[Thomas Dai]

A poster herein has recently published a splendid piece on U.K. course restoration opportunities with contributions from others who also post herein.
It’s a splendid thought provoking piece which I’m confident others will enjoy reading.
See - https://www.ukgolfguy.com/golf-blog/british-restoration-opportunities
Atb

[Jeff Schley]

I appreciate David's site and insights. A couple things stand out to me:

• Is Yale price tag really $25 million??? wow missed that if so.
• Appreciate the Royal Lytham & St. Anne's observation of shrinking fairway width, you need it there with any sort of wind. Also I played with a member who thought they have too many bunkers on the right side of the course (added) over time to penalize the slicers (hand raised).
• RSG I think is wonderful links and obviously the most random for ball bounces. I don't see how GS suggestion would vastly improve RSG. Most don't even know that little niche of history. It does provide a great viewing area during The Open for spectators.
• I like GS suggestion of a committee to advise TOC on their decisions for changes. I am actually curious who is in charge of that at the Links Trust? How are the changes done and who is involved?
• Sunningdale is a treasure and should be preserved for time. I would love for some tree removal and maybe more width, but it is a beautiful garden agreed. Is that bad necessarily? Beautiful place to play and has moved more to a parkland look rather than heathlands perhaps. St. George's Hill is another beauty that has also had trees and growth over time. Should be managed to not affect play, but I wouldn't chainsaw everything and widen it to the max just because it started as a blank slate. Change and maturity can be good.

[Ben Stephens]

Can name a few


Wentworth West restoring it back to heathland type course with more heather and trees thinned out - probably unlikely after its botox job


Joe McDonell and I have been having a recent discussion about Brancaster on twitter - it would be cool to restore some of the original holes and greens allowing it to have two different types of 18 hole courses.


St Andrews New restoring the Old Tom Morris that Colt removed/changed quite drastically.


The original courses at Prestwick, Muirfield and Birkdale are a bit far fetched. Prestwick original course could be recreated a la Lido course.

[Robin_Hiseman]

I should have remembered to suggest the lost Simpson holes at Sunningdale. They are still there in their entirety, with green shaping, tees and bunkers easy to recognise amongst the trees and scrub.


I have photos from when the hole corridors were cleared out about 10 years ago. They must be growing back in again now.

[Adam Lawrence]

I should have remembered to suggest the lost Simpson holes at Sunningdale. They are still there in their entirety, with green shaping, tees and bunkers easy to recognise amongst the trees and scrub.


I have photos from when the hole corridors were cleared out about 10 years ago. They must be growing back in again now.

Lost Colt holes, not Simpson. The chronology is Colt-Simpson-Colt. I've never really seen anything about Simpson's holes. Except Morrison gloating that he had had letters from Sunningdale members saying what an improvement the final Colt/Morrison holes were.

[James Reader]

Great article David.


One (or rather, two) more to add to the list would be Fowler’s courses at Saunton, which were eulogised at the time - “potentially one of the courses of the world, fit to hold up its head with St Andrews or Prestwick, Hoylake or Prince’s, the National or Pine Valley.”


Unfortunately, the damage done to the dunes by the military during WW2 means there doesn’t seem to be a lot of Fowler left and no realistic prospect of that changing.

[James Reader]

In part as an excuse to see if I can actually manage to post photos on here, here are a couple of Spey Bay giving an idea of the “object lesson in micro-contouring” that Robin refers to.

[Brent Carlson]

I should have remembered to suggest the lost Simpson holes at Sunningdale. They are still there in their entirety, with green shaping, tees and bunkers easy to recognise amongst the trees and scrub.


I have photos from when the hole corridors were cleared out about 10 years ago. They must be growing back in again now.

Robin,


Would you kindly advise where these lost holes are at Sunningdale?  Why were they let go?  I've played both courses only once and never heard of this before.

[Adam Lawrence]

Brent

This old thread should help. I wrote an article for GCA about the lost holes, but it doesn't seem to be on our website.

https://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php?topic=33878.0;

Basically, Colt's original holes 6-10 on the New course were judged to be too steep, and the club hired Simpson to redo them in the very early 30s. However, Simpson’s holes were never popular, and the club then went back to Colt (along with John Morrison, who as well as being Colt's partner was a club member, and I think a committeeman) and they produced the current holes in the late 30s.

About ten years ago, then Sunningdale course manager Murray Long mowed the original Colt holes out. All the features are still there in the ground, as I found out when I went round the holes with Murray. The lost holes and the current routing meet at the tenth green, which is original, and which was adapted by Colt and Morrison to play from the current tee. The original tee is high up on the ridge, and when you stand up there, you realise that the green was very obviously designed to accept a shot from that direction. There's still some fescue on the old tee box too!

[James Reader]

This is a great read on the Sunningdale history:


https://golfclubatlas.com/best-of-golf/the_sunningdale_story/

[Robin_Hiseman]

The link James refers to has several stunning photographs of the lost Colt holes, both as they were originally and how they looked when the corridors were cleared in 2011.


It was interesting to read that for a good while the New Course operated with alternative layouts that included these four holes. Looking at the photos makes you realise they were amongst Colt's most dramatically designed holes.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Brent

This old thread should help. I wrote an article for GCA about the lost holes, but it doesn't seem to be on our website.

https://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php?topic=33878.0;

Basically, Colt's original holes 6-10 on the New course were judged to be too steep, and the club hired Simpson to redo them in the very early 30s. However, Simpson’s holes were never popular, and the club then went back to Colt (along with John Morrison, who as well as being Colt's partner was a club member, and I think a committeeman) and they produced the current holes in the late 30s.

About ten years ago, then Sunningdale course manager Murray Long mowed the original Colt holes out. All the features are still there in the ground, as I found out when I went round the holes with Murray. The lost holes and the current routing meet at the tenth green, which is original, and which was adapted by Colt and Morrison to play from the current tee. The original tee is high up on the ridge, and when you stand up there, you realise that the green was very obviously designed to accept a shot from that direction. There's still some fescue on the old tee box too!

It appears Simpson’s holes were redesigned primarily because they didn’t go near enough the halfway hut, causing confusion for those who stopped Vs those who didn’t.


Have you seen anything that said the actual holes weren’t popular? It’s a shame we have so few photos of them.

[Brent Carlson]

Thank you Adam and James.  Very interesting

[Jeff Schley]

The original courses at Prestwick, Muirfield and Birkdale are a bit far fetched. Prestwick original course could be recreated a la Lido course.

Ben, good idea. Let's get 50 founders together than throw in $XX k each and make it happen. Maybe we could create 4 more of the best recreations in Sand Valley next to Lido. Marketing potential galore.

• Lido - it's there
• Prestwick - where the Open started
• Royal Melbourne - that could happen with the soil, only issue is the bunker material for the hard faces.
• TOC - how can you leave that off for any recreation if only hypothetical, flat as can be.
• Fifth......?  Not sure suggestions? Maybe Hirono or for some real fun North Berwick!

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