Architectural Significance of the 1st......

[Mark Pavy]

Golf Course you ever played.

Without looking it up, do you know off the top of your head who designed the first course you played?

Why doesn't the architectural community place more importance on designing "introductory" golf courses, courses designed for kids and beginners, courses designed to introduce new players to the game?

[RJ_Daley]

Yup, I know that answer in my case.  I lived a wedge away from the first tee of a Tom Bendelow course in Madison WI, called Burr Oak GC, built the same year as Nakoma CC just a short distance away (the more well regarded of the two).  While it is not officially been attributed by documentation as far as I know, it had what one would say were all the stylistic hallmarks of TBs design with snarly lipped, bunkers aside smallish greens, very over the ground laid upon the existing land routing, with little to no shaping beyond tees and greens.  It did have one large sand pit FW bunker more similar to a Langford elongated on a diagonal 'gullwing' bunker that had stairs to get in ad out of.  Burr Oak was a 9 holer like so many other Bendelow projects.  It was a cute and sporty course where the University of Wisconsin golf club team practiced. 

As a kid, I and the neighborhood kids lived on the course, often batting around irons to greens at dusk, or in fall and when no snow in winter.  We hunted with our BB guns, shot our bow and arrows, built forts in the woods, hawked and resold found balls (sometimes found before the golfers knew they were lost  )

And, when the golf course was sold, they hired us neighborhood kids to help roll and stack FW sod that the development company harvested to sell.  So, I tend to think I played my first golf on that course along with every sport known to American kids of that 50s era, when golf was over for the seasons or after the sale and it lay abandoned for several years.  I literally helped roll up  my first golf course.

[Bill_McBride]

Both Bill Shulz and I played our first golf at a nine hole course called Las Gallinas (the roosters) just north of San Rafael, California.   I don't think it was an RTJ or Jack Fleming!

[JimB]

Both Bill Shulz and I played our first golf at a nine hole course called Las Gallinas (the roosters) just north of San Rafael, California.   I don't think it was an RTJ or Jack Fleming!

Add me to your list Bill.

For my first 18 I honestly can't remember if it was San Geronimo; Robert Muir Graves or Peacock Gap; William Bell.

[Bill_McBride]

Both Bill Shulz and I played our first golf at a nine hole course called Las Gallinas (the roosters) just north of San Rafael, California.   I don't think it was an RTJ or Jack Fleming!

Add me to your list Bill.

For my first 18 I honestly can't remember if it was San Geronimo; Robert Muir Graves or Peacock Gap; William Bell.

Too bad that place has been NLE for many years, many legends got their start there!

My first 18 was at Indian Valley in Novato, no idea who designed it!

I think A V Macan worked at San Geronimo before Graves but not sure if he did the original layout. 

[mike_beene]

Ralph Plummer

[JimB]

Why doesn't the architectural community place more importance on designing "introductory" golf courses, courses designed for kids and beginners, courses designed to introduce new players to the game?

You have a good point. Not sure this description found on the San Geronimo "Golf Now" page makes it great for new players. Las Gallinas as Bill mentioned was a much better place to start.

"A word of warning though...don't let San Geronimo's natural beauty catch you off guard. Water hazards await misdirected shots on more than half of the holes. Ponds come into play on seven holes, creeks on one."

[Paul Gray]

Since this conversation always ends up in a call for more par 3 courses, my first course was the 9 holer at Hayling. Not for the first time I'll claim that it's the best par 3 course in the world. No, but it is a really good links pitch and putt which gave me an early introduction to the ground game.

[Jim Nugent]

Both Bill Shulz and I played our first golf at a nine hole course called Las Gallinas (the roosters)... 

Right animal, wrong gender. 

My first course was Ruth Park, just outside St. Louis MO.  Robert Foulis, who designed a number of St. Louis area courses, also laid out RP.  9 holes, about 2850 yards, no par 5s, cost $1.25 IIRC.  Foulis came from St. Andrews, where he worked with Old Tom. 

