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Bill Brightly

  • Karma: +0/-0
While I am no Joe Bausch, I stumbled across a 1961 club newsletter that detailed the work that was done to Hackensack GC in 1960. "All back traps removed." Bunker floors raised so that the golfer can see the pin... When I am done crying, I will fill you in with some of the specifics. While I knew about the bunker removal and could tell much from aerial photos, until this article I could not prove that our greens were flattened.

http://www.hgc.org/files/1961%20-%20April.pdf

Link did not work, so I copied and pasted the article below
« Last Edit: April 30, 2013, 07:54:35 AM by Bill Brightly »

Garland Bayley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Details of what our Modernization Committee did to our Banks course
« Reply #1 on: April 29, 2013, 06:49:47 PM »
My condolences.
"I enjoy a course where the challenges are contained WITHIN it, and recovery is part of the game  not a course where the challenge is to stay ON it." Jeff Warne

Don_Mahaffey

Re: Details of what our Modernization Committee did to our Banks course
« Reply #2 on: April 29, 2013, 06:54:47 PM »
Why don't you just put it back the way it was?

Bill Brightly

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Details of what our Modernization Committee did to our Banks course
« Reply #3 on: April 29, 2013, 07:03:23 PM »
Don, we are! Road Hole was just restored this year! It a fabulous, I will post a complete "before and after" with photos very soon!

Keith Phillips

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Details of what our Modernization Committee did to our Banks course
« Reply #4 on: April 29, 2013, 08:28:32 PM »
The link didn't work for me - we have a Banks 9 at Montclair so I'm very interested to follow your progress!

Bill Brightly

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Details of what our Modernization Committee did to our Banks course
« Reply #5 on: April 30, 2013, 07:54:03 AM »
From The Hack'r, April 1961

(my comments added)

The- course you will be playing when the club's sixty-second golf season opens April 29 will be a lot different
from the one you left when the season closed last fall. And it won't be one shot easier despite some things
that may have been reported. As a generality, what has happened is that back traps have been eliminated
and side traps have been made shallower, most of them with what is known as 7 to 1 pitch to the green.
In layman's language and in a sort of inexact way, what this means is that in all probability you can see the Hag
when you are hitting out of a trap. But, to compensate for the shallower trans the openings to the greens have narrowed so that there will be less running up to the green and more pitching to it.

Here, hole by hole, is what has been done:
One, narrower entrance, back trap filled.
Two, same as One.
Three, gully filled (Goodbye Biarritz Swale...), side traps moved forward.
Four, traps installed on left and right of the fairway, about 200 yards out. Trap between Fourth and fourteenth fairways has been filled.
Fifth, trap on left of fairway filled,other fairway traps shallowed. (Including Principal's Nose :(  )
Sixth, ("Short" ) back and front traps filled and entrance to green made more narrow.
Seventh, trap on left of fairway filled, and left side of the green lowered.
Eighth, trap back of the path has been eliminated.
Ninth, new trap on left side of fairway,200 yards out; right side of the green reduced and brought forward.
The trap between the ninth and eighteenth has been eliminated.
Tenth, back traps filled and side traps shallowed and brought forward.
Eleventh, trap on the left side of Fairway eliminated.
Twelth, (Redan...) deep trap on right eliminated and the left trap recontoured.
Thirteenth, trap installed on right of fairway; new trap indented into the fairway .'280 yards all the left.
Fourteenth, the tee has been moved .30 yards to the left so that the hole becomes a slight dogleg to the right,
skirting the big center tree. The fairway trap on the right has been recontoured and the opening to the
green made more narrow and the green on the left lowered 4 feet.
Fifteenth, the nearer fairway trap on the left has been eliminated. Sixteenth, trap on the left of fairway
partially eliminated and the opening to the green narrowed.
Seventeenth, the green has been reshaped and pinched in at the entrance
and the back trap filled.
Eighteenth, (Road Hole) the dogleg has been accentuated and a trap installed on
the left of the fairway 200 yards out. The trap on the left at the green (Road Hole Bunker) has
been shallowed.

All traps will be filled with white sand and there will be no more turf banks.
The work was done under the supervision of the course modernization committee with Nep Smyth as chairman and Bal Balestier as vicechairman, assisted by Paul Blume, Jim Butterfield, Ed Gerkin, Cam
Nazer, Jim Saydah, and Fred Shifty.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2013, 08:02:13 AM by Bill Brightly »

JMEvensky

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Details of what our Modernization Committee did to our Banks course
« Reply #6 on: April 30, 2013, 09:51:07 AM »
Are any members of the Modernization Committee still around? I'd be interested in their comments.

Bill Brightly

  • Karma: +0/-0
Nope. All dead. My theory is they felt our Banks course was odd looking, and the Robert Trent Jones style was in fashion. The very deep bunkers might have been viewed as too severe.  The ground game was going out of fashion, the aerial game just starting to take hold in 1960.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2013, 01:04:29 PM by Bill Brightly »

JMEvensky

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Details of what our Modernization Committee did to our Banks course
« Reply #8 on: April 30, 2013, 11:23:16 AM »

Nope. All dead. My theory is they felt our Banks course was odd looking, and the Robert Trent Jones style was in fashion. The very deep bunkers might have been viewed as too severe.  The ground game was going out if fashion, the aerial game just starting to take hold in 1960.


Hindsight is always 20/20 but still you wonder how guys given the responsibility to look out for their own golf course were swayed so much by the "club down the street".

Like the lady sang,"you don't know what you got til it's gone...".

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