help re Denver CC

[mark chalfant]

Any thoughts on this course,

I believe many have worked on this design over the decades.

I  am wondering if the routing holds interest.

also is the terrain nice or strategy evident  ?


thanks.

[Yancey_Beamer]

I have not played the course.
My Colorado friends love it.
Here's your list:
James Foulis
Harry Collis
William S. Flynn
William H. Diddel
Press Maxwell
John Cochran
Ed Seay
Bill Coore

[wsmorrison]

Mark,

In researching a book on the golf courses of William Flynn, Tom Paul and I came across a nearly complete collection of his original design drawings.  We have Flynn's hole drawings, not a routing map, of the Denver CC redesign of Foulis' course.  

It is a fascinating set of plans that called for a complete redesign incorporating undulating sandy waste areas, interrupted fairways, island greens surrounded by sand (like PV #3 and Kittansett #3 (designed in 1922 by Flynn), and many other Pine Valley influences and it also called for significant mounding that was mostly man-made (some 8-10 feet high!) but intended to look natural.  This is no surprise at all given that Flynn was working at Denver CC in 1922 after finishing the PV course as per instructions of the 1921 Advisory Committee.  Both Flynn and Howard Toomey (his engineering partner) were on the Green Committee at PV and Toomey was on an executive committee as well.

I believe Flynn addressed the redesign of DCC after completing the design for Cherry Hills which was started by members of Denver CC.  Basically, from what I've been told by Chuck Bonniwell,  the Denver CC saw Flynn's plan start to be put on the ground and they decided that the concept was too difficult a course and they stopped the Flynn work and hired Harry Collis to complete the course.  I believe part of 7 holes of the Flynn plan exist today.

I made copies of the plans for Chuck Bonniwell, a DCC member, and for Doug Wright.  To date, neither has gotten back to me with an analysis of what of the Flynn plans were incorporated and what was not.  I hope to get out there one of these days to study CHCC and DCC in person.  If Doug Wright should see this topic, I hope he will be reminded and eventually respond.  

The plans are outstanding and if they were fully implemented it would be one of the great courses in the West, easily surpassing the Cherry Hills design in my opinion.  Although I do base that on drawing and photographic evidence alone since I have not been there so I realize that more info is required before I can justify that statement.  

redanman,

What did you mean by:

"in spite of all the architects who have been there, a bit of a Flynn-like feel (Strange considering he was never one of thegang of ten)."

What was the gang of ten?

[Tom Ferrell]

All right - been lurking for a while now, and this is my first post to GCA.  I took a detailed tour of Denver Country Club on September 23 in conjunction with a film project I'm working on.  I was most interested in seeing some of the James Foulis features, as DCC is the farthest west Foulis ever got.  Predictably, there is little left of the original design.  The par-4 ninth, with its runaway green clearly designed to accommodate long, running approaches and a museum green (it serves no current hole on the course) that stands near today's third tee - the green is a shelf with three small, rectangular bunkers at the bottom of the fronting slope.  A group of "chocolate drop" mounds remains from a lost green complex to the left of the fourth fairway.  There are some great photos of the Foulis design in the clubhouse.

I saw the Flynn plans while I was there.  Too bad the club decided not to go that route.  Granted, urban encroachment has forced numerous re-routings and renovations, but the club's decisions to re-design on an "as needed" basis have cost it dearly, in my opinion.  The flow of the course is disrupted throughout the round by jarring changes in style and design elements.  The routing is confused, with huge plots of land completely unused while multiple tees and greens are squeezed into small parcels in other places.  Lost opportunities abound.  There is little of the Flynn plans integrated into today's course.  The fourth hole is similar to Flynn's proposed sixth.  And the bunker complex at the 16th appears to have been taken from the Flynn plans.  But one wonders how good the course could have been had different decisions been made all those years ago.

By the way, add Donald Ross to the list of architects who have worked on the property.  The fifteenth green complex, hard against the southern boundary, is reported to have been designed and built by Ross sometime in the years after the 1914 reconstruction of the course following the flood of 1912.

DCC is one of the few true urban layouts left.  It is the only land in the city of Denver zoned for agriculture.  But architecture buffs will find it more a curiosity of mix-and-match styles than a cohesive layout.

TOM

[Brad Swanson]

Tom,
   Please elaborate on the "huge plots" of land that were not used.  In my experience at DCC, I don't recall there being much usable land being left over.

Cheers,
Brad Swanson

[Tom Ferrell]

Brad,

Obviously, land on the DCC site is at a premium.  There is a large plot stretching from the point of the first green/second tee, back in a triangle shape toward the sixth(?) - I don't have a map of the property handy - that is treed, includes creek frontage and is not used at all.  Apparently, this land was used in previous routings on the site (a hole or holes lost in the Speer Boulevard expansion), and there are members who want to again incorporate it somehow into the golf course.

Perhaps "huge plots" was a bit hyperbolic.  My point is simply that the routing of the course reminds me of the line from the great Talking Heads song "Life During Wartime" - "I've changed my hairstyle so many times now, I don't know what I look like."

We've all seen houses that were just added onto and onto and onto so much that they lose all sense of identity.  That said, DCC is a fine place to spend a day, but as a golf course, it is a yard sale of architectural styles and implementations.

TOM

[Scott_Burroughs]

This doesn't include the surrounding neighborhoods, but here's
DCC from above (it was AOTD #198):

[Mark_Fine]

Mark,
I was at Denver CC a few months ago.  Bill Coore did the renovation of the golf course.  I also saw the Flynn plans which are superb.  I have to say, however, that the original plans of Cherry Hills are pretty darn good as well.  Remember, Denver CC's site is not what you would call outstanding.  
Mark