[wsmorrison]

Mark,

Did you know that Flynn designed two golf courses on the Yorktown battlefields?  One of the courses was built but the entire large-scale development process imploded.  Flynn used the battlements and earthenworks in the design.  It was said afterwards that the alternative was high-density development and the earthenworks would have likely been lost.  The US Government took over the property and it is has been a National Park ever since with the military features saved.

[Chris Parker]

Jeff,

Here's the scans of a St. Andrews (Toronto) brochure that I picked up a few years ago.  There's no map of the course or scorecard on it though.  

   

   

   

   

[Craig_Rokke]

Craig,

The Manor I refer to (as did Craig Disher earlier) is in Washington, DC.  Flynn designed 27 holes there; a full size 18 and a 9 hole short course.  The short course was built and the back 9 according to Flynn but the front 9 was completed and redesigned by Harry Collis.

Do you or anyone else know anything about the origin of Meadia Heights GC (1922) in southern Lancaster County?  It looks a bit like Flynn, from old aerials at least.  It is near Eshelman Mill Road and that family was important in the development of Flynn's Lancaster CC.

Wayne-I checked the Cornish/Whitten listing for the course I thought you may have been referring to, and they list a "Manor GC/CC" in Sinking Spring as a Findlay design with a Flynn revision.

[Mike Benham]

For the NorCal guys:

Fairway Glen (SCU Home Course - the Taj Mahal of Bay Area public courses ...)
Oakridge Golf Course - former home of the SCU Bronco Bench Invitational

[Andy Hughes]

Similarly, I thought folks here familiar with golf in the Poconos might be interested in the following article that has some really cool old pics of holes like the Binnikill hole at Shawnee, a really startling pic of the famed 77 yard 7th hole at Pocono Manor (with a green appearing much larger than exists today), one of Mon-Om-O-Nock, one of Donald Ross's Buck Hill, etc.

Wow, good stuff Mike!
Never heard it called the Binnickill Hole before. As I can tell, it looks about the same now as it used to (we used to have Leagues there each year).
Wish the pictures were a little clearer--I'd like to be able to see some detail on some of 'em.
For bonus points, can you identify the building in the center oval?

[Mike_Cirba]

Ok...who's up for Sheep Ranching the Valley Forge course on Monday (if we don't get snow on Sunday)?  

What's the worst they can do....arrest us?  We can tell them that we're part of an archeological golf course society and that we are looking to confirm traits of Alex Findlay's design methodologies....or, use the Tom Paul excuse about the lost dog with diarreah, but that might be tough with golf clubs in tow.

Wayne,

Manor GC near Reading is a Alex Findlay course, as well, with some really cool holes mixed with some blase ones.  As Craig mentioned, the "Architects of Golf" list it with some revisions by Flynn.  Perhaps that's a misattribution given his work on the one in Maryland?

Also, we should plan to make a day this spring in Lancaster, both at the CC, as well as Meadia Heights.  Certainly, from what you mentioned, the timeframe and the lineage seem possible for Flynn.

Finally, if you haven't looked at the link I posted earlier which shows an early pic of the 7th at Pocono Manor, I thought you might be interested.  Certainly I'd like to see the original magazine as the pic is a bit dark and blurred.  However, it appears possible from the pic, provided it's taken from the tee, that the original hole might have had a tee quite a bit to the left of the present tee, and probably more in line with a hole of about 120 yards to a bigger green than exists today.

Since we know that Flynn built this hole, at least it seems possible to me that it wasn't as much of a "one off" as it might seem from the evidence on the ground today.

Andy,

Unfortunately, my computer is acting up tonight and I can't bring up the magazine article I posted earlier today, or I'd be happy to guess.

The pic of Mo-nom_o-nock you posted is very cool and looks very familiar for some reason.  However, the only nine holers i know in that area are Evergreen Park and one other familyowned course (forget the name at the moment) and the course pictured is from neither of those.

[Andy Troeger]

Might as well make an addition or two:

Woodmar CC (Hammond, IN--almost in Chicago), just this year I believe was sold. Was a pretty good track.

