Latest / Designing Golf / Great Courses: Merion

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Great Courses: Merion · Designing Golf

0:00
Speaker 1: The East Course at Marion Golf Club is kind of
0:03
Speaker 1: a contradiction. This Hugh Wilson William Flynn design is one
0:08
Speaker 1: of the oldest great American golf courses, so it's not
0:12
Speaker 1: surprising that by modern standards it's pretty small, yet it's
0:16
Speaker 1: still capable of testing the best golfers in the world.
0:21
Speaker 1: And today we're going to find out why. I'm Garrett
0:24
Speaker 1: Morrison and this is designing golf. All right, Before I
0:34
Speaker 1: bring on my guest today, Wayne Morrison, let's do some Marion.
0:39
Speaker 1: One oh one. What are the big things that you
0:41
Speaker 1: need to know about the East Course at Marion Golf Club.
0:45
Speaker 1: First little bit of history. Marian started way back in
0:48
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five as predominantly a cricket club, but in
0:52
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties golf became suddenly popular in the US
0:56
Speaker 1: and members at Marion started playing golf on a kind
1:00
Speaker 1: of rudimentary course. These were the origins of Marion Golf Club,
1:05
Speaker 1: but the cricket and golf clubs actually didn't officially separate
1:09
Speaker 1: until the early nineteen forties. So the East Course at
1:13
Speaker 1: Marion opened in nineteen twelve. It was in Ardmore, Pennsylvania,
1:19
Speaker 1: basically a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia. The architect of record
1:24
Speaker 1: was a member named Hugh Wilson, who was the head
1:27
Speaker 1: of the club's green committee. Wilson also designed the West
1:31
Speaker 1: Course at Marion, about a mile down the road, but
1:35
Speaker 1: the East Course as it stands today is I think
1:39
Speaker 1: best understood as a collaborative design effort. Hugh Wilson was
1:44
Speaker 1: the driving force and the initial architect, but he had
1:47
Speaker 1: critical assistance from the club's greenkeeper, William Flynn. Flynn's name
1:52
Speaker 1: you might recognize. He went on to become one of
1:55
Speaker 1: America's greatest golf architects, designing Shinnakawk Hills as well as
2:00
Speaker 1: bunch of other excellent courses, but he got his start
2:03
Speaker 1: at Marion, and I think he learned his craft under
2:07
Speaker 1: the influence of Hugh Wilson and in the context of Marion.
2:13
Speaker 1: So between nineteen twelve and the nineteen thirties, William Flynn
2:17
Speaker 1: and Hugh Wilson made a number of important updates to
2:20
Speaker 1: the East Course, molding it into essentially the course that
2:24
Speaker 1: we know today, which is one of our top championship venues.
2:29
Speaker 1: It's hosted five US opens and is on the schedule
2:33
Speaker 1: for twenty thirty twenty forty and twenty fifty. It's also
2:37
Speaker 1: hosted six US Amateurs, with the seventh coming up next week.
2:42
Speaker 1: All right, that brings us to the East Course itself.
2:46
Speaker 1: Let's talk about land design and routing. The first thing
2:51
Speaker 1: to know is that the property is very small. It's
2:55
Speaker 1: only about one hundred and fifteen acres that's taken up
2:58
Speaker 1: by the golf course. By comparison to Oakmont Country Club
3:02
Speaker 1: is around two hundred acres. Pinehurst Number two in Shinnakawk
3:06
Speaker 1: Hills around the same Marion is much smaller. But the
3:11
Speaker 1: routing of the East Course is so good that you
3:14
Speaker 1: really don't notice that the property is limited. For example,
3:19
Speaker 1: if you look at holes two through nine, they all
3:22
Speaker 1: sit in a valley that's about three hundred yards wide
3:26
Speaker 1: and nine hundred and fifty yards long, so pretty narrow,
3:30
Speaker 1: and there are eight holes packed into this one rectangle.
3:35
Speaker 1: The danger here would be ending up with a bunch
3:38
Speaker 1: of parallel holes kind of running up and down the valley.
3:42
Speaker 1: That's when golfers would notice, you know this, this property
3:46
Speaker 1: is pretty small. We're kind of hemmed in here going
3:49
Speaker 1: back and forth. But the East Course avoids this in
3:53
Speaker 1: a really clever way. Basically, holes two through nine form
3:58
Speaker 1: two big overlap loops, so you're always changing direction and
4:03
Speaker 1: swirling around the property instead of just bouncing back and forth.
4:09
Speaker 1: Another brilliant aspect of Marian's routing is its pacing. Famously,
4:14
Speaker 1: the writer Jerry Tardy compared the East Course to a
4:18
Speaker 1: three act play, quote the drama of the first six
4:22
Speaker 1: demanding holes, the comedy of the next seven, and the
4:26
Speaker 1: tragedy of the last five. That makes a lot of sense.
4:30
Speaker 1: With the exception of the first hole. That opening stretch
4:33
Speaker 1: is pretty long and tough. Pulls two and four are
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Speaker 1: the only par fives on the course. That's your drama.
4:40
Speaker 1: Then you get to the comedy of seven through thirteen,
4:43
Speaker 1: lots of short par fours along with the tiny par
4:47
Speaker 1: three thirteenth. Then you arrive at the final act fourteen
4:53
Speaker 1: through eighteen, just one tough, treacherous hole after another, with
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Speaker 1: the last three playing through Marion's iconic quarry. That's your tragedy.
5:04
Speaker 1: So every round at the East Course has this structure.
5:09
Speaker 1: There's a sense of rising and falling action across the
5:13
Speaker 1: eighteen holes, and I think that's a big part of
5:16
Speaker 1: what generates this feeling of grandeur insignificance at Marion, even
5:22
Speaker 1: though again the property is pretty small. All right. The
5:27
Speaker 1: last topic I want to cover in this Marion one
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Speaker 1: oh one rundown is why the East Course is still
5:34
Speaker 1: a relevant championship venue. At the US Amitter next week,
5:38
Speaker 1: the longest that the course is going to play will
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Speaker 1: be around six nine and thirty yards, not even seven thousand.
5:46
Speaker 1: So how does that even work for a modern championship
5:50
Speaker 1: golf course. Well, for one, the East Course repeatedly takes
5:55
Speaker 1: driver out of the hands of longer players. There are
5:57
Speaker 1: only a few spots where you can go bombs way,
6:00
Speaker 1: mostly in the first six holes. Otherwise it's a lot
6:04
Speaker 1: of long irons and hybrids to certain landing zones. So
6:08
Speaker 1: Marian definitely plays longer than the scorecard indicates, and it's
6:13
Speaker 1: pretty hard to overwhelm. Two. The hazards are real hazards.
6:19
Speaker 1: The bunkers are shockingly deep and out of bounds, comes
6:22
Speaker 1: into play on several holes. This is another factor that
6:26
Speaker 1: prevents power hitters from just overwhelming the course with raw strength. Three,
6:33
Speaker 1: the greens are tough targets. They're mostly pretty small, many
6:39
Speaker 1: of them severely tilted, and the hardest pin positions are
6:44
Speaker 1: very very difficult to access. For the fourth and final
6:48
Speaker 1: reason why Marion still works as a championship course, we
6:52
Speaker 1: have to talk about narrow fair ways and thick rough.
6:56
Speaker 1: Even after Gil Hans's renovation works several years ago, the
7:00
Speaker 1: ways at Marion East remained quite narrow, much narrower than
7:04
Speaker 1: they were in Hugh Wilson and William Flynn's time, and
7:08
Speaker 1: the rough is lush, overseeded and dense now. On the
7:14
Speaker 1: one hand, I understand why the club does this. It
7:17
Speaker 1: keeps scoring in check and it's a deterrent to just
7:21
Speaker 1: hitting driver everywhere. On the other hand, it does reduce
7:25
Speaker 1: the complexity of the golf course. It shuts down what
7:30
Speaker 1: should be what used to be valid strategic angles, and
7:33
Speaker 1: it forces play down the middle. Plus I think it
7:36
Speaker 1: hurts the course esthetically. The moulling lines just don't really
7:40
Speaker 1: match the landforms anymore. But you know, when the governing
7:44
Speaker 1: bodies don't regulate equipment effectively, this is what you get.
7:49
Speaker 1: It's sad but inevitable. All that said, the East Course
7:54
Speaker 1: at Marion is a unique and brilliant golf course, a
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Speaker 1: precision golf course, a great test of playing ability, and
8:02
Speaker 1: it offers a lot of lessons for anyone interested in
8:06
Speaker 1: golf architecture. Okay, so those are the basics. Let's go
8:10
Speaker 1: a little bit deeper. And for that there's really no
8:12
Speaker 1: one else to bring on than Wayne Morrison. Wayne is
8:17
Speaker 1: the author of the definitive William Flynn biography, The Nature Faker,
8:21
Speaker 1: and he also happens to be a member of Marian
8:24
Speaker 1: Golf Club, so his knowledge of the East Course is
8:27
Speaker 1: really second to none. All right, let's bring him on.
8:36
Speaker 1: All right, Wayne Morrison is here. Wayne, welcome to the podcast.
8:40
Speaker 2: Thanks for coming on, Welcome back to the podcast. You're welcome.
8:43
Speaker 2: Good to be with you.
8:44
Speaker 1: Indeed, welcome back to the podcast. Well, you have been
8:47
Speaker 1: on the Friday Golf Podcast a couple of times, including
8:50
Speaker 1: one time with me, and you've also been on various
8:54
Speaker 1: videos of ours. So you've been very generous with your
8:56
Speaker 1: time and your expertise.
8:58
Speaker 2: I'll let people know right the bat that that you
9:02
Speaker 2: are you know pretty much undoubtedly the world's leading William
9:05
Speaker 2: Flynn expert. Your book, The Nature Faker is a great
9:08
Speaker 2: resource for anybody looking into William Flynn designed courses and
9:12
Speaker 2: courses that have elements of William Flynn design, which is
9:17
Speaker 2: the category that the East Course at Marion Golf Club
9:20
Speaker 2: falls into. So, Wayne, you're going to help me dig
9:23
Speaker 2: a little deeper into the architecture and history of the
9:27
Speaker 2: East Course. First, we'll talk about the elements of the
9:30
Speaker 2: course itself, so land routing, hazards, grains, design philosophy, and
9:37
Speaker 2: the you know, some of the renovations that have been
9:39
Speaker 2: done in the past and recently. Then in the latter
9:43
Speaker 2: part of our conversation, well, we'll dig a bit more
9:45
Speaker 2: into the history, but I do want to start with
9:49
Speaker 2: discussing the golf course from an architectural perspective, from a
9:53
Speaker 2: design perspective, essentially as it stands today, starting with its
9:58
Speaker 2: land with its So, Wayne, could you just describe in
10:03
Speaker 2: a basic way the property that the East Course at
10:07
Speaker 2: Marion currently occupies. Yeah, so the club itself sits on
10:11
Speaker 2: about one hundred and twenty acres, but that includes the clubhouse,
10:14
Speaker 2: the parking lot, and a driving range which we purchased
10:18
Speaker 2: from the land we purchased from harf for College in
10:21
Speaker 2: the sixties, So that's about fifteen or so acres. So
10:25
Speaker 2: the whole thing being on one hundred and twenty five acres,
10:27
Speaker 2: only about one hundred and one hundred and ten acres
10:30
Speaker 2: or the golf course, which is very small footprint for
10:35
Speaker 2: what's considered a championship golf course and remains a championship
10:38
Speaker 2: golf course. It's L shaped, which is kind of it
10:45
Speaker 2: sort of dictates, you know, what the routing can possibly be.