[Mark Pavy]

Since this conversation always ends up in a call for more par 3 courses, my first course was the 9 holer at Hayling. Not for the first time I'll claim that it's the best par 3 course in the world. No, but it is a really good links pitch and putt which gave me an early introduction to the ground game.

Whilst I do agree there should be more Par 3 courses, I'm more curious as to why the architectural community has so little regard for the 9 hole Par 3 course. Is it simply because the model (low cost construction, low cost golf) doesn't stack up for the architect to make money, therefore no interest?

[Kirk Gill]

I can't think of any aspect of Indian Tree golf course in Arvada, Colorado that is architecturally significant. Dick Phelps designed it, like a lot of other public tracks around town. I guess it does have one of the longer par 5's around at 640+ yard from the back tees.

[Adam Clayman]

While it was far from my first, there was a significant influence on the first thoughtful design I ever played. Lawsonia.

[Paul Gray]

Since this conversation always ends up in a call for more par 3 courses, my first course was the 9 holer at Hayling. Not for the first time I'll claim that it's the best par 3 course in the world. No, but it is a really good links pitch and putt which gave me an early introduction to the ground game.

Whilst I do agree there should be more Par 3 courses, I'm more curious as to why the architectural community has so little regard for the 9 hole Par 3 course. Is it simply because the model (low cost construction, low cost golf) doesn't stack up for the architect to make money, therefore no interest?

They can comment for themselves but I'm not sure that the architectural community around here has little regard for par 3 courses, quite the opposite in fact.

 

[Terry Lavin]

Hickory Hills Country Club, an old public course in a southwest suburb of Chicago, was my first golf course.  I learned this morning that Tom Bendelow designed both courses there, which isn't a huge surprise since he was so prolific in the area in the early 20th century.  The courses are pretty short, in my memory, with a lot of hills, but I haven't been on the grounds in more than forty years.

I've told this story before, but I'll dump it on you guys again.  My dad was a Coca Cola truck driver who liked to golf.  He bought me and my two brothers golf clubs but we couldn't really afford to pay greens fees, so he used to drop us off at Hickory Hills very early in the morning on his way to work and we'd throw our clubs over the fence, climb over and play until we got caught.  Eventually, the folks there took a liking to us and let us play until the course started getting busy.  It really infused a love for the game.

Flash forward 43 years and I'm now an appellate court judge with a hobbyist's knowledge of golf course architecture and a well-developed distaste for improperly planted trees on a golf course, not to mention a distaste for the wrong species.  I get a case assigned to me involving an insurance dispute where the owner of Hickory Hills is suing his insurance company because it refused to pay him "millions of dollars" after a wind storm felled dozens of silver maple and spruce trees.  There were particular reasons why he never could receive money, based on the language of the insurance contract, but the case did offer me an opportunity to quote the Scottish golf course architect, H. G. Whigham who once said that "all trees on the links must be ruthlessly destroyed."  That quote was in the third paragraph, as I recall, so there was little need for the reader to go through the entire document to learn the result of the appeal.

[Steve Burrows]

The first course I ever played was Ulen Country Club, in Lebanon, Indiana, about 30 minutes north of Indianapolis.  Ulen is the first effort of Bill Diddel, a man whose contributions to golf course architecture - particularly in Indiana - cannot be overlooked.  There is an element of penal design to the course insofar as 7 holes cross a small stream (often in a perpendicular fashion) that meanders across the property, but the course stretches out to only 6300 yards and the playing corridors are relatively wide.  It is an ideal course for its members in a small Midwestern town and, based on my experiences, an excellent place to learn the game.  All of this is entirely fitting with Diddel's desire to make the game of golf both fun and accessible.

[John Mayhugh]

Whilst I do agree there should be more Par 3 courses, I'm more curious as to why the architectural community has so little regard for the 9 hole Par 3 course. Is it simply because the model (low cost construction, low cost golf) doesn't stack up for the architect to make money, therefore no interest?

How have you determined that there is no interest from the architectural community?  The designers generally aren't the ones initiating the projects that they work on.  Are there loads of 9 hole par 3 courses going wanting for architectural input?



