Latest / Designing Golf / Great Courses: Shinnecock Hills

Transcript

Great Courses: Shinnecock Hills · Designing Golf

0:00
Speaker 1: Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, as designed by William Flynn in
0:04
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, is one of the greatest golf courses
0:07
Speaker 1: in the world, and today we're going deep on it.
0:10
Speaker 1: I'm Garrett Morrison, and this is designing.
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Speaker 2: Golf, all right.
0:22
Speaker 1: Later in this episode, I'm going to bring on the
0:25
Speaker 1: golf historian Bob Crosby, and we're going to talk about
0:28
Speaker 1: the early history of the design at Shinnecock Hills. Basically,
0:33
Speaker 1: the course went through a few different very interesting iterations
0:37
Speaker 1: before it's settled on its current form, and I would argue,
0:41
Speaker 1: Bob would argue that the story of Shinnacock in its
0:44
Speaker 1: early years was basically the story of American golf architecture.
0:48
Speaker 1: So we'll get into all of that in the second
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Speaker 1: half of the episode with Bob Crosby. But the first
0:55
Speaker 1: thing I want to talk about is what makes Shinnacock
0:59
Speaker 1: Hills golf course. And it is a really great golf course.
1:04
Speaker 1: But that's not because it is hosted US opens, or
1:07
Speaker 1: because it's difficult, or because it's an exclusive club. It's
1:12
Speaker 1: because there are qualities inherent to its land, design and
1:18
Speaker 1: presentation that make it great. So in this episode, We're
1:22
Speaker 1: going to go through six big factors that explain why
1:27
Speaker 1: we love Shinnakok Hills. And to help me do that,
1:30
Speaker 1: I've brought on my Friday Golf colleague, Matt Rusius. Matt
1:34
Speaker 1: how's gone.
1:36
Speaker 3: Doing well, doing well, Just gearing up for a trip
1:39
Speaker 3: to Ireland in a few days, so talking American Links
1:43
Speaker 3: golf is fitting absolutely.
1:46
Speaker 1: Where are you going in Ireland?
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Speaker 3: I'll be headed to the southwest side, so making stops
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Speaker 3: at places cycle hinch Belly, Bunyon, Waterville, dune Bag. So
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Speaker 3: really looking forward to that.
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Speaker 1: Not bad courses. I'm actually going to Northwest Ireland in
2:02
Speaker 1: a few days for a Friday Golf club trip. So
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Speaker 1: it's work, but it's obviously going to be very fun
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Speaker 1: as well. So we're both setting off for Ireland very soon.
2:13
Speaker 1: First we're talking about Hinnacock Hills, which is actually you know,
2:16
Speaker 1: if you're looking for a course in the US that
2:20
Speaker 1: resembles somewhat in Irish Links, Hinnacock Hills might not be
2:24
Speaker 1: a million miles away. So first of all, some basics
2:28
Speaker 1: on the golf course. The club was founded in eighteen
2:31
Speaker 1: ninety one by some very well off New Yorkers, including
2:34
Speaker 1: a member of the Vanderbilt family. Of course, it was
2:37
Speaker 1: one of the first movers in American golf, so it
2:41
Speaker 1: claims to be the oldest incorporated golf club in the
2:44
Speaker 1: US and to have the oldest dedicated golf clubhouse in
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Speaker 1: the US. The clubhouse was built in eighteen ninety two.
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Speaker 1: As I've mentioned, I'll talk more about the early development
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Speaker 1: of the golf course with Bob Crosby later in this episode,
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Speaker 1: but basically the first twelve holes were constructed in eighteen
3:02
Speaker 1: ninety one. The first eighteen was completed in eighteen ninety five.
3:07
Speaker 1: About twenty years later, CB McDonald and Seth Rayner revised
3:11
Speaker 1: the course, but all of those versions of Shinnecock Hills
3:14
Speaker 1: are now gone because in the late nineteen twenties the
3:19
Speaker 1: club purchased new land and hired William Flynn to build
3:23
Speaker 1: a new course in that course, which is basically today's
3:27
Speaker 1: Shinnecock Hills. Opened in nineteen thirty one. Shinnecock hosted its
3:31
Speaker 1: first US Open in eighteen ninety six. This is now
3:36
Speaker 1: recognized as the second ever US Open, and that was
3:40
Speaker 1: obviously played over the earliest version of the eighteen hole course,
3:45
Speaker 1: so pre McDonald, pre Flynn really didn't resemble today's course
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Speaker 1: at all, and then the club didn't host another US
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Speaker 1: Open for the next ninety years. Basically, it came back
3:58
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty six. Ever since then it has staged
4:02
Speaker 1: a US Open about every decade, so nineteen ninety five,
4:07
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, twenty eighteen, and of course this
4:11
Speaker 1: year twenty twenty six. So if rankings mean anything to you,
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Speaker 1: shinnakaka Is is consistently ranked as a top five golf
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Speaker 1: course in the US. It's up there with with Cyprus
4:22
Speaker 1: and Pine Valley and Augusta. You know, pretty much everybody
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Speaker 1: agrees that it belongs in that top tier. And over
4:30
Speaker 1: the past few decades the club has done a lot
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Speaker 1: of good work to maintain that reputation. They've they've removed
4:37
Speaker 1: thousands of trees to reinstate the property's essential Lynksland character,
4:43
Speaker 1: and they've worked with Corn Crenshaw over the past twelve
4:46
Speaker 1: years or so to bring back certain details of William
4:50
Speaker 1: Flynn's design. But on the whole, the course was pretty
4:55
Speaker 1: well preserved over time. Aside from you know, tree pl
5:00
Speaker 1: planting and mowing lines, it really never strayed too far
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Speaker 1: from its roots. So those are the basics. Let's get
5:07
Speaker 1: into the six factors that make Shinnecock Hills a great
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Speaker 1: golf course. In our opinion, at least, the first big
5:15
Speaker 1: factor has to be the land. The property sits pretty
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Speaker 1: near the eastern tip of Long Island, right between the
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Speaker 1: Great Peconic Bay to the north and the Atlantic Ocean
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Speaker 1: to the south. It consists essentially of glacial outwash. A
5:32
Speaker 1: bunch of sand came in from the glaciers and was
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Speaker 1: deposited in this spot and kind of blown into these dramatic,
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Speaker 1: undulating configurations. It's Lynx land effectively. I would say it's
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Speaker 1: one of the purest lynx land of properties you'll find
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Speaker 1: in the US. Those certain parts of it have a
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Speaker 1: little more clay than others. So what do you make
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Speaker 1: of the of the land at Chinnacock.
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Speaker 3: I think the thing that makes the land so great
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Speaker 3: is how it's almost uniformly good. The quality of the
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Speaker 3: land is so uniformly good across the entire site. Now,
6:14
Speaker 3: while I'm saying that there are very much more dramatic
6:18
Speaker 3: sections of the land, I feel like, in a general
6:22
Speaker 3: sense kind of the closer you get to the clubhouse,
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Speaker 3: the more dramatic the dunes are there's kind of a
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Speaker 3: huge main ridge line that the clubhouse sits up on,
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Speaker 3: and it kind of follows that. I believe it's the
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Speaker 3: Tuckahoe Road, which kind of goes between the fourteenth hole
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Speaker 3: and the thirteenth hole, so there's a kind of a
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Speaker 3: massive ridge line there, and then another massive ridge line
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Speaker 3: that kind of goes along the tenth hole and the
6:48
Speaker 3: eleventh green sits on top of. So really that section
6:52
Speaker 3: kind of to the right of the clubhouse if you're
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Speaker 3: looking out over the course and like kind of the
6:57
Speaker 3: beginning in the back nine is some of the most
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Speaker 3: ramatic terrain and it's very very undulating, which produces these
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Speaker 3: kind of truly one of a kind of golf holes.
7:07
Speaker 3: And then the closer you get towards kind of the
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Speaker 3: bay to the north, the land starts to mellow out.
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Speaker 3: But while I say that, like it does mellow out,
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Speaker 3: it gets flatter, but it's still tremendous golfing ground with
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Speaker 3: lots of intricissies, good roles and contours and the fairways
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Speaker 3: that kind of great strategy and interest on a lot
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Speaker 3: of those holes, but maybe just a little bit less
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Speaker 3: eye catching and less dramatic kind of the further away
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Speaker 3: you get from the clubhouse.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say there are actually three sections of
7:40
Speaker 1: terrain at Shinnacock that I could identify. You've talked about
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Speaker 1: the two main ones, which are the very dramatic highlands,
7:48
Speaker 1: which basically holds nine through fifteen and eighteen occupy this
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Speaker 1: big ridge that Tuckahoe Road goes over that the clubhouse
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Speaker 1: is built on top of.
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Speaker 2: All of these.
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Speaker 1: Holes play kind of most of them play along the
8:03
Speaker 1: side of that ridge, right, are kind of clinging to
8:07
Speaker 1: the edge of it. Some play up on top of it,
8:11
Speaker 1: and you know, this is obviously the best land at Shittacock.
8:15
Speaker 1: Then you have the lowland section which you're describing, still
8:19
Speaker 1: good still you know, some contour, but not nearly as
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Speaker 1: impressive as the other land. And in fact some sections
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Speaker 1: of it are almost dead flat. But those sections are
8:32
Speaker 1: generally not used for golf holes. That's really striking how
8:37
Speaker 1: you look at the holes themselves, and most of the
8:40
Speaker 1: holes in that lower section of the property, the flatter section,
8:44
Speaker 1: do have you know, some good role to them, whereas
8:50
Speaker 1: if you look just to the side of the fairway
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Speaker 1: it might be completely flat. So obviously Flynn was able
8:55
Speaker 1: to find the best sections of that slightly inferior section
8:59
Speaker 1: of the prom but basically this is where it holds
9:01
Speaker 1: four through eight and sixteen through seventeen are right. Then
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Speaker 1: I think there's a third section which is these softly
9:13
Speaker 1: rolling midlands right which have a little bit more elevation
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Speaker 1: change to them, and that to me is the first
9:19
Speaker 1: three holes. The first hole tease off from the ridge obviously,
9:23
Speaker 1: but I think most of the hole sits in this
9:26
Speaker 1: in this kind of more broadly moving area of the property,
9:32
Speaker 1: because it's not to me, those first three holes don't
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Speaker 1: really occupy the lowlands. They're they're not as flat as that,
9:39
Speaker 1: but it's also not highlight it's not it's not the
9:42
Speaker 1: you know, super chaotic stuff either, and that's the section
9:46
Speaker 1: of the property. Interestingly, that's closest to National Golf Links.
9:50
Speaker 1: National Golf Links is right next door to that, and
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Speaker 1: if you're familiar with those holes at the kind of
9:56
Speaker 1: turn of the out and back configuration of National Golf Links,
10:00
Speaker 1: then you kind of know what this land is like
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Speaker 1: where there's elevation change and there's there's some undulation, but
10:09
Speaker 1: it's very broad slopes. So there are some holes at
10:12
Speaker 1: Chinnecock that occupy that as well. But yeah, so you
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Speaker 1: have these you have these different sections of the property
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Speaker 1: and all all of the sections of the property have
10:21
Speaker 1: something going for them, right, and good land is found
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Speaker 1: within them, right. Yeah.
10:27
Speaker 3: And I think another thing that's kind of interesting to
10:29
Speaker 3: look at is on the flatter terrain you get a
10:32
Speaker 3: lot more bunkering and these kind of more expansive sandy
10:36
Speaker 3: waste areas. If you just pull up Google Earth and
10:40
Speaker 3: quickly glance at it, like you can kind of see
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Speaker 3: there's this almost diagonal effect across the property is more
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Speaker 3: sand up on the top left corner and a little
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Speaker 3: bit less and smaller bunkers towards the more dramatic land.
10:52
Speaker 3: So it's really cool to see how Finns able to
10:55
Speaker 3: really maximize the use on the best land and then
10:59
Speaker 3: maybe have a little bit more built features kind of
11:02
Speaker 3: guiding the strategy on the lamb that's slightly less interesting.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. And also the greens are much more
11:11
Speaker 1: built up and manufactured the less dramatic parts of the property.
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Speaker 1: Think of the Seventh Green is the most obvious example
11:19
Speaker 1: of that, where it's just you know, it kind of
11:21
Speaker 1: sits on a nothing green site. There's not much there
11:24
Speaker 1: to tie into. You know, if you look to the
11:26
Speaker 1: right of the seventh green, there there is a nice
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Speaker 1: swale there that the green kind of ties into visually
11:32
Speaker 1: at least, but mostly it just sits on sits on
11:35
Speaker 1: a flat stretch of ground. But that green is so
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Speaker 1: severely built up it really stands out among the other
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Speaker 1: holes at Shinnecock. And if you look at the greens
11:45
Speaker 1: for five and six as well, on those flatter sections
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Speaker 1: of the property, those are pretty dramatic too. So it's
11:52
Speaker 1: obvious that Flynn turned up the dial a little bit
11:55
Speaker 1: when he was given ground that wasn't giving him quite
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Speaker 1: as much. So very well executed design in that way.
12:03
Speaker 1: The fundamentals are there, all right. The second big factor
12:07
Speaker 1: that I want to talk about is the elements, especially
12:12
Speaker 1: the wind in relation to William Flynn's routing. So the
12:17
Speaker 1: summer wind at Shinnecock comes out of the kind of
12:20
Speaker 1: south southwest part of the compass. A good way to
12:24
Speaker 1: orient yourself with the map of the course is to
12:27
Speaker 1: look at the fifth hole and remember that the fifth
12:30
Speaker 1: hole plays basically directly downwind, So that's the that's the
12:34
Speaker 1: wind direction at Shinnacock, and the routing is really built
12:38
Speaker 1: for that specific wind direction. It was It's obvious that
12:40
Speaker 1: William Flynn had that wind direction in mind when he
12:44
Speaker 1: built the course. Apparently, the winter wind is just it's
12:48
Speaker 1: kind of it's kind of miserable to play the course
12:50
Speaker 1: in it because it doesn't click together in the same
12:53
Speaker 1: way that the routing does for the summer wind. In general,
12:58
Speaker 1: the shorter par four play into the wind and the
13:01
Speaker 1: longer par fours play downwind. But the course is constantly
13:06
Speaker 1: changing direction, right. You can never settle into a groove
13:10
Speaker 1: with the wind and the way it's affecting your ball.
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Speaker 1: It changes with every single shot. And this is partly
13:16
Speaker 1: because of Flynn's heavy reliance on dog leg holes, and
13:22
Speaker 1: it's also partly because he uses triangles really cleverly in
13:28
Speaker 1: this routing. So Shinnacock basically has these three groupings of
13:33
Speaker 1: three to four holes that form triangles in the routing.
