[Rich Goodale]

We on this site often rail about the "Augusta Syndrome," whether that syndrome be defined as "Greenophilia", "Stimpmeter Fetishism", "Mackenziephobia", "Rough Medications", "Plus ca change, plus c'est Augusta" or whatever.

What about the Pine Valley Syndrome, which is most concisely defined as the feeling of separation from your fellow golfers as you play your round?  Has the concept of "splendid isolation" been as good a one in terms of golf course architecture and golfing enjoyment as it has been a bad one for the trial lawyers assocation?

Discuss.

[Mike Sweeney]

Here comes the Sweeney double standard. I will comment on many threads "could lose a few more trees" and yet I love the isolation of Pine Valley and its sister courses.

I believe it is a situational answer based partially on this map:



You should not build a "links style" course in any of the areas in green above, and you should not plant a forest on a farm setting.

[Matthew Mollica]

Rich,  it's a coincidence that you mention this phenomenon. I was thinking about it today, and how it cannot be undertaken unless planned from the outset with fairway widths / playing corridors far wider than the norm through the last decade. Trying to implement this through tree planting / growth upon an existing layout which hasn't been designed with it in mind will invarialy lead to a loss of angles during play and a sense of claustrophobia IMHO.

The club at which I play features one course with generous fairway width, and a routing on a large plot of land, with distances between green and tee on the longer side at some points. The course was carved out of dense tea-tree covered terrain.  There are curtains of native tea tree seperating golfers from one another, and many could be oblivious of their proximity to nearby golfers on neighbouring holes. This course opened for play around 20 years ago, and the sense of seclusion through vegetation has been mimicked by at lease one sand belt course here in Melbourne. Much to its detriment.

MM

[Rich Goodale]

Thanks for that Mike

In the spirit of honest and friendly debate I will make the point that if planted with a few pine trees and left untouched, any and all links courses will become pine barrens/forests in a relatively short period of time.  If you doubt this, next time you are at St. Andrews, just look across the Eden Estuary.  That thick woods (Tentsmuir?) could be the home of some great golf courses--planning approval and chain saw availablity permitting.

In addition, I am sure that I and virtually all people on this site would love Pine Valley, but that is not the point.  What is the point is to what degree Pine Valley has influenced GCA in a less than optimal way by giving legitimacy to routings which favor splendid isolation as opposed to intimacy and camaraderie.

Thoughts?

Rich

[Mike Sweeney]

Thoughts?

Rich

I think you are reading too many Max Baer threads by Tom Paul!  The trees got bigger, because they got bigger. Philly guys are not that sharp to think about abstract concepts as "Splendid Isolation".

Pine Valley is great because of the "Philadelphia Chip On The Shoulder":

In The American Golfer Tillinghast wrote that the Philadelphia slump was a direct result of her deficient golf courses. They were not up to championship standards, and to make matters worse, the existing courses located near the city center were being squeezed by development. 'Philadelphia must forget the convenience of links within her walls; she must be content to range a bit for her play. Does New York grumble because of the time it takes to go to Garden City, Nassau, Baltusrol or Englewood? Chicago makes light of the runs to Glen View and Wheaton. So my dear old Quaker town I believe that you too, must make up your mind to leave the city behind when you play. Go outside where you can buy your land, but select good golfing country for it, even though you have to take it to the sands of Jersey.' He went on to say, 'Go but a few miles away on the other side of the Delaware, where the sandy sub-soil is ideal…Let me quote a very prominent Philadelphia golfer, ‘We are past our babyhood in golf. Let us build permanent courses that are up to the standard of the best.’'

And like many great courses, Crump got his inspiration from overseas:

In hindsight, Crump’s visit to the heathland near London must have been particularly inspirational. In addition to Sunningdale and Walton Heath, other courses he may have seen include Royal Mid-Surrey, Swinley Forest, Stoke Poges, Huntercombe, Woking, Worplesdon, and Coombe Hill. Seeing what was possible in the rough sandy country around Surrey may have altered Crump’s thoughts on where good golf was possible. While on the tour he wrote to his brother-in-law requesting he purchase a map of Camden County.

