A Ross About To Bite The Dust

[Sean_A]

More about Brightmoor (Western) in Detroit. I found this in my Grosse Ile file yesterday.  I originally found it in the Grosse Ile file of the Given Library!  It is clear Ross had misgvings about how the final product of the real estate course would turn out.  Its a shame there is no date on the note as it would be interesting to find out when the Brightmoor name was dropped.   I think it is clear why the name was dropped, but it would be interesting to discover if the name for the course came about purely by accident as location indicator. 


Ciao

[Mike Bodo]

Craig, you are correct. I don't believe Western opened as Brightmoor. The course opened with a name to do with district... I forget exactly. Nobody then or now would use Brightmoor if trying to recruit Detroit area members. It must have been some sort of operating name at first. The odd thing about that name is Western is not in Brightmoor...which is a part of Detroit....maybe even when Western was built.  It could also be the case that Brightmoor was originally part of Redford...where Western G&CC is located.  I know Redford was at one time much larger, but I don't know what became what.  Being an area developed for auto industry housing, Brightmoor could well be a splinter of Redford.


PS...Rouge Park GC is not in Brightmoor either!

Ciao

Brightmoor was the name of the housing/golf community developer B.E. Taylor planned in which the course played a central part. I don't know if it opened as Brightmoor Golf Club and if it did, how long it operated under that name, but it was owned by the Western Land Co. up until 1945, when the membership purchased the club and renamed it Western Golf and Country Country Club. Eventually, the housing community got absorbed into what became Redford, MI as other houses shot up around it. It's easy to differentiate the golf community homes from the rest of the neighborhood, as they tend to be larger and more stately.

[Tim_Weiman]

Wow - not being a Ross is news to me.  I could have sworn the course advertised itself as such.  Anyway, there were some really neat holes out there that just don't get built anymore. 


#2 was a short par 4 with an angled fairway that fell away from the tee. It almost required a hook off the tee (or a very short iron) and I thought it was the only place on the course where the trees added to the quality of the hole. 


Number 8 was a par 4 with a cliff-top tee and little trouble, but the real challenge was the green that had a nasty little tier in it.  The options on the second shot were limitless on the few times it was playing firm and fast (right after they went public). 


And #16 was one of my favorite holes in Cleveland.  Long par 4, dogleg left that just opened up beautifully on your 2nd shot over a valley.  I normally don't like hitting woods into par 4's, but that was just a fun shot for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. 


Besides losing an architecturally interesting course (Ross or not), the other bad part of closing courses like this is the added strain it puts on the good public courses like Sleepy Hollow and Manakiki - add some more people to those courses and the already 5-hour round gets another 30 minutes tacked on to it.

Erik,
I don’t want to hijack the thread, but just wanted to mention I’m disappointed to learn Manakiki and Sleepy Hollow have become 5 hour rounds. That wasn’t true back when I used to play these courses in the early 1980s. At Sleepy Hollow, that was the era of Charlie Sifford as the pro and his wife who worked taking green fee payments. It may have been a public course - part of the Cleveland Metroparks - but it was very well maintained and a pleasure to play.