Bill,
They didn't call him Steamshovel for nothing!
I know, Jud. Every time I play Forsgate I want to cry, because it reminds me of what Banks built at Hackensack, and what we changed in 1960 when our Modernization Committee hired William Gordon. This is from our April, 1961 newsletter:
COURSE PLAYS
HARD AS EVER
The course you will be playing when the club's sixty-second golf season opens April 29 will be a lot different from the one you left when the season closed last fall. And it won't be one shot easier despite some things that may have been reported. As a generality, what has happened is that back traps have been eliminated and side traps have been made shallower, most of them with what is known as 7 to 1 pitch to the green. In layman's language and in a sort of inexact way, what this means is that in all probability you can see the flag when you are hitting out of a trap. But, to compensate for the shallower traps the openings to the greens have been narrowed so that there will be less running up to the green and more pitching to it.
Here, hole by hole, is what has been done:
One, narrower entrance, back trap filled.
Two, same as One.
Three, gully filled, side traps moved forward.
Four, traps installed on left and right of the fairway, about 200 yards out. Trap between Fourth and fourteenth fairways has been filled.
Fifth, trap on left of fairway filled, other fairway traps shallowed.
Sixth, back and front traps filled and entrance to green made more narrow.
(Goodbye Short Hole, hello short hole with smaller green)Seventh, trap on left of fairway filled, and left side of the green lowered.
Eighth, trap back of the path has been eliminated.
Ninth, new trap on left side of fairway, 200 yards out; right side of the green reduced and brought' forward. The trap between the ninth and eighteenth has been eliminated.
(Goodbye Road on the Road Hole...)Tenth, back traps filled and side traps shallowed and brought forward.
Eleventh, trap on the left side of fairway eliminated.
Twelfth, deep trap on right eliminated
(trap beyond the kick mound on our Redan ) and the left trap recontoured.
(i.e. no more deep Redan bunker...)
Thirteenth, trap installed on right of fairway; new trap indented into the fairway 280 yards on the left.
Fourteenth, the tee has been moved 30 yards to the left so that the hole becomes a slight dogleg to the right, skirting the big center tree. The fairway trap on the right has been recontoured and the opening to the green made more narrow and the green on the left lowered 4 feet.
Fifteenth, the nearer fairway trap on the left has been eliminated.
Sixteenth, trap on the left of fairway partially eliminated and the opening to the green narrowed.
Seventeenth, the green has been reshaped and pinched in at the entrance and the back trap filled.
Eighteenth, the dogleg has been accentuated and a trap installed on the left of the fairway 200 yards out.
The trap on the left at the green has been shallowed.
All traps will be filled with white sand and there will be no more turf banks.
The work was done under the supervision of the course modernization committee with Nep Smyth as chairman and Bal Balestier as vice chairman, assisted by Paul Blume, Jim Butterfield, Ed Gerkin