the turn of the century?

No, Tom, but it was before NGLA was finished, which was the point I was trying to make.  

We have articles indicating that what Ross (and apparently Travis) were doing there was scientific trapping, and we also have articles on how visiting that course had a positive effect on the thinking of Philadelphian green committees and players at the time.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Since the NHL started about the same time as golf, (really about 1917, amidst WWI and lawsuits from a preceding league, so the Stanley Cup, first donated in 1892 might be a better timeline example to golf) and the Flyers came in the league in what, 1967? I propose we look for a bully from that era, and the logical candidate would be Pete Dye and Harbor Town, or The Golf Club.

I guess we could compare the real early courses to predecessor leagues and start our original six in about 1915, which would alter the mix, too.

For the record, the original six blackhawks didn't enter the NHL until 1926, so NHL history is about as muddled (and romanticized) as gca history in some cases.  In fact, most of the original six weren't really original at all, but that marketing moniker really was invented in 1967 with the expansion.

[Sean_A]

Since the NHL started about the same time as golf, (really about 1917, amidst WWI and lawsuits from a preceding league, so the Stanley Cup, first donated in 1892 might be a better timeline example to golf) and the Flyers came in the league in what, 1967? I propose we look for a bully from that era, and the logical candidate would be Pete Dye and Harbor Town, or The Golf Club.

I guess we could compare the real early courses to predecessor leagues and start our original six in about 1915, which would alter the mix, too.

For the record, the original six blackhawks didn't enter the NHL until 1926, so NHL history is about as muddled (and romanticized) as gca history in some cases.  In fact, most of the original six weren't really original at all, but that marketing moniker really was invented in 1967 with the expansion.

Jeff

I was thinking the same thing with the preceding NHL teams being the old Canadian leagues and the preceding 6 archies being the British archies. The timeline is remarkable until we get to the expansion of 1967.  That said, the Broad Street Bullies didn't emerge until 72/73.  So we need to find a bully course from the early 70s. 

Ciao

[Jeff_Brauer]

Sean,

Maybe TPC as the bully?

[Jim Franklin]

Go Blackhawks!

The bully would be The Stadium Course at PGA West. So it was a few years later, it was designed to be a bully.

[Bill_McBride]

Pinehurst #2? It was considered a superior design around the turn of the century?

No, Tom, but it was before NGLA was finished, which was the point I was trying to make.  

We have articles indicating that what Ross (and apparently Travis) were doing there was scientific trapping, and we also have articles on how visiting that course had a positive effect on the thinking of Philadelphian green committees and players at the time.

Even with those sand greens?

[Mike Cirba]

Bill,

Sure, let me cite a few examples;

"The new or number 2 eighteen-hole course, opened last winter, and which awakened such universal discussion throughout the country, has now been perfected even to the minutest detail and the completed result from the expert's standpoint, is a "wonder." Some idea of the difficulties to be encountered may be gained from the fact that the total number of hazards is one hundred fifteen, spread out in the following order, 8, 4, 4, 6, 5, 6, 7, 6, 4, 10, 6, 6, 8, 7, 6, 7, 7, 8, and yet, there is not a transverse bunker or pit on the course, penalty coming only through poor play or lack of judgment. "

"These hazards range all the way from the deadly "whisker" (wire grass) bunkers and traps to equally deadly trouble makers in the form of mounded pits and other unique devices and the "rough" bordering the course and lying in wait for topped drives in front of the tees. Illustrative of just what is in store for the careless player is the accompanying sketch of the traps on the short seventeenth hole."

"First criticized very severely, as Mr. Walter J. Travis predicted, it has now come to be regarded as standing practically alone, "unique in this country, if not the world; a modern course for the modern ball. You have got to place, not bang anywhere, and you have got to think, a distinct value being given to a particular shot on each hole."

"In this connection it might be emphasized that the impression existing in some quarters that Pinehurst is all competitive or tournament golf is at least three-fourths wrong, for of the two thousand or more players who
annually gather here only about five hundred of them are attracted by
the tournaments. A great many, to be sure, participate in some or all of these tournaments, but this is merely incidental, by no means the end, for the great majority is made up of the lovers of the game who follow it just as
a yachtsman does the sea, the equestrian the horse and so on down the long line."

American Golfer - December 1909 - "Special Correspondent"
 

 
 
 
 
 

[Mike Cirba]

"After one of the most unprofitable—from a golfer's point of view—winter, Philadelphia extended a warm greeting to spring. It has been years since the links of the Quaker City have been so unplayable as the period from Christmas until the latter part of March.  An occasional day was the only respite from weeks of the worst possible sort of weather."