10:48
Speaker 2: You can't have you can't have too many holes going
10:51
Speaker 2: in the axis of the you know, the shorter lengths
10:55
Speaker 2: of the L. So it just happens to fit. I mean,
10:59
Speaker 2: it just happens to work, and a little bit lucky
11:02
Speaker 2: in that regard, but there's nothing wrong with luck when
11:06
Speaker 2: it comes to golf design. I'm sure there are other
11:11
Speaker 2: examples where the boundaries of the site were fixed and
11:15
Speaker 2: the golf just happened to fit very well in there.
11:19
Speaker 2: So so that land is ideal for golf. There's about
11:23
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifteen feet of elevation change overall from
11:27
Speaker 2: the low point on the golf course is the eleventh green,
11:31
Speaker 2: and not surprising that a lot of balls sort of,
11:33
Speaker 2: you know, throughout the golf course tend to have, you know,
11:37
Speaker 2: a more of a direct you know, more of a break,
11:41
Speaker 2: and more of a speed as they go to the
11:43
Speaker 2: eleventh green. And the high point is the fifteenth Green.
11:48
Speaker 2: So in between there there's some parallel holes, but you
11:52
Speaker 2: don't get any sense of parallelism. There are other courses
11:55
Speaker 2: that we're all familiar with where you definitely know there's
11:58
Speaker 2: there're parallel holes and you're playing up in back and
12:00
Speaker 2: it gets a little bit routine, but not at Marion
12:04
Speaker 2: because they're on different elevations, go in different directions. And
12:08
Speaker 2: one of the fascinating things, I mean, and superintendents have
12:11
Speaker 2: confirmed this with me. For whatever reason, the wind is
12:14
Speaker 2: always changing at Marion. You could plays, as you well know,
12:19
Speaker 2: the only two par fives on the golf course, or
12:21
Speaker 2: the second and the fourth holes, they go in opposite directions.
12:25
Speaker 2: But it's uncanny how you could have the same wind.
12:28
Speaker 2: I don't I don't get it.
12:29
Speaker 3: It's just some some sort of uh, you know, nuance
12:35
Speaker 3: and and kind of you know, unusual circumstance that the
12:41
Speaker 3: wind shifts so much at Marion.
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Speaker 2: It kind of seems like shirl, doesn't it, Like it's
12:45
Speaker 2: a you know, yeah, the the biggest part of the property,
12:49
Speaker 2: the part of the property that the front nine occupies,
12:52
Speaker 2: is effectively a valley, right, and so you know, the
12:56
Speaker 2: wind kind of gets down in there and it might
12:58
Speaker 2: be bouncing off some things, and it's yeah, it really does.
13:01
Speaker 2: I mean the creek along the left side of the
13:04
Speaker 2: fifth holes where you know is the low point there,
13:07
Speaker 2: that's the valley you're talking about. So what that valley
13:10
Speaker 2: does is it creates some different levels and different you know,
13:15
Speaker 2: so you don't get a scent, you don't get a
13:17
Speaker 2: monotony or a sense of you know, I've played this
13:19
Speaker 2: hole before. Things are very different there.
13:22
Speaker 1: The topography itself, you know, there are valleys, there is
13:28
Speaker 1: a general slope right, the high point, as you mentioned,
13:32
Speaker 1: is the fifteenth grain. The low point is the eleventh grain,
13:35
Speaker 1: so that there is a general push towards certain parts
13:38
Speaker 1: of the property. But it's not as though the course
13:40
Speaker 1: sits on a hillside, right, It is rolling, which I
13:45
Speaker 1: think is is really what suits it to a golf course,
13:48
Speaker 1: right that the that the topography isn't doing just one thing,
13:52
Speaker 1: It's doing a lot of different things over over the
13:55
Speaker 1: course of of the of the site.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's kind of interesting when you think about,
14:01
Speaker 2: you know, Marian was in a lot of ways. The
14:04
Speaker 2: the the influence on the Shinnacock Shinnecock relies on triangulation
14:09
Speaker 2: of wind. Marian doesn't have to rely on that because,
14:11
Speaker 2: as you said, the way the wind plays in that valley,
14:15
Speaker 2: you know, creates a lot of different kinds of influences
14:19
Speaker 2: on on this, on the on the golfer and how
14:22
Speaker 2: they play and how they play that it's and they're
14:25
Speaker 2: not having you know, not having flags, having baskets. You
14:28
Speaker 2: got to really be careful in how you assess what
14:31
Speaker 2: the wind is, both the intensity and the and the direction.
14:35
Speaker 1: Great. All right, So now that we have kind of
14:37
Speaker 1: an idea of of the basic you know, terrain topography,
14:42
Speaker 1: let's talk about the routing. You mentioned already that there's
14:45
Speaker 1: there's uh, you know, you don't feel as though you're
14:49
Speaker 1: playing parallel holes, even though if you look at the
14:52
Speaker 1: course from above there there clearly are parallel holes. How
14:56
Speaker 1: does the routing at the at the East course basically work.
15:00
Speaker 1: What's kind of the tactic of the routing to get
15:03
Speaker 1: the golfer through these different sections of the property.
15:07
Speaker 2: That's a great question. And really that routing creates a
15:11
Speaker 2: rhythm and flow to the golf course which I think
15:14
Speaker 2: is unmatched in any other golf course. You've heard the
15:18
Speaker 2: story about the three act play at Marion where The
15:20
Speaker 2: first hole is sort of a well, it's a not
15:24
Speaker 2: so gentle handshake because there's thirteen bunkers, right, But you know,
15:27
Speaker 2: it's a short haul that requires a lot of precision.
15:30
Speaker 2: The next five holes are long and challenging based on
15:34
Speaker 2: length and also topographic changes. And obviously, I mean the
15:39
Speaker 2: real challenge is at the greens.
15:42
Speaker 1: You know.
15:43
Speaker 2: That's why a golf course that's only sixty eight hundred
15:45
Speaker 2: yards or I guess you can push it out to
15:47
Speaker 2: sixty nine ninety six if you have one foot in
15:49
Speaker 2: the rough on the back of every tee is still
15:55
Speaker 2: a challenge to the best players in the world, and
15:57
Speaker 2: yet still enjoyably difficult for you know, a range of golfers.
16:03
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to if I was a beginning golfer,
16:04
Speaker 2: I'm not so sure i'd want to, you know, start
16:07
Speaker 2: playing the East course. But we have the West Course,
16:09
Speaker 2: which is nice in any case. So I was talking
16:13
Speaker 2: about the rhythm and flow. It happens to work, but
16:17
Speaker 2: it's it breaks a lot of principles. The only two
16:20
Speaker 2: par fives are the second and fourth holes, and and
16:25
Speaker 2: they're long and demanding par fives. But in some regard
16:29
Speaker 2: that's one of you know, you think about Flynn and
16:33
Speaker 2: hit the influences on Flynn's design practices. A lot of
16:37
Speaker 2: the best courses are only two par fives par seventies.
16:41
Speaker 2: They those courses hold up to championship play a lot
16:44
Speaker 2: better than four par fives, because especially in these days,
16:49
Speaker 2: you know, if you if you have four par fives,
16:52
Speaker 2: the tour pros are going to be starting off ten
16:55
Speaker 2: under par for the you know, for the four rounds. Anyway,
16:59
Speaker 2: that's not the case when you only have two par fives.
17:02
Speaker 2: And it's kind of interesting that the two par fives
17:04
Speaker 2: on the are the are in the first four holes.
17:07
Speaker 2: But it's not like all of a sudden like where
17:10
Speaker 2: as a par fives on the rest of the round.
17:12
Speaker 2: The rhythm and flow keeps you really centered and focused.
17:17
Speaker 2: So there are three three acts to Marian Again, I
17:22
Speaker 2: talked about the first hole being short, but it's kind
17:25
Speaker 2: of nerve wracking anyway, because you're hitting in front of
17:30
Speaker 2: all these people sitting in the upper terrace having lunch
17:32
Speaker 2: ten feet away from it. Yeah, it's kind of a prologue,
17:35
Speaker 2: is how I like to put it. Yeah, the first
17:38
Speaker 2: hole is a prologue, and it feels that way, not
17:40
Speaker 2: only because it's short, but because it's on the clubhouse
17:43
Speaker 2: side of the property. After the first green, you cross
17:46
Speaker 2: Ardmore Avenue and you get to the second hole, and
17:50
Speaker 2: that that that's when the first act in this three
17:53
Speaker 2: act structure really begins, and that first act is.
17:58
Speaker 1: Tough and dramatic. Jerry Party, who came up with this
18:02
Speaker 1: three act concept, said that this was the drama portion
18:07
Speaker 1: of the play.
18:07
Speaker 2: Brilliant ret Marion, so it really brought.
18:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's that's a really it's a really good It's
18:13
Speaker 1: it's been used a lot to describe Marian so obviously
18:16
Speaker 1: it's been sticky. So you get through that first act,
18:18
Speaker 1: which is which is the drama section, then you get
18:21
Speaker 1: to the seventh te and where does it go from there?
18:24
Speaker 1: How does how did the acts play out from there?
18:26
Speaker 1: So from between seven and thirteen from the member tees
18:30
Speaker 1: the white teas that you know, there's no hole over
18:32
Speaker 1: four hundred yards. But to me, I think it starts
18:37
Speaker 1: building towards the finishing the back five, because the back
18:40
Speaker 1: five to me, I don't I can't think of another one,
18:43
Speaker 1: maybe Carnousti, but I think it falls short of the
18:47
Speaker 1: hardest finishing golf. So the middle section seven through thirteen.
18:53
Speaker 1: That's called comedy because it whereas the original, you know,
18:58
Speaker 1: the first six holes requires a lot of length demands
19:02
Speaker 1: and controlling your shot shape and.
19:06
Speaker 2: How you approach the greens. The middle holes are all
19:10
Speaker 2: relatively short, but precision is elevated. You have to be
19:13
Speaker 2: really precise. It's you're not gonna there's no way to
19:16
Speaker 2: score from the rough, so you really have to play
19:20
Speaker 2: for the fair way, and that kind of changes people's minds.
