Geoffrey Cornish

[John Blain]

Did Cornish design any courses in the northeast worth playing? My experience playing his courses in upstate NY is that quite honestly they are - for the most part - pretty uninspiring, to put it kindly. A lot of his work up here was low budget sort of stuff so maybe I'm being unfair.
What am I missing?

[Tommy Williamsen]

In some ways, Cornish was the NE's Ed Ault. He did a lot of decent work but didn't design anything outstanding. Every area needs someone like him that can design a playable course on a budget. I have played Twoson CC in Md and his state resort cxourses in West VA. They were not inspiring but they were fun.

[Jim_Coleman]

  His best work was with the typewriter.

[Cliff Hamm]

Public golfers in New England owe a deep debt of gratitude to Mr. Cornish. No he did not design top hundred courses.  But that was not his mission. I suspect more golfers in New England started playing on Cornish courses than any other architect with the possible exception of Ross.  Bretwood, 36 holes, in Keene New Hampshire is worth a play. Exeter in Exeter Rhode Island is also an enjoyable 18 holes.

[Tim Martin]

Ellington Ridge CC in Ellington, Connecticut is solid without being spectacular. Cranberry Valley on Cape Cod is also worth a play.

[Chris_Blakely]

My favorite Cornish courses are:


Farm Neck Martha’s Vineyard, MA


Brentwood GC North & South Keene, NH


River Valley CC Westfield, PA


Of those listed I prefer Farm Neck and River Valley


Chris

[MCirba]

The closest golf course to my house in travel time is a Geoffrey Cornish course, these days called Mountain Laurel, formerly Le Chateau and Pocono Hershey.   I still get over there a few times a year these days.

I was fortunate growing up that Mr. Cornish made his way around northeastern PA as most of the best courses I played in high school and within travel range were ones he designed, including Wilkes Barre Municipal, Mill Race, and Sugarloaf, all within an hour of the house I grew up in.   He and his firm touched 43 of the courses I've played to date.

His courses were definitely utilitarian and my biggest beef with his architecture was that his bunkers were more for show and color contrast than actually functioning much as hazards as most were built into mounds with the sand base above the natural surface of the surrounding terrain.   He did this type of thing primarily for drainage and easier maintenance.

I can't say any of his original courses I've played were higher than a 5 on the Doak Scale but most are/were at least a 3.   Given his volume of activity over the decades, that's a record to be proud of at a time the game needed to grow to meet demand.

[Jim Sherma]

Tommy - I’m not sure if your disrespecting Ault or if I’m underrating Cornish.


I agree with Mike on Wiles-Barre Muni being ok. The Cornish I played the most is NLE Center Valley in Pa. I got a lot of what he was trying but it just didn’t work that well.


I’ve played a lot of Ault and never thought it was not working. Even when budget or land was an obvious constraint it was still good golf. Not sure I can say that about the handful if Cornish courses I’ve played.

[Dan_Callahan]

If the list of Cornish courses I found online is accurate, these ones aren't bad at all: Crestview, Simsbury Farms, Mt. Snow, Hickory Ridge, Indian Ridge, Nashawtuc, Cranberry Valley, Bretwood, and Hop Meadow. He's definitely got some clunkers on his resume (Far Corner is one of my least favorite courses in New England), but there are a bunch I'd be happy to play again.

[Tommy Williamsen]

Tommy - I’m not sure if your disrespecting Ault or if I’m underrating Cornish.


I agree with Mike on Wiles-Barre Muni being ok. The Cornish I played the most is NLE Center Valley in Pa. I got a lot of what he was trying but it just didn’t work that well.


I’ve played a lot of Ault and never thought it was not working. Even when budget or land was an obvious constraint it was still good golf. Not sure I can say that about the handful if Cornish courses I’ve played.

Jim, I didn’t want to give the impression that I disrespected Ault. I probably have played twenty of his designs.  He had his fingers in one way or another on every course in the DC area.  I live in a resort where he designed the course. I was just saying that it is nice to have an architect that does design work in and around his home.  He has a love for the area and wants to do a good job for his neighbors.

[Richard Hetzel]

I think the only course I have played by Cornish IIRC was Crestbrook Park near Waterbury, Connecticut. Back in the mid 1990's you had to sleep in your car to get a tee time. It is not a memorable design.

[MCirba]

Jim Sherma,

Suspect most of Center Valley (RIP) was Silva under the Cornish corporation.   It was really garish.

