Comparing and contrasting Garden City and Myopia Hunt

[JNC Lyon]

The berms and cross bunkers were definitely something that made Garden City unique.  One really has to focus on getting a good line in the distance off the tee, as most of the tee shots are semi-blind/blind and give very little visual aid.  I think a feature like this rewards the player who can focus on a target and commit to make a good swing.  Once you you play the course three or four times, you know where the hazards but still have very few visual reference points, making such focus all the more difficult.  I remember striping it down the middle on 17, then getting up to the landing area and realizing how narrow it really is.  Since the tee shot is still blind every time, a second playing will mean the same visual presentation, but it will be mentally more intimidating.

The cross bunkers, even more than the berms, provide the real character and defense of the course.  The prime example of this comes on 15.  The bunker is perfectly placed to limit distance on a long par four, meaning that the long second combined with the tilted green will allow the hole to stand the test of time.  Simultaneously, the hole remains strategically brilliant, tempting the golfer to drive long down the right side to gain the best angle into the green while flirting with deep bunkers right and the cross bunker long.  9's massive cross bunker serves a similar purpose on a short four.  However, because of the length and setup of the hole, the longer hitter will often be tempted to fire at the flag, frequently leaving an awkward approach into the green.

It is rare today to see holes like 9 and particularly 15 being built, mainly because there will be complaints of favoring the shorter hitter.  However, it is indisputable that such holes do a much better job at defending against length than a wide open 490 par four.

[TEPaul]

"Maybe wayne is right, bring back berms.  Also bring back cross bunkers...that'll help stem some of the distance problem and keep things strategic.

They create the line of charm."


No, Jay, crossbunkers and such that stretch clear across the line of play do not create "line of charm" strategies in the slightest.

All that kind of old fashioned "across the hole" crossbunkering creates for today's really long level of player to shut down on their choice of some of their longer distance clubs off the tee etc.

That, in fact, is almost an antithesis of Behr's "line of charm" architectural or strategic philosophy.

[JMorgan]

yes, Emmet, a follower of raynor, employed them to good use at GCGC.

Que es esto? Jay, you have entered ... the Twilight Zone.

[Mike_Cirba]

If anything, Raynor and even Macdonald were likely followers of Emmett.

[wsmorrison]

It looks like I am the only Wayne who posted on this thread.  I don't believe Jay Flemma understood the meaning of my post very well and as Tom Paul suggested, the impact of berms and cross bunkers on lines of charm and the places on the architect timeline for Emmet and Raynor.

I've never visited Garden City or Myopia Hunt.  I hope to see them both at some point.

[BCrosby]

I think I should describe Myopia's 1st in complete detail because there's nothing like it. Some might say it's just too short (Leeds basically just had to wedge what it is in there) for today and they have a point. But the rest of what it is does to compensate in some really cool ways for its extreme shortness should be explained.

Bob Crosby, you played for Harvard and obviously played Myopia numerous times. Why don't you go first and describe this ultra unusual opener of that super early era in American golf and architecture?

TEP -

I haven't seen the hole in many, many years. And when I was playing it regularly my entire focus was on scoring. Which is also why I haven't contributed to the Myopia/GC thread. I don't remember big chunks of the course. But then I don't remember big chunks of those years. The former I can correct, the latter probably not. I do have some great stories about drinking and stuff late into the night on the porch to the wonderful little locker room.

So I yield the podium to you.

I DO want to hear more about the Jones letter. Any chance you could get a copy? When was it written? I would love to see it.

Bob 

[Thomas MacWood]

Emmet's original Garden City was a typical Victorian design with cross hazards & cops at regular intervals. Did Myopia feature the same kind of hazards?

[TEPaul]

BobC:

OK, I get you. There are probably whole years for me too back then I can't even remember where I was! 

Myopia's opening hole is a par 4 of 275 yards from the tips, and as I mentioned before, Leeds basically had to just wedge it in there from the clubhouse up to the second tee which was originally the first tee and hole on Myopia's original "Long Nine" which was basically a Leeds redo of the original nine laid out by three Myopia members in the spring of 1894.

