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Mark Bourgeois

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If so, this makes me want to get on an Air NZ flight pronto. If not, what happened? I don't have permission to post the full aerial here — link comparing today's course and 1940's: http://golfcoursehistories.com/Titi.html




Charlotte. Daniel. Olivia. Josephine. Ana. Dylan. Madeleine. Catherine. Chase. Jesse. James. Grace. Emilie. Jack. Noah. Caroline. Jessica. Benjamin. Avielle. Allison.

Dónal Ó Ceallaigh

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Re: WOW! Mac's green complexes at Titirangi in 1940: still like this today?
« Reply #1 on: November 23, 2013, 10:32:38 AM »
Nice work Mark. I'm just curious about how much detail you can observe in these aerials. I can't see much myself and the cynic within me wonders that if this wasn't a Mac design, would you be so excited?

Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +2/-1
Re: WOW! Mac's green complexes at Titirangi in 1940: still like this today?
« Reply #2 on: November 23, 2013, 10:38:57 AM »
Mark:

All of the greens at Titirangi were rebuilt about 10-12 years ago to USGA spec.  It was one of those "sympathetic restoration" jobs where they tried to imagine what MacKenzie would have built today, based on his old drawings and current day green speeds.  Generally, the work was very well done, but you are not going to find any of the original work.

I had played the course in 1988 before the work, and was somewhat disappointed by the greens, which were not nearly as exaggerated as the drawings.  Perhaps they had already been redone once by then.  Titirangi is an interesting case, in that MacKenzie spent his usual 3-4 days on site and produced drawings, but he did not have an Alex Russell or Perry Maxwell stationed in New Zealand to oversee the work ... so he left it with the club secretary to figure out.  I had assumed the work did not come out so well, but perhaps your aerial photo shows that it came out TOO well, and was changed later on.

Mark Bourgeois

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: WOW! Mac's green complexes at Titirangi in 1940: still like this today?
« Reply #3 on: November 23, 2013, 07:51:05 PM »
Dónal, I think the fair question is whether I am more excited by the quality of the aerial than by the provenance of the course or by its contours.  :P

Tom, I wonder how much (if any) the course degraded due to the Depression. The aerial suggests perhaps not much. The shared fairways, the way the greens kind of slotted in and the apparent playing strategies gave the impression of a tightly-fitting jigsaw puzzle. A little like Pasatiempo (originally).
Charlotte. Daniel. Olivia. Josephine. Ana. Dylan. Madeleine. Catherine. Chase. Jesse. James. Grace. Emilie. Jack. Noah. Caroline. Jessica. Benjamin. Avielle. Allison.

Neil_Crafter

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Re: WOW! Mac's green complexes at Titirangi in 1940: still like this today?
« Reply #4 on: November 24, 2013, 07:43:14 PM »
Mark, this is one of the all time crispest and most informative old aerials that I have seen in terms of showing surface contour, so a great find on your part. The short answer is that no the course is not like this today.

The club had an architect in Chris Pitman, and English former superintendent I believe. Unfortunately he re-interpreted Mackenzie's bunkering in the style of the Cal Club etc, or a pastiche thereof, rather than finding the evidence locally of what was once there. And as we can see from this 1940 aerial the club did a pretty decent job of interpreting Mackenzie's green plans and his bunkering. But this bunkering appears more in the mould of the Meadow Club to my eye, which interestingly is the very next project chronologically that Mackenzie went on to do after he travelled on to the US after leaving NZ at the end of January 1927.

Tom, certainly Mackenzie had no-one of the calibre of Russell or Maxwell to do the work, but Titirangi entrusted one of its own members, Bert Cooke, to undertake the work and by all accounts he did a pretty decent job. Further, it is recorded that Mackenzie was asked by the committee to have a bunker built under his supervision before he left (which was also done at Royal Adelaide) so no doubt they had at least some guide as to how Mackenzie wanted the bunkering, and could follow this lead. Cooke apparently built more new greens that mackenzie envisaged, so probably some of them were Cooke greens! And in 1938 Charles Redhead rebuilt the 2nd green short of the hole as Mackenzie had designed it and Cooke built it just across the road. The council eventually saw the danger in this and forced the club to change. So the second green is a Redhead one.

There seem to be hardly any old photos in the club's history that depict the bunkering, the only one I could find is this one of the par 3 11th, called the Redan. I've included Mackenzie's green plan and the 1940 aerial for comparison.







Mark Bourgeois

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: WOW! Mac's green complexes at Titirangi in 1940: still like this today?
« Reply #5 on: November 28, 2013, 09:40:29 AM »
Here's a full aerial comparison of the course in 1940 and in 2010:
http://golfcoursehistories.com/Titi.html

Neil

Looking at the plan Mackenzie drew up it looked like Mac's plan for the 3rd was to use TOC 16 as a template. It does not appear the plan for this hole was executed (not fully, at least) nor does it exist today as planned. Which seems a shame: assuming the bunker on the right is to discourage tee shots towards OB (and houses) right, instead of that bunker why not restore the width of the hole down the *left*, turn that bunker in the left rough back into a Principal's Nose (ie bring back fairway left of it), and perhaps move the tee over towards OB a little?

Wouldn't that provide a nice incentive for most to drive away from OB, while the greenside bunkering provides the reward for taking the Hoganesque line down the right of the PN bunker?

In its current form the green seems to just encourage going down the right as close to that RH fwy bunker as possible. Because of the lost fwy width and added trees on the left it seems there's zero incentive to go over there.
Charlotte. Daniel. Olivia. Josephine. Ana. Dylan. Madeleine. Catherine. Chase. Jesse. James. Grace. Emilie. Jack. Noah. Caroline. Jessica. Benjamin. Avielle. Allison.

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