13:37
Speaker 1: So look at holes four through six, ten through thirteen,
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Speaker 1: and fourteen through sixteen. Each of these sequences is arranged
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Speaker 1: in a big triangle, and that means that nothing is
13:50
Speaker 1: linear essentially in relation to the wind. You're never moving
13:54
Speaker 1: straight ahead from hole to hole, and you're hardly ever
13:58
Speaker 1: even moving like parallel or at right angles from hole
14:03
Speaker 1: to hole. It's always these funky triangular angles, and that's
14:08
Speaker 1: just a great test of the player's ability to adjust
14:13
Speaker 1: to the wind from shot to shot. So anything to
14:17
Speaker 1: add about the elements and the routing at Chinnaicog.
14:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you kind of noted that the triangle holes,
14:26
Speaker 3: and I know you're probably talking to Bob about this,
14:29
Speaker 3: but one thing to note about it is kind of
14:32
Speaker 3: the back nine, which was originally the front nine when
14:36
Speaker 3: Flynn designed, it was all kind of new land that
14:39
Speaker 3: they had gotten, so you get a lot of those
14:42
Speaker 3: triangles that he specifically designed, whereas the front nine he
14:46
Speaker 3: was more so adapting the old CEB McDonald course to
14:51
Speaker 3: his new kind of designs. So you only get like
14:54
Speaker 3: these two whole stretches where you have holes kind of
14:57
Speaker 3: playing in the same direction, and that's holes two and
15:00
Speaker 3: three and then seven and eight are kind of the
15:03
Speaker 3: only two holes and those are both kind of sections
15:05
Speaker 3: of the course where they kind of adapted the new
15:09
Speaker 3: William Flynn design to the old ZB McDonald design. So
15:12
Speaker 3: I find that interesting how you kind of have these
15:15
Speaker 3: two different dynamics on the front nine and back nine
15:19
Speaker 3: is where on the back nine, you're constantly changing direction,
15:22
Speaker 3: and like you said, you're never playing straight downwind. But
15:25
Speaker 3: in addition to that, none of the holes really ever
15:27
Speaker 3: play in a singular straight line. There's always a dog
15:30
Speaker 3: lag or some sort of s curve. So depending on
15:35
Speaker 3: where the tea is set up that day or where
15:37
Speaker 3: you are in the fair way, the wind can really
15:40
Speaker 3: affect your ball from multiple different directions on the same
15:43
Speaker 3: golf hole, from the tee shot to the approach shot.
15:46
Speaker 3: So there's just so much variability in the way that
15:49
Speaker 3: the holes lay in the ground that makes wind just
15:52
Speaker 3: so prevalent. And then also with the land and the
15:55
Speaker 3: wind is when you get into these big peaks and
15:59
Speaker 3: valleys you're walking along the golf course. At least when
16:02
Speaker 3: I was playing, I felt it really hard to get
16:05
Speaker 3: like a good perception of the wind and have a
16:08
Speaker 3: good confident, like I guess, understanding of how fast the
16:13
Speaker 3: wind is and where it's coming from. Holes like ten
16:16
Speaker 3: and eleven kind of show this off really well. I mean,
16:19
Speaker 3: you go down into this massive bowl towards the second
16:21
Speaker 3: half of the tenth fairway, feels like the wind dies
16:24
Speaker 3: down a lot, and then you get back up onto
16:26
Speaker 3: the green, and the wind picks up again, and the
16:29
Speaker 3: eleventh T is right behind it, But then the eleventh
16:32
Speaker 3: green is another twenty or thirty feet above you from there,
16:35
Speaker 3: so it gets really hard to judge how fast that
16:39
Speaker 3: wind is moving because it just felt like it was
16:41
Speaker 3: almost not moving at all. It picks up, and then
16:44
Speaker 3: you can only imagine how much more that wind is
16:47
Speaker 3: blowing up by the eleventh green, which is one of
16:49
Speaker 3: the highest points on the entire property. So I find
16:52
Speaker 3: that was like, at least when I was playing last fall,
16:56
Speaker 3: just judging the wind and knowing how fast it was
16:59
Speaker 3: coming from and how much it was going to affect
17:01
Speaker 3: your ball is almost constantly changing because you're moving through
17:04
Speaker 3: these is ridges and valleys throughout the routing.
17:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, and especially on the back nine, you're really exposed
17:12
Speaker 1: to the wind, partly because you're up high on this
17:16
Speaker 1: highland section of the property. It's one of the highest
17:19
Speaker 1: points in the entire area, so you're getting the full
17:23
Speaker 1: brunt of the wind. But also a lot of the
17:26
Speaker 1: t's on the back nine are elevated. Ten is an
17:31
Speaker 1: elevated T, twelve is an elevated T. Thirteen is a
17:37
Speaker 1: very elevated T fourteen, is a very elevated T fifteen.
17:40
Speaker 1: Very so one after the other, you're hitting tea shots
17:45
Speaker 1: where you're very exposed to the wind. You're just a
17:48
Speaker 1: sitting duck for the wind on those tea shots. And
17:52
Speaker 1: that's something that is that really comes out on the
17:56
Speaker 1: back nine because on the front nine you're mostly in
17:59
Speaker 1: this lowlands action of the property. A lot of the
18:01
Speaker 1: tea's are kind of flush with the ground, and so yeah,
18:05
Speaker 1: once you get up in the air, you start to
18:08
Speaker 1: experience the wind even more. Yeah, going back to your
18:12
Speaker 1: point about the McDonald philosophy versus the Flynn philosophy of routing. McDonald,
18:20
Speaker 1: you know at National he did this at a lot
18:22
Speaker 1: of courses. McDonald would would do, you know, the kind
18:25
Speaker 1: of out and back routings. His routings tended to be
18:28
Speaker 1: a little bit more linear. Rainer certainly explored different ways
18:32
Speaker 1: of routing courses. I would not call you know, Rayner's
18:36
Speaker 1: habit of routing to make things linear, but certainly get
18:40
Speaker 1: the sense that that McDonald's version of Shinnacock, and we
18:44
Speaker 1: don't know much about McDonald's version of Shinnacock honestly was
18:47
Speaker 1: just a little bit more linear in relation to the
18:50
Speaker 1: wind than Flynn's was. And you see that even on
18:54
Speaker 1: poles two and three, which do roughly play in the
18:56
Speaker 1: same direction, but there is a little bit of turn in.
19:00
Speaker 1: I will give the routing credit in those first three holes.
19:03
Speaker 1: They all play kind of out to one section, to
19:06
Speaker 1: one corner of the property, but each of them turns
19:10
Speaker 1: a little bit, so it's not exactly the same. And
19:13
Speaker 1: then on the third hole, a very clever thing that
19:15
Speaker 1: Flynn did is that he basically just moved the tee
19:19
Speaker 1: way to the left so that the hole played on
19:22
Speaker 1: a diagonal now instead of straight ahead. And so that's
19:26
Speaker 1: one way that Flynn was, yeah, enhancing the strategy of
19:30
Speaker 1: the hole because now it's a diagonal instead of a
19:32
Speaker 1: straight ahead kind of situation. But also he varied the
19:37
Speaker 1: relationship to the wind direction by moving that tee over
19:41
Speaker 1: and kind of essentially turning the hole into a dog lake.
19:44
Speaker 1: So yeah, Flynn was obviously really thinking hard about how
19:47
Speaker 1: the wind related to the golf course. And so I
19:51
Speaker 1: would say shinecok Kills is probably one of the best
19:54
Speaker 1: designs in relation to elements and wind that there is
19:59
Speaker 1: an American. It's really cool. We're going to be on
20:02
Speaker 1: the third big aspect of Shinnecock Hills that I want
20:05
Speaker 1: to talk about, and it's somewhat related to what we
20:09
Speaker 1: just discussed, and that is the way the course is
20:14
Speaker 1: constantly playing with angles, diagonals, offsets, dog legs. Basically, this
20:23
Speaker 1: is a course that totally resists anything linear. It's remarkable,
20:29
Speaker 1: for example, how many t shots on this golf course
20:33
Speaker 1: play to a diagonal or offset fair way. And this
20:37
Speaker 1: does a couple of things. One, it poses a risk
20:40
Speaker 1: reward question. In general, if you challenge the long side
20:44
Speaker 1: of the diagonal or the inside of the dog leg,
20:47
Speaker 1: you get an advantage of both distance and angle. But
20:51
Speaker 1: also occasionally it's a fake out because it's you know,
20:53
Speaker 1: sometimes it's actually better to play to the outside of
20:55
Speaker 1: the dog leg or the outside of the diagonal, and
20:59
Speaker 1: that's specifically the case on holes eight and thirteen. The
21:03
Speaker 1: second thing that all these kind of all this diagonal
21:06
Speaker 1: movement does is that it challenges both line and distance
21:10
Speaker 1: off the tee. You can't just bash it down a
21:14
Speaker 1: certain line and say, you know, if it goes three hundred,
21:17
Speaker 1: it's fine, or if it goes three fifty it's fine.
21:19
Speaker 1: You have to be specific about matching line with distance,
21:24
Speaker 1: because otherwise you're going to run through the fairway or
21:27
Speaker 1: not get to the fairway. So how do you think
21:30
Speaker 1: about about angles and diagonals and all that kind of
21:34
Speaker 1: thing it should have gotten.
21:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think something that you didn't even touch on
21:39
Speaker 3: right there is the green angles. So many of the
21:42
Speaker 3: greens are set on very sharp angles that then enhance
21:46
Speaker 3: the strategy that you were just talking about off the
21:48
Speaker 3: tee is where you really need to get into the
21:50
Speaker 3: right positions to attack certain pins. And the way that
21:54
Speaker 3: the greens are built, like you talked about on the
21:57
Speaker 3: kind of lower lands where a lot of holes are,
22:00
Speaker 3: the greens are kind of pushed up. There's so many
22:02
Speaker 3: runoffs and rolloffs on all these greens on all the
22:05
Speaker 3: different sides. So it really does put a very strong,
22:10
Speaker 3: I guess importance on where you are in the fair
22:13
Speaker 3: way and how you're approaching these greens. And then that
22:15
Speaker 3: just gets so complicated when you throw in the wind
22:18
Speaker 3: and the constant changing winds. I think that's something we
22:22
Speaker 3: might not have touched on on the wind section. But
22:25
Speaker 3: the wind can frequently completely flip directions during the day
22:29
Speaker 3: when you're playing at Shinnacock. When we played it last fall,
22:32
Speaker 3: we had the north wind, which was kind of the
22:35
Speaker 3: unusual wind, and it just made things so much more
22:38
Speaker 3: difficult to judge. So it really is kind of the
22:42
Speaker 3: total package that enhances the angles and the diagonals and
22:47
Speaker 3: creates such a challenge when you're playing this golf course,
22:52
Speaker 3: and like you said, like a whole like sixteen, it
22:55
Speaker 3: plays relatively dead straight all the way for six hundred
22:59
Speaker 3: and twenty yards or whatever it is, but the fairway
23:02
Speaker 3: is constantly snaking its way through the landscape, and there's
23:07
Speaker 3: different bunkers kind of pushing and pulling the direction of
23:10
Speaker 3: the fairway, forcing you to kind of navigate this s
23:14
Speaker 3: curve even though the whole basically plays dead straight from
23:19
Speaker 3: tea to green. If you just drew a line, it
23:21
Speaker 3: would go right down the middle, but the fairway doesn't
23:23
Speaker 3: follow that. So there's a lot of things like that
23:26
Speaker 3: that he was able to do, which I think was
23:28
Speaker 3: somewhat a product of fitting the golf course into the
23:32
Speaker 3: landscape and finding the best place for fairways to go
23:36
Speaker 3: and bunkers to go. There's never going to really be
23:39
Speaker 3: kind of a straight linear path to take in a
23:43
Speaker 3: site that has kind of dune formations like this. But
23:47
Speaker 3: he was also able to like strategically place teas in
23:50
Speaker 3: certain areas that either create some obscurities or diagonal angles
23:55
Speaker 3: that really make you think when you're standing on the
23:58
Speaker 3: tee boxes. So it it really is kind of this
24:01
Speaker 3: total package staying where all the different little aspects, especially
24:06
Speaker 3: the six that we've picked out, all kind of feed
24:09
Speaker 3: into each other and enhanced the design in many different ways.
24:21
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Speaker 1: All right, let's get back to the episode. Yeah, everything
26:03
Speaker 1: at Shinnacock is off kilter. That for me was the
26:07
Speaker 1: kind of keyword of going around Shinnecock. It's just off kilter.
26:11
Speaker 1: Nothing is straightforward, nothing is again to use this word linear,
26:17
Speaker 1: it's all offset, angled, diagonal. It's off kilter, tilted right.
26:25
Speaker 1: So you're you're going through the course and you're constantly
26:27
Speaker 1: dealing with this, you know, with the unexpected nature of
26:34
Speaker 1: off kilter things, and that feels very natural. It just
26:38
Speaker 1: feels like it's the landscape. But it's obviously intentional on
26:44
Speaker 1: the part of the design to constantly keep the player
26:47
Speaker 1: off balance in sixteen, which you brought up, is a
26:50
Speaker 1: great example of this. I don't know how you play
26:52
Speaker 1: it that whole. I don't know because there's so many options.
26:57
Speaker 1: It's that each landing zone has a diagonal and has
27:00
Speaker 1: hazards on on on one side or the other. And
27:05
Speaker 1: I think you probably do something different if you're if
27:07
Speaker 1: you're thinking that you're going to go for the green
27:09
Speaker 1: in two, but it's a very long hole and it's
27:11
Speaker 1: often it's often kind of you know, mostly into the wind,
27:14
Speaker 1: and so how often are you going to be going
27:15
Speaker 1: for it in two? But if you play it as
27:17
Speaker 1: a three shot hole, there are a couple of different
27:18
Speaker 1: ways to do it. Do you want to get left
27:21
Speaker 1: on your second shot to to hit into that green
27:23
Speaker 1: or do you want to go I mean, it is
27:25
Speaker 1: just it's not clear what the what the you know,
27:29
Speaker 1: prevailing or you know, dominant strategy of that hole is.
27:33
Speaker 1: You just have to make your way up it. Uh
27:36
Speaker 1: in in whatever way I think you think you'll get
27:38
Speaker 1: an advantage. But it's just you know, on different days,
27:42
Speaker 1: it might be different approaches that are that are optimal
27:46
Speaker 1: there and uh, And that's a great representation of shinnakok
27:49
Speaker 1: in general, it doesn't nothing is clear, There aren't bright
27:54
Speaker 1: lights around what the best strategy is. You just you
27:58
Speaker 1: have to kind of discover it. And that leads very
28:02
Speaker 1: nicely into the fourth factor I want to talk about here,
28:06
Speaker 1: and that is naturalism. The naturalism of this golf course,
28:11
Speaker 1: of William Flynn's design, Shinnecock just seems to respond to
28:16
Speaker 1: the land, right. It doesn't seem to be doing anything
28:20
Speaker 1: architecturally extroverted, right, It's just taking the land as it comes,
28:26
Speaker 1: and the course is highlighting using the land. But in general,
28:32
Speaker 1: I think this course represents late Golden Age naturalism at
28:37
Speaker 1: its peak. So what do you make of this aspect
28:40
Speaker 1: of Shinnacock's design.