"One thing will be noted by visitors from other cities whether they play over such excellent eighteen hole courses as Huntingdon Valley and the Philadelphia Cricket Clubs as representing the larger organizations or the two dozen or more courses of nine holes and that is the growing tendency to improve in a more scientific manner the courses around Philadelphia. "

"Time was when changes were made in a sort of a hit or miss manner. Today every trap or pit that is constructed means something definite and with it all has come the scientific construction of bunkers and hazards.  Time was when the green committee built courses on a broad principle of the greatest good to the greatest number and as the greatest number in every golfing organization is the dub or indifferent player, the really good player suffered.  As the chairman of the green committee of one of the largest courses recently expressed himself: "A few years ago we used to post the changes proposed. This met with so much opposition that we were forced to take a couple of days in the week when we were sure that the bulk of the players would not be on the course and then we started to construct a course that would help the good player and do no great injury to the poor player.  Nowadays, fortunately, we are able to make changes without feeling that we would be subjected to the severest sort of criticism.""

"There is no doubt that the Southern courses have done wonders for golfing conditions around Philadelphia.  It is not so many years ago that very few players took two weeks off in mid winter to play golf in the south.   Where one player went South five years ago, twenty go now.  Pinehurst, in particular has worked wonders. Hundreds of men who have always played a rather indifferent game have gone to Pinehurst and have been confronted with golf courses constructed on scientific principles where traps and pits have been placed in spots because good golf demanded their presence there."

"The result has been that the indifferent, careless player found that every shot he made demanded study and care and the golf there brought out the best in him. When he got back to the home heath he began to realize that one of the reasons he had not been playing better golf was because his own course was constructed on rather slip shod lines, on the one hand, or built on lines to suit him and scores of other players who insisted that the course should not be made any harder than it was. He realized for the first time that his wild shots were not penalized, that many of his approaches should have been punished but were not. The realizing sense finally came to him that he had not been playing golf but had simply used the paraphernalia of the game in a very bungling fashion."

"As a direct result scores of the indifferent players who have received their real golf education in the south have gone to the green committees and frankly and freely confessed that their theories were all wrong and asked them to stiffen the course. They now realize that it is impossible to play good golf over an inferior course and that a good course does not hamper their game but actually helps it."

"At any event, the golfing renaissance in Philadelphia has actually begun and before many years we shall have courses which are a credit to us and not a mark of good natured chaffing of others who  know what constitutes a good course."  

American Golfer - "Far and Sure" - May 1912

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mike Cirba,

To be fair, the early schematic/stick routing of GCGC doesn't do the course justice.

I don't think that early schematics detail the features and the topography and as such should just be regarded as informationally "general"

Patrick,

That's a fair comment, but isn't the site of Chicago Golf Club relatively flat?

Yes, but so is GCGC.

Furthermore, while the two dimensional routing map doesn't show contour, it does serve to show the routing, and it does show the features.

In the case of the early CGC, it seems to me that the routing is relatively unsophisticated at best, and the features look to be mostly penal cross hazards.

I think you could say the same thing about the early routing and features at GCGC, some of which still remain

I think this is why Macdonald himself spent a good deal of time actually studying the great courses abroad in detail years later, in preparation for building his ideal course at NGLA.  

I don't think that there's any question that CBM wanted to increase his data base.

To lump in his earliest stuff with the great architect he became is inaccurate revisionist history at best, blind hero-worship at worst.

Wouldn't that depend upon his "marching orders" and budget at his "earliest stuff" ?

[DMoriarty]

David,

I'm trying to say that if we're looking for "breakout" courses prior to NGLA, then Chicago was hardly the "bully" that set the bar.

It had the advantage of being the first 18 hole course, but it wasn't very good, except in context of lack of competition.

Soon, Myopia, Ekwanok, Garden City, and then Pinehurst #2 were superior as golf courses and leaders in creating examples of strategic design and "scientific trapping".

Then, NGLA took it to a new level.   Not Chicago.

As Mac said, let's have fun with it.   I don't think there is any "misleading rhetoric" that I'm laying down, just trying to keep this in historical context and also trying to say that the Chicago Golf Club golf course we know today is most assuredly not the Chicago Golf Club course Macdonald originally laid out.   

In fact, I think anyone would be hard-pressed to pick that routing and feature map out of a hundred or so other very rudimentary, cross-bunkered affairs that were practiced early on in golf in America.

It just had more of it.

This is hogwash, Mike.   No one suggested Chicago was the "Bully" course.   How could it be the Bully replacing anything when it was the first 18 hole course?  You twisted the question to give you a bully-pulpit to blast Chicago, but your posts continue to be historically ignorant and entirely beside the question.  Your original post denies its position as one of the original six! Such a position is absurd, as even you must realize by now.   Post all the self-serving snippets from 1909 you like; they don't rewrite history from over a decade earlier. 

