The Tragedy of Yale- hole #4

[ChipRoyce]

My only comment... regardless of their merit in regards to the orig design, these bunkers look like the handiwork of a complete neophyte to golf course architecuture.
Its truly a shame that the course is in its current form, esp. having seen NGLA last weekend and the potential that the course could have.
Tisk, tisk
Chip

[Tommy_Naccarato]

kwl,
I like the way you think!

But then again, my cure for all of this is to go into the head pros office with a baseball bat and "recruit" him.

[kwl]

TN

i like the way you think! i have worked long and hard to bury my aggressiveness/anger deep within. i can even outfox the benzodiazepines (no disinhibition here). should you need help, i have a ski-mask and the willie horton H&B from childhood.

thank you for your thoughtful analysis and commitment to the game. maybe the "batting it around" will lead to something agreeable to all.

 

[Mike_Sweeney]

Road Bunker first:

The problem with this bunker besides the mechanical problems is the psychology of playing the hole. On the 7th at National, that Road Bunker dominates your decision process on the second and typically for me the third shot. It looks like any shot near it will bounce in. Reality is different, as I bounced one right of the bunker and onto the green for one of my rare GIR last weekend. But the bunker strikes fear as soon as you see it.

At Yale, the Road Bunker is factored in as "I need to stay left of that".


The Bunker(s) that mimick The Road:

To be honest they are so bad that I never understood that they were The Road untill today with Geoffrey's post. I have probably heard it from him a dozen times up there and yet untill I saw the comparison with National "Mimick The Road Bunker". I really did not understand it.  

[Nigel_Walton]

Keep up the good work, Geoffrey. This series is the zenith of the sort of research that should be undertaken on this website. Bravo.

[kwl]

NW

BRAVO. BRAVO.

professor childs' work is tireless, meaningful, and responsible. i begin to envision a mob (see gangs of new york), with bahto and childs leading...we can and should see this through.

YGC was and should return to being a treasure (despite the markets vissicitudes and the effect on the ample endowment). for God's sake, last i looked, the university has more ncaa titles in golf than any school, 41s grandfather was the 1st president of the usga (named a cup after him), 43 plays the game with vim and vigor (no mulligans like 42),...lets take this to the white house.

let's recall rulewich. impeach the man (only similarity between he and CB is hittin' the bottle from what i see). i coulda done that work for [3k+1 bottle of macallan]/bunker and a rake. in fact, that sounds like a proposal to me...let me write that one down.

[SPDB]

Mike -
The road bunkers need not be as deep as National's, in fact often times, it seems, NGLA's road bunker is the exception not the rule as far as depth is concerned, cf. Piping Rock #8. Nevertheless, they should be set below the purpose. It is so easy to remedy this hole it is almost laughable.

Tommy -
First off - let me say that I owe you a response on the IM side. Have been busy. sorry.

Second, let's not inject value judgments into this. I'm not spinning anything. You and I have different opinions of the bunker work at Merion, and neither one is the only right answer, as you suggest. I'm not spinning anything. Plus I've seen and played them.

Moreover, I was talking about taking bunkers down to historical depths. It was done at Merion (which you must concede, irrespective of how you feel about the surrounds/walls), and can easily be done at Yale. Often times it is simply a matter of probing the bunker to find its original depth. The evolution in this regard is usually a matter of neglect which is often accomplished by putting more sand in the bunker to raise its floor.

[GeoffreyC]

Sean

Did you read Roger Rulewich's reply to Brad Klein about bunker depth and the angles of the slopes into them that I posted?  

To answer your previous question- I don't have an example of the original pot bunker on #4.  I imagine that the sand in the road bunker was invisible from the angle of that photo right below the curve in the hillside. Placed there it would have gathered balls from different angles; it would be tucked right into that STEEP hillside where balls collecting near the front would be DEAD.  Hitting sideways or backwards would be the only play. That's my interpretation, however, I bet you that if I showed that photo to a member I know who has been there since 1951 (only 3 years earlier then Roger   ) that he would instantly tell me EXACTLY how that bunker sat into the hillside. Again, this old time member was not consulted by Roger or the restoration committee that know him and play with him.      

Here is another direct quote from Mr. Rulewich's reply to Brad Klein's Golfweek article.  "Original plans of the architects, C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor, were non-existent and the photos and recall of past players, historians and staff became a helpful guide." I for one would like to know the names of these past players that were consulted for this work. The fellow I know certainly was NOT! Might the historian he is referring to be one George Bahto!- If so he neglected to say that no one listened to him!

[HamiltonBHearst]

It looks like the work of a New York City construction crew at Van Cortlandt Park.  This work is horrible regardless of the fact that the course is still "fun to play" as some have said.  Mr. Childs, thank you, and I hope all eighteen holes can be put as a my opinion piece on this site.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Geoff Childs,

What makes the 4th hole so difficult to accept is the knowledge that not far away, at Piping Rock and NGLA, are Road Hole greens/complexes representative of the Road Hole green/complex at TOC.

There would seem to be no creative or agronomic impediment to restoring that green/complex to its original or intended form, with the only impediment being the inability to focus on the proper goal.

SPDB,

When I casually looked at the 4th at Yale, it seemed that there was more then ample elevation and grade necessary to accomodate any drainage issues.

Geoff Childs,

I don't know how any architect could look at old photos, aerial and ground level, and then offer that the current green/complex is the result of a faithful and/or professional effort at restoration.

I would be embarrassed if that is what I had produced.

And, what I'm surprised at is, that Yale accepted this non-representative faux-restoration as the final product.
Who signed off on it for Yale, they are just as much at fault ?

