Can you go home again? Stanford Golf Club

[Rich Goodale]

Stanford Golf Club was my “Home” Course from 1964-1968, when I was an undergraduate and played it first casually and then with more intensity as I moved through the steps of my “education.”

 About 10 days ago I played Stanford for the first time in 8 years and the first time for me over the most recent re-routing.  According to the club history, this was one of George Thomas's last projects, even though most of the work was done by Billy Bell.  When Golf Magazine published its first World Top 100 20+ years ago, Stanford made the cut while Yale and others did not.  I suspect this had more to do with the then influence of Sandy Tatum and Grant Spaeth and Tom Watson, than objective relative merit.  Since then the course has had some significant changes, mostly due to the transmogrification of the Santa Clara Valley to “Silicon Valley.”  Sand Hill Road was just a bordering road when I first played the course-now it is a freeway to financial nirvana.  The road works extracted much of the soul of the golf course--particularly what was the old 4th hole, a long (then) and marvellous two shotter over a hill into a dip and then up to a two-tiered,”Mackenzie” green.  But, life must move on…..

The old Stanford will never be recovered, but what remains is worth talking about, particularly  in the context of its history.  The following are some of my observations based on the 18 holes I played October 9, 2008.  I know there are pictures on another recent thread.  If anybody could link them to this thread, I would be appreciative.

--the introduction to the course--the drive in up the hill, the pro shop, the club, the putting greens and the first tee are very much as they were in 1964.  Bonus points for the retro feeling.  'Tis a pity that the green fee is not waht I paid in the mid-60's ($3.50).......
--the first hole lacks not only the rickety bridge that one used to have to traverse to get to the fairway, but also the huge arroyo @ 200 yards or so (which is being filled in to accomodate the ladies and the geezers), as well as the simple bunkering (now sadly MacKenzified) and the fast and firm mid-October conditions (now green when the hills are brown, rough thick rather than wispy, sigh....)
--on the second I miraculously managed to hit a solid straight drive with my reantal clubs and found myself just about in the same place as I witnessed Roberto Di Vincenzo in a seniors event in 1980 or so.  I thought his drive amazing at the time, and the fact that I could equal it now at roughly the same age (then) of that great man was for me sad, rather than triumphant.  To the right as you play the hole you see a spectacular trench bunker sitting at the back of a pushed up green.  It is a Raynor(?) Ross (?) replica on the 30 acre practice facility which is now open only to golf team members and deep pocket donors.  Should I as an alumnus be proud of this seemingly highly aesthetic paean to greed and exclusivity?  No.  It sucks.  Just think what other great uses could have been put to that land by that great University.
--the 3rd is now completely reversed, and it is a very good medium length par-3.  Kudos.
--the 4th is now another 3, top the green built by RTJ Jr. when they emasculated the old par-4 mentioend above.  As a par-4 when I last played it it was a stupid hole--iron short of the barranca, pitch to the green.  Now it is OK,  but geezers like me can't stop from looking left to see what the 4th used to be........
--thankfully they have restored the old back tee up near the old back green.  Unthankfully peons like me can't play that tee, so we have to be content with hitting from the ladies, with no need to think strategically.
--6 always was and still is one of the great medium length par-4s in the world of golf.  They have cleared out some room on the left for the hackers, but that just serves to tempt the better players to open their shoulders.  If there was even a hole designed for the well struck 1-iron this is it.  Sic transit gloria 1-iron........
--Big Walt Driver could carry the trees on the dogleg 40 + years ago, but even today they are uncarryable to us wee mortals.  This was and is a great risk-reward shortish par 5.  One note of regret.  The native oaks to the left of the green are now gone and replaced by a boring bunker.  One of my playing partners (a member) told me that the oaks were dying due to OVERwatering.  To the goal of keeping the course green, its natural attributes were being lost.  Sigh...
--the 8th is a new RTJ green, but far less subtle that the old green nearer the creek.  I never liked it 40 years ago, and still do not.
--9 now has a stupid bunker/tree complex(?) in the pull hook area off the tee, and the hill to the left beyond is now fully grassed, at rough height.  In the 60's, that grass used to be brown native stuff, and the really good and long players at the time (e.g. John Brodie) used to hit it up there as far as they could and then pitch down to the green.  Now that option is gone.....
--10 was and always wil be a slog up a hill.  Always boring, still boring.
--11, going downhill, could be made into something interesting, maybe even a driveable par-4.  Now it still is just an OK hole.
--12 was always will be great and quirky.  You have to drive it long and straight (either left or right) to have a shot at the pin.  Learn to love those trees in the middle of the fairway.
--13 used to be a great hole, but that was in the days where it took a solid hit to get over the center-line bunkers.  Now it is a sky-ball and a 9-iron.  They spent some money foo-fooing that center-line bunker to make it look like it had been designed by Fazio.  They should have bulldozed it and moved it 20-30 yards forward and put in a Bell/Thomas artefact.
--not much you can do with 14.  It is a simple medium par-3 over a barranca,  Bunkers would be superfluous or even counterproductive.
--the next hole would be improved by making it a driveable par-4.  All the resrotation money seems to have gone into putting bunkers down the left to punish the hackers. The green s already hard enough for them.  Put a gentle l-r kick slope at 300 or so (the hole is severely downhill), surounded by hazards.  Give the punters a chance for a birdie with an open fairway up to 250 yards or so.
--16 is a good uphill 5 which now has a left hand kick-plate to fee a 2nd shot onto the green.  The bunker right seems to have been filled in, but the over-watered grass is not an improvement.
--17 is and always has been a great inverted Redan (i.e. front to back, left to right slope).  It plays best at the 185 yard tees.
--Tom Watson once said that if you can see your tee ball bounce on this hole, you haven't hit it far enough!  When I was there you could see the City and Mt. Tam standing on that tee.  Who in the hell would care where your ball happened to bounce?

