Banks vs Raynor

[T_MacWood]

They both relied on many of the same template holes...but from what I understand they had their own unique style. Which man produced the more interesting architecture?

[ed_getka]

I haven't seen enough of their work to compare. Ask again in a few years and I should have some inkling of an answer.

[Mike_Sweeney]

I have only seen Whipporwill, Essex County and Forsgate of Banks. All three are excellent members courses that I really enjoy and are fun to play. They seem to have softer edges than that of a Raynor course, but the terrain of Yale probably dominates my thought process too much in favor of Raynor.

Whip is very hilly and "ridgey" in areas which gives it some of its memorability, Forsgate is farmish type land, and Essex is very classic rolling parkland. The separation of the three is fairly small in my mind. Banks probably did not take the chances that Raynor did, but that may have been a fuction of the amount of courses he produced versus Raynor. Right or wrong, I think they will always be viewed in the folowing order:

1.  CB
2.  Seth
3.  Charles

I am going to see Mountain Lake at the end of this month, and I am very excited to see what Raynor does on a flat piece of property.

Obviously George Bahto is better to answer.

[mark chalfant]

  Tom,
Im a bit pressed for time but  briefly....

I really think  theyre  both great


One  thing   I have  noticed that  Banks may have taken  more  chances with template  holes,   and with   par   fives


  Banks  @ Forsgate,  Tamarack  and  Whipporwill spring to  mind


Forsgate   #8  and  9 are  bold and very   interesting

par  fives  over roller coaster   terrain.


At  Tamarack  the   fifth  (577) and the 17  (501) are also

compelling creations by Banks.


Sometimes  the  Steam  Shovel   guy  built  dropping par

threes that allude to the Redan   prototype


I  like  the one at   Tamarack but I   dont see much merit
in the Forsgate  version


In  addition,   Banks took  many chances at the hilly

land at   Whippoorwill.  Again the long  6th  is funky  but

engaging.    But  the dual fairway  14th is   a splendid strategic hole.  Wonderful   internal  contours at Whippl
also.

   Such  contours, intricate and elegant,  are why  I slightly

prefer  Whippoorwill over  Forsgate.

The  greens at  Forsgate  are   fun  but ,in some cases,

of the " buried elephant school"

Finally,    Raynors   briiliant  trio of  Camargo, Fishers Island,

and   Yeamans are  among my favorite courses by any

architect, period.  Nothing   I ve seen by  Banks quite

reaches this pinnacle.

I  find the green complexes & routing  at Camargo and  

Fishers Island to be   exemplary.


So  maybe  I slightly prefer  Raynor over  Banks,

but  I   contend that both of  their ouevres  are very

compelling and   interesting. !!


If you  come out   east  be sure to see Essex  County,  NJ,

it has 6-7  by  Tillinghast  and  11 by  Banks/ Raynor.

George  Bahto has done a  fine restoration job there.


  I hope this helps


    Mark

 

ps.   the bold  par thees at Tamarack  are worth a look as are

  Raynor's  excellent  greens at   Westhampton.


 

[Donnie Beck]

They are very similar, but I think Bank's features are a little bolder than Raynor's.

[mark chalfant]

    Donnie   makes a good point,


Banks  sometimes opted for a very amplified, almost

monumental, sense of scale.

Many bunkers at  Forsgate  are  15-20 feet  deep.

Moreover the  Biarritz hole (12) at  Tamarack (Ct.) was designed to

have a green  60  yards  deep.  This  hole,

and the  neat  Eden (3)  at  Tamarack  have   sharp

dropoffs if you miss   left  or   long.


Ive  sometimes wondered what  Camargo would look like if

  Banks  had done the work   or  what  Shoreacres

would  be  like   if    Banks  had   been in charge.







It would be  neat to hear what   Gene  G,  George B,or

Jim  Kennedy think about  the contrasts  between


Seth   Raynor  and  Charles  Banks.


 

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mark,
The one man who can supply the most definitive answers hasn't checked in here, as of yet.
From George's second Feature Interview:
 

(Banks)... perhaps not up the top of Raynor-standards as far as certain aspects of design. There was less boldness in Banks work compared to Raynor's as there was less boldness in Raynor's work compared to the 'master', Mr. Macdonald. I think much of this is (was) a reflection of each man's personality.

