Richard - whoa, look at the questions here - you sound like Mucci now - hah
I’ve got an article about “the new Royal Hawaiian Hotel course” (the Territorial Hotel Co) published in January 1927 and written the previous year by none other than Seth J. Raynor .... I mean this guy finally wrote something down!! I was published in a Hawaiian magazine called ALOHA (surprise - surprise - what else would it have been called) .... forwarded to me by a very nice gentleman at the Mid-Pacific course also laid out at the same time by SR.
Raynor died in Jan 1926, the Waialae course was not finished until the following year by Charlie Banks.
In part: “The new Royal Hawaiian course at Honolulu was laid out at about 6,400 yards ..... 6,000 from the short trees and about 6,600 yards from the long tees.” It goes on to talk about the famous hole concept and includes one of the Macdonald Raynor favorites, the 5th at Garden City - he inserted that hole quite often. ......... It also stated he left there in the middle of December to go back to FL.
The article confirmed for me a couple courses he built that I had had trouble substantiating: listing the usual “suspects of Piping Rock Mid Ocean St Louis etc but listed Riddle’s Bay in Bermuda, generally credited to Emmet (I have other conformations of that one) and a Vanderbilt chain, hotel course in Porto Rico (it was spelled like that then) which I had a lot of trouble tracking down.
The course has the same routing today as it had when built and for those who want to see if there is any semblance to the originals, here are a few of the holes designs.
2nd Hole - Eden - 4th looks as though it was a Double Plateau - 6th: bottle-neck bunkers with a cross bunker 300-yds off the tee - 7th Garden City 5th hole - 8 a Redan at 190 - the 10th looks like it was (is) a great hole (except for the pros I guess) ... Road hole with two sets of tees (on at 540) - this one is interesting: 12th: 370 drive and pitch large diagonal bunker offers select tee shot, “jaw” bunkers 300 yards from the tee to a plateau green ... this is long version of the “Knoll” hole .... there should have been a back plateau on a highly elevated green - 13 is Biarritz (single green but bunkered perfectly as if it were 2 greens - 16th a Short built at 140 yards and 18 looked like a really good finisher, 492 with a stream running across the second shot landing area.
Let me know what’s there that resembles any of this, if any of you are watching.
Dick I can’t tell how may bunkers are gone.
I think Rick Smith worked on the course a few years ago.
There is an aerial photo of the original course taken just after it was completed - opening was in Feb 1927. The course had a lot of groups of trees scattered all over the layout and the fairways were very wide .......... all clubs please take note!!! hah some of the areas look to be at least 60 yards wide.
Good looking swale on the Biarritz - someday I’m going to count up how many 13th holes were Biarritz hole - there a lot of them.
Richard - no info on tree planting. The ocean holes were had a few trees and really look great.
The Road hole looked like one of the best holes on the course - great bunkering off the tee and a great green complex. I wonder what itz like now??