On that one point I have not yet really researched how old the clubhouse is but assuming it predated Leeds which I'm quite sure it did (it was probably used by the polo interests before the golf course), it's understandable he basically had to do the first hole as it is.

It plays right uphill to a semi-plateau-like ridge. That means a golfer on the first tee can't see anything after the ball travels about 175-190. The green is blind up there and so is most of the fairway except the very first portion of it.

For first timers it can be pointed out about where the green is but the deal is it's also pretty obvious if you stray even a little left of that blind line at the green over the ridge you're going to be in some deep CaCa as the ridge clearly falls off to the left bigtime and there's a ton of really deep rough and crap down there.

So the basic strategy is to layup with something a bit to the right of the direct line to the green on the fairway which again is blind up there. Or for the aggressive and long player he can just try to take a rip at the green and get it on or right in front.

But the problem is that green is narrow and it's also basically shelved in beautifully to a natural right to left fall of the ground (which the green also has) and if you're even a bit to the right of it you have a situation getting even a short shot onto that green which is not unlike approaching Riviera's #10 from anywhere to the right of it, including even a basic chip shot.

What maybe different on the hole now, Bob, from when you last played it is all along the left of this green is a fairway chipping area that falls off hard with the natural fall of the land. That chipping area may be at up to a 20% grade so balls that get to the left of this green are going to keep going about 20 yards way down hill to the left into some junk or generally a bunker which is about 15-20 yards from and way below this narrow green.

You can just imagine how difficult it is to recover back up the hill to that narrow surface you can't even see from that distance down there. A lot of bad things can happen like coming up short and having the ball come back to you or going over the other side up onto the right side bank and then being faced with a difficult chip back down the slope.

For someone going at this narrow blind green from the tee can get it left down there real easy or get it up on the bank on the right which is so delicate a short chip.

But if you get lucky and hit it long and really straight you can also have a legitimate eagle putt right out of the box.

I've definitely never seen one like this one anywhere else---it's a total original.

And that left greenside fairway area that shoots it downhill is one of the most effective strategic fairway areas I've ever seen anywhere but remarkably it isn't as strategically efffective as the steep fairway area in front of the short 13th green that sits on the other end of that ridge only about 120 yards away.

Myopia's opener might be the most "make or break" sub 300 yard par 4 in the world, and certainly as an opener on a famous golf course.

[Peter Pallotta]

TE -

you touched on this in an earlier post, but I'm wondering:

As the years passed, how was what Travis did with GC the same/different as what Leeds did with Myopia?

In other words, were there similar/differing philosophies of golf architecture behind the changes that each man was making?

thanks
Peter

 

[TEPaul]

Peter:

First of all Leeds began with working on only a two year old original nine hole course that may not have had some of those original nine holes where there're holes now or at least in this arrangement. I'm a bit unclear on what all the holes of that first and original nine hole course looked like or even where a few were (the history book is a bit unclear on this, in my opinion).

Travis began really working on GCGC quite a number of years after it was an 18 hole course by Emmet and obviously a very well respected one at that.

As for design similarities/differences between Travis and Leeds that's probably a pretty big subject but all I'd say for now is it is not hard to tell their styles were pretty clearly one of that early era which was very cool and pretty unique.

[Thomas MacWood]

Which of today's eigtheen holes are the original nine?

[Jay Flemma]

You're right on the line of charm comment guys, I meant to trake that out of the last draft I wrote but I never got the chance to last night...but a couple of us were told that emmet got the idea to do some template holes from raynor, not the other way around. By us I meant some of the folks at leatherstocking an d at eisenhower red.

Well wayne, instead of just heaping criticism, why don't you teach?  What material is out there that discusses the relationship between emmet on the one hand and macd/raynor on the other?

TP or anyone else?

