A modern day Lido?

[Brian_Gracely]

From a November 2003 Business Week article, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_46/b3858610.htm

"Although he already has a third course on the way, Keiser admits over dinner that he's obsessed with creating a course modeled on the original Lido Golf Club on Long Island, which was damaged when the Navy claimed the seaside land for its use during World War II. "Economically, we don't need more than three courses here," says Keiser. "But it's the idea of reviving the original Lido Club that stirs my soul." As his first two links courses show, Keiser would love nothing more than to take course design -- and the game of golf -- back to its roots."


From the GCA.com archives, http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forums2/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=8410, Tom Doak wrote:

"Here's a vote for Lido.  It's tempting to build it again on a flat site in Florida or somewhere -- I've seen a good enough aerial photo of it that I believe I could get most of it right..."


Any chance that these two gentleman might be able to pull this off on some of the available property at Bandon?  Would too many good courses potentially spoil the aura at Bandon?

[T_MacWood]

Aren't we looking at a modern day Lido this weekend?

[Robert Thompson]

How in the world could too many good courses possibly spoil any location? Pacific and Bandon, along with the Coore and Crenshaw course will put the facility in among the best resorts in the world. Add a fourth, modeled after Lido (my understanding is that Keiser has the land available) and the facility might rank as the best golf resort in the world.

R

[TEPaul]

"Aren't we looking at a modern day Lido this weekend?"

Tom MacW:

If just massive amounts of earthmoving to form golf architecture means a modern day Lido to you then maybe Whistling Straits is a modern day Lido. But to me the look and style and type of course WS is or BD is, is not remotely close to The Lido in type or style. And I doubt anything could be built in the area of WS or Bandon similar to Long Island's Lido. Both those sites are rather high above the coastline--completely unlike the raw swampy site of The Lido!

The Lido was a massive dredge and fill operation. WS and BD are high up off the coastline--not remotely similar in my opinion. The entire aura is completely different. If a course could be built today along Long Island's south shore or perhaps on the inland or even some stretches of the ocean side of the inland waterway or even the Florida Everglades it may be close to the look and style of The Lido. I seriously doubt if the site the Lido was built on in 1915 and 1916 existed today as it was back then that environmentalism would even allow it to be built!

A sort of similar site (type, look and style) to The Lido was Alison's Timber Point also low profile to the coast-line and water table but not anywhere near as extreme as the excessively low water-table or almost swampy original site of The Lido. Earthmoving wasn't really the theme of Lido---massive dredge and fill was!

Some of the basic nuts and bolts and fundamental differences of some of the classic old architecture you don't seem to know or understand never ceases to amaze me!  

WS or BD never could be similar to the type and style of Lido! The raw sites are most definitely different enough

[Gerry B]

Based upon old photos, historical articles and praise -in particular Claude Harmon's assessment that it was in the same league as Pine Valley,  if it could be pulled off at Bandon - the resort  would be the #1 destination hands down. If I could turn back the clock to the golden age and get to play 1 course - The Lido would be my choice hands down.

[T_MacWood]

TE
"In trying to persuade me he [Roger Winthrop] assured me I could do anything I wanted in constructing the holes, as in making the fills, hollows, mounds and lakes could be created at will and they could pump them up or out according to any contour map I might submit. He said he knew I had in mind a number of wonderful holes I had seen on the other side, but for which I had never found any fitting place, exclaiming: 'Here is an opportunity for you, Charlie, to build anything you want to build.' To me it seemed a dream. The more I thought it over the more it fascinated me. It really made me feel like a creator."

Lido wasn't about dredging, dredging was just a means to an end. Lido was about creating something out of nothing. WS is a modern version of creating something out of nothing.

[tonyt]

Does anyone know; Did Pete Dye have to bring it all in and make it from nothing on a site as plain as Kyle Phillips had at Kingsbarns? Or more so?

[TEPaul]

"Lido wasn't about dredging, dredging was just a means to an end. Lido was about creating something out of nothing. WS is a modern version of creating something out of nothing."

Tom:

Certainly creating something out of nothing is a similarity between WS and The Lido, but the similarity probably ends there. The Lido was about dredging and filling natural areas of water retention and WS was not. It appears to me that WS is rather high over Lake Michigan, but the Lido was not high over the Great South Bay of Long Island---in the beginning it was practically part of it.

Probably unfortunately, that means The Lido was a golf course, as was a part of MacD/Raynor's Creek Club, constantly exposed to problems of hydrology and we do know it wasn't long before that took it's toll on perhaps Macdonald/Raynor's most impressive Biarritz hole (#8) which apparently also affected the 9th. The same kind of inherent dredge and fill problems were also constant on five of Macdonald/Raynor holes at the Creek Club which ended up costing the club over $100,000 to fix in the 1930s. (I'd have liked to see you try to convince The Creek Club back then that this was just an "earth-moving" means to an end. Apparently Macdonald wasn't very good at convincing them of that and ended up resigning from the club over what went wrong and how to fix it! But what the hell, who really cares what a membership thinks, right, even if it does end up costing them an additional $100,000 in the 1930, perhaps the cost of a very good golf course at that time!    )

So, yes, while you think creating something out of nothing by dredge and fill operation is simply the same thing as the massive earth-moving of WS, let's hope the latter course will never have some of the inherent architectural problems of a few of Macdonald/Raynor's "create something out of nothing" dredge and fill operations. Being that high over Lake Michigan I doubt WS will have those inherent hydrology problems with its architecture, although a few of those WS greens do hang quite precariously close over cliffs down to Lake Michigan!