Alister Mackenzie's 16th at Bayside

[Mark Bourgeois]

Clever use of OB. Shades of Woking 4 (yet different, in part thanks to modern technology).



This is a 1951 aerial by the way.

Note: edited to repair broken picture hyperlink.

[Bill_McBride]

Given my proclivity to hit the dreaded double crossed pull snap hook, I'd be disinclined to try to hit a draw on this nice little hole.  A four iron out to the right would be much more likely!

[Mark Bourgeois]

So now you've got to carry the grass bunker and the farther right and long you go the more you've got to think on your second shot about the OB long -- while staring at the bunker short. (Let it be said that bunker looked elaborate.)

Hard to say but I wonder if the green fell off to the back. The coloration of the fairway suggests a drop off the tee to the grass bunkers, after which the hole rose to the green, then fell off in the back.

[Sven Nilsen]

Similar to the third at Talking Stick North.  Flirt with the left side for the better angle, or bail out right and be faced with an approach that not only brings OB into play but also has to deal with the trouble short right of the green.

[Mark Bourgeois]

1st at New South Wales?

[Bill_McBride]

Similar to the third at Talking Stick North.  Flirt with the left side for the better angle, or bail out right and be faced with an approach that not only brings OB into play but also has to deal with the trouble short right of the green.

Sven, the 12th at Talking Stick is similar and even more so to the Bayside hole.  If you dare drive to the left of the wash it's a simple flip to the green.  If you bail right into the Elysian Field, now the OB is directly behind the green and, based on personal and brutal experience, very much in play.  

The fifth at Cuscowilla has the same strategy except no OB left.  

[Tom_Doak]

What was on the other side of the fence Mark?  There are many cool holes like this now changed for safety reasons, including the great 15th at Royal Melbourne East.

The cool thing about Talking Stick is that they had the idea to create their own boundary, instead of having players try to scramble out of the desert if they missed left

[Mark Bourgeois]

Lawsuits Tom. There were lawsuits on the other side of the fence.* But yes, it was a thoughtful use of OB. The tee and the green positioned against OB placed down the left, with bailout right. (All the perimeter holes at Bayside were routed so that the OB was left.) From a legal standpoint it wouldn't have mattered but it's interesting to me at least to see OB left. Woking 4, RME 15: those have OB right.




* At first farmland, then housing. And when the housing came it ate the course.

[Sven Nilsen]

Mark:

I was thinking about courses I've played that work with hard boundaries, and for the most part those boundaries are to the right of the playing corridors.  Would be an interesting discussion to figure out if there was a preponderance of one side over the other on landlocked courses.

Sven

[Mark Bourgeois]

Sven,

Here's the 1st at New South Wales:



OB is just on the other side of the row of trees and the hole effectively plays like a hard left OB.

[Craig Disher]

An earlier view from 1946 with the farmland still in use. It appears the grass bunkers on the left are actually mounds.



When I saw this I thought more of a mirror image of one of the opening holes at TOC - maybe a shortened version of #4. It's not obvious but possible that the mounds obscured the view of the green from the tee. The bunker on the right might be sandy rather than grass bottomed. The ridge behind it looks high enough that it may have discouraged an easy shot over the bunker to the next fairway.

[Neil_Crafter]

Hi Craig
Yes I concur that the features on the left are indeed mounds looking at some other aerials we have of the course. Assume you have the whole course from that 1946 aerial? if so I'd love to see it neil@golfstrategies.com.au

[Jon Wiggett]

The old 17th at Moortown was not dissimilar. Was also change due to housing but used to border Sandmoor Golf Club before that.

Jon

[Mark Bourgeois]

Craig,

Great quality pic and of course you are right, those are mounds. I'm conditioned to see light from above so I flipped your pic:



Next I took the 1942 NARA image in Wexler's book, did post-production on it and got this:



What does everyone see?

[Sean_A]

Gosh, I know nothing about this hole!  From the last image, it looks like the green is a punchbowl.  I spose it could be a plateau, but it doesn't look that way.  What is the rectangular area shy of the right grasss bunkers?

Ciao

[Mark Bourgeois]

The green looks flush to the fairway with a slight elevation to the bunker and a more significant elevation to the surrounds left and back. So: a plateau (somewhat). The fairway mounds look irregular yet rounded or "blunt," like chocolate drops.

