Colt's site visits while at PV

[Ally Mcintosh]

Sorry for the continuous posting... just thoughts are coming to me...

Suggesting WH Old was changed because of a glaring weakness may be somewhat off the mark. I seem to remember that there was a big change because of the rerouting of the motorway (in much the same way as Shinnecock Hills) but I guess that may be considerably more recent... Can't quite recall...

As for Sunningdale, don't forget that Colt's New course was drastically changed by Tom Simpson with the introduction of six new holes... Granted, that has nothing to do with the Old course...

I sound like I'm arguing against Colt here which is far from what I meant to do. I think I better stop.

[Bradley Anderson]

Sunningdale was absolutely the light bulb moment - if there ever was one - for golf course architecture.

It was the first, or certainly one of the first, golf courses in the entire world to truly go from plow to play in 12 months. Prior to Sunningdale it would take up to three years to have playable turf cover on a golf course, because it was mostly done vegatatively by transfering turf. And even that turf would take generations to form a tight playing surface. Turf grass seed was such an unreliable commodity before this time. But with the assistance of Reginald Beale, who was the turf stud of that time, Sunningdale was all grown in with seed.

We can say that Tom Dun was unimaginative for throwing up barriers and ditches and calling them bunkers, but as Hutchinson put it "a man can not be criticised because he is not in advance of his time".

A lot of the developments in architecture at this time were tied to the art and science of greenkeeping. It must have just been liberating to those men to really shape the earth for the first time into golf features, knowing that it could be sprinkled with seed and 12 months later golfers could be playing on it.

[Patrick_Mucci_Jr]

TEPaul,

What about GCGC pre NGLA ?

Bradley Anderson,

The ability to seed and how it affected architecture is a very interesting point.

I never considered the architectural constraints that alternative methods and a three year grow in would create.

[Bradley Anderson]

Patrick,

It is possible also that some remodeling work was done to those very first golf courses because improved varieties of turf were suddenly available.

The quality of seed that you ended up with also exerted huge influence on how the project turned out. There was nothing like the quality controls in place that we have today.

I am in my very early stages of studying the history of this subject. It appears that the worlds foremeost expert on turf seed, and growing in a golf course from 100% seed was Reginald Beale. He made many trips to America, and you could argue the case that he brought as much enlightenment with him as Colt did during his brief visits here.

Park is credited for doing a kind of total site preparation at Sunningdale. But it was Beale who provided the seed and the grow-in know how that made that accomplishment possible.

[TEPaul]

"I think you are trying to broadly package the idea of inland golf architecure into pre and post heathlands.  Thats fine, however, this idea has been around a long time and it is badly lacking in details.  I am only trying to push the agenda out a bit further."

Sean:

Yes I am trying to do that, particularly the significance of those early heathland courses compared to what came BEFORE them INLAND. I think the heathland architecture both can and should be looked at that way. And the fact that idea has been around a long time probably just serves to confirm the accuracy of that fact.

As for supplying more detail to the heathland breakthrough or evolution in architecture I have no problem with that at all of course. But I don't really want to see someone try to rewrite the basic facts of what happened there, when and by whom.

Read chapter 3 in Cornish and Whitten's "The Architects of Golf" called "The Heathland Quartet". I realize that chapter is not as comprehensive and detailed as it might be but if you can offer something that changes the validity of what it says and who it names from that era in the healthlands and the significance of what happened there, by whom and when and how that was percieved around the world I'd like to see it. I do not believe you can or at least I don't believe you have yet. And I don't believe someone else who tried to offer more detail about that time did either.

I think we know that Tom MacWood tried to develop and offer a new and highly detailed slant on that time and place and basically why it happened and who basically inspired it and influenced it. I feel his assumptions and conclusion on the influence and therefore the significance of Horace Hutchinson, Country Life Magazine, and particularly the Arts and Crafts Movement (that was clearly into other and diverse things) on that architecture in that place and at that time and later in the Golden Age is just basically massively exaggerated and overblown. That kind of thing to me isn't much more than  revisionism on historic accuracy!

[TEPaul]

Furthermore, I feel one thing that C&W just touched on in that chapter (but thank God they touched on it) which is mentioned and developed above by Bradley Anderson is of huge importance to what happened there in the heathlands and why and when. That of course is the matter of agronomics and what the heathlands did to change that from most everything that had come before it INLAND. A search of the back pages of this website will uncover some threads discussing how important that too was.

[TEPaul]

"TEPaul,
What about GCGC pre NGLA?"

Patrick:

Yes? What about it?

What about Myopia too?  

Do you recall what Macdonald said about those two courses pre-NGLA (as well as CGC) in his book?  


"The ability to seed and how it affected architecture is a very interesting point.
I never considered the architectural constraints that alternative methods and a three year grow in would create."


Of course you didn't Patrick, and that's just another reason you're such a lame-brain and should listen to me more and more often. Have you ever bothered to read and appreciate what Cornish and Whitten said on that point on their heathland chapter and what they said about what lay under the heather and gorse and such of the heathland sites of Sunningdale and Huntercombe? That alone they mentioned was a virtual mother-lode discovery for inland golf and agronomy as well as architecture!

The other interesting and important factor that I think most overlook is it was also about the first time a professional architect actually slowed down and took the time and the far more available money to do something in one place! The very same thing was true of Fowler about three years later, and that too got as much or more notice as what Park Jr did a few years previous.

At least that's what C&W said. If someone can deny those facts and prove them historically inaccurate with others that deny them I'd love to see them try.