[Rob Rigg]

I grew up in Toronto where there are a ton of great golf courses - too many to name and a bounty for a city with a fairly short golf season. Some of the old masters and modern archies have worked the canvas to great effect in and around TO.

I now live in Portland, OR, where, hmmm, the quality is below what I would have expected for the size of the city and length of the golf season. There are a few good courses but nothing I have seen that is really impressive (Note - I have not played every course in Rip City, so let me know if I am wrong) . I don't think Portland has any golden age gems and none of the GCA.com modern favorites have built anything closer than Bandon or Bend.

What is the deciding factor for quality of golf in and around cities?
Population?
Wealth?
Land availability?

I have been pondering this for a while and was hoping to get some thoughts from the treehouse 

[Tom_Doak]

Rob:

The #1 factor is the architectural talent of who's worked around there.

One great course begets many more.  But if nobody ever builds the first one, there is no great need to build another to compete.

In Toronto, Stanley Thompson is the answer (although he followed Harry Colt).  In Boston it's Donald Ross; in Philadelphia it's William Flynn, if it wasn't Hugh Wilson or George Crump.  In Portland, it's Chandler Egan ... who wasn't as bad as you have intimated, but who wasn't Ross or Thompson either.

Good land doesn't hurt, either, but most cities have SOME good land around them somewhere.

[Matt_Ward]

Rob:

It helps in some of the more established eastern cities -- like New York (Westchester and Long Island specifically), Philadelphia, Boston and many parts of northern NJ -- that you had people with deep pockets who were enamored with the game and that those particular locations were the places where those from the UK first came to the States to spread the word about the game.

No doubt the growth of American talent in and around those communities also helped the escalation of top designs.

You also have land sites that were specifically scoped out for so many of the key courses that were eventually created and that at that time the wherewithal to create such courses was free of the sheer array of environmental restrictions that are now commonplace.

[Andy Troeger]

The two cities/areas I pretty well don't plan on visiting for golf are New Orleans and Memphis.

Everything else I'm aware of has at least one course of some note if you count their metropolitan areas. Salt Lake City has quite a few good (maybe no great) courses, especially if you include the Park City courses, Albuquerque if you include the outlying courses like Paa-Ko (Black Mesa is 90 minutes so it wouldn't count to me).

The cities with significant amounts of good golf are pretty obvious it seems...

[Tyler Kearns]

Rob,

I live in Winnipeg (pop. 700,000), which, back in the golden age was a thriving city, a hub for east-west transportation of goods.  That wealth brought the very best architects to the city to build courses.  Donald Ross designed Pine Ridge & Elmhurst on the best land northeast of the city, and 9 holes at St. Charles.  Stanley Thompson was responsible for Glendale & Niakwa, while Alister Mackenzie designed 9 holes at St. Charles.  Willie Park Jr. was also active, designing both Southwood & Winnipeg golf club, the former, soon to be NLE.

Once the Panama Canal was built, shipments across the continent didn't go by land, and the city lost its momentum, and golf course architecture stagnated.

TK

[Rob Rigg]

Tom,

That is an interesting point.

Do great architects help build a culture of golf course competition in a city?

Does this drive clubs to try and outdo each other so they invest in highly rated architects to build courses that will attract members?

Sidenote - I did not mean to intimate that Egan or Macan or Cupp are bootsy architects, I intended to imply that Portland does not have many good/great courses for a fairly large city with a long golfing season.

TO has a ton of great courses, P'town does not.

[Kalen Braley]

The Spokane area, especially in light of the new privates in the area is a great mix of quality layouts with good inexpensive publics to go along with some superb private courses.

I'd agree with Andy on the SLC area as well.  Tons of really good quality publics that are very cheap, even though there is nothing great here.  And Park City is well covered on the Privates side with several excellent choices.

[Steve Lang]

  Too bad the city fathers of Portland decided to ignore golf and opportunities to build on topography close to or in the Oregon Zoo or Washington Park and the Hoyt Arboretum.. if they had, they might be helping to leading the low chem input wave or now that i think of it,, the golf course land recovery movements..

they needed a man like SP Jermain in Portland..

[PCCraig]

While Chicago certainly was visited by its fair share of famous GCAs, you could make the case that over the years no region has reversed their work as much. Most of the Colt and Ross courses that dot the landscape have been grassed and planted over to the point they are not the same golf course.

[Dan Herrmann]

Keep in mind that PDX was a pretty small city until fairly recently.  And it's a LONG way from other bigger cities (except for Seattle and Vancouver).    It would have been challenging for the Golden Age guys to get out there.

I lived in PDX from 85 thru 93 and I really enjoyed the golf.  No - there's no Merion or Winged Foot, but there is some pretty good golf out there.  I was a member at Riverside (H. Chandler Egan and others), which was a lot of fun, C-E is next door, Portland GC is an ex-Ryder Cup venue.  And PDX may have the best city-owned munis in the country  -  even the worst muni, Rose City, was always fun. 

PS - I think Riverside was better before they built the new clubhouse and kind of ruined #18's approach.  The old clubhouse had a more character.

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()