19:24
Speaker 2: It was amazing how few drivers people and you know
19:27
Speaker 2: use in the in the in you know, the US
19:30
Speaker 2: Open or high level amateur play. So that makes the
19:33
Speaker 2: courus at sixties eight hundred yards or whatever they're going
19:36
Speaker 2: to play at play a lot longer because you're not
19:39
Speaker 2: bombing three hundred yard drives on on the bar fours
19:43
Speaker 2: and the bar fives. There's nothing it's you know, easy,
19:47
Speaker 2: there's nothing that's simplistic about the design. It was sort
19:50
Speaker 2: of if you think it's relentless, isn't it. It's every
19:54
Speaker 2: shot is is tough, not in the sense that every
19:58
Speaker 2: shot is necessarily but there's complexity and discomfort to pretty
20:05
Speaker 2: much every shot you hit on this course.
20:07
Speaker 1: And I think to bring it back to routing. A
20:09
Speaker 1: lot of that is down to the routing of the
20:13
Speaker 1: golf course because you're never playing the same type of
20:16
Speaker 1: hole twice. The amount of variety that the routing finds
20:21
Speaker 1: in this very small property is really impressive. I mean,
20:25
Speaker 1: this was I think the only way for Hugh Wilson
20:29
Speaker 1: and William Flynn to solve the puzzle of how to
20:31
Speaker 1: route eighteen holes on this property in this particular way.
20:35
Speaker 1: Each hole is different, each hole gives you some new
20:39
Speaker 1: kind of issue to confront, and it all fits in
20:44
Speaker 1: really tightly. And that's kind of the magic of the
20:49
Speaker 1: routing of the East course at at Marion. I think
20:51
Speaker 1: that's probably why people say that it's one of the
20:54
Speaker 1: best routings, if not the best routing in the world
20:59
Speaker 1: of golf. Don't you think? Is that?
21:01
Speaker 2: Is that kind of like, I mean, why why is
21:03
Speaker 2: it that you what's your general take on, you know,
21:05
Speaker 2: where this routing kind of ranks among the routings of.
21:09
Speaker 1: Golf courses that you've seen all of them?
21:11
Speaker 2: Well, I'll expand on that a little bit. I think
21:13
Speaker 2: William Flynn was the best router of golf courses in America.
21:16
Speaker 2: He would take up he was a first of all
21:18
Speaker 2: a really quick study. Now he didn't he didn't route
21:21
Speaker 2: the golf course, but he learned about routing. Mary. This
21:24
Speaker 2: was sort of his his uh school guess yeah right,
21:27
Speaker 2: and you and Hugh Wilson was his professor. Souh. If
21:34
Speaker 2: you look at so the routing. One of the aspects
21:39
Speaker 2: of the routing that's very hard to discern unless you've
21:42
Speaker 2: played it a thousand plus times like I have, is
21:46
Speaker 2: the elevation changes. They're not that evident. If you're standing
21:49
Speaker 2: on the third T and you look at the third
21:51
Speaker 2: green and then you look out, you have to cross
21:54
Speaker 2: over this from the second green to the third T,
21:56
Speaker 2: you have to cross over the sixth hole. But if
21:59
Speaker 2: you're standing on the third T, it looks like the
22:02
Speaker 2: third green is twenty feet higher in elevation than the
22:05
Speaker 2: sixth screen, which is way out there. In actuality, the
22:10
Speaker 2: sixth green is ten feet higher in elevation than the
22:12
Speaker 2: third green. To me, that's a classic example of what
22:17
Speaker 2: Flynn learned it, Marian, and what he practiced later on
22:19
Speaker 2: is your eye has a lot of difficulty in judging
22:24
Speaker 2: elevation changes over long distance, and a lot of that
22:28
Speaker 2: has to do with what he learned there. It's just
22:34
Speaker 2: it's incredible how how many times really good golfers are
22:38
Speaker 2: short on their approaches to both five and six. Actually
22:41
Speaker 2: they're both elevated from the approach shots. The other thing
22:49
Speaker 2: at the other aspect that I think is really interesting
22:53
Speaker 2: about the routing is how again it hearkens back to
22:57
Speaker 2: what the rhythm and flow of the golf course is.
23:00
Speaker 2: You have drama, you have comedy, then you have tragedy.
23:03
Speaker 2: So what goes on in your head while you're playing
23:06
Speaker 2: the short holes the seven through thirteen is geez, I
23:10
Speaker 2: better get some good scores in because I know I'm
23:12
Speaker 2: going to have trouble at the end, and for whatever
23:14
Speaker 2: reason psychologically, that really affects you. So a hole that
23:17
Speaker 2: might be if it was somewhere else in the routing
23:20
Speaker 2: or the routing progression was a little bit different, it
23:22
Speaker 2: has a different effect on you because of where it
23:25
Speaker 2: is in the position. You know, the out of bounds
23:27
Speaker 2: is on the right hand side on the front nine.
23:30
Speaker 2: Out of bounds is on the left hand side on
23:31
Speaker 2: the back nine. So you really, you know, singles, if
23:35
Speaker 2: you can shape your shot, you're rewarded tremendously.
23:39
Speaker 1: So your discussion of out of bounds can bring us
23:42
Speaker 1: to Marion's hazards. So, first of all, out of bounds
23:46
Speaker 1: is a significant hazard at Maryon. It comes very much
23:50
Speaker 1: into play on several holes, and so you know, what
23:54
Speaker 1: do you think the impact of that is? How do
23:57
Speaker 1: the holes use those boundaries lines? Well, some of it
24:02
Speaker 1: are more strategic than others. I mean, the second hole,
24:05
Speaker 1: the long part uphill par five, you got to keep
24:08
Speaker 1: it left, you know, you got to keep it left
24:09
Speaker 1: of the of the street, and that's you know, Ardmore Avenue.
24:13
Speaker 2: But there's not that much difference between You're not rewarded
24:17
Speaker 2: so much for playing on the you know, close to
24:19
Speaker 2: the out of bounds there, but on the on the
24:24
Speaker 2: for instance, the next hole that goes in that direction
24:27
Speaker 2: would be the sixth hole, and there's out of bounds
24:30
Speaker 2: on the right. But the closer you play to the
24:32
Speaker 2: out of bounds on the sixth hole, you play over
24:34
Speaker 2: the sort of sight line bunker on the right short right.
24:40
Speaker 2: I mean, why is that bunker there? It doesn't really
24:43
Speaker 2: it shouldn't come into play. It won't come into play
24:45
Speaker 2: for the amateurs and touring pros that come here. But
24:49
Speaker 2: if you hit it over that bunker, you're rewarded with
24:52
Speaker 2: a turbot boost. It hits the backside of a slope
24:55
Speaker 2: and it shoots down there, and which is a really long,
24:59
Speaker 2: difficult approach, becomes a little bit easier if you play
25:02
Speaker 2: close to the out of bounds. That's also true on
25:07
Speaker 2: the seventh and eighth holes, which will go in the
25:09
Speaker 2: same direction. Really, the ideal line on the seventh hole
25:13
Speaker 2: is the right edge of the green. But it's kind
25:17
Speaker 2: of funny Ben Hogan played to the left side of
25:21
Speaker 2: that green. He hit three wood off the tee every time,
25:24
Speaker 2: and there's a little flat area he needs the size
25:28
Speaker 2: of a dining room table, maybe maybe smaller than that
25:30
Speaker 2: size of a kitchen table. And they supposedly Hogan's five
25:36
Speaker 2: divots were all within an eight foot circle there. He
25:39
Speaker 2: wanted to come from the left side. There's more visibility
25:43
Speaker 2: on the right, and you know, the green basically flows
25:46
Speaker 2: front to back, but Hogan had to play over the
25:49
Speaker 2: fronting the big gaping bunker that's on the front left
25:53
Speaker 2: of that green. I still to this day can't figure
25:56
Speaker 2: out why he decided to do that, but obviously it
25:58
Speaker 2: worked for him. Then on the eighth hole, you have
26:04
Speaker 2: a deep bunker right and a deep bunker left further down,
26:08
Speaker 2: so it's short right and farther left. You can't tell,
26:11
Speaker 2: I mean, first time playing it, but you really want
26:13
Speaker 2: to hit over that right bunker. There's fair way behind it,
26:16
Speaker 2: and it's by far the best angle into the green.
26:19
Speaker 2: But it brings that bunker into play, and it also
26:22
Speaker 2: brings the out of bounds into play. Out of bounds
26:24
Speaker 2: then also comes into play on the fifteenth hole. I
26:29
Speaker 2: guess it is four fourteen and fifty, yeah, fourteen. It's
26:33
Speaker 2: you know, the drive can be essentially a lot of
26:36
Speaker 2: longer players hit their ball well over the out of
26:39
Speaker 2: bounds and kind of bring it into the fairway, especially
26:42
Speaker 2: the left, the lefties for sure. Absolutely. Sergio Garcia in
26:46
Speaker 2: the twenty and thirteen Open was sixteen over on fourteen
26:50
Speaker 2: and fifteen and finished fifteen over And then you get
26:53
Speaker 2: to sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen. That all played through a quarry,
26:56
Speaker 2: and it's funny. One of the original guys was on
27:00
Speaker 2: the site committee to determine where to put the you know,
27:03
Speaker 2: where to locate the golf course. He argued that we
27:08
Speaker 2: can't use this site because you know how much money
27:10
Speaker 2: it'll cost to fill in the quarry. So yeah, it wasn't.
27:15
Speaker 2: It wasn't really, Uh, it wasn't you know, initially imagined
27:19
Speaker 2: that that would be such a great golf feature.
27:21
Speaker 1: It wasn't obvious that that this should just be incorporated
27:24
Speaker 1: into the golf course because obviously it was a you know,
27:28
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not. A quarry is not necessarily considered
27:31
Speaker 1: a wonderful natural feature because by definition it is it
27:35
Speaker 1: is not natural. But that actually, you know, the quarry
27:38
Speaker 1: is one of Marion's major hazards. You know, since we're
27:41
Speaker 1: talking about the hazard of out of boundary, the quarry
27:45
Speaker 1: is is a significant hazard. Now, the story that I
27:49
Speaker 1: heard while I was at Marion, and you can say
27:52
Speaker 1: whether this is true or not, is that a lot
27:55
Speaker 1: of the rock that was mined from that quarry was
27:58
Speaker 1: then used to build the houses Uh in the in
28:02
Speaker 1: the suburb around Marion Golf Club. Is there any truth
28:05
Speaker 1: to that story?
28:06
Speaker 2: Uh, It's an often quoted story, but it is just
28:09
Speaker 2: that it's a story that that quarry wash was abandoned,
28:14
Speaker 2: you know, when the before the golf course was built,
28:16
Speaker 2: before the homes were built, So that was a pre
28:19
Speaker 2: existing quarry mhm. But the interesting thing about that is,
28:22
Speaker 2: you know, the entrance from sixteenth you know, the approach
28:25
Speaker 2: from the fairway to the sixteenth green. They had a
28:28
Speaker 2: blast the rock that really went. They had to open
28:32
Speaker 2: up that green. So they blasted and and chiseled or
28:36
Speaker 2: did whatever they did to to uh, to remove the
28:40
Speaker 2: that that that that rock wall, so to speak, to
28:45
Speaker 2: create the opening, which is a little like what Flynn
28:48
Speaker 2: did at Shinnacock on the eleventh hall that he had.