[Peter Pallotta]

TE -

I was wondering about something more basic, i.e. whether as Leeds kept tinkering with the golf course, he was guided by the thought of creating a sterner test and a "harder" golf course.  There seems to have been this period/phase in American architecture when that idea was paramount (and it came and went over the years). Just from reading a bit of Travis and the course profile of GC, it seems that Travis was an early proponent of it and that it shaped the changes he made to GC.

Peter

[TEPaul]

BobC:

This is for you, an Atlantan, a lawyer, and a Harvard man who also did some pretty good drinking up there---all of which are just so, well, so Bob Jones, as you are about to read.


                       An American-bred wonder, Robert Tyre Jones, Jr., was an occasional visitor to Myopia at this time. Bobby already had a degree from Georgia Tech but he also wanted a Harvard B.S. and while he was acquiring it in 1923-1924 he became close friends with Charlie Pierson, the hockey star and luminary on the Harvard Golf Team. It was a good team and would have been better had University Hall not ruled that Jones was ineligible because of his undergraduate years in the South. The golfers adopted him as their “special” manager; he usually practiced with them at Belmont, and on the trip to New Haven for the final match with Yale (which they won) Jones was entrusted with the liquor, very precious in Prohibition. Bobby was so attentive that by the time they arrived at Yale golf course for a practice round he was well away, so unsteady that Charlie had to tee up his ball and he was 4-down to Pierson in the first five holes. At which point he dove head first into a convenient waterway, emerged, dried his hands, and finished the nine with three birdies
                   Pierson took a liking to Jones’s crook-necked putter, and said so. Six months after Bobby departed from Cambridge---with his degree---Charlie received by express a replica of the famous “Calamity Jane.” All of which is a roundabout way of saying that on one round at Myopia Jones scored a birdie 3 on the seventh, and eagle on the eighth, and a birdie on the ninth. That was the year in which he won his first National Open Championship.
                   To mention Bobby Jones is to remember one of the most delightful extramural affairs in which Myopia took part. Mr. Q. A. Shaw’s three-day clambakes, held at Eastham on the Cape each summer, as his spirit dictated. Over the sand dunes and bayberry our host laid out eighteen holes which put the highest premium on accuracy; there was every temptation to look up and scuff the ball, and the martinis and seafood that followed were the most welcome solace. It was a very special clambake which saw Bobby Jones, Francis Quimet, and Chandler Egan teeing off with Mr. Shaw.
                    Many years later when this book was first contemplated, George Batchelder, then Captain of the Green, wrote to Jones asking his opinion of our old course which had not been altered to accommodate the longer game. Bobby’s reply is a trophy which now hangs in the Red Room. It reads:



                                                                         THE AMERICAN GOLF INSTITUTE
                                                                               19 Beckman Street
                                                                                        New York
 November, 30, 1939

Dear Mr. Batchelder:
   It is certainly quite easy for me to write most sincerely that your course at Myopia is quite definitely worth the expense and trouble necessary to keep it in first class condition. I have not played Myopia in a long while, but I got out there at every opportunity when I was in college at Harvard. I have always regarded it as one of the most interesting in America.
   With respect to the charge that it is out of date, a course which is properly designed and located in good golfing country can no more get out of date than can Old St Andrews. I always thought one of the charming features of Myopia was its lack of artificiality. Very much like Garden City, Myopia always offered a most welcome relief from greens banked up in the back and closely guarded by bunkers according to the type of architecture seen all over the country today. Our modern courses lack the individuality that the old ones built with more trust in nature always had.
   I certainly think it would be a shame to allow a golf course like this one to go to ruin.

With Best Wishes,
                        Most Sincerely,
                        Robert T. Jones.
   

[Peter Pallotta]

TE -

not just for drunken southern lawyers that Bobby Jones - thanks much for posting that. It may answer my last question, though not as I thought it would; but it definitely has one of the neatest and clearest description of an architectural ethos I've ever read, i.e. "trust in nature"...