[Mike Cirba]

This is hogwash, Mike.   No one suggested Chicago was the "Bully" course.   How could it be the Bully replacing anything when it was the first 18 hole course?  

What would you all say about the original six being...

Shinnecock Hills
Chicago Golf  Club
The Country Club Brookline MA
Newport Golf  Club
St. Andrews  Golf Club Yonkers, NY

with Myopia thrown in there to make it 6.

The "bully" being Chicago (or NGLA if you want a course that came along later) and CBM.  As he seems to be the man that revolutionized golf course architecture (and golf) in America and many seemed to follow his lead overtly or covertly.

Thoughts?

David,

I respectfully disagreed with Mac's assessment that the bully course of those named was Chicago.

It was not a landmark course architecturally, nor was it better than those mentioned, much less push them from prominence, in any timeframe, much less at inception.

I'm not sure if you're a hockey buff or not, but the analogy refers to a course where there is an established six, and then a new outsider comes in and changes things systematically and profoundly.   Many hockey observers believe the Philadelphia Flyers did that in the 1970s, thus the attempted comparision.

Chicago was not that course, so I disagreed with Mac's contention, without being confrontational or personal.  

[Mac Plumart]

Mike...

you beat me to the punch.

David...

I suggested it with this line..."The "bully" being Chicago (or NGLA if you want a course that came along later) and CBM.  As he seems to be the man that revolutionized golf course architecture (and golf) in America and many seemed to follow his lead overtly or covertly."

My broader point was CBM was the "bully" with Chicago and NGLA being his courses. 

[Mike Cirba]

Mike...

you beat me to the punch.

David...

I suggested it with this line..."The "bully" being Chicago (or NGLA if you want a course that came along later) and CBM.  As he seems to be the man that revolutionized golf course architecture (and golf) in America and many seemed to follow his lead overtly or covertly."

My broader point was CBM was the "bully" with Chicago and NGLA being his courses.  

Thanks Mac...

I followed up in response to David by saying that I'd agree that NGLA was a "bully" course that changed everything, but would disagree that CB's Chicago course (either of them) was anything but more of the same in a primitive early US period.

The fact that it was changed so significantly by Raynor in the next couple of decades attests to the reality that the original was hardly up to the ideal standard developed later by Macdonald.

[Mac Plumart]

I think you are right.

I initially didn't see the "came along later" part of the post in the context of the "bully" that is why I put in Chicago as I thought CBM changed the way things were done in the US and Chicago in effect represented him.  I added NGLA in after I recognized my mistake regarding this thread.

It appears I should have erased Chicago all together during my edit.

Oops!

[Mike Cirba]

Mac,

Thanks...

Macdonald's visits to abroad and his study (evidently much of it done in conjunction with Emmett, Whigham, and at times, Travis) of great holes abroad and what made up an ideal course certainly set the tone for much that was to follow.  

He took a movement that had just been getting off the ground in the US with a few courses and moved it forward about 500 yards with NGLA.  

[DMoriarty]

Mac,  

As I guess you have figured out, Chicago couldn't really be the bully that displaced anyone since it was at the very beginning of golf in the US.   Chicago would have been replacing itself.   Contrary to Mike's assertions, Chicago was considered very good for its place and time, and remained well respected for many years, before the Raynor changes were made.    Those old routings can be extremely misleading as to the character of a course.  

My gripe with this thread and much of what goes on around here is this unsupported nonsense of writing off some courses and designers because of some other agenda, no matter how convoluted.  Comparing early Chicago to later Pinehurst #2-- as if they were contemporaries-- to create some false impression about Chicago is good example.

[Matthew Rose]

The original six really aren't the original six anyway. They were just the ones left over after several teams folded during the depression.

At one point you had the Montreal Maroons (Montreal's "English" team), the Ottawa Senators (first incarnation), Victoria Cougars, and  Philadelphia Quakers. Everyone of those except the Quakers won Stanley Cups.

Toronto had the Arenas and St. Patricks before the Maple Leafs although I think they might all be the one franchise.

OK... don't mean to turn this into too much of a hockey thread

[Mac Plumart]

Man...I had a really good post typed up and lost it when I got "timed out".  Ugh!

Oh well, here is the basics...

I love the Jeff B. and Sean A. timeline and the idea that the "Original 6" weren't really the original 6.  So, what courses were designed to be bullies?

