Continuing with the Indiana courses...

Since Clyde just recently joined I thought I would show you some of his work.  

For many years, one of the most affable golfers on the professional circuit has been Indiana native Fuzzy Zoeller.  Late in his career he began to dabble in the course design industry and partnered with Clyde Johnston.  Their first venture would be in Zoeller’s backyard.  They would create what would become the home club of the famed player in Sellersburg, Indiana.  A small covered bridge to traverse a stream running through the course would prove to be the inspiration for the name of the facility.  Zoeller’s home course would be titled the Covered Bridge Golf Club.  

The bridge


The course is quite an effort by Zoeller and Johnston to produce a quality course at the base of Floyds Knobs.  The quickly changing terrain would normally be difficult to deal with but a piece was located that had subtle movement with the only severe change in elevation being from the clubhouse down to the ninth and eighteenth greens.  The rest of the landforms were worked into the routing of the course marvelously by Johnston and the player very seldom can even tell that they are running down or up hill.  A natural stream is also in play on a couple of holes.  Some irrigation ponds also come into play on several holes throughout the routing.  Though housing abounds on the exterior of the course, much of the land was primarily devoted to golf and aside from a few of the exterior hole, there is not evidence that a large community is just outside the trees.  
   As would be expected with any course that is the home of a touring professional, course upkeep is at a premium.  Covered Bridge is simply one of the more beautiful public courses in the state.  It has all the amenities and look of a private small town country club.  The fairways, greens and rough are very well manicured and presented as well as possible every day.  That maintenance also is used to allow the course play up to its true potential as the fairways allow some run and the greens are fairly fast.  Fairways are maintained at an adequate width to take advantage of the strategic aspects of the holes laid out by the architect.  Something else that is obvious after going around is that trees do not crowd the holes as you would expect on many woodland courses of this nature.
   The greens at Covered Bridge were in exemplary form.  They all seem to work with the natural slope of the terrain and have some common characteristics.  The slope is often from one back corner towards the opposite front corner of the green.  This varies from hole to in the direction and degree of slope.  Many of the greens also feature slight ridges splitting the green or shallow bowls on one particular corner.  The greens are also very large in some instances and provide ample room for the higher handicap to avoid hazards but still find the green in regulation.  But there no straight putts to be found at Covered Bridge unless one is going directly into or down the slope of the green.  To do that requires luck or extreme skill from local knowledge.  The home town player has an extreme advantage in this case for any matches.  
   The bunkering at Covered Bridge is both understated but very prominent at the green end of the holes.  Fairway hazards are not the priority so there is less pressure on the drive.  Perhaps the most vexing hazards are the links style pot bunkers put in by Johnston that are placed around the greens.  But the course does not rely solely on these.  Many of the greens are angled and have gorgeous hazards laid out along the entire side of the green.  Water comes into play on a little over half of the holes in the form of the Muddy Fork and several irrigation ponds.  In many instances though the ponds are alongside the holes and do not come into the line of play.


Holes of note:

Hole 3 – 196 yards - A shortish par three with the entire tee shot having to clear water.  It is perhaps the most photogenic hole on the course and provides a wonderful setting when one looks back with the fifth green and covered bridge in the background.



Hole 5 – 531 yards - A double-dogleg par five with the second shot and possible approach to the green pinched by the pond on the right.  A nice hole.



Hole 7 – 423 yards from the tips (372 from the next tee marker) - The seventh kicks things off with a wonderful short par four that features a cape-style green with the second having to clear water and bunkers as the green seemingly juts out into nothingness.  

The approach

From the left of the green with the 8th in the distance


Hole 8 – 195 yards - A stellar par three then follows and provides an alternate avenue of play for those that are afraid of the Herculean shot over the water and sand to the slightly elevated green.  



Hole 10 – 391 yards - My favorite hole on the course then starts the back nine with a downhill drive with a fairway that is bisected by a natural stream bed that sometimes has water in it.  The hole then runs back uphill with the rest of the hole angled along the line of the stream bed.  The green is placed into a natural hollow with only two small pits protecting the narrower back section of the green.  The putting surface runs naturally from left to right towards the stream.  This is one of those rare instances where it appears as if the architect found the hole and just grassed it over properly.

From the tee

The approach


Hole 12 – 192 yards - The twelfth exquisitely uses a stream and uneven terrain to create a great short hole.  


Hole 13 –  414 yards - An excellent downhill par four with a difficult approach

From behind you can see the change in elevation.


Hole 14 – 525 yards - The shot into the green is complicated by the center pot bunker in front of the green.  A wonderful addition by the architect.