28:52
Speaker 2: He had to remove a lot of that sloping you know,
28:55
Speaker 2: the left to right slope of that, you know, to
28:58
Speaker 2: open up the green right, Yeah, what.
29:00
Speaker 1: Completely blind if they had not chopped off some of
29:03
Speaker 1: that big ridge that kind of comes now diagonally across
29:08
Speaker 1: the green there. So yeah, certainly some earth moving had
29:12
Speaker 1: to be done in both cases. Now, as far as
29:15
Speaker 1: hazards that Marian are concerned, out of bounds in the
29:18
Speaker 1: quarry or certainly the most terrifying ones, I guess. But
29:22
Speaker 1: then you have the bunkers, so you know what was
29:26
Speaker 1: you know, how do you characterize Wilson's and Flynn's approach
29:31
Speaker 1: to bunkering Marion not only positioning the bunkers but shaping
29:38
Speaker 1: them as well. Oh, that's a terrific question, because there
29:41
Speaker 1: it is. It is so different than what was going
29:44
Speaker 1: on at the same time, you know, when the course
29:46
Speaker 1: was being built. It really was.
29:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you compare it to any contemporary course, just
29:51
Speaker 2: the approach to bunkering esthetically and strategically quite different. Yeah,
29:58
Speaker 2: And I think some of that has to do with
30:00
Speaker 2: Wilson going overseas and looking at the bunkering. There's the
30:03
Speaker 2: sort of and it's a true story that when Wilson
30:07
Speaker 2: went overseas to look at the bunkering after the golf
30:09
Speaker 2: course was seated, he was so enthralled with the ideas
30:12
Speaker 2: that he was coming up with that he canceled his
30:15
Speaker 2: trip back, you know, back home, and that was on
30:18
Speaker 2: the Titanic, so he gave up his tickets on the
30:20
Speaker 2: Titanic to see golf. But the difference between the bunkering
30:27
Speaker 2: of what was going on with McDonald and what was
30:29
Speaker 2: going on with some of the itinerants scott, Scottish and
30:33
Speaker 2: British architects was was was really revolutionary because on heavy
30:39
Speaker 2: clay soil they built some really natural looking bunkers. You know,
30:45
Speaker 2: they don't look like bathtubs, they don't they look like
30:48
Speaker 2: wind or water erosion created the bunkers. So they took it,
30:53
Speaker 2: and that was mostly Flynn because the original bunkering.
30:55
Speaker 1: Was not that.
30:58
Speaker 2: I did not have that sort of uh naturalized appearance,
31:03
Speaker 2: natural appearance exactly, flat bottoms, grass faces. That's that's what
31:09
Speaker 2: was going on back then. They were you know, they
31:11
Speaker 2: were to do that on heavy clay soil, though, required
31:14
Speaker 2: a lot of time and effort, and that that's one
31:17
Speaker 2: of the things that if you're if you're a member
31:20
Speaker 2: of a club and you're doing it for your club,
31:22
Speaker 2: you will spend the time you're there all you know,
31:25
Speaker 2: it's not like you're going from one site to another.
31:28
Speaker 2: They spent a lot of time on site when Flynn
31:32
Speaker 2: was you know, he moved here and stayed here, so there.
31:35
Speaker 2: The bunker approach they took had white face, the white
31:38
Speaker 2: faces of marine, you know, the the raised sand faces.
31:42
Speaker 2: But the other thing that they did, I think and
31:44
Speaker 2: remains to this day very demanding, is the contoured bottoms
31:50
Speaker 2: of the bunkers. You don't get a level lying on
31:52
Speaker 2: just about any any of the bunkers. You're always have
31:56
Speaker 2: a dance that's a little bit awkward. And they're deep too,
32:01
Speaker 2: so but the one thing in this, and gil Hans
32:03
Speaker 2: taught me this. The scale of the bunkering is ideal.
32:07
Speaker 2: You don't have a lot of trees, there's not, so
32:09
Speaker 2: there's a lot of open ground. And the bunkers are
32:12
Speaker 2: huge and if on long hauls, really big bunkers don't
32:16
Speaker 2: look that big until you get up near them. They
32:18
Speaker 2: sort of have you know, they fit the other sort
32:22
Speaker 2: of the design aesthetic that you think of. But there,
32:26
Speaker 2: I mean to me, the scale of things, the scale
32:29
Speaker 2: of the hazards, and there you are really brilliant, and
32:33
Speaker 2: they were ideally located. There's still except for the when
32:38
Speaker 2: we moved the second green to where Flynn proposed it,
32:43
Speaker 2: excuse me, and they move the bunkers down range a
32:46
Speaker 2: little bit. The bunkers that there are today are the
32:49
Speaker 2: same bunkering that was used, you know, back in the twenties,
32:53
Speaker 2: teens and twenties. I mean, I can't think of a
32:56
Speaker 2: better bunker golf course. But you know, I've got informed
33:00
Speaker 2: bias that probably shows all more than off more often
33:04
Speaker 2: than not.
33:04
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people would agree with you
33:06
Speaker 1: on that. Aside, There we go. Let's get to the greens.
33:12
Speaker 1: The greens that at Marion are are a big source
33:15
Speaker 1: of of it's difficulty, of course for sure, and also
33:19
Speaker 1: of its interest. So how would you go about describing
33:23
Speaker 1: the design approach the architectural aspect of Marion East's greens.
33:29
Speaker 1: They make it makes it very difficult to to read.
33:33
Speaker 1: We have some of the best caddies, you know, it's
33:35
Speaker 1: a real professional caddy program, and what you think the
33:41
Speaker 1: butt should do is often not the opposite of what
33:43
Speaker 1: it does. So I said, listen, you know, listen to
33:46
Speaker 1: your caddy there. You know there's gonna be times where
33:49
Speaker 1: it looks like it's going to break left and it
33:51
Speaker 1: breaks right. Even you know, there was so many examples
33:55
Speaker 1: of where Phil Mickelson.
33:56
Speaker 2: Didn't really well. I wonder if he's going to listen
33:58
Speaker 2: to this. I can almost guarantee you that he's not okay,
34:03
Speaker 2: that he just misread putts six foot putts. He misread.
34:07
Speaker 2: Some of that has to do with the way the
34:11
Speaker 2: greens sit in the overall topography, but some of it
34:14
Speaker 2: also has to do with grain, and there there is
34:18
Speaker 2: there is grain in the greens. The interesting thing is
34:21
Speaker 2: if you have an overall down slope to the to
34:23
Speaker 2: the hole itself, and you change the downs and you
34:26
Speaker 2: change it just a little bit. So if you if
34:30
Speaker 2: you raise, you know, if you change the greens, it's
34:32
Speaker 2: still a back to it's still a front to back slope,
34:34
Speaker 2: but it's slightly softer than the overall topography around it.
34:38
Speaker 2: Your eye here, we're going back to perspective again. Your
34:41
Speaker 2: eye looks like it's severely back to front. So you
34:44
Speaker 2: so the second hole, the fourth hole, the eighth hole
34:48
Speaker 2: that it's all like that, you mean, the seventh hole,
34:52
Speaker 2: the putts that look like they're really slow or you know,
34:55
Speaker 2: go racing past the hole, and holes that look like
34:58
Speaker 2: they're you know, screaming fast, you know, stop short of
35:02
Speaker 2: the whole. And that's because it's hard to read what
35:07
Speaker 2: the slopes of those greens are given the surrounds of
35:10
Speaker 2: those greens. Yeah, and if I design, I kind of
35:14
Speaker 2: think so because there's so many examples of it and there,
35:17
Speaker 2: and there are other examples of it on other golf
35:19
Speaker 2: courses that Flynn was associated with. Yeah, Sneacock Hills kind
35:24
Speaker 2: of has has some of this characteristic that you're talking
35:27
Speaker 2: about of the you know, long, more gradual, intersecting slopes.
35:35
Speaker 2: And I want to highlight how important that is. What
35:38
Speaker 2: you're saying about the style of Marian's greens, because you know,
35:42
Speaker 2: you have other examples of Golden Age green design that
35:45
Speaker 2: are not that right. There were designers who much preferred
35:49
Speaker 2: to have kind of sharp internal contours, shells and gullies
35:53
Speaker 2: and you know, contours that were easy to see because
35:58
Speaker 2: they were big and severe. A lot of McDonald and
36:02
Speaker 2: Rayner greens had these kinds of contours. A lot of
36:05
Speaker 2: mackenzie greens, although they took a more natural approach, generally,
36:09
Speaker 2: had had these characteristics as well. Then you get to
36:12
Speaker 2: somebody like Perry Maxwell and and he loved these these
36:17
Speaker 2: sort of rounded slopes in the middle of greens Maxwell rolls,
36:20
Speaker 2: as they're often called. But again, you know, it's it's
36:24
Speaker 2: interior contour. What Flynn did at Mayor well, what Wilson
36:29
Speaker 2: and Flynn did at Marian Sorry, and what Flynn then
36:33
Speaker 2: went on to do at Shannahawk Hills is is kind
36:36
Speaker 2: of build greens that that have more gradual slopes, even
36:41
Speaker 2: if they're very significant slopes there, they don't announce themselves
36:45
Speaker 2: and and so but then they kind of run into
36:47
Speaker 2: each other and go in different directions so that they're
36:50
Speaker 2: they're very hard to read. And if if you're in
36:54
Speaker 2: for a private club that you want a long learning curve?
36:58
Speaker 2: You mean, well, I mean I do anyway. Yet you know,
37:02
Speaker 2: if things are really overt and easily discerned, you just
37:05
Speaker 2: have to make sure you get the right speed because
37:07
Speaker 2: you know what the break is going to be. You know,
37:09
Speaker 2: it gets to be a little bit. The learning curve
37:12
Speaker 2: is not as steep, or sorry it's steep, it's not
37:17
Speaker 2: as long. I think there are the greens themselves, I
37:23
Speaker 2: think are there are really? Why at sixty eight hundred
37:26
Speaker 2: yards sixty nine hundred yards from the very tips? Why
37:30
Speaker 2: that golf course still challenges the pros today and the amateurs.
37:35
Speaker 2: But the thing that's different about the Greens than the
37:38
Speaker 2: last US Open or the last amateur we add is
37:41
Speaker 2: that there's a technology system under the greens. It's precision air,
37:46
Speaker 2: so it's the air conditioning, heating, vacuuming and blowing, so
37:51
Speaker 2: they could you know, our superintendent is as good as
37:55
Speaker 2: it gets. He can manipulate the greens to provide whatever
37:59
Speaker 2: he whatever he wants. And and these this era of
38:02
Speaker 2: where we have really strong brief showers, the golf course
38:09
Speaker 2: uh you know is uh can be managed and playable
38:15
Speaker 2: whereas you know, for the old push up greens that
38:17
Speaker 2: we had, there was, there was they each green responded
38:22
Speaker 2: a little bit differently, dried out a little bit differently.