An additional "reflection' of their personalities might be found in their grave stones. George says CB's is very large and ornate and postioned across from the smaller and less magnificent monument for Seth. George says it's so CB can "keep an eye" on him.
Poor Charles' is located in Salisbury, a driver/wedge away from my dooryard. It took the folks who administer the cemetery quite a while to find his site on their maps when I went looking. The stone is a flat marker, about 8"x 14", and was nearly covered over with grass when I found it.

I've only seen a bit of Bank's work, the few holes he remodeled at Wyantenuck in Gr. Barrington, Ma., our 7th at Hotchkiss and the back nine at Essex. The holes at Essex are as fine a nine as anyone could ask for but I think George says Raynor was involved there, at least in the planning.
I hope to get out more this season.  


 

[T_MacWood]

One interesting difference, Banks wrote a lot more about architecture than Raynor. Of course, from the looks of it, Raynor might not have had any time to write.

[Doug Braunsdorf]

Just to add something--it's established that Forsgate is a VERY good golf course.  Not too expensive to join, either. Well under 10 grand, I believe.  I used to work there, and played the Banks course on a weekly basis.  Sadly, the owner of the property (who is also a developer) is putting up scads of new homes around the perimeter.  The #2,3,4,5 holes have townhomes and McMansions entirely too close to the course, in my opinion.  
It's really a shame, because there are many of the "British" holes represented here (Hog's Back, Punchbowl, Eden, etc.) and this is truly a classic course.  

[TEPaul]

I agree with Donnie Beck that Bank's architecture was generally even bolder and more dramatic in its construction and look than Raynor's, as hard as that is to believe and visulize. Both those guys and probably Macdonald too were, in my opinion, sort of at the outside edge of a fascinating style of an era (their own) that looked incredibly engineered but almost always played bold and great.

Geoff Shackelford in his "Golden Age of Golf Architecture" categorized architects Macdonald, Raynor, Banks and Emmet as comprising the "National School" of architecture and I think rightly so.

One of the things that's always interested me about the so-called "Golden Age" architecture is how vastly different in look much of the "National" School's architecture was from those ultra-naturalists of the so-called "Monterrey" School of architecture that seems to have evolved out of or even merged into the "Mackenzie" School that probably began to develop its basic style and look from it's initial strong ties to the "Heathland" architecture of England.

I can't help notice how different in look some of the greens and their sites of the more engineered look of the "National" School are from something like Cypress Point where every one of its greens seems to flow into and out of the landscape as if no one actually constructed them.

A course like PVGC has greens (and architectur ) that's a real combination of both looks to me, probably a result of the early time it was built and the architectural influences on it, much of it heathland and considerably before that time when a school like "Monterrey" appeared to tie everything together as if it was just Nature.

[George_Bahto]

Just to define a little more what I thinking about comparing between the boldness of designs of these three guys.

Jim Kennedy quoted me: “Banks)... perhaps not up the top of Raynor-standards as far as certain aspects of design. There was less boldness in Banks work compared to Raynor's as there was less boldness in Raynor's work compared to the 'master', Mr. Macdonald. I think much of this is (was) a reflection of each man's personality.”

What I was referring to was the OVERALL impact of their holes designs.

Macdonald: very, very bold designs - like pop-you-between-your-eyesotype holes. Raynor less so and Banks, in my opinion, even less overall in some respects ...... but there are some individual features of Banks’ that were often more bold than Seth’s.

Example: I think Banks was really impressed with what could be done greenside on one of the first Macdonald/Raynor projects he worked on - Yale. To me he saw the incredible drama of greenside bunkering on Yale #8 left and Yale #2 left-greenside.

Remember this fella came from “stiff” academia, Hotchkiss!!  (How’s that Jimmy) ....  So the transition to golf course architecture (and Macdonald) was severe. He only got in, at best, a year working under Raynor before Raynor died although it seems he worked part time the “off-school-season” before.

It seems to me he tried to incorporate that very deep greenside bunkering setting wherever he could, more that had Raynor.

Raynor greenside, even at its steepest, seems less dramatic than Banks in many cases - Raynor more natural and fitting to the existing terrain.

It seems to me Banks sort of went out of his way to “make it happen” - going out of his way in his designs to locate green sites that were more perched on a precipice, affording him the opportunity to create this scary greenside bunkering. It may even have not been intentional on Banks’ part but there is an awful lot of these canyon-bunkers in his work.

I wish I could have been able to really get a handle on areas of unfinished work Banks took over after Raynor died to see if an occasional unfinished hole was influenced by Banks.

