[Dunlop_White]

I've always wondered why Old Town Club originally had just 43 bunkers, but soon realized that it really didn't need any more. "Slope and Contour" are the life and soul of the game here. But did you know that Perry Maxwell was not all that fond of bunkers to begin with?

Maxwell said: "Audibly, I curse various bunkers and traps that have had to do with my silvering hair. Far too many exist in our land. Oakmont, where the National Open will be played this year, has 200 bunkers. Other courses famed everywhere average 150. From 20 to 25. plus the natural obstacles, are ample for any course. Millions of dollars annually are wasted in devastating the earth, obstructing the flow of rainfall, and creating impossible conditions. [with bunkers]......the time is ripe for a saner and simpler plan for turning the good earth into playgrounds for those who follow through" {American Golfer: 1935}

Are there other Maxwell designs that possess a low number of bunkers? Did other classic architects limit their use of bunkers similarly?

[wsmorrison]

Hey, Dunlap.  You mean besides Augusta National?  

Merion West (Wilson and Flynn) only had 20 or so bunkers when it first opened for play in 1914.  It has wonderful topographic movement.  Cobb's Creek (Wilson, Crump, Smith, et al), the first public municipal course in Philadelphia had only 20 bunkers at the outset, I don't think any fairway bunkers at all.  Flynn's 18 hole new course at Eagles Mere (9 built, now NLE) only had 24 bunkers and no fairway bunkers.  That topography might just exceed ANGC in amount and variety of elevation changes.  Where there wasn't interesting topographic movement and thus little "gravity golf,"  Flynn would use much more bunkering to create strategic interest.

I hope you're coming up for a visit sometime this year.

[Tom_Doak]

Dunlop:  Maxwell is playing to the times a little bit.  That quote is from 1935, when the economy was in shambles and A.W. Tillinghast was going around the country removing bunkers from existing courses.  In the 1920's, like the 1990's, nobody was worried about spending a few extra $ on bunkers, but what goes around comes around.

Incidentally, I was re-reading Wethered and Simpson's book "Design for Golf" this weekend, and noticed that Simpson referred to the 1920's as the "Golden Age" of golf course design in that text, which was published in 1931 I think.  Could he be the one to coin the phrase?  It's almost as interesting as reading him talking about the top player as the Tiger.

[TEPaul]

Dunlop:

It seems like as time went on bunkers became less popular and less accepted by architects and clubs.

The Golden Age architects who talked about or experimented with limiting them or removing bunkers of other architects were Tillinghast, Thomas, Maxwell, Mackenzie, Behr, Bob Jones, Flynn, Styles etc.

The reasons seemed fairly numerous--eg cost to build and particularly to maintain, unfair to some levels of players, strategically unnecessary or redundant etc.

We may never know but with some architects bunkers may not have been primarily designed for strategic purposes and such originally. Many may've just been generators of fill needed for other reasons.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Dunlop:  Maxwell is playing to the times a little bit.  That quote is from 1935, when the economy was in shambles and A.W. Tillinghast was going around the country removing bunkers from existing courses.  In the 1920's, like the 1990's, nobody was worried about spending a few extra $ on bunkers, but what goes around comes around.

Incidentally, I was re-reading Wethered and Simpson's book "Design for Golf" this weekend, and noticed that Simpson referred to the 1920's as the "Golden Age" of golf course design in that text, which was published in 1931 I think.  Could he be the one to coin the phrase?  It's almost as interesting as reading him talking about the top player as the Tiger.

Well, "The Architectural Side of Golf"  was published in 1929 begins with W&S's chapter on the four ages, including the Golden Age.

Mark

[Tom_Doak]

Mark:  I had the date wrong, but basically, that's the same book as the one I'm talking about.

[Art Roselle]

That is an interesting quote.  I am not a Maxwell expert, but I have to admit that my impression of his work is sort of the opposite.  I tend to envision the typical Maxwell green as being surrounded by bunkers, like the 2nd at Old Town



or the 7th at Augusta, which he rebuilt



Both of those pictures are from Dunlop White's profile of Old Town which points out the similarity in these two green sites.  The 4th at Southern Hills has an almost identical look from the fairway.  While Augusta started out with very few bunkers, many were added through the years and I thought a large portion of these were attributable to Maxwell (indeed the 5 around the 7th green make up over 10% of the total on the whole course, even today).

Was that just a poorly informed impression or does Maxwell's comment above not match his actual work?

[TEPaul]

Dunlop:

When did Maxwell design and do Old Town?

