Geoff Shackelford article in Golfdom

[Sean Remington (SBR)]

  Just opened my June 2004 Golfdom magazine to find a wonderful piece by Geoff Shackleford, "The Best of the Best".
Geoff makes the case that,"Many Architecture aficiaondos insist that Shinnecock Hills could be the most complete design in the world."
  You get a clear history of the club and how William Flynn came to work there and design the course as it is today. To help clear up some of the controversy on an earlier post Geoff includes.
   
   "Flynn retained only one hole from the old Macdonald-Raynor course, today's devilish par-3 seventh. It's argably the most severe and unusual Redan derivative created, leading some to wonder if Flynn didn't touch up even that hole."

  I already have the pages cut out of the magazine ready to be laminated and put up in the our clubhouse this morning. For my purposes, I long for the day that my members embrase the fact that they play a golf course that at one time Mr. Flynn designed, owned and operated for public play. How many Classical era architects made this effort?  Although we are in Philadelphia we are not mentioned along with Flynn's other great designs in this area because we have losed sight of what we have here. The article correctly states. "The quirky side of Flynn went unnoticed because many sandy features have been grassed over or trees have suffocated Flynn's courses to the point that they are unrecognizable."
   
    I hope everyone gets a chance to read this very informative article.

 

[TEPaul]

"The quirky side of Flynn went unnoticed because many sandy features have been grassed over,...."

This is an interesting little tidbit, even as it relates to a few holes on Shinnecock.

Shinnecock, by the way, has done an absolutely wonderful job in recent years of removing from the course an overcrowding of trees (the trees that remain on the course are impressive to me for some of the interesting shapes of their trunks---carefully considered by Michaud and the club apparently!). This effort was spearheaded by the club’s green chairman of a least two decades. But with the removal of trees, particularly on the front nine flat land holes there was an interesting Flynn-made architectural feature for that time that was not returned. On holes #5 and #6 Flynn created enormous areas that were labeled on his design blueprints as “undulated sand waste area”.

According to a comprehensive pre-construction review by England's Hugh Alison of Flynn’s Shinnecock plan those areas were an architectural supplement to flat featureless land. From the old aerials those “undulated sand waste” areas were impressive and one can imagine today on those low profile holes how they must have looked from the tees!

The demise of those impressive “undulated sand waste” areas constructed by Flynn was apparently the result of misunderstanding of what they were by the club perhaps many decades ago and they were allowed to vegetate and grass over . Perhaps they were so well done the club thought they were areas of natural sand waste and let them go. We spoke to the club about restoring them at some point. It’d probably take a good deal of work to restore them and keep them as sort of maintained but "unmaintained looking" areas.

I hope they restore them, as they must have been impressive and sort of frightening to the golfer’s eye. We’re also quite convinced the inspiration to use this feature came from the time Flynn was lent by Merion to finish the construction on a number of the holes of Pine Valley (#12-#15 & right green #9).

[A_Clay_Man]

Tom Paul- The use of the word "waste" is fascinating. I had heard just this year, from one of them ignorant TV announcers, that Pete Dye's Waste area, was the first.

It just shows why Wayne was so passionate, huh?

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

There are some interesting aerials of Shinnecock that appear in this week's GolfWorld.

The pictures were taken late in the day when the shadows tend to accentuate the ground features.

The pictures seem to indicate mounding between several of the holes and it would seem logical that these mounds might have been the dunes you reference.

Is there a great topo of Shinnecock that you are aware of ?

Perhaps that topo could assist in identifying the dunes areas.

[Paul_Turner]

More contradiction about Shinnecock.  Is the redan Macdonald/Raynor's or Flynn's??  Now only 1 hole from M/R?

Seems to be a concerted effort to make Shinnecock #1 in the world ("course" or "design"), from GCA regulars?  Seems a bit weird.

[wsmorrison]

Paul,

I don't think the evidence is clear as yet.  Certainly Flynn designed the tee box to the left of the one currently in use which is an original M/R tee.  The bunkers are all Flynn and the green seems built up higher than the topo lines show on the map Flynn had made of the existing course prior to his redesigns.  But the answer is not yet in.  Could be Macdonald/Raynor or it might be Flynn.  What is clear is that the unused Flynn tee (Mark Michaud discovered it prior to seeing the drawings when the trees in this location were taken down) is a much better angle to the current green than you get with the current tee.

Don't look for any conspiracy theories regarding a push to make Shinnecock #1 in the world; I don't think there is one.  We'll get Bill and Hillary to look into it though.  It is pretty ridiculous to try and rank architecture but Shinnecock Hills is without doubt one of the world's greatest tests of golf, a beautiful course, and a tremendous design for that site.  It is simply superb in every regard.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Wayne Morrisson,

How visible are the remnants of the old golf course, both across the highway and on the clubhouse side ?

