Garden City Golf Club # 12

[TEPaul]

Mike:

Bradley sent that fascinating photo to me maybe a year or more ago. In my opinion, Bradley is the best researcher and analyst out there for that kind of thing----eg the history of maintenance equipment. The important thing to me in that photo is not just those wild and highly dramatic green contours but that it does look like they could and did mow them to greenspace with those small light hand-mowers you see on top of that radical mound.

[Jeff_Brauer]

No, those mounds probably couldn't be restored at fw height.  They would stress a bunch, especially in a summer like this one.  Mounds dry out, especially at short cutting heights.  No one will propose such a thing at least as long as this summer remains in everyone's memory, which might be a long time.

Mike Cirba,

What is funny is this discussion group will praise the ODG for experimenting with unsustainable mounds, but any modern guy who does it would be roundly thrashed.  That is, if being roundly thrashed by the owner and having those things taken out doesn't occur first and the idea never sees the light of day.

That green is just one of literally thousands of examples of design ideas found wanting, that needed to be changed.  While the idea of huge mounds in the putting green is novel, and interesting, the cost and trouble of maintenance simply means that they did not give high enough golfing value for the trouble it took to keep them.

[TEPaul]

"That green is just one of literally thousands of examples of design ideas found wanting, that needed to be changed.  While the idea of huge mounds in the putting green is novel, and interesting, the cost and trouble of maintenance simply means that they did not give high enough golfing value for the trouble it took to keep them."



Jeff:

That is just so true!! Some seem to just want to refuse to believe it or consider it and particularly that some, and probaby all of the best and most respected architects back then made some really egregious mistakes that were not only some real bad playability problems but particularly some maintenance nightmares as golf and maintenance practices evolved over time.

You and I and Bradley, at least, should begin to list what some of them were that can be documented.

[Jeff_Brauer]

TePaul,

Now that would be a fun list to put together...or would it be a sad list?  But the concept of a "pure design" idea that scores highly, vs what it might score when adding aesthetics and maintenance (i.e., "real world score) fascinates me.

In essence, no idea is probably universally loved for its design quotient, but if its hard to maintain (or ugly) it will soon go away, since those qualities tend to score higher to the 100% margins.  I suspect many waterfalls (expensive, hard to maintain, and perhaps ugly) should go under the knife at some point!

[Mike Cirba]

Jeff,

Why do we think that is?   I mean, it's undeniably true, but why do we love these little bits of antiquity, impractical as they may have been, yet seem to agree that if Rees Jones did that he'd be vilified, at least on GCA?

Perhaps there's something about black-and-white photos that makes things look romantic and quaint.

Or, is it something more betterer, where the old guys seems to do it on a whimsical, random flight of fancy, where most modern architects seem to do anything wildly daring more out of a self-conscious attempt to reproduce something from the past, usually as part of a contrived owner-driven "theme"?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mike,

I think rose colored glasses and nostalgia have a lot to do with it.  Its more us and human nature than them.  I do love the BW photos though. In that one of GCGC, I can see the guy struggling to push that mower over the hill just from looking at it.  If you look real closely, I think you can see him cursing the gca under his breath!

We might look at the old guys as more whimsical and it is probably true.  In those days, they were really struggling to adapt golf to a new country, many new types of sites, and even then, new equipment (golf clubs and mowers, irrigation, etc.)  Those experiments do seem genuine, whereas with another century or so of experience, and having seen the mistakes, it often seems forced when we do it now.  A sort of contrivance simply for the sake of contrivance, although, the 12th at GC had to be seen in the same light way back when.

So, maybe its a combination of long term historical perspective and nostalgia that makes those long bulldozed old designs seem more signifigant.  Most of them had a lot of merit, some did not.  The fact that very few Raynor courses have been changed a lot speaks volumes as to how good those designs really were.  You can't step on a Raynor course without saying "They don't build em like this any more!)  And when we do, its merely a copy cat effort, which is never as satisfying.

[Mike Cirba]

Jeff,

Thanks for a really good response.

I also think generally the ODG's were working under much less in the way of environmental restrictions and/or EXPECTATIONS than today's architects, and today, as witnessed on this DG, EVERYONE's a architect, or at least an architectural critic.