Hole 15 – 371 yards - Fifteen is a short par four with a tight landing area and a hidden green.  The green is concealed by a deep sand pit that protects the entire front of the wide putting surface.  This is the only hole on the course that requires a directly aerial attack and one of those a round is not a bad thing.  The green is split by a spine in the middle and falls off to the side in both directions placing a premium on being on the correct side for your birdie putt.  

View from the right rough.


Holes 9 and 18 – 597 & 563 yards respectively - The eighteenth and ninth holes seem to be linked all the way up the hole as they play with two lakes splitting them.  A shared landing area in the middle of the holes with some bunkers and a green that spans nearly one hundred yards from side to side dominate the holes and provide a unique feature.

The shared green

The view from just below the clubhouse.


One of the highlights of any round at Covered Bridge is the large clubhouse that overlooks the holes that complete each side of the course.  Sitting on the patio and watching others play up the holes makes for a wonderful view.  Covered Bridge conveys the feeling of belonging to a exclusive club and having all the benefits of such membership.  It truly exhibits the nature of a country club for a day.  That is really all that Fuzzy wanted of the course anyway.

Just in case you forget who is responsible for the club being here.


Other courses by Johnston in Indiana include Timbergate in Edinburgh, Chestnut Hills in Fort Wayne and the newly opened Champions Pointe in Memphis, just north of Covered Bridge.

The pictures are very nice and the course looks to be in excellent condition.  I also really like the curved covered bridge.

The only things thatv really caught my eye that didn't look great to me were the color of the rock lining the lakes.  The bunkers appear to have a nice off white color and the setting is very natural looking but the rocks seem too "concrete colored" to me.

The last picture from the clubhouse is very pretty but the trees along the lake seem a little "rowed up" to me--the two pyramid shaped trees seem like they were planted equal distance from the greens across from one another (and I hate fountains ).  

But, the course looks great and well worth a trip to play.

Chris,

Thanks for posting the pics. #10 looks special and begs the question...What lies over the back of the green? Is it a closely mown swale?

Wyatt

I was wondering how long it would take for me to post a course that people would actually have some critical comments.    I will try to address any questions I can.  If Clyde comes on perhaps he can answer some as well

Andy,

Glad I could oblige.  

Chris and Mike,  

The tree situation was something I noticed as well.  There were more than a few times that I was wondering why there were so many trees.  In many instances on the perimeter, they block the view of the housing (such as those trees behind 10).  But the ones behind greens like 14 and 3 just seem to cut down on some nice views of the course.  But as you can see from my polite description "they don't crowd the course."

Wyatt,

Behind the green is a slight fall-off for about 10 feet and then the rise to the mounding behind that hides the street that runs through the course at that point.

Mike,

To be honest, the course has some movement up and down on holes like 10 and 13 and as you near the clubhouse, but for the most part it is fairly flat.  I would guess at one time it was a flood plain.  But that might be a question for Clyde.  One of the things the mounding does do is that it hides many of the cart paths from view around the course.  Which to me is a good thing as I'd rather see that over asphalt.  But I do see your point.  

The 9-18 holes are exactly the same as 9-18 at Jacksonville Golf & Country Club in Jacksonville, FL (Clyde Johnston - circa mid-1990's) with the clubhouse setting nearly identical.  The detail of the rock at the waters edge is even similar.  At JGCC both holes are par-4's.

The fairways appear to be mowed very narrow - particularly from the views of the 10th and 13th holes.  I've played a Clyde Johnston course numerous times - St. Johns Golf & Country Club - south of Jacksonville, and some of those fairways were designed and maintained at no more than 25 yards wide.  Are they really as narrow as they look in the pictures?

Holes 1-9 and 14-18 at Covered Bridge are all in a floodplain so they were pretty flat and mostly farm fields. Most of the golf course site was open fields, probably only 35% in existing trees.

The mounds were used to hide paths, hide roads, separate holes and just add some interest to a pretty ordinary looking site. The mounds were also used to dispose of and hide the shale rock that we encountered when digging the ponds.

The rock around the lakes was added later (not part of the original design) to stabilize the lake banks from erosion due to the wave action created by the prevailing wind.

The finishing holes are somewhat similar to Jacksonville G&CC (which Fuzzy was also a part of). Fuzzy and liked the look especially with the view from the clubhouse on top of the hill. And yes, I'll do it again if the opportunity presents itself. Jax's finishing holes are slight dogleg par fours (one left, the other right) so the only real similarity is both finishing holes end up behind the clubhouse with a lake in between. Jax didn't have rock - I used crushed oyster shells in select areas for accent at that course.