28:42
Speaker 3: Men, I think one of the big things that I
28:45
Speaker 3: guess stands out to me in terms of naturalism and
28:48
Speaker 3: when you're playing the golf course is kind of the
28:50
Speaker 3: obscurity and the slight blindness. I'm not sure if there's
28:54
Speaker 3: anything that's really truly blind. I guess kind of the
28:57
Speaker 3: t shot on ten is pretty blind and you're kind
29:00
Speaker 3: of playing through the spectacle bunkers up on the hill
29:03
Speaker 3: there and you don't really know where you're going if
29:07
Speaker 3: you've never played there. But a whole like six was
29:10
Speaker 3: really kind of stuck out to me on first play
29:14
Speaker 3: if vividly remember Andy Johnson or coworker like talking with
29:19
Speaker 3: the caddie for several minutes trying to pick a line
29:22
Speaker 3: on where he wanted to play. And that's because you
29:24
Speaker 3: play up over this kind of slight rise and then
29:27
Speaker 3: the fairway kind of pitches down pretty severely down towards
29:30
Speaker 3: the lake that sits probably I don't know, one hundred
29:33
Speaker 3: and twenty yards in front of the green, but you
29:36
Speaker 3: can't see where the fairway's going. You can't really see
29:39
Speaker 3: the extens of the fairway lines. So just by laying
29:43
Speaker 3: the golfer over the natural landscape creates all this uncertainty
29:47
Speaker 3: on the tee and you're not exactly sure or confident
29:50
Speaker 3: where you want to play. It will start your ball
29:52
Speaker 3: and hit that golf ball. So I think that's like
29:54
Speaker 3: a big thing. But the naturalism of the golf course
29:58
Speaker 3: had an effect on me at least when playing the
30:00
Speaker 3: ninth is very similar, where you're kind of dog lagging
30:03
Speaker 3: around a kind of hill on the inside of the
30:06
Speaker 3: dog leg, and you want to hit it over that
30:08
Speaker 3: hill to get the shortest approach in there. In the
30:11
Speaker 3: best angle, but you don't really know how far it
30:14
Speaker 3: cuts around that corner. You don't know where the far
30:18
Speaker 3: lion stops around that corner. So there's a lot of
30:21
Speaker 3: things like that when you're playing that makes you feel
30:24
Speaker 3: uneasy and uncertain of exactly what you want to do.
30:28
Speaker 3: And I found that really really impactful. When you're playing
30:31
Speaker 3: the golf course.
30:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels like you're just playing over a landscape, right,
30:38
Speaker 1: which is what a lot of Lynks golf feels like.
30:40
Speaker 1: And Shinnacock manages to create that impression even though the
30:47
Speaker 1: presentation the agronomy of the course is very premium. You know,
30:51
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like you're just in a raw field. Obviously,
30:53
Speaker 1: it's much more curated than that. But on holes like
30:58
Speaker 1: five and six, especially those kind of low lying holes,
31:01
Speaker 1: the blindness of those, the kind of visual confusion of
31:06
Speaker 1: those is really something that we don't see in modern
31:10
Speaker 1: golf architecture very much. You know, there's a boldness to
31:13
Speaker 1: that that is, you know, kind of surprises you. And
31:18
Speaker 1: on both of those holes you can see the greens
31:21
Speaker 1: from the tee. The greens are kind of on rises
31:26
Speaker 1: right or even pushed up a little bit, and so
31:29
Speaker 1: you can see what the ultimate goal is, but what's
31:32
Speaker 1: in between is just this kind of tumbling low stuff
31:37
Speaker 1: that is it's not clear how to navigate it. And
31:42
Speaker 1: those holes, those holes really stick with me. I think
31:45
Speaker 1: they're brilliant golf holes, and they're on some of the
31:49
Speaker 1: lowest potential land at Shinnacok Hills. It's obvious that a
31:53
Speaker 1: lot of effort was put into the design there, but
31:57
Speaker 1: they don't feel artificial, right, They just they use what
32:01
Speaker 1: they have and use it so well that they become
32:05
Speaker 1: these these incredibly memorable golf holds. But you know, Shittacock,
32:11
Speaker 1: if you're trying to place it in the history of
32:14
Speaker 1: golf architecture, and you know, Bob Cosby and I are
32:18
Speaker 1: going to talk about this a little bit more later,
32:20
Speaker 1: it really does represent where American golf architecture got by
32:25
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteen twenties. You know, it represents
32:28
Speaker 1: that full development of this art form where architects really
32:34
Speaker 1: figured out how to make golf courses look and feel
32:38
Speaker 1: and play natural. And that was a big goal for
32:41
Speaker 1: these guys because part of what they loved about the
32:43
Speaker 1: old Links courses is that they just felt like a
32:46
Speaker 1: piece of nature. But it was so hard to create
32:50
Speaker 1: that feeling and that aesthetic on land that wasn't immediately
32:55
Speaker 1: suited to it. Now, Shittacock Hills, you have a good
32:57
Speaker 1: piece of linksland where you can do that kind of stuff.
33:00
Speaker 1: But you know, it's not Scottish links land. It's not
33:04
Speaker 1: exactly the same. You can't just start playing golf over
33:07
Speaker 1: it as soon as you walk on the property. Some
33:10
Speaker 1: architecture had to be done, but the architecture that William
33:13
Speaker 1: Flynn did is so concealed at Shinnakoka. It really does
33:18
Speaker 1: show where golf architecture developed too by the end of
33:25
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties. Did you get that feeling? I also
33:27
Speaker 1: get this feeling from like Perry Maxwell's nineteen thirties golf
33:31
Speaker 1: courses right, and maybe some of Alistair McKenzie's late work.
33:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, it certainly feels like a very well thought out
33:40
Speaker 3: and complete golf course. And one thing I really found
33:43
Speaker 3: myself admiring about Shindacock Hills is just the ability of
33:49
Speaker 3: Flynn to use the natural landscape to kind of derive
33:52
Speaker 3: strategy on a lot of holes and create consequences. One
33:56
Speaker 3: perfect example is on the third hole in the landing
33:59
Speaker 3: zone of fairway. There's this massive bowl that kind of
34:03
Speaker 3: is scooped out of the fairway, but it was a
34:06
Speaker 3: natural hollow there, and he set up the tee where
34:09
Speaker 3: you're basically driving straight towards this giant hollow that kind
34:14
Speaker 3: of feeds down into the bunkers on the right side
34:16
Speaker 3: of the fairway, and it's just like a brilliant way
34:19
Speaker 3: to make a really wide fairway essentially a lot smaller,
34:23
Speaker 3: because if you're on the right half of the fairway,
34:25
Speaker 3: your ball is going to tumble down into this bowl.
34:27
Speaker 3: If it has too much speed, the bowl is gonna
34:29
Speaker 3: kind of careem it into the bunker, or you're just
34:32
Speaker 3: gonna end up in the bottom of this fairway hollow
34:35
Speaker 3: and kind of have a completely blind shot into this
34:38
Speaker 3: very long part four. So just his ability to use
34:42
Speaker 3: the natural landscape kind of in harmony with his design
34:47
Speaker 3: is just pretty brilliant all the way around the golf course.
34:50
Speaker 3: And that's just one kind of small example of it
34:52
Speaker 3: that I found myself admiring.
34:55
Speaker 1: Okay, So the fifth factor that I want to talk
34:58
Speaker 1: about here also relates to William Flynn's kind of subtle
35:02
Speaker 1: but brilliant design ability, and that's the green designs. So
35:08
Speaker 1: I think this is obviously a big part of what
35:12
Speaker 1: makes Shinnecock such a complete golf course is that the
35:14
Speaker 1: green architecture is incredible as well. At Shinnecock. For me,
35:21
Speaker 1: it's not as much about the internal contour of the greens.
35:25
Speaker 1: And in that sense, you know, I just said that
35:28
Speaker 1: that Shinnacock is kind of representative of the late Golden
35:31
Speaker 1: Age state of the art, but in this specific way,
35:35
Speaker 1: it's kind of not because a lot of the top
35:38
Speaker 1: architects in the late twenties and early thirties were starting
35:41
Speaker 1: to experiment heavily with internal contouring of greens. Donald Ross
35:47
Speaker 1: was moving toward this at the end of the nineteen
35:50
Speaker 1: twenties and that's why we get what we got at Aeronomy.
35:53
Speaker 1: Alistair mackenzie of course was doing very bold things that
35:58
Speaker 1: passa tiempo, and later at Augusta National, and then Perry
36:03
Speaker 1: Maxwell in the nineteen thirties had his own approach to
36:05
Speaker 1: interior contour, the kind of rolls based or spine based
36:09
Speaker 1: way of constructing interesting green contour. Shinnecock is not as
36:15
Speaker 1: much about that, right, It's more about broad slopes and
36:20
Speaker 1: tilts on the putting surface. Itself. Some greens are extremely tilted,
36:26
Speaker 1: and it's always with the kind of natural tilt of
36:29
Speaker 1: the land. But you know, the greens certainly aren't flat,
36:33
Speaker 1: but it's not undulating contour in the middle. It's more
36:37
Speaker 1: of these you know, sometimes there's contour, sometimes there's artificial contour,
36:40
Speaker 1: but it's but it's more broad and feeding. Right, Everything
36:45
Speaker 1: on the green kind of tends toward one direction or
36:48
Speaker 1: one outlet. But then on the exterior of these greens
36:53
Speaker 1: there is a lot more complexity, right, big runoffs and
36:58
Speaker 1: spines around the greens, and that's what you really end
37:01
Speaker 1: up focusing on. I think when you're playing into these
37:05
Speaker 1: greens is what's outside of them? What is the short
37:09
Speaker 1: grass contouring around the putting surface. You obviously are thinking
37:14
Speaker 1: about the tilts as well, like that's a big deal.
37:17
Speaker 1: But an interesting thing to do at Chinnacock is too
37:22
Speaker 1: is to start at the green and look back at
37:25
Speaker 1: the hole, and look around the green and see where
37:28
Speaker 1: the big runoffs are. What are the most punitive runoffs,
37:32
Speaker 1: especially behind the greens. That often determines the strategic angles
37:38
Speaker 1: of the holes. The big runoff is not what you
37:42
Speaker 1: want to be hitting your ball toward right, because your
37:44
Speaker 1: ball could very well run through the green and end
37:48
Speaker 1: up down that big runoff. You want to be playing
37:50
Speaker 1: into the greens at the angles where what's behind the
37:53
Speaker 1: green is not as punitive, and so yeah, for me
37:57
Speaker 1: at Chinnacock, it is so much about those exterior or
38:01
Speaker 1: complexities paired with the big tilts and broad slopes of
38:05
Speaker 1: the greens.
38:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's definitely kind of the I guess the main
38:10
Speaker 3: theme of a lot of the greens. Another thing that
38:13
Speaker 3: finn Fln did so much on basically all of the
38:17
Speaker 3: golf courses was locate greens on ridges and put them
38:21
Speaker 3: in very challenging locations within the landscape. I mean, the
38:25
Speaker 3: eleventh hole is a prime example. It's one of the
38:28
Speaker 3: most insane green sites I think I've ever seen. Almost
38:32
Speaker 3: I almost guarantee that no modern architect would ever consider
38:35
Speaker 3: placing a green on that tiny little ridge line that
38:38
Speaker 3: feeds up there and just falls off so severely on
38:41
Speaker 3: both sides. And you see that a lot, like, there's
38:44
Speaker 3: so many greens that are perched up and fall away
38:47
Speaker 3: on multiple sides, and that's just a product of kind
38:50
Speaker 3: of the landscape and where he routed the golf holes.
38:53
Speaker 3: But Conversely, there's also a lot that kind of even
38:56
Speaker 3: if they are up, they do sit down in slight hollows.
39:00
Speaker 3: Ninth Pole, for example, sits way up in the air,
39:02
Speaker 3: but it's kind of in this slight little depression. So
39:05
Speaker 3: if you just kind of get it up there and
39:08
Speaker 3: around the green, it's going to be a decent shot.
39:11
Speaker 3: So that's one thing that I found so common among
39:15
Speaker 3: a lot of the green sites is just they kind
39:17
Speaker 3: of are derived from the landscape and what was there,
39:21
Speaker 3: and then on the holes where maybe the land wasn't
39:24
Speaker 3: quite as interesting, there's more of these kind of exterior
39:27
Speaker 3: bulges that you were talking about that really dictate the
39:30
Speaker 3: strategy where you want to be in the fair way
39:32
Speaker 3: coming into them, so that these bulges are helping you
39:35
Speaker 3: rather than kind of kicking you away from the pin
39:38
Speaker 3: and repealing your golf ball. So there's just a lot
39:41
Speaker 3: of different variety and all the green sites that he chose,
39:44
Speaker 3: even though a lot of them are really kind of
39:46
Speaker 3: derived from from what was sitting there in the land.
39:50
Speaker 1: The fourteenth Green is another good example of what you're
39:53
Speaker 1: talking about with nine, where fourteen is a very difficult
39:57
Speaker 1: long golf hole and green is elevated just tough, tough, tough,
40:04
Speaker 1: but the fourteenth green sits in this saddle that offers
40:09
Speaker 1: a little bit of forgiveness so that the whole is
40:12
Speaker 1: not just, you know, completely punishing from beginning to end.
40:18
Speaker 1: So there's a nice variation of grains that are sitting
40:22
Speaker 1: on kind of exposed knobs and where everything runs away
40:25
Speaker 1: from them and greens that are have a little bit
40:29
Speaker 1: more of a feeding character to them. So yeah, I
40:34
Speaker 1: think these are greens that maybe won't come across clearly
40:38
Speaker 1: on the telecast for the US Open. I hope that
40:43
Speaker 1: what they do is kind of show what those exterior
40:46
Speaker 1: contours are like in some way. But it's not like
40:50
Speaker 1: Augusta National's greens, where the the internal contour of the
40:54
Speaker 1: greens is so dramatic that it can become part of
40:57
Speaker 1: the narrative of the tournament. And I'd say that that's
41:00
Speaker 1: the case at Ironomic as well and a few other courses,
41:03
Speaker 1: but at Shinnacock it's there's a little bit more subtlety
41:07
Speaker 1: as to what's happening, because as you're saying that, the
41:10
Speaker 1: greens are so responsive to the natural landscape and are
41:13
Speaker 1: just kind of enhancing the what the natural landscape offered.
