There are maybe twenty to thirty of us who have been hanging around this site for ten plus year ( we now go through in six hours the number of page views that we once did in a month) and it is fair to ask/wonder: How has this site changed, if at all, your views on golf course architecture?
One way this site has changed my own personal view is that I now consider William Flynn to be among my all-time favorite architects. Part of my tardiness for coming to this conclusion was that I grew up at the James River Course at Country Club of Virginia. It was plenty fine but no one confuses it for having strokes of genius splashed across it. At the time, popular history had it as an untouched Flynn course, leaving me with an impression that Flynn was more functional than brilliant. Turns out that though Flynn did a routing, it was never implemented and that the James River course was not a Flynn design after all. Next up for this Virginia boy was playing and experiencing the Cascades, which most emphatically is a Flynn design but time, especially recently, has been cruel to the course, thus undermining it as a showcase for Flynn's talent.
Despite those two poor benchmarks, my opinion changed thanks to the steady drumbeat of information on Flynn that Wayne has provided over the years. Along with Tom Paul, they have compiled 2047 pages (!!) in a five volume set entitled The Nature Faker, William S. Flynn, Golf Architect, which puts Flynn in perspective like never before. This will soon be made available on DVD as well. Obviously, the man who built Shinnecock was a rare talent and a true craftsman but it is fascinating to understand how he became so. His background in agronomy, how large Pine Valley loomed over the Philadelphia School, and of course his role at Merion all played into making Flynn one of the game's most prescient architects. His writing for the USGA Green Section is freakily accurate to this day and his vision is no doubt one of the reasons that his gems like Lancaster and The Country Club outside of Cleveland stand the test of time so well.
All of this and more are discussed within this month's Feature Interview with Wayne. In particular, it is fascinating to compare Flynn's routing at Country Club of York to that of Donald Ross's. One thing is for sure: Flynn's routing is a lot more than just high tee to low fairway to high green and I think it speaks as to the time he spent on site as opposed to just mailing in a routing from a topo map. See what you think.
Wayne is a one man Flynn society and has done more to frame Flynn's career than any other person. Unlike some researchers who are tetchy in sharing, Wayne has been very quick to help me and this site for a number of years and the walk around Merion with him during the rain-soaked practice round at the Walker Cup last year at Merion was eye-opening. Fortunately for us all, Jeff Silverman and Wayne have teamed up to offer their research skills to clubs, architects, etc. I have read the first rate report that Wayne was involved with for The Homestead and it is a paint by the numbers of what was there and what needs to be done to restore the Cascades to the upper echelon. It is the exact sort of thing that every Golden Age club should pursue. More on this new service being offered by Wayne and Jeff at the end of this month's Feature Interview where we try to give one of the titans of the Golden Age credit for all that he did for the game.
This aerial of the sixth at Indian Creek highlights how Flynn used bunkers to great strategic effect - shy away from the nest of bunkers on the inside of the dogleg and enjoy a horrible angle into the green. Surely this hole is the equal of the more famous sixth at Seminole?