The bold is from Tom MacWood:

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/opinionmacwood7.html

[Billsteele]

Rich-Nice Warren Zevon reference.

Mike-Has anyone designed a course around the Albany Pine Bush?

[Rich Goodale]

Thjanks, Mike

How big can a chip on the shoulder get when it drives you to build "your" best course in a neighbouring state?  Let's get real.  Shouldn't GAP be GANJP, or even better GANJA (Golf Association of New Jersey and Anywhereelsewithin500milesofPhiladelphia)?

Matthew

Very good point that there are courses on whose land isolation is desireable and courses on whose land isolation is affected and not conducive to great golf.

Just as it is stupid for mediocre courses to dye their ponds green or stimp their greens at 13, so is it stupid to route courses to have the isolationist "feel" of Pine Valley without the underlying backbone which links this feel to the the nerves and other organs of the course as well as to the soul of the golfer who plays the course and without whom there would be no course, reagrdless of how great the design.

Rich

[Peter Pallotta]

Rich - your last paragraph there is spot on. And if you don't mind some random thoughts:

I like the terms expansive isolation and focused isolation: the basic characteristic of the former is that trees are used to frame vistas and not golf holes, of the latter that trees frame the golf holes and not vistas.   

Someone posted pictures of Woodhall Spa recently - goodness, but it seemed to me that it managed to capture both expansive and focused isolation.   

Peter

[Joe Hancock]

Just as it is stupid for mediocre courses to dye their ponds green or........

Sometimes, the stupid is profound. Adding dye is sometimes done to filter sunlight in the water, reducing algae blooms and reducing the need for other chemicals to be used. The algae can be a real nuisance in irrigation systems.

Joe

[JESII]

I think the isolation at Pine Valley would/could work just as well if there were basically no trees because the holes go off in all sorts of directions and only occassionally run alongside each other...and on many that do appear to run alongside each other from an aerial, there is a significant elevation difference which takes the part of separating such as #10 at the tee from #18, or #'s 12 and 13 being alongside but well above (and therefore segregated from) #15

[jeffwarne]

It's really not that unique.

Go to any real estate development course opened in the last couple years

perhaps that's "not so splendid" isolation

[Rich Goodale]

Just as it is stupid for mediocre courses to dye their ponds green or........

Sometimes, the stupid is profound. Adding dye is sometimes done to filter sunlight in the water, reducing algae blooms and reducing the need for other chemicals to be used. The algae can be a real nuisance in irrigation systems.

Joe

Agreed, Joe.  Of course I really meant to say "dye their ponds blue"........  Isn't green the color of choice for algae?

[TEPaul]

"What is the point is to what degree Pine Valley has influenced GCA in a less than optimal way by giving legitimacy to routings which favor splendid isolation as opposed to intimacy and camaraderie."


Richard the Magnificent:

Yes that probably is the point or a point. But when one starts using terms to describe it like stupid isolation the question needs to be asked and answered----stupid on whose part; Crump and Pine Valley or those who copied his course somehow without even understanding what he was really doing and where he was doing it?

The routing of Pine Valley obviously uses up a lot of space between holes in certain spots and that may've been done in one sense to create some hole by hole isolation but mostly it was done to do what they called then "constantly turning on the compass"---eg consecutive holes were not supposed to go in the same direction. That aspect is written in the archives of the development of Pine Valley. THAT was definitely what Crump was trying to do but was it ONLY to create visual isolation? The true answer is of course not; there were other reasons or at least ONE OTHER good reason.

But what about the trees there? How did that factor into the hole by hole isolation part and what did Crump think about that?

Curiously (or perhaps not so curiously) he never mentioned that, as far as I know, in writing or seemingly to any of his friends who ended up recording his thoughts about the course (even contemporaneously) and what he ultimately wanted it to be.