What I mean is this: Yeamans Hall was incomplete when Raynor died: Hole #12 on this basically flat terrain looks like your playing in Westchester County NY with that bunker in front of the green! It’s the only one on the course.  Was that area as deep as originally planned or was it not completed and Banks bad it deeper - we’ll never know but it’s interesting to speculate. There are a number of examples like this on these unfinished courses.

I think that bold, deep greenside bunkering, as I said above, was often the result of Josh Banks selecting or manufacturing almost overly dramatic green locations, whether subconsciously or intentionally. .......  Tamarack, Essex County, The Knoll, Whippoorwill, Rock Spring, even little old Annapolis Roads in MD are a few examples of very deep greenside bunkers ......  and then on moderately rolling land at Forsgate where he made it look more dramatic that the original land dictated - there he manufactured it and blending it in so marvelously so it didn’t look that out of place.

He certainly learned quickly that dynamite and big machines to could get the job done quicker and more efficiently - but I think those were changing times (1925 thru Depression) going on during the hectic years of the Roaring Twenties and the architects did not have the luxury of time they had in the 10-teens and early twenties They were all up to the asses in work.

[Patrick_Mucci]

George Bahto,

Don't you find a rather smooth transition from one to the other ?  A natural progression, a remarkable continuity from three men from such diverse backrounds.  I sense an ongoing rhythm, an evolving harmony in their designs, not a conflict or a competition

One also has to look at the individual sites that they worked on.

[George_Bahto]

Patrick_Mucci
"Don't you find a rather smooth transition from one to the other?"  

You're right Patrick - you could hardly tell where one ended and the other began.

There was obviously a lot of courses SR and Banks designed and worked on together.

There might be more of a change between CBM's holes (ones he actually "entered" himself) and those of Raynor. CB was much more dramatic.

I also think that over the years Raynor sort of tired of "fighting" with the clubs as to what he REALLY wanted on a course and what they WANTED on their courses. He'd submit designs and get them watered down. but hey, it was their course.

He (SR) was very stubborn though - don't kid yourself. It shows in a lot of Banks' articles. He was big time and would not often seriously compromise.

I have a whole collection of his original concepts.

Big Charlie on the other hand  ..........   not many were going to challenge him.

[TEPaul]

George:

Perhaps the photo of Tillinghast's redan at Somerset Hills isn't clear enough but I've always been struck by something about it---the fact that there appears to be something akin to fairway space along side and to the right of the hump that creates the mid-right side of the green and basically the mid-green "kicker". There's also a carry bunker way out to the right in this apparently right fairway area that would seem to support the idea that some form of fairway may have been way out there and past that bunker. None of this apparent fairway area to the right exists anymore, I don't believe.

The reason I mention it is simply because I doubt it's still there and also because it appears to be a strange thing to design and build. If a ball went over there it looks as if the golfer would have to play a recovery from that fairway area over the kicker mound on the right of the green which would be a helluva shot (for anyone other than Phil Mickelson) as the green runs completely away from that angle.

But I was reading Tillinghast description of the hole in "The Course Beautiful" and he explains something that may indicate that fairway area was there for a reason.


"A prominent mound appears at the entrance and if the ball finds it nicely it will kick in, but if it gets working too far to the right it is a case of "helangone" as the caddie would say."

There's no question there's something like fairway over there to the right of the mound on the green's right on that early photo if one looks at the width of the fairway area over there running up to the green particularly on the right demarked by that apparent berm and trench way out on its right.

A very interesting original looking hole--and that Tillinghast bunkering on it looks to be as much Raynor in shape, style and look as Raynor himself.

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

I find the hole to be a severe rendition of a redan, not a typical one.

AWT might have wanted to distinquish his version from all others.

[George_Bahto]

Patrick - you got it - this thing is very difficult - much more so than a Raynor Redan in design an, I think, in playablity. To get to the back left pin placements is about as hard as it gets.

I did the same at Sands Point but even put in a minor depression back left .......  you probably should come in to that pin with a high fad but heck you've got to come in over the bunker.


SH #@ - outstanding hole!

[Patrick_Mucci]

George Bahto,

Do you think he manufactured that redan to show his contemporaries and the world that he too was capable of producing some of the famous template holes ?

I don't know that that specific location lends itself to a natural redan that he just happened to discover.

