Did Seth Raynor have an artistic bone in his body?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Pat:

Why? My question to you has nothing at all to do with your question to Sean Arble.

Yes it does, you just don't understand the connection at this point.

By the way, Patrick, did you ever play the old Links GC?


Unfortunately, I didn't.
Remember, I'm a Jersey boy, not an Islander.


 If you did tell me what you thought about it. Macdonald never said much about it but he sure did have plenty to do with it, and not just with doing it but also afterwards (for instance he apparently adamantly refused to let the club use rakes or have any). There may be a good reason he never said much about it in his book which might be part of the same reason he never said much about The Creek Club.

By the way, that seminal blowout meeting over The Creek Club and its problem holes happened at a Creek Club board meeting at The Links Club in NYC! If you read the meeting minutes it isn't hard to tell the walls were virtually rocking! Macdonald resigned from The Creek Club shortly afterwards, giving as his reason that he wanted to go to his cottage in Bermuda and write his book by which I suppose he meant he wouldn't be around much. A few months later they made him an honorary member. 

[George_Bahto]

Tom's post about the Links course reminded me of what Gib and I described in The Evangelist of Golf:
it wa about the exclusivity of the course and the story of Macdonald and his superintendent, BennY Zuckowski, who granted me two interview (at the age of about 90 or so):

** **

     From an interview with the only Superintendent the Links Club ever had:

   "Mr. Macdonald kept us on the edge, he noticed everything.  We were always worried about what he might say to us.  He certainly knew just about everything there was to know about designing courses, and he was very learned about growing and controlling turf grass.  We didn't need to bring in a turf expert to solve problems because Mr. Macdonald could solve them himself."


     Zukosky recalls Macdonald's insistence - over member objections - that the course be kept firm and fast at all times.  He knew that golf was a ground game, and that is the way the course was to play - end of conversation. 

     Everyone knew exactly who was in command at the Links Club.

     In accordance with Macdonald's wishes, the rough was kept high, and there were no rakes on the course until after his death.  He instructed that no bunker be smoothed out unless it was in terrible condition.  Some members went to far as to bring their own rakes and leave them on the course. Macdonald immediately had them removed and destroyed.
     Macdonald was distressed about the 1920's trend to maintain smoothed-out sand in bunkers.  Many early photographs of golf in America show players in deep and craggy bunkers, trying to extract themselves from purgatory as their caddy and the rest of the his group look on.
     By middle 1920s Charlie was horrified at the turn of events when more and more, golfers demanded their sand bunkers raked perfectly smooth. He should only be here today !

     "...... errors in play should be severely punished, but now the golfer wants his bunkers raked and the unevenness of the fairway rolled out", he bellowed!  "If I had my way there would be a troop of cavalry horses run through every trap and bunker on the course before a tournament started,  where only a niblick could get the ball out but only for a few yards"

[Jud_T]

Great post George.  I guess that's why they called them Hazards.....

[TEPaul]

TomD and George:

Wonderful posts and information about the old Links Club and Macdonald's part in it. I always heard he had a lot to do with the course through the years and I didn't mean to suggest he had a falling out with the Links Golf Club, only that there seemed to be a real falling out with Macdonald and The Creek Club at The Links Club in NYC during a seminal Creek Club board meeting at the Links Club in NYC in October 1926. It was obviously the culmination of some on-going arguments and controversy over those so-called "Lower Holes" at The Creek Club that were having real ongoing problems (particularly #9, #12, #13 and #14) and had to be redone to the tune of over $100,000.

My father belonged to The Links Club and one summer I played there just about every day with my old friend Dan Bacon from Boston and Myopia when he was around NYC that year. I think it was the late 1970s or very early 1980s. There was never anyone there except on Sundays when the members came for golf and the excellent Sunday lunch.

It was sad to me the way the Links Club got in the end before being sold and plowed under. I think the conditioning went down big-time and the only people playing the course were basically the local police and firemen. In those decades the club was basically run by Mr Paley and I think Mr. Whitney. Some said they paid for everything but that was actually not true.