The plethora of evergreen plantings (overdone IMHO) was all done by Fuzzy and his group. The last time I was there, I told the superintendent they needed to start thinning out the plantings. I'm not a fan of evergreen trees to begin with and they do stand out among the more native deciduous trees of the site.

Covered Bridge is a fun course to play and it's very popular in that part of Indiana/Kentucky.

Clyde,

Thanks for filling in some details as to how the course arrived in its final arrangement. I must admit that unlike (apparently) some of the "purists" here I find that clubhouse view quite compelling as well. My former club here in South Carolina (the University Club in Blythewood) has a clubhouse with a similar view down a larger hill and holes 16, 17 and 18 play around a similar lake, finishing right below the back porch. I always enjoyed finishing my round and eating lunch while the next few groups played in. I'm not sure why would object to providing such an environment for the members to enjoy every day.

The grassing-over of rock collected in clearing the playing area sounds like a throwback technique. I think back in the early 20th century that was perhaps more common than now. I'm not a big lover of that sort of mounding. For my part it adds rather less interest (visual and playing-wise) than most architects seem to believe. At least in the case of Covered Bridge the mounds don't stretch out in geometrical lines like some older Nicklaus and Rees courses I've seen (as well as a bunch of newish courses at Myrtle Beach).

At first glance I thought the photo of the twelfth hole showed the second shot of a Par 4. In reality, the meandering lengthwise stream should be out of play for anything other than a topped tee shot or a weak right-handers slice way off line. Was there ever any consideration of using that same stream running along the line of play on a longer hole so that it had to be avoided with a (possibly) layup tee shot and then in play on the approach as well? Maybe I just spent too much time watching Carnoustie on TV last week...

Mike, I answer to Dick all the time.    But, Chris is no new poster, he has written a great book on Maxwell, and I think he can take the comments as they were meant, in the spirit of 'frank discussion of GCA'.  

If things are commented upon, opinions are expressed, and an archies would like to come on here and set the record straight, it is up to them.  

As for my own comments, I tried to be fair and said I would be happy to play the course, it looks nice and modern in presentation.  (by that I mean the grading and mounding seem gradual, deliberate, and somewhat uniform.  Mounds are where you'd expect them as containment of greens structure or FW corridors.  Trees seem planted at optimal spacing and position, etc.  The ponds are dug for the material and placed as a focal point of strategy.  Nothing wrong with that!  And, if the price is right, and I didn't have a course nearby that I prefer, I wouldn't be unhappy to play here.  

But, don't expect this Dick to say it appears original, lay of the land clever, or somehow a design that sets it apart from many other courses fashioned from a similar method.  I have seen the 9-18 combo, nearly identical in concept and design right down the road from me at Fox Hills National.  I hope Jeff doesn't get his knickers in a wad, as I thought it was BL, but maybe Jeff had something to do with it as well.  Did they lend the drawing to Clyde?  Bayhill is of similar ilk.  It was unique once, but I'm willing to bet the 9-18 shared lake, shared green is done even more than I think.

I'd love to know more of Clydes Johnston's work.    

It looks like a nice course to go play, but it don't trip my trigger because it leaves me feeling like I've seen these holes before.

I am down in Latin America and grumpy...

hmmm, it is about 1PmCDST... siesta time down there I suppose.

What does an industrious hard working southern boy do when the natives are snoozing?  Margaritaville and GCA.com monitoring?  

Quote

I am down in Latin America and grumpy...

hmmm, it is about 1PmCDST... siesta time down there I suppose.

What does an industrious hard working southern boy do when the natives are snoozing?  Margaritaville and GCA.com monitoring?  

Si Dickardo.....

Actually, since I think I was the one who started this, I can truly say that I wasn't trying to be a dick.

I think RJ Daley sums up most of what I was trying to say quite nicely.

I can also say that I'm gratified that Clyde Johnston would come on here to tell us knuckleheads the specific reasons for some of his design decisions as well as the specific challenges he faced.

But, what I was most trying to do is get at least some of the conversation here back to actual golf course architecture.   The decision to ring the back of a green with mounding, even if I don't much care for it, is a design decision and I think it's great that Clyde Johnston told us that he used it as a place to dump rock excavated when ponds were built.   I don't see the point in posting pics at all if we can't have some honest comments and discussion...should we all just ooo and aaa?

I'm all for encouraging anyone in the industry and particularly golf course architects to come here and enrich this site, but I don't think the rest of us should become Stepford wives in the process.  

When executives at Warner Brothers spend 50 million dollars making a film there is probably nobody in the world who thinks twice about criticizing or crediting the movie on whatever level each person feels is appropriately deserved.   I'm not sure what separates a golf course from any other art form in that regard?