41:19
Speaker 1: Sixth and final factor I'd like to talk about six
41:22
Speaker 1: and final factor in Shinnecock Hills's greatness is the stewardship
41:29
Speaker 1: of the golf course, which I think has been almost
41:32
Speaker 1: completely exceptional. At Shinnacock. The course, the turf, grasses and
41:39
Speaker 1: the soils have basically been preserved rather than blown up
41:46
Speaker 1: and put back right. The fairway grasses are this kind
41:50
Speaker 1: of motley mixture of a little bit of everything. The
41:54
Speaker 1: greens are original push up construction, no sub you know,
42:01
Speaker 1: USGA spec. There's some greens that have been supported more
42:04
Speaker 1: by drainage and stuff like that, but these are the
42:07
Speaker 1: original greens and the grass on them is POA, but
42:12
Speaker 1: sort of like Oakmont, it's Shinnacock POA, you know. It's
42:15
Speaker 1: it's really seasoned, experienced POA that has taken on its
42:20
Speaker 1: own characteristics. The restoration work over over the past thirty
42:25
Speaker 1: years or so, starting with tree removal, has been very
42:29
Speaker 1: restrained and sensitive. You know. Corn Crenshaw have worked with
42:33
Speaker 1: the club for the past number of years now and
42:36
Speaker 1: their approach has not been to rebuild. It's just been
42:40
Speaker 1: to kind of nudge the course in the right direction
42:44
Speaker 1: and then of course, everything plays as it should. I
42:47
Speaker 1: think it is firm and fast out there, now, is it?
42:53
Speaker 2: Would it be?
42:54
Speaker 1: Would it be amazing if this course were full rescue? Sure,
42:58
Speaker 1: you know that would be That would be incredible. I
43:01
Speaker 1: don't think it would be possible in this particular environment
43:04
Speaker 1: because the grasses at Chinnacok, you know, these are veteran
43:08
Speaker 1: turf grasses that have adapted to their environment. So I
43:12
Speaker 1: don't think that imposing fescue on this course would necessarily
43:16
Speaker 1: be the being the best interest of the golf course.
43:20
Speaker 1: But you know, it's it's it's with any US sea
43:23
Speaker 1: side course. It's hard not to fantasize about it about
43:27
Speaker 1: it just being fescue. But with that said, the place
43:32
Speaker 1: is firm and fast, it dries out super quickly, it's sandy,
43:35
Speaker 1: it is. It is what you want. The ball, you know,
43:39
Speaker 1: kind of leaps into the air at unexpected moments, so
43:42
Speaker 1: it gives you everything you want in a seaside course.
43:45
Speaker 1: Anything to add there about the about the kind of
43:48
Speaker 1: stewardship and presentation.
43:49
Speaker 3: Of the course, I think you summed it up really well.
43:52
Speaker 3: There's sort of this intangible that old golf courses have
43:56
Speaker 3: when they've sat there and evolved for sixty seven eighty
44:00
Speaker 3: ninety one hundred years long, where the grass has just
44:04
Speaker 3: become one with the environment in the ecosystem and the
44:07
Speaker 3: habitat that it sits in. So it's almost like these
44:10
Speaker 3: grassives have been even trained for one hundred years to
44:15
Speaker 3: be perfectly suited for the soil type, for the conditions
44:19
Speaker 3: and what kind of it's facing on a day to
44:21
Speaker 3: day basis. So that just enhances the design and playability
44:25
Speaker 3: so much.
44:26
Speaker 1: There's so much.
44:27
Speaker 3: Going for it that it's just I honestly don't know
44:31
Speaker 3: what else like you could change or to the turf
44:34
Speaker 3: to try and make it better. Like you said, Vescue,
44:37
Speaker 3: I'm not even sure if that would play a whole
44:40
Speaker 3: lot better than what they have they're growing. They have
44:43
Speaker 3: sort of this hodgepodge of grass and the fairways that
44:46
Speaker 3: are just have been optimized, like I said, for over
44:48
Speaker 3: one hundred years to this environment. So that's just like
44:53
Speaker 3: you can't replicate that. Only time can can create that,
44:56
Speaker 3: and that's something that's really special about the agronomy at
45:00
Speaker 3: Shinnecock Hills. And then additionally, I think as a holistic
45:05
Speaker 3: kind of visual thing, just the textures and the visual
45:09
Speaker 3: appearance and aesthetic of the golf course really is pretty beautiful.
45:13
Speaker 3: You have these kind of dried out white sand bunkers,
45:18
Speaker 3: the green kind of rownish tint of the grass and
45:22
Speaker 3: the turf on the plane surfaces, and then you get
45:25
Speaker 3: this bright orange kind of fescue grass and blue stem
45:29
Speaker 3: grass in the native areas that blows in the wind
45:32
Speaker 3: and there's just acres and acres and acres of it
45:35
Speaker 3: between the golf hole, so it really defines the golf
45:38
Speaker 3: hole that you're on and just creates these awesome visuals
45:41
Speaker 3: across the property. Being able to look at the tall
45:44
Speaker 3: grasses blowing in the wind and look at all the
45:47
Speaker 3: different green sights and flagsticks kind of perched up out
45:50
Speaker 3: of the ground is just it's really awesome to just
45:54
Speaker 3: to look at. And I hope that maybe you know,
45:58
Speaker 3: the one of the evenings during the open, that you'll
46:01
Speaker 3: get that low light and you'll get to see all
46:03
Speaker 3: the awesome shadows and kind of that golden glow across
46:07
Speaker 3: the entire golf course, which really highlights kind of that ecsthetic.
46:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the keyword here is texture. Shinnacak has texture,
46:19
Speaker 1: and that's what a lot of courses lose when they
46:22
Speaker 1: rebuild everything, when they strip it down to the dirt
46:26
Speaker 1: and put up these new turf grasses, irrigation systems, drainage systems, subair,
46:31
Speaker 1: et cetera in their place, right, they lose texture. They
46:36
Speaker 1: become monochromatic. And that's happened to so many golf courses,
46:41
Speaker 1: like just about every other big championship course that the
46:46
Speaker 1: PGA Championship where the US Open is going to go to,
46:49
Speaker 1: has had over the years some degree of texture loss.
46:53
Speaker 1: And this becomes, unfortunately, especially visible at courses that remove
46:58
Speaker 1: a lot of trees. I am generally in support of
47:02
Speaker 1: those tree removal programs if they are done for kind
47:05
Speaker 1: of historical and agronomic and playability reasons. But one of
47:10
Speaker 1: the things that you lose when you lose trees is
47:13
Speaker 1: texture variation, right, You lose that bit of difference that
47:18
Speaker 1: a tree brings. And so when you take out trees,
47:24
Speaker 1: you've got to somehow recapture the natural texture of the
47:28
Speaker 1: property through grasses and through other methods, and a lot
47:33
Speaker 1: of courses don't do that. They just maintain the kind
47:35
Speaker 1: of a lawn in place of where the trees were
47:40
Speaker 1: between the holes, and that's a real shame, and that
47:44
Speaker 1: is not something that they've done at Shincock Hills, Right,
47:46
Speaker 1: they remove their trees and they recaptured the natural texture
47:52
Speaker 1: of the property, not only between the holes, but then
47:56
Speaker 1: they also preserved the texture of their fair ways and
48:00
Speaker 1: their original greens, so that when you walk on these fairways,
48:03
Speaker 1: you can see, as you're explaining that you're not walking
48:07
Speaker 1: on a mono stand, right, you're walking on a fairway
48:10
Speaker 1: that has all sorts of different colors and turf types
48:14
Speaker 1: in it. And to me it's beautiful. A lot of
48:16
Speaker 1: people might look at that and say, oh, wow, is
48:18
Speaker 1: this really an elite club, Like why isn't it kind
48:21
Speaker 1: of uniform? But to me, that's so much better looking
48:25
Speaker 1: and so much more textured than the typical, you know,
48:29
Speaker 1: high tech fairway grass that we see. And you know,
48:33
Speaker 1: although the greens are a kind of monostand of poe
48:35
Speaker 1: annua its, it's unique poe annuals. It is. It's been
48:39
Speaker 1: there for a long time and it's adapted to its environment.
48:43
Speaker 1: And yeah, you feel that that variety of texture every
48:48
Speaker 1: step you take on the property, and it's something that
48:50
Speaker 1: makes Shinnecock so memorable and again enhances the naturalism of
48:55
Speaker 1: the place. You feel like you're on a real piece
48:58
Speaker 1: of land, not in an artificial environment. So yeah, we
49:04
Speaker 1: I guess we love Shinnacock Hills. I guess that's the uh,
49:07
Speaker 1: that's the message here. Are there any critiques of Shinnecock
49:10
Speaker 1: Hills that that we should that we should air At
49:12
Speaker 1: this point, it's very difficult, if you're very difficult to
49:16
Speaker 1: critique this golf course. It's it's really hard to poke
49:19
Speaker 1: holes in it. I I don't really I don't love
49:21
Speaker 1: the seventh hole. There were Dan you know, some people
49:24
Speaker 1: might take offense to that, but I think it's you know,
49:27
Speaker 1: it's almost like a parody of a ra Dan hole.
49:31
Speaker 1: It's really different in philosophy from the rest of the
49:33
Speaker 1: golf course. And you know, it would be if the
49:36
Speaker 1: green speeds were a little bit a little bit uh
49:40
Speaker 1: lower than I think it would probably work better. But
49:43
Speaker 1: as it is, it it's a bit of a one
49:45
Speaker 1: dimensional type of Dan and you really got to play
49:48
Speaker 1: it through the air. But at the same time, it's
49:52
Speaker 1: it's super memorable, you know, like it's there's no doubt
49:55
Speaker 1: that it's a it's a moment when you stand on
49:57
Speaker 1: that tea and try to hit that shot, so it's
49:59
Speaker 1: got that going for it. But yeah, it's hard to
50:01
Speaker 1: think of anything else where you would where you would
50:05
Speaker 1: criticize it.
50:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, seven was really the one thing that stuck out
50:09
Speaker 3: to me when I played. It just kind of feels
50:12
Speaker 3: a bit like a sore of thumb sticking out of
50:14
Speaker 3: the ground. And like you said, it doesn't really play
50:16
Speaker 3: like the original for Dan, where you can bounce the ball.
50:20
Speaker 1: In and run it up.
50:20
Speaker 3: The slope in front of the green is just too
50:23
Speaker 3: steep to do that. So with modern technology it's become
50:26
Speaker 3: more of this aerial pursuit of a golf hole, and
50:29
Speaker 3: it really doesn't fit in with kind of the rest
50:31
Speaker 3: of the design of the golf course. It's kind of
50:34
Speaker 3: like this one odd hole out, which is really interesting
50:37
Speaker 3: because it's kind of become almost the most famous hole
50:40
Speaker 3: in the golf course and the one that most people
50:42
Speaker 3: can recognize. So it is an interesting aspect of kind
50:46
Speaker 3: of that core of the property.
50:49
Speaker 1: It's understandable that it's become a famous hole or a
50:53
Speaker 1: kind of point of focus during tournaments because visually it
50:58
Speaker 1: is so legible, right, and in that way, it's different
51:03
Speaker 1: from the rest of the course, which which very much
51:05
Speaker 1: just follows the land, and so it's hard to tell
51:08
Speaker 1: what the golf course is quote unquote doing. Right on
51:11
Speaker 1: the seventh hole, you can see what the golf course
51:13
Speaker 1: is doing because it's it's right there, sticking up out
51:15
Speaker 1: of the ground. And and so I think that's part
51:17
Speaker 1: of the reason that it's become famous. But yeah, aside
51:23
Speaker 1: from that, it's just it's really hard to to find
51:28
Speaker 1: things about Shinnecock that that fall short. And and so
51:34
Speaker 1: in that sense, it is one of the most complete,
51:38
Speaker 1: near perfect golf courses in America certainly, and so so
51:45
Speaker 1: where do we where do we put it in those ranks?
51:48
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting to try to compare it to
51:51
Speaker 1: a Cypress Point or an Oakmont or an Augusta National.
51:56
Speaker 1: I think in a lot of ways, Shinnacock does things
52:00
Speaker 1: better than those courses. Like, yeah, Cyprus might have the
52:04
Speaker 1: more remarkable and memorable piece of land with the kind
52:08
Speaker 1: of seaside portion of it and that amazing, you know,
52:11
Speaker 1: white sand dune that it plays through and that incredible routing,
52:17
Speaker 1: But the turf grass at Chinnacock and the way it
52:19
Speaker 1: plays and the relationship between the elements of the golf
52:23
Speaker 1: is way better at Chinnacock right now, you know, And
52:26
Speaker 1: so where do you put it among the great golf courses,
52:30
Speaker 1: at least of the ones that you've seen. I don't
52:32
Speaker 1: think either you or I have seen Pine Valley.
52:34
Speaker 3: No I haven't, but I think it's certainly in question
52:38
Speaker 3: for the greatest golf course in the world. Like we said,
52:42
Speaker 3: there's really not that much wrong with it. You have
52:45
Speaker 3: the wind, you have the firmness, and the incredible landscape.
52:51
Speaker 3: Like there's no reason why anyone should not say that
52:54
Speaker 3: it's not the best golf course in the world. There's
52:57
Speaker 3: so much going for it. It's an incredible test golf.
53:02
Speaker 3: It's very, very difficult, and this is something I was
53:05
Speaker 3: thinking of. Some of the best golf courses in the
53:07
Speaker 3: world really are really challenging. There's not really very many
53:11
Speaker 3: golf courses that are highly regarded that are easy or
53:15
Speaker 3: less challenging than something like Shinnacock. So if in my
53:20
Speaker 3: book it could be the it could be the number one,
53:23
Speaker 3: it could topple Pine Valley as the best golf course
53:25
Speaker 3: in the world. But it's all really a personal preference.
53:28
Speaker 3: So I do think it kind of lives in that
53:31
Speaker 3: absolute upper echelon of golf courses, basically top top five
53:37
Speaker 3: in the world in my eyes.
53:41
Speaker 1: All right, man, thank you for coming on the podcast.
53:43
Speaker 1: Always fun to talk to you. Looking forward to the USO.
53:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having me. Really looking forward to watching
53:49
Speaker 3: the pros try and tackle it one more time.
53:53
Speaker 2: All right.
53:54
Speaker 1: Next up here we have Bob Crosby joining me to
53:58
Speaker 1: talk about the early history of the architecture at Shinnakak Hills.
54:02
Speaker 1: So let's go to that. This episode of Designing Golf
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Speaker 1: All right, let's get back to the episode. Bob Crosby,
55:55
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the podcast.
55:56
Speaker 2: Great to be back here.
55:58
Speaker 1: So I wanted to talk with you today, Bob, about
56:01
Speaker 1: the early history of Shinnecock Hills. Eight years ago, you
56:06
Speaker 1: co authored a short article with Wayne Morrison for the
56:10
Speaker 1: USGA website about the evolution of this golf course over
56:14
Speaker 1: its first forty years, essentially right from eighteen ninety one
56:17
Speaker 1: to nineteen thirty one. The opening sentence of that article
56:21
Speaker 1: basically lays out its thesis. You say, if you were
56:25
Speaker 1: looking for a case study on the evolution of golf
56:27
Speaker 1: architecture in America, Shinnecock Hills would be a good place
56:31
Speaker 1: to start. Effectively, what you then go on to argue
56:34
Speaker 1: is that between eighteen ninety one and nineteen thirty one,
56:37
Speaker 1: there were three main versions of the course, and each
56:39
Speaker 1: of those versions represents a different stage in the history
56:43
Speaker 1: and development of American golf course design. I found this
56:45
Speaker 1: very interesting. I think you know it's for me. It's
56:48
Speaker 1: less about the specifics of those versions of the course
56:50
Speaker 1: than about what they represent in history. And so that's
56:55
Speaker 1: kind of what I want to get in to with
56:57
Speaker 1: you today now. The first to get us at the beginning,
57:02
Speaker 1: the first iteration of Shinnecock Hills was designed by two
57:06
Speaker 1: British professionals, Willie Davis and Willie Dunn. Davis designed the
57:12
Speaker 1: first twelve holes in eighteen ninety one and Done completed
57:16
Speaker 1: the eighteen in eighteen ninety five. So do you just
57:20
Speaker 1: want to start there maybe and talk about that version
57:23
Speaker 1: of Shinnecock Hills and what it said about, you know,
57:26
Speaker 1: historical trends of the period.
