... under Architecture Timeline and Courses by Country.
Photographs showing the transformation of the California Golf Club of San Francisco have already graced this Discussion Group. Is it the best course in San Francisco now? With its combination of expansive property, superior playing surfaces, acres and acres of short grass, and MacKenzie bunkers all leading to some outstanding holes, it's easy to construct such an argument. Regardless, everyone at the very least is startled by how a course could come so far, so fast. In fact, in ~ 24 hours after you have had a chance to look at some of these photographs, I am going to post a couple of photographs from 2003 to demonstrate this point.
At the heart of this renovation/restoration centers the successful marriage of Kyle Phillips's proposed sweeping changes and how the club board lead by Al Jamieson was able to convince the membership that it was the best direction to go. Originally, the project could have been curtailed to addressing the nematode issue of the greens but thankfully, it grew into something far more grand. Very few clubs can lay claim to their Golden Age course being the best that it has ever been - the Cal Club now joins that select company. As he displayed at Kingsbarn, Kyle Phillips has an uncanny ability to take a big picture approach and create something special that most other architects can't either fathom or execute.
Here, his five new holes meld into the Locke/Macan/MacKenzie ones with no one being able to tell who did what. Though hindsight shows Phillips's plan was the right one to pursue of the fourteen that the club board considered, every plan needs a sponsor, especially one that involves shutting down the course for fifteen months. Fortuitously, the then club president was Al Jamieson, whose favorite golf credo is, "Play the course as you find it. Play the ball as you find it. Leave the course better than you found it." That mindset helped guide him throughout the process of shepherding this through. Though the approval process took a chunk of time, he was more than glad spend it as, in his words, it represented ‘a once in a lifetime opportunity to give back to a place that has given much to me. I'm glad it happened on my watch, assisted by many able and dedicated hands.’
The net result is that starting six feet under ground, this is a Golden Age golf course with the best that modern agronomy has to offer. What could be better?! As Al states, ‘The goal was to leave the course better than we found it, for the benefit of future generations’ and this was hands down accomplished.
One of the neat aspects about this project is the impact that several 30-35 year olds had. There is Mark Thawley at Phillips Design whose research proved a key guiding factor to the overall project. His passion for the project started five plus years ago when he first discovered a 1938 aerial. Though the potential was evident before any dirt work commenced, Mark's back and forth with the shapers Kyle Franz and George Waters during construction on the black and white aerials was critical to the project's overall success.
Also, Mark tried to get Josh Smith to the site at least a year before Josh ended up taking the Second Assistant Green Keeping position. Even after Josh took the job, the members had not yet voted on the project. Al is quick to pile credit on Josh and according to Al, 'All of the finishing touches that highlight the golden age of American golf are a direct result of his influence and artistic eye, including research as well as some of the material objects on the course including rakes, flags, benches. etc. ' Having listened to Josh talk about this project for three years, I can personally attest to how much heart and soul he invested into it. Bottom line: he was there each and every day and if, for instance, a bunker was ever so slightly misaligned, everyone heard about it from Josh.
Such devotion to detail nearly became commonplace as everyone involved sensed something special was going on. Take Kyle Franz and George Waters. Late on an October evening, a group of us were going over the finer details and the conversation turned to the feeder mound in front of the long par three eighth green. It turned out that George had shaped that one and he talked about some of the holes in Britain where a ridge begins out in the approach area and then carries through the putting surface, holding up a narrow high shelf and acting as a feeder for the broader lower shelf. He noted the seventeenth at St. George's Hill as well as Old Tom's sixth green on the Valley Course at Rosapenna. It did make me think that the ease of travel and the better world economy/politics of the start of the 21st century allowed someone's interest like George's to foster and grow as opposed to people who pursued the profession from 1950 through 1980 that weren’t afforded such opportunities of studying UK courses. Here is an in the dirt example of the benefit of that.
Hopefully, this is the next generation of folks who will be shaping the future of golf course architecture. Based on their work at the Cal Club, we are in very good shape indeed. In the meanwhile, we are all left with this 'new old' gem to savor once again.
Cheers,