Peter       

[TEPaul]

"TE -
I was wondering about something more basic, i.e. whether as Leeds kept tinkering with the golf course, he was guided by the thought of creating a sterner test and a "harder" golf course.  There seems to have been this period/phase in American architecture when that idea was paramount (and it came and went over the years)."


PeterP:

I would say Leeds was every bit in the same league with W.C. Fownes of Oakmont that way---or Crump. Their ideas were to make their courses very hard over time. Fownes and Leeds's technique to accomplish that was to keep adding bunkers where they observed that play showed they were required.

[BCrosby]

TEP -

Wow. Just wow.

I have lots to say but can't at the moment. Will post later. Great stuff.

Bob

[TEPaul]

BobC:

Don't you just love the way Edward Weeks writes?


"Bobby was so attentive that by the time they arrived at Yale golf course for a practice round he was well away, so unsteady that Charlie had to tee up his ball and he was 4-down to Pierson in the first five holes."


If it was me I would've said:

"On the way to Yale since the Harvard Golf Team "special" manager Bobby Jones was entrusted with guarding the Prohibition liquor, he got into the hooch bigtime, became so shit-faced his friend and Harvard Team golfer, Charlie Pierson, had to tee the ball up for him and then proceeded to box the ears of the best golfer on the planet for five holes before the American wonder from Hotlanta jumped into a waterway and emerged rejuvenated and went on a birdie tear." 

How about what Jones wrote about modern architecture's penchant for banking up greens in the back? Who else do we know who wrote the very same thing? 

[Brad Tufts]

To add/answer questions:

Myopia does have a few cross-bunkers, namely on #2, #3 (sort of), #10 (Taft bunker), #11, #15.

Tom Paul....the clubhouse, as we were told, is the modern iteration of the original home of a Revolutionary War general, I believe it was orginially built in the 1750's.  There also used to be a HUGE tree inside the square made by the clubhouse, 18th green, and first tee, but this may be going back 75-100 years.

Personally, I found the 16th and 18th holes to be the most confounding.  12 and 13 are very difficult and bordering on unfair in some conditions, but I think 16 and 18 are the easiest bogeys.

As for conditions-wise, in my time at Myopia (I've played probably 30 rounds there), the only time the course was running particularly firm/fast was during the four-ball over labor day weekend.  This might have changed in the last couple years.  Many of the lower holes are in "wet" areas that hurt the F&F efforts...

The biggest theme for me when playing at Myopia is that the yardage guide provides yardages to the front of the green, which is where you need to land your ball to have a chance at holding the green.  This is very difficult when many of them are fronted by bunkers, but there are many others where it can be advantageous to miss the green in a good spot rather than fire at the pins.

[Jay Flemma]

Emmet's original Garden City was a typical Victorian design with cross hazards & cops at regular intervals. Did Myopia feature the same kind of hazards?

where were the cops at GCGC?

[TEPaul]

BradT:

I agree that #16 sure can be confounding when firm and fast or just fast. I've tried hitting the ball a mile in the air and even landing it on the front and it still seems to get just over. One time I landed it a little short and it stayed there and that putt to a back left pin is almost impossible.

I don't see any confoundedness with #18 though even if the approach can be blind from the right or middle. That is a very big green. Actually, I think the approach into #17 (with F&F) is a trickier one. That fall-off chipping area on the right and how the front approach fairway contour bleeds into it is really wonderful architecture. #7 with F&F is really hard to hold on the green too and I can't see that it's possible to land it on the green and keep it on. #8 is pretty "Keen" (as they used to say) too, as is #11 green.

[Thomas MacWood]

Emmet's original Garden City was a typical Victorian design with cross hazards & cops at regular intervals. Did Myopia feature the same kind of hazards?

where were the cops at GCGC?

The majority of the holes at GCGC had cross hazards with cops. Roads were also used as cross hazards on several holes. I was looking at an old map of Myopia and it had quite few Victorian cross hazards as well. Both courses were typical of their era in that way, and as it turned out, were the perfect subjects for Leeds and Travis to carry out their modern ideas.

