The reason there are so few actual course histories – as opposed to club histories -- or any extended analyses of the evolution of the golf course itself in these books is because that’s not what the clubs are looking for. For the most part, a club history is a celebration of its membership over time, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, one volume that – by design -- veered from that track was the Country Club of Rochester’s, which was printed for the membership – with copies available from the pro shop -- last spring. The book’s title is “Lasting Impressions,” which atually works quite nicely given the book’s intent and the cover painting by Mike Miller. I was quite fortunate to be the writer tapped for the project.
What made this one so different is that from the get-go the club sought a detailed examination of its golfing grounds through its various incarnations – pre-Donald Ross, Ross, Trent Jones, lots of green committee meddling -- to go hand in hand with Gil Hanse’s marvelous restoration, bringing what had virtually turned over time into 18 distinct narrow bowling alleys back to an open, strategic design, one of Ross’s first ventures beyond New England and Pinehurst.
The club had already done a 100th anniversary book in the ‘90s – preceded by 50th and 75th anniversary editions -- so the directive on this one was elsewhere. The club wanted the book focused solely on the golf course, to fill in some historical gaps, present Ross both as a person and historic presence, explain why the club opted to restore the course rather than remodel it and how contentious the process was, explain the restoration process, and then look at every hole for Ross’s original intention, how that was lost over time, and then look at Gil’s thinking behind his plan for each hole now and into the future.
What made the project additionally fascinating was the club’s intriguing cast of characters. Walter Hagen’s life as a golfer was spawned in the caddie yard, and he became head pro at the club – and won his first US Open – the summer Ross’s new course was unveiled. Robert Trent Jones was also spawned in the caddie yard, became fascinated by course design watching Ross working nearby at Oak Hill, then added three holes himself – completely out of character with the rest of CCR course – in the ‘50s. Longtime head pro Sam Urzetta, a two-time Walker Cupper who’d retired shortly before I began the project but was still a constant presence on the lesson tee, pulled off one of the biggest upsets in US Amateur history by defeating Frank Stranahan in 1950. And through some older members, a good part of the club’s institutional memory was intact. All that’s part of the story.
So is the fact that Ross made significant alterations to the course twice, the second time almost 20 years after drawing the original plans, allowing me to look at Ross’s growth as an architect and the evolution of the kinds of golfing challenges he presented.
Thankfully – from my perspective, certainly – CCR had a committed core golfing membership that was enchanted by the course they had and proud of their perseverence in restoring it to its former glory. They cared enough about the course – host of two women’s Opens and a Women’s Amateur -- to go about the restoration with real dedication to its historical significance and the fact that playing a wide open golf course was going to be a lot more fun. Beyond that, they also had a sense that it was important to preserve the story of the course’s past and present to help assure its future. The book is their record because the keeping the record straight mattered to them.
Shortly after “Lasting Impressions” came out, I wrote a column for SI about the importance of clubs’ maintaining good archives, which might seem off the topic of this post, but goes right to its heart. Clubs don’t maintain – from their papers to their playing surfaces -- what they don’t care about, and they can only care about their past if they have access to it. Not, as I wrote in the column, “because the past is necessarily prologue, but because something that connects the present to the past and links the past to the future is inevitably lost every time a tattered blueprint is thoughtlessly chucked or the oldest members dies with his reminiscences unrecoreded. Without those remnants golf loses texture. Without them golf is simply a game.”
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