A List of Seth Raynor Golf Course Projects

[ANTHONYPIOPPI]

Jim: Good point.  I'll change it to, Banks altered 1 3/17ths of holes? Does that sound right?




The work at Country Club of Fairfield that involved removing the Biarritz was performed under the guidance of Robert Trent Jones, Sr. I have a copy of his plan that appears in the club's 75th anniversary book. It will make you wretch. 




Anthony

[Jim_Kennedy]

Jim: Good point.  I'll change it to, Banks altered 1 3/17ths of holes? Does that sound right?
Anthony

Round it to two holes.   

[Nigel Islam]

I know Anthony tried very hard to get the wording as perfect as he could. I’m sure he’s more than fine tweaking the list for future use. He just wants to be as accurate as possible while accounting for the work Raynor actually did.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Nigel,


Hopefully you don't think I'm nitpicking Tony's, or Bret's, or even your work. You all know Banks' contributions to the course, and I've already congratulated TP in an email and on another forum.


.....and when I see T giving me a few of these,  . I just chuckle. 

[Peter Pallotta]

In many cases, the second courses Raynor drew were just basic routings without bunkering, features, etc. Yale and Mountain Lake are that way. The second Fishers course, though, was a full drawing.

Am curious if anyone knows or would venture a guess: what explains that difference, ie between ‘basic routings’ and ‘full drawing’?
Would Raynor have always started with the former and then ‘completed’ the latter only if/when he thought he had the job & the project was a go?
Or did he sometimes offer/use/work off of the basic routings and at other times offer/use/work off of full drawings?
In his mind, could one of his course plans be finished/all that was necessary if it was only a basic routing?

[Nigel Islam]

Jim,


We welcome the nitpicking. Like I said it's more important it looks right. Anthony has been sending me versions for months now, and it's probably really good to get some new sets of eyeballs on it. Trust me, Anthony knows this stuff well, but editing your own work can be challenging.

[ANTHONYPIOPPI]

Jim: We need the nitpicking. I want this to be the definitive Raynor list so it has to be incredibly accurate. That being said, there is no one I would rather have nitpick me than you. I mean that  !

[Bret Lawrence]

I think we listed 3 holes at Hotchkiss, because today's 7th hole was shifted to the south to make way for new dormitories being built on Raynor's original fairway.  Banks left the original Raynor green and may have even used pieces of the old 3rd and 9th fairways to make the new fairway.  It may not warrant the stamp of renovation, but he did have to make a few alterations including realigning the tee to make the hole playable around the new dorms.  As Jim knows the original green only lasted about 6 more years before it was moved due to a new school entrance being built.  We still don't know who built today's 7th green.


Bret

[John Foley]

The second Fishers course, though, was a full drawing.

Anthony - is this different than the drawing in the FI club history book? I'm not at home so I don't have my copy with me but if I recall that one was very rudimentary.

[Jim_Kennedy]

I think we listed 3 holes at Hotchkiss, because today's 7th hole was shifted to the south to make way for new dormitories being built on Raynor's original fairway.  Banks left the original Raynor green and may have even used pieces of the old 3rd and 9th fairways to make the new fairway.  It may not warrant the stamp of renovation, but he did have to make a few alterations including realigning the tee to make the hole playable around the new dorms.  As Jim knows the original green only lasted about 6 more years before it was moved due to a new school entrance being built.  We still don't know who built today's 7th green.


Bret

Bret,

At that time there was just the one dorm that was being built along the old finishing hole, today's #7, and it narrowed the approach to the green. There wasn't any chance of Banks using part of the third fairway for the hole because it became the new road bed and the remainder to the south became part of the present day first hole. I don't believe he could have made any changes to the rest of the fairway because it was being narrowed by the road construction on the south and it was already as wide as it could have been on its northern side . Plus, the construction work done by the road crew was a cut and fill and strictly a fill job for the last 120 yards of it that paralleled the hole.  Additionally, there is written evidence of his work, but I don't think there has ever been any mention of this hole in any of it.
Also, I do believe that the original tee box was in the same general location as today's forward tee, well away from the original road and the new one, and  the back tee was created when the green was moved to its present site.

It could be possible that he had to do some minor work on the hole, but I don't see where. 

[Bret Lawrence]

Jim,


Thank you for that information.  I am guessing we see the old routing laid over the current routing a little differently. I will be up to Hotchkiss this week to discuss it further.  Instead of trying to explain what I am seeing here, I will include a photograph of a modern aerial with the addition of Raynor's original 9th hole drawn on top. 


The shaded green area is approximately where I believe Raynor's original 9th fairway played before the school started constructing student housing south of the the old road.  The outside edge of the shaded green line is approximately where I see the old road cutting through the school in the original layout.
 





Bret

[Bret Lawrence]

After having a nice discussion with Jim at Hotchkiss yesterday, I believe we came to the consensus that Hotchkiss should be a 2-hole renovation for Banks. 


Jim and I see the changes very much the same, but using the word renovation for Banks is perhaps misleading.  The original 9th hole has shifted significantly south over time and today's 7th hole plays to a new green from 1937, making today's hole very different from Raynor's original.  Jim's point was that Banks left the original green intact in 1930 and had to do very little to shift this hole.  He also brought to my attention, that a good portion of the original 9th fairway was still in play (on today's 7th) until the most recent dormitories were built in the 1990's.


Jim also recommended the idea of adding footnotes to some of the entries on the list. This way further details about changes to the course could be listed on a seperate page for anyone that seeks that information out.  For courses with few changes, you could list those changes as they occurred. For courses with a laundry list of changes you could list what's left of Raynor's work.


In Hotchkiss' case, we could give details on the 2 holes Banks renovated in 1930 and the change to Raynor's original 9th hole and how it differs from today's 7th.  We could also mention that today's 2nd hole at Hotchkiss was shortened from a Par 4 to a Par 3 and today's 4th green was built by George Bahto.  Most of the changes to the golf course were a result of the school expanding its footprint. Did I miss any of the major changes Jim?


I just want to thank Jim for taking time to give me a tour of the golf course yesterday, it was an educational experience.


Bret

[Jim_Kennedy]

Bret,

That is the extent of the major changes. Glad you stopped by so we could work it out.