Has anyone played Royal Westmoreland, Barbados?(subtopic: quarries)

[Phil McDade]

Tom:

That's a fair statement, about the semi-blindness of it. I had bought the yardage book in the clubhouse, and was at the tail end of a 36-hole marathon (Kingussie, a bit of a climb, in the AM, followed by the Boat in the afternoon) that day, so the go/no-go decision on the tee for my admittedly shortish game was easy. It is an odd hole for someone playing it the first time, but I'd think the regulars would get a kick out of the multiple approaches to playing it.

[Garland Bayley]

Phil,

Do I understand you correctly that you don't know of Langford ever using a quarry in a golf course?

As far as quarries are concerned I guess one of the greatest examples is the sand and gravel quarry that Chambers Bay is built in. The 10th hole is routed through the the sand quarry they used to supply much of the sand for the rest of the site.

[Phil McDade]

Garland:

Langford and Moreau had their hand in something like 250 courses, according to fairly well-respected research, and some of those are NLE or somewhat undocumented. I've only played or visited just a handful of L/M courses, and none of them could be considered quarry sites (nor some of the ones subject to GCA threads/articles, such as Culver Academies, Kankakee, Wakonda, Harrison Hills).

Having said that, those guys did move a ton of dirt on their projects, and on some courses that I've played, I've wondered if some of the sharp dips in the terrain of the course was existing landforms, or the result of some of L/M's digging (the little pond that fronts the pushed-up green at the wonderful par 5 4th hole at Spring Valley comes to mind, and I've always wondered about the sharp dip on the back nine at Lawsonia -- a pond to cross on the tee shot of the par 4 15th, as well as the ravine to cross on the tee shot of the par 5 11th and the sharp drop before the green on the par 5 13th).

[Garland Bayley]

A civil engineer and a mining engineer. I guess it would be surprising if they didn't "move a ton of dirt".
 

[Phil McDade]

Garland:

The interesting thing about Langford in particular was how almost scientific he was in his approach to both the design of a course (on the ground), as well as the way he thought about golf and golf design and how courses ought to be designed.

As Ron Forse pointed out in his recent talk at a GCA L/M outing, Langford kept absolutely meticulous records of how much dirt he moved, and where he moved it, on his courses. But he also wrote alot about golf (and was a very good golfer), and the USGA journals have several of his articles where he applies these interesting little mathematical formulas to things like the odds of two-putting a green, or why short courses can demand greater shot variety than longer courses.