38:24
Speaker 2: To me, that adds some challenge and and the adaptability
38:28
Speaker 2: of the golfer is is more into play. But I
38:33
Speaker 2: do think the greed that Marion, you know, Flynn's learning,
38:37
Speaker 2: you know what he did at Marion. I see there's
38:40
Speaker 2: three phases of design at Marion. There's Hugh Wilson, there's
38:43
Speaker 2: Hugh Wilson and Flynn, and then there's Flynn. But it's
38:46
Speaker 2: easy to see the influence that Marion has on all
38:49
Speaker 2: these other courses, Shinnacock being a great one right where
38:53
Speaker 2: the sixth thall at uh Marion is is similar in
38:59
Speaker 2: concept that the fourteenth at Shinnakok, for instance. But as
39:02
Speaker 2: you brought up earlier, you know, it's the interplays of slopes,
39:05
Speaker 2: it's the it's the angles. We didn't really talk about that.
39:08
Speaker 2: The angles you have to play are you know, they're
39:12
Speaker 2: really well defined to me. The first doll at Marion
39:15
Speaker 2: is a really great example where you really need to
39:19
Speaker 2: play on the outside of the dog leg because the
39:22
Speaker 2: green is on a diagonal, so it's an offset green.
39:25
Speaker 2: The fairway is pretty much straight away. But most architects
39:29
Speaker 2: want you to play, you know, reward you for cutting
39:32
Speaker 2: the dog leg. In this case, you really you have
39:36
Speaker 2: a lack of visibility of the green because of the
39:38
Speaker 2: top line of the of the crossbunker, and you're also
39:41
Speaker 2: coming into the green from a shallow angle. But if
39:45
Speaker 2: you play towards the hazards on the left, the bunkers,
39:47
Speaker 2: the really deep demanding bunkers on the left, if you can,
39:51
Speaker 2: if you can skirt those and stay really close to those,
39:54
Speaker 2: you have you have a better view of the green.
39:57
Speaker 2: And you also are playing into the long axis of
39:59
Speaker 2: the green. So we talked about you know how marian
40:02
Speaker 2: requires a lot of strategic thought and as well as execution.
40:06
Speaker 2: There's some counterintuitive designs that I think also for people
40:11
Speaker 2: off a little bit too.
40:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, what you expect to be the ideal position just
40:15
Speaker 1: looking at it from the tee, even as somebody may
40:18
Speaker 1: be informed about how strategic angles usually work, often turns
40:22
Speaker 1: out not to be the case once you get up
40:23
Speaker 1: there and actually actually see the shots. So it is
40:26
Speaker 1: a it is certainly a tricky golf course. And you
40:30
Speaker 1: know the word that keeps coming to mind for me.
40:32
Speaker 1: I mentioned it earlier is relentless. It is. It's relentless,
40:36
Speaker 1: not only in terms of its difficulty, but in terms
40:39
Speaker 1: of the strategic problem solving that you're faced with on
40:43
Speaker 1: every single hole. And we sort of transitioned at this
40:46
Speaker 1: point to talking about the kind of general design philosophy
40:51
Speaker 1: at Marian. There is there is this balance at Marian,
40:55
Speaker 1: or maybe it's not a balance. I guess it's two
40:58
Speaker 1: goals pursued equally aggressively toward championship golf difficulty challenge for
41:07
Speaker 1: for high level players, but also strategic golf. That was
41:11
Speaker 1: the intent when when Philadelphia was playing New York and
41:15
Speaker 1: Boston in inner city matches, we were getting hammered, and
41:19
Speaker 1: because we didn't have great golf courses. Again we were
41:21
Speaker 1: a little bit much later than New York and much
41:23
Speaker 1: later than Boston and developing them. So really the primary
41:28
Speaker 1: motivation between but.
41:30
Speaker 2: With Marion and Van pine Valley a couple of years later,
41:34
Speaker 2: was we got to start building champion designing and building
41:37
Speaker 2: championship golf courses. To build championship golfers, there's difficulty, and
41:42
Speaker 2: there's enjoyable difficulty. I think Marian's enjoyably difficult. There are
41:46
Speaker 2: some courses which I won't name, there are just long,
41:50
Speaker 2: boring slogs, and it's easy to design a difficult golf course.
41:57
Speaker 2: It's not easy to design an enjoyably difficult golf course.
42:00
Speaker 2: Versus is that most classes of players can play. I'm
42:02
Speaker 2: not saying Marian is good for everybody. It's a very
42:06
Speaker 2: tough course for for youngsters and for women because the
42:10
Speaker 2: rough is always demanding and some of the some of
42:13
Speaker 2: the carries you have to make are really demanding. That's
42:16
Speaker 2: why they had the ladies aid on sixteen that a
42:19
Speaker 2: lot of women can't carry the the one hundred and
42:22
Speaker 2: thirty five yards uphill, usually into the wind, to uh
42:26
Speaker 2: to the green, So they play around and it's a
42:29
Speaker 2: part five for them. I have, I have. I just
42:34
Speaker 2: think that there was there was a design intent to
42:40
Speaker 2: make this a championship golf course, but somewhere underlying that,
42:45
Speaker 2: either by hap hazards or by design, they made it
42:48
Speaker 2: so it was. It was an interesting and different and
42:51
Speaker 2: challenging golf course. One thing that we didn't talk about
42:54
Speaker 2: it's in terms of hazards. Are the streams? Yeah, yeah, sure,
42:58
Speaker 2: the streams come into play, not on a lot of holes.
43:00
Speaker 2: There's you know, there's not a lot of water on
43:02
Speaker 2: the golf course, but where they come in, they're really
43:06
Speaker 2: they're really strategic. You know. Cobbs Creek, it's really interesting.
43:11
Speaker 2: Cobbs Creek is is the creek that runs through Marion,
43:14
Speaker 2: but it also runs through McCall field Club, and it
43:17
Speaker 2: also runs through Cobbs Creek. The golf courses, so those
43:20
Speaker 2: are courses that Flynn and Wilson had varying degrees of
43:24
Speaker 2: input on, but all of them, you know, all of
43:26
Speaker 2: them have Cobbs Creek going through them. So there's some
43:30
Speaker 2: halls where the where the streams are parallel to the hole,
43:34
Speaker 2: like the fifth hole, there are streams. There are holes
43:37
Speaker 2: like the fourth Hall that the stream fronts the greens,
43:44
Speaker 2: and then there's holes like the eleventh Hall where the
43:46
Speaker 2: stream semi circle you know, covers half the you know,
43:50
Speaker 2: covers half of the of the green, of the three
43:53
Speaker 2: hundred and sixties one hundred and eighty degrees around the green.
43:56
Speaker 2: The fifth hole, the fairway cants pretty hard right to
44:00
Speaker 2: left the green. The it's a really long, demanding hole.
44:04
Speaker 2: It's five oho nine from the back tee and the
44:08
Speaker 2: and the fairway tilts right to left the entire way,
44:11
Speaker 2: and the green tilts right to left as well, but
44:14
Speaker 2: it levels off a little bit right before the creek.
44:16
Speaker 2: So if you know, the best angle into that green
44:20
Speaker 2: is from the left, you know, play skirt close to
44:22
Speaker 2: the creek, you have a level line. The greens slopes towards,
44:26
Speaker 2: you know, is sloping right to left, so you're hitting
44:28
Speaker 2: into the to the slope. So I think the streams
44:33
Speaker 2: are used brilliantly. I didn't, you know, I kind of
44:36
Speaker 2: didn't occur to me right away, but Ramar set want
44:39
Speaker 2: the kind of conversation with him, and he thought Flynn
44:42
Speaker 2: was the best designer, the best utilizer of streams, especially
44:46
Speaker 2: on diagonals, and uh yeah, I think you know, he
44:50
Speaker 2: learned a lot of that at at at Marion.
44:54
Speaker 1: So one thing that people will notice in the upcoming
44:58
Speaker 1: US Amateur is the the course will look different than
45:03
Speaker 1: what they remember from the twenty thirteen US Open. So
45:08
Speaker 1: I just like to briefly touch on the recent round
45:11
Speaker 1: of renovation work that was done at Marion, I think
45:14
Speaker 1: primarily in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen by Gill Hants.
45:18
Speaker 1: What were just you know, high level view what were
45:22
Speaker 1: the basic goals of that work. So I mean we
45:25
Speaker 1: could talk about subsurface and above ground work. The subsurface,
45:31
Speaker 1: we talked about the precision air and precision air, et cetera,
45:34
Speaker 1: managing the firmness and the speed of the greens because
45:38
Speaker 1: up until that point, Marion had its original push up
45:41
Speaker 1: greens effectively right, but.
45:46
Speaker 2: XGD drainage in some of the greens. We have it
45:49
Speaker 2: in some of the fairways too, But they were the
45:51
Speaker 2: original push up greens and they worked really well. But
45:55
Speaker 2: we lose you know, the conditions of the golf course
45:59
Speaker 2: in July and August. That's you know, Philadelphia in July
46:01
Speaker 2: and August is hot and humid. We we would have
46:06
Speaker 2: significant condition of UH concerns during that period of time.
46:14
Speaker 2: Now it's it's you know, in championship condition every day.
46:18
Speaker 2: It's not it's not cheap to do that, but but
46:21
Speaker 2: the but the will and the and the ability to
46:24
Speaker 2: do it is there.
46:27
Speaker 1: So that's the subsurface aspect of the renovation. What was
46:31
Speaker 1: the above ground above ground.
46:33
Speaker 2: Was there was very little, you know, change in the bunkering,
46:38
Speaker 2: but the but the surrounds of the bunkers, they got
46:40
Speaker 2: rid of a lot of the fescue that wasn't original.
46:44
Speaker 2: It was kind of I mean, it had a good
46:46
Speaker 2: look to it, and and uh, it's there's something to
46:49
Speaker 2: be said. And you know, when the sun's going down
46:51
Speaker 2: and the textures and colors are you know, varied around
46:55
Speaker 2: the golf course, and the way the wind would blow
46:57
Speaker 2: the tall rescue, it was just a real serene kind
47:01
Speaker 2: of look. Now today it's it's more it's more finished
47:06
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways. But the bunkering except on
47:12
Speaker 2: two is except for the string of pearls bunkering on
47:16
Speaker 2: the right and the really big bunker that when one
47:19
Speaker 2: you never want to get into. On the left side,
47:22
Speaker 2: beyond the trees, they're in the same spot. They might
47:27
Speaker 2: be a little bit deeper. They have better billy bunker now,
47:30
Speaker 2: so which comes into play because you know, again we
47:34
Speaker 2: have more short, shorter time periods of really heavy rains
47:40
Speaker 2: and we don't get the washouts that we used to have,
47:42
Speaker 2: so the but you know, the white faces are still there.
