Kitanssett in Marion, Mass

[mark chalfant]

Would appreciate feedback on this course. best holes,greens
and routing



Curious how it compares to CC of  Fairfield in terms of challenge and f un to play

[Wayne Freeman]

  Mark-  I don't have any deep architectural analysis of these courses, but have been privileged to play both, and what a joy they are.  They were both built in the early 20's and are in very wealthy areas. Kittansett especially has a real blue-blood feel. I thought the layout there was terrific-  lots of variation requiring many different shots.  They have a terrific short par 3 right on the water and close by a pole that marks the water level when the course was struck by hurricanes and buried under water. I think a member there invented the stimpmeter.  Fairfield is also on the water and has some wonderful par 4's that I remember well. It is a real Raynor gem.  Don't pass either one up if you have the opportunity.

[Joel_Stewart]

Ran has a nice write up in the courses section.  Its much more than a one hole golf course with some really interesting architectural features especially the rock mound formations.

[TEPaul]

Mark:

What do you want to know about Kittansett?

This course for decades was considered to be basically designed by owner Frederick Hood. In the last few years we proved it to be a William Flynn design (because we found his design plans). We also found a letter from Merion's Hugh Wilson mentioning he was up there with Flynn for a few days when the course was being planned and designed.

We believe the course was constructed by local crews very likely under the supervision of owner Fredrick Hood (this could be why so many thought for so long that Hood designed the course) but the course was built very specifically to Flynn's design plans.

An interesting historical fact about the creation of Kittansett is that after the project was conceived an enormous amount of rock was found under the pre-construction site---and dealing with that problem completely busted the initial budget and probably almost made the course a "no-go". It's also one of the reasons many of the bunker features (greens?) are somewhat raised above natural grade (the other being a generally very high water table).

[Mark_Fine]

Tom,
Whitten and Cornish gave credit to Flynn in The Architects of Golf for Kitanssett.   I always attributed Hood as the guy who built it similar to Tillinghast and Burbeck at The Black.  
Mark

[T_MacWood]

Mark
I have not played Farifield, so I'm not sure how they compare. Kitanssett has very little elevation change. It is an interesting combination of inland holes carved through trees and holes completely naked to the bay. The third is a great hole, but so is the 2nd. 17 and 18 also standout in my mind. All four are out on the peninsula.

I haven't seen the course since Gil Hanse re-did the bunkering, but the course had a very old-fashioned feel--somewhat simplistic almost cop-like bunkers and the rock-piled mounds. I always thought that was due to Hoods involvement, but perhaps it was the site.

[Tom_Doak]

I stopped in there the other day with Brian Schneider on our way up to Old Sandwich.

The thing which struck us was how narrow the golf course was from the first hole straight through the 18th.  Combined with an average wind (and it looked to be quite a windy spot) it would be a very difficult test of control.  There were also quite a few interrupted fairways, which would beat on the high-handicap players.

The third hole is rightly famous but the 240-yard eleventh should be, too, with a large tier in the green dividing the higher left side from the lower right which hangs over bunkers.

[Mark_Fine]

Tom Doak,
When the wind howls and the mist comes in off the water it is a very tough test.  I've played it in different conditions and never found it very easy.  It is not very long on the card (about 6600 yards par 71) but weather conditions play a big role.  I've never found the course too firm but that could have been just how things were when I've played there.
Mark

[Eric Pevoto]

Mark,

I've never seen Fairfield, but I played Kittansett in what had to be a 40-45 mph wind.  I grew up playing in the wind, so I'm no stranger to its effects; I certainly like it better than no wind.  This was a test.

The routing exposes you to the shore 3 times: early in the round getting to the 3rd, then at 13, then again at 16 and 17.  The third is great.  Couldn't build it today.

I too really liked the eleventh, an inland hole.  A wild green with essentially two levels left and right.

Like I said, the wind howled the day I played.  IIRC, most holes played with a cross wind though seventeen stands out to me because it was completely exposed and into the breeze (gale). It plays down into a valley, then up to the green making the tee shot difficult to control (can't get the ball on the ground fast enough); then the second is up the hill.

Eighteen and one are parallel (sort of reminded me of TOC).  The entrance road borders eighteen on the right.  There was just a thin drainage ditch running between the two and little in the way of rough.  With the wind crossing, viewed all of it as grounds for golfing.  I played my second shot out of the first fairway.  I thought it would be cool to see it all maintained as fairway.

I owe you a call,
Eric

[TEPaul]

"Tom,
Whitten and Cornish gave credit to Flynn in The Architects of Golf for Kitanssett.  I always attributed Hood as the guy who built it similar to Tillinghast and Burbeck at The Black.  
Mark"

Mark:

There may be an interesting reason C&W attribute Kittansett to Flynn (while the club never did that before). All Flynn's drawing were given to his primary foreman, William Gordon, by Flynn's wife when he died in 1945. Wayne discovered those drawings in a box at William Gordon's son, David Gordon's place in Pa. I spoke to Geoffrey Cornish in the last two years and he said the guy who basically encouraged him to write "The Architects of Golf" was William Gordon.  

