Consider this short hole, designed by an RTJ shop steward in 1963-64, for which this course represents his first (and perhaps only intact) solo design. Tragic illness (once rumored to be contracted constructing Dorado Beach) laid him low before this first effort opened for play in 1965, confining him to a wheelchair for the rest of his days, which saw a handful of other designs before joining the Palmer design team for the remainder of his career.
Showing the definite influence of his master's tutelage and the design style he initiated (alternately called
Course Beautiful, Hard Par-Easy Bogey, Everyday Championship), this course exhibits many of the tropes found in the hi-period of the prolific RTJ... One of those is the "long thin rectangle/ runway tee"...sometimes 50 or more yards of box following a vanishing point down the center of the fairway (or green, as it occurs). More than the visual geometry, one significant intention of this "style" is to be utilitarian... that each day, the two or three sets of markers can be moved back and forward to allow the hole the play a healthy difference in yardage from the day previous, on most every day. Combined with the easy move of markers to avoid turf wear in any one spot, they usually achieve this goal of utility. Less so today, but it also worked/works in concert with the original fairway bunkers as one day bunker X can be carried from the tee color Y, but not the next day, etc.
But this hole is a one shotter and so creatively twists the concept laterally...creating a short hole that can play either 170 or 125, with nearly a 45 degree difference in wind and angle to the green contours, which (cunningly) are more receptive to the longer shot, played with a usual quartering downwind than they are to the shorter, straight downwind angle from 125. Though its as facile a "Guiness Book" moniker like "Tallest Private Home," I'd bet that this at 125 yards was (when maintained as contiguous teeing ground) was the single "longest/widest tee" in the world of golf (around 10,500 sq feet too).
When I first encountered this hole at age 14 and just starting out in the game, it seemed like a very... "conjured" "showy" kind of thing...quirky cool, but so obviously engineered that my first notions of architecture at the time, were "What constrains the architect?" as well as "how did someone conceive of this?" I don't know what your reactions may be to it in this first pass, but later on, I discovered "why" this particular hole was laid in this way.... the architect was using/workign around an abandoned rail line as the basic footprint for the tee (and the hole), which can be seen in this fuller view of the property and surrounds....
Indeed, a never used "ghost train" the Westchester Northern, (
which never saw a passenger, only partially constructed, and abandoned with the advent of the automobile and railroad re-organization in the 1915-1925 period) cut(s) right through these virgin woods (now Brae Burn CC in Purchase NY) when Frank Duane camped here to route the course in the Fall of 1963. And the use of the West Northern is not limited to the 5th tee... trestle ruins are deployed as a monumental water hazard between the 15th and 17th holes...it forms the path from the tee plaza to the driving range and as its raised bed makes an amphitheater-like embankment along the approach to the 6th hole as it exits the BB property.
Today the 5th tee is no longer one contiguous teeing ground (so out goes the Guinness title I suppose) as it broken up by a new cart path network and turnaround down the middle of the tee, but the effect and the amusing genius (imo) of it remains.
I put this in a thread to extol this wee bit of design, yes, but also to invite and continue the discussion of quirk, inventive deployments in courses, the value of the RTJ-utiliatrian philosophy (which extends past the tees to the large segmented/tiered greens), the difference between slaving to a piece of ground or making it serve one's own design ends and so forth.
*** I wished to put up some ground level photos of the hole, but I can't find them just now***