57:28
Speaker 2: Sure, the first versions of shinnecock were designed by two
57:35
Speaker 2: Actually they were Scottish professionals.
57:37
Speaker 1: Were they both Scottish? I was having a hard time
57:40
Speaker 1: figuring out. I used British as a catch all sometimes.
57:42
Speaker 1: I know Scottish people maybe resist being British, and British
57:46
Speaker 1: is not wrong, but yeah, Britain. But there really weren't
57:51
Speaker 1: very many English professionals at the time. Yeah, I thought
57:54
Speaker 1: Willy Dunn was one. I was in English, happened to
57:57
Speaker 1: be an English person, But I know Willys was scott
58:00
Speaker 1: You know.
58:01
Speaker 2: You may be right because his father was at Wimbledon
58:04
Speaker 2: for a long time.
58:05
Speaker 1: I think he was from London and that you're right,
58:08
Speaker 1: But sometimes you don't know when you're like this is
58:10
Speaker 1: sort of a digression already. But it's a funny thing
58:13
Speaker 1: about researching early history, in early golf history, especially in America,
58:19
Speaker 1: with these Scottish and English and you know whoever else
58:22
Speaker 1: professionals coming over because they're all named Willie.
58:26
Speaker 2: Was there a Willy And they all died before their
58:29
Speaker 2: fiftieth birthday. For those remarkable how quickly they all died.
58:33
Speaker 2: They all had pneumonia or something. And in fact, it's
58:36
Speaker 2: a good, good correction because I want to come back
58:38
Speaker 2: to something about Willy Dunn that ties in with English
58:43
Speaker 2: golf courses. But yeah, they they were part of a
58:48
Speaker 2: literally a title wave of British professionals that immigrated to
58:53
Speaker 2: the United States starting about eighteen eighty five or so.
58:59
Speaker 2: It was such a large title way that by the
59:05
Speaker 2: late eighteen nineties AJ Balfer, who was at the time
59:09
Speaker 2: it would become eventually Prime Minister of Britain but at
59:12
Speaker 2: the time was a fairly high functioning high functionary in
59:16
Speaker 2: the British government, suggested that they enact but Parliament enact
59:21
Speaker 2: rules to limit the immigration of these professionals to America.
59:27
Speaker 2: And they went for all sorts of different reasons. I
59:29
Speaker 2: think most of them was because they were being paid
59:31
Speaker 2: more money, they had a higher social standing in the
59:35
Speaker 2: United States. It was just in all sorts of ways,
59:39
Speaker 2: very very attractive. What ended up happening, and this will
59:43
Speaker 2: not be news to many people, is that various professionals
59:47
Speaker 2: went to various American metropolitan areas and created a whole
59:51
Speaker 2: range of They built the whole range of golf courses
59:56
Speaker 2: all over the United States. What from a historical perspective
1:00:02
Speaker 2: is remarkable about all of that is how similar all
1:00:06
Speaker 2: of those golf courses were. You had literally dozens, if
1:00:12
Speaker 2: not hundreds of professionals in the United States introducing golf
1:00:18
Speaker 2: to Americans who knew relatively little about it at the time,
1:00:21
Speaker 2: and then designing the same or very similar Victorian style
1:00:25
Speaker 2: golf courses. By eighteen ninety or by the time Shinnacock
1:00:31
Speaker 2: was built, there was a fair amount of There was
1:00:37
Speaker 2: a large consensus that golf courses should include cross hazards
1:00:43
Speaker 2: to force balls to carry them, the idea being that
1:00:48
Speaker 2: we wanted to find objective tests for players who could
1:00:52
Speaker 2: hit the ball far ensure. That whole idea came from
1:00:57
Speaker 2: Laidlaw Purpose and really begins in some respects with Laidlaw
1:01:02
Speaker 2: Purvose's original iteration of Sandwich, which opened for play in
1:01:06
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety seven. Laidlaw Purpose then lays out his design
1:01:11
Speaker 2: theories and an article in the Early Golf which became
1:01:15
Speaker 2: Golf Illustrated later which talks about the need for Carrie
1:01:20
Speaker 2: Hazard's whole links were critical and for the most part,
1:01:26
Speaker 2: and I'm actually having trouble finding exceptions, the Scottish professionals
1:01:31
Speaker 2: that came to America about eighteen ninety followed that those
1:01:35
Speaker 2: sorts of principles fairly strictly there were. There is a
1:01:42
Speaker 2: thread on golf club batlast that's been going on now
1:01:44
Speaker 2: for I think about ten years, which is basically compilation
1:01:48
Speaker 2: of old routings and drawings of early American golf courses.
1:01:53
Speaker 2: I'm having trouble finding any golf course on that thread
1:01:56
Speaker 2: that wasn't a Victorian golf course. So these guys come
1:02:00
Speaker 2: to Shinnacock and they designed what they were all taught
1:02:02
Speaker 2: to designer all as soon was the correct way to
1:02:04
Speaker 2: design a golf course. Willie Davis does the first twelve holes,
1:02:10
Speaker 2: Willie Dunn does finishes it off. Actually, I think he
1:02:13
Speaker 2: won the Open the year he finished the golf course,
1:02:15
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety six, and that was pretty much it,
1:02:24
Speaker 2: I mean. But the antecedents to all of that was
1:02:29
Speaker 2: this wave of Scottish immigrants that came to America to
1:02:34
Speaker 2: a place where the game was still relatively unknown. Nobody
1:02:39
Speaker 2: had the clue about how to design a golf course,
1:02:43
Speaker 2: and these guys supplied the need and that was the
1:02:48
Speaker 2: beginnings of Schnakock.
1:02:52
Speaker 1: Where do you think they all got their ideas about
1:02:56
Speaker 1: how to design a golf course where they reading material
1:03:02
Speaker 1: about this? Did they just gather it by osmosis by
1:03:07
Speaker 1: growing up in Great Britain wherever they might have been.
1:03:10
Speaker 1: I mean, my understanding is that Willie Davis was at
1:03:13
Speaker 1: Hoylake for some of his training as a professional. Willy
1:03:18
Speaker 1: Dunn may have been at Westward ho for a while.
1:03:24
Speaker 1: How do you think this kind of consensus formed. What
1:03:28
Speaker 1: were the mechanisms for spreading these ideas?
1:03:32
Speaker 2: I'm not clear about. There was almost a complete unanimity
1:03:37
Speaker 2: about the way golf courses should be designed. I'm not
1:03:41
Speaker 2: sure where that came from. I can tell you a
1:03:45
Speaker 2: bit about the story of Willy Dunn, whose father and
1:03:50
Speaker 2: I think he then succeeded. His father was at Wimbledon
1:03:53
Speaker 2: for eleven or twelve years. That was laid Law Purvis's
1:03:58
Speaker 2: London course. Leidlow purpose had a number of disagreements with Wimbledon,
1:04:04
Speaker 2: which may have in the end led him to set
1:04:07
Speaker 2: up a new club, now Royal St George's in Sandwich.
1:04:13
Speaker 2: But he had very very strong opinions about golf architecture,
1:04:17
Speaker 2: about the shortcomings of the old course at Saint Andrews,
1:04:20
Speaker 2: and where golf ought to go if it's going to
1:04:23
Speaker 2: be a quote progressive, more objective, fair sport, and his
1:04:31
Speaker 2: ideas were basically what we see what we now. You
1:04:35
Speaker 2: don't see many of them anymore, but his ideas were
1:04:38
Speaker 2: basically embodied in the doctrines of Victorian golf architecture, the
1:04:43
Speaker 2: cross hazards, the whole links and the whole bit. It was,
1:04:48
Speaker 2: by the way, not a crazy philosophy. It was seamless.
1:04:51
Speaker 2: In fact, it answered all the questions, and it was
1:04:56
Speaker 2: before that reason easy for these pros to use. It
1:05:00
Speaker 2: was a matter of measuring links, laying out cross hazers
1:05:03
Speaker 2: at the right intervals, and it required very little imagination
1:05:08
Speaker 2: on the on the part of the people building the courses.
1:05:11
Speaker 2: It was. It was a It was a It was
1:05:14
Speaker 2: a plan that the details of which were put in
1:05:18
Speaker 2: their laps and they built. It was.
1:05:21
Speaker 1: It was a way to spread golf quickly, which was
1:05:24
Speaker 1: obviously a big goal in the eighteen eighties and nineties
1:05:27
Speaker 1: when the game was really catching on and suddenly people
1:05:31
Speaker 1: needed courses, and sometimes they wanted them in places that
1:05:34
Speaker 1: were not particularly well suited to golf. Now, Shannacock Hills
1:05:37
Speaker 1: happened to be a land that was pretty well suited
1:05:41
Speaker 1: to the game, but they were putting courses in places
1:05:45
Speaker 1: that courses hadn't been put before, and so they needed
1:05:48
Speaker 1: a way to do it right, and you could do
1:05:49
Speaker 1: it quickly.
1:05:50
Speaker 2: I do I write some account of Willie Davis. Willy
1:05:53
Speaker 2: Davis did the first twelve holes at Shirakok in a month.
1:05:56
Speaker 2: I mean it, you know, just give me the land,
1:05:59
Speaker 2: I'll do the crows hazards, and you got your golf
1:06:04
Speaker 2: course right. It's it's it's pretty amazing and it you know,
1:06:09
Speaker 2: it was a philosophy though that was we pooh pooh
1:06:12
Speaker 2: it and make fun of it. But it was very
1:06:13
Speaker 2: sophisticated purpose answered all the questions, had an answer for
1:06:19
Speaker 2: all the questions.
1:06:20
Speaker 1: A coherent worldview.
1:06:22
Speaker 2: In a way, hear it a seamless architectural universe that
1:06:27
Speaker 2: left nothing unaddressed.
1:06:29
Speaker 1: Right, And that was the original version of Shinakok Hills.
1:06:33
Speaker 1: There are some pictures out there that that I think
1:06:35
Speaker 1: might be striking to people because of how different they
1:06:38
Speaker 1: look from the current version of the course, which is
1:06:42
Speaker 1: very naturalistic. There were some pretty wild booking cross bunkers
1:06:48
Speaker 1: and and things of that nature, with designs that were
1:06:52
Speaker 1: not attempting to emulate the natural environment, were maybe just
1:06:56
Speaker 1: attempting to look cool. But there's one particularly famous one
1:06:59
Speaker 1: of a of a cross bunker with what they call
1:07:02
Speaker 1: the cop right a a kind of vertical berm that
1:07:07
Speaker 1: that wasn't straight but instead had this kind of squiggle pattern, right,
1:07:12
Speaker 1: you know. And uh and so there were things like
1:07:15
Speaker 1: that at this at this first version of the course,
1:07:18
Speaker 1: things that now you know, looked very strange to us.
1:07:21
Speaker 2: Right, it was a it was a very it's called
1:07:23
Speaker 2: a bastion bunker at the time b A S T
1:07:26
Speaker 2: I O N. It was very funky. Somebody had a
1:07:31
Speaker 2: spasm of imagination it built this very weird thing. But
1:07:36
Speaker 2: to address something you just mentioned, their point, in fact,
1:07:40
Speaker 2: their objective was not to have natural golf courses. Natural
1:07:45
Speaker 2: golf courses allowed too much haphazardous and luck in the game.
1:07:49
Speaker 2: They wanted objective tests for a player's ability to hit
1:07:53
Speaker 2: a ball, as laid La Purbis said, far insure their
1:07:58
Speaker 2: ergo you have carry bunker at various intervals on each hole.
1:08:03
Speaker 2: And that's what he that that was, that was the
1:08:06
Speaker 2: design intent.
1:08:08
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Golf becoming maybe a little bit more like tennis,
1:08:11
Speaker 1: like establishing an official playing field as opposed to just
1:08:15
Speaker 1: these kind of natural environments, which is where the where
1:08:19
Speaker 1: the game started. But there wasn't at the time a
1:08:23
Speaker 1: huge specific value put on the original links courses. In
1:08:28
Speaker 1: a way they were thought of as being kind of
1:08:31
Speaker 1: outmoded or old fashioned, and that there must be a
1:08:34
Speaker 1: a new modern way of doing golf course construction. And
1:08:38
Speaker 1: you know, this first version of Shinnecock Hills was representative
1:08:41
Speaker 1: of that. But now we move on from there to
1:08:44
Speaker 1: the second version of Shinnecock Hills, which has hotly sort
1:08:49
Speaker 1: of forgotten these days. You know it's a given who
1:08:53
Speaker 1: was involved in building it, But maybe tell me a
1:08:57
Speaker 1: little bit about that. What is this second main itera
1:09:00
Speaker 1: of the golf.
1:09:01
Speaker 2: Well, first, let me just jump in and say that
1:09:03
Speaker 2: Wayne Morrison knows more about Shinacock way Morrise has forgotten
1:09:07
Speaker 2: more about Shinnicock.
1:09:08
Speaker 1: That I know, of course, all of us fact but.
1:09:13
Speaker 2: Wayne told me back in the day that there's very
1:09:16
Speaker 2: little known about the McDonald version of Shinnecock There are
1:09:21
Speaker 2: very few drawings, very few photographs, and very little was
1:09:25
Speaker 2: written about it, which makes it a bit of a
1:09:29
Speaker 2: blank slate.
1:09:30
Speaker 1: And now let me jump in real quick to be clear.
1:09:33
Speaker 1: The second version of Shinnecock Hills was designed by Cebe
1:09:36
Speaker 1: McDonald and Seth Rainer in nineteen sixteen, and this was
1:09:40
Speaker 1: just five years after National Golf Links, McDonald's masterpiece and
1:09:46
Speaker 1: really his showcase golf course. Just five years after that
1:09:51
Speaker 1: course opened right next door to Shinnecock Hills. So five
1:09:55
Speaker 1: years later we have Cebe McDonald and Seth Rainer coming
1:09:58
Speaker 1: in and redesigning the golf.
