… Courses by Country and Architecture Timeline. Here is the link:
http://golfclubatlas.com/courses-by-country/usa/sleepy-hollow-country-club-ny-usa/I like having heroes in part because they make you keenly aware of how much room for self-improvement there is.
Starting in the mid-1990s, I picked up two more. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to play NGLA for the first time and it lived up to the incredible hype that I had created in my own mind. That paved the way for C.B. Macdonald to ascend to hero status for the course was unlike anything I had ever experienced. And to think it was brought about in the ~1910 timeframe! Then, along came another event: an email from a man named George Bahto in 1999. True, George didn’t help found the USGA but his efforts to gather and disseminate information on the Macdonald/Raynor/Banks school of architecture seemed every bit as honorable and pure for the amateur golfer. His work was crucial in restoring many of their works and that is a very big deal because their courses were very big deals.
Therefore, in 2007, what a dream it was to wander around Sleepy Hollow with George and admire the work that Gil Hanse and he had done. And yet … the story doesn’t end there. Hero worship can cut both ways and in the case of Sleepy Hollow, this wasn’t Macdonald’s finest moment. Not every Beatles album was a masterpiece either and personality issues among other things tempered what was built. By the 1930s, Macdonald hadn’t even design 40%+ of the holes on the main course. Another legend had had a hand – AW Tillinghast but time showed his 7 holes weren’t representative of his best either. When I worked for the USGA in 1985 and Sleepy Hollow kindly acted as a host for a meeting, it was for a dinner affair; people were more interested in dining in the former Vanderbilt home than playing the course.
The same group of men at the club that drove Stage I of the work – Michael Hegarty, George Sanossian, Corey (‘The Smart Brother’
) Miller and Green Keeper Tom Leahy – knew that a flaw remained, namely that the greens lacked the charisma and flair associated with ones from the Macdonald school. After 5 years of letting the accolades roll in from Stage I, they decided to tackle the issue and asked Gil to complete the transformation. Gil returned (this time with Ben Hillard as George Bahto had passed away) and set about transforming the greens into complexes that any Macdonald student would appreciate.
Jon Cavalier’s drone captures Macdonald’s superb use of a ravine that extends 300 yards across the course. The good news now is that there is also plenty of compelling golf well away from it as well, signaling that the transformation is complete. To be clear, this wasn’t a restoration as Macdonald/Tillinghast didn’t leave a feature-rich design behind. However, thanks to the wisdom of the board in 2003 that embarked on a path to emulate/honor Macdonald as opposed to Tillinghast, a clear path was set. Why was it ‘clear’? Because Macdonald stood for something definite and his template holes made his design ideals known to all. The result? Today the members of Sleepy Hollow play a course that is far better, more interesting, and grander than at any time in its history.
That's the monumental effect that proper club governance can have on a course. And there isn’t a person alive that doesn’t think Uncle George isn’t looking down with C.B Macdonald and Seth Raynor and smiling at the job well done as the golf is now a match for the views.
Best,