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Part II: Who was that guy?
Posted on July 02, 2024 at 12:00 AM
What Makes a Golf Course
We all know (at least a little bit) about the history of Golf -the Game. But what of your chief opponent, not yourself - that’s for an article on psychoanalysis - the Course?
This month, at Pinehurst, the US 2024 OPEN Course #2 is demonstrating that Golf, in its origins, was not designed to be an easy game. Donald Ross, the architect of #2 and now synonymous with Pinehurst, a relocated Scotsman, came to America in 1899. He started as a Golf Professional in Massachusetts. He brought with him ideas from Dornoch - an Old Tom Morris masterpiece which was literally 500 yards from his front door. Ross is a revered name in the southeast where over 100 of his 400 lifetime designs can be recognized immediately, turtleback greens and runoffs everywhere. Result - formidable foes indeed!
While James Lee was smitten by golf and penned the first ever book on golf published in America, aptly named Golf in America (1895), Charles Blair Macdonald was the first to delve into the art and architecture of the game. He said it best in his seminal book, Scotland’s Gift written in 1928, where he claims to be the first to have coined the term Golf Course Architect.
CB MacDonald was introduced to Golf at St. Andrews while there as an overseas student at ST. Andrews University in 1872. Old Tom Morris had left his Gift, The Old Course at St Andrews, at CB’s dorm doorstep. MacDonald was obsessed with Golf thereafter and spent most of his life trying to emulate designs he had come across. His lifetime labour was the National Golf Links of America near Philadelphia. Here can be found holes directly derived from famous holes such as Biarritz in France (a 1888 Willie Dunn, Jr. design). Dunn, another Scottish import, then came to America where he gave us Shinnecock Hills in 1891. You will also find The Road Hole -17at St. Andrews, The Alps-Old Prestwick-and the much-copied Redan from N. Berwick at MacDonald’s National Links.
While MacDonald kept tweaking the National his whole life, he also gave us a more productive architect in Seth Raynor. American born, Raynor was a trained Civil Engineer who left us, among many, Fishers Island, the Yale Club, and Mid Ocean. Known as a classicist designer (thank you CB), he and the Scot, Charles Banks grew from under MacDonald’s wing to great architects in their own rights.
So, what about Meadowood and all this? Wouldn’t it be nice to speak with our architect, Ankrom, and ask him who his influences have been? Where his ideas came from?
Well, fellow detectives, it is all there for us to figure out. We know one thing with certainty -he didn’t ascribe to Willie Park Jr.’s philosophy of a nice gentle opening hole to get you comfortable with your game.
Meadowood’s Number One grabs our attention a little too early, especially if we just rolled out of bed without hitting a practice shot. We start with a gauntlet of 4 holes which can beat you up quickly if you aren’t ready to think your way around. Number 5 is the first place you can relax a little. And then 6 promptly arrives. Significant features noted immediately at Meadowood are the abundant sand and the water and resultant eye-pleasing and ego- deflating possibilities right there for your golfing pleasure.
We need only to look at other work and influences on Ankrom to find his inspirations. Ankrom worked on Doral’s The Blue Monster with American architect Robert Von Hagge in 1996, giving it the form it has today derived from Dick Wilson’s original.
He also collaborated frequently with Bruce Devlin, most notably on Bay Hill, the Florida home of the Arnold Palmer masterpiece which Arnold has tweaked with Ed Seay continuously, but whose bones Devlin and Ankrom rearranged out of Dick Wilson’s original in the 1970’s.
The water features prominently at Meadowood as it does at those and many of Dick Wilson’s courses. It is there for both strategic and aesthetic purpose. A quick think and I arrived with this: it is possible to deposit a ball in the water on 17 of our 18 holes! I know because I have done it. The only exception is #7. You may say #10 has no water. Then why have I left a few in the pond across the road? Most holes give you not 1 but 2 or 3 possibilities to dunk it! We witnessed the ball retrieving machinery bring out no fewer than 50,000 balls earlier this year, so I am not alone in finding the deep.
So how have the influences of distant others/originators of the game shown themselves at Meadowood? The second green is a prime example of a Redan hole. Those of us fortunate to have played North Berwick have seen the single bunker protecting the front approach. We have seen the green longer sideways than back to front and the sloping right to left - no need to travel to Scotland - we have it here. It was certainly on Chuck Ankrom’s mind on #2, with the twist of adding the pond in front and right for further consideration for the big hitters off the tee.
Bunkering and the origins and evolution of the concept warrant a volume on their own. Ankrom originally provided us with over 70 of these bedevillers, and the only serious tweaking we have done to his design is removing 5 or so on the advice of resident/Professional Emeritus, Sam Snead, who in 1989 famously told us # 17 was too punitive for golfers of our abilities.
Gino, our Landirr foreman, tells me his favourite hole is #6 with the ‘elephant buried in the green ‘delighting him no end. He can see some tough putts (we have all experienced these at 6) over the years.
James Barron, our Superintendent, states # 11 is his hands down favourite for how it catches the eye from every tee and features the subtle complexity of the Green.
I like to think of Meadowood as starting strong and finishing strong. We have a great set of 4 finishing holes with, in my opinion, MGTC’s signature hole-- #16 in the mix and a lot of memorable holes in between. I was grabbed, as so many others have been, by Meadowood’s very pretty water and sand-filled fair yet tricky “got ya” nature the first time I played. I knew it was a course I could play every day and not get tired of it. What the heck, we joined after my second game here!
So, fellow Member/golfer, what is your favourite hole at Meadowood and what are your reasons why? Now you are becoming a true aficionado, occupying a position in our architect’s eye.
Thank You, Charles Ankrom, and thank you to the thousands of course designers over the centuries upon whose shoulders all architects stand.
Sam Kucey
Interested in a little more?
There is so much in the world of golf course architecture to get excited about, I could not bring all my favourites in, but for a start I point interested readers to read Alister Mackenzie’s SPIRIT of ST. ANDREWS. Just as a teaser, Mackenzie, of Augusta and Cypress Point here in the USA, was a Boer war veteran physician (a lousy but seriously smitten golfer until 60 when he improved!) named first director of camouflage warfare for the British Expeditionary forces. He applied the concept of hidden delights and a duality with the natural land to his golf course design.
For an anthology on the whole picture, read The ARCHITECTS of GOLF by Cornish and Whitten.
If you can get your hands on one of the 100 or so underworld copies of Tom Doak’s The CONFIDENTIAL GUIDE to GOLF COURSES, do it. Failing that, Doak has published a less spicy but much more inclusive version of the well-received critical appraisal and rating of everyone’s work but his own. Spoiler alert: he is not a big fan of Nicklaus designs.
For a wonderful sally into the origins of bunkering, try to find Don Childs’ Harry Colt’s Sand Save at the Royal Ottawa or How the Golf Course got its Bunkers.