1:10:00
Speaker 2: Course, and as far as we know, he designed, at
1:10:03
Speaker 2: least by all accounts, he designed the usual slate of
1:10:07
Speaker 2: template holes, or at least partly a partial slate of
1:10:10
Speaker 2: the template holes. I think the interesting question for McDonald,
1:10:17
Speaker 2: and I think it's by nineteen sixteen still somewhat true,
1:10:22
Speaker 2: is that he wanted to introduce a better way of
1:10:28
Speaker 2: designing golf holes, one that was better in all sorts
1:10:32
Speaker 2: of different ways than the Victorian courses that I think
1:10:35
Speaker 2: he saw in America. He says in Scotland's Gift Golf,
1:10:44
Speaker 2: which is published in nineteen twenty eight. He says in
1:10:49
Speaker 2: there that his ideas for different kinds of golf holes
1:10:53
Speaker 2: came from the Golf Illustrated discussion of Best Holes in
1:10:58
Speaker 2: nineteen oh one, and John Lowell played a predominant an
1:11:04
Speaker 2: important role in that discussion. I'll get to that. We'll
1:11:06
Speaker 2: return to that, hopefully later. But he says in Scotland's
1:11:12
Speaker 2: Gift that he took the holes people liked out of
1:11:16
Speaker 2: that discussion. He only took some of them, actually, And
1:11:22
Speaker 2: he wanted to devise a kind of golf architecture that
1:11:27
Speaker 2: was based on those holes, which he took to be
1:11:31
Speaker 2: the best holes, because the experts in Britain thought they
1:11:34
Speaker 2: were the best holes. But consider the problem he had
1:11:38
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh one or so. He wanted to design
1:11:42
Speaker 2: a golf course based on the best holes of which
1:11:46
Speaker 2: nobody in America had seen, and nobody in America was
1:11:50
Speaker 2: going to see in any numbers in any time soon.
1:11:55
Speaker 2: So he had to figure out a way to make
1:11:59
Speaker 2: those holes known to them. And I think that was
1:12:03
Speaker 2: the origins of his notion of going out and drawing
1:12:07
Speaker 2: inexquisite detail the templates for a series of holes. And
1:12:13
Speaker 2: it was those templates that he could use to educate
1:12:17
Speaker 2: American golfers about the best holes in Britain. And not
1:12:22
Speaker 2: only that, he could give those templates to a non
1:12:25
Speaker 2: golfing surveyor rainer who could use those those plans to
1:12:32
Speaker 2: build his golf courses. But his problem was to educate
1:12:37
Speaker 2: American golfers about what the best tolls in Britain were
1:12:40
Speaker 2: at the time, and he used that as the basis
1:12:43
Speaker 2: for his own design theories. And that's what he took
1:12:46
Speaker 2: to Shinikock.
1:12:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so at this second version of Shinnacock Hills,
1:12:53
Speaker 1: we have we believe versions of the radan version of
1:13:01
Speaker 1: the Cape hole, uh and and perhaps a couple of others,
1:13:05
Speaker 1: maybe an Eden and a short template. And so these
1:13:10
Speaker 1: were these were the kind of standard part of the
1:13:14
Speaker 1: standard catalog of McDonald and Rayner designs that were now
1:13:19
Speaker 1: being installed at at Shinnecawk Hills. And so you know,
1:13:23
Speaker 1: when you consider this approach to design, what what new things,
1:13:32
Speaker 1: what new ideas? Did it help inject into the blood
1:13:36
Speaker 1: stream of golf architecture, especially in America?
1:13:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I have I have a couple of thoughts.
1:13:48
Speaker 2: It it injected into the American blood, the bloodstream of
1:13:53
Speaker 2: the American Gulf. First full just affected these other holes
1:13:56
Speaker 2: existed and they're worth worth being attention to. But it
1:14:02
Speaker 2: also brought attention to the fact that these holes. Let
1:14:10
Speaker 2: me pack up a minute, well, these holes differed dramatically
1:14:16
Speaker 2: from the Victorian kinds of designs that he inherited at
1:14:19
Speaker 2: Shinnakock and other places. The design theories behind the Victorian
1:14:26
Speaker 2: golf courses basically set out in exquisite detail the kinds
1:14:30
Speaker 2: of holes you should be designing. The design goals of
1:14:34
Speaker 2: laid Law, Purvos and other people sort of fell out
1:14:37
Speaker 2: from that. There was no need to go and if
1:14:39
Speaker 2: you design these kinds of holes, the design principles will
1:14:42
Speaker 2: take care of themselves. My design goals will take care
1:14:48
Speaker 2: McDonald had very different ideas about the right kinds of holes,
1:14:53
Speaker 2: but his methodology was very much like Purposes in the
1:14:57
Speaker 2: sense that I'm going to give you a fa really clear,
1:15:01
Speaker 2: detailed description of the kinds of holes you should be building,
1:15:05
Speaker 2: and if you build those holes, my design goals will
1:15:09
Speaker 2: fall out without naturally. And his design goals were make
1:15:15
Speaker 2: holes more strategic, make them require the golfer to do
1:15:19
Speaker 2: more thinking. It involved more than simply clearing a cross
1:15:23
Speaker 2: hazard at various distances. But from an architectural methodological point
1:15:29
Speaker 2: of view, he wasn't allowing the architect much leeway. I'm
1:15:35
Speaker 2: going to give you the whole kitten kaboodle you design
1:15:38
Speaker 2: a golf hole like my templates and your design goals
1:15:42
Speaker 2: take care of themselves. That's the And that was a
1:15:46
Speaker 2: methodology that he shared with the Victorious. He didn't get
1:15:51
Speaker 2: he really never got past that there's all sorts of
1:15:57
Speaker 2: old stuff and McDonald's that. Bernard Darwin wrote an article
1:16:02
Speaker 2: about McDonald in nineteen thirteen or nineteen fourteen. He had
1:16:05
Speaker 2: just visited Nationville Golf Links. Loved just absolutely loved it.
1:16:09
Speaker 2: But you know, there's a yeah, but he said, you know,
1:16:11
Speaker 2: there's a lot of really old stuff here. This is
1:16:15
Speaker 2: not cold. And and McDonald at one point brags about
1:16:23
Speaker 2: the fact that his Eden Hoole at National Golf Links
1:16:26
Speaker 2: has a water hazard between the green and the tee
1:16:30
Speaker 2: and he said that's good, he said, because that means
1:16:33
Speaker 2: you can't play the hole with a putter. And that
1:16:37
Speaker 2: was the main Victorian objection to the Eden Hole. With
1:16:40
Speaker 2: the old course, it didn't have a cross hazard. You
1:16:43
Speaker 2: could play with a putter. You could play down in
1:16:45
Speaker 2: the valley and putt between the hill bunker and strathbunker
1:16:48
Speaker 2: and get to the green, and that was viewed as
1:16:50
Speaker 2: a major problem with the Edenhole. Well, McDonald's figure when
1:16:55
Speaker 2: McDonald was bought into that Victorian argument at the Eden
1:16:59
Speaker 2: at National Golf Links. It's a very odd sort of
1:17:03
Speaker 2: throw in for somebody that we considered sort of the
1:17:06
Speaker 2: father of modern strategic golf architecture. In many ways, he
1:17:10
Speaker 2: was not. He was really he was really stuck in
1:17:12
Speaker 2: an ear older ear slightly, although we had different preferences
1:17:16
Speaker 2: and holes. So it's well, go ahead.
1:17:21
Speaker 1: Well, I'm curious about about where you see McDonald in
1:17:25
Speaker 1: that kind of evolutionary path. What insights do you think
1:17:32
Speaker 1: McDonald and Rainer for that matter, did not yet have
1:17:37
Speaker 1: about golf architecture, what remained to be done after their work,
1:17:43
Speaker 1: Because I mean, if you look at you know, one
1:17:45
Speaker 1: might argue, you look at National Golf Links, there aren't
1:17:47
Speaker 1: that many golf courses that have been built that are
1:17:49
Speaker 1: better than that.
1:17:52
Speaker 2: It's a it's a wonderful golf course. But his design,
1:17:56
Speaker 2: his design methodology was exactly the reverse of the design
1:18:01
Speaker 2: methodology of William Flynn, who will we'll talk about later
1:18:05
Speaker 2: and William Flynn's progenitors, which is Harry Colt and other
1:18:11
Speaker 2: other people, which is that the the the design goals
1:18:15
Speaker 2: of a golf course come out of a particular terrain,
1:18:21
Speaker 2: I'm going to I'm going to shape a particular piece
1:18:25
Speaker 2: of land so as to achieve certain prior design goals.
1:18:32
Speaker 2: For McDonald's and in frank for the For the Victorians,
1:18:35
Speaker 2: it was the reverse. I'm going to tell you how
1:18:38
Speaker 2: to design a golf hole, and the design goals will
1:18:41
Speaker 2: just come out automatically, and you can build my whole,
1:18:47
Speaker 2: you know, within certain limits. You can build my hole
1:18:50
Speaker 2: on a whole bunch of different kinds of terrain. But
1:18:53
Speaker 2: if you follow my instructions, things will come out. You know,
1:18:57
Speaker 2: the design objectives will be achieved. What's interesting rereading Scotland's
1:19:04
Speaker 2: gift and I urge I recommend it to everyone. In
1:19:10
Speaker 2: his section on golf architecture in the book, he reproduces
1:19:14
Speaker 2: almost in total his nineteen oh six article on the
1:19:18
Speaker 2: ideal golf course from Outing magazine, and lest we forget,
1:19:24
Speaker 2: he actually worked up a mathematical table for the features
1:19:29
Speaker 2: a good hole should have. He also worked up a
1:19:33
Speaker 2: sort of mathematical table on the links and various approach
1:19:37
Speaker 2: distances that any good eighteen hole golf course should have.
1:19:42
Speaker 2: That should all remind you of the controversial Joshua Crane
1:19:47
Speaker 2: course rankings that used essentially the same formula twenty years later.
1:19:53
Speaker 2: McDonald was, in some respects a sort of a halfway
1:19:56
Speaker 2: house to the kinds of things that we that we
1:20:01
Speaker 2: talk about and see today in modern in modern golf architecture.
1:20:07
Speaker 2: It was it was still he still had a foot
1:20:12
Speaker 2: in the Victorian world.
1:20:14
Speaker 1: He was a systematizer, wasn't he, And and so he
1:20:18
Speaker 1: was approaching the question of how to build a great
1:20:23
Speaker 1: golf course in a way that wasn't dissimilar from how
1:20:29
Speaker 1: Laidlaw Purvis was approaching it. His method, his kind of
1:20:34
Speaker 1: disposition as a thinker was was pretty parallel to that,
1:20:40
Speaker 1: but the conclusions that he came to were different. Because clearly,
1:20:45
Speaker 1: in reproducing some of these great links holes, he was
1:20:49
Speaker 1: first of all respecting the links and not saying we
1:20:53
Speaker 1: can do better than that, but saying we should be
1:20:55
Speaker 1: learning from these courses. And he was also re producing
1:21:00
Speaker 1: strategic concepts. So clearly he was able to kind of
1:21:03
Speaker 1: read these holes and derive from them strategic principles that
1:21:09
Speaker 1: that could then be applied to different pieces of land.
1:21:11
Speaker 1: But his insight that these holes had strategic content was
1:21:16
Speaker 1: was something new, or at least something different from most
1:21:20
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties designers, So there was there
1:21:24
Speaker 1: was definitely a key insight there. But as you say,
1:21:29
Speaker 1: his kind of habits of mind were still very similar
1:21:33
Speaker 1: to that Victorian attitude of we can make a science
1:21:36
Speaker 1: out of this, right, Yeah, And.
1:21:38
Speaker 2: I think that's I've had always had reservations about the
1:21:42
Speaker 2: template holes. They leave very little room for the imagination
1:21:50
Speaker 2: of the architect. You need you need to find the
1:21:53
Speaker 2: right spot for them. You need to find the right
1:21:56
Speaker 2: place in an eighteen hole round are very extraneous questions.
1:22:01
Speaker 2: But if you're seth Rayner, you follow the template and
1:22:07
Speaker 2: those happen to be very good holes. Don't get me wrong,
1:22:12
Speaker 2: but it is a very different way to design a
1:22:14
Speaker 2: golf course than from the one that I think Low
1:22:18
Speaker 2: would have. In fact, I'm pretty sure Low disagreed with
1:22:22
Speaker 2: that way of going about designing a golf course. Colt
1:22:24
Speaker 2: certainly did, Darwin certainly did, Mackenzie certainly did. And we
1:22:31
Speaker 2: can talk about that when we get to the next
1:22:33
Speaker 2: stage at Shennacock. But McDonald presents interesting intellectual puzzles about
1:22:42
Speaker 2: what it is about template holes that made sense and
1:22:46
Speaker 2: that were also problematical.
1:22:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's get to that third version of the
1:22:52
Speaker 1: golf course nineteen thirty one, at least that's when it
1:22:56
Speaker 1: was finished. New Land was purchased because the highway Route
1:23:01
Speaker 1: twenty seven I believe it is, was routed close to
1:23:06
Speaker 1: the existing course, or really through the pre existing course
1:23:11
Speaker 1: at Shinnakak Hills, and so they needed to expand the
1:23:14
Speaker 1: course elsewhere. And of course, you know, technology had advanced
1:23:17
Speaker 1: and they're maybe looking for a digger course as well
1:23:19
Speaker 1: than the one that McDonald and Rayner built in nineteen sixteen,
1:23:22
Speaker 1: which topped out at about six thousand yards. So they
1:23:25
Speaker 1: brought in William Flynn to design a new golf course. Really,
1:23:31
Speaker 1: there are some holes that are kind of located near
1:23:35
Speaker 1: old holes, some holes that roughly occupy the same corridors.
1:23:38
Speaker 1: But this was really a brand new golf course. It
1:23:41
Speaker 1: wasn't a renovation. This was a William Flynn design. And
1:23:45
Speaker 1: so how do you read this design and then connect
1:23:49
Speaker 1: it to these kind of historical trends that we're talking about.
1:23:52
Speaker 2: We have to add, Garrett, that one trip the controversial
1:23:57
Speaker 2: wild Man, founder of Pan American Airways, was the one
1:24:00
Speaker 2: that brought William Flinn in. I think that's interesting, very interesting,
1:24:05
Speaker 2: though younger younger listeners may not know it. Pan American
1:24:09
Speaker 2: Airlines was at one time one of the larger, one
1:24:11
Speaker 2: of the major air carriers.
1:24:12
Speaker 1: It was it was the most romantic airlines as far
1:24:17
Speaker 1: as I can see, the most fashionable and cool one.
1:24:22
Speaker 1: I guess I.
1:24:23
Speaker 2: Have a friend who was a stewardess or a flight
1:24:26
Speaker 2: attendant sorry on pandem and it was The stories are
1:24:29
Speaker 2: amazing at any rate. To step back just a minute,
1:24:36
Speaker 2: there is an assumption among US Americans that golf arket,
1:24:41
Speaker 2: the evolution of golf architecture was American, that it was
1:24:47
Speaker 2: all it all sort of happened here, and that's sort
1:24:53
Speaker 2: of all we need to know. There's a similar view
1:24:58
Speaker 2: of the American Revolution. We all we need to know
1:25:00
Speaker 2: was what happened with Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson. There was in fact
1:25:04
Speaker 2: a hell a lot going on in Britain, and to
1:25:06
Speaker 2: get the whole picture you need to understand that well.
