Hey, what a juicy little Huntingdale thread. Sorry for the delay in getting back.
NAF: It is true, Allison never set foot in Melbourne. The bunkering style is not an outstanding feature of Huntingdale, and they do visually differ from nearby sandbelt courses. In addition, pre Newton Grant & Spencer redesign,
the fairway bunkers were relatively low-lipped. For instance, the bunkers at the far end of the 4th fairway (since departed), the ones flanking both sides of the 7th, 13th fairway, 14th, the right-hand side 16th (ex-18th) which is now considerably built up by NGS. From all of these fairway bunkers, you always fancied yourself to play a decent recovery, and on some holes find the green. Now, forget the green, or any silly notion of reasonable advancement on the 16th, or from the new addition 18th hole bunkering. The liberal bunker on the 13th hole still provides a sporting chance of success.
RAN:
The course routing is okay at Huntingdale but nothing remarkable. In part, this may be due to being built upon a terribly sqeezed in plot of land. Goodness, we don't even have a decent short-game practice facility. As you say, both nines wend their way back to the clubhouse, but I do think that some of the blandness that Tom Doak referred to, is related to the predominantly north-south, or south-north direction of holes. What excites me about Royal, KH, Metro, Vic ... is the terrific variety of east-west, and west-east, plus a few good old north-south and south-north configurations thrown in for good measure.
At the "Dale", the holes can be absolute ball-breakers into the southerly wind.
On balance, I would have to say that Allison put together a "safe" and conservative routing - one, comensurate with doing it from 12000 miles away!
In reality, without two strokes of luck, C.H. Allison's name would never have been associated with Huntingdale. The club was initially well into negotiations with local design firm, Jackson and Falconer. Jackson was a plus figure golfer, and ex-State champion. Unaccountably, things soured.
The second incident, was a chance meeting in London with Allison and a prominent Eastern member, R.Kinsman. Kinsman related the tale of woe to Allison about how negotiations had soured with Jackson-Falconer, ... and the rest is history. Allison shortly accepted the club's offer of 100 guineas.
HARLEY:
Like you, I'm viewing the fact that Allison never set foot in town as a bonus, in regard to the possibility that the famed sandbelt bunkering of Mackenzie, Russell, and Morcom may not have become as strong a trademark. At the very least, had Allison showed up and put in bunkers that were akin to his trademark, the 'mackenzie' look would have had a competitor. It is pure speculation as to how future committes would have viewed the sharply contrasting styles. Perhaps they may have viewed Mack style bunkers as "on the nose"?
TE PAUL:
Dicey all right, but he had a few of things in his favour:
(1) Huntingdale is relatively flat - the back nine was built upon a reclaimed swamp. Pleasingly for its members, the front nine utilises some undualting terrain; the high points being the 4th tee, 5th, 6th, 7th holes and 8th teeing ground.
(2) Allison had at his disposal an unusually gifted man called A.G. Dempster who, as an engineer, cabled meticulous survey plans at frequent intervals to London. Apparently, Dempster's site surveys detailed every few square metres of ground (rise and fall) from two standpoints: the course from east-to-west, and also from north-to-south.
(3) Allison must still have acknowledged the uncertain nature of what he was undertaking. I say this, because as a precaution against failure, he made allowances for two green sites at every hole in his design! And so with Berriman on the ground in Australia, it gave him an excellent chance to put his own stamp on the course - and he did - by not always adhereing to Allison's first choice of green site. In addition, Berriman was encouraged to make suggestions, and Allison reputedly accepted several of them. In light of this, it is perhaps unfair that Berriman is not accorded co-designer status at Huntingdale.
Of note, the plan that Allison sent from England, did not fit into the tight property. Berriman was forced to make changes. Another major oversight, was that Allison failed to make any provisions for Ladies tees. Was he perhaps a male chauvanist?
(4) The relative safety of designing a north-south course
TOM MaCWOOD
To my knowledge, Allison and Berriman did not know each other, although on account of Berriman being English, I can see how the rumour started. Why Berriman? A good question. As Michael Clayton pointed out, Berriman was the curator of Eastern Golf Club. A little history will further demonstrate the connection. In the early 1920s, Berriman was a gardener at a 76-acre property named Tullamore, which in 1924 became the home of the Eastern Golf Club. The committee built a 12 hole layout and Berriman - reputedly a brute of a speciman - did much of the hard 'yakka'. He became Eastern's curator, and in 1941, a breakaway group of members esacped the claybelt and Huntingdale Golf Club was duly formed. As far back as 1937, a five-pound deposit was placed on the land. It was always naturally assumed that Berriman would transfer down south. He did so, and remarkably, for a good deal of time he was curator at both clubs.
I found it intersting to read Colt's letter about the Bombay job. Thank you for posting it. Was Allison worried about the 'opportunity' cost of accepting the Huntingdale job and not travelling out? Not likely, I say this because he priced his fee specifically to take into account his NOT travelling. The H'dale committee was pleasantly surprised by the reasonable fee and expected it to be much higher.
Greg and Shane:
Re - the bunkers. Until recently, I had always assumed that the incidence of front-of-green bunkering disallowed the run-up approach. But when actually reviewing it in my mind, I found this wasn't the case. Consider where you can run the ball into the greens: 1st, 4th (after the new change), 5th (to a small degree), 6th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th, 14th (if you are using a rifle), 17th (marginally now). About 50% of the holes. You may be as surprised as me.
One very interesting fact about Huntingdale's bunkering is the almost complete absence of rear bunkers. They appear behind the right-half of the 12th green, and behind the 16th green (old 18th) only. Seems like a definite bias from Allison against them!
However, at nearly all the greens, they are heavily flanked by bunkers. The exceptions are 1st, 9th, 15th, 17th, and 18th greens which presents its bunkering on one side of the green only.