Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture Discussion Group => Topic started by: Jeff_Brauer on November 16, 2004, 04:18:24 PM
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I thought I would turn around Jason's thread to ask the same question another way.....
For its time, what was most Original or Radical GCA Idea of All Time? Reading Cornish and Graves, I recall that doglegs, separate tees, courses away from the seaside, etc. were all radical departures from what went before.
As far as individual holes or features, the first things that come to mind are:
MacKenzie's Sitwell Park Super Contoured Green and 16th at Cypress Point
CB MacDonald's Lido Hole (with Cape Hole not far behind)
Alison's Double Green system in Japan.
Pine Valley's Double Green
Whoever used two separate tees, widely spaced for one hole to change its playing characteristics
C and C's huge, blind, par 3 green at Friar's Head.
First large scale use of lakes, such as in Florida
First Desert CourseDesmond Muirhead's Symbolism, although I hate to focus this thread on anything that is gimmicky.
What have I missed and what do you think were original for its time?
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Holes 4,5,6,9,10,11,12,13 and 18 at ANGC circa 1935.
Bob
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Joel Goldstrand's reversible "Double Eagle" in Eagle Bend, Mn.
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Holes 14 and 15 at N. Berwick.
Holes 5 and 14 at Cuscowilla.
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In the broad scheme of things in the entire evolution of architecture it very well may've been C.B. Macdonald's original and radical idea to build a golf course that was a composite of actual and conceptual copies of European holes and design principles at NGLA. It certainly got the attention of architects and burgeoning architects on both sides. It was all for the dedicted purpose of building the first course in the USA of 18 really good holes---a pretty radical and original idea for that time for sure!
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PD building TPC Jacksonville in a swamp
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8)
How about Par 3 courses???
Aren't most of those ideas just the result of viewing the ground available with an experienced eye trying to reconcile options?
Is NGLA in its time, really any different than Tour 18 in its?
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Jeff, While it NLE, the original tenth hole at BWR, was radical. A steep final climb, that resembles as close to vertical, I have ever climbed to the flatest green, ever seen.
It was so radical, it was chopped down 34' feet.
I'm also of the belief that chopping-up that original masterpeice should qualify as the MOST radical thing that ever happened in GCA.
What a pity!
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The road hole at St. Andrews has to be high on the list. Everything from the tee shot over the railroad shed now the hotel to the bunkering around the green and the green itself.
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OK, so this hasn't been built yet, but.......
How about the "Moe Norman" hole?
Tee off into a HHA sort of area with the only port of refuge a small raised and flat "green" sort of area 150 yards from the tee, but it is NOT a green! No, it's the only bit of "fairway" for 150 yards on any side. If you can hit that fairway/green you have a relatively simple 230 yard carry over a stream to a punchbowl green, with more gunge outside the bowl. Moe would play it 8-iron/3-wood, and would expect a birdie (assuming he didn't hole his 2nd...).
How would you play it?
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Rich:
Did you hear the story of Moe teeing off on the first hole of a tournament with a few world reknowned pros and to their amazement Moe took out his driver on a hole with a semi-blind pond and a bridge across it just after they all layed up in front of the pond. Moe's driver hit the bridge and bounced across it to the fairway on the other side. When they asked Moe if he knew this was not a driver hole he said;
"That's what the bridge is for, that's what the bridge is for!"
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Tom
Like all others on this site, I know that story. And, for all I konw, it could have been said of you, if you weren't so pitifully short off the tee...... :'( ;)
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Jeff,
You're going to have to take "Alison's double green system" off your list, because it wasn't Alison's system.
Hirono, Kawana and the original Tokyo Golf Club were all designed and built with one green per hole. The alternate greens were introduced at Tokyo Golf Club just after World War II, by an American general who had been stationed in Atlanta, where apparently some courses had "winter" and "summer" greens. The clubs in Tokyo were struggling to keep their greens alive in the summer, so the general suggested they build "summer" greens with korai grass.