Also...the old Purdue North course seemingly was pretty well bulldozed to build Kampen (Dye), if that counts. It certainly was an improvement.

[Mike_Cirba]

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think we should Sheep Ranch the Valley Forge course on Monday, irrespective of weather conditions.

What a bunch of pussies we are!  Think about what General Washington and his troops had to endure about 230 years ago and here we sit on our widening asses in the comfort of our warm homes thinking that we probably aren't men enough to endure a few hours outside....not awaiting the possible onslaught of the redcoats while suffering from hypothermia, diphtheria, and the pox of the week...but instead probably worried that the greens may be a bit to cold to willingly accept a cold ProV4 struck in leisure.

Who's bringing the flask?

[Craig_Rokke]

Mike-
There are certainly several teeing areas on #7. You also have to wonder if that road behind the tees came in after the course, in which case the tee may have been further back, as you suggested. If they don't trim back the tree growth, though, it may be a fully blind 77 yarder in another 5 or 10 years.

That little hole finally convinced me to break down & get a lob wedge.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

This is why I stay in warm, sunny Southern California.

You ALL can freeze your asses off back there all you want. Don't worry, I'll call and tell you how just how warm and sunny it is here and you can tell me just how colorful it is in the dead cold of winter. The only problem is that my Sheep Ranch is probably going to be located in the parking lot of a KIA dealership or something like that....

Gotta go and work on my Art's & Crafts rebuttal piece now, which by the way is a rebuttal to Tom Paul's rebuttal of Tom MacWood's that was further rebuked by Phil Young who is working on a rebuttal of his own. It's amazing what the cold can do to a man.

[Craig_Rokke]

Tommy,
It was downright balmy here the last couple days--60 today, in fact. Hit some balls at the range today in anticipation of trip out to said "warm and sunny Southern California."

I purposefully have not looked at the Arts and Crafts thread.
I don't have 4 hours of free time!

[William King]

Bear Creek and Canterbury in ATL
Normandie in StL

[A.G._Crockett]

Had to bump this back up; I just remembered The Woodyard, a Bob Cupp design near Savannah, GA, that was bulldozed after only 3 years and rebuilt by Greg Norman and is now under the name Savannah Quarters.  I haven't seen that course, but I liked The Woodyard a lot.  3 years has to be close to a record for this sort of thing.


Given the sheer number of these things that I seem to have played relative to other posters, I am beginning to worry about being a jinx.

[Pat Howard]

I only total 1 on this list. I grew up in Richland, WA across the street from Sham-Na-Pum golf course. My uncle was the head pro and my father and grandfather were two of the seven original owners before they sold the land to the city of Richland.  

It was a very popular muni, short by todays standards (around 6600 yds), but played to a par of 66 making it a challenging short track. They tore it down in 1996 and built a par 72 on the same land, making the new course VERY short and a bit of a joke. It's a shame when economics and development take precedent over value and tradition, but it's commonplace.

[ChipOat]

Most missed: The Links Golf Club

Interesting to GCA: Happauge

Others (quickly): Malvern, Valley Forge

[wsmorrison]

Craig and Mike C,

I think it is an error in Cornish and Whitten, especially since they don't have Flynn's name at all under Manor (formerly Craig Disher CC) in Washington, DC.

Mike, I'd definitely go out with you to both Pocono Manor and to Meadia Heights.  I think Craig sent me a photo of Meadia Heights, I can't seem to find it.  I'll copy and paste from Google Earth in a bit and give you some food for thought.

