Neil Crafter,
Thanks for the vintage photos. That was a "Bad Kop", indeed.
Sean,
I focused my research on name-only SKs because I was really hoping to find a formal connection between at least some of them. That didn't happen. But in a way that makes the story even more interesting--the sheer number of clubs that have Kop holes (I highlighted a large handful, but found at least three dozen around the world) that are similar in design, yet without an obvious popularizing influence. The major point in common was that most were clubs that were either founded or had their courses formalized in the first decade of the 20th century.
Viewed in the light of that recent and traumatic event, the Spion Kop begins to look like essentially an emergent and vernacular "style" of hole as opposed to a formal element of golf architecture's canon. I find that to be a very interesting distinction. The last piece of research I included before filing the story was what I learned from Howard Nunan at Crowborough Beacon--that they'd only named their 5th hole Spion Kop within the past twenty or thirty years. It's ironic that the hole that launched the entire story for me was a "neo-Kop". At first I was a bit disappointed, but over time I came to think of it as being altogether in keeping with the informal and localized ways in which historical memory manifests itself. Someone at a tiny club in Lincolnshire could wake up tomorrow and decide to name a hole Spion Kop and it would be a very long time before anyone thought twice about it. The funny thing is, the hole chosen would probably fit in pretty well with the several dozen others that already carry the name.
David Tepper,
Brora #16 definitely presents a Kop-like vista from the tee. I've never been to Brora and can't tell from the second photo if the green tilts from back to front. I consider this a key ingredient to a good SK, as many people tend to press on severely uphill shots and come up thin. It leaves a difficult recovery for those who run through the green. On the other hand, I also agree with Sean that there should be trouble of some kind short of the green. Crail has gorse, Edzell has a false front and bunkers, Craigie Hill has broken ground. I think the last is the best of the three as it is perhaps the closest symbolic representation of the Boer War ascent. The shot is an uphill chip and run, but maybe you're playing it from a sketchy lie, something a little rutted and sparse in turf coverage. That would be my ideal, at least. I consider Craigie Hill's to be the best Spion Kop that I have ever seen, but the only hard and fast rule is that the hole gives you a mountain to climb.