Oakland Hills after RTJ rennovations?
Shadow Creek?
Sandhills just might have turned out to be a bully as it ushered in a return to minimalism.
I love the TPC courses listed...they for sure were bullies.


What else do you guys think?


And also, if the NHL used the "Original 6" for marketing purposes in 1967, as Jeff said, what courses would golf have marketed as the "Original 6" then?

FYI...Matthew R just posted as I was typing.  But I think we are kind of going in the same direction.

[TEPaul]

"My gripe with this thread and much of what goes on around here is this unsupported nonsense of writing off some courses and designers because of some other agenda, no matter how convoluted."



In that case Moriarty, why don't you take your gripe with this thread and what goes on around here and give it another six months vacation? As far as "some other agenda, no matter how convoluted"----given your totally f...ed up essay on Merion entitled "The Missing Faces of Merion" and your convoluted follow-up agenda and nonsense on this DG about it----well, talk about someone calling the kettle black as far as another convoluted agenda goes.

[Sean_A]

Man...I had a really good post typed up and lost it when I got "timed out".  Ugh!

Oh well, here is the basics...

I love the Jeff B. and Sean A. timeline and the idea that the "Original 6" weren't really the original 6.  So, what courses were designed to be bullies?

Oakland Hills after RTJ rennovations?
Shadow Creek?
Sandhills just might have turned out to be a bully as it ushered in a return to minimalism.
I love the TPC courses listed...they for sure were bullies.


What else do you guys think?


And also, if the NHL used the "Original 6" for marketing purposes in 1967, as Jeff said, what courses would golf have marketed as the "Original 6" then?

FYI...Matthew R just posted as I was typing.  But I think we are kind of going in the same direction.

Mac

Yes, I wonder what would have been the original 6 courses as of 1967.  Like hockey, a bit of leeway in timing would be allowed for those courses to develop and gain the rep which they largely enjoy today.  The Wings didn't really find their stride as a team until going bankrupt and Norris bought the club in 1932 - yet they were an NHL franchise from 1926 and essentially the team left over from the Western Canada League - Victoria Cougars.  The Cougars had roots back to 1911 and a reformed Cougar team won the Stanley Cup in 1925 - essentially the end of the old Canadian leagues as a major player in hockey.  There isn't even an original 6 for the NHL!  Jeepers, I think it started with 4 teams one of which was the Canadiens.  I don't think Boston, Chicago, the Rangers and Detroit came into the league until the mid 20s.   

So, six courses...

Ciao

[Mike Cirba]

My gripe with this thread and much of what goes on around here is this unsupported nonsense of writing off some courses and designers because of some other agenda, no matter how convoluted.  Comparing early Chicago to later Pinehurst #2-- as if they were contemporaries-- to create some false impression about Chicago is good example.

Now that's classic misinterpretation.   

All I was saying, David,  is that there were a handful of architecturally significant courses in the states prior to NGLA which started the trend away from geometric cross bunkered courses and by 1906-07 they numbered among them, Garden City, Ekwanok, Myopia, Pinehurst #2, but I disagreed that Chicago should be in their number.  If you disagree with me, David, perhaps you could simply tell us why you think it was strategically noteworthy, and what features had lasting influence?

The "bully" then became NGLA which took things to a more refined and purposeful level, but only after Macdonald himself studied in depth what made a hole ideal on his trips abroad, and in his discussions with Emmett, Whigham, Travis, and others.   

[Mac Plumart]

Sean...

using this "unique" hockey timeline, I kind of fall back on what teams do I think of immediately when I think of hockey (and again I am not a big hockey fan, so this is from the mind of a layman).  They are the Redwings, Blackhawks, Maple Leafs, Rangers, Canadians, and Islanders.  Oh yeah, the Thrashers as well...but then again I live in Atlanta.     These are probably not the original 6, but I am sure some of them are.

So, to do the same thing in golf...I think immediately of the following American golf courses...Pebble Beach, Augusta National, Merion, Shinnecock Hills, Pinehurst, and NGLA.

Now when I think of modern courses (the bully)...I think immediately of TPC Sawgrass.

When I think of a global original 6...I immediately think of The Old Course, Muirfield, Pebble, Augusta, Pinehurst, and NGLA with the same bully.

Anyway, just having fun with this and enjoying the goof. 

[TEPaul]

I can't figure out if this thread about some "bully" is supposed to be about hockey or golf architecture or golf architects but even though I've never followed hockey I am from Philadelphia and I can certainly assure you our Flyers are and certainly were BULLIES in ever sense of the word and apparently proud of it too.

Wasn't it that Russian team that the Flyers said; "If we can't beat them at least we can beat them up."

Apparently they did both almost forcing the Russians to leave the ice in frustration.