47:47
Speaker 2: Jim Wager did a wonderful job in edging the bunkers,
47:50
Speaker 2: you know, the creating the you know, the sort of
47:54
Speaker 2: interest in in the sort of ragged shapes to the
47:57
Speaker 2: edge of the bunkers. The fairway lines have not really
48:03
Speaker 2: have not really been changed at all. They put some
48:05
Speaker 2: new back teas in, so there's a new back te
48:09
Speaker 2: on four, so it went from six hundred yards to
48:12
Speaker 2: six hundred and forty yards. So that that so, and
48:15
Speaker 2: then they put the back t in on eighteen. It's
48:18
Speaker 2: five twenty one, but you know it plays shorter than
48:21
Speaker 2: five twenty one because where the Hogan plaque is right
48:24
Speaker 2: after that is a steep down slope and these guys
48:27
Speaker 2: were easily hitting you know, from I guess from four
48:31
Speaker 2: seventy or four to sixty or something like that. They
48:33
Speaker 2: were easily hitting the back of that slope and they'd
48:37
Speaker 2: have an eight iron in. So that to me, putting
48:40
Speaker 2: that back t in at five twenty one makes you know,
48:43
Speaker 2: the average play, the average tour pro or the average
48:47
Speaker 2: high you know, high caliber amateur hit from around where
48:52
Speaker 2: Bobby or sorry, Ben Hogan hit like it's I think
48:56
Speaker 2: it's two to eleven from the plaque to the middle
48:58
Speaker 2: of the green and just rose in twenty thirteen from
49:02
Speaker 2: around that plaque on Sunday. So again a lot of
49:08
Speaker 2: it was you know, you know, things that you don't
49:10
Speaker 2: see underground technology and a few added bunkers and a
49:14
Speaker 2: few added teas.
49:21
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf is brought to you by
49:24
Speaker 1: our friends at the Golf Course Superintendent's Association of America
49:28
Speaker 1: or GCSAA. This partnership makes a lot of sense for
49:33
Speaker 1: Friday Golf. Really, our company wouldn't exist in its current
49:37
Speaker 1: form today if not for the help and kindness of superintendents.
49:42
Speaker 1: This community has been one of our most important bases
49:46
Speaker 1: of support from the beginning, and GCSAA supports them. They
49:51
Speaker 1: serve more than twenty one thousand members worldwide, not only
49:55
Speaker 1: golf course superintendents, but also equipment managers, students, and educators.
50:00
Speaker 1: Celebrating its one hundredth anniversary this year, GCSAA continues to
50:05
Speaker 1: ensure that its members are on the forefront of research, education, innovation,
50:10
Speaker 1: and advocacy through a range of programs and services. To
50:14
Speaker 1: learn more, go to GCSAA dot org. Check it out.
50:18
Speaker 1: Great organization and we're very proud to be partnered with them. Okay,
50:29
Speaker 1: so that covers the characteristics of the course that I
50:33
Speaker 1: wanted to cover. So we've kind of gone through greens
50:38
Speaker 1: and bunkers and design and some of the renovation work.
50:44
Speaker 1: I think now we can dive into the history, which
50:47
Speaker 1: is your specialty. Now there's a lot here, right. We
50:50
Speaker 1: could stay here for another four hours, probably talking about
50:54
Speaker 1: the history of Marian Golf Club, but I kind of
50:57
Speaker 1: want to give people a basic overview and then just
51:02
Speaker 1: talk about it's importance historically just as a as a
51:07
Speaker 1: new kind of golf design in America. So you know,
51:12
Speaker 1: what were the origins of golf at Marion and then
51:18
Speaker 1: take me up to the point that Hugh Wilson got involved.
51:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I mean, like I said earlier, or golf
51:25
Speaker 2: in Philadelphia started a bit late. Philadelphia Country Club in
51:28
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety three had their first golf course in the city,
51:33
Speaker 2: and in eighteen ninety five Marion had a golf course
51:38
Speaker 2: on one of the members' properties, Clement Griscom and by
51:42
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety six there was an official nine hole golf
51:46
Speaker 2: course that was designed by Willie Campbell, not the Willy
51:49
Speaker 2: Campbell from Brookline, Willie W. Campbell from Saint Andrew's. Willy
51:55
Speaker 2: Campbell from Brookline was from Musselborough and this is a
51:58
Speaker 2: different Willie.
51:59
Speaker 1: One of the sea.
52:00
Speaker 2: Semingly, thousands of Willie's from Great Britain, from England or
52:07
Speaker 2: Scotland and were involved in early golf in America.
52:10
Speaker 1: They all those guys are named Willy. Yeah.
52:13
Speaker 2: Parents weren't very creative and no dolling out names, and
52:17
Speaker 2: it makes it hard to follow because you know, they're
52:19
Speaker 2: very common names, and you know, doing searches online makes
52:24
Speaker 2: it kind of difficult. But Willie Campbell designed the first
52:27
Speaker 2: nine hole course in eighteen ninety five. It was expanded
52:30
Speaker 2: to eighteen holes in nineteen hundred, but it was it
52:33
Speaker 2: was short, and the technology advances in that with the
52:38
Speaker 2: Haskell ball and steel shafts instead of hickory shafts were creating, uh,
52:44
Speaker 2: you know, the need for longer courses. I think the
52:48
Speaker 2: course was fifty six hundred yards and that wasn't going
52:52
Speaker 2: to cut it better. Better athletes were playing golf and
52:56
Speaker 2: better equipment was was obsoleting a lot of courses. And
52:59
Speaker 2: the court and the and the club leased the land
53:02
Speaker 2: from the from the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Clement Chriskam don't
53:06
Speaker 2: you know, allowed them to be on his property as well.
53:09
Speaker 2: So they looked to find a place where they could
53:11
Speaker 2: buy land and build a championship golf course that was
53:17
Speaker 2: you don't go to stands attested time for the better players.
53:21
Speaker 2: As Philadelphia embraced golf and embraced championship golf. The fellow
53:30
Speaker 2: that bought the three hundred acres with the idea of
53:33
Speaker 2: making the land available to Marion at half price, brought
53:36
Speaker 2: in an H. H. Barker to look it over. He
53:39
Speaker 2: was an English architect. You probably know him more about
53:43
Speaker 2: him than I do. But he submitted a He submitted
53:47
Speaker 2: a letter and then a routing map for the club.
53:50
Speaker 2: We have the letter. Unfortunately we don't have the routing map,
53:53
Speaker 2: so it's hard to understand what he what he was
53:56
Speaker 2: looking at. You know, there were no boundaries then the
53:58
Speaker 2: house and the location for the housing lots were not
54:03
Speaker 2: delineated at that time, so we are don't we don't
54:07
Speaker 2: really know what he was looking at a few years
54:11
Speaker 2: I guess that was nineteen ten. So the next year
54:14
Speaker 2: they brought in the two most celebrated golfers in America
54:18
Speaker 2: SEEBE McDonald and H. J. Wigham. They both had US
54:21
Speaker 2: Amateur championships. McDonald was in the middle of, you know,
54:26
Speaker 2: creating National Golf Links, which is you know, is usually
54:30
Speaker 2: considered the first best course in the United States. But
54:35
Speaker 2: that was using old World principles in a lot of ways,
54:38
Speaker 2: and the routing is up and back routing with the
54:42
Speaker 2: you know, very little wind variety and things like that.
54:45
Speaker 2: But they came in and looked at the and consulted.
54:48
Speaker 2: I'm sure they knew each other from the Leslie Cup,
54:50
Speaker 2: the Inner Club, inner City competitions, and they suggested a
54:56
Speaker 2: six thousand yard golf course. I think McDonald didn't want
54:59
Speaker 2: to thing to surpass or or you know, be or
55:03
Speaker 2: outshine National Golf Links, so the six thousand yard golf course,
55:08
Speaker 2: but that's not really what Mary was looking for. They
55:11
Speaker 2: were looking for something a more severe test than that.
55:15
Speaker 2: And eventually they you know that Hugh Wilson went to
55:20
Speaker 2: it with some of the committee members and went to
55:22
Speaker 2: visit McDonald and Wigham at National Golf Links. Came back
55:28
Speaker 2: with a whole bunch of ideas and eventually they set
55:32
Speaker 2: her on a like several ideas they had McDonald look
55:37
Speaker 2: at them, and he helped them choose which of their designs.
55:40
Speaker 2: It wasn't the McDonald McDonald design. He helped them select
55:44
Speaker 2: which he thought would be the best design turns out
55:47
Speaker 2: to be the one that we have now, and it was.
55:49
Speaker 2: It was an in house project. Like I said, there
55:53
Speaker 2: was only twenty two bunkers to start with. They wanted
55:55
Speaker 2: to see how the course played. I mean these guys
55:58
Speaker 2: were amateur golf out commissure architects. They didn't really couldn't
56:02
Speaker 2: foresee how, you know, how the golf course would play
56:05
Speaker 2: in actuality versus you know, theoretical, So they waited to
56:10
Speaker 2: see how the course played. It was awarded the nineteen
56:13
Speaker 2: sixteen Amateur, which only four years after opening, was probably
56:17
Speaker 2: more indicative, how you know. The Philadelphians were you know,
56:23
Speaker 2: considered that you know, throw you know, to have a
56:27
Speaker 2: major tournament, and the Amateur was the major tournament back then.
56:31
Speaker 2: The US opened was sort of second bananas. I think
56:35
Speaker 2: it became more prominent and after Bobby Jones retired the
56:40
Speaker 2: US opened that is, but for at that time, the
56:43
Speaker 2: US Amateur was the premier event in the in the
56:46
Speaker 2: United States. And they took a look at the golf
56:48
Speaker 2: course and said, well, this isn't going to work because
56:51
Speaker 2: there's only twenty two bunkers. And there was some outdated
56:56
Speaker 2: design practices, some mounding, you know the quite chocolate drops
57:01
Speaker 2: but mid Surrey kind of mounding, and some squared greens
57:06
Speaker 2: and kind of geometric looking bunkers. But that's when you know,
57:10
Speaker 2: Hugh Wilson and Flynn together decided to take the course
57:14
Speaker 2: in a more original direction, and that's you know, really
57:19
Speaker 2: one of the earliest examples of American architecture, which they
57:24
Speaker 2: called the scientific design that you know, supplanted in a
57:32
Speaker 2: lot of ways the Victorian designs and even the template
57:35
Speaker 2: designs that McDonald and later mcgrater were doing. But again,
57:41
Speaker 2: so they held the nineteen sixteen Amateur was a huge success.
