What makes a golf course "historic"?

[Steve_L.]

A recent study on the 1916 Ponce de Leon/St. Augustine Links determined that the Golf Course was not historically significant.  Although the site has been in use for golf for 87 years - it has undergone renovations which have changed the sequence of holes, golf features, etc. although the property site remains intact.   These renovations have, according to the study, changed the golf course from its original character - therefore excluding it from consideration as a candidate for historic preservation.

According to this criteria, haven't most "historically significant" golf courses been altered beyond initial recognition?  I would think that ANGC, Pebble Beach, Oakland Hills, Merion, SFGC and many others fall into this category.  In each of these cases original features have been changed, hole sequence revised, holes lost to progress (streets/highways), or "modernized" - although the character of the original place remains...

Made me wonder - as a matter of opinion...  What makes a course historic?  Is it the character of the features, landforms, bunkers?  Is it the property or site?  It is the routing and physical configuration of the holes?  Is it the cultural significance to the region?  Or simply the age of the course..?

[TEPaul]

In Florida all it takes is some good old live oaks and just the right amount of Spanish moss on 'em. In California a course needs to reach it's 7 1/2 anniversary and it's historic. In Philadelphia the subject can't even be considered until 3 1/2 generations of Biddles and Cadwalladers have been continous members. In Boston the club has to have a Cabot because only they can actually talk to God. In New York--well--let's start with money and go from there.

[Willie_Dow]

What good is it to be "historic"?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Steve L,
History can add a perspective to a course that only time will reveal. Here at the Hotchkiss School GC we consider it a fortuitous twist to have been the place where Charles Banks met Seth Raynor. At the time Banks was a professor at the school and was also on the building committee for the new Raynor course. He became so enamored with GCA that he left his teaching post and teamed with Raynor. This little tidbit of history raises some interesting questions, at least for me.

If Raynor had not met Banks would Banks have ever entered the field? If not, would we sorely miss his creations?
Who would have completed Raynor's works in progress?
What gears meshed in Charlie Banks' brain that made him decide to give up a relatively secure, stable existence at Hotchkiss for a life in architecture?

p.s.
According to George Bahto, C.B. has a burial monument that typifies his personality. Seth Raynor's, right across from C.B's. is quite a bit smaller.
In the graveyard down the road from my house lies Banks' headstone, a simple, flat marker about 10"x 14".      

[Brad Klein]

Criteria for "historic" status:

-Bobby Jones kicked a tree there while pouting over an early round loss in a U.S. Amateur

-a future U.S. President passed out in a shrub behind the clubhouse after staying out all night celebrating with his secretary

-the board room hosted a famous diplomatic session at which Paraguay and Bolivia signed a peace treaty ending the bloody Chaco War

-Tiger Woods parred the fourth hole while still wearing diapers

-the club became the first course in 1967 to have a fully computerized irrigation system. The pump station and pipes have since been declared "historic sites" by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and so the greenkeeper is not allowed to replace the original vacuum tubes powering the system

[T_MacWood]

I can tell you one thing not being altered is not the requirement. There are plenty of historically significant works of architecture that were either in very shaby condition or completely altered. Frank Lloyd Wright's house and study in Oak Park had been subdivided into appartments before histoical preservationists stepped in.

Golf architecture has done a very poor job of recognizing and protecting her most historically significant works. The ASCGA or some other group should form a board of golf architectural historians...take a lesson from what the related field of architecture. Just in the case of Wright home you need historians to present the historical siginificance and documentation of a work despite its current state or condition. To determine historical signifiance look back at history....after reading Missing Links does any dispute Timber Point or Lido was historicaly siginificant?

As far St. Augustine is concerned, the fact that Donald Ross is one of the great golf architects in history and the fact that the course was unique within his portfolio is histoically significant in my view....despite changes that have occured. Reverse the changes.

[Steve Lang]

Along TEP's lines of muse..

It never hurts for someone to have been shot durig a major competition either... i.e, AT Ottawa Park, 1922, first US Am Publinx, in Toledo, a spectator was shot apparently by angry woman.. what is it with love affairs and golf?  

[Willie_Dow]

Jim Kennedy

[Willie_Dow]

Sorry, Jim, but my touch was before my mind!

I'm trying to recall why we made our course a National Monument.  But I think it was to maintain its architecture.
What constitutes its inclusion in this category?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Willie'
You wrote:

I'm trying to recall why we made our course a National Monument.  But I think it was to maintain its architecture.
What constitutes its inclusion in this category?

I don't know what you are driving at here.

[TEPaul]

JimK:

I know what Willie's talking about. A few American clubs and courses have become designated in certain "historic" ways. Mostly that would probably be a designation in the "Historic Registry" which can have certain tax benefits but can also include certain restrictions against change and alteration.

Merion and Oakmont are two such clubs and courses and we've had this discussion before on here about all that means and requires.

Mostly this involves the buildings of these clubs and the fact they become somewhat restricted to change due to the "Historic Registry" designation or perhaps some more local "conservation easment" designation. Buildings are much easier to monitor that way and there're actually "conservation aegis" organizations that can and do that in the context of a particular set of agreed upon restrictions to change that're all spelled out in the conservation easment covenant between the designated property and the "aegis" organization.

But that has never been true of the actual architecture of a golf course that I'm aware of. There's no "aegis" organization to do that and no club would probably want one to do that anyway.

It is possible to place the ground under a golf course into a "conservation" organization as Applebrook G.C. did. But all that really means is the land under the golf course has developmental restrictions on its future use not that the golf architecture itself can't be altered in any way.