Shoreacres greens

[John Connolly]

A Chicago golfer here. Played SA for the first time yesterday on a sunny and blustery autumn day with my cousins.

Much has been said about SA on this board over the last several months and I now understand why. The point of this thread is not to gush - overly redundant as Yogi Berra might say. It's really a thread looking for solid answers regarding how the greens there have evolved over time. The DG has agreed that the green expansions have been recent and have fundamentally changed the complexes for the better, with putting surfaces now extending to the very edges of the pad and have allowed a closer relationship with bunkers. So, first question: Is that a restored feature or something Tom Doak and Renaissance developed for them?

Second question: Are those remarkable green contours Raynor originals? Or have they been tweaked through the century? Or both??

SA's 6th hole Biarritz was my first - incredible really. I didn't want to go to the 7th tee. I felt like wandering around the green and spending the night in its swale.

[John McCarthy]

John:  my experience at Shoreacres consists of driving up the driveway twice to look around so take my input with the pound of salt necessary...but old greens that have retreated over the years is obvious.  They get rounder and flat slots which were pinning areas get toward the outside. 

But that wind yesterday!  Up at the Crook it was a steady 20 mph from the WNW.  Could not keep a ball on line putting. 

[Gary Sato]

Some of your answers may be in Rans review.

http://golfclubatlas.com/courses-by-country/usa/shoreacres-il-usa/

[John Connolly]

Gary,

Yes, Ran's review is interesting and I'm quite familiar with it. I reviewed it the night before my round as well as The Itinerant Golfer's excellent pictorial blog.

But Ran's description doesn't really get to the heart of my question. Ran's article says: "they have thoughtfully restored every Raynor feature possible to its original state. Over time, the greens have been returned to their initial size, in some cases increasing the green size by more than one third. A direct consequence of such a restoration is that many of the most interesting hole locations are brought back into play along the outer parts of the greens."

But Tim Davis has been gone for 2 years. Things have changed in that interval. The far margins are now cut to putting height which would suggest the greens have not "returned" but are in fact, something new, something bigger - something even more. Or is this splitting hairs? And my second question still remains: Have the greens been re-contoured at all? Have they ever been rebuilt? Because if not - and their evolution has been merely a process of increasing surface area to original size (and beyond) - then I'd be even more blown away.

For example, I believe it was said here that the 14th, the Redan, has recently had its right sided kicker bank grass changed from fringe/run up  to putting surface. I would consider that to be a significant change from Raynor's intent. But then again, the contour wasn't changed - just its turf.

[Jim Nugent]

Ran's profile says the Biarritz is only 190 yards long.  On Google Earth, it looks like that is measuring to the middle of the trench.  Measure to the center of the back section of the green, and the hole comes in around 215.  Are Biarritz holes, whose greens contain the trench, measured to the trench?  Seems to me they need two yardages, for each tee.  One for the back pin, and one for the front pin.  Of course, that might also change handicaps (including hole handicaps), course and bogey ratings and slope.

[Tyler Kearns]

Ran's profile says the Biarritz is only 190 yards long.  On Google Earth, it looks like that is measuring to the middle of the trench.  Measure to the center of the back section of the green, and the hole comes in around 215.  Are Biarritz holes, whose greens contain the trench, measured to the trench?  Seems to me they need two yardages, for each tee.  One for the back pin, and one for the front pin.  Of course, that might also change handicaps (including hole handicaps), course and bogey ratings and slope.

Jim,

Typically, when measuring the length of golf holes, golf association staff use the middle of the tee & the middle of the green as starting and end points.  For Biarritz holes, they would have a longer scorecard yardage when the front portion in front of the swale is not cut to green height.

TK

[Ian Mackenzie]

Ran's profile says the Biarritz is only 190 yards long.  On Google Earth, it looks like that is measuring to the middle of the trench.  Measure to the center of the back section of the green, and the hole comes in around 215.  Are Biarritz holes, whose greens contain the trench, measured to the trench?  Seems to me they need two yardages, for each tee.  One for the back pin, and one for the front pin.  Of course, that might also change handicaps (including hole handicaps), course and bogey ratings and slope.

Having played this hole many times, I would say that it can stretch to 220 yards when the pin is towards the back of the green.
When the pin is up, it can play as short as ~160 yards. The green is HUGE.

I have hit 8 iron on this hole and I have mashed a hybrid before.

John, it is my understanding that Tom and the RGD team did not drive the changes over the past year. Yes, they were certainly consulted, but the project was steered from within. Recall that TD posted about SA a few weeks back and seemed as pleasantly surprised as many others.

I is also my belief that the greens at SA are at least 70 years old. I cant say if the contours are from the original Raynor design (a few decades earlier), but my gut tells me that may indeed be the case.

[ANTHONYPIOPPI]

Years ago Tim Davis told me they used soil probes to determine the original dimensions of the greens. He then, he told me, returned them to those dimensions. He also tole me he was the person responsible for converting the front portion of the fill pad and the swale to green height.

I have not seen the course in years, so I have no idea about the recent expansion.

Anthony

[Sven Nilsen]

Any Biarritz that is pinned before the swale runs contrary to CBM's intentions for the template.  It is still a golf hole when played to the front portion, but it is not a Biarritz.

[John Connolly]

Ian,
So the dots I'd like to connect, if possible are whether the new super had insight/information about either what the greens were like umpteen years ago and tried to bring them back (out to the edges, "crowned", etc) and/or did he attempt to get Raynor's vision right. To me, based on what TD, you and others have said about the recent changes, they are not an insignificant development in the course's evolution. So while I appreciate that the effort was internally driven, was it born of in interest in reconnecting to Raynor's vision or did it just seem like a good idea?