57:45
Speaker 2: They played the Amateur on both the East and West courses,
57:49
Speaker 2: and then by the time nineteen twenty four came around,
57:52
Speaker 2: we were able to you know, apply the additional seven
57:55
Speaker 2: and a half acres Alost ten, twelve, ten and eleven,
57:58
Speaker 2: twelve and thirteen were redesigned and I think dramatically improved,
58:05
Speaker 2: mostly by Flynn, with Wilson contributing as well. He you know,
58:09
Speaker 2: he was on a lot of Wilson was on a
58:11
Speaker 2: lot of committees. He had to run his own family
58:14
Speaker 2: insurance business, it was maritime insurance, and he was on
58:18
Speaker 2: the executive board of the USGA. He's on the Green
58:20
Speaker 2: Section board. He was in other local boards and stuff
58:24
Speaker 2: like that. So he was really he groomed Flint and
58:27
Speaker 2: they were they. I'm sure nothing was done without Hugh
58:31
Speaker 2: Wilson's oversight, but also a lot of changes were made
58:37
Speaker 2: after Hugh Wilson passed away. The first hall is a
58:41
Speaker 2: Flinn Hall that was redesigned for the nineteen thirty amateur
58:44
Speaker 2: and really until Gil Hants came in twenty eighteen, the
58:47
Speaker 2: golf course was exactly the same for the what eighty
58:52
Speaker 2: something years, So this was, you know, a great collaboration
58:57
Speaker 2: between Hugh Wilson and William Flinton. Right, the course is
59:01
Speaker 2: essentially their work, their baby. I'm fascinated by Hugh Wilson.
59:08
Speaker 1: You know. My understanding is that he was he was
59:11
Speaker 1: basically just a member of Yeah, I mean he was right,
59:14
Speaker 1: I mean he wasn't he wasn't a hired gun. He
59:17
Speaker 1: wasn't a professional architect by any means. No, he was
59:21
Speaker 1: just I guess they identified him as, hey, this guy's
59:25
Speaker 1: smart and maybe maybe he'll maybe he'll be able to
59:27
Speaker 1: build us a good course. And he's right here, he's
59:29
Speaker 1: in the membership and and let's go with him. So
59:32
Speaker 1: who was Hugh Wilson like and how did he come
59:36
Speaker 1: to be such a such alliant designer of this course
59:40
Speaker 1: the very least.
59:41
Speaker 2: I think that's a great question. I think it's really
59:42
Speaker 2: good to highlight his contributions because they go well beyond
59:48
Speaker 2: Marion in a lot of ways. He was a collegiate golfer.
59:53
Speaker 2: He was a captain of the golf team at Princeton,
59:55
Speaker 2: graduating in nineteen oh two. While he was at Princeton,
59:59
Speaker 2: he was involved in the new design of the Springdale
1:00:03
Speaker 2: course on campus that moved from a couple miles away
1:00:07
Speaker 2: to where it is today. And when Flynn redesigned the course,
1:00:11
Speaker 2: it was in homage to Hugh Wilson. That's the kind
1:00:14
Speaker 2: of relationship they had. It was really like a father
1:00:17
Speaker 2: and son relationship. But Hugh Wilson was you know, he
1:00:19
Speaker 2: was an excellent golfer. He wasn't the best golfer in Philadelphia,
1:00:23
Speaker 2: but he was really beloved people. I mean, he was
1:00:27
Speaker 2: just a guy that you could not help. But like
1:00:30
Speaker 2: he was a soft spoken, sickly kind of guy. You know,
1:00:33
Speaker 2: he was often he's kind of rail thin, and he
1:00:38
Speaker 2: always had ailments. He ended up dying in nineteen twenty five,
1:00:42
Speaker 2: right after the twenty like February. I think it was
1:00:44
Speaker 2: of twenty five, right after the not long after the
1:00:47
Speaker 2: twenty four Amateur. But he was sickly through for many years.
1:00:51
Speaker 2: He used to go up to Massachusetts and convalesced by
1:00:55
Speaker 2: the ocean. Ended up dying young at of nephritis, and
1:01:02
Speaker 2: he had arterial sclerosis as well. But while he was,
1:01:07
Speaker 2: you know, he was a young guy that the big wigs,
1:01:11
Speaker 2: the big potatoes that Marion Deem you know, named him
1:01:15
Speaker 2: as the guy to do the job. He dived in
1:01:18
Speaker 2: head first. He became one of the world's experts on turf,
1:01:22
Speaker 2: grasses construction and all that. Piper and Oakley had a
1:01:27
Speaker 2: book Developed Turf for golf courses and there's a chapter.
1:01:30
Speaker 2: McDonald did a chapter, but Hugh Wilson did a chapter
1:01:32
Speaker 2: on how they designed and turf to Marion and it's
1:01:36
Speaker 2: it's just fascinating how much time he developed. And really
1:01:39
Speaker 2: between Alan Wilson, U's brother, I'm not sure if he
1:01:42
Speaker 2: was older or younger, Hugh Wilson and William Flynn, they
1:01:45
Speaker 2: were very much responsible for the development of the USGA
1:01:48
Speaker 2: Green section. So to me, Hugh Wilson is just, you know,
1:01:53
Speaker 2: he was he had so much energy, so much desire
1:01:57
Speaker 2: to learn, and his goal was to create the best
1:02:00
Speaker 2: of course, and and and create a you know, a
1:02:04
Speaker 2: collaborative community. And and really you think about Pine Valley,
1:02:09
Speaker 2: the collaborative effort there, Cobbs Creek. These were Philadelphians that
1:02:13
Speaker 2: didn't you know that they relished and embraced working together
1:02:17
Speaker 2: to create something. There was no egos or anything like that.
1:02:20
Speaker 2: If you look at some of the writings that that
1:02:22
Speaker 2: Hugh Wilson did, he never.
1:02:24
Speaker 1: Talked about I did this or we did that.
1:02:26
Speaker 2: You know, it was always this is what happened. He
1:02:29
Speaker 2: never you know, tried to take credit. He was a
1:02:31
Speaker 2: I think he was a humble man in a lot
1:02:33
Speaker 2: of ways, kind of yeah, typical Quaker gentleman, although he
1:02:37
Speaker 2: wasn't Quaker, but.
1:02:38
Speaker 1: Right, the influence maybe, but maybe was regionally.
1:02:43
Speaker 2: You know.
1:02:43
Speaker 1: An aspect of Hugh Wilson's story that I that I
1:02:46
Speaker 1: find very interesting is his visits to National Golf Links
1:02:50
Speaker 1: and then his trip over to see courses in Great Britain.
1:02:55
Speaker 1: What influence do you think those those travels had on
1:02:59
Speaker 1: on what he eventually did it?
1:03:01
Speaker 2: Marion, I'm not so sure that I think with the
1:03:05
Speaker 2: visit with McDonald and Wigum at National gave him a
1:03:08
Speaker 2: perspective he probably didn't have before, right, I don't think
1:03:11
Speaker 2: there was a direct influence, although there was a principal's
1:03:15
Speaker 2: nose on the fourth hole for a while, you know
1:03:17
Speaker 2: that really big cross bunker. Yeah, short of that was
1:03:21
Speaker 2: was a principal's nose feature, so interesting, So there was
1:03:24
Speaker 2: some influence.
1:03:25
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean he certainly didn't pick up the templates.
1:03:27
Speaker 1: But I guess you know, if I'm putting myself back
1:03:31
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen teens and I see National Golf
1:03:35
Speaker 1: Links and all I've seen is the other courses that
1:03:38
Speaker 1: existed in the US at the time, I'm not necessarily
1:03:42
Speaker 1: saying to myself I want to do template holes now,
1:03:45
Speaker 1: but I'm saying to myself, oh man, there's a lot
1:03:48
Speaker 1: of potential in golf architecture. Yeah, you know, the grandeur
1:03:52
Speaker 1: of this course, that the scale of this achievement is
1:03:55
Speaker 1: something that, Ohsue, we can think bigger now. I think.
1:04:00
Speaker 1: I think in.
1:04:03
Speaker 2: Creating a knowledge base on turf, grass and maintenance practices
1:04:07
Speaker 2: helped a lot. Oh sure, yeah, National was big in that, right.
1:04:11
Speaker 1: They had trouble.
1:04:12
Speaker 2: National was failing they you know, they they it was
1:04:14
Speaker 2: built on straight sand and they had lots of trouble.
1:04:17
Speaker 2: Pine Valley had tons of trouble, you know, after opening
1:04:21
Speaker 2: because the golf course was built on straight sand and
1:04:23
Speaker 2: they didn't really modify the soil, and they were losing
1:04:27
Speaker 2: the golf course all the time. There was a while
1:04:29
Speaker 2: where Flynn was both the superintendent at Pine Valley and Marion.
1:04:35
Speaker 2: That must have been a pretty tough commute, but back
1:04:37
Speaker 2: in the late nineteenth nineteen nineteen and nineteen twenty. But so,
1:04:42
Speaker 2: I think there was something about the Philadelphians, the George Thomas,
1:04:47
Speaker 2: the George Crump and Wilson w was was in the
1:04:55
Speaker 2: was in that group. Yeah, yeah, that this Philadelphia school
1:04:58
Speaker 2: of golf architecture. They wanted to do things differently. They
1:05:01
Speaker 2: wanted an American style of golf architecture and have a
1:05:05
Speaker 2: much more natural natural look, you know. Uh that that
1:05:11
Speaker 2: wasn't kind of a stark contrast between what's man made
1:05:13
Speaker 2: and what's what's what's what's.
1:05:16
Speaker 1: You know, what is?
1:05:19
Speaker 2: Yeah right yeah, So and then you know, when there
1:05:22
Speaker 2: was architecture, they and this was sort of the the
1:05:26
Speaker 2: way Flynn became the nature fakers. If they if they
1:05:30
Speaker 2: were going to do something that was man made, they
1:05:32
Speaker 2: didn want they didn't want it to look man made.
1:05:35
Speaker 2: They didn't want geometric features or anything like that one
1:05:39
Speaker 2: because they're more expensive to maintain. But also they just
1:05:42
Speaker 2: they just thought that it needs to look like the
1:05:46
Speaker 2: hand of man's not there. And there's something about you know,
1:05:51
Speaker 2: even though you know marrying you know, the teaser built
1:05:53
Speaker 2: and the bunkers are built, and the greens or but
1:05:56
Speaker 2: there's something about it that there's a harmony there with it.
1:06:00
Speaker 2: If you get a sense of maybe a pastoral feeling
1:06:04
Speaker 2: that you're you know that you know, it's it's all,
1:06:08
Speaker 2: it's right, if you know what I mean this, You're
1:06:10
Speaker 2: not playing against man, you're playing against nature. And to
1:06:13
Speaker 2: me that's that's a great feature with the you know,
1:06:17
Speaker 2: with natural looking golf courses, there's just a different feel
1:06:20
Speaker 2: about it. So I do think well the influence on
1:06:24
Speaker 2: Hugh Wilson and later Flynn from the UK trip that
1:06:30
Speaker 2: Wilson took and Flynn never went over there, so that
1:06:32
Speaker 2: you know, this is a this all flowed through Hugh
1:06:36
Speaker 2: Wilson was the more natural looking, the look of the
1:06:39
Speaker 2: bunkering and the seaside. You know, he went to the
1:06:42
Speaker 2: seaside what be it the Jersey Shore which he talked about,
1:06:46
Speaker 2: or the or the bunkering that he saw on the
1:06:47
Speaker 2: links Lands. Just I think that had a huge impact
1:06:52
Speaker 2: on how he approached the design astatic of the bunkering
1:06:56
Speaker 2: and things.
