[MCirba]

In doing Cobb's Creek research, I recently came across some online archival holding descriptions which I shared with Joe Bausch.   As he tends to do, Joe dug in and within a few days was in receipt of what seems to be at least one additional, earlier version of the routing for Cobb's Creek Golf Course in Philadelphia.

Although the shape of the property dictated that some of it was similar to later versions, I was struck by the fact that nearly every hole was different on the earlier plan(s) than what was eventually approved and built.   Even many of the greensites were different from what was constructed.   

As a refresher, Cobb's Creek was designed and routed during 1914/1915 by a Golf Association of Philadelphia (GAP) Committee appointed by President Robert Lesley and included;

Hugh Wilson (Merion)
George Crump (Pine Valley)
Dr. Simon Carr (Pine Valley)
Ab Smith (Huntingdon Valley)
George Klauder (Aronimink)
J. Franklin Meehan (North Hills)

All of these men had previous design and construction expertise and once construction commenced in the spring of 1915 William Flynn, Superintendent of Merion was brought over to do the shaping of greens and bunkers under the direction of Wilson, Smith, and Klauder.

Beyond that history, and beyond our excitement at locating another important artifact I began to wonder;   How many of the early architects drew up multiple routing plans for a single site?     I'm not talking something that was in basic form and simply evolved through additional tweaks and compromises.   The plan Joe now has is about 75% different overall than the course that was built.   I do recall in history of some courses reading about "different plans" that were developed for consideration, but was this something that was common or rare?

Here's an edge of one of the plans in question.  "CCP" stands for "Cobb's Creek Park". 

[RJ_Daley]

Mike, I'll bet many courses in all era have seen different proposals of routing by various bidding architects.  I reckon it is just a matter that most which are not used would be discarded over the years by club boards and officials that didn't see the historical value of future generations contemplating the differences and what they could tell us about the evolution of golf architecture ideas and design techniques including routing conventional and creative methods. 

Heck someday, the alternative routings of some of our favorite archies, or some that should but aren't getting opportunities in these tight times, will become collector items to little GCA.com mavens in the 22nd century...  Even some of Gib's famous bar napkin routing drawings may be on e-bay   

[MCirba]

RJ,

Great to hear from you!   Hope all is well with you and yours.

I'm sure that when various architects are involved you may have wildly differing routing plans (one of the best documented near me are Flynn and Ross's respective plans for CC of York...the club went with Ross), but in this case it was the same group of guys who drew both plans and while they share similarities, not a single hole is exact and as mentioned, the overall plan is about 75% different if I were to try and quantify it. 

[Phil Young]

Mike,

When one walks into the Wissahickon clubhouse of the Philadelphia Cricket Club and see the wonderful 36-hole drawing by Tillinghast hanging on its wall and then play the 18-hole course they simply assume that the course they just played is one of the two on the drawing. It isn't. That drawing shows the original plan when the club actually thought that they would lose their lease on the St. Martins course site. The original plan called for a massive clubhouse/ tennis court/ parking lot complex on the opposite side of the RR tracks from where todays clubhouse sits. It even included building a small train platform from which members could arrive by rail. With the new clubhouse site an entirely new design including a drastically different routing for only 18 holes was designed and built.

Also, the 1920 routing and design of the SFGC course by Tilly that wasn't built was significantly different from the 1924 design which was built.

[MCirba]

Phil,

Yes, I've seen Philly Cricket's original 36 hole plan by Tillinghast, although I've never mentally walked it through in my head, or on the ground, if that makes any sense.   Perhaps that might be fun as a winter exercise.

I wasn't aware of an earlier Tillinghast plan for SFGC that was markedly different from what got built.   I wonder if club feedback or personal reconsideration was the genesis?

I do plan to walk the unused Cobb's Creek routing before long, although I'm so familiar with that property I doubt much will be surprising.   One hole in particular I'm hoping to post here because I'm thinking that they perhaps had been hitting the flask. 

[Ally Mcintosh]

Mike, I think every architect I know has numerous different routings for every site they've worked on. So it will not only be common but actually the norm.

That said, I'm always amazed at those who just churn out a load of wildly different options in complete form. I always seem to abandon routings before they are finished when I know they aren't going to be the best possible option.

[MCirba]

Ally,

That process of trial and error is what I'm interested in understanding better.   

In this particular case, the architect(s) needed to get approval of their plan from the Fairmount Park Commission, which was an entity of the city of Philadelphia.   Thus, I would suspect that earlier plans were both 1) possibly rejected and 2) the architect(s) preferred plans.   However, it's also pretty clear that the earlier plan is not as good a golf course as what eventually got approved and built.

So, perhaps what I'm looking at is instead part of a work in progress, a prototype if you will, but it's tough to try and read into the minds of these guys a century later.

One thing that is different between the two plans is that the earlier one, even though it's to scale, is not on a topo map.   The later approved plan is on a  topo.   What would that suggest to you?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mike,

What Ally said.  Usually, where there are different routings, things like possible property parcels, varying ideas about where the clubhouse ought to be, etc. are the starting points and drive the differences.  And even after those 2-? different basic options are considered in a preliminary plan, and one selected by the powers that be, I will go back and do 2-3 variations of that, sometimes seeing if I can incorporate the best features of a discarded plan in the final version.