[TEPaul]

I'm surprised at that. I think SH's #2 is one of the best redan type holes I've ever seen and when the greenspeed is about the same on both and fast I bet #7 at Shinnecock is a whole lot harder. The one thing I do not know about Shinnecock's #7 (redan) is if it's the same green as the old #14 on the old Macdonald/Raynor course that preceded the present Shinnecock. The bunkering was redone at least. I'd doubt it is the same green although it's in the exact same place. If it is the same green I  think it would be the only one out there that is although a few others are in the same place as some other hole iterations from the Macd/Raynor previous course (#2 & #3 at least). #9 is near the old 18th but not in the exact some place I don't think. We do have the topo from Flynn that can tell all that though as he drew all the previous greens on the contour lines.

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

I think, if you played # 2 more often, your opinion might change.

Looking at it and playing it provide two distinct experiences.

[TEPaul]

Pat:

You're probably right about that. I've only played it twice and knocked it inside 3 ft both times so obviously it doesn't seem all that severe to me---YET!

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

Your experiences are the product of your golfing skills and the fortuitous mood of the golfing gods on the days you played it.

But, it can be a bedeviling hole, and is far more exteme then other redans I've encountered.

[TEPaul]

Pat:

In my opinion, the redan hole and its concept, although perhaps one of the most famous in golf design, is, or certainly was supposed to be when it was developed and initially used--a very high demand and even a one dimensional shot requirement.

I think this fact alone is very important to know today for a number of reasons, the primary one being the so-called "shot testing" those early architects were dedicatedly to and into was simply a part of the principle and philosophy of golf and architecture in that day and age!

In their minds, and in the ideal conditions for that hole and that design concept (firm approach area and green) basically the only way to play that hole and that concept successfully was to hit the "redan shot" plain and simple. And it was definitely not an easy thing for most, and even good players to do consistently.

Macdonald no more contemplated golfers like Woods hitting a big high faded 5-6 iron into that green and that design concept than he contemplated a golfer flying bunkers out over 300 yards (as Woods sometimes does)!!

I remember those holes when I was a kid sometimes playing them and sometimes with my Dad and his friends most all of whom were good players.

I remember when I was a young teenager playing NGLA's redan, I remember better Piping's redan and the Links's reverse redan because I played them more often and watched my Dad and his friends play them.

They all hit the "redan shot" or tried to because that was the only possible way to play those holes successfully unless it was soaking wet. They were both (NGLA and Piping) long irons and sometimes a 4 wood,  generally low and sometimes necessarily drawing a bit although they all tried to hit the low cut 4 wood into the Links reverse redan. I don't remember them hitting irons into the Links redan except very occasionally.

Frankly, as good golfers as some of them were they didn't pull that demand "redan shot" off that often and payed the price almost every time they didn't. Those redan holes, all of them, were severe---they were supposed to be---that was the concept---a true "shot test" as many of those early architects intended it to be. The designs on holes like that and the concept was supposed to be an examination of a particular skill to see if a golfer could pull off the ONLY real shot required and the ONLY shot that could be successful!

Many of us on here today sort of forget that fundamental or principle of some of early architecture in our fixation with this all encompassing idea of "strategy". Too many of us think ALL those old holes had multiple ways of playing them--multiple choices to basically accomplish the same end! That was not then the case on some of those holes and it wasn't supposed to be. Many of them were multi-optional but not the redans!

You just had to pull off the "redan shot" which on many of them needed to be pretty precise in both distance, direction and trajectory or you generally had a major problem. They were supposed to be severe.

Too many of us today have forgotten that or apparently never understood it. It's just another example, in my opinion, of how some of us are looking back on that time through the prism of some things and ideas that came later and not understanding the way it was and was supposed to be back then!


 

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

I understand, but, I think the extreme slope of the putting surface, almost a two tiered surface and the green surrounds make it more severe then most redans.

[TEPaul]

Pat:

I don't really agree with that regarding Somerset Hills. I played that course a few falls ago and in the last year or so when the Compher Cup was there and particularly in the latter it was simply that the greens were just a little too quick for so many of the slopes and contours on that course. I think SH should be very careful that way. If they take their greenspeeds up just even one foot they'll probably basically obsolete as reasonably functional about 30-35% of all the greenspace on that golf course. I was very aware of that throughout the course last I played it and can even go through ever green (including the redan) and tell you almost exactly where!

[Paul_Turner]

With the right wind, I've seen a high fade work very well on the original Redan.  I suspect this shot might not be as effective at NGLA or SH because those holes play slightly downhill.  The original is slightly uphill (more of a "fortress").