Siwanoy CC – Bronxville, NY.
1913
Architect: Donald Ross
Restoration: Stephen Kay (1995-98)
Blue 71.8/139 White 70.4/136 Red 69.0/1236481 6176 4868
The Experience of Siwanoy’s Design: History and RestorationThe boulevards and by-ways of the Metropolitan NY region are like the “Hollywood Walk of Fame” of Golf Course Architecture. Names such as Tillinghast, Raynor, Macdonald, Emmet and Travis are the prolific Golden-Age box-office stars that draw the biggest crowds and the most flamboyant notices. Great character and supporting actors like Herbert Strong, Charles Allison and Charles Banks also have significant pieces of their oeuvre in this rich golfing district, drawing their own accolades. But in all the glamour of those classic architects who chose to leave an imprint in the Met district, we find one star curiously missing; that of Donald Ross.
While Ross was significantly involved with the design evolution of some notable Met Area courses including Wykagyl, Whippoorwill, and Greenwich – his work at these sites served as either an appendix or preface to the work of other architects - and that mostly lost in time and dilution. But like a long-forgotten treasure miraculously recovered, Ross’ lone intact effort in this architecturally-rich region - Siwanoy Country Club - has been reclaimed, restored and lovingly reborn into the finest “pound-for-pound” golf course in a region loaded with seasoned and able contenders.
Today’s Siwanoy Country Club golf course was created by Ross in 1913 and opened for play the following year, but the club’s rich history dates back to 1901. After two nomadic moves around the Mount Vernon NY area this land was bought in consultation with Ross and included a significant portion (today’s #2, 4, 5, 6, &7) of a scuttled 19th century harness track and its natural amphitheater. The course lies just a hair southeast of where the first rudimentary club layout was located before it had moved a few miles to a Mount Vernon property between the years 1902-1913. Siwanoy’s design has a historical and architectural significance which well-complements other noteworthy elements of its historical tradition:
1. Siwanoy hosted the Inaugural PGA championship on this course in October of 1916. The Wannamaker Trophy was first captured by “Long Jim” Barnes on the 36th hole of the Final Match vs. Jock Hutchison.
2. Siwanoy was the long-time home course of 1922 US Amateur and 1926 British Amateur Champion Jess Sweetser. Sweetser was the first native-born American to capture the British title. In winning the earlier US title he administered one of Bobby Jones’ worst-ever beatings (8&7) in the Semifinal Match.
3. Tom Kerrigan was one of the first homegrown American club professionals in an era dominated by transplanted Scots. He held just about the longest tenure in professional history as Siwanoy’s home pro for 50 seasons (1914 -1964). Among many professional awards and noteworthy tournament performances, it was Kerrigan’s honor to strike the inaugural shot of that first PGA Championship, heralding the birth of a whole new era of golf.
4. Siwanoy is the home of the most enduring Winter Golf organizations in America, “The Sno-Birds,” an annual grouping of some 30-40 members who compete in late-autumn qualification rounds for a 16-player match play bracket culminating in early January. The Sno-Birds compete over the front nine of the regular course until weather dictates that the regular greens be closed; at which time they shift their activities to a “Sno-Bird” course. That course is a shortened amalgam of the regular front nine played to tiny oil-infused (for keeping moisture off) sand greens that utilize brooms for flagsticks (the brooms are used to brush the sand smooth prior to putting).
Though Siwanoy’s traditions will never tarnish, Siwanoy’s course was indeed “lost” for many years, cloistered in a veritable forest of Depression-era tree plantings and a layered-on hodge-podge of bunker styles and visual aesthetics. Playing width had been completely strangled; recovery shots had little strategic merit and the tiny greens with their heavy interior contour were often a sour end to holes that morphed into an exercise of fretful straight hitting. What was conceived by Ross as an open, rolling hillscape of strategic tacking merely became “that tight, mean little course with the small greens and bad rough.”
In a salvage and restoration effort that took almost 15 years from conception to final execution, Siwanoy has been lovingly dusted off and polished up, ready to reclaim its place as a stalwart of strategy and shot-making in the Ross tradition. The process began in the early 1990s when Stephen Kay was engaged to plan and execute a well-researched restoration that would subtract the layers of flashed, high-profile, oval-shaped bunker work done by RT Jones in the early 1950s and various consulting designers from 1970-1990. In coordination with such a restoration, the issue of the 2000+ trees the club purchased and planted in 1932 (and hundreds of later cousins) had to be addressed.
Like a Mafia don taking out his rivals, the club undertook what perhaps is the single most aggressive tree removal program in the country and the trees – well, they are simply not there anymore. The reward for such a bold and steadfast initiative is a singularly interesting and utterly stimulating demonstration of inland “links” design. For any player or critic who experienced Siwanoy prior to the Millennium, the sight of Siwanoy now is simply…stunning. It takes one’s breath away to see the Ross course so dramatically revealed. For as far as the eye can see, it is golf, golf, golf; long sweeping vistas of golden green terrain rolling and swelling dotted with flag sticks and peek-a-boos of sand behind a low profile knob or brow.
Possessing similar arcane charms and museum-piece contours of courses like Maidstone and Engineers, the restored Siwanoy reveals Donald Ross perfectly seasoning ingredients of frank, solvable strategy with enough camouflage and outrageous fortune to make a savory feast of trying to control one’s golf ball. Now dramatically cleared and restoratively styled, Siwanoy can accurately be revisited by the raters, the critics and most importantly, the players, to truly reclaim its long-lost stature amongst Golden Age designs. It truly deserves a detailed look which the author hopes to provide in this reading.
END of PART I
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