[Terry Lavin]

After seeing Joe Jemsek place Pine Tree in his top 25 courses, I wandered onto Google and found this fascinating profile from Sports Illustrated in 1962, with both architects taking potshots at each other.  Worth a read:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1073966/index.htm

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks, Terry.

Interesting how, right in the heart of the so-called Dark Ages, someone like Mr. Wilson was criticizing RTJ for the same reasons some of us might today, i.e. because his "work is too much on the artificial, manufactured side...It doesn't fit the ground as well as it should because he hasn't made enough effort to fit it. Even from the very first his work never showed this effort". With that last sentence, he is basically saying that RTJ's "philosophy" always differed from his own, which was to make real efforts to "find" instead of "create" a golf hole. That's a philosophy that obviously the new golden agers espouse strongly (perhaps even more than the original golder agers did), but one that just as obviosuly never disappeared or lacked proponents, even in the dark ages.

Peter

[Anthony_Nysse]

I was given this article shortly after I started here at Pine Tree. We all know the story about Pete Dye seeing RTJ's Palmetto Dunes prior to building Harbour Town and how he wanted to make sure it was totally different. Small greens, bunkers and tight corridors. When I think of Peachtree, Point O Woods, The Dunes, I think of big greens, LOOOONG, runway tees, large, sprawling bunkers....like Pine Tree, Dick Wilson's masterpiece. There courses are certainly more similar than they are different.

[Tom_Doak]

I was given this article shortly after I started here at Pine Tree. We all know the story about Pete Dye seeing RTJ's Palmetto Dunes prior to building Harbour Town and how he wanted to make sure it was totally different. Small greens, bunkers and tight corridors. When I think of Peachtree, Point O Woods, The Dunes, I think of big greens, LOOOONG, runway tees, large, sprawling bunkers....like Pine Tree, Dick Wilson's masterpiece. There courses are certainly more similar than they are different.

Anthony:

Sign of the times, I guess.  None of the cars from the 50's and 60's looked anything like today's models, either.

[Joe Jemsek]

I haven't read that in about fifteen years, Joe Lee had saved that magazine in his office.

Few of the courses ever kept the true Dick Wilson look except, for Pine Tree which goes back and forth(btw, Anthony course looks great). I presume, mostly as Tom eluded too, courses wanted to keep up with the times.  As courses became more manicured, the rough edges of Wilson's bunkers became "Capes and Bays" and now many of his courses, particularly in the Northeast, are just wavy lines. I've got some old photography in archives, but after Dick's death his family sued Joe Lee and most everything before 1960 was lost. Maybe I'll get the Villa Real(Cuba) hole x hole pictures up online for everyone to see. Might make a nice addition to the Architecture Timeline.

[Anthony_Nysse]

Joe,
  Thank you for the kind words. I think that we are FINALLY on the right path at Pine Tree in restoring and thinking in the Dick Wilson fashion. We have agreed to being a masterplan with Ron Forse as our architect. He is responsible for getting us back on track...twice. It's the least we could do! He will actually start that process this week, so looking forward to continuing this work.
  You probably saw my pics on twitter form yesterday, but I had the chance to go up in a helicopter and take aerials of the course. You can seen the bunker shapes very well from the air.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Old pictures of the La Costa bunkers, at least the original 18 showed they were very jagged edged. I agree with Joe that our perception of a Wilson bunker as a puzzle piece is somewhat skewed by what came after he left them.

I am glad to see that last aerial.  AT the Champions course at LC, for circulation reasons we decided to split a green side bunker on 14 from one into two for circulation reasons, and at just about that same angle as shown on the photo.  Whew.  We debated whether the style would be representative, and it turns out, as we figured, that he had to have done it somewhere......

I would also be interested in knowing how accurate that sharp turn on the green in the same photo is.  Did Wilson do "L" shaped greens like that very often?  Lee's La Costa plans show a lot of small curves, as on the front and back left of that green shown, but never offset with a long straight line/edge on the other side.

BTW, Damian and I also found that article as part of our research on La Costa.  Kinda makes the Confidential Guide look like tame criticism.....

[Joe Jemsek]

"L" shaped or greens with "elbows" were very common in Dick's and Joe's work. During the Dubsdread renovation there were several conversations with Rees Jones about "fairness" and getting putts around corners. Several of the edges were expanded to maximize the tournemanet pin positions.
Below is one of the few Dick Wilson green details I have seen. I think this was actually drawn by Dick it similar in style to his drawings from Meadowbrook.    

WilsonMetro11plan by jemsekgolf, on Flickr

PS I finnaly figureout how to post pics  

[Jeff_Brauer]

Joe,

Thanks. I have the Lee drawings for the third nine at La Costa, and the style is the same.  The green edge curves seem exaggerated to what could ever really be built in some cases.  And, as for that one green, the long straight edge on the back is what stood out to me as nice contrast.

I always wondered what they were thinking with the bunkers right up to the green edge.  They certainly aren't built that way now, and I am not sure they ever were built without some collar/apron between green and bunker.

[Tim_Cronin]

Love the new pictures of Pine Tree. The PT membership are the keepers of the Dick Wilson flame.

[Bill_McBride]

Love the new pictures of Pine Tree. The PT membership are the keepers of the Dick Wilson flame.

Not Trump Doral Blue?   

[Brad Klein]

Joe Jemsek, your reply No. 7 (above) - does that refer to Meadow Brook on Long Island?

[Mike_Clayton]

Brad


I was looking at that drawing thinking it looked exactly like the 11th green at Metropolitan in Melbourne - where Wilson designed 8 new holes in 1961.   Turns out that's exactly what it was although the far right bunker was never built.


He never saw the holes, either during construction or finished.

[Bill_McBride]

Brad


I was looking at that drawing thinking it looked exactly like the 11th green at Metropolitan in Melbourne - where Wilson designed 8 new holes in 1961.   Turns out that's exactly what it was although the far right bunker was never built.


He never saw the holes, either during construction or finished.

Photos of Metropolitan always amaze me with the way the bunkers are cut right into the greens. 

[Jeff_Brauer]

For all the pot shots those two took at each other, is their work really that much different?

[Ronald Montesano]

Is that original link broken? I have a 404 when I click on it.


This one does work, however: http://www.si.com/vault/1962/07/02/597990/golfs-battling-architects

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