1:06:57
Speaker 1: Right. Well, you know, throughout this conversation, Wayne, we've sort
1:07:01
Speaker 1: of been developing an argument for Marion's importance that it's
1:07:08
Speaker 1: at the beginning of something in American golf architecture. And
1:07:13
Speaker 1: I'd like to kind of put a cap on that.
1:07:15
Speaker 1: You know, how, how would you talk about Marion's influence
1:07:19
Speaker 1: and importance in the development of golf architecture in the US.
1:07:25
Speaker 2: That's a tough question. That's a good question, but you know,
1:07:27
Speaker 2: not easy. A number of different directions you could take.
1:07:29
Speaker 2: I mean, let me suggest William Flynn went out to
1:07:34
Speaker 2: do a bunch of other things that were influential and
1:07:37
Speaker 2: important in their own right, and really his origin story
1:07:41
Speaker 2: is with the design and development of this golf course
1:07:45
Speaker 2: alongside Hugh Wilson.
1:07:46
Speaker 1: Right, So that's one direction, right. Another direction might be
1:07:49
Speaker 1: this introduction of naturalism to American golf architecture. Aroach, don't
1:07:55
Speaker 1: you answer this question? Well?
1:07:57
Speaker 2: Sorry, no, no, I think I really don't mean.
1:08:00
Speaker 1: To ask a question that I already have an answer
1:08:03
Speaker 1: to because you know, what you've said so far is
1:08:06
Speaker 1: basically what I'm giving back to you right now. But
1:08:10
Speaker 1: you've kind of developed this naturalism idea. There's also perhaps
1:08:14
Speaker 1: the idea of strategic architecture, you know, arranged on a
1:08:20
Speaker 1: championship golf course, or strategic architecture applied to the end
1:08:25
Speaker 1: of challenging really good players that Marian seems to embody.
1:08:30
Speaker 1: So those are kind of three different directions that I've
1:08:32
Speaker 1: seen you take this subject so far in the conversation.
1:08:36
Speaker 1: But I don't know if there's anything.
1:08:37
Speaker 2: Else or whether one of those stands out to you.
1:08:39
Speaker 2: I look at Philadelphia at large, the kind of work
1:08:41
Speaker 2: that was going on with the Philadelphia School of Golf architects,
1:08:44
Speaker 2: Pine Valley and Marion. Again, these were collaborative efforts, less
1:08:49
Speaker 2: so at Marian than it was at Pine Valley, but
1:08:51
Speaker 2: it was all about creating championship golf courses that would
1:08:55
Speaker 2: stand the test of time and develop better players. I
1:08:59
Speaker 2: think they they succeeded very well, not only that, but
1:09:02
Speaker 2: identifies great players. You look at the champions at Marion,
1:09:06
Speaker 2: they're you know, I mean, maybe maybe Olin Dutris kind
1:09:11
Speaker 2: of the exception which you know, there's bound to be
1:09:13
Speaker 2: some exceptions to the rule. But there's a reason why
1:09:15
Speaker 2: Bobby Jones won two amateurs there, there's a reason why
1:09:22
Speaker 2: Ben Hogan won when he won. The course demands a
1:09:26
Speaker 2: full complement of shots and the ability to move the
1:09:30
Speaker 2: ball both ways, which kind of gets lost a little
1:09:33
Speaker 2: bit in the modern game. I guess although you know, Mike,
1:09:37
Speaker 2: as I aged Mike, I'm hitting not hitting it as
1:09:40
Speaker 2: far as I used to, and uh, those demands aren't
1:09:42
Speaker 2: quite there as much anymore. But I'm moving up teas.
1:09:45
Speaker 2: I like playing combo te's now and things like that,
1:09:48
Speaker 2: so you can set marrying up with short teas that
1:09:51
Speaker 2: make it available, you know, make it enjoyable for everybody.
1:09:55
Speaker 2: But I do think that it's the collaborative effort at
1:10:00
Speaker 2: you know that Marion and Pine Valley, and particularly the
1:10:05
Speaker 2: sharing of knowledge and the growth of knowledge that Hugh
1:10:09
Speaker 2: Wilson and William Flynn had together. It transported everywhere. It
1:10:14
Speaker 2: transporting out Thomas, you know, he brought up to California.
1:10:18
Speaker 2: Tilling has brought it all over the country. But there
1:10:22
Speaker 2: were two classrooms where these guys learned their lessons and
1:10:26
Speaker 2: became you know, the exceptional talents that they became, and
1:10:32
Speaker 2: that's Marian and Pine Valley, and the reasons for both
1:10:35
Speaker 2: are the same. You know, developed championship golfers want, you know,
1:10:39
Speaker 2: you need requiring, you know, needing a championship golf course
1:10:42
Speaker 2: to create championship golfers. And I really do think the
1:10:46
Speaker 2: influence is far and wide in the United States today.
1:10:50
Speaker 2: There's been a little bit of a uh, you know,
1:10:53
Speaker 2: things happen in cycles, so there's been a little bit
1:10:55
Speaker 2: of a return to the McDonald rayner stuff that, you know,
1:10:59
Speaker 2: bringing the lido back and you know, some of the
1:11:03
Speaker 2: designs influences of MacDonald or Rayner. But to me, that's
1:11:10
Speaker 2: not America thing, you know, that's that's sort of a
1:11:12
Speaker 2: vestige of the old world. Maybe he had one foot
1:11:16
Speaker 2: in the old world in one foot in the kind
1:11:19
Speaker 2: of new world, but Philadelphia took it in an entirely
1:11:21
Speaker 2: different direction and created an American style of golf architecture.
1:11:26
Speaker 1: There's sort of these twin origin stories, I guess of
1:11:31
Speaker 1: American golf architecture, the yin and the Yang represented by
1:11:36
Speaker 1: National Golf Links on the one hand, which opened in
1:11:40
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, right was developed for several years before that,
1:11:45
Speaker 1: but it finally became you know, playable by about nineteen eleven. Yeah,
1:11:50
Speaker 1: and then it was the very next year that the
1:11:55
Speaker 1: initial iteration of Hugh Wilson's design at the East Course
1:12:00
Speaker 1: at Marion opened, And so it's it's within this two
1:12:05
Speaker 1: year period that we have kind of two different paths
1:12:09
Speaker 1: for American golf architecture opening up. Yeah.
1:12:12
Speaker 2: That trunk of the tree, you know, has two really
1:12:14
Speaker 2: big branches separated early on.
1:12:17
Speaker 1: It's so interesting, though, I heard you say earlier that
1:12:21
Speaker 1: that you really think that the East Course came into
1:12:24
Speaker 1: its own and this is just my interpretation of what
1:12:27
Speaker 1: you said, came into its own more in nineteen sixteen.
1:12:31
Speaker 2: Around Yeahsaover was helped. Yeah, so that when you think
1:12:34
Speaker 2: that Marion really became the kind of path breaking golf
1:12:38
Speaker 2: course that we're talking about right now, yeah, I do
1:12:41
Speaker 2: think so. And it was and you know, championship golf
1:12:43
Speaker 2: at Marion's always been a you know, in the DNA
1:12:47
Speaker 2: of the club, and it's really the reason why the club,
1:12:49
Speaker 2: the course improved over time. I mean, if you think
1:12:53
Speaker 2: of nineteen twelve to nineteen thirty four, there were a
1:12:55
Speaker 2: lot of changes that were made and fortunately not all
1:13:00
Speaker 2: changes or improvements, but these were these were all improvements
1:13:03
Speaker 2: in the golf course. And again it was Hugh Wilson,
1:13:07
Speaker 2: then Hugh Wilson and Flynn then Flynn, and I think
1:13:12
Speaker 2: without a doubt the it's sort of a microcosm of
1:13:15
Speaker 2: the evolution of golf architecture, and it followed the evolution
1:13:20
Speaker 2: of golf going from you know, hitting a two hundred
1:13:24
Speaker 2: and twenty yard shot with a with a hickory and
1:13:26
Speaker 2: a gun approch it to you know what they're you know,
1:13:30
Speaker 2: they're they're you know, four hundred and sixty cc drivers
1:13:33
Speaker 2: that they're carrying three sixty hitting three wood over the
1:13:36
Speaker 2: first green. It's still a relevant golf you know, still
1:13:41
Speaker 2: a relevant golf course. And there's not too many sixty
1:13:45
Speaker 2: eight sixty nine hundred yard golf courses that today that
1:13:47
Speaker 2: can you know, withstand the the the improvements in golfers
1:13:53
Speaker 2: and golf equipment. Studying that golf course. I think anybody
1:13:56
Speaker 2: who wants is interested in golf architecture needs to study
1:14:00
Speaker 2: it for what it is. Like you, like you pointed
1:14:02
Speaker 2: out where it is in the in the evolution of
1:14:05
Speaker 2: golf architecture in America, but it's it's It's an example
1:14:09
Speaker 2: of a golf course that you know, considered short, is
1:14:13
Speaker 2: still you know, still uh, still relevant and enjoyable.
1:14:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. It was important at the time that
1:14:22
Speaker 1: it was built for a variety of reasons, because of
1:14:25
Speaker 1: its newness and because of what it indicated about where
1:14:27
Speaker 1: golf architecture could go. And now it still seems to
1:14:31
Speaker 1: be important, partly because it represents a way to challenge
1:14:36
Speaker 1: elite players without enlarging and lengthening everything, right, And so
1:14:44
Speaker 1: the course's significance has maybe shifted over the years, but
1:14:48
Speaker 1: but it's but it's still there. So, uh, thank you
1:14:51
Speaker 1: so much for for coming on the podcast. Wayne. It's
1:14:53
Speaker 1: always a delight to talk to you. And uh, you know,
1:14:57
Speaker 1: your research has been really important in my own understanding
1:15:00
Speaker 1: thing of this course and many of William Flynn's other courses.
1:15:04
Speaker 1: So so thank you for that research. And we'll have
1:15:07
Speaker 1: to talk again soon.
1:15:08
Speaker 2: Thanks Gay. When are we going to play golf together
1:15:12
Speaker 2: any anytime I'm on a plane, I'm outside of Portland, Oregon,
1:15:19
Speaker 2: so I'm always away. I'm always away, but it's I'm
1:15:22
Speaker 2: over one of these one of these days. I look
1:15:24
Speaker 2: forward to that. That's great. I really enjoyed talking to you.
1:15:27
Speaker 2: Your knowledge, your insights, your questioning abilities or are really phenomenal.
1:15:33
Speaker 2: So it's a pleasure to speak to you. It's a
1:15:35
Speaker 2: pleasure to get you know, inspired to uh to you know,
1:15:41
Speaker 2: to to be able to dig in and and be
1:15:43
Speaker 2: able to answer your very insightful question. So much appreciated.
1:15:55
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will. Thank
1:16:00
Speaker 1: you Will. If you'd like to support Frida Egg Golf further,
1:16:06
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1:16:41
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