When they started building courses in large numbers in the 1960's, everyone looked to Tokyo Golf Club, and all those new courses were built with the "two green" system. Hundreds of them! Even in Sapporo, which has the same climate as Traverse City, they built two bentgrass greens side by side!
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Bunker in the middle of green at Riviera par 3, (6th?)
Island green Sawgrass
Radical GCA construction idea; the first draining a swamp or dredging a channel to fill one in to route a course in such an area. Or, along those lines, digging a lake to get shaping material.
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Tom Doak -
I recently found an aerial of East Lake taken in the late 40's that shows every green was double. The picture was taken in the winter. One half of each green is dormant, the other half alive.
My guess is that George Cobb's changes in the '60's for the Ryder Cup included the removal of EL's double greens. By then bents were availble that would survive the summer heat.
Most courses in the SE went through similar renovations at the time.
Bob
P.S. People forget how rough the early Bermuda greens were. Charlie Harrison, a fine amateur player and friend of Bobby Jones, was recently quoted in the Atlanta paper as saying that putting on Bermuda in the '30's was like putting across grape vines.
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Bob,
Have you spoken to Barb Hall at the Hagley regarding the 5 aerials they have of East Lake? I believe they were all taken at the same time, in the mid 1930s. She can send you things by mail. But if the weather stays this warm, you should come back up to see the Hagley and bring your clubs ;)
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Wayne -
I plan on getting in touch with her soon. The picture of EL I found was in an old Ga. Golf Journal and credited to the Hagley.
Bob
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How about Neveille's hiring of an artist to design the 14th green at Pebble Beach?
Was that radical?
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If the question is the single, greatest GCA idea of all time - if we are limited to one choice - I think that choice is easy:
The Redan.
Bob
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Tom,
My bad.
Upon reflection, I would have to agree with TEPaul - the idea of 18 great holes would have to trump the idea for any one hole or feature as being the most original.
It also seems to have sort of set the American golf design mindset up. Whereas GBI accepted many holes as they fit dramatic land, in America, we were doing to do what it took to make the greatest golf courses in the world, no?
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Japan's two green system began at Kasumigaseki in the mid-30's after Alison and Viscount Soma's experimental bentgrass greens failed.
Paton and Low's planting of a bunker in the middle of the 4th fairway at Woking.
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If the question is the single, greatest GCA idea of all time - if we are limited to one choice - I think that choice is easy:
The Redan.
Was the Redan actually an original idea, or did the hole just sorta evolve/happen?
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I'm surprised no one has mentioned that idiotic thing at Cour d'alene.
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Andy -
I think it extremely unlikely that The Redan just happened. Someone back in the dim mists of time knew exactly what they were doing.
Bob
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For its time, what was most Original or Radical GCA Idea of All Time?
brother Jeff_Brauer
it seems to me the "firsts" (ie installation of an irrigation system, golf under lights to play at night, the GOLF CART (ugh), building residential homes purposely on the course, the first PUBLIC course design, the modern lawn mower, etc) would qualify as either radical or original architecturally influenced ideas
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I think it extremely unlikely that The Redan just happened. Someone back in the dim mists of time knew exactly what they were doing.
Bob
That's interesting, as I had always thought that, like the Old Course, much of the features/greens/routing on the older links in Scotland where not actually created by man and that N Berwick was one of those. Are you surmising or do you actually know this?
Also, and I can't imagine there is any way to know, it would be interesting to know if the hole was designed by someone who put things in specific places for specific reasons, or if it was much more random and only much later people looked and said "hey, cool, look how well this works and for these reasons".
Andy
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For its time, what was most Original or Radical GCA Idea of All Time?
brother Jeff_Brauer
it seems to me the "firsts" (ie installation of an irrigation system, golf under lights to play at night, the GOLF CART (ugh), building residential homes purposely on the course, the first PUBLIC course design, the modern lawn mower, etc) would qualify as either radical or original architecturally influenced ideas
Frank,
Good points all. In the irrigation point, though, George Bahto's book describes how an irrigation salesman came out to NLGA quickly after construction started. Thus, golf irrigation may have evolved from other irrigation. Thus, it may not be radical as much as evolution.