Another common thread, both courses started as nine-holers. Myopia designed by Campbell. GCGC designed by Emmet, with Findlay advising. Both courses can trace the origins to old Scottish veterans.

PS:The confounding 16th at Myopia was part of the original nine created by Willie Campbell.

[BCrosby]

TEP -

The passages from the MHC club history are fascinating.

Egan and Ouimet were mentors to Jones. They were his behavioral models. Jones' courtly, gentlemanly ways had as much to do with them as  to his southern upbringing, I would guess.

Egan was an especially important model. He had gone to Harvard, won a couple of collegiate championships there, a couple of US Ams just after college, played in the Olympics for the US, losing in the finals. For a brief period of time Egan was the cat's meow in US golf.

Jones revered Egan, who was handsome, quiet and with all the right social connections in the NE, a world Jones knew little about at the time. It was Egan's influence that took Jones to Harvard, according to Keeler. I'd guess that it was Egan that helped solidify Jones' relationship with MacK. (Jones seemed to like hanging out with golf courses designers. Keeler did too.) I'd guess Egan also helped with Jones' education about gca. Egan was designing courses in the NW at the time.

Your little snippet from the MHC history is the first account I had seen that put Egan in Boston when Jones was there. That Ouimet joined them for the Eastham outings is just icing on the cake.

As for the golf team, the story goes that Jones' job was to make sure the team had plenty of balls and liquor. Especially the liquor. The team practised by matching their best ball against Jones'. By all accounts Jones was very happy during the parts of two winters he spent in Cambridge. I think the MHC history is wrong, however, about Jones getting a degree. There is no record he did. He was what is still called a "special student."

Thanks for sharing the MHC stuff. Another little piece of evidence suggesting that there has never been a top flight golfer with the range of interests that Jones had. Heck, I'm having trouble thinking of another top flight golfer that even bothered to read a few good books. Let alone Thucydides and Cicero.

Bob

 

[TEPaul]

According to Myopia's 1894 club records and Myopia's history book, Myopia's original nine hole course laid out in the spring of 1894 and open for play in June was done by three Myopia members, R.M. Appleton, Thomas Watson Merrill and A. P. Gardner.

According to the Myopia history book where all those original holes were and exactly what they were is a matter of speculation. The Myopia history mentions that a few of them were apparently on the the fringe of land of Myopia member Dr. S. A. Hopkins and available drawings show Hopkin's land covered 51 acres and was that area of the course that is today perhaps a piece of #3, #4, #5, #6, and #7. A somewhat different version of today's second hole was the original first and some form of today's #8, today's #9 (without the pond), the "Alps" playing from a tee to the right of #9 green to present 11th green, and a shorter version of today's #12. Dr. Hopkins land was purchased by the club following the 1898 US Open at Myopia when Leeds turned the Myopia course into eighteen holes from his so-called "Long Nine" on which the 1898 US Open was held. The new eighteen was tested by some excellent golfers in the spring of 1900 and it held the 1901 US Opens and two more US Opens by 1908.

The so-called "uphill" holes which probably consisted of present #14, #15 and #16 and probably #13 were apparently not part of the original 1894 nine hole layout and were not laid out, seeded and opened for play for another two years (1896) and until Herbert Leeds joined Myopia and dedicated himself to those "uphill" holes for the club and what would become known as the "Long Nine" by Leeds. #16 would've been the 9th hole on the Long Nine. At one point this hole (present #16) was a 250 yard downhill par 4 (apparently Geo. Crump wanted to copy the runaway green feature of this hole with his #12 green at Pine Valley).

[Thomas MacWood]

Speaking of Eastham, Quincy Adams Shaw, who designed Cedar Banks on his estate at Eastham, was one of the patriarchs of Myopia. It could be argued he was Myopia's most accomplished golfer. He was also an original member of the NGLA. I suspect he knew something about architecture himself.