George, you said the greenkeeper was named Zukowsky. That was not the same one who was Macdonald's long time super at NGLA was it? If not what was the name of his long-time greenkeeper at NGLA? He had a name that sounded something like that. Was it Zabriski or something like that? He was before the Rewinski family.

The guy who really made The Links in my era was a man who ran the club and the clubhouse by the name of Bert. I think he was an Englishman and it totally fascinated the members that he would just bring them the right drink at the right time without even being asked.

TomD, I am thrilled you took photographs of the old Links Club course before it was no more. I hope you still have them somewhere, particularly that amazing reverse redan that used to drive the good players nuts yet always fascinated them somehow. If they pulled that shot off they were proud as peacocks but mostly the didn't, and the guys my father played with were all good. THE shot was a low cut with like a 4 wood and with just the right amount of weight!!

Totally fascinating info about Macdonald's fixation with ruggedness with sand surfaces in bunkers, by the way!!

[TEPaul]

"Unfortunately, I didn't.
Remember, I'm a Jersey boy, not an Islander."


Patrick:

I know that but you are also sort of a golf globalist too and particularly considering your father. I'm sorry you never saw the Links club though. You want to talk about a relaxed, sleepy atmosphere at a golf club-----the Links Club was just about the ultimate that way. I've seen a lot like that over my life and times but that way The Links Club definitely took the cake!

I mean like that friend of mine Dan Bacon from Myopia and Boston back then----he didn't even belong to The Links Club but his married uncle, James Knott, or maybe my father just called the club and said: "This young man will be in New York this summer so take care of him will you?" And they did, no green fees or anything like that. We'd just come over and play and we pretty much had the course and the clubhouse all to ourselves.

One time as we were playing the hole that went by the clubhouse and crossed the driveway I hooked a ball right through the kitchen window and knocked an enormous bowl of Bert's potato/leek soup right off the table where it was cooling next to the window. When I got up there he just flipped the ball back out the window with potato/leek soup all over it.

[George_Bahto]

Tommy Paul - the original superintendent at National was Mike Tureski

Charlie Macdonald did the same thing at both National and at Links - he selected a youngster (a local) - both of they youngsters were Polish -  who had been working  on the construction crews and basically told them they did not need to know anything about being a superintendent - he, Charles the Great, would teach them all they needed to know.

Makes sense to me (at that time) -  he gets a faithful person who will not have preconceived ideas. Charlie was a know-it-all, who knew-it all!   

now there is a very interesting part to this story:

both Benny Zukosky and Mike Tureski were with him for along time and he "took care" of them generously (money and stock tips). Benny was the ONLY super at the Links club course (1918-1919 until its demise in the middle '80's) and Mike Tureski was kept on until Macdonald fell ill and had to give up the reins of club overlord in about 1935!!

and by the way, at that time at National, the members seemed to have had a ball, ridding all the things they did not like on the course that Charlie would not allow while he ws still in charge - including cutting off the top of the PN on the 11th hole

sad story:  when a member (I’ll not name) became the new president  (for only one year) Tureski was immediately dismissed and they gave him no severance money. They later thought it over, and I think he was given, like, $500 - I have a copy of the letter to him in the huge NGLA files.

I suppose I should post the section of the Links chapter that gives the brief hole descriptions - doesn’t make much of an difference at this time - the book is sold out.

If there is interest, let me know - pretty good stuff - tough getting the information about the course itself. I found a member of a maintenance staff on a Long Island course who worked on the Links course and he really was a great resource.

There was a story about CBM carrying an axe in his golf bag so he could cut down saplings and such. Zukosky actually got in trouble with the old man because Charlie saw some flowers along the edge of the course - turns out it was on a neighbor property .... but Benny said he was in trouble for a while.

[Mac Plumart]

George...

you say, "If there is interest, let me know"

There is interest!

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks very much, gents - a wonderful series of posts there. It struck me that we search so often for reasons why the game has changed (for better or worse), but right there is a reason we don't often mention, i.e. because people have changed, and with them the world.  There were men like Mike Tureski once... and then came men like that one-year president.

Peter

[Patrick_Mucci]

George Bahto,

That's fascinating information, especially the part about CBM recoiling at the "Americanization" of bunkers, the quest for pristine conditions in a HAZARD, and the quest for flattened fairways.

