Not Good Ross Courses

[Ira Fishman]

Several months ago, there was a thread about good Ross courses. Which ones are not good? As a kid I remember Evanston as not particularly good. But we were sneaking on to play during shoulder seasons. There must be others given how many he designed.


Ira

[Bernie Bell]

Ira -


Lot of views and no replies.  Maybe as Sheryl Crow says, "you can say what you want, but you can't say it 'round here!"  I'll stick my neck out and say I didn't find Delray Beach anything to write home about, although I'm not sure how much if any of that can be pinned on the master.

[Ronald Montesano]

The reason is, they aren't all Ross courses. He may have laid out the plans, but the building was at the mercy of his foreman. The Lake course at Chatauqua Institute (New York State) has intimations of Ross and the golden age, but does nothing for me. Was he ever there? Doubt it.


If the thread were phrased Which courses, where Ross was on site, still suck? you might have a more interesting battery of responses.

[Jeff Schley]

The reason is, they aren't all Ross courses. He may have laid out the plans, but the building was at the mercy of his foreman. The Lake course at Chatauqua Institute (New York State) has intimations of Ross and the golden age, but does nothing for me. Was he ever there? Doubt it.


If the thread were phrased Which courses, where Ross was on site, still suck? you might have a more interesting battery of responses.

ROMO,
I second this, but also will add that years of lack of maintenance/restoration has affected many of his 400 or so courses after almost 100 years as well. What is there now in many cases is what the present operators put into it.  Look at Bethpage condition before the restoration some 20 years ago.

[Tim Martin]

Almost every course in existence will leverage the Donald Ross pedigree in their marketing efforts and most certainly on their websites and scorecard. I’m a big fan of Shennecossett but it’s routing is reconfigured from three Mark Mungeam holes that resulted from a land swap with Pfizer. Still enough to call it Ross but like many other golden age designs not nearly original.

[Ira Fishman]

To be clear: I think that Mr. Ross is probably the most consistently brilliant architect of his era.  But even Dr Mackenzie and Colt and even Old Tom had some clunkers. Certainly Ross did so too even when he was on site.


Ira

[Jim Nugent]

The reason is, they aren't all Ross courses. He may have laid out the plans, but the building was at the mercy of his foreman. The Lake course at Chatauqua Institute (New York State) has intimations of Ross and the golden age, but does nothing for me. Was he ever there? Doubt it.

I thought Ross wasn't there for lots of courses attributed to him -- he mailed in the designs without ever putting foot on the properties. 

Yes?  No? 

[Tim Leahy]

Peninsula CC in San Mateo CA? Ross only course in CA and I have never heard anything about it. Not ranked in top 50 in the state.

[Sven Nilsen]

The reason is, they aren't all Ross courses. He may have laid out the plans, but the building was at the mercy of his foreman. The Lake course at Chatauqua Institute (New York State) has intimations of Ross and the golden age, but does nothing for me. Was he ever there? Doubt it.

I thought Ross wasn't there for lots of courses attributed to him -- he mailed in the designs without ever putting foot on the properties. 

Yes?  No?

No. 


And he did visit Chautauqua.

[Ronald Montesano]

A) Damnit, Sven! There goes my theory. I suspect that the Chautauqua Institute has many other things on its mind, before a restoration comes to consideration, then passage. Also, kinda curious to know if the routing has been reconfigured over time, if bunkers have been removed, etc.


B) I'd love to know what clunkers MacKenzie put forth. I've photographed only two of his prizes (Pasatiempo and Crystal Downs) and they were places I should spend a lifetime.


C) Ross experts can chime in on specifics, but he did do a number of courses from afar.


D) JSchley...always a good point, one that I tend to forget. I use the line "the bones are there, and evident" quite often. Bass River in MA is a good example of one of these. Don't know the extent of changes there, or if he visited. I suspect he visited, as it wasn't far from Little Compton.


E) My 5-course meal of Ross courses that I would love to see: Essex, Salem, Charles River, Tedesco, and Winchester. All near Boston. I'll have to make some new friends

[Duncan Cheslett]

 I'd love to know what clunkers MacKenzie put forth. I've photographed only two of his prizes (Pasatiempo and Crystal Downs) and they were places I should spend a lifetime.

There's not a lot of MacKenzie magic on view at Marsden Golf Club.


A humble but perfectly solid 9-holer on the windswept moors that were the setting for "An American Werewolf in London", Marsden is typical of some of Dr Mac's more routine output in northern England which paid his bills before he blagged the fancy gigs in Buxton, Australia and the US which helped elevate his reputation to dizzy heights. 


https://www.marsdengolfclub.co.uk/

[Tim Martin]

A) Damnit, Sven! There goes my theory. I suspect that the Chautauqua Institute has many other things on its mind, before a restoration comes to consideration, then passage. Also, kinda curious to know if the routing has been reconfigured over time, if bunkers have been removed, etc.


B) I'd love to know what clunkers MacKenzie put forth. I've photographed only two of his prizes (Pasatiempo and Crystal Downs) and they were places I should spend a lifetime.


C) Ross experts can chime in on specifics, but he did do a number of courses from afar.


D) JSchley...always a good point, one that I tend to forget. I use the line "the bones are there, and evident" quite often. Bass River in MA is a good example of one of these. Don't know the extent of changes there, or if he visited. I suspect he visited, as it wasn't far from Little Compton.


E) My 5-course meal of Ross courses that I would love to see: Essex, Salem, Charles River, Tedesco, and Winchester. All near Boston. I'll have to make some new friends

Ross also designed Wianno, Oyster Harbors and Hyannisport on Cape Cod so I don’t know if he would have had to come from Rhode Island for Bass River. That said I’m not sure of the timelines.