1:25:09
Speaker 1: Especially considering that those guys were English.
1:25:12
Speaker 2: Through English, right. So so William Flynn raises the whole
1:25:20
Speaker 2: history of Synagogue, actually raises the question is American golf
1:25:26
Speaker 2: architecture really the tale on a British Dog? And I
1:25:31
Speaker 2: think it is. William Flynn came out of what was
1:25:37
Speaker 2: now called what is now called the Philadelphia School George Crump,
1:25:41
Speaker 2: A W. Tilling Has George Thomas, Uh, I'm leaving people out, Wilson. Wilson. Yeah,
1:25:51
Speaker 2: a school of golf architecture that that was acknowledged its
1:25:58
Speaker 2: its debt to a number of important English golf architects.
1:26:04
Speaker 2: George Crump at one point was stuck at Pine Valley
1:26:07
Speaker 2: and brought Harry Colt in to fix it. That sort
1:26:11
Speaker 2: of thing. They understood what was being written and talked
1:26:19
Speaker 2: about and built in the UK. They understood it was
1:26:23
Speaker 2: probably a better way to go about designing golf courses,
1:26:26
Speaker 2: and they brought those ideas to America. That's why I
1:26:33
Speaker 2: think they are such an important chapter in American golf architecture.
1:26:38
Speaker 2: William Flynn was part of that, probably one of the
1:26:41
Speaker 2: younger members of that group. Brought in to redesign Shnacock
1:26:49
Speaker 2: along more traditional what we would call traditional strategic lines,
1:26:56
Speaker 2: made it the great golf course it is today. But
1:27:00
Speaker 2: broke with McDonald and i'll get harp again on my
1:27:05
Speaker 2: theme that did he didn't design Shnacock based on a
1:27:11
Speaker 2: set of plans that described for him various design details
1:27:16
Speaker 2: of the various holes. He went out and looked at
1:27:19
Speaker 2: what the terrain said to him, interpreted it. He had
1:27:23
Speaker 2: an artistic flare about things. Built a golf course from
1:27:29
Speaker 2: a specific piece of land that would reflect basic design
1:27:33
Speaker 2: goals that he and others of the Philadelphia school had.
1:27:38
Speaker 2: And I think that that approach to golf architecture, it
1:27:42
Speaker 2: was flipping McDonald in some respects, was far more productive,
1:27:47
Speaker 2: made for far better golf courses, and opened the way
1:27:51
Speaker 2: to basically modern golf architecture. The cores, the doakes, all
1:27:56
Speaker 2: the rest. And it was the beginning. You know, it
1:28:04
Speaker 2: was quietly revolutionary. Although Flynn was late in the game
1:28:08
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty one, the real revolutionary stuff was happening
1:28:12
Speaker 2: a little bit earlier.
1:28:13
Speaker 1: Well, certainly by the time he designed Shinnecock Hills, this
1:28:17
Speaker 1: idea of golf architecture had reached a kind of maturity.
1:28:20
Speaker 1: This is Lake Golden Age architecture. This is when Alistair
1:28:23
Speaker 1: McKenzie is doing a lot of his work in California
1:28:26
Speaker 1: and similarly reaching a kind of apex there. But you know,
1:28:31
Speaker 1: maybe one way of understanding what you're describing is that
1:28:35
Speaker 1: you know Flynn's approach focusing on the land first, but
1:28:40
Speaker 1: also introducing these strategic concepts that are broadly shared with
1:28:45
Speaker 1: McDonald and Rayner. Is that whereas McDonald and Rayner might
1:28:49
Speaker 1: have kind of signposted the strategic ideas of their holes,
1:28:55
Speaker 1: really highlighted them for the player and shown them what
1:28:58
Speaker 1: they are doing through artificial features, at the new Shnecock Hills,
1:29:06
Speaker 1: those ideas were still there, but they are all concealed
1:29:10
Speaker 1: because it all just looks like the land, right, and
1:29:12
Speaker 1: so these strategic features are are kind of pre existing
1:29:18
Speaker 1: humps and bumps, and you know if they when there
1:29:21
Speaker 1: are bunkers, they appear to be in the right place
1:29:24
Speaker 1: where a bunker might be on this kind of land,
1:29:26
Speaker 1: and so it's all there's a kind of seamlessness about
1:29:29
Speaker 1: the architecture and a lack of sign posting that allows
1:29:33
Speaker 1: the player to then discover the strategic nature of the holes,
1:29:36
Speaker 1: as opposed to having that taught to him.
1:29:39
Speaker 2: I think that's an interesting way to put it. I
1:29:41
Speaker 2: would put it slightly differently. I think the strategic the
1:29:45
Speaker 2: strategic aspects of the of the of the Flynn design
1:29:49
Speaker 2: at Shinnikok emerged from the natural conditions there in the
1:29:55
Speaker 2: land and the new land they acquired what one hundred
1:29:58
Speaker 2: and ten acres I think after McDonald's course was closed
1:30:02
Speaker 2: down Route twenty seven cut off most of.
1:30:05
Speaker 1: It, including some of the best land.
1:30:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you've ever been there, Yeah, yeah, it's ever
1:30:12
Speaker 2: been there. It's it's great and it would have been
1:30:13
Speaker 2: great land down there. But there's just a big highway
1:30:15
Speaker 2: in a railroad down there. But but Flynn looks out
1:30:22
Speaker 2: over a piece of land. His genius is to devise
1:30:27
Speaker 2: ways to design golf holes from which an emergent quality
1:30:34
Speaker 2: is strategy. McDonald told you what to design, and the
1:30:40
Speaker 2: strategy just falls out naturally from his instructions, and and
1:30:47
Speaker 2: Flynn's was it is the modern way to design golf courses.
1:30:53
Speaker 2: That's how people do it now, or at least the
1:30:55
Speaker 2: good ones. And it is it is an important stage
1:31:02
Speaker 2: in golf architecture. But it is I think a stage
1:31:05
Speaker 2: that is to some extent derivative of hard thinking and
1:31:11
Speaker 2: hard lessons that people learned in Britain earlier.
1:31:15
Speaker 1: How would you trace that intellectual history of this idea
1:31:19
Speaker 1: of golf course design that William Flynn then executed in
1:31:22
Speaker 1: the third version of Shneakak Hills. We can go we
1:31:26
Speaker 1: might we could go too deep on this, but take
1:31:29
Speaker 1: us back a little bit. What is you know, what
1:31:32
Speaker 1: is the history of this idea and how did it
1:31:35
Speaker 1: eventually come out here.
1:31:37
Speaker 2: I'll take you as deep as you want to go.
1:31:39
Speaker 2: You cut me off. McDonald begins with the best golf
1:31:44
Speaker 2: Holes discussion in Golf Illustrated in nineteen oh one, and
1:31:48
Speaker 2: he highlights Lowe's contribution to that which was, by any measure,
1:31:54
Speaker 2: the beginnings think of a different way of thinking about
1:31:57
Speaker 2: golf architecture and frankly the beginning of mine in golf architecture.
1:32:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just to give people context here about the
1:32:03
Speaker 1: best holes discussion, this was a moment when this publication
1:32:11
Speaker 1: Golf Illustrated, right, Golf Illustrated had basically asked the question
1:32:17
Speaker 1: to people, you know, what are what are the best
1:32:20
Speaker 1: golf holes? What is really class golf? You know? Or
1:32:24
Speaker 1: what is the what is what is a good golf course?
1:32:26
Speaker 1: And and they, you know, a lot of significant figures
1:32:29
Speaker 1: in golf at the time ended up responding with their
1:32:32
Speaker 1: opinions about what the best golf holes were, and most interestingly,
1:32:36
Speaker 1: some like like John Lowe, who were inclined toward, you know,
1:32:41
Speaker 1: more kind of intellectual pursuits. It ended up writing these
1:32:44
Speaker 1: big articles about the philosophy of what made a good
1:32:48
Speaker 1: golf hole.
1:32:49
Speaker 2: Since you've opened the door, I'll walk in it, walk
1:32:51
Speaker 2: through it. In early nineteen oh one, Golf Illustrated published
1:32:57
Speaker 2: a long article, almost certainly by laid law purpose, that said,
1:33:01
Speaker 2: we now know so much about the design of golf course,
1:33:04
Speaker 2: and the basic ideas are so settled that we need
1:33:08
Speaker 2: to build a standardized golf course in order to facilitate handicaps.
1:33:16
Speaker 2: There was a very strong reaction to that. The standardization
1:33:19
Speaker 2: of golf courses was not a very popular idea, even
1:33:22
Speaker 2: if it facilitated handicaps. So in response, Garden Smith, the
1:33:26
Speaker 2: editor of Golf Illustrated, said, well, let's do a survey
1:33:29
Speaker 2: of what people think the best holes are and maybe
1:33:31
Speaker 2: there'll be a consensus. We can arrive at a consensus
1:33:35
Speaker 2: and build golf courses based on those holes.
1:33:38
Speaker 1: I don't have that.
1:33:39
Speaker 2: I think there were fifteen or eighteen people that responded
1:33:43
Speaker 2: to the survey, and the instructions of the survey would
1:33:47
Speaker 2: tell us your favorite part three, par four and par five.
1:33:52
Speaker 2: A whole bunch of people responded, gave their holes, and
1:33:55
Speaker 2: then Golf Illustrated asked three or four people, including John Lowe,
1:33:59
Speaker 2: who was at the time only in his late twenties.
1:34:05
Speaker 2: They asked him, along with Hutchinson and Hilton, to give
1:34:10
Speaker 2: a more elaborate answer, and Lowe's essay is one of
1:34:15
Speaker 2: the most remarkable things written ever in golf. It took
1:34:20
Speaker 2: on the assumption that almost everybody else on the survey had,
1:34:24
Speaker 2: which was that good golf holes have certain cross hazers
1:34:27
Speaker 2: at certain intervals, and good golf require full shots of
1:34:31
Speaker 2: certain length. Low took all that on said no, no
1:34:38
Speaker 2: golf course designed as evidence by Saint Andrew's and other
1:34:45
Speaker 2: golf courses, requires the careful placements of shots in order
1:34:50
Speaker 2: to open up to make easier the next shot, and
1:34:53
Speaker 2: it requires various analysis and thinking as opposed to pure
1:34:58
Speaker 2: athletic skill. He went on to develop those ideas over
1:35:01
Speaker 2: the next two or three years. He right after that
1:35:05
Speaker 2: he became a weekly columnist for the for the for
1:35:08
Speaker 2: the The Athletic, which was a London weekly UH newspaper,
1:35:15
Speaker 2: and developed his ideas, you know, almost on a weekly
1:35:18
Speaker 2: basis thereafter over the next several years. Colt Uh, Alison, Simpson, Fowler, Darwin,
1:35:29
Speaker 2: everybody picks up on his ideas, and literally, overnight, the
1:35:35
Speaker 2: Victorian golf courses begin to disappear. It's it's staggering how
1:35:40
Speaker 2: quickly they vanish. That is the background, to the British
1:35:47
Speaker 2: background to golf, to to to modern golf architecture. Americans
1:35:52
Speaker 2: picked up on that A little later. McDonald came to
1:35:56
Speaker 2: the party. A little later. Travis came to the party
1:35:59
Speaker 2: a little A little later, Travis pulls Ross aside in
1:36:04
Speaker 2: nineteen twelve and says, don you got to rethink how
1:36:08
Speaker 2: you're designing this Pinehurst stuff. And Ross completely changes the
1:36:12
Speaker 2: way he designs his golf courses. The number two becomes
1:36:17
Speaker 2: a whole different golf course. But it all starts, I think,
1:36:24
Speaker 2: with Low beginning to question the basic tenets of Victorian
1:36:29
Speaker 2: golf architecture, and everybody goes hold the phone. He's right,
1:36:35
Speaker 2: and Victorian golf architecture dies suddenly. It literally. There's still
1:36:42
Speaker 2: some courses in America being built as late as nineteen
1:36:44
Speaker 2: oh five, nineteen oh six, but not very many, most all, most,
1:36:48
Speaker 2: most of most of the courses in America are beginning
1:36:51
Speaker 2: to reflect the newer ideas, and William flynn is is
1:36:56
Speaker 2: is at the tail end of that the golden age
1:36:59
Speaker 2: of golf arcitecture is that golf architecture. The golf architecture
1:37:06
Speaker 2: I think motivated by Lowe's id is the Colts, the followers.
1:37:10
Speaker 2: I mean, you get on the usual list that is
1:37:13
Speaker 2: the golden age of golf architecture. William Flynn comes in
1:37:16
Speaker 2: and sort of the tail end of that, but nonetheless
1:37:20
Speaker 2: an enormously talented guy who did great work, and Sinacock
1:37:26
Speaker 2: is the beneficiary.
1:37:28
Speaker 1: So would you say that since MacDonald read Lowe himself
1:37:35
Speaker 1: and was influenced by this best Holes discussion, that he
1:37:40
Speaker 1: just kind of had a different interpretation of this material
1:37:45
Speaker 1: than say, Harry Colt and Alistair McKenzie and the progenitors
1:37:51
Speaker 1: of this more kind of naturalist approach to golf course
1:37:54
Speaker 1: design that William Flynn then implemented later at Shinnecock Hills.
1:37:59
Speaker 1: It seems like they're had two different sprouts out out
1:38:03
Speaker 1: of this discussion in Golf Illustrated, you know, one represented
1:38:06
Speaker 1: by the McDonald Rainer school and the other represented by
1:38:09
Speaker 1: these other architects.
1:38:10
Speaker 2: I started to say, but I will now say it
1:38:15
Speaker 2: is that McDonald's and low and low by Low, I mean, Reed, Cold,
1:38:21
Speaker 2: et cetera. McDonald and Low were both reactions to Victorian
1:38:27
Speaker 2: golf architecture, but very different kinds of reactions to Victorian
1:38:31
Speaker 2: golf architecture. McDonald still had some of the methodological features
1:38:37
Speaker 2: that will that Laid Law Crobus brought to it. That
1:38:40
Speaker 2: is to say, I'm going to tell you how to
1:38:41
Speaker 2: design golf holes, and the design objectives I have in
1:38:46
Speaker 2: mind will fall out naturally if you design the holes
1:38:48
Speaker 2: according to my plans. Low approached things differently the way
1:38:55
Speaker 2: William Flynn did, which is that there is a I
1:38:59
Speaker 2: have a philosophy of how a golf course ought to
1:39:01
Speaker 2: operate on a golfer. I have no specifics as to
1:39:06
Speaker 2: how you do that, but your genius is to figure
1:39:11
Speaker 2: it out, and you go find a piece of land
1:39:15
Speaker 2: and that particular hole or that particular golf course its
1:39:20
Speaker 2: features will be unique to that particular piece of land.
