HVGC and their remarkable super, Scott Anderson, absolutely nailed the Ideal Maintenance Meld in last Wednesday's Baily Cup in Philadelphia. This year was the 75th anniversay of the Baily Cup, an annual competition on the first Wednesday of May every year between HVGC, Pine Valley, Merion and Gulph Mills.
There are singles matches in the morning and foursome matches in the afternoon and a wonderful old fashioned super camaraderie dinner following the matches with toasts and stories and jokes (a few on these teams are also world class joke tellers generally lead by Hartfeld's Davis Sezna (now in California) who in my opinion is funnier than 75% of the professional comedians out there).
The dinner always begins with a toast of port to Frederick Baily who served on Merion's search committee in 1910 in the move to Ardmore. Baily was struck and killed by lightening, I think in the early 1920s, on one of Merion's greens.
Anyway, I didn't play but I did go around the course in the afternoon following the foursome matches and I have basically never seen a course that completely nailed the "Ideal Maintenance Meld" quite like that.
When I came out of the parking lot and got my first look at a few greens they had this combination ultra light green/light brown SHEEN to them. Shots "through the green" were bouncing and rolling and trucking all over the topography. The fairways were light green not brown. The players said it was all they could handle but basically all of them were loving it because it took so much thought just to figure out what kind of shot to try---eg the ball was definitely not sticking or holding that well coming into the greens and the approaches were really functioning for bounce or run-in selections. The medalist in the singles was HVGC's Mike Gregor with a 71. I've known him for years around here on the tournament circuit and he can really play--a true "natural" talent and incredibly solid ball striker. Really remarkably, one foursome (alternate shot) on the HVGC team shot a 73!
I spoke to Scott on the phone a couple of times that day and he told me the course basically could not have been better than it was and it wasn't even close to stressing, and Scott is definitely not a guy who ever overstates or exaggerates things, that's for sure. He told me what the greenspeed was but I told him I wouldn't tell anyone and I'm not going to. I putted a bunch of them and they were definitely super-sporty requiring huge imagination but I thought they were all very doable with caution and thoughtful and imaginative putting and chipping. The stimp reading was really fast though! HVGC's greens are multi-strains with some excellent "managed" poa, like most of the old top championship courses around here still are!
HVGC sort of blew the other teams away and won the Baily Cup. At the other end of the spectrum, the Baily Cup has always had what's referred to as the "Piss Pot" that the team with the lowest team total has to drink in front of everyone at the end of the dinner. Over the years, Gulph Mills' team has sort of become conoisseurs of the Piss Pot but this year we beat out Merion by a minimum numerical possibility of a mere half point to not drink the Piss Pot.
(The Merion team captain, Gerhard Van Arkle, had to cut out of the dinner early to go watch to see if his super-athlete daughter won the Inter-Ac athlete of the year so his Merion captain duties at the dinner were taken over by hilariously funny, Tom Murrell. When the Merion team was collecting in front of the dinner to drink the Piss Pot. I was just slipping out on the patio for a smoke but I believe I heard Murrell dedicate the Piss Pot to two over-arching numb-skulls from somewhere out there in the boondocks by the name of Moriarty and MacWood who apparently think they know something about Merion's architectural history, about the ethos of this town as it relates to others and who are out to ridiculously reinterpret Merion's history on some Internet website without even having bothered to come here).
Anyway, you're THE MAN, Scott Anderson! For those not aware of it we think Scott may've been the first one in America to bring a prominent American INLAND golf course out of years of massive over-irrigation and dry it out, soup it up, speed it up and make it shine figuratively and literally. That was almost twenty five years ago and he claims there was no way he could've pulled it off if he didn't have one Linc Roden behind him all the way who was followed by Sully's (JES11 on here) father Jim Sullivan.
HVGC just NAILED the Ideal Maintenance Meld in the Baily Cup last Wednesday. I've seen courses come close like NGLA in the National's Singles Tournament, and like Merion East and of course Oakmont but HVGC and Scott did it as good as it can be done, in my opinion.
It is a playability and a look to just die for, I will gurantee you all that!
PS:
Scott did such a great job last Wednesday, I want to make a little plug here for his very serious sideline expertise----eg minimizing the effects of geopathic stress. It works on his course and it works on anyone willing to have him remediate it in their homes and offices or whatever. Give him a call and he'll come out and do it for you and your entire life will also NAIL your personal IMM and you too can become as firm and fast as you can stand. Contact me on the IM or email and I'll tell you how to reach him. The only thing you probably shouldn't ask him to do for you is give you a drink of water. Scott's not too crazy about using water.