Definitive List of Raynor Courses

[Rick Shefchik]

Jeff:

Thanks.  Differentiating the orig. U. of M. course (l/k/a Midland Hills) from the Les Bolstad course clears up the question. 

Was this Barton's first foray into GCA?  Seems like the pairing worked out pretty well, as Barton continued to work with Raynor and went on to a fairly nice career in the business.

Sven

Sven,

To further expand on Jeff's information on Raynor's work in Minnesota, the original U. of M. course was a 9-holer located more or less on the same site as the current 18-hole Les Bolstad course, started in 1915 by faculty and administrators of the University of Minnesota, including math professor Ralph Barton. When they became concerned that their lease would not be renewed, they began negotiating for the farmland across the street in 1919. They initially wanted Ross to design the new course (which would eventually be called Midland Hills), but Ross turned them down the first time and asked for too much money the second time, so they "settled" for Raynor, who was building Somerset CC in in Mendota Heights, just south of St. Paul. Barton was put in charge of organizing the club's volunteer work crews, and in the process began working closely with Raynor as his de facto foreman. Barton learned so much on that job that Raynor asked him to go to work full time for Raynor's architectural firm, leaving his job at the U. of M. to help Raynor build Mid Ocean.

In the meantime, those who didn't join the new private club stayed at the U. of M. course. Bill Clark (Minneapolis Golf Club pro who designed Oak Ridge and several Twin Cities municipal courses) lengthened and redesigned the U. of M. course in the early 1920s (it was briefly renamed Minnepau) before the University officially bought the course and enough additional land in 1927 to expand the course to 18 holes. They hired Vardon for that job. That course, now called Les Bolstad, is essentially the same as it was when Vardon's redesign opened in 1929.

[Sven Nilsen]

Rich:

Thanks for the clarification.

Sven

[Sven Nilsen]

Add these to the list

Sven,

I've put a red asterik next to the club's where I have questions about Raynor's involvement.

Maybe George can enlighten me as to the work produced

Augusta CC (GA)
Babson Park Golf & Yacht Club (FL) - NLE
Bellport GC (NY)
Berwind Porto (PR) - NLE
Chicago GC (IL) - as noted by TD
Cow Neck CC (NY) - original Southampton plan - never built
Crawford County Club (NY) - redesign
Cypress Point Club (CA) - routing
Dedham Country & Polo Club (MA)
Deepdale G&CC (NY)
Essex County CC (East) (NJ)*
Essex Fells CC (NJ)*
Fishers Island Club (NY)
Gardiner's Bay CC (NY)
Gibson Island GC (MD)
Grand Hotel GC (NY)
Green Park - Norwood GC (NC)
Greenbrier (Lakeside) (WV) - redesign
Hotchkiss School GC (CT)
Kahn Estate (NY)
Knapp Course (NY) - 3 hole course
Knollwood CC (NY)
Lido Club (NY)
Links Club (NY)
Maidstone GC (NY)
Minnesota Valley CC (MN)
Moore Course (NY) - 3 hole course
Nassau CC (NY) - Hole 5 - Eden
North Palm Beach CC (for Paris Singer) (FL)
North Shore CC (NY)
Oakland GC (NY)
Ocean Links (NY)
Olympic Club (Lake) (CA) - hired, drew plans, never built
Piping Rock Club (NY)
Riddles Bay G&CC (Ber)
Rock Spring CC (NJ)
Rumson CC (NJ)*
Santa Barbara GC (CA) - plans submitted
Sequoyah CC of Oakland - plans submitted
Shinnecock Hills GC (NY)
St. Louis CC (MO)
Statesville CC (NC)
Stauffer Estate (LA)
Westchester Hills GC (NY) - Raynor drew plans, unknown if he built the course or if his plans were used.
Whitney Estate (NY)
Women's National G&CC (NY) - advisor to Hollins, course built by D. Emmet
Yale University GC (CT)

Question as to why Bahto doesn't list Raynor for NGLA?

Pat:

Here's some additional information from EofG on a couple of the courses you noted:

Essex Fells - Raynor drew up plans in 1923, Braid built the course to those plans in 1928.
Rumson - Raynor solo, some time in the 1920's

Rumson is an interesting one to me.  There is record of a "Rumsen GC" in "Rumsen" (no yardage or number of holes provided) in the 1900 and 1901 Harper's Reports.  Barker's 18 hole layout is given a date of 1910 by other sources.  I have no information on whether or not Barker's course was on the same piece of property as the earlier course.