[TEPaul]

Rob Kimball:

Yeah, I used to play the old Links club all the time, particular one summer. My Dad belonged to it and I played one summer all the time with this other guy originally from Boston who was just a friend of mine. He didn't have to pay greenfees or anything. The club could never have more than 100 members and hardly any of them ever seemed to play except on Sunday because that's when they had a great lunch in the little farmhouse. The pro shop was in the barn and the farmhouse was run by Bert, this great old English or Scottish guy who was a wonderful cook and he had this knack of bringing the members exactly what they wanted to drink without them even having to tell them what they wanted. That always killed me, and them too but they all say he never got it wrong. The hole I remember the best was the reverse redan. My Dad and the guys he played with said it was the best RR they knew of anywhere. Mr Paley and Mr Whitney pretty much ran the place but I guess they let it go in the end because they were getting pretty old and all the members belonged to so many other clubs anyway and in the end no one who belonged was playing it. I really loved it because it was about the most understated club for a good golf course I've ever seen in my life. One time on that hole that came right by the old clubhouse I hooked a ball right through the kitchen window and apparently wiped out a big pot of Bert's leek soup which he told me about later. When I got up to the window Bert just handed me back my ball through the window without saying a word. It was a great little place and I'm sorry to say I probably appreciate it more now than I did then. Isn't that so true sometimes?

[A.G._Crockett]

Today, I remembered Southerness in Stockbridge, GA, which gets me to at least 14 NLE courses, I believe.

My new working theory is that I play often at relatively cheap, relatively accessible courses.  Often, apparently, they are cheap and accessible because they are about to cease to exist.

[Bill Gayne]

A.G.

I played Southerness once, what happened?

Bill

[A.G._Crockett]

Bill,
Just a standard real estate thing, I suppose.  It closed a couple of years ago.

[Scott_Burroughs]

I'm sad to say that it looks like I'll be adding another course to my list of NLE's played, but this one hits much closer to home.  As in, my home course, Wake Forest GC.  

A front page article here today announced that my home course (of 10 years) looks like it will be sold to developers of high-end homes.  We'll be given the option of transferring our membership to a sister club, but it is much farther away, and I recall only being able to hit a handful of drivers there, which would get old.  I think it's also more crowded.

For those of you who have joined me in a round there or have played it otherwise, you also might be adding a NLE to your list.

Here's the article, which has the name of the club wrong (it's WFGC, not WFCC):

http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/397786.html

By the way, the letter to the members mentioned in the article hasn't reached me yet, so it's so nice to be in the dark about such things.  Not mentioned in the article is the original architect of the course, Gene Hamm, a mid-atlantic regional architect now retired in Raleigh, NC, who did a few of the courses in the Pinehurst area (the Foxfire pair and Pinewild's original course), and a number of the older courses in the Myrtle Beach area.

My favorite quote from the article was the last:

A member on and off since 1973, Dickerson said the course has an unpretentious character that you don't find at the newer courses.

"It's kind of middle class," he said. "The golf course is not for the real prosperous people."

...and this was one of my favorite things about it, the unpretentiousness.  We rarely had what today is considered even 'acceptable' conditioning, but you rarely heard any members complain about it.

It was also a great place to take my oldest daughter out for a late afternoon round.

[A.G._Crockett]

Scott,
I haven't had a chance to read the article yet, but I am very sorry to hear that.  I played there once long ago, so I have to add it to my list of NLE's as well.  I got to play with Tommy Byrne, the old Yankee pitcher, who said that he had been involved in the development of the club somehow.  He literally came off both feet on every full swing, and just hit the hell out of the ball; a very impressive athlete, even at around age 70 or so at that time.  A very enjoyable afternoon.

[Tom Huckaby]

Is Peacock Gap in NorCal still E?

Yes, most definitely.  Pretty darn fun golf course.

Was Chimney Rock once 18 holes?

And like Mr. Benham, of course I too often frequented Fairway Glen and Oak Ridge back in the day.  May they rest in peace.

Interesting, I also played damn near all the SoCal courses Tommy mentioned...

Did any of you NorCals play either Cambrian or Calero?  Those go WAY back.  But we visited here a lot when I was a kid, and I played both of those also.

Sadly too many golf courses do come and go.  

[Evan_Green]

Would having played the Bob Baldock version of MPCC Shore (e.g. a course that was redesigned) count as having played a NLE? Or does it have to be totally gone (e.g. turned into a mall)

[Tom Huckaby]

Evan - I'd say that counts - the course is pretty damn different now, totally different after the 4th hole.  Add that to my list also.

TH

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