Rich

Oops!  Modified to include 16......

[Tom Huckaby]

Rich:

Great stuff and I hate the priorities that made me miss you that day.  When work interferes with golf one has to take a good hard look at his life.  But such is said life, for now....

In any case, some return comments/questions re the course I now see so often but play so infrequently:

 - why didn't you play the back tee on 5?  Was it closed?  It's a hell of a fun shot from up there....

 - re the new practice area, it is fantastic for the college golfer, but you're right... what might they have done for the betterment of the university, the students, or mankind.  That is food for thought.

 - I can't imagine carrying the huge oaks on 7 but they say it is now done routinely by the college boys. 

 - 11 IS a driveable par 4 for the big boys.  For us mortals, well... it is fun to try and get it through the neck.

 - fully agreed re 12 - love that hole.

 - again, 15 IS driveable for the big boys/youngsters.  For us, it's a layup followed by a pretty tough short iron, as that green is a bitch.  I like the hole.  I'd love it if they changed it just how you say!

 Fully agreed re all the rest, and great comment especially re 18.  If one can't appreciate the view from that tee, one is either blinder-induced Muccian or otherwise soul-less.  Note - the view from that practice green to the right of 18 fairway ain't bad either.  Don't ask me how I know it so well.

TH

[Mike Benham]

A few photos (from the time of road rerouting and construction of the new 3rd and 4th holes) to support Rich's comments:


The widening of Sand Hill Road east of Alameda de las Pulgas (Avenue of the Fleas) which went from a piddling two-lane dirt road (at least during Rich's glory days) to a 4-lane with median and two-way bike lane mini-parkway.   And Rich, I think the wealth on Sand Hill road travels downhill to the shopping center ...





The new 3rd hole:




The new 4th tee to the old 4th green which is the second location for the 4th green.  As Rich noted, the 4th has had 3 variations over the years:




The new/old 5th tee (the 4th green is below and to the right):

[Rich Goodale]

Thanks, Huck

--We didn't play the back tee on 5 since it was not obvious how to get there, and one of the guys I was playing with was a hacker who might have killed somebody on the 4th (see Benham's pictures).  As the hacker was a pathologist, he might have had a vested interest in playing that back tee.....

--as to the practice facility, the more I think of it the more I am pissed off.  One of Stanford's greatest assets is the land that it owns, and to give away 30 precious acres for the pleasure of one gazillionaire donor for the benefit of a few flat bellied prima donnas every year is obscene.

--I carried the oaks on 7 once in my youth (age mid-50's)).  There is hope for you yet, grasshopper.  That being said, I can't imagine driving 11.

Mike

Thanks for the pics.  I should have teed up one of my overpriced Stanford Logoed Pro V1's and tried to drive one off of Page Mill onto Alameda de las Pulgas when I was on the new 3rd green, just for old times sake........

Rich

[Tom Huckaby]

Rich - love it!

The more you write about that practice facility the more pissed I get too... both for the principles you mention as because I can't even sneak on to use it.   

Re 7, man I can't hit the ball that HIGH.  I doubt even slugger Benham can.  But nothing you have done ever surprises me.   

Re 11, it's straight downhill and one just has to carry the bunkers.  I bet Jon Spaulding could drive it no problem.  It's out of my range without a doubt... but he plays a game with which few of us are familiar.

TH

ps - oh, very much understood re 5 also - descretion was the better part of valor, wisely so.