The interesting thing about Pine Valley is obviously it got it's name for a reason---ie there were thousands of PINE TREES on that site before Crump found it but most do not appreciate back then how small most all of them were.

If one looks at an early aerial of the site of Pine Valley it looks like it's heavily treed and it was but if one looks at the onground photos of the course and the holes back then one is really struck by how small or low those trees were then and how one can seemingly see forever over the tops of them to other holes in the distance or even almost all the way to Philadelphia from some vantage points such as the 6th fairway.

Why were the trees so small there back then? That's a question I've never seen answered but clearly there must have been one helluva forest fire event not more than a decade or two before Crump found that massive Sumner Ireland land which was over 1000 acres.

But to go back your point. My opinion, is if anyone is or was stupid it wasn't Crump and Pine Valley it was others who copied him by massively treelining holes on land and sites that are nothing like Pine Valley once was and is today! Pine Valley was and is a very unique site for golf and if others are going to try to copy aspects of it elsewhere they need to completely understand that. Clearly history shows many did not understand that very well and so you're right it did create a real "syndrome."

But does that mean somehow that Crump shouldn't have done what he did there because eventually it would create a "syndrome" like this? Of course not!

[Craig Disher]

Rich,
The burr under my saddle has been the effect this syndrome has had on older courses built on relatively small sites - say less than 130 or 140 acres. Isolation is no problem when the course sits on 250 acres. The fetish that greens committees had in the 60s-90s to plant trees along fairway borders to improve safety or to increase difficulty has gutted a lot of the original strategies as well as made the courses visually repetitive; supers can attest to the impact these trees have had on turf conditions.

I suspect the USGA may have had some culpability in this, years ago advising clubs to plant trees as a protection from wayward shots. Sadly, some architects keep encouraging this stuff - or at least shy away from advising clubs that this isn't a good idea anymore.

[TEPaul]

Again, unfortunately precious little seems to have been recorded by Crump himself as to what he was looking for and trying to do down there certainly on this subject of the hole by hole visual isolation.

However, to me what is even more important is to try to determine what he was looking to do or see on various individual holes themselves.

Unfortunately, there is precious little of that recorded too except a single very brief mention on a particular hole which frankly I find to be just remarkably tantalizing and probably important.

And not to even mention that it involves perhaps the most important hole on the course and a hole that many consider to be one of the really great par 4s in golf----the 13th!

Here it is and ironically it was recorded in the part about the 12th hole and not the 13th. It is from his close friend W.P Smith and Smith even recorded the date of his remembrance---ie 8/15/17:

"8/15/17 G.A.C. said 12th not working well. Niblick shots from short drives sticking to green. He and Joe Bole both thought green should slope away from tee. Not decided, however. But did decide that the 13 tee should be connected to the 12th green by gradual slope and should be raised considerably to SEE FLAG ON 13th GREEN WHEN DRIVING." (caps mine)

For those who really know Pine Valley and that 13th hole can you imagine what that would mean and what it would look like if it was done??

If one looks carefully at an old aerial it is clear to see that perhaps 50-75 yards of trees all along the left of that hole that drops down severely off the 13th ridge fairway towards the 15th was cleared! It seems like Crump didn't live long enough to create the raised ramp 13th tee off the back of #12 (he would be dead within five months) but nevertheless there are his ideas on this hole. And from Father Carr on the 13th there was a lot more Crump planned to do on that hole.

But can you imagine what it would look like standing on the 13th tee and being able to actually see the flag on the green to the left alone the drop off that long ridge? Anyone can see no one could drive in that direction but Man would it ever pull your eye if you could actually see that flag from the tee.

In my opinion, this hole really is one of the great par 4s of the world but restoring that long look at the flag from the tee would definitely step this great hole up another notch!

[Rich Goodale]

.....when one starts using terms to describe it like stupid isolation...

Who said that, Tommy?  Shirley not me or even Sully?

