Leader of the Pack

[wsmorrison]

The Medinah thread renewed my thinking about geography and golf course maintenance and design practices.  Do you think it reasonalbe to assume that the efforts of a region's top tier clubs have a trickle down affect on maintenance practices and design/redesign of other courses in the district?

In terms of design, how about the Chicago area?  Was the Macdonald and Raynor style superceded by the long and narrow with resulting single strategy of Medinah, Butler National and other courses of their ilk?  Is is a stretch to think that this style began to be the style associated with the greater midwest?

Did the segregation of holes with trees at Pine Valley lead to other clubs in the area to become tree lined as well (especially with pine trees)?

The bunker style at Merion became a prototypical American design.  The waste areas at Pine Valley influenced and continues to influence designs today.  In the early 1920s the work at Pine Valley was instrumental in the eventual look of the quarry at Merion's 16th hole.

Surely the return to playability as practiced at Huntingdon Valley 20 or so years ago led other clubs in the district to eventually try their hand at returning the playability intent of the designs--firm and fast with a tolerance for turf loss and brown fairways.

If the clubs are high profile enough, then the affect has a broader reach.  Tree removal at Oakmont, Shinnecock, NGLA and other clubs seems to be leading a sea change in other club mentalities.

What are some clubs around the country that have been influencial in terms of regional design and maintenance practices and what have those influences been?

[Tom_Doak]

Wayne:

Not that they are US courses, but Sunningdale and Royal Melbourne had huge influence on everything else built in their neighborhoods.  And, Tokyo Golf Club's two greens per hole system, led to the concept being copied across all of Japan in the boom of the 1960's.

I agree that Medinah has had enormous influence on what was built or evolved in the rest of Chicago [EXCEPT at Chicago Golf Club and Shoreacres].

[Phil_the_Author]

Tom,

What was the inspiration for the Tokyo Golf Club 2 greens per hole? Was it influenced by the courses in the U.S. where this was done (a number of them in the South) or was this its own conincidental development?

[Lou_Duran]

Philip,

Re: Tokyo

I understand that it was done for maintenance purposes, primarily growing two crops of grasses for hot and cool seasons.

BTW, what is the status of the restoration/renovation of the Red Course at Bethpage?  When I played it last fall, I thought that the first few holes needed some work, but the course overeall was very, very good, and the last 12 holes or so seemed to have been spruced up nicely.

[tlavin]

Wayne:

I agree that Medinah has had enormous influence on what was built or evolved in the rest of Chicago [EXCEPT at Chicago Golf Club and Shoreacres].

I agree that Medinah, and other front-line clubs in Chicago, has had enormous influence on the "evolution" of the dominant parkland style here in Chicago.  But that is also true in many other areas across America.  What was built on farmland, when planted with trees by benevolent but uninformed committees has become parkland.

Now that places like Medinah, Olympia and Beverly have begun the slow but inexorable process of tree removal, one will surely see an evolution in the opposite direction.  Oakmont?  That's a revolution, not an evolution and I'm betting we won't see that in Chicago any time soon.