Colt/Alison features at today's Sea Island (Seaside)

[JBovay]

As I understand it, Colt & Alison designed the back nine at the Sea Island (Seaside) course, where the PGA Tour is playing this week, in 1928. Tom Fazio redid this nine and completely reworked another nine on the property to create today's course, in 1999.

What about the back nine at today's course is distinctively the work of Colt & Alison? (What features do we look at and say, 'oh yes, that is something Colt or Alison would have built'?) Have the greens contours been preserved? Are the large, flat bunkers something they built at other sites? Or something unique to the Seaside course within their works? Or were they Fazio's additions? How have the strategies of the original design been retained, or not? Do we know anything about how the open water or marshes came into play originally, or the (fake?) dunes? How much of the original design was lost before 1999?

Sorry if this has been discussed previously, but I couldn't find it in the archives.

[Adam Lawrence]

Just a quick note that if work in the US is labelled Colt & Alison but was done after WW1, then it would have been done by Hugh Alison alone - Colt never returned to North America after 1913.

[Paul_Turner]

1914

[Tom_Doak]

As I understand it, Colt & Alison designed the back nine at the Sea Island (Seaside) course, where the PGA Tour is playing this week, in 1928. Tom Fazio redid this nine and completely reworked another nine on the property to create today's course, in 1999.

JBovay:

The course was completely rebuilt by Tom Fazio and his team.  I don't think any of the greens contours of the original course were retained.  The bunkers were big and flat with high lips when I saw the Seaside nine in 1980, but I haven't seen original pictures to verify it was always that way.  The "dunes" are Tom Fazio's.

What has been retained is the routing for that nine holes.  And, since the Seaside nine was created by dredging and filling the adjacent marsh, the water hazards and how they come into play were very much designed by Hugh Alison.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

So what do we make of Cornish and Whitten listing St George's, Ontario as a 1920 Colt SOLO (NLE)? As I said in the Lochmoor thread I'm not out to pick arguments, I'm just there trying to sort out which are and which are not genuine Colt courses/clubs which Prestbury (Colt 1920) might approach for possible centenary matches.

[Tom_Doak]

So what do we make of Cornish and Whitten listing St George's, Ontario as a 1920 Colt SOLO (NLE)? As I said in the Lochmoor thread I'm not out to pick arguments, I'm just there trying to sort out which are and which are not genuine Colt courses/clubs which Prestbury (Colt 1920) might approach for possible centenary matches.

I don't know about the NLE St. George's.  But it's always possible that there are a couple of courses that Colt laid out on his visit that didn't get completed until several years later.  For that matter, Pine Valley is one.

[JBovay]

Thanks, Tom, for sharing what you know.

It's always amazing how features of golf courses are flattened by TV cameras: I described the bunkers as "wide and flat" but did not see any high lips during my couple hours of half-attentive viewing on Thursday and Saturday. (Did not watch on Sunday after starting this thread.)

Thanks also to Adam and Paul for clarifying what a Colt & Alison course means.

[Anthony Gholz]

To All:


I thought I'd use an existing thread re Alison's Sea Island Seaside course to ask that someone local please report on the status of the course regarding the approaching hurricane.  A 7-10 foot storm surge would just about cover Alison's original Seaside 9.


Thanks
Anthony

[BCrosby]

We are housing some refugees from the area. So far too early to tell.


Bob