Ricardo il Magnifico

[Jim_Kennedy]

Bill Steele,

There are a few courses in the Pine Bush, but none use the underlying ground in PV fashion.

edit: by the above I meant none of the courses in that area reveal the sand
or have a 'wild' look.

[JMorgan]

Rich, I don't know if I'd call it a PV Syndrome, though I understand why you use PV to illustrate the point. 

My short answer to your original question -- "Has the concept of 'splendid isolation' been as good a one in terms of golf course architecture and golfing enjoyment as it has been a bad one for the trial lawyers association?" -- is, No.  The costs outweigh the benefits, and arise more out of fear than from any hard probabilities and statistics. 

Macdonald's bit about Westward Ho! always comes to mind when we talk about isolated holes and indemnity:

At St. Andrews there are only two holes that cross, the seventh and the eleventh. In view of the lamentations that one hears at the nineteenth hole regarding the danger of being killed by a golf-ball where two fairways cross, these timid golfers should have played at Westward Ho! with its twelve crossings.  To this day, St. Andrews men like to tell the story that in all the years golf has been played there nothing has been killed except a "cuddy."

Then again, they didn't use 460cc clubheads and ProV1s back then ... .

[TEPaul]

"Who said that, Tommy?  Shirley not me or even Sully?"

Ricardo the Hispanic:

Agreed. Apparently neither you nor Sully nor even Shirley said it, but I did, didn't I?  Furthermore, you don't even need to say various things on here as over the years I have become really good at reading your mind; and understanding the theory and philosophy known as "Contrary Opinion" as well as I do definitely helps.

[JESII]

Tommy,

The writing there talks about raising the tee in order to see the flag. While I agree that regardless of how it was accomplished, seeing the flag on 13 from the tee would be really cool but how high do you figure the tee would have to be raised (then or now)? and how would that impact the backdrop of #12? What is the evolution of the upper tee on #13?

[TEPaul]

"Tommy,
The writing there talks about raising the tee in order to see the flag. While I agree that regardless of how it was accomplished, seeing the flag on 13 from the tee would be really cool but how high do you figure the tee would have to be raised (then or now)? and how would that impact the backdrop of #12? What is the evolution of the upper tee on #13?"s


Sully:

I really don't know how much a left tee would have to be raised on #13 to see the flag on the green. One would pretty much need to have the trees down on the left as they once were to tell that I guess. One thing that most don't appreciate enough probably is how severely that ridgeline falls off to the left and down to #15 and of course the 13th green is a bit around to the left too as you know.

I think the upper and lower tees on #13 are probably original but don't forget holes #12-15 were not in play when Crump died; both show up on a mid 1920s aerial anyway.

[Jim Nugent]

Did Crump plant any or many of PV's trees?   I'm curious where they all came from. 

Same at ANGC.  The difference between now and ANGC's early days is so vast, it's hard to believe Mother Nature did all that. 

[JohnV]

Thjanks, Mike

How big can a chip on the shoulder get when it drives you to build "your" best course in a neighbouring state?  Let's get real.  Shouldn't GAP be GANJP, or even better GANJA (Golf Association of New Jersey and Anywhereelsewithin500milesofPhiladelphia)?

Rich

Not quite that far, they still won't let the courses around Harrisburg and Hershey join as it would pollute their pure team matches, but letting those hicks from the west play PV or Merion.

I don't like the courses where every hole is its own little world as much as ones where you see the other holes and players.  It is a minor negative, but would be enough to separate two courses that were otherwise equal in my mind.

[Mike Sweeney]

Rich,

Here is a pretty good contrast of the two schools of thought on the course:

* Splendid Isolation on the left and mostly open farm land on the right. I assume this was driven by modern permitting in the Town of East Hampton

[TEPaul]

"Did Crump plant any or many of PV's trees?   I'm curious where they all came from."

JimN:

The site had plenty of trees when Crump found the place even though most all of them were pretty small compared to today. He removed apparently 40--50,000 trees basically to route or just look at potential landforms for holes (some of which were not used). Following that a number of trees were planted and the archives even record what kind of trees they were. 

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