[TEPaul]

"There were also quite a few interrupted fairways, which would beat on the high-handicap players."

TomD:

There were? That's interesting. Maybe they've started to reestablish them. When we went up there to show them Flynn's plans for the first time we did mention how frequently those "interrupted" fairways appeared on his hole by hole plans. The club apparently had taken them out years ago because lady golfers and such didn't like them.

We told them there was little question in our minds that was an influence from Pine Valley on Flynn (when he worked there). Flynn used those "interrupted fairways" on a lot of his designs in the 1920s and even advertized them on his Army/Navy plan.

Most of the courses where he designed them either didn't use them or removed them but they seem to be coming back again. The Cascades is going to reestablish theirs again, I think.

[Dave_Miller]

Mark:

   We also found a letter from Merion's Hugh Wilson mentioning he was up there with Flynn for a few days when the course was being planned and designed.

 

Tommy:
Shame on you.  Hugh Wilson was the Club Champ at Aronimink.
Best
Dave

[TEPaul]

"Tommy:
Shame on you.   Hugh Wilson was the Club Champ at Aronimink.
Best
Dave"

What's the matter with you Dave? That's truly shoddy research. Tom MacWood might accuse you of only ever reading C&W.

Hugh Wilson did not win the club championship of Aronimink G.C., he won the club championship at 18 of the Belmont Golf Association within the Belmont Golf Club that was the precursor to Aronimink G.C. Not only that, but in the process of winning the club Championship at Belmont he birdied both colorfully named holes "Hoodoo Hollow" and "Pons Asinorum" both considered to be "card wreckers". (that latter fact was determined through 10 years of intense research)!

Not just that but when Belmont Golf Association finally encorporated into Aronimink G.C. there were six ladies on the board and only four men! Would you like me to give you the family histories of the six ladies to see if any of them had "Arts and Crafts" movement connections anywhere in their family background which might have been a primary influence on the architecture of the golf course? Not just that but Aronimink was named after the Lenape Indians and some say they were the regional "red man" representatives in the Philadelphia area of the English and American "arts and crafts" movement. There's a small Lenape Indian museum down near City Line Avenue and in that museum---most curiously---are a few tattered old copies of English magazine "Country Life" from just before the turn of the century.

If you people at Aronimink have any real interest in your club's history and tradition, Dave, I suggest the Board makeup should revert to 60% women almost immediately.

[Jeff_Mingay]

Flynn's consistent use of "interupted fairways" is really interesting. He planned quite a few at Manor CC in suburban Washington, DC as well.  

[Tom_Doak]

Tom:

Yes, there were a lot of interrupted fairways at Kittansett.  Just off the top of my head:  #1 and #18 both, #7, and #9; I think there were a couple of others but I don't remember which holes.

[TEPaul]

"Tom:
Yes, there were a lot of interrupted fairways at Kittansett.  Just off the top of my head:  #1 and #18 both, #7, and #9; I think there were a couple of others but I don't remember which holes."

TomD:

That's encouraging. Wayne, didn't Lennie Blodgett say most were taken out long ago because ladies didn't like them or am I losing my mind? (You don't have to answer that).

Maybe they actually believed our "Pine Valley influence story" and restored them all at Kittansett. If so, I'm really encouraged. It just shows sometimes you can make up all kinds of stuff and people will actually believe you!

Dave Miller:

I'm going over to Aronimink to see if I can convince them to restore those two wonderful old original "card wrecking" holes, the "Hoodoo Hollow" and the "Pons Asinorum"! So what if they're both underneath a 20 story office building right now?!

[wsmorrison]

"Tom,
Whitten and Cornish gave credit to Flynn in The Architects of Golf for Kitanssett.  I always attributed Hood as the guy who built it similar to Tillinghast and Burbeck at The Black.
Mark"

Mark,

Cornish and Whitten credit Flynn with the routing and it seems Frederick Hood with the design, along with one hole redesigned by Steven Kay.  I can't imagine what that one was since the course matches old photos very closely...and the Flynn plans too.

Tom Doak,

We have the plans for holes 1,2,4,5,6,7,8(par 3),14(par 3),15,16,17 and 18.  Every hole (except the par 3s) had interrupted fairways.  Several of the interruptions were there when we first visited (sorry Tom Paul, your memory doesn't serve you well on this one) although I don't think the rough is maintained at the height that they were intended to be.  Tom Paul does remember correctly that the old guard are/were not fond of it.