1:39:23
Speaker 2: But we do have at least some general idea of
1:39:27
Speaker 2: your objectives, and I'm not going to tell you how
1:39:31
Speaker 2: to do it. I'm not going to give you template
1:39:34
Speaker 2: holes that make your job easier. On the other hand,
1:39:38
Speaker 2: by making your job harder, it also opens the way
1:39:43
Speaker 2: to you being more imaginative and artistic. You can do
1:39:47
Speaker 2: things that replicating template holes won't allow you to do,
1:39:53
Speaker 2: and that I think was part of what made Colt
1:39:56
Speaker 2: so great. While we still love his golf courses and
1:39:59
Speaker 2: the hole, the whole group of those guys. Uh uh.
1:40:03
Speaker 2: And then the Philadelphia School really picks up on a
1:40:05
Speaker 2: lot of that.
1:40:06
Speaker 1: Uh.
1:40:07
Speaker 2: And I'm just limiting to the Philadelphic School. There are
1:40:09
Speaker 2: others too, but it's a different it's a dramatically different
1:40:14
Speaker 2: way to approach the question of how you design a
1:40:17
Speaker 2: golf mm hmm.
1:40:18
Speaker 1: It's prescriptions. Well, no, it's principles rather than prescriptions.
1:40:23
Speaker 2: Right, principles. But I think I used the word prescription
1:40:26
Speaker 2: in that old essay about in that old article about
1:40:29
Speaker 2: about Sherika. Sure, it is not a prescription, it's it's
1:40:33
Speaker 2: a it's just a general sense of where you want
1:40:37
Speaker 2: to be at the end of the day.
1:40:40
Speaker 1: Well, so I want to give a a kind of
1:40:43
Speaker 1: a stamp of approval to this line of thinking that
1:40:46
Speaker 1: you've guided me through here, Bob, by bringing in something
1:40:50
Speaker 1: that Bill Corr said to us recently. And this is
1:40:53
Speaker 1: this is actually unpublished material. It is I'm just reading
1:40:57
Speaker 1: from a transcript of an interview that we did with
1:41:00
Speaker 1: Bill Corr about Shinnacak Hills, and parts of that interview
1:41:03
Speaker 1: are going to be included in our video on the
1:41:06
Speaker 1: course coming up, I think in a couple of weeks here.
1:41:09
Speaker 1: But he said something that really I think illuminates or
1:41:15
Speaker 1: matches with in a nice way, what we've been talking about.
1:41:18
Speaker 1: He said, you know, MacDonald and Raider, they owed to
1:41:21
Speaker 1: classic golf imported from the UK, the best holes, the
1:41:25
Speaker 1: best possible holes to create here in America, and these
1:41:31
Speaker 1: were the kind of natural gifts that they imported from
1:41:34
Speaker 1: from Scotland. Shinnecock, on the other hand, Flynn's Shinnecock was
1:41:38
Speaker 1: a tribute to the landforms that were there. So you know,
1:41:43
Speaker 1: clearly when Bill went on to say, you know, he
1:41:47
Speaker 1: certainly understood the National and all the classic holes that
1:41:50
Speaker 1: had so influenced the building of the National. But I
1:41:52
Speaker 1: have an idea he would have said, okay, I'm letting
1:41:54
Speaker 1: this land more dictate this golf course instead of trying
1:41:57
Speaker 1: to emulate or create existing holes somewhere. And so I
1:42:01
Speaker 1: think that that, you know, Bill puts it that way,
1:42:05
Speaker 1: I think because you know, first of all, it's it's true.
1:42:08
Speaker 1: There's a truth there about about William Flynn's design approach
1:42:11
Speaker 1: in contrast to McDonald and Rainers. But Bill is also
1:42:15
Speaker 1: talking about his own design approach in a way, you know,
1:42:17
Speaker 1: because well.
1:42:18
Speaker 2: He absolutely is and and and he is very much
1:42:21
Speaker 2: in line with Cole William Flynn. So it's dope. I mean,
1:42:25
Speaker 2: these guys are all part of a similar perspective on golf,
1:42:31
Speaker 2: on golf architecture. To be sympathetic to McDonald a bit, yeah,
1:42:36
Speaker 2: I wanted to get there because I'm still add who
1:42:39
Speaker 2: doesn't a man who doesn't need sympathy?
1:42:41
Speaker 1: Right is that?
1:42:46
Speaker 2: And I said this earlier, but I'll try to say
1:42:48
Speaker 2: it again real quickly. He he. He took from the
1:42:52
Speaker 2: best Hole discussion in Go in nineteen oh one a
1:42:55
Speaker 2: set of holes that he thought were really good. He
1:42:57
Speaker 2: traveled to Scotland and England often had seen the holes,
1:43:01
Speaker 2: knew the holes. He had though, to come back to
1:43:04
Speaker 2: America and try to convince people that these were really
1:43:07
Speaker 2: good holes. Nobody had seen them, nobody was familiar with them,
1:43:12
Speaker 2: nobody was going to see them anytime soon. And so
1:43:17
Speaker 2: he decides to do templates. I'm going to show you
1:43:22
Speaker 2: what these holes look like, because he needed to, and
1:43:29
Speaker 2: so to some extent if he's going to base golf
1:43:32
Speaker 2: architecture on holes nobody has seen, he's got to at
1:43:36
Speaker 2: least show them what he's talking about. And so he,
1:43:39
Speaker 2: I think was in a bitter He was cornered in
1:43:43
Speaker 2: that respect. He had no choice but to do templates.
1:43:46
Speaker 2: Now he could have loosened up his dictates about all
1:43:50
Speaker 2: that with Rayner, you know, do what you want to do,
1:43:54
Speaker 2: you know, mess around with their Dan concept if you
1:43:56
Speaker 2: want to. But he didn't seem to be inclined to
1:43:58
Speaker 2: do that. He was he was very much authoritarian figure.
1:44:03
Speaker 1: You know, there's a pattern in discussions of cultural history
1:44:08
Speaker 1: that I've noticed and that I'm not saying you're falling into,
1:44:11
Speaker 1: but in fact, I think you're you're resisting to an
1:44:13
Speaker 1: extent where when we tell these stories about the development
1:44:17
Speaker 1: of a cultural form, whether it's golf architecture or literature
1:44:21
Speaker 1: or film, we tend to underrate the cultural artifacts that
1:44:28
Speaker 1: came early in that development or came before the development.
1:44:33
Speaker 1: When we tell our story of the you know, kind
1:44:35
Speaker 1: of progress of an art form, the implication is that
1:44:40
Speaker 1: what we get at the end of that progress is
1:44:42
Speaker 1: the best thing, and that everything else was kind of
1:44:44
Speaker 1: a stepping stone. Along the way to get there and
1:44:47
Speaker 1: therefore not as good in and of itself.
1:44:50
Speaker 2: The Whig interpretation of history exactly.
1:44:53
Speaker 1: You know, this is a very yeah, this is this
1:44:57
Speaker 1: corresponds with actually a lot of stuff you've written about
1:44:59
Speaker 1: about the the kind of you know, Victorian perspective on
1:45:04
Speaker 1: things that everything's progressed and the stuff in the past
1:45:07
Speaker 1: is mcclasse and we can disregard it. And this very
1:45:10
Speaker 1: much became an attitude like after World War Two and
1:45:13
Speaker 1: accounted for a lot of the destruction of the great
1:45:16
Speaker 1: Golden Age golf architecture that we both love. But in
1:45:19
Speaker 1: any case, I think we need to be careful about
1:45:24
Speaker 1: that because you know, to say that McDonald and Rayner
1:45:28
Speaker 1: were part of the progress toward a certain idea of
1:45:31
Speaker 1: golf architecture that we got to at the Great Shinnekhawk
1:45:35
Speaker 1: Hills isn't to say that McDonald and rayner were bad,
1:45:38
Speaker 1: or that National Golf Links is bad or the Chicago
1:45:41
Speaker 1: Golf Club is bad. In fact, those are terrific, wonderful
1:45:44
Speaker 1: golf courses, but they do sit in this, you know,
1:45:50
Speaker 1: in a certain place in this narrative of history. So
1:45:53
Speaker 1: just as you know, not every film that was made
1:45:57
Speaker 1: before the kind of revolution in Hollywood. It in the
1:46:00
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies with Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppole, et cetera.
1:46:05
Speaker 1: Just as not every film made before that was a
1:46:07
Speaker 1: bad film. In fact, Alfred Hitchcock made some made some
1:46:10
Speaker 1: pretty good stuff in the fifties. Uh that that, you know,
1:46:14
Speaker 1: everybody still loves we We can't, you know, uh, persuade
1:46:21
Speaker 1: ourselves to to disregard the things that were made before
1:46:26
Speaker 1: the thing that we find to be the most fully developed.
1:46:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. I McDonald pushed things along. I mean he he
1:46:32
Speaker 2: he was. He was a helpful at least in America
1:46:37
Speaker 2: he was, and he was never a factor, never a
1:46:40
Speaker 2: factor in Britain they allyby kind of scoffed at his ideas.
1:46:45
Speaker 2: But he helped America along because America knew nothing about
1:46:48
Speaker 2: any of this. They it was, it was there was
1:46:51
Speaker 2: still a new sport. But getting back to your wig
1:46:54
Speaker 2: thing that that history tends towards progress, that there's an
1:47:01
Speaker 2: arc to history which goes from the primitive to the
1:47:05
Speaker 2: more sophisticated. What I think of the glories of John
1:47:10
Speaker 2: Lowe and his and his close friend Harry Colt and
1:47:14
Speaker 2: others is that they viewed golf. The history of golf
1:47:19
Speaker 2: architecture is anti Whigism. That is to say, we don't
1:47:24
Speaker 2: want to see progress in golf course design. We already
1:47:27
Speaker 2: know what's the good stuff. It's the stuff that some
1:47:31
Speaker 2: mystery man we don't know who it was designed for.
1:47:34
Speaker 2: The holes at the Old Course and other great links courses,
1:47:38
Speaker 2: uh and and and and the the templates, wrong word,
1:47:43
Speaker 2: the the ideas behind those golf holes are timeless, and
1:47:50
Speaker 2: there is no sense in which you're going to ever,
1:47:52
Speaker 2: if you're any good you ever get beyond them. You'll
1:47:54
Speaker 2: just you'll just manipulate them, interpret them, apply them in
1:47:58
Speaker 2: different contexts, all sorts of things, but that the core
1:48:03
Speaker 2: ideas are more or less timeless, and that there is
1:48:07
Speaker 2: no sense in which you're going to move beyond them
1:48:10
Speaker 2: to some other better kind of golf course.
1:48:14
Speaker 1: So you've got to be I guess what I'm arguing,
1:48:18
Speaker 1: and what I'm taking from what you're saying is that,
1:48:20
Speaker 1: you know, kind of being open minded about about the
1:48:23
Speaker 1: past is a great idea for an artist, because if
1:48:26
Speaker 1: you disregard entire swaths of things that were built or
1:48:31
Speaker 1: created in the past, then you're kind of you know,
1:48:34
Speaker 1: limiting yourself and and that was an insight that the
1:48:38
Speaker 1: early Golden Age architects in Britain, cults, et cetera brought
1:48:42
Speaker 1: and they said, actually, actually look at these lengths courses.
1:48:46
Speaker 1: They're amazing. And I you know, what you're saying also
1:48:51
Speaker 1: resonates so much with where golf architecture and the discussion
1:48:55
Speaker 1: of golf architecture is right now, because there are many
1:48:59
Speaker 1: there are many people who bemoan the fact that golf
1:49:03
Speaker 1: architecture doesn't seem to be innovating or coming up with
1:49:07
Speaker 1: new ideas, or seems to be stuck in the Golden
1:49:09
Speaker 1: Age or stuck in this links tribute stage and are
1:49:14
Speaker 1: very frustrated with that. A lot of people think that
1:49:16
Speaker 1: that's a bad thing because they see art as something
1:49:19
Speaker 1: that necessarily must always be breaking the past and progressing
1:49:23
Speaker 1: on to something new. But my own attitude towards it
1:49:27
Speaker 1: is that we don't necessarily need to do that. What
1:49:32
Speaker 1: we need to do is to react to the land
1:49:34
Speaker 1: and to stay true to the principles that we know
1:49:39
Speaker 1: to be true.
1:49:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there are all sorts of applications to
1:49:43
Speaker 2: new terrains and new features, but those applications there is
1:49:50
Speaker 2: a limited set of applications that one can productively do
1:49:57
Speaker 2: to a specific sort of terrain, and the genius is
1:50:01
Speaker 2: figuring out which is best, which how to nuance that
1:50:05
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. But it's not like you're going
1:50:07
Speaker 2: to ever. I think it's the wrong question to think
1:50:10
Speaker 2: that you're going to somehow move beyond that to a new, different,
1:50:14
Speaker 2: better universe of golf architecture. It's not going to happen.
1:50:18
Speaker 2: I mean, golf architecture is not like the evolution of
1:50:22
Speaker 2: physics or chemistry.
1:50:24
Speaker 1: It has even poetry for that matter.
1:50:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, say yeah, it's it's it's it is what it is,
1:50:30
Speaker 2: and we all, you know, practitioners struggle with the same
1:50:34
Speaker 2: issues that they'd struggled with in nineteen ten. They have
1:50:39
Speaker 2: better equipment, they have you know, that sort of thing,
1:50:41
Speaker 2: but it's just the issues are the same, and there
1:50:44
Speaker 2: will I don't think there will ever be a time
1:50:46
Speaker 2: where we sort of break through to a new, different
1:50:49
Speaker 2: universe with a cleaner slate of questions that will all
1:50:55
Speaker 2: applaud I just it's not going to happen.
1:50:59
Speaker 1: Well, Bob, this has been, as always, a very interesting conversation.
1:51:03
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming on the podcast again. Looking forward,
1:51:06
Speaker 1: to Shinnecock Hills.
1:51:08
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. I look forward to it
1:51:09
Speaker 2: as well.
1:51:18
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam.
1:51:22
Speaker 1: Thank you, Will, so obviously, as you heard in this episode,
1:51:26
Speaker 1: the next men's major is upon us the US Open
1:51:29
Speaker 1: at Shinnecock Hills, and to celebrate the occasion, we've got
1:51:33
Speaker 1: new additions to our major's collection in the Friday Golf
1:51:37
Speaker 1: pro Shop. Everyone on the team here is very excited
1:51:40
Speaker 1: about seeing Shinnecock Hills in action, so my colleague Cameron
1:51:45
Speaker 1: heard us created a new routing map, T shirt and poster.
1:51:49
Speaker 1: Cameron is one of the best in the business at
1:51:52
Speaker 1: these kinds of things, and we also have an incredible
1:51:55
Speaker 1: illustrated poster by Will Eager. There's much more availab including
1:52:00
Speaker 1: plenty of US Open themed apparel and hats, so go
1:52:04
Speaker 1: check it out at Proshop dot Thefrida Egg dot com.
1:52:08
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, and we'll be back again soon,
1:52:11
Speaker 1: in fact next week for another episode.