Joe,
Thanks for pinch-hitting today and getting those aerials up.
Philip,
If we come across any of the proposed Tilly layouts, you'll certainly be the first to know.
Bill Hagel,
The green for the old #9 is visible right behind the tree(s) that are behind today's #8 tee. There were no bunkers at the time at that green.
We don't know yet who designed #17 but the time period could have indicated Flynn...or even possibly Wilson. We'll be doing more research later this month and should be able to learn more. In any case, the bunkering on this hole is Flynn-like, I'd agree, but there are few cases on the course where that comparison could be made...possibly #2, but...that leads me to;
Eric/Kyle,
Similar to Seaview, and perhaps even Merion East (I'm unclear here, but suspect it's so), Cobb's Creek was laid out with very little bunkering when it opened.
Some of the thinking back then, which seems pretty sound on the face of it, was that one needed to see how the course played before adding a lot of artificial hazards, particularly when the land offered plenty of natural challenges and hazards.
In the case of Seaview, for whatever reason 2 years after Wilson designed it, Clarence Geist (who was also on the GAP Commission working to bring public golf to Philly) brought in Donald Ross to do the bunkering scheme, who was helped by the inhouse professional Wilfred Reid. It's probable that Wilson was simply too busy with Cobbs Creek at the time, given that he spent
SIX months on the layout, which was a huge shock to me.
I'm beginning to learn that Hugh Wilson was a very meticulous, detailed, fastidious, and likely perfectionist man, and it now seems much different to me when I think about the stories of him having Joe Valentine lay bedsheets in positions around the Merion course so that he could see what any proposed bunker might look like to the golfer's eye.
Along with that very disciplined methodology for course building, there were additional reasons for exercising caution in overburdening Cobbs Creek with artificial hazards and bunkering. As Tillinghast explained in July of 1916, in an article where he said of the island-green 12th "Possibly there is not a prettier hole in the country from the purely scenic standpoint";
"Everything is new, but in another year or two the course will be as fine a test of golf as any one will wish. Very little bunkering has been done yet and the course will not be made harder for a year or so, for those who laid it out realize that it will be played over by a host of persons who have never played golf before, and no effort will be made to make it too difficult for them until they have reached the point where their golf will admit of stiffer bunkering."A number of other accounts of the time indicate that this was the thinking but also suggest that this was such good and challenging golfing ground, with such a number of "natural" hazards (the creek came into play on six holes), that the course was indeed not in need of more. Tillinghast spoke of this in another article when he stated,
"There are so many natural hazards that this problem has not been much of a bother to the golf architects."In fact, most of the bunkers that are in place today, with the exception of those on 2, 10, and 17 would likely qualify as "saving" bunkers, where they prevent balls from running into even more difficult positions, either of which might serve to 1) delay play, and/or 2) put the golfer in such a disadvantageous position that he 1) delays play.
And, even from the very beginning the course did prove challenging...immensely so. In the first tournament held there the winner finished around 161 for two rounds...and won by 9 shots!
In the 1928 USGA Publinx tourney, ten over par for two rounds won medal.
Even during the 50s when the PGA tour came to town for the Daily News Open and played on today's course at around 6200 yards, (somewhat ironically for purposes of this discussion, BILLY CASPER played), the winning scores for four rounds were +2 and -3.
In an article I can't find at the moment, Cobbs Creek professional Horace Gamble around 1920 or so started a local brouhaha when he had the temerity to suggest that Cobbs Creek was a more difficult test of golf than Pine Valley.
After a firestorm of local backlash from the private clubs in Philadelphia, Gamble tried to explain himself in a more politically correct fashion by saying that Cobbs Creek had much more challenge in the way of "natural" hazards, where Pine Valley needed to incorporate extensive bunkering, and that in tournament competitions, he had fared far better scorewise playing Pine Valley than he was ever able to at Cobbs Creek.
Tommy N,
Do you still need me to send the jpg files, or can you grab them here?