I have a routing now where one parcel of a disjointed site is triangular, and between 6 or 7 tightly spaced holes or 5 loosely spaced holes.  I did one routing of each for the client to decide. I obviously prefer the looser fit, but there will be a real estate component, so I suspect I will be directed in round 2 to use the 6-7 hole version. 

Routing Is a process, not a plan.

[MCirba]

For comparison purposes, first here's the plan that was approved and quite close to what was actually built. 





Here's another plan that is very close to the "as built", although pencil markings on it indicate some changes that took place in the mid 1920s and later in the 1950s.   The only thing glaringly different than what was built is the location of the 5th green/6th tee.  I think this plan was used as a working drawing to delineate and plan later changes.





Following is the earlier plan that was sent to Joe Bausch in recent days.   As you can see, it's quite different and although it's to scale, it's not on a topographical map.

[Tom_Doak]

Mike:


This is why I'm determined to complete a book about the routings of my own courses, one of these years.  The whole process is misunderstood by many, though I think I approach it a little differently than others:  generally, I don't put out many "alternatives" for a client to make a wrong choice, I just keep evolving the plan until I'm happy with the whole thing.


It's not uncommon that several holes wind up being reversed, as on the western side of the Cobbs Creek property.  Once you decide that one hole is better in the opposite direction -- say, splitting the original 11th playing east into the present 9th & 10th playing west, perhaps because they'd discovered the small ridge that was a good green site for the 9th -- you have to reverse others in order to make them work out.


We did three incremental routings for Pacific Dunes.  The first one has only four holes that made the final course.  The second has a few more, but holes like #4 and #5 and #12 were played backwards, and on others we made different tee-to-green connections.  [Originally, the 3rd hole played to the 12th green; we didn't discover the green site for #3 until after the fire burned the gorse down in that area, and we could see what was there.]

[Keith OHalloran]

Tom,
With all due respect to your previous books, I would be fascinated by a book on routing, especially with real worl examples. I am always shocked when amateur golf nerds finish playing or walking a course and comment on the routing. Seems like you need to be there before construction and have done it before in order to have an opinion.

[Phil Young]

Mike,

You stated, "I wasn't aware of an earlier Tillinghast plan for SFGC that was markedly different from what got built."

The original Tillinghast design began in early December 1919 when Tilly was hired by the club at the urging of Roger Lapham to redesign several holes on the front nine. They were so pleased with his work that they then asked him to design an entirely new course. This plan is dated "January 1920" and a version of it was shown in the 1923 Spring Valley Water Co." brochure.

The club approved this plan on Januray 20, 1920 and began construction in February. At the same time there were some members who believed this plan to be a mistake and were already making suggestions as to how to change it. Before work had progressed in any large amount, in March 1920 the Spring Valley Water Co. now demanded that SFGC either buy the land on which the golf course was built (they leased it but owned the several acres on which the clubhouse, entrance, etc... sat) or they would have to leave the site for another. And so construction stopped and the members decided to buy the property. It took them until the early part of 1921 to raise the funds and make the purchase. 

The timing for this could not have been better for the cadre of strong-minded members who wanted to design their own course (a mistake already made on several occasions) or worse for the Tillinghast supporters who were led by Roger Lapham. Lapham was asked in the late winter of 1921 to organize and run the 1921 U.S. Open back east. So he left SF and spent until August organizing and running the Open. He was under the impression the entire time that the work being done on the course was according to the plans designed by Tilly. When he arrived back home in August he was stunned by what he saw, a new members-designed course which he took great exception to and yet could do nothing about as the only left to be done was the "growing in of the greens."

Yet Lapham's work on the Open paid benefits that would soon bring Tilly back. In 1922 Lapham was appointed to the Executive Committee of the USGA, the first person from the west coast to be given this honor. This appointment enabled Lapham to be appointed to the SFGC Board of Directors in January 1924 and to be named chairman of the Green Committee. At the very first Board meeting he attended in 1924 he convinced to Board to bring Tillinghast back to redesign the course. Tilly arrived in March and did the design plan that hangs on the clubhouse wall. He would stay an extra fortnight beyond his original plans at Lapham's insistence and personally laid out the green complexes himself. In 1925 the course opened for play.

The differences between the two plans ranged from minor to dramatic. Only 3 holes were unchanged from his 1920 t the 1924 plan. For example, the 4th hole was lengthened by more than 20 yards and turned into a Reef hole with center mounding and bunkers that weren't part of the original plan. One of the major routing changes was that the original 1920 Tilly plan called for the nines to be swapped.
 
You asked, "I wonder if club feedback or personal reconsideration was the genesis?" Actually it was a bit of both but mostly due to the Spring valley Water Co. demand for money for the land...