Flynn was designing interrupted fairways from the time he was finishing Pine Valley through 1925 then he seemed to stop.  It seems they either weren't built that way in some cases and they certainly weren't retained in all but a few.

The Cascades is returning some of the interruptions and have done so to 2 and 5? as of now.

I agree that the par 3 11th at Kittansett is terrific.  That's a heck of a green on such a long hole.  Bill Dow showed me exactly how to play that hole when I lose distance, as he has in his mid-70s.  

That is a wonderful golf course and a fabulous club.  Tom Doak, did you stop and check out George Thomas's Marion GC up the road from Kittansett?  I think it is 1906, it is really neat.  Stone walls and hedges to carry; tons of quirk--Tom Paul calls it a steeple chase course.

Dave Miller,

Craig Disher found an aerial of the second incarnation of Aronimink near City Avenue.  Wasn't this in a different spot than the original Belmont Golf Association?  I'm looking for Pons Asinorum and can't find it anywhere.

[TEPaul]

"I'm looking for Pons Asinorum and can't find it anywhere."

Wayne:

If you can't find "Pons Asinorum" the least you can do is try to describe it.

[Ed_Baker]

Tommy Paul,
 Now you've done it pal, I just had to call 911 for Miller, just the thought of 60% women at Aronimink has sent him over the edge, he's in restraints hyper ventilating and foaming at the mouth. Not to worry though, I know a great taxidermist we'll stuff him and put him on the corner stool in the grill room at the River and make him President in perpetuity.

[Dave_Miller]

What's the matter with you Dave? That's truly shoddy research. Tom MacWood might accuse you of only ever reading C&W.

Hugh Wilson did not win the club championship of Aronimink G.C., he won the club championship at 18 of the Belmont Golf Association within the Belmont Golf Club that was the precursor to Aronimink G.C. Not only that, but in the process of winning the club Championship at Belmont he birdied both colorfully named holes "Hoodoo Hollow" and "Pons Asinorum" both considered to be "card wreckers". (that latter fact was determined through 10 years of intense research)!

  .

Tommy:
I am duly chastised
The name Aronimink is derived from Chief Aronimink who was the Chief of the Lenape Indians and whose home was purchased as the first Clubhouse.
Prior to Newtown Square the Club was located in Drexil Hill in what is now known as the Aronimink section.
60% Women - I don't know
Best
Dave

[TEPaul]

Ed:

Sorry about that. Tell you what. I'm going over to Aronimink and convince them anyway that they should go back right now to their club's tradition back around 1900 when the Board of the Club was 60% women. It really is true! Can you believe it?--they were voting on the Board of that club before they had the right to vote in this country!

But if it will make Dave feel better, in exchange, if I actually do convince Aronimink to put 60% women back on their Board, I promise I'll hie on down to D.C and try to convince the US Goverment to repeal the XIXth Amendment (Women's Right to Vote). Do you think that will bring Dave out of his catatonia?

[wsmorrison]

"If you can't find "Pons Asinorum" the least you can do is try to describe it."

pons as·i·no·rum  Listen: [ pnz s-nôrm, -nrm ]
n.
A problem that severely tests the ability of an inexperienced person.

I thought it would be something anatomical below the equator.  What's with the highbrow wordsmithing?

So, pons asinorum is basically everything and anything to Mike Malone, right?  

[TEPaul]

Wayne:

Wow! Good pickup on "Pons Asinorum". At first it sounded to me like some old fashioned cream for a rectal rash, but it's actually in one of my dictionoriums. In the one on the top of my stack of thirty or so it says;

pons asinorum-the geometric propostion that if a triangle has two equal sides, the angles oppostie are equal; so named for the difficutly beginners have in mastering it. [ < L; bridge of asses]

What do you think? That sure does sound like it could be some great strategic geometric golf architecture at that time in Philadelphia just before Horace Hutchinson and his incredible Country Life "arts and crafts" golf architectural influence made it to Philadelpia, wouldn't you say?

We need to look into this "Pons Asinorum" hole at the old Belmont Golf Association (the precursor to Aronimink). It may've been a hole as famous to "Dark Age", "Victorian", "Industrial" or "Geometric" architecture as the redan would be later to "Classic" or "Golden Age" architecture.

It looks like the green on Pons Asinorum may've been a geometric propositon of a triangle of two equal sides. By tomorrow morning I want you to report to me if the angles on all opposite sides are equal. And if you manage that then you must hit a soft fade into a pin in the lower right oblique angle.

If you can do all that then I'll call Bill Coore to see if he'd be interested in restoring Belmonts's "Pons Asinorum" hole on his next course that logically should be a tribute to early "geometric" architecture.

[Kevin_Reilly]

One of my partners is a member at Kittansett.  He told me that the club has done a fair amount of tree clearing recently, opening things up a bit.