[Bob_Huntley]

Don't diss Sand Hill Road too badly.  I've been working up this theory that with the recent collapse of all the Wall Street investment banks, Sand Hill Road is the only Wall Street we have left, not to mention our best defense against India and China turning the US into a colony in a few years...

Sand Hill Road is certainly more like what Wall Street used to be than Wall Street has been for decades (pre-dating today's all-arbitrage-all-the-time, derivative-fueled, futures-dominated "trading for trading's sake, but adding nothing" world).  Wall Street used to exist primarily for capital formation, with trading secondary, but alas, I digress...)

Dave,

Not a word to Tommy about this.

Bob

[Rich Goodale]

Shivas

I last worked on Wall Street in 1966, and I'll guarantee you that then it was a sleepy old place where 19-year old english majors like me were sent to due diligence meetings because there was nothiing to do and nobody more senior wanted to go.  That being said, the top earner in the firm I worked for was in arbitrage.  He made about 500K/year, but in those days the firm (#2 in the wrold at the time) was profitable whenever turnover on the NYSE exceeded 3.5 million shares a day........

Sand Hill Road is and always has been very different, unless you are talking about "Wall Street" before there was a Wall Street, or latterly before Glass-Steagall.

Rich
rich

[Anthony Fowler]

The new 3rd and 4th are not bad holes, but I thought the old ones were much better.  The old 3 going in the opposite direction was a very good par 3 (as is the new 3rd) and the old 4th was very fun even if only an iron and pitch.

Richard, I'd love to hear more about the old old 4th hole.  Can you explain exactly where it was and what made it so special?  Thanks.

[Rich Goodale]

Anthony

Essentially it was a 420 yard hole teeing off from the right of the old 3rd green, up against Sand Hill road.  The hole was straight with the road to the right and trees on the left with a dip in the middle and then a rise to a green situated just to the right of what is now the back 5th tee.  The green was a double plateau with lots of slope from back to front.  It was not a great hole, but in the context of 1, almost great 2, old 3, old 4, 5 from the tips, great 6, 7, 8, 9, it was an outgoing 1/2 that was hard to beat.  Now that 9 is is just so-so, which is a pity.

Rich

[John Kirk]

Well, I'm more than qualified to discuss Stanford.  Here are my comments, riffing off Rich:

#2 has changed dramatically.  It used to be a considerable achievement to drive it over the left bunker on the inside of the dogleg.  Nowadays, you never consider playing out to the right.  In 1987 it was driver, 5-wood, now it's driver, 6-8 iron.  The green is designed for a long approach club.  Great hole made less so.

#4 - My Dad liked the version over the creek better than the original, but played it less than Rich did back in the 1960s.  He started playing there regularly in the 1980s.  The second version, 345 yards over San Francisquito Creek, was quite difficult, mostly because of an oak tree that guarded the right side of the green.  The new 4th is sort of a nothing hole to me, and I'm disappointed they moved the green closer to the creek.

#5 - The green is much different, with a large back left portion that slopes away from the approach shot.  Mr. Harbottle introduced these reverse slopes on 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, and a bit on 18.

#7 - Still a wonderful golf hole.  I had seen long bombers hit over the trees in the 80s, but even I could now do it on a good day.  Still, from the second tees, it's usually 3-wood, 4-wood.

#12 - Did you read the plaque beneath the new tree?

#13 - One of my favorites.  The centerline bunker may have been a challenge in the 1960s, but never in the 1980s.  About 6-8 years ago, I belted one over the left bunker and had the best possible angle in.  Just a few years ago, the fairways were still 60-70 yards wide, and that playing angle was still available.  But the club now features rather narrow fairways and thick rough, and that option has been eliminated.

#14 - I love #14 for its uniqueness.  The amphitheater hole.  Steep green.

#16 - For me, #16 may now be more fun than before, since it is barely reachable.  There has been talk of restoring a water feature short right of the green.  If it's a creek, I'm OK with it.  I like creeks much better than ponds.

#18 - Narrowing the 18th fairway takes some of the fun away.  They lose the speed slot on the right side, which is naturally firm ground.  The downhill that the perched green makes it hard to judge the distance correctly.

The comment that baffled me the most concerns maintenance.  For the last three rounds I've played there, the course was in spectacular playing condition: firm, fast, and fun.  Superintendent Ken Williams replaced a crew that habitually overwatered the course.  He also instituted a sand capping program.  Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Mr. Williams' maintenance practice is the care for his bent grass greens, which were rebuilt in the mid-1990s.  To my knowledge he has never aerated the greens, and they maintain a high percentage of bent and putt beautifully.