[Matthew Rose]

I imagine it is pretty common in residential plans. When my parents were having a house built in the late 90s, the original lot plan included the planned routing of the golf course. From that time until the course opened all 18 holes, the routing was changed twice. Three holes on a secluded, wooden part of the property were discarded for three new ones on a boring, flat parcel on the other side of the course where more houses could be built. Then several holes in the middle were routed in the opposite direction so that all the water would be on the left instead of the right. In the end only about half the holes were built like the ones in the plan, and only three of them retained the same hole number (1, 17, and 18). The same architect (a disciple from the Nicklaus org) ended up doing all the revised routings.

The hole that my parents' house was located on changed from #5 to #2, as the three discarded holes would have been 2, 3, and 4. They were very unhappy about that.

Pretty much every revised routing was worse than the previous one, and the worst of the three was the one that got built. But, real estate won out over golf.

[Tim_Weiman]

Mike,


I'm not sure of the exact number, but multiple, very different routing plans were prepared for Sand Ridge in Chardon, OH. Funny thing: the club retained and framed a few of the routings that didn't make the final cut.


Environmental considerations played a major role in selecting the final routing. The property if about 360 acres and about 120 acres are wetlands. For better or worse, minimizing the intrusion into the wetlands played a big part in decision making.

[paul cowley]

Jeff and Tom are right...a routing starts out in verb form and becomes a noun when the options are fully explored.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jeff and Tom are right...a routing starts out in verb form and becomes a noun when the options are fully explored.

Cute phrase...I will probably borrow it at some point!

Mike,

Going back to your original point, even without all the noise, sound clutter of outside influence, sometimes when you go out in the field, you see things differently than the six times before.  And, "da kneebone connected to the...." takes place, sometimes affecting large parts of the routing.

[MCirba]

Thanks for everyone weighing in, particularly Jeff, Tom, Paul, and those with real life experience in planning routings.   It's terrific to hear and understand some of the factors that make up the decision-making process.

One thing that strikes me (thanks Kyle H!) about the earlier Cobb's Creek plan is that more holes were planned in the more level areas of the floodplain along (and across) the creek than were later approved and built.   One possibility affecting that plan may have simply been a large rainstorm during the planning process which may have led to reconsideration of so many dependencies on mother nature.   Also, the holes across the creek were in neighboring Delaware County, a fact that was later (in the 20s) to raise its head again as Delco began enforcing "Blue Laws" and actually arresting golfers playing on Sunday.   At this time, the city of Philadelphia was trying to have those areas "condemned" so there wouldn't be future issues of domain, but apparently these issues lingered for some time.

I mention these things only to add speculative information on the type of non-golf related issues that I suspect affect most design and routing efforts on all projects.

Thanks again!

[John Burnes]

Phil-


The Blueprint drawing you refer to was not done by Tilly.  It was done by a local urban planner who reached a certain level of significance in his own right, Charles Wellford Leavitt.  Though he didn't do much in GCA, he did a few, the club enlisted his ideas before settling in on our own, AWT.


(photo of said blueprint from my phone)

[Phil Young]

John,

The 36-hole golf course shown on that design drawing were done by Tilly. There are other copies of that drawing that have Tillinghast's name on it listing him as the golf course architect showing the exact same 36-hole designs. They are dated both several months earlier and two months later than the one hanging in the clubhouse. These can be found both in the course superintendent's office and at the Chestnut Hill Historical Society.

The ones at the Historical Society were donated a number of years ago by a past Board member along with numerous documents, letters, newspaper articles, scrap books, photographs and books of board minutes from both the club and the Women's auxiliary.

There also is a ledger book containing the accounts for the building of the golf courses and the grounds. Among the interesting notations is that they spent $477.90 on trees on 3/25/1922 and $277.00 on 8/25/1922 for "tee boxes." It lists all the separate land purchases and the money paid for them, the money lent to the club and the repayments and the various architects and surveying fees including Tilly's.

Unfortunately, during my several research trips to the Club and Historical Society I was never able to find the original design drawing showing the new 18-hole Wissahickon course that was built and the new, scaled-down clubhouse on the site where it is today. We did find one treasure, a copy of an 1898 drawing showing the St. Martins course and also a hand-drawn routing of the proposed second 9 that would be built a short time later. It was in three pieces and delicate condition. It was at the bottom of a box containing older blueprints that were kept in a locked basement closet...

[Jim Nugent]

If this is too much a threadjack, please ignore it.  When I saw Mike's title for this thread, I thought of wildly varied routing plans for the same property by differing architects.  Perhaps the course for the 2016 Olympics is one example?  Maybe the Sand Valley courses?  I'm interested to know how different/similar the various designs were. 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jim,

It seems there was a similar thread long ago.  There have been enough design competitions where the routings have come out to get an idea about that.  In any of those cases I have been involved in, it seems some holes get repeated (if perhaps backwards in the same corridor) and others are wildly different, often in the tougher site areas the gca's must deal with.

When I see other routings, I usually recall John Lennon speaking about other songwriters and wondering how they came up with their songs, as it was so different than his thought process.  I usually find a few holes in others I wish I had thought of but more I don't care for.

BTW, in one case, I came up with better holes, IMHO (and in the clients opinion, because I got the job) because I had walked the property most thoroughly and made use of a small opening of trees here, a rock outcrop there, etc., that they were familiar with.  One architect didn't even visit the site and took out some other important last uses (although had he been looking, they were clear on the map)

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