Glamourous Life of a Golf Course Architect

[Bruce Katona]

As a small handful of this Board may know, the other portion of my working career revolves around developing and construction much needed affordable housing. I've had many a site visit in areas where its very uncomfortable to walk, especially as it gets to be dusk in the colder months.


I was with a handful of folks inspecting a terrific, but pretty remote site late one afternoon.  The local neighborhood youth group living in the adjacent apartment project wasn't thrilled we were poking around in an area where we certainly didn't blend in well.


You've never seen 4 middle aged "thick" white guys duck and cover so fast when we heard the 1st shot.  Site visit was complete after shot 2. 


I'd take a bear any day - there were 2 guys with me that day who I know I could have outrun.


No, we didn't wind up developing that site.

[Tim_Weiman]

Herbert Fowler is stated as having routed courses on horseback (and there are photos of Mike Strantz atop a horse too).

Brian Schneider and I had to do that once, to see over sugar cane growing in the fields where the course was to be built.


We both made a compact not to take each other's picture. 

Tom,


I’ve been told a few times that Robert Trent Jones couldn’t walk the property when the Cashen was built at Ballybunion. Fortunately, there used to be horse stable down by the Cashen River and an owner that was willing to lend a horse as long as he could lead the horse with Mr. Jones on it.


When you think of what the Cashen was like before the years of gradual softening, it is pretty amazing they got a horse up and down to some of those original tee and green locations,


Then, too, apparently Mr. Jones was known to doze off a couple times a day while sitting on the horse and had to be minded so he didn’t fall and break his neck.


Love it or hate, the Cashen did produce lots of funny old stories.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Herbert Fowler is stated as having routed courses on horseback (and there are photos of Mike Strantz atop a horse too).

Brian Schneider and I had to do that once, to see over sugar cane growing in the fields where the course was to be built.


We both made a compact not to take each other's picture. 

Tom,


I’ve been told a few times that Robert Trent Jones couldn’t walk the property when the Cashen was built at Ballybunion. Fortunately, there used to be horse stable down by the Cashen River and an owner that was willing to lend a horse as long as he could lead the horse with Mr. Jones on it.


When you think of what the Cashen was like before the years of gradual softening, it is pretty amazing they got a horse up and down to some of those original tee and green locations,


Then, too, apparently Mr. Jones was known to doze off a couple times a day while sitting on the horse and had to be minded so he didn’t fall and break his neck.


Love it or hate, the Cashen did produce lots of funny old stories.

I wish I’d seen the original Cashen. I haven’t even seen good photographs so if anyone has any to post / send, that would be much appreciated.

[Jonathan Cummings]

Just a lowly golfer here.  I got bitten by a tick years ago at a Maryland course.  Within 24 hours I had the classic bull's eye pattern, went to the doc who immediately started treating me for Lyme's Disease (doxycycline).


Who knows if I actually had Lyme's Disease as it's hard to positively detect, but the medical wisdom is that if treated early, you usually avoid the much more serious symptoms you are likely to get when left untreated.

[Marty Bonnar]

Not Lyme’s, just Lyme. (Had a LOT of Training being an outdoors worker most of the career!)
 

F.

[Bret Lawrence]

Not Lyme’s, just Lyme. (Had a LOT of Training being an outdoors worker most of the career!)
 

F.

Lyme disease is named after Lyme, Connecticut.

[Tim_Weiman]

Herbert Fowler is stated as having routed courses on horseback (and there are photos of Mike Strantz atop a horse too).

Brian Schneider and I had to do that once, to see over sugar cane growing in the fields where the course was to be built.


We both made a compact not to take each other's picture. 

Tom,


I’ve been told a few times that Robert Trent Jones couldn’t walk the property when the Cashen was built at Ballybunion. Fortunately, there used to be horse stable down by the Cashen River and an owner that was willing to lend a horse as long as he could lead the horse with Mr. Jones on it.


When you think of what the Cashen was like before the years of gradual softening, it is pretty amazing they got a horse up and down to some of those original tee and green locations,


Then, too, apparently Mr. Jones was known to doze off a couple times a day while sitting on the horse and had to be minded so he didn’t fall and break his neck.


Love it or hate, the Cashen did produce lots of funny old stories.