Charlie, Seth and I share similar views when it comes to golf courses and golf course maintainance.
I make sure to stop by and chat with the boys whenever I'm in their neck of the woods at Montauk Highway and North Sea Road.
I've even funded a fence around their resting place for the sole purpose of keeping Wayne Morrison and other defilers at a good distance.

On my last visit Charlie was a bit apoplectic that MacWood suggested that others, pretenders he called them, deserved credit for designing NGLA.  He told me, in no uncertain terms, that NGLA and everything about it was his idea, dating back to the late 1800's, and that everyone else was a Johnny come lately, with nothing more than TOKEN  or polite political involvement, courtesy of his gracious invitation to them.  Invitations which were quicky rescinded whenever anyone other than Jim or Seth offered suggestions.


I'm due for another personal visit in the latter part of September, but, may have to settle for a conference call instead

[TEPaul]

Pat:

When Clarence Piper went to visit Charlie in the early 1920s at NGLA, Alan Wilson asked Piper if Charlie tried to take his head off. Piper said, no, he didn't try to take my head off but he did allow that in his opinion everyone was a God-damned idiot!  

In that letter it looks like he added that he thought the biggest idiots of all were two guys named MacWood and Moriarty but unfortunately the letter is a bit blurred in that line.

[Joe Sponcia]

Also - Raynor's artifice is appealing to me because it seems ego-less.  That is, even though the hand of man is completely obvious, the whole gives me the feeling that it isn't him that I'm seeing but the forms -- and only those forms required to challenge the golfer along/through the tried-and-true principles of good design.  There is something good and decent about a craftsman who is so obviously willing to put the demands of the craft -- and of the game this craft is meant to serve -- above his own more personal (and thus, smaller) self.

Peter

Peter, such a great point.  Imagine the 1920's.  Few had cars, few traveled out of their state, much less their city on a regular basis.  Mr. Raynor probably never conceived that someone could play Camargo, Shoreacres, and then Lookout Mountain and say, "all of these holes look the same".  It took me some time to "get" his designs.  Pete Dye is much the same.  His work looks very "manufactured" but the beauty is in the 8th time around.  The site lines, the angles you could have tried.  The heroic nature of each shot.  That is the thing about "natural" designs some times...the lack of hero shots.

[Tim Martin]

Who cares if his holes look manufactured or if the templates are used over and over in his designs? His golf courses are a joy to play.  How about some extra points for bold?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Who cares if his holes look manufactured or if the templates are used over and over in his designs? His golf courses are a joy to play.  How about some extra points for bold?

Tim,

I was having that very discussion yesterday with a few fellows, one of whom is a member of a CBM/SR course.

And the "critical" element was the presentation of a challenge that's "FUN" to play.

I'm just wondering, has anyone played a CBM/SR/CB course that wasn't fun to play ?

[ward peyronnin]

Pat I only wish I could play more of those always fun courses.

You can't tell me that the 15th long par four at Yeaman's where , when you pay attention, the line of charm off the tee is directly at a grove of five hoary old gorgeous live oaks that cluster along the forested outside of the is not artistic.

He found ways to incorporate those themes he believed were timeless into a landscape if it could sustain them and that is an art and impose them in places that could not but had piss poor options for other solutions as well( CC of Charleston)

[Patrick_Mucci]

Ward,

I'd agree.

Too many GCA enthusiasts think it's easy to plunk down a template or templates on any terrain and have them work.

The other failing I see is that many think of the templates in the narrowest or purest of terms, not allowing for any variation.

Reverse Redans, be they at Sleepy Hollow, LACC North, Morris County or elsewhere are a tribute to a concept modified to fit the terrain.

And, if it was so easy, why haven't others been successful at it over the last 100 years

[Joe Sponcia]

Another point that gets lost, especially (but not exclusive to) with his par three's are the effort it would take to alter/soften these holes over time.

[Ray Cross]

So....did George Bahto ever post the chapter on The Links Course?   Where and when?
I'm sure there was great interest but I may have missed it.
Pls let me know if anyone has info.
Thanks