[Rich Goodale]

Many thanks for your thoughts, John.  You are of course more qualified than I on how the course has played over the past 25-30 years.

Vis a vis #2 I think we are saying the same thing.  Technology has made that hole a relative doddle where it used to be a real challenge.  They have now put a "tiger" tee behind the 1st green which makes the carry over the left bunker probably impossible for me (but probably not, yet, for you...).

4's OK but to have two par 3's in a row they have to be distinctive, IMHO (viz Pacific Dunes 10 and 11).  There is much of a muchness to 3 and 4.

They had a back left pin on 5 when I played.  Stupid me to not notice that this was a newly built green area (or maybe just a senior moment).  It does improve the hole.

On 12 I managed to hit a good drive left which obviated any walking visit to the base of the new tree short middle.  I now seem to remember you saying that the plaque there celebrated your Dad's love for the course.  If so, sorry for not making the pilgrimage.

Vis a vis 13, I don't "belt" the ball anymore, but I had just a 9 iron to a front pin after airmailing the centerline bunker.  What possible advantage could one gain from going over the further left hand bunkers, except to reach a far right pin?  Isn't it thick rough over those bunkers, anyway?

A water feature right of the 16th green could be cool.  That part of the hole is and always has been a mess, in my memory.

As for maintenance, in October the land is normally naturally parched, as reflected in the Stanford "Alma Mater" song, ".....where the rolling foothills rise, flushing deep and paling...."  This year the golf course was as green as I can ever remember, but my memory is much more focused on the distant past than your more recent experiences.  The rough was particularly abnormally thick.  I thought the greens were good but by no means great.  Much slower than they could have been (and what my memories of other local greens could and can be at that time of year).

Bottom line--next time I'm in the area I won't go out of my way to play Stanford, but that's only because there are several better alternatives nearby.  At least for me.

Cheers

Rich

[John Kirk]

There's a little plaque that says "The Bill Kirk Tree".  Sweet.

The area behind the left bunker on 13 used to be fairway, and I felt that I had a straight look into the front left to back right sloping green from there.  If you had 9-iron in, then we hit it about the same length.  I'm a medium long hitter these days, with typical carries in the 230-240 range.  I generally have 7- or 8-iron into 13.  I like this hole a lot, by the way.  I feel it is an excellent example of how to place hazards to make a flat piece of ground interesting to play.

I despise all the heavy rough to combat scoring.  I think it's to keep the college kids from tearing the place apart.  As I've said many times before, Stanford has suffered from the introduction of the new equipment.  It used to be pretty long and wide, and now it is a short, straight hitter's course.  I love the place.  It has home course bias of me; I was born a mile away.

Interesting you say 9 has changed dramatically.  Those bunkers and trees on the hill have been there a long time, but I can definitely see your point.  In theory, it's a fine hole, where the closer you dare to hit it to thecreek, the flatter the lie.  The green is less severe than it used to be, and if you remember, the right greenside bunker used to be the largest on the course, sometimes yielding 40-50 yard shots from way below the green.

[Rich Goodale]

Thanks for the additional thoughts, John

I agree regarding the narrowing set-up.  It is interesting to me that the best two players ever to come out of Stanford, Watson and Woods, were long and wild players with world-class short games.  I doubt if either of them would feel comfortable playing on the course today where slightly errant shots require brute strength rather than finesse for recovery.

Rich

[Bob_Huntley]

 Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Mr. Williams' maintenance practice is the care for his bent grass greens, which were rebuilt in the mid-1990s.  To my knowledge he has never aerated the greens, and they maintain a high percentage of bent and putt beautifully.

When asked when the Club starts aerating the greens, I always reply,' Why, right now, when they are in perfect condition."

Bob

[Ian_L]

I will be playing the course on Saturday, if anybody would like me to take pictures of specific holes/features I'd be glad to do that.

As someone who just recently started playing the course (last year), it's interesting to hear opinions of those who have seen its changes.  With regards to hole 2, I think it may play for me the way it played for the best back in the day.  I am a medium-length hitter, and I am faced with the decision of hitting it straight and having a long iron to the green, or trying to draw it over/around the left-hand bunker (if you're in that bunker the tree blocks you from the green).  I really like the hole.  In general I found the course to play firmer than most I play.  That being said, my casual rounds aren't on the best courses most of the time.  I agree it would be better if the fairways were wider, some of them are very confining.

Richard, I played the day after you did, and the rough was longer than usual, I believe due to a tournament that weekend.  Most of the time it is cut shorter (you can easily see your ball in the rough from far away most of the time).

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

I first met Richard there and the sprogs as well. I hope to finally play this wonderful course this next year.