I'm sort of a preservationist at heart, and love to see the old courses preserved, yet I wonder how much of that is due to the quality of the courses and course features preserved as the nostalgic and sentimental fact that they are still there after all this time, and they still look cool, and in most cases they still play cool, even if some of them are/were difficult to maintain, particularly at today's speeds and conditioning.

[Sean_A]

Jeff

All you say is undoubtably true.  I have never been one to get uptight about "losing" interesting architectural elements that may (usually were) ugly and/or impractical to maintain.  However, strangely, I do lament the loss of diversity and variety in architecture.  Much of what we see today (even the critics choice award winners) can look incredibly homogenized as in I just saw that shot at such and such course.  Current and recently passed archies can stand on the shoulders of previous archies, but in the name of aesthetics, maintenance, shot values, fairness, safety (you get the point, but they all add up to taking very few risks in design) they choose to stand on only one shoulder and not only that, that ignored shoulder is being systematically erased from history.  I think in 50 years time more folks will look back and wonder if it wasn't worthwhile preserving more whimsical architecture at the cost of slower greens and not so wonderfully manicured fairways etc.

Ciao   

[jeffwarne]

That seems like the prefect hazard to place on a course where the routing(or existing hole) allowed for a 480-510 yard par five.
Lots of different strategies could be employed to play around, over that mound to counteract the guy who simply hits driver mid iron.
Seems a lot better than an automatic up and  down, non strategy changing sand bunker.
You could mow it and irrigate at whatever height/level deemed appropriate for the season/weather by the super.

In a world where there are way more architects than current projects, it would seem innovation,excitement/quirk and imagination would be praised, not chastised.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I have actually tried a gentler version of that hole, at least on one side of the green as a hazard.  It doesn't really need to be that high to be effective with higher green speeds. 

I got the idea from 17 at Ballybunion which has very soft ridges on both sides, and if you miss pin high left or right, its hard to get any chip close.  Putting is a matter of hitting it just to the crest and hoping for the best.  You can't get it close, but at least the ridge on the other side keeps you from putting or chipping it right over the green.

I think TD and I discussed the idea of a little one foot ridge years ago.  It is really a very effective non-sand hazard to guard a green, and I think it will make a comeback, just not as high, exagerated, unnatural, and hard to maintain as the original 12th at Garden City.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Jeff,

The 9th at GCGC has that ridge, rising about one to two feet above the putting surface.

Unfortunately, it's in the back of the green.

Hopefully, the green will be extended further back, bringing it along with back hole locations into play.

[George Pazin]

Mike Cirba,

What is funny is this discussion group will praise the ODG for experimenting with unsustainable mounds, but any modern guy who does it would be roundly thrashed.  That is, if being roundly thrashed by the owner and having those things taken out doesn't occur first and the idea never sees the light of day.

That green is just one of literally thousands of examples of design ideas found wanting, that needed to be changed.  While the idea of huge mounds in the putting green is novel, and interesting, the cost and trouble of maintenance simply means that they did not give high enough golfing value for the trouble it took to keep them.

Don't you see the logic in praising the first person who experimented, even though it failed, while condemning someone who didn't learn from that failed experiment?

Perhaps you work secretly for the government...

[Joe Bausch]

Pat:

Anyone would identify the old green as being out of character, too.  That's why it got changed.

A former GCA poster has requested the following to be posted for him.  Please don't shoot the messenger.    


Tom, Someone should go back into the GCA archives and find all the 
times you have been obstinate about the restoring of the 12th, 
rejecting Pat's great passion and influence at the club and how you 
more or less nixed the ideas several times, or at least killed any 
notion of the idea.

You have great influence with the club; have made changes that 
seemingly don't fit (like the bunkers right of #17 green) and the 
insistence that the hole would fall on harsh criticism by the status 
quo is, to me, simply not good enough of an excuse. The hole fits the 
nature of Garden City in every aspect. Its the one of two times where 
man-made quirk was built--and worked--in Golf Archtiecture's glorious 
history. It was wrong to have changed it in the first place--
especially wrong to have let any one with the name Jones that 
practices golf architecture for a living, get within 100 miles of 
Garden City to begin with.

Restore the hole.

The current version is best passed and looked in reverence of the way 
we do with fallen heroes.

You should be ashamed of yourself for being so coy to this discussion.