The bunker appears almost flat; it does not appear to cast a shadow.

EDIT: not sure which rectangular area you're referring to. Here's the full 1951 aerial (with routing): http://golfcoursehistories.com/Bayside.html

The area back and right of the bunker is 17 tee. Also, 16 tee appears flush to the ground, giving credence to Craig's comment the mounds might have partially or completely blocked the view of the green.

[Joshua Pettit]

Interesting discussion Mark.  Reminds me a lot of No. 6 at Valley Club with its rectilinearly delineated OB on three sides.  

Based on the shape and orientation of the Bayside No. 16 green it looks like the ideal angle of approach would have been from about the dashed line in your first aerial.  Classic Mackenzie strategy -- the player having to flirt with the boundary and carry the mound in order to reach Position A, while the safer unobstructed route of play (your solid line) would provide a more difficult angle of approach, greatly reducing the probability of being left with an easy birdie putt.

Golf, like life, is a matter of trade-offs, not solutions.  

[Mark Bourgeois]

I found an article on Bayside. Interestingly the author calls out the 16th as notable. Sounds like the green was amazing! FYI I read somewhere the greens were made "more practical" subsequently. Do the pics of the green seem to match the description in the article?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Another author found the 17th to be the 'most interesting'.

Mackenzie compared Bayside to ANGC, saying there was a similarity in most of the holes.

Too bad it's gone, sounded like the a great place to play, and one of the best transformations of 90 acres of flat ground.    
  
With a limited space to design his course, on flat land, necessitating artificial hillocks, hollows, hummocks, Dr. MacKenzle has emerged with a triumph. The flat surface has been completely covered by hilly, interesting golf layout. There are marvelous greens to shoot at, oddly shaped and well groomed. The pitch and run shot will be an essential in realizing a good score. Few golfers can master this shot, but we are inclined to believe the course will develop golfers in it. Probably the most interesting hole, the one that will evoke the most comment, is the plateau seventeenth, offering a blind green 410 yards away. The hole is so long that a second shot of any trajectory, even a high spoon, will not hold the green. There will be plenty of adverse criticism, but Dr. Mackenzie believes the golfers appreciate the hole the more they play it.  He declares the best players will strive to improve their game on this hole.
Wendell P. Miller and associates carried on the construction of the course and installed the ultra-modern irrigation system.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Jim can you source that quote?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Jim can you source that quote?

Sure thing Mark. Here you go:

http://tinyurl.com/cbtom23

edit: A few more

Ryder Cuppers practice and more about the 17th green
http://tinyurl.com/mqfwjag

A round by Bobby Jones, played when he withdrew from the '24 Open due to illness. It has Jones as consulting w/Mac on the design.
http://tinyurl.com/lyudukp
http://tinyurl.com/lx49lyk

Mackenzie adapted some well known hole
http://tinyurl.com/kzcoten

And I have another somewhere   that puts the course in use in the autumn of '31, w/the official opening either April 30th or beginning May in '32.

[Neil_Crafter]

Jim
About that mention of Jones that is the only one I've found that says he was involved with the course, no other corroboration so I think it's a bit unlikely. If he was I believe the Owners would have made a big deal of it.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Jim
About that mention of Jones that is the only one I've found that says he was involved with the course, no other corroboration so I think it's a bit unlikely. If he was I believe the Owners would have made a big deal of it.

Neil,
On the other hand - both ANGC and Bayside are in the same time frame, MacKenzie made comparisons between them, and we have both of them playing a round with Clifford Roberts during Open week, which is a nicely timed piece of PR.

[BCrosby]

Mark/Jim -

Wonderful stuff. The connections between ANGC and Bayside I've always thought ran deep. MacK mentions Bayside several times on SofSA. I had not seen the newspaper accounts of Jones' visit in 1932 that Jim posted above. 

The other course that impressed Jones at the time was Behr's Lakeside in LA. Jones filmed some of his instructional shorts there. It too was noted at the time for its lack of rough and relatively few bunkers.

Bob

[Jim_Kennedy]

Neil,

The Jones/MacK collaboration is mentioned a couple months earlier in the "six inch cup" article.
Same newspaper, the Daily Star.

 http://tinyurl.com/m3to6ox

Bob,

I think it's plausible that BJ had input.