How radical is the idea of bombarding the genetic chromosones of turf to create drought resistant, disease resistant turf?)
Andy,
Since no one alive now was there, we don't know. But, I suspect that about 2 days after the first golf hole was in play, golfers started discussing how to rebuild it to be "fairer" (read, "Make it fit my game better) and most holes we know now are the result of constant revision. Over 500 years of Scottish Golf, you have to figure there were numerous changes, if, at least, you believe human nature to be a constant.
I thought this was a fairly decent topic, and its good to see it finally get to 2 pages!
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Andy -
All golf courses are man-made. It's just that some look more like it than others.
Bob
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Coming off the ice and onto grass
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"Frank,
Good points all. In the irrigation point, though, George Bahto's book describes how an irrigation salesman came out to NLGA quickly after construction started. Thus, golf irrigation may have evolved from other irrigation. Thus, it may not be radical as much as evolution."
JeffB:
Although NGLA may've had some sophisticated irrigation for its time are you aware of the extent of agronomic problems that course had in its first few years?
It wasn't a matter of lack of irrigation at all that produced the massive agronomic failures there---it was the totally inexact science of seed at that time (seed merchants put every kind of seed imaginable together in what they sold Macdonald on the theory that something was bound to grow! :) ) and the fact that Macdonald apparently did not understand well enough that you can't grow grass on basically straight sand. Actually, as NGLA and then PVGC found out a few years later you can grow grass on straight sand but you can't grow it very long!
Those early guys did not understand very well that the second necessary part to irrigation in growing (and sustaining) grass was you had to have a growing medium for both nutrients and water retention. Macdonald got a few catches of grass at NGLA in the beginning but it didn't take long for that grass to just burn right up as the irrigation drained straight down to China probably by the end of the day ;)
That's when Macdonald got in touch with Piper and Oakley of the US Dept. of Agriculture. They were basically forage experts and botanists and they sure did know how to make things grow although they'd never thought about golf agronomy before.
At that point NGLA dumped thousands of tons of manure all over the golf course as did PVGC and everything sure did grow---all kind of things including weeds and worms and everything else imaginable making both courses a bloody mess early on.
At that point they all got into real experimentation with grass strains and exactly how to apply the proper growing and water retention medium during construction, bents were perfected and within ten or so years they all started the USGA green section with what they'd learned together. As far as an acceptable putting surface was concerned a truly interesting jack-of-all-trades by the name of Frederic Winslow Taylor of Philadelphia managed to make a real breakthrough with a green construction method that was basically the precusor (in the teens) to the present USGA spec green construction method!
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Since no one alive now was there, we don't know. But, I suspect that about 2 days after the first golf hole was in play, golfers started discussing how to rebuild it to be "fairer" (read, "Make it fit my game better) and most holes we know now are the result of constant revision. Over 500 years of Scottish Golf, you have to figure there were numerous changes, if, at least, you believe human nature to be a constant.
All golf courses are man-made. It's just that some look more like it than others.
Jeff, what the heck does human nature have to do with golf? :)
I do wonder, though, how right you and Bob are re the hand of man and some of the older Scottish courses. For example, take the Road Hole; did someone at some point see the hole and say, 'ya know, this hole would be more strategic if there was a deep, gathering bunker eating into the very vitals of the green'? Or at some point, did someone make the conscious decision to orient the green just so, so that the bunker, the road and the approach shots all played out as they do now? Or did it just kinda play out that way, and then the finishing polish was just applied the last 100 years?
Or #16, did someone look at that as a mundane hole and have a flash of brilliance and decide to dig out the Principal's Nose, and put it just so in relation to the wall on the right and the green further on?