[wsmorrison]

Good question, Pat.  I've never been below Hwy 27 to see those holes, so I can't say about them.  Mark Michaud told me that you can find traces of the Biarritz (#6) and a few of the other holes near the railroad.  I know from the driving range you can see on the right side the old M/R 11th (Eden) green.  You can still see the M/R fill pad on the current 3rd green.  Flynn extended the front right of the green but its been lost.  The M/R greenside bunkers of #1 are Flynn's right side fairway bunkers.  You can still see evidence of the M/R green in the rough.  There's a slight depression early on in the 1st fairway that is the remnant of a M/R bunker.  I'm not sure since I've really only been considering the area included in the Flynn design, but I think the M/R 2nd green and 3rd tee are where the maintenance buildings and parking lot are.  Since George Bahto studied the M/R version in areas other than where the Flynn course is situated, he'd be the best guy to answer this interesting question.  Aren't some of the practice holes on the right as you drive in part of the M/R?  Maybe 4 tee and 5 green?  Just to the left of the beginning of the current 14th would be M/R 16th green, but I haven't noticed it out there.  It is possible that the M/R 15th green can be located left and short of the left greenside bunker on 8.    The nearly surrounding bunkers of this Cape hole should be easy to spot if carefully searched for.  The current tee box used on 7 is the original M/R tee box for this, their 14th.  Certainly it is easier now to look for pre-Flynn stuff now that so many trees have come down.   Back in the days of Flynn's redesign, the fill for obsoleted greens might have been used during construction around the course so some might be lost.

By the way, Tom and I were at a dinner at Merion this past Monday and we think we found the original 13 green site below the caddie shack.  I used to think it was where the shack is, but I am pretty sure we found it below that--it certainly looked like an old green site.  

[wsmorrison]

Pat,

I don't think anyone has responded as yet to my question so I ask you about a different way to play Shinnecock.  How about playing 9 at Shinnecock to 9 fairway and then to 18 green while playing 18 to 18 fairway and then to 9 green.  What do you think of this routing iteration?

[TEPaul]

"More contradiction about Shinnecock.  Is the redan Macdonald/Raynor's or Flynn's??  Now only 1 hole from M/R?"

Paul:

There's no contradicitons here exactly. What's come up is a whole lot of Toomey & Flynn's blueprints and construction plans that were in the possession of the Toomey & Flynn Co. until Flynn died in 1945 at which point they were given to William Gordon whose estate obviously passed them on to his son David Gordon, whose barn they've been sitting in for 50 or so years. There's a lot of valuable information on those plans and plenty of potential detail about exactly what was done where. As far as we know no one's really looked at these things since the time they were used to construct Shinnecock. All the stories of the past Mcd/Raynor holes were just second-hand information. These plans are the real thing.  The Dick Wlson story was real simple. Wilson came up to the club in the 1950s for some redesign work and bascially just told the club he designed the course. But David Gordon filled in the truth there too because his father was the project manager on Shinnecock, not Wilson. The redesign work Wilson did in the 1950s was very minimal too. He made a moderate amount of suggestions but the club didn't want to do most of them. Wilson's suggestions and what was done in the 1950s is very well documented by the club.

"Seems to be a concerted effort to make Shinnecock #1 in the world ("course" or "design"), from GCA regulars?  Seems a bit weird."

I'm not sure what you mean by a concerted effort. We just put a short paragraph at the end of an article about Flynn saying we'd bet Shinnecock hit #1 in the next few years. That's not a concerted effort to make Shinnecock #1.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Wayne,

I think it would be very interesting, with perhaps a better, or more dramatic finishing hole.

I'd like to try that before offering a final opinion.

[wsmorrison]

Pat,
I'd like to be there when you try it!  Good luck in the Singles.  Hope to see you down Philly way sometime soon.
Best,
Wayne

[TEPaul]

If you guys are talking about playing to #18 green from #9 tee box and vice versa that really would be interesting. I was looking at that very closely yesterday and trying to gauge how it could be done off of the drives of the group of Singh, Darren Clarke, Furyk and Adam Scott on #9 and off of the drives of the Haas's on #18.

It looks to me to be harder from #9 fairway to #18 green and maybe a bit easier for a good player from #18 fairway to #9 green---although you'd have to come directly over those hillside bunkers.

It looks like it may be sort of a reasonable option to drive the ball from #9 tee over into #18 fairway and maybe get farther out than from #18 tee but the angle off the tee box and onto the fairway is almost at 45 degrees!

It's not possible to hit the ball from #18 tee over into #9 fairway but if they were to merge the two fairways together over the hill between the holes that would be sort of interesting! It'd probably be super dangerous too as it'd be blind from both tees!