I wish I’d seen the original Cashen. I haven’t even seen good photographs so if anyone has any to post / send, that would be much appreciated.

Ally,


To the best of my knowledge, there aren’t many pictures, if any, of the original Cashen. That was in the days before mobile phones and even if someone used an good old camera, some of the original stuff was probably not very easy to capture.


Mr. Jones did have my friend Kevin Frost do quite a few paintings. Kevin was the person who hit balls for Mr. Jones during the design. He was also an art teacher in the County Kerry school system.


I think Kevin gave Mr. Jones most of those early paintings, though some probably also went to regular visitors back in the 1980s.

[Tom_Doak]

I wish I’d seen the original Cashen. I haven’t even seen good photographs so if anyone has any to post / send, that would be much appreciated.

Ally,

To the best of my knowledge, there aren’t many pictures, if any, of the original Cashen. That was in the days before mobile phones and even if someone used an good old camera, some of the original stuff was probably not very easy to capture.

Mr. Jones did have my friend Kevin Frost do quite a few paintings. Kevin was the person who hit balls for Mr. Jones during the design. He was also an art teacher in the County Kerry school system.

I think Kevin gave Mr. Jones most of those early paintings, though some probably also went to regular visitors back in the 1980s.





I can't post them because they aren't scanned, but I have 60-80 slides of the course from July of 1985 when I first played it -- of pretty much every hole -- and a couple of pictures from May of 1983 when it was still being constructed and grown in.


It was pretty severe!  I played my ass off and shot 78, and while that wasn't the course record, Ted Higgins told me I might have been the first one to play all 18 holes without losing a ball.

[Tim_Weiman]

Tom,


You may have more pictures of the original Cashen than anyone on the planet!


Playing it back then without losing a ball is pretty amazing even without much of a wind.

[Jon Claydon]

Tom,


You may have more pictures of the original Cashen than anyone on the planet!


Playing it back then without losing a ball is pretty amazing even without much of a wind.

Sounds like those slides would make a coffee table book that i would buy.  I'm a fan of the Cashen course.  It suffers in comparison to the old course, but hard to imagine how that wouldn't be the case. 

[Dan Kelly]

Surely the ticks can't be worse than the flies at 16, 17 and 18 of Dismal River Red.


"Glamourous"? You going Brit on us, Tom?

[Marty Bonnar]

Surely the ticks can't be worse than the flies at 16, 17 and 18 of Dismal River Red.


"Glamourous"? You going Brit on us, Tom?

Dan, nope.
We spell it glamorous, but we also spell it glamour.
We’re weird,
F.

[Tim_Weiman]

Tom,


You may have more pictures of the original Cashen than anyone on the planet!


Playing it back then without losing a ball is pretty amazing even without much of a wind.

Sounds like those slides would make a coffee table book that i would buy.  I'm a fan of the Cashen course.  It suffers in comparison to the old course, but hard to imagine how that wouldn't be the case.

Jon,


I agree with you. It would be great to see Tom’s pictures circa 1985.

[Tom_Doak]

Surely the ticks can't be worse than the flies at 16, 17 and 18 of Dismal River Red.


"Glamourous"? You going Brit on us, Tom?

Dan, nope.
We spell it glamorous, but we also spell it glamour.
We’re weird,
F.

I don't learn something new every day, but I learned something new today!  Thanks Marty.


P.S.  This is about the spelling, not the weird part.  I already knew you guys were weird.

[mike_beene]

So let me get this Australian snake business straight: the brown snake basically kills you with one bite so be careful. The black snake eats this killer. The black snake sounds like a scary dude. But the implication is the black snake is my friend?


You Aussies are a tough breed!

[Kalen Braley]

So let me get this Australian snake business straight: the brown snake basically kills you with one bite so be careful. The black snake eats this killer. The black snake sounds like a scary dude. But the implication is the black snake is my friend?


You Aussies are a tough breed!

And don't forget about the Spiders, they are a nasty brood too, but generally you have enough time to get the anti-venom so you won't die or incur serious health issues.

Many of them make large webs to boot, which I happened to walk thru one night when i walked between two trees about 2 meters apart and it wrapped around my entire body, yea that was an epic freak out!