A possible solution might be to find an alumnus who would be willing to fund a TRUE restoration, provided his architect had complete creative control in the context of a true restoration.

But, would the University have the strength of  character to admit they made a mistake, and let another party fix it ?

[CHrisB]

On a separate but related topic, I just bought this picture of the 1905 Championship Golf Team at Yale off ebay for $10:

I am giving it to Yale Golf Course, assuming it does not sit in a closet.

Mike,
How do you know that it's not Yale that put the picture on EBay in the first place?

[ian]

Geoff,

A wonderful detailed case study of a renovation . You did a wonderful job of telling us what was there and what it looked like. How I wish you were also the one who did the "restoration" since the most important part to getting a restoration accurate is "caring".

Patrick,

If someone offered to pay the tab as a donation, I'm quite certain that no ego would get in the way of free restoration work.

[GeoffreyC]

Ian

Thank you for the kind words.  I'm hardly capable of doing any restoration myself.  I did volunteer for any committee they thought would help the cause (several times) but to no avail.  I love the course at Yale and my hopes were high when we were lucky enough to get George Bahto on board as a consultant to Beinecke.  George loves that course too and its a real shame that his recomendations were ignored.  

[brad_miller]

This is starting to remind me of the 12 days of X-MASS, keep it up!

[FORTSONATOR]

I am a T-2000 Model Terminator from the future sent back in time to terminate Yale Golf Club.  

Wait.....

It's already been terminated.  Have you seen John Conner?

[Tim_Weiman]

Geoffrey Childs,

I agree with the sentiment Pat Mucci expressed. The bunker work on #4 is embarrassing.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

The shapes of the new bunkers are outlined in Red. Due to the much more refined lens of the color photo, the satellite photo is going to be more accurate when compared to the old aerial. This ovelay matched the path from #2 green to #3 tee as well as the outline of the pond, which is down in the color photo, but matched to the tanned edges of the high waterline. The left side bunkers of #4 line up to this as the should. However the Road Hole bunker and the bunker back right of the green do not. Once again, this could be due to the aspect of the lens. This is not to imply those bunkers have shifted or moved, but there does exist a possiblity that they may have. As Mark Fine recently suggest about golf courses shrinking, well features can move too. Maybe this was one of them, and that shaping and build-up was done to the bunkers in their areas to make them blend.

I'll let you guys figure it out from there.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

By the way, Nice Resotration Roge!

Peter, Do you think there could be a possibility that picture really isn't Yale? Were you anywhere around Aztec, New Mexico in 1949? (When the spaceships from outerspace landed)

[Mike_Sweeney]

Tommy,

Not much more to talk about after seeing that.

Well done and thanks.

[GeoffreyC]

Tommy

That's some great work my friend.

The pond is now lined with reeds and tall grasses so it appears to be smaller then the old photo.  Its edges are the same as they were 75 years ago.

I think this overlay proves pretty well that the road bunker on #4 at the time of that recent aerial is significantly farther away from the green and this dumbed down version is consequently easier to recover directly to any pin location on that green.  If this isn't a MAJOR deviation from the intended playability of the hole then I don't know what would be. I don't know the date that "new" aerial was taken but I can say that the road bunker built by Rulewich was not moved ANY closer to the green.

Remarkable work Tommy.

 

[SPDB]

Geoff - is it a combination of recovering lost greenspace toward the road bunker, and moving the bunker back to its original position?

Pat M.
I'm not sure what you are referring to in reference to me.

[GeoffreyC]

Sean

In this case the overlay of aerials shows exactly in real physical space where the old original road bunker sat in relation to the current version.

Look at the angles between the road bunker and the back right bunker.  The new road bunker is closer to the fourth tee and to the right of the original.  Now look at the construction photo and you can place the original just about where I thought it would be in my previous post to you. I said "I imagine that the sand in the road bunker was invisible from the angle of that photo right below the curve in the hillside. Placed there it would have gathered balls from different angles; it would be tucked right into that STEEP hillside where balls collecting near the front would be DEAD.  Hitting sideways or backwards would be the only play." The new bunker takes away every difficult aspect of the playability of that bunker and consequently the entire fear and strategy of the second shot to the green. My guess is that the new bunker is a good 10-15 feet removed from its original location.                

[GeoffreyC]

Pat

Sadly, I know that John Beinecke, Peter Pulaski and at least one member of the restoration committee visited NGLA and Piping Rock to look at the MacDonald style. One can only imagine what was in their heads when they compared Yale's current state and their vision for Yale after the "restoration" with those two gems.  

[SPDB]

Geoff -
Tommy's overlay is great, but not conclusive. To me, it seems that if you map the existing bunker and its predecessor against the only fixed coordinate (allowing, to a certain deg. variances based on altitude), it seems that the green has shrunk, and the bunker and the space between softened. This is consistent with the shape of the green to the right of the bunker.

Do you have any documentation of the bunker being moved?

[GeoffreyC]

Sean

The new superintendent is doing a fine job of mowing the greens out to expand them closer to thier original sizes.  However, this has nothing to do with the location in actual physical space of the bunkers as seen in the overlay and individual shots of each aerial.

Perhaps someone can explain it better. If you fix in space three points- 1- The right rear edge of the left bunker at the back of the green and 2- the right front edge of the bunker near the front left of the green and 3-the right rear bunker- they allign pretty well in space.  The road bunker is out of kilter with these fixed points in space. No amount of mowing can alter that physical fact given the accuracy of the size adjustments and overlaying.

It also helps to know what it looks like today from first hand observation.  The bunker looks way too far from the green and the slopes from the green down to the bunker are WAY to SHALLOW.