Camden (SC) Country Club and Walter J. Travis

[Jamey Bryan]

Eric:

You managed to pull up my very first post on GCA!  I enjoyed my trip down memory lane.

To answer your question, very few of our members have any idea who Walter Travis is (unless they've been treated to one of my "five beer" lectures).  This is in spite of substantial further research which shows that the routing we're currently playing is 75% Travis!

Our best current information is:

1)  In 1923, Walter Travis was retained to create a "championship" course for the Kirkwood Hotel, using land used for 9 of the pre-existing 18 holes, with additional new property (side note:  Philip Young has provided me with a photo (circa 1918 or 19) of someone who looks like Tilly supervising "grass planting" at Camden....  have not been able to document any Tilly involvement ever).  So far, I've not been able to document who predated Travis, or what, if anything, he kept that existed.

2)  In 1939, Ross was brought in to renovate the course and to grass the greens.  From aerials around the time and news reports, we know:

  Sorry folks, I'm falling asleep as I type.....   will edit tomorrow to update.

[Phil_the_Author]

Jamey is correct. Below is one of the "Our Green Committee" pages that Tilly wrote for Golf Illustrated. As a page filler is a phot of the seeding for the Camden CC course. In the center of the photo an older white gentleman sporting a hat type that Tilly was quite fond of is standing there directing the work. I have to look up the issue, but if memory serves me correctly it would have to have been taken sometime in the late teens.

During this time Tilly's wife Lillian was traveling with him to many of his work sites. In fact a number of Tilly's more famous photo's (e.g. - the monuments at the "Duel Hole"at SFGC) contain Lillian in them and she, in turn, took a number of photos of Tilly at work. As the photo has no attribution, it most likely is from Tilly's personal collection and taken by Lillian.

Is it Tilly? WE don't know. We do know that there are a number of courses that he designed and oversaw the construction of during these years that he has never been credited with as the records have been lost. Anyway, below is the article with the photo. Remember, the photo is a space filler rather than associated with what he was writing about:

   

[Ed Oden]

I posted this on another thread and thought I would tack it on here as well for posterity's sake.  Courtesy of Kris Spence, here is Travis' 1923 plan for Camden...

[JC Jones]

I need some orientation here.   Where would the current clubhouse be (is it in the same spot as the Hotel was?)?  And, where would the railroad tracks be?

[Jamey Bryan]

Jason....   More later, but the RR tracks start in the middle bottom of the plan and curve to the right.  The current clubhouse is more or less in the middle of the property, the first hole in the plan is what is now the short par 5 with the tracks left and the polo field right.  Travis had it as a par 4 (the green was 70 yards short of where it is now) and there was a second hole where the tee shot carried the tracks and went up to a green below what is now the 16th green (that hole NLE, Ross eliminated it and added the par 3 12th).

I want to look at this more closely, I'd seen it but missed a couple of things.

Jamey

[JC Jones]

Awesome, Jamey I look forward to hearing more.

Interesting that the Travis routing only had one hole on the other side of the tracks vs the 2 that are there now.

[Jamey Bryan]

Jason,

1.5 or 1 2x.5....  There was an old newspaper article that referenced someone playing into 18 (at the time) and tiring of waiting on a freight train hit a shot THROUGH an open boxcar....  I can't find any aerial evidence of this, though.  We do know that the Travis second hole played across the tracks, though.

Jamey

[JC Jones]

I find it interesting that the 11, 13, 14, 15 and 16 holes appear to be in the same place now as they were with Travis's routing.  Which makes the addition of the par 3 on the other side of the tracks more interesting.

[Bill_McBride]

Awesome, Jamey I look forward to hearing more.

Interesting that the Travis routing only had one hole on the other side of the tracks vs the 2 that are there now.

Wasn't there an uphill par 3 in that blank space heading toward the tee of that dogleg right across the tracks?

[Jamey Bryan]

Sorry it's taken me so long to get back on this, but I had some family problems which had to take precedence.

Jason, the routing you played in the Dixie Cup is 80% what you see in Travis's plan.  When Donald Ross (1939) was retained to renovate the course and grass the greens, he apparently saw no reason to make major changes.  Other than some minor relocations of bunkers, tees, and green sites (for example, the green on current #15, #4 on Travis's plan, was about 50 yards short of Ross's site, fairly close to what is now a crossing bunker), the most significant changes were as follow:

1)  The opening hole (now #13) was changed from a par 4 to a par 5, moving the greensite approx. 70 yards down the RR tracks.

2)  The second hole, with the tee shot crossing the tracks, was eliminated.

3)  The twelfth hole (now #5) was changed from a 154 yard par 3 to a 305 yard par 4.

4)  The thirteenth hole (now #6) was changed from a 400 yard par 4 to a 235 yard par 3.

5)  A new par 3, then #18 and now #12, was added.

Bill:

You're correct, the uphill #12 is now the second hole on the "hotel" side of the RR tracks.  As I said above, that is the only hole at Camden that is 100% original Donald Ross. The rest of the routing is primarily Travis's.

The only major changes which have been made since Donald Ross's renovation in 1939 have been to:

--  Change Travis/Ross #14 (now #1) from a par 5 to a par 4, accommodating the clubhouse and swimming pool.  Note....  I think this is a damn shame and one the club needs to REALLY try to turn back....  The Travis hole (which Ross left unchanged) was the strongest par 5 on the course at 575 yards with a TINY green, and the resulting par 4 is mediocre at best.

--  Lengthen Travis #3, Ross #2 (now #14) to make a strong par 4 into a short (very mediocre) par 5.  Note:  It's interesting that Travis had this hole as a par 5 from the back tees (which were slightly forward from the current "mens" teebox but as a par 5 from the forward tees (which were about where our "Senior" tees are now).

Ed sent me the PDF file of this plan, and with the ability to zoom as much as I wanted, I was struck with the number of Travis's "Humps and Hollows with Sand Pockets" that were noted (several of which looked to be very large).  Only a few of these survived into the 1960's, when I first played the course, and none survived the latest renovation.  It'd be interesting if we could reintroduce some of these features.

Jamey

[JC Jones]

Very interesting, Jamey.  Thank you.

[Bruce Wellmon]

Having played Camden today for the first time, I was impressed with the severity of the greens. Forget "false fronts," on certain occasions it seemed there were false one-fourths. Local knowledge goes a long way here. My original intent was to ask whether this was an "unrevised" Ross but the above information answered that. What a great course.

[Jamey Bryan]

Bruce:

I'm sorry I didn't know you were here, I'd liked to have had the chance to talk!  Come back any time.

You were "treated" to some unusually interesting pin locations, as the final round of our club Fourball was Sunday (I recognized the pin on #14 in the picture).  Did you manage to keep the ball on the green on 12 (the uphill par three just over the tracks)?

As a side note (a self-congratulatory one) my thirteen year-old partner and I won the First Flight of the club Fourball 1 up, winning 17 and 18 with par.  We didn't make but one birdie on the day but never lost a hole to par and finally our opponents blinked!  Camden is a great match play course.

Jamey