[Sven Nilsen]

C) Ross experts can chime in on specifics, but he did do a number of courses from afar.

Ron:


I'd like to know what courses you think Ross did from afar.  You can use this as a resource:


http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,65481.0.html


The sooner people give up this misconception the better.


Sven

[Brad Tufts]

E) My 5-course meal of Ross courses that I would love to see: Essex, Salem, Charles River, Tedesco, and Winchester. All near Boston. I'll have to make some new friends

Or mine the ones you have!  (Tedesco)




I was looking at Ira's original post, and I was thinking that "which Ross courses are bad?" would now really be an exercise on critiquing the stewardship, or critiquing the Ross resto guys.


Bass River is not a great golf course, but is completely enjoyable even if having to play about 6 totally blah holes (and I believe it has a rather unique 34-38 par split for its nines).  There are a number of others like that in Mass. that are not great but not bad either...like Sandy Burr for instance.  Northern New England has another handful.


The only "bad" one I've played was Donald Ross Golf Club in Ft. Wayne...but even that was more due to lack of money to properly condition the course, and it seemed like a bunch of bunkers had been filled in.  I learned last week on here that the other non-Ross nine there has been jettisoned, and Indiana Tech has bought and will maintain the Ross nine.  Still, it's not bad, just bland and needs love.

[Tim Martin]

I played a Golden Age 9 holer in Massachusetts not long ago and the pro told me that the lack of money over the years to make changes has served the club well as it is almost entirely original.

[Ronald Montesano]

Sven:

This is what is out there.

"As he aged, his playing career diminished while his architecture career began to flourish. Ross is credited with the original design or redesign work of over 400 courses in the United States before his death in 1948. With such a heavy workload, it’s estimated that the designer was only able to visit about half of his sites, instead doing his work off of land surveys."

from https://thefriedegg.com/donald-ross-biography/



"Of all the courses that bear Ross' name, either as original designs or as renovation projects, he probably never even saw a third of them, and another third he visited only once or twice. Given the constraints of train and car travel in those days, repeat visits were difficult to arrange. Though Ross was a voracious traveler, he did much of his design work from his home in a cottage behind the third green at Pinehurst. There he worked from topographic maps, drew up blueprints, and wrote simple but sharply-worded instructions that his construction crew knew how to implement."

from https://rosssociety.org/Donald_Ross_bio


I'm not the only one, and I suspect that if you put together a definitive, long-form essay disproving our shared ignorance (you the exception) you would rock the golf architecture world. I say this with full support for your position. It will be bigger than the domed-greens-that-Ross-loved myth that was finally put to rest with the Pinehurst #2 restoration.

[Steve_Lovett]

Peninsula CC in San Mateo CA? Ross only course in CA and I have never heard anything about it. Not ranked in top 50 in the state.

It's a really good golf course on a hilly site... IMO it's in the second tier of private clubs in the SF Bay area, behind the ones we all know about. It's definitely underrated.

[Kyle Harris]

My list of worst Ross courses is dominated, not by originals but, by bad interpretive restoration efforts by heavy-handed architects of certain brands.

The worst of these was recently corrected, much for the better, by Kris Spence.

The list of false Ross courses is far more interesting.

[Sven Nilsen]

Ron:


I have put together that study.  If you'd click on the link to the thread I noted above, you'll see it.


The idea that Ross didn't visit a 1/3 of his sites is a fallacy.  An oft-repeated fallacy, but still wrong.  Just because people keep repeating a myth doesn't make it the truth.


I challenge you to come up with even 10 courses that Ross designed off of a topo map without a visit.


Sven

[Brad Tufts]

Looks like Great Southern in Gulfport, MS still says Ross on their website.


I don't know the history, but it's not on the Ross Society list...looks like a decent place to play someday.

[ChipRoyce]

Newton Commonwealth.

Always discussed as one of the courses that Ross' associates did, Ross never having a hand in it.

[Sven Nilsen]

Newton Commonwealth.

Always discussed as one of the courses that Ross' associates did, Ross never having a hand in it.

Chip:


Ross did have a hand in it, but the suggestions he made to improve the existing course were carried out in house and the course was later reworked by Stiles and Van Kleek.


Tough to fault him for this one. 


And he definitely was on property.


Sven

[Ronald Montesano]

Sven, the study should be bound and available/circulated.

At the place where Mark Chalfant did his Emmet book (https://www.lulu.com/) they take 20% and you keep 80%.

I would certainly help with editing, if you needed it, as a labor of love.

rm

[A.G._Crockett]

I'll add one factor to the idea of not good Ross courses as a corollary to Jeff S.'s comment about maintenance; trees.

It's hard to remember that, for instance, a willow oak that was planted in 1925 might now be as much as 90' tall, with a canopy almost as wide.  Maples don't get as tall, but the canopies are wider, to use another example.  Resulting from that, of course, would be great difficulty in growing good grass anywhere around it, as well as changes to the intended playing lines.  And we won't even get into pine trees in the South...

I doubt that very many of us on this site are fans of trees that impede what appear to be the intended lines of play, but trees like that are all over the place on very old golf courses.

[Chris_Blakely]

The Woodlands in Hampton, VA is s bad Ross course but the construction of I-64
Significantly altered the course


Miami Shores (Troy, OH) is s bad Ross course; however, I talked to the head pro when I played several years ago and he said they significantly softened / butchered the course in the 80s.


Don’t know if Ross visited these courses or not, but it doesn’t matter with the changes made.


There are several  that I’ve played that I wondered what his on site involvement was if any.


Chris