Anthony,
Can you tell me/us about soil probing and its relationship to green configuring? Sounds cool.

[Tom_Doak]

Ian,
So the dots I'd like to connect, if possible are whether the new super had insight/information about either what the greens were like umpteen years ago and tried to bring them back (out to the edges, "crowned", etc) and/or did he attempt to get Raynor's vision right. To me, based on what TD, you and others have said about the recent changes, they are not an insignificant development in the course's evolution. So while I appreciate that the effort was internally driven, was it born of in interest in reconnecting to Raynor's vision or did it just seem like a good idea?

John:

I don't want to get into any further discussion of "who did what," as it turns out my previous post sparked a bit of "discussion" within the club about who should really receive credit for what.  I wasn't there the whole time, so I will bow out of that.  The green chairman asked me to come and see what they had done based on my visit in the spring of 2013, and they had done far more than I imagined.

I think that Tim Davis had the green perimeters out quite close to where they originally were, and the new work has pushed them beyond that.  And I think that's a great change that hardly any architect would have dared to make.  If you can imagine Shoreacres 90 years ago, maybe the greens were a bit smaller, but without irrigation there would have been a lot LESS grass on bunker faces, etc., so the grass around the greens would not have been much impediment to the ball rolling off the green pad.  Today, the rough is thick and uniform, so the only way to get the ball to roll away from the greens is to mow the grass to a MUCH different standard than it was mowed in 1916.

Not many clubs would have the guts [or the resources] to maintain the course the way Shoreacres looks right now.

P.S.  The Biarritz did not have a front plateau the first time I saw Shoreacres, in 1981.  It was put back in by Tim Davis sometime before I started consulting on the course in 1994.  The green is measured to the middle [in the swale] on their scorecard because that's what the Chicago District told them to do, but it's the same length as most others [215-220] to the back hole locations which are used 5 or 6 days per week.

[John Connolly]

Helpful information, Tom, thank you. Would you concur with Ian's instincts that the contouring has been pretty stable through the years - fairly close to the originals?

[Tom_Doak]

Helpful information, Tom, thank you. Would you concur with Ian's instincts that the contouring has been pretty stable through the years - fairly close to the originals?

To my knowledge the greens have never been rebuilt or even resurfaced.  They're as close to the originals as you'll get with 100 years of maintenance practices.

[ANTHONYPIOPPI]

Tom:

I'm not sure Tim put back in the front plateau. He told me he did that on his own. He also told me he met a guy who  had worked on the Shoreacres crew decades before, possibly pre-Second World War, if my memory serves, and that the front was never green.

Do you know of any Raynor Biarritz holes where the front portion was unequivocally green from the start?

Anthony

[Tom_Doak]

Tom:

I'm not sure Tim put back in the front plateau. He told me he did that on his own. He also told me he met a guy who  had worked on the Shoreacres crew decades before, possibly pre-Second World War, if my memory serves, and that the front was never green.

Do you know of any Raynor Biarritz holes where the front portion was unequivocally green from the start?

Anthony:

I don't.  In all of the oldest aerial photos I've seen of these courses, dating back to 1926 on Long Island and before 1930 in Chicago, the front plateau appears to be mown at fairway height, not green height.  I've often thought the front plateau having been part of the green is a myth, and I've struggled to recommend "restoring" it on courses because I don't think it WAS green originally.

However, much like my explanation about mowing off the green pads, above, it's certainly true that the intent of the hole was for golfers to be able to land a long shot on the front plateau and let the ball feed through the swale to the back.  If maintaining that area as green makes that more likely, then fine.  Not sure it does, though.

[ANTHONYPIOPPI]

I haven't either. The Hartford Courant article I have about the opening of the course at Yale says of the ninth: "The green proper is behind a deep groove in the approach which is of about the same area as the green. The approach is bunkered heavily on the right and left and the fairway is the lake."

[Terry Lavin]

I'm happy to read the references to Tim Davis, who had been the superintendent at SA until a couple years ago. He was a great dirt guy. He had a crusty exterior and rebelled against those who sought to soften the course into a pampered suburban enclave. He believed bunkers needed to be imperfectly maintained in order to preserve their status as hazards.  Here's hoping that shining this light on the brilliance of Shoreacres current maintenance meld doesn't cause any rifts to appear. Success has many fathers and failure is an orphan. This place is a real success, as a result of several influential members along with Tom Doak.

[Bradley Anderson]

The link below is to an article I wrote several years ago about the bunker restoration work that Tim Davis performed at Shoreacres.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16492815/Web%20Site/Shoreacres%20Bunkers%202007jan6.pdf

[Terry Lavin]

I'm also impressed that the additional width does not seem to have made the course easier. We always talk about width adding those precious options, but in the absence of wind, one would think it would also make the course easier. That doesn't seem to be the case at Shoreacres, not that I'm capable of articulating an explanation.

[John Connolly]

The link below is to an article I wrote several years ago about the bunker restoration work that Tim Davis performed at Shoreacres.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16492815/Web%20Site/Shoreacres%20Bunkers%202007jan6.pdf

Cool stuff Bradley. Interesting to note how wide the long grass swath was that was cut out adjacent to the putting surface. Just highlights how much green expansion has gone on there the last several years. Thx for the link.