Dale,
Macan's quote is easy to like. Pete Dye would have never said that so eloquently but that's how I learned to build golf courses under Pete's tutelage, just build the greens yourself.
Marine Drive was my first introduction to A.V Macan. Michael Riste the curator of the B.C golf museum helped me with a lot of the background info on Macan’s design history. I toured his museum years ago, included in that tour was some of the Plasticine models that Macan used to create his green formations. I would recommend a visit to Michael’s museum for anyone in the Vancouver area, his efforts are well showcased and he is such an enjoyable person to be around.
I made it a mission to visit almost every notable Macan course in the Northwest. What I found out is that many of them had changed either by the usual evolution of the golf course or by greens committee’s or other consultants trying to do one better. In most cases the second go around was not much better.
Marine Drive had a interesting routing that caught my attention, it looped in between the river and the hillside over and over and for that reason I thought it kept the golf course interesting, kind of like a figure 8 routing weaving back and forth from East to West and North to South. The greens were small but conditioning kept them interesting. I got interested in the golf course because of its potential. With the help of George Waters and Tony Russell we got the consistency of the bunkers looking right, the mowing lines as good as we could get them and most of the teeing grounds a little more in line with a 1920's look. We have a way to go but the club seems willing. Holes to note are #4-11-12-14 and 17. Many of the green sites were altered from there original intent by other visiting consultants, we have eliminated a lot of the modern looking mounding surrounding the green sites, now it feels like a 20's design. We restored almost all of the original Macan bunkers, a few left to do but those are scheduled to be done soon. Other projects have kept us from finishing but I have my fingers crossed we can be done with the project soon.
Of all of the Macan golf courses I have seen, Richmond C.C. and Royal Colwood have the best chance to showcase Macan’s genius. Fircrest would be a close third as far as his golf courses go. Victoria GC wins the beauty award. MD fits in nicely with this group.
Many of Macan's designs had really interesting greens but the fair mongers have taken some of the fun out of his greens, making flat boring greens the replacement for interesting green sites. I am hoping Richmond doesn't flatten all of Macan's greens out; they are truly inspirational for me.
You know the term 6 degrees of separation, here is my 6-degree story. The late Charlie Mulligan from Ballyneal and I spent time together and one day Charlie called me and said he had some interesting memorabilia that he wanted to share with me. The next visit I would make to Ballyneal he was going to have a plastic storage container full of stuff I may be interested in. When I arrived Charlie met me and opened up the container, in the box were trophies, matches, scorecards and other gifts that were given to the gentleman and family he had befriended in Eastern Colorado. It turns out that Charlie had inherited the winning trophies of the second club champion at Marine Drive.
It included scorecards, ball markers, tees and various other golf trinkets. Charlie was so happy that he could turn them over to me. Several months later I took the trophies and related objects to MD so they could display lost history. Charlie was so happy to share his finding with Marine Drive and me. From that time forward Charlie and I had a special bond in fact when Charlie would call me while laid up in bed, we would talk about that rare 6-degree moment. That time was priceless.