The 1920's renovation would be in line with the updates that were taking places to many similar courses during that time.  If you track the yardages in the Annual Guides, it ranges from 6,400 (1916-1920), dropping down to 6,276 in 1921 and then jumping back up to the 6,500 range in the late 20's.  Just looking at the yardage reports, one would assume that the work done in the 20's was either very early (with the result being a shorter course) or very late.  Of course, it is also possible that the 6,400 number given in the early Annual Guides was simply an estimate, and that the real yardage did not change until the late 1920's.  If the work done was later, that would create some doubt in my mind if Raynor was involved, as it would have been after his death.  But the history of Banks completing Raynor designs certainly does not rule out the possibility.

Sven

[Mark Bourgeois]

So...FIVE Raynors in Monterey !? Cypress Point, Monterey Peninsula and...??

From the 4 January 1926 New York Sun:

[Sven Nilsen]

So...FIVE Raynors in Monterey !? Cypress Point, Monterey Peninsula and...??

From the 4 January 1926 New York Sun:

Other Raynor California Design Onlys:

Olympic Club
Santa Barbara CC
Sequoyah CC

[Dan Kelly]

I think you need to put a red asterisk next to Minnesota Valley. According to their own club history, there is no evidence that Mr. Raynor designed to course.

And, as Jeff Shelman noted above, your list is still missing

Midland Hills Country Club (Roseville, Minnesota)
Somerset Country Club (Mendota Heights, Minnesota)

Dan

[Rees Milikin]

Lake Wales CC needs to be added.  Also,
I am curious if there is any documentation of any kind that Raynor built Babson Park and if so, please point me in the direction of where I can see it.

[Philip Caccamise]

Westchester Hills is definitely not a Raynor design.

Per their website the course was designed by the first head pro there, Peter Clark, with "influence" from Donald Ross.

[Sven Nilsen]

Westchester Hills is definitely not a Raynor design.

Per their website the course was designed by the first head pro there, Peter Clark, with "influence" from Donald Ross.

As the notation says, Raynor drew up plans for Westchester Hills.  Whether parts of those plans were adopted is unknown. 

It is one of several courses listed where his work was "Design Only."

[Josh Bills]

Found this article in the New York Tribune from September 19, 1920 relating to Raynor designing one hole after winning a contest for a Newport RI course. 

[Sven Nilsen]

I think you need to put a red asterisk next to Minnesota Valley. According to their own club history, there is no evidence that Mr. Raynor designed to course.

Dan:

I'll let you take that one up with Mr. Shefchik and Mr. Shelman.

Sven

[Alex Lagowitz]

Lake Wales CC needs to be added.  Also,
I am curious if there is any documentation of any kind that Raynor built Babson Park and if so, please point me in the direction of where I can see it.

Rees,

See this thread on Babson Park.  The consensus seems to be that the club name was Crooked Lake.  The aerial at the bottom looks definitively Raynor-esqe.

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php?topic=58228

[Tom_Doak]

Found this article in the New York Tribune from September 19, 1920 relating to Raynor designing one hole after winning a contest for a Newport RI course. 

I am not sure about the accuracy of this article; it's possible the writer did not understand what he was writing about given the limited scope.

My understanding is that "Raynor's Prize Dogleg" was a hole also built at Lido [hole 6] ... and I believe it was an adaptation of one of the runners-up in the famous 1914 Country Life competition that Dr. MacKenzie won.  There were a total of three holes from that competition actually used at Lido ... a version of Tom Simpson's entry was also employed, as the 15th hole I believe.  The author of the above article might not have understood all that, and concluded that Raynor only "designed" one hole on the course, instead of nine [or zero, depending on how you look at templates!].

[Rees Milikin]

Lake Wales CC needs to be added.  Also,
I am curious if there is any documentation of any kind that Raynor built Babson Park and if so, please point me in the direction of where I can see it.

Rees,

See this thread on Babson Park.  The consensus seems to be that the club name was Crooked Lake.  The aerial at the bottom looks definitively Raynor-esqe.

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php?topic=58228

I have posted in that thread and have worked with Scott Edwards (heading up the Florida Historical Golf Trail & probably one of the most knowledgeable people on Florida's golf history) and neither of us have seen any article, drawing, etc that points to Raynor designing Babson Park/Crooked Lake. 

[Dan Kelly]

I think you need to put a red asterisk next to Minnesota Valley. According to their own club history, there is no evidence that Mr. Raynor designed to course.

Dan:

I'll let you take that one up with Mr. Shefchik and Mr. Shelman.

Sven

I will update this later with the title and date of Minnesota Valley's course history.

It's "Minnesota Valley Country Club: From Farms to Fairways [sound familiar to anyone?] ... A Narrative History, 1923-1991," by Laraine Tracy.