[Tom_Doak]

Joe:

Seriously?  There are no former posters on Golf Club Atlas who have been in any of the discussions I've had with green chairmen or board members of Garden City about restoring the 12th green.

In fact, I have never once been asked to restore the green.  I've been asked to design a new version once or twice; I even submitted a drawing for a different version, once, but then backed off wanting to build it because I really don't want to design a watered-down version of the original.  I would love to see them restore it, and keep it; but I've never heard a willingness to do the former, and if they went ahead, I'd be pessimistic about the latter.

If Pat Mucci wants to go ahead and front run the committee and the board to restore the 12th green as it was, I'd be glad to build it for them.  But frankly, I think his influence at the club is greatly overestimated by this former GCA poster, and by the Discussion Group in general.  If it wasn't, somebody would have already restored the damned green, wouldn't they?


Edit:  In re-reading the note, I guess the former poster means that I've nixed the idea in previous threads ON GOLF CLUB ATLAS.  Which I have, because pretty much no one at Garden City has the guts to let me build that green.  I don't know who this former poster is, but it's idiotic of him to suggest they would do it just because I said so, or just because Pat said so ... or most idiotic of all, just because some former poster at Golf Club Atlas said so!

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tom Doak,

Let's set the record straight

Tom Poole, the former green chairman at GCGC directed you to provide a rendering to restore the 12th hole, after I convinced the entire committee, including Board members and the Chairman, also a Board Member that the hole should be restored.
We both attended the meeting where the Green Chairman directed you to provide a restoration rendering.

You then provided a rendering effectively restoring the hole.

Subsequently, you resubmitted a revised rendering of an iteration you had previously submitted and effectively undermined and killed the project.

Not long after that series of incidents I became pre-occupied with fighting for my life in a battle with very serious cancer,
thus what happened at # 12, Garden City GC and every other golf course in the world became of little concern to me.
I resigned all of my Board and Committee positions at every organization I was involved with and distanced myself from every and all projects not related to my medical condition so that I could focus on my battle with cancer.   

Subsequent to that, the only discussion I had with you about GCGC was the two phone conversations we had when I was trying to convince you to design Sebonack and accept the fact that it would be known as a Jack Nicklaus & Tom Doak design.
I informed you, that if you got the job that the only consideration I asked in return was that you stop by GCGC when you landed at LaGuardia or JFK on your way to Sebonack, so that you would restore the 12th hole.

Extensive chemotherapy may have affected my equilibrium, but not my memory.

I have chosen NOT to get reinvolved at GCGC, but, if I'm ever inclined to do so, you'll be amongst the first to know.

[Neil_Crafter]

Hi Bradley
That green photograph you posted - can you tell me where it is and when?
Thanks.
Neil

[Bradley Anderson]

Hi Bradley
That green photograph you posted - can you tell me where it is and when?
Thanks.
Neil

Neil,

I am fairly certain that the picture is of number 16 at Headingley Golf Club. I would guess it to be from pre-1913, but not exactly sure when.

[Bradley Anderson]

[Bradley Anderson]

My son just left and I can't get a photo on this site without his help. Grrr!

[Neil_Crafter]

Thanks Bradley
There was a suggestion by someone earlier that Mackenzie was in that photo, but for the life of me I can't see him.
Neil

[Neil_Crafter]

Sorry to take this thread away from GCGC, but I have another old image of the 16th at Headingley from a postcard from around the 20s-30s.
Just wondering if this is the same hole as it appears quite elevated with a drop off at the left rear that isn't evident in Bradley's 1913 photo. Anyone have any thoughts?

[Willie_Dow]

TP - Unfortunately, Mel Lucas is out of the country for a couple of weeks, and I doubt he can make the upcoming get together.  But I wanted to include some of his thoughts on this matter in his absence

Mel's notes on Peter W. Lees seem to fit in here.  "Lees, while at Mid-Surrey, in 1911, created the "Alpinization" style of course architecture.  He with J.H. Taylor took this flat in-land course and introduced grass hollows and mounds.  The mounds were on a large scale.  Some being a sixteen foot high rugged range, many as long as eighty yards and thirty yards in width.

He died at age 55, 5/11/23, and an obit gave him credit of being a (noted golf architect) of Garden City CC."