[Mike_Cirba]

That is an interesting quote.  I am not a Maxwell expert, but I have to admit that my impression of his work is sort of the opposite.  I tend to envision the typical Maxwell green as being surrounded by bunkers, like the 2nd at Old Town



or the 7th at Augusta, which he rebuilt



Both of those pictures are from Dunlop White's profile of Old Town which points out the similarity in these two green sites.  The 4th at Southern Hills has an almost identical look from the fairway.  While Augusta started out with very few bunkers, many were added through the years and I thought a large portion of these were attributable to Maxwell (indeed the 5 around the 7th green make up over 10% of the total on the whole course, even today).

Was that just a poorly informed impression or does Maxwell's comment above not match his actual work?

Or, the 8th at Gulph Mills, which I don't have a pic of handy, unfortunately, but which looks quite similar in approach.

[Dunlop_White]

Tommy,

Maxwell designed Old Town in 1939.  He also designed Reynolds Park while he was in W-S. According to my 1941 aerial, this Maxwell design was not armed with many bunkers either -- under 10, the best I can tell.

[JC Urbina]

Dunlop
 
 I last saw Old Town in 1994 and I don't remember the bunkers on the second hole looking like that.  Someone has worked on those bunkers.
It appears that each bunker has the same amount of lip. If anyone knows,  could they let me know who redid these bunkers.
Do you think Perry Maxwell would dislike these bunkers?

[Sean_A]

Wasn't it fairly common for ODG's from the Golden Years to build a par 3 surrounded by bunkers?  This may be the last bit of architectural influence that we can conect to OLd Tom.  Wasn't he fond of this sort of hole?

Ciao

[Tom_Doak]

Jim:

Bob Cupp worked on Old Town a couple of years after we were there.

[TEPaul]

In my opinion, the overall designs of the greens and surrounding bunkering at the 2nd at Old Town, the 7th at ANGC and the 8th at GMGC are so similar they must've been something of a Maxwell template or stock design. I think he flipped the quadrants around and stuff but those ones are too similar to be a coincidence, in my opinion. I think I remember counting up about three others on Maxwell courses once upon a time that were really similar.

For me the trick is to try to figure out which one he did first. So far GMGC's is the earliest at 1933-4.

By the way, the 8th at GMGC has been really respected by good Philadelphia golfers and club members for years as one of the best little par 4s in the district.

For years it was assumed to be a Ross hole until a comprehensive design evolution report was done of the course identifying it as a Maxwell redesign.

[Dunlop_White]

TD,

Bob Cupp renovated the bunkers in 1995.....most are non-descript, oval or clamshell in shape and are surrounded by eyebrows of Zoyzia.

A Maxwell bunker restoration is on the horizon.. Old black & whites reveal large, sprawling, charismatic bunker shapes with rough, jagged lips -- encased with tall stalks of broom sedge and other native grasses. Just beautiful!

That's just it! He made gorgeous bunkers not to like them or want to utilize them all that much.

Jim,

Good stuff at Yeamans! I love the double plateau at No. 1. I have been working with them on the USGA Architecture Archive and it looks dead on.

[TEPaul]

Dunlop:

Given what Maxwell wrote so explicitly about limiting bunkering on golf courses and given what seemed to be happening in America via bunkering, particularly in the 1930s, I'd sure like to determine better and more accurately what it was that was motivating those guys that way.

A bunch of them seemed to be in on it including Tillinghast during his PGA bunker removal tour of America.

It seems to me a ton of golf and clubs were beginning to see the cost of them and notice the pinch. These guys were either reacting to that or actively promoting the idea that less bunkers are better for a whole variety of reasons.

Thomas, Tillinghast and now Maxwell very actively wrote about this and pretty stridently. So did others later such as Wayne Styles.

It is also instructive that those involved with ANGC essentially promoted the fact that the course was designed with only 22 bunkers!

[Lynn_Shackelford]

Now, now Dunlop, my Reynolds Park did have a few bunkers in the early aerials, not many, but a few.

This topic brings to mind one of my favorite Mackenzie quotes, read from THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR. ALISTER MACKENZE.  When asked by the captain of the Jockey Club about bunkers after the contouring of the course took only 3 weeks to complete, Mackenzie replied, "the undulatons have created such a varied, interesting, and pleasurable test of golf that we do not require a single bunker.  Nevertheless, for the sake of appearance and for the purpose of creating more spectacular thrills, we will give you a few bunkers."

[Dunlop_White]

Ross too eliminated many of his own bunkers during return visits in the 30's and 40's. Sadly, many of his distinctive cross-bunkers were the ones he was removing. Did Tillinghast remove the short ones as well?

While it may have been a sign of the times -- with the impetus being a financial one -- Maxwell seems to be saying something different. He "curses" them as causing the "silvering" of his hair. They make for "impossible conditions". Seems as if he's saying they were too punitive; also spoiling the natural state of the terrain. This is my interpretation.

