A pair of Shorts

[Adam Lawrence]

Those of you who see my postings on various social media sites will know that I've been sharing a lot of historic images recently.


I'd put more of them on here but having to upload them to photo sharing sites is a pain.


But this is so cool i wanted everyone here to see it. For your delectation: the fifth at Royal West Norfolk, the model for Macdonald's Short hole, and the Short at NGLA, side by side. 1912.

[MCirba]

Wow.

Brilliant.

Prefer the intimidation of the slightly uphill on the original, but both look awesome.

Thanks for sharing.

[Tom_Doak]

Adam:


That's a great find. 


[For others:  the hole at Brancaster is today's fourth ... two of the early holes were combined into one longer one, and today's 6th added to the routing to get back to eighteen.]


I've often wondered whether Macdonald got his idea for the "horseshoe" mound in the green from the original Brancaster hole, or from somewhere else, or if it was his own idea.  There is no trace of such contours at Brancaster today.  However, the horizon of the putting surface in that picture does seem to suggest a similar shape.

[Adam Lawrence]

Tom


Tommy N just said something similar on Facebook; I think it's a bit of a stretch. It may be true, but I don't really think the photo offers enough evidence to reach that conclusion. You're talking about a shot from about the level of the green, maybe even slightly below, and a hundred and odd yards away. I'd be seriously hesitant about drawing any conclusions on the green from that.

[Thomas Dai]

Great posting of the old pics Adam.
Maybe, given the hassle in photo-posting herein, the GCA Facebook site would be a good place for an archive of old course photos?
Nice to have an accessible store of them, something like the long term thread for old maps and routings etc, but for photos.
Atb

[Jeff_Brauer]

Not clear from TD's post, did they lengthen the short hole, or some other hole? 


If so, who likes short shorts?

[Peter Pallotta]

Edit - I had it totally backwards and upside down!

Peter   

[Jeff Loh]

Thanks Adam!!
That's what GCA is all about.

[Tom_Doak]

Not clear from TD's post, did they lengthen the short hole, or some other hole? 

Jeff:


The par-3 at Brancaster is still pretty short:  129 yards.  The number of the hole changed because they combined the original 3rd and 4th holes together to add length to the course as a whole.


Adam:


I agree with you that the photo is not adequate proof of the Brancaster green's contours.  I was just surprised to see that it might be a possibility.  I'd always assumed that the green contours at National were a figment of Macdonald's imagination.

[Terry Lavin]

Great digging, so to speak!

[Tom Bacsanyi]

So National's Short was bulkheaded?  When did they move away from that to the current sod faced look?

[Neil Regan]

I agree that you can not conclude too much from the photo.
But it sure looks like the spectator on the green’s edge is way higher than the caddie on the right part of the green.
It also looks like a pretty significant transition from the golfers on the left to the caddie.

[MCirba]

Do you see what I see,
(Do you see what I see)
Way up on that green, Shepherd Boy?

A mound, A mound
Designed just to confound,
It will bring us such a wicked plight,
In which GCA nerds will all delight,
Or am I just losing my sight?




Happy Holidays, my fellow crazies!