[Bret Lawrence]

I belonged to Crestbrook Park when I started golfing. The front nine at Crestbrook was done by Geoffrey Cornish and the back was done by Albert Zikorus.  I agree there is not much memorable about the course, but I always enjoyed the people and the hot dogs.


I have played many Cornish designs living in New England.  Some of the better Cornish courses I have played were his big budget projects like Ellington Ridge and Hop Meadow in CT and Allendale Country Club in North Dartmouth, MA.  Most of his work seems to be on low budget courses where they haven’t had the money to cut back the tree corridors since Cornish left.


Cornish was good with giving you a variety of distances throughout the course, but his greens are not really interesting.  When I think back to Crestbrook. 7 of his 9 greens on the front are just severely sloped back to front.  Very few tiers, no internal contours, just a tilted pancake again and again.  That is a common theme on most of his courses.  Hop Meadow has one green that stands out because it’s got a huge thumbprint in it, but he just didn’t add interest to many of his putting surfaces. 


Some of my favorite courses are his smaller courses like Twin Brooks in Hyannis, MA. It’s a short courses with a nice variety of holes and the course only takes about an hour or hour and a half to play.  This course is generally full most hours of the day. I learned the game of golf playing on a Cornish course, so I admire his work, and feel he gives you plenty of challenges to overcome throughout the round.  His routing are not bad. Some of his courses could easily be improved with some interest added to the green complexes and perhaps the reworking of his raised bunkers (that Mike Cirba alluded to).

[Forrest Richardson]

Having known Mr Cornish, and having great respect, I’ll defend him against J Coleman’s snarky post: “ His best work was with the typewriter.”

I will guess this implies he wrote better than he designed. To which I’d point out that the rounds enjoyed on Cornish courses over the years have amassed to a far greater quantity than the readers of his books and articles.

Just another lame post that proves the great honesty here on the Atlas — far too often it is the “inside baseball” and elite-leaning bits of golf architecture that take over to drown out the fundamental point of a golf course — which is to provide fun recreation for the most players possible, not just a society of critics obsessed with a certain look and feel.
Mr Cornish’s writing was never intended for broad audiences, so it’s no wonder you think it’s above average. It fits your eye.  Just take note that he never designed courses for architectural critics — but his writing, as evidence by your post, was surely aimed that way.

[Tim Gavrich]

The more wasted-opportunity, overly expensive-to-build modern golf courses I see, the more I appreciate the utilitarian simplicity of the Cornish courses I grew up playing, including Hop Meadow, Simsbury Farms and the NLE Tower Ridge in Avon and Simsbury, CT. I also like Crestview in Agawam, Mass., and Sugarloaf in NE PA. To paraphrase Hemingway, they are clean, well-lighted places for golf, and I think in the instances where they fall short, it would not take total gut-jobs to make them significantly better. Hop Meadow is a great example: a former superintendent once showed me Cornish's original plan, which revealed greens with some very interesting amoeba shapes and corners, where then (and now) there are only ovals.


Just because his work doesn't show up often on our Instagram feeds with fawning, herd-following praise heaped under it doesn't mean Geoffrey Cornish didn't make significant contributions to people's golfing lives.

[Kyle Harris]

One of my favorite golf adventure memories was making the trek from Penn State to play Geoffrey Cornish's Standing Stone in Huntingdon, PA.

Yet another was playing Adirondack in Peru, NY.

Hard for me to not love a guy that was instrumental in both of those moments.

[Forrest Richardson]

On another note, here's something of insight about Mr Cornish. Or, as I'll frame it: "Content" for GCA-ers:

At ASGCA meetings he was always seen walking courses. Often with Jack Snyder, Jack Kidwell, Bob Graves, etc.  While the predominance of members were playing and counting strokes, Mr. Cornish was thoughtfully considering the routing, the landscape and the way it all came together. He would stop and watch, say a few kind words, and then head off, often backwards to the flow of play.

[Bernie Bell]

Having known Mr Cornish, and having great respect, I’ll defend him against J Coleman’s snarky post: “ His best work was with the typewriter.”

I will guess this implies he wrote better than he designed. To which I’d point out that the rounds enjoyed on Cornish courses over the years have amassed to a far greater quantity than the readers of his books and articles.