[Mike_Cirba]

I don't think a raw number of bunkers is quite as telling as the makeup, purpose, size and placement of the bunkers.

For instance, the original Cobb's Creek layout had approximately 15 bunkers, but at least 7 of those were what I'll term "saving" bunkers, which were bunkers meant to stop a shot from rolling into an even worse predicament, either from the standpoint of slowing play, losing balls, creating congestion, or D) all of the above.

[Chris_Clouser]

As Tom Paul speculates, the greens being shown on this thread were a standard Maxwell green that he used on several courses.  

For some reason he typically used this on short par 4s on his renovations, like Augusta and Gulph Mills, but as a shorter par 3 on courses like Old Town, Prairie Dunes or Dornick Hills.  There have obviously been differences to that over his career, but in general that is what he did.

The green design was typically a green that was split into multiple sections, either by seperate plateaus such as the Old Town green, or by distinct rolls in the green such as the 2nd at Prairie Dunes.  In every case he surrounded the green with 5 bunkers.  Usually with 3 in the front and 2 in the rear, but that wasn't even a hard and fast rule.  It was his version of Macdonald's Short hole.  

As for Maxwell's dislike of bunkers, he saw the place for them but only wanted to use them in specific ways.  I think one of the obvious things you notice about Maxwell's career is that very few of his courses have really significant fairway bunkering.  The courses that have it I think were for specific reasons, but his general style was to avoid this and only have greenside bunkers whenever possible.  When you accompany this with his placement of greens you can often have holes with only 1 or 2 bunkers.  This greatly reduces the number of bunkers required on a course.  Hillcrest in Oklahoma is a fine example of this part of his philosophy.

[David Stamm]

Wasn't it fairly common for ODG's from the Golden Years to build a par 3 surrounded by bunkers?  This may be the last bit of architectural influence that we can conect to OLd Tom.  Wasn't he fond of this sort of hole?

Ciao

Sean, here's the par 3 16th at Pauma Valley by RTJ. I don't know about OTM's par 3 tendencies because I don't know enough about him, but I thought you'd find this "interesting" since you love overbunkering so much.

[Sean_A]

Wasn't it fairly common for ODG's from the Golden Years to build a par 3 surrounded by bunkers?  This may be the last bit of architectural influence that we can conect to OLd Tom.  Wasn't he fond of this sort of hole?

Ciao

Sean, here's the par 3 16th at Pauma Valley by RTJ. I don't know about OTM's par 3 tendencies because I don't know enough about him, but I thought you'd find this "interesting" since you love overbunkering so much.

David - you are too kind!  

Ciao

[Rich Goodale]

Wasn't it fairly common for ODG's from the Golden Years to build a par 3 surrounded by bunkers?  This may be the last bit of architectural influence that we can conect to OLd Tom.  Wasn't he fond of this sort of hole?

Ciao

Sean

I'm scratching my head on that one.  I can't remember ANY bunker that OTM built, much less a cluster of them on any short hole.  Jog my memory, please.

Rich

[Dunlop_White]

We've established that Maxwell's distaste for bunkers was financially motivated "as a sign of the times" in the 1930's. Tillinghast evidently removed 7,442 bunkers in a 2 year stretch with the PGA in the 30's as well. According to "The Golf Course" by Cornish and Whitten, under their "Great Depression" chapter, it was the torturous, short cross-bunkers that he was removing from courses. Plus, I know from experience that Ross also eliminated many of his own bunkers during return visits in the 30's and 40's. Sadly, many of his distinctive cross-bunkers were the ones he was removing too.

Question: If you are interested in "restoring" your Ross course, and you have a 1925 plan with cross-bunkers and all, but you also have a revised 1941 plan without the cross-bunkers, what era would you use as your design template?

Most say the 1941 plan accurately represents the culmination of Ross's objectives with the course over time. While true, I think these were "forced" alterations, and the 1925 plan represents his true design intent.

Any thoughts here? !(Obviously I'm a cross-bunker enthusiast)

[Melvyn Morrow]

Sean

You may be interested to note that Old Tom Morris designed many of his course originally with no bunkers and liked to return after a few months to have them installed. Although he left one of his designs with no bunkers and did not return to install any - that was West Herts Golf Club 18 hole course in England in 1896/7. I am not certain but that may have been due to illness so J H Taylor installed the bunkers nearly a year later.

Richard

Old Tom liked and used bunkers on most of his courses. He placed bunkers behind greens at Prestwick - Alps, the 12th at Wallasey, Royal North Devon Tee position to front of bunker/dune, Luffness and of course the Dell at Lahinch which is between two sandhills, to name but a few.

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