First course I ever played?  Perry Maxwell.

[RJ_Daley]

I have to add to my first reply, because the significance easily explains my affinity and the allure in my psyche to the features of GCA regarding y childhood exposure to the Tom Bendelow, Burr Oak golf course.  I actually remember explaining this more than ten years ago on a similar thread, but will repeat it because it explains so much to me why I am the way I am, in my emotional response to the shapes and features of golf course architectural works.

My Dad was an avid fisherman, and we had great fishing on our lakes that are within our "4 Lakes City".  From as early as I can remember, 3-4 years old, one of the most thrilling adventures Dad and I would have was when we would go nightcrawler gathering out on the golf course behind the house.  Dad also just loved to walk out there at night and play with me telling me scary stories and really getting me all worked up as we would walk in the pitch dark golf course grounds, with only turning on and off the flashlight as we would walk.  He would get his worms enough to fish in a few minutes, but we would usually make the whole rounds of the nine holer property in the dark, much to my Mother's disapproval that I was allowed up too late. 

But, I would often wander just to the edge of the flashlight range towards a bunker, mound, or green pad, all among the stately Burr Oak trees, and then Dad would turn the flashlight off, and I would be very much in the dark with only our voices giving range and distance, as I would stumble and feel my way along the ground contours with Dad's voice as assurance that no boogiemen would get me,  and which features that in the light I knew so well yet became mysterious ground obstacles of various interesting shapes and dimensions in pitch dark.  I particularly remember that one long FW bunker that had steps to get down in and out of, and when the flashlight was turned out, trying to find where the steps were ad it seemed so immense and foreboding.  Thus, shapes and dimensions and the artistic nature of golf course ground features just always was stuck somewhere in the recesses of my mind from that very early age.

If you want your kids to be interested in GCA, take em for a night walk on a golf course. 

[RJ_Daley]

oops, forgetting that Mark started this thread and for all our Aussie friends, perhaps don't go on a night walkabout with the kids on your courses as one of your notorious slithering killers might be on their own night maneuvers.   

[Gene Greco]

William Mitchell - Merrick Park in 1969. I believe it was built in 1966 over a landfill.

[Todd Melrose]

Chandler Egan... Oswego lake CC.... a great opening hole too

[Daniel Jones]

Golden Hills Golf & Turf Club, now known by the much less appealing Ocala National. Greens and several holes reworked by Rees Jones several years back - no clue on the original designer back in the 60's. Highest point in our county is the 4th tee, which isn't necessarily saying much in Central Florida. A brutally tough 18th hole which plays as a 5 though the card says 4.

[Rob Marshall]

Durand Eastman in Rochester NY. It was a fun course to play when I stared in the 70's. Over the years the county has ruined it. Flattened greens and changed holes. It used to have 10 holes on the front and 8 on the back. It was a ball hawkers paradise with woods lining every hole. Believe it or not I don't think they know who designed it. Used to play for $.50 a round when I was 12 years old.

[Mark Pavy]

Whilst I do agree there should be more Par 3 courses, I'm more curious as to why the architectural community has so little regard for the 9 hole Par 3 course. Is it simply because the model (low cost construction, low cost golf) doesn't stack up for the architect to make money, therefore no interest?

How have you determined that there is no interest from the architectural community?  The designers generally aren't the ones initiating the projects that they work on.  Are there loads of 9 hole par 3 courses going wanting for architectural input?

John,

That would be my opinion based on experience. I'd love to hear a different opinion or be shown evidence that suggests the contrary.

Your second point is quite correct, whether or not that is a good thing is another question.

There's an architectural saying- Form Follows Function. I guess I see the architectural significance of the 1st course that many of us ever played as great design because it provided function- a place to play golf that was affordable and suitable for beginners.

The emphasis placed by the architectural community on good design is well and truly skewed towards large budgets and other peoples money. Maybe future architects will build, fund and operate their own golf courses, form will certainly follow function if this was to occur.