Of course, it's possible that some lost documents have come to light in the past 23 years.

[Rick Shefchik]

Dan, Laraine Tracy is the mother of Mike Tracy, our longtime head pro at Stillwater Country Club. The Tracys were from Bloomington, and Mike's mother and father were members of the club for decades. I read her book while preparing my chapter on Minnesota Golf Club in From Fields to Fairways. It was a start, but as you can tell from the preamble, her historical facts were not always deadly accurate -- she skipped over Interlachen, which opened in 1911, White Bear yacht Club, which started golf in 1912, Glenwood, which opened in 1916, and Somerset, which opened in 1919; in addition, The Golden Valley Golf Club started play in 1917, and Hillcrest in 1921. I'm not nitpicking here -- her book was very informative and helped me greatly in writing the Minnesota Valley history, but historical research was not Laraine Tracy's specialty.

I spoke to head pro Rob Hary and superintendent Mike Brower a few years ago, and they told me they'd consulted with George Bahto, who included it on his list of Raynor courses, though he did not cite specific evidence. Golf Course Architect Ron Forse toured the course and concluded it was a Raynor. It is just as likely that the design was done by Ralph Barton, with his Minnesota connections, or possibly Charles Banks, but the features that remain have a strong Raynor influence. That's all we really know at this point; I think an asterisk is justified, but maybe not a red one.
  

[Sven Nilsen]

Another Raynor for the list?

St. Louis Post-Dispatch June 14, 1912 -



St. Louis Star and Times June 15, 1912 -

[Ian Andrew]

Rumson is not ... Travis and Barker
Shapes on couple of greens may fool you in person, but history was well recorded in NY times.

[MCirba]

With Forest Park being in 1912, would that make it Raynor's first solo design?

[mark chalfant]

I think it does Mike.  I believe Westhampton is 1914 or 1915..

[Tim Martin]

I think it does Mike.  I believe Westhampton is 1914 or 1915..

Mark-I think Westhampton is 1914.

[Sven Nilsen]

A lot to noodle on in these articles.


The plans for Forest Park were supervised by Commissioner Davis with assistance from a golf advisory board made up of representatives of a number of St. Louis clubs, including SLCC.  Its not hard to imagine CBM having a role in recommending Raynor for the work and how his name got to Davis.


The articles seem to note a conceived routing, even going so far as to note the locations of certain holes.  I have no idea if the course as built followed these plans.


I've been told that Robert Foulis later claimed responsibility for Forest Park, but did he claim responsibility for the design or for the construction work?  If the latter, its not hard to imagine how many of the MacRaynor touches (bunker scale, green sizes, etc.) did not make its way onto the ground.  It may have been his first design, but it probably wasn't the first Raynor course in the same way a course built under his supervision would have been.


Why, so many years later, did Irwin's team add in some MacRaynor templates when they redid the course?

[Michael Wolf]

I've been working on a list of history books from golf clubs CB/Raynor designed or worked on. I'd appreciated any feedback from Mr. Bahto or anyone else who might have compiled a similar list.


Mine is in excel spreadsheet form, and I'd be happy to share it with anyone who emails me at michael.wolf.usa@zf.com


Best regards,


Michael

[Ryan Hillenbrand]

A lot to noodle on in these articles.


The plans for Forest Park were supervised by Commissioner Davis with assistance from a golf advisory board made up of representatives of a number of St. Louis clubs, including SLCC.  Its not hard to imagine CBM having a role in recommending Raynor for the work and how his name got to Davis.


The articles seem to note a conceived routing, even going so far as to note the locations of certain holes.  I have no idea if the course as built followed these plans.


I've been told that Robert Foulis later claimed responsibility for Forest Park, but did he claim responsibility for the design or for the construction work?  If the latter, its not hard to imagine how many of the MacRaynor touches (bunker scale, green sizes, etc.) did not make its way onto the ground.  It may have been his first design, but it probably wasn't the first Raynor course in the same way a course built under his supervision would have been.


Why, so many years later, did Irwin's team add in some MacRaynor templates when they redid the course?

Sven, great question on why Irwin’s group did the templates. I’ve played forest park a hundred times before and after the renovation and I never remembered any templates before other than a Biarritz green. I assumed they wanted to pay homage to St. Louis cc. Now on one of the nines I can see an alps hole, squared greens, the Biarritz, and a hole matching one at slcc called Blind. Maybe they knew something of the history. In reading the articles description of where it would start and end it matches almost exactly with how the course used to be routed. But no longer. Could be that Foulis used his routing but not his design theories

[Rick Lane]

FWIW, Wikipedia has Raynors first course at 1914.    Doesn't say which one