Just another lame post that proves the great honesty here on the Atlas — far too often it is the “inside baseball” and elite-leaning bits of golf architecture that take over to drown out the fundamental point of a golf course — which is to provide fun recreation for the most players possible, not just a society of critics obsessed with a certain look and feel.
Mr Cornish’s writing was never intended for broad audiences, so it’s no wonder you think it’s above average. It fits your eye.  Just take note that he never designed courses for architectural critics — but his writing, as evidence by your post, was surely aimed that way.

Amen. 

“I don’t care how my courses are rated or ranked, but there are 40 million golfers each year enjoying the fruits of my
labor.”  Ed Ault (from GCA.com Feature Interview with Tom Clark)

[Jim Sherma]

Cornish and Whitten attribute it as Cornish with Silva. Based on that I certainly do not have much to go on when critiquing his work.


Other than Wilkes Barre Municipal what would be the best examples of his work in PA/NJ/MD that are worth seeking out?


Tommy - I know that you do not disrespect Ault's work. I tend to think Ault's work is better than it is usually given credit for. Based on my small Cornish sample size I would not have placed them equivalently in my mind. I also think that the Gordon's are better quality than lower end regional players, even if a lot of their work could be described as such.

Jim Sherma,

Suspect most of Center Valley (RIP) was Silva under the Cornish corporation.   It was really garish.

[Richard Hetzel]

The more wasted-opportunity, overly expensive-to-build modern golf courses I see, the more I appreciate the utilitarian simplicity of the Cornish courses I grew up playing, including Hop Meadow, Simsbury Farms and the NLE Tower Ridge in Avon and Simsbury, CT. I also like Crestview in Agawam, Mass., and Sugarloaf in NE PA. To paraphrase Hemingway, they are clean, well-lighted places for golf, and I think in the instances where they fall short, it would not take total gut-jobs to make them significantly better. Hop Meadow is a great example: a former superintendent once showed me Cornish's original plan, which revealed greens with some very interesting amoeba shapes and corners, where then (and now) there are only ovals.


Just because his work doesn't show up often on our Instagram feeds with fawning, herd-following praise heaped under it doesn't mean Geoffrey Cornish didn't make significant contributions to people's golfing lives.

WHen did Tower Ridge go NLE? I totally forgot, I played there and it was a fun round.

[Tim Martin]

The more wasted-opportunity, overly expensive-to-build modern golf courses I see, the more I appreciate the utilitarian simplicity of the Cornish courses I grew up playing, including Hop Meadow, Simsbury Farms and the NLE Tower Ridge in Avon and Simsbury, CT. I also like Crestview in Agawam, Mass., and Sugarloaf in NE PA. To paraphrase Hemingway, they are clean, well-lighted places for golf, and I think in the instances where they fall short, it would not take total gut-jobs to make them significantly better. Hop Meadow is a great example: a former superintendent once showed me Cornish's original plan, which revealed greens with some very interesting amoeba shapes and corners, where then (and now) there are only ovals.


Just because his work doesn't show up often on our Instagram feeds with fawning, herd-following praise heaped under it doesn't mean Geoffrey Cornish didn't make significant contributions to people's golfing lives.

WHen did Tower Ridge go NLE? I totally forgot, I played there and it was a fun round.

Tower Ridge closed in 2019. Some good holes and some throwaways. Very difficult to walk.

[MCirba]

Other than Wilkes Barre Municipal what would be the best examples of his work in PA/NJ/MD that are worth seeking out?

Jim,

The best Cornish closest to you/us is probably Sugarloaf, then Mountain Laurel, and I always liked Bowling Green in northern NJ but it's been decades since I've been there.  Doak Scale probably 4, 3, ?.   

[MCirba]

Jim Sherma,

Since it's Masters week, you might be amused to learn that we used to call holes 11, 12, & 13 at Wilkes Barre Muni "Amen Corner" and they are quite a very fine set of holes.

Conditions since it's heyday when I was in my teens in the 1970s, however?   I stopped back during my nostalgia tour a few years ago and let's just say I hope they are improving.

[Stewart Abramson]

Link to ASGCA's list of Cornish original designs. I've only played six on the list none of those were bad albeit most are Doak scale 3's. I never knew that he designed Manhattan Woods. I've always seen it identified as Gary Player's.


https://golfarchitects.lib.msu.edu/cornishg/cornishocdloca

[Jim_Coleman]

  It seems Cornish would be Roman Hruska’s candidate for the architect’s hall of fame. I’m guessing 10% of you understand this reference.