As Mark Fine mentioned in another thread some of us from here went out to the first William S. Flynn Invitational at the Glen View G.C. in Chicago on Thursday and Friday. There is another Flynn Invitational but it only includes the Flynn courses in and around Philadelphia.
The William S. Flynn Invitational at Glen View was the inaugural one that might take in the other Flynn courses from around the country. This one was represented by members from Philly C.C, Rolling Green, Lehigh, Indian Creek, Cherry Hills, Glen View, C.C of Virginia, C.C of Cleveland etc (Wayne--did I forget one?).
The tournament was the inspiration of Geoff Nixon from Glen View and was a two day stapleford format.
Glen View has a lot of history. Apparently the home course of Chick Evans--one of America's most notable early amateurs and winner in the same year of the US Open and the US Amateur as well as the namesake of the biggest caddie scholarship program in America by a mile.
Glen View is a beautiful club, beautiful 1922 clubhouse and beautiful William Flynn parkland golf course that was a redesign upgrade of a 1890s course by a Mr. Tweedie apparently. The 19th century photos excellently displayed around the clubhouse of the original Tweedie course shows a track that had plentiful evidence of geometric featuring.
Flynn came in around 1922-23 and offered the club a comprehensive redesign and partial rerouting--much of which was accepted by the club. The course is in the mid 6000yd range.
The course today appears to flow around the property in typical Flynn routing fashion--over some tee shot ridges, into valleys, up, down and around.
There're a few unusual architectural features, the most noticeable one first being the extremely wide tee end on the first hole (maybe up to 80yd) with back tees on either side separated by a practice putting green. A branch of the Chicago River meanders around the course and is used in various iterations on 8-9 holes.
The card is a bit misleading, certainly when it comes to the par 3s which appear to lack variety of length (on the card) but don't really lack that variety so much in play. The one par 3 playability lacking is at least one typical really long Flynn par 3.
The holes to me that had the most interest of architecture and strategy were #2!, the second half of #3, #6, #7's green, #9, #10, #11!!, #14! (reminiscient of Ross's #13 Seminole in playability), #16, #17!! and the green on #18. Although, again, it didn't show it on the card, I thought the par 3 greens were the most interesting in slope and contour on the course! The par 4 hole that was the most interesting to me was the short par 4 (350 yd) #17 with a wonderful right to left sloping green, well bunkered, sitting on a right to left sloping ridge at a wonderful angle to the tee shot choices which involved an enormous tree in the center of two fairway choices--the right side one involving a fascinated bank to filter a long tee ball left off of with the risk of hitting an original log cabin on the right!
All the bunkering at Glenview has been recently restored from mundane oval shapes to a Flynn interpretation by Chicago architect David Esler.
David Esler was at the Flynn Invitational on Thursday evening for dinner to explain and describe his ideas on his Flynn bunkering interpretation. The bunkers are basically grassed down to flattish floors with low profile random jaggedy grass edges on the incoming sides and sort of moundy ridge-like formations on the other sides and the outgoing sides.
Esler explained that he took this interpretation mostly from the Flynn bunkering at Brookline as well as some ideas from Merion. His overal intent was to create a degree of "iffiness" in bunker playability not so much from grassing but with smallish bays where lies and swings might be complicated! I'd call this kind of thing "iffiness" through architecture not sand floor maintenance. Some of the members refer to this occasional bunker recovery problem as "getting Eslered". From a "pay for failing to avoid certain bunkers" perspective it does work enough to get into player's heads and strategies, I'm sure.
The grassing on Esler's bunkers has a fescue mix that showed up last year as brown and rugged but this year as far more green (abundance of rain).
At the Thursday dinner, again, David Esler gave about a 20 minute talk on his ideas on Flynn bunkering and Wayne Morrison gave about a 20 minute talk on Flynn generally and I gave one too on Flynn, American architectural evolution and the general make-up of the "ideal maintenance meld" with some important specific details for various styles of course--particularly one such as Glen View.