Garden City GC: 1913 hole diagrams courtesy of the Daily Eagle

[Joe Bausch]

These were published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle before the National Amateur tournament.  Enjoy!

[Tom_Doak]

Joe:

Those drawings are sensational, and thanks for printing them.  They are much more detailed than you usually see, and of course there aren't many aerial photos dating back to 1913 -- Wilbur Wright was scared of going that high!

I got a big kick out of seeing the diagram for #8.  When I first started consulting at the club they insisted that the hole had always had rough right up to the front of the green, and didn't want me to put a bit of fairway down in front of it. 

[Ed Oden]

Very nice Joe.  Does this settle the argument over whether the mounds on #12 were within the putting surface?

[Tom_Doak]

Ed:

Was there ever an argument about that?  They were clearly inside the green and described as such in many old articles; the only question has been how tightly it was possible to mow the grass going over the mounds.

[Ed Oden]

Tom, I may have misunderstood, but I thought it was part of the discussion in this thread...http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,45593.0/

[Patrick_Mucci]

Joe,

What I find fascinating about those schematics is that the course appears far more difficult, far more penal in those sketches than it plays today, yet, we've had close to a century in improvements in equipment.  If anything, you would have thought that the course would become more difficult as equipment improved.

Unfortunately, it seems to have gone the other way.

Tom Doak,

I always wondered about that area short of the green on # 8.

Also, look at the 9th green and how it contains similarities to the 12th green.

[Mike Cirba]

Just awesome, on so many levels.

Thanks, Joe.   Terrific stuff.

[Dave Falkner]

Are these diagrams before or after the Travis renovations?

[Tom_Doak]

Are these diagrams before or after the Travis renovations?

Most of Travis' renovations were made about 1908-1910, if I recall correctly.  But I think he made some changes after this, too.

One thing of note is that there is no alternate fairway in place on the first hole.  I want to say that Tillinghast suggested that change prior to the 1936 U.S. Amateur, but it's been a long time since I read about it.

[Tom MacWood]

That is a great find. That's right most of Travis's changes occurred in the 1906-1910 timeframe. Tilly altered the first later and Emmet made several changes in the twenties, and of course RTJ and Tom Doak later. This along with some of the documentation from 1936 could go a long way toward restoring the golf course.

[TEPaul]

Very interesting drawings and a truly wonderful find, Joe, particularly if they are drawings of GCGC from 1913 that the club has not actually had in their position in the last some or many decades!!

But like other drawings of this type from particularly this early era I do have a question or two I have asked a time or two before about drawings like these. My question goes right to the heart of a full understanding of the necessary historical context of some of the ancillary technologies of that early time (or lack of them); things like the ability to copy drawings and put them into such things as newspaper articles.

This goes right to the question of attribution of those drawings and how accurate they may be.

I do have some drawings of holes at Pine Valley from right around this time (1914-15) from Walter Travis during the development of his idea to make Pine Valley's holes reversable. Some of his drawings to that affect appeared in Travis' American Golfer magazine.

Those drawings from the Brooklyn Eagle do have many similarities in style to Travis' hole drawings of Pine Valley but it seems there are some differences as well that are probably worth noting and considering.

So the question is----who made those 1913 hole drawings for the Brooklyn Eagle of GCGC, and how did they print them in the newspaper and of course how accurate are they?

I would have to assume if Walter Travis did not think they were accurate enough he might have said somethng about it or done something about it.

There was a whole course hole drawing done of Pine Valley around this time (the mid-teens) that appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper and it was not particularly accurate to the drawings Pine Valley was using itself at the time to develop the golf course, so one does wonder about these things as there were certainly no copy machines in the teens as there are today.

[Mark McKeever]

Fantastic find Joe!  We sure can learn a lot from these old drawings/descriptions.

Mark

[David Stamm]

Well done, Joe! You struck gold again! This is very cool to see.

[Joe Bausch]

Hole No 1 was modified, I think, in 1928.  And I believe hole 7 was modified in 1930.  I'll post drawings sometime soon.  Busy day today....

[Bradley Anderson]

Very interesting to see that there were "grass mounds" and "sand mounds". These must have been piles of sand with no grass planted on them. Can you imagine the difficulty of climbing up on to the top or side of a sand pile and hitting from something like that?

And the second hole has a pit that was used for "procuring sand". So apparently the bunkers were filled with material that was excavated right there on the golf course.

What an amazing find!

[TEPaul]

Joe:

If you're interested in tracking the architectural changes to GCGC you pretty much have to state or plug in what years or what holes you're interested in talking about as far as significant architectural changes. The course today or the way it's been for many decades is very different from how it started out on that site as a nine hole course and then progressed through about the next thirty years or so with changes made alternately by Emmet and Travis.

The club's history book is not all that clear that way even though one can find some pretty fair indications of what happened where and when on the course. Believe it or not there are some old photographs hanging throughout the clubhouse that a history writer on the evolution of the architecture on that course should have or could have used better or at least more comprehensively for a clearer indication in the history book of the entire architectural evolution of that golf course from near the beginning until to date.

But if you're just interested in working backwards and forwards off a base year like 1913 (because of those Brooklyn Eagle newspaper drawings) that's another way to look at it.

[Jay Flemma]

Great job Joe, those drawings are just gorgeous!  I like how they describe 12 as one of the toughest tests of long irons in the country!

Has anyone got a drawing from before the Travis renovations so we can compare and contrast?

[TEPaul]

"Has anyone got a drawing from before the Travis renovations so we can compare and contrast?"


There're a couple of the original nine and the 18 hole course in the 1899-1999 Bill Quirin GCGC history book.

[Joe Bausch]

Here is #1 after some changes, I assume in late 1928, as this is an early 1929 Daily Eagle article.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Joe,

I think the schematic may be a careless or unprecise rendering, showing the general features without accurately portraying the physical properties of the hole.

Aerial and ground level photos circa 1936 conflict, in detail, with the 1928-1929 rendering.

If only we knew who provided the sketch and what the artist based it on. 

[Tom MacWood]

I love the first at GCGC and love Tilly's changes. I also think Emmet's changes were excellent and in particular his revised 16th. It is ironic the man who originally laid out the course, which was later roundly criticized, would return 25+ years later and redesign his course that had been completely overhauled.

[Patrick_Mucci]

I love the first at GCGC and love Tilly's changes. I also think Emmet's changes were excellent and in particular his revised 16th. It is ironic the man who originally laid out the course, which was later roundly criticized, would return 25+ years later and redesign his course that had been completely overhauled.

Tom,

In what year did AWT make his changes ?

[Tom MacWood]

I love the first at GCGC and love Tilly's changes. I also think Emmet's changes were excellent and in particular his revised 16th. It is ironic the man who originally laid out the course, which was later roundly criticized, would return 25+ years later and redesign his course that had been completely overhauled.

Tom,

In what year did AWT make his changes ?

If memory serves me it was the early 30s.

[Joe Bausch]

Here is a Daily Eagle article from April 1930 talking about upcoming changes to the 7th.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Joe,

What great finds.

The only thing I question is the accuracy of the drawings in terms of scale, juxtaposition of the features, etc., etc..