Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture => Topic started by: Joe Bausch on December 19, 2007, 11:56:07 AM
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Here is the drawing published in the Philadelphia Inquirer for Pine Valley from 1914:
Headline: Pine Valley Course Designed for All the Year 'Round Playing and Calling for "Thinking Golf" by Players; Article Type: News/Opinion
Paper: Philadelphia Inquirer, published as The Philadelphia Inquirer; Date: 01-04-1914; Volume: 170; Issue: 4; Page: 11; Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
(http://darwin.chem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/pv_1_04_1914_Inky.jpg)
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Good find Joe! That's a copy of Colt's plan.
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Quite interesting! It seems to be devoid of a few features though, such as the lake in front of 14/15. Also, where's the dogleg on the 12th, and Hell's Half Acre? Did Crump and the architects change the routing/layout THAT much after Colt laid out the original plan? ???
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Chris
Yes you can pretty much work out the changes; HAH, 12, 13 and 14 etc lots of info in the GCA discussion group archives about these.
Looks like the word "Swamp" is written between 15 and 16.
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Joe
Is there any text to go with the plan? If there is, it would be super if you could post that too.
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Joe
Is there any text to go with the plan? If there is, it would be super if you could post that too.
There is Paul. I'll post it in pieces coming up soon.
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Here is part 1 of the text.
(http://darwin.chem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/pv_1_04_1914_Inky_text_part1.jpg)
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Part 2:
(http://darwin.chem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/pv_1_04_1914_Inky_text_part2.jpg)
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part 3:
(http://darwin.chem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/pv_1_04_1914_Inky_text_part3.jpg)
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last part of the text:
(http://darwin.chem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/pv_1_04_1914_Inky_text_part4.jpg)
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The Philly Inky ran a column during this era called "Club and Clubmen". The reference for this next part is as follows:
Headline: Clubs and Clubmen; Article Type: News/Opinion
Paper: Philadelphia Inquirer, published as The Philadelphia Inquirer; Date: 01-11-1914; Volume: 170; Issue: 11; Page: 5; Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
(http://darwin.chem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/pv_1_11_1914_Inky_text.jpg)
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Thanks Joe. That was the article that led some to believe that Colt's only contribution was the change to the 5th (8 iron par3 changed to a driver par 3 is "minor"?). I guess the author wasn't aware that the plan he included in the article was drawn by Colt.
Interesting that he writes about a huge view from the 6th ridge.
The yardage to the 14th hole doesn't fit??
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Joe,
This is awesome. I've been a bit predisposed with a family medical issue, but you're uncovering some tremendous stuff!
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It's also interesting in a later article that Joe Bunker (Tilly) mentions that Macdonald believed Pine Valley is the best course in the country. Quite a testament from the man who built NGLA!
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Joe,
This is awesome. I've been a bit predisposed with a family medical issue, but you're uncovering some tremendous stuff!
I'm confident there could be more to be dug up. Stay tuned.
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Joe, that's great detective work. I know I saw a good drawing in a book called Great Golf Courses of America. They had great drawings of many courses actually, Augusta, Shinny, Southern Hills, Sawgrass...
...in a funny bit of poor editing, they had Ventana Canyon in there...they analyzed the mountain course, but they put in the drawing of the canyon course. Has anybody else got this book? Its by John Gordon with photos by Mike French.
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Paul,
That is certainly in the style of and very similar to the Colt drawing we obtained on eBay, but it is not exactly the same as the one we purchased on eBay on behalf of the club. There are several notable differences. The greens in the Colt drawing we obtained are not in Roman numerals. The twelfth green is properly numbered unlike our drawing which mistakenly had two 13th greens. A number of holes are drawn differently, especially in detail. The seventh on the drawing Joe posted shows a dogleg left where as the Colt drawing (labeled as such) we found is straight away. The 13th hole is significantly longer in the drawing Joe posted and there's a number of bunker differences.
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Very interesting statement that "experience----will dictate the permanent location of the bunkers."
Does any gca design a course today with the idea that they will move bunkers depending upon how the hole is playing - my thought is that today's bunkers involve much more work, including drainage, to construct and it isn't something which is easily or inexpensively done.
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Wayne
It's like the original one hanging up in the clubhouse; the one with blue/red lines, which does have roman numerals and the 7th turning left.
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Yes, of course it is like that one. Sorry about that. It does however differ from the eBay map in a number of ways. Where would you say the eBay map is in the time line of the development of the course compared to the one hanging in the clubhouse and the one posted in the Philadelphia Inquirer?
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Joe, Paul and Wayne:
That article and particularly the drawing of the course in the article is most interesting and should probably take some additional thought in a number of areas as to what it means about the design and construction of the golf course and the progression of both from 1913 until Crump died in Jan. 1918..
First of all, I doubt that drawing in the article is by Colt. At the very most I think all it could be is someone’s copy of the Colt whole course drawing that we bought off of eBay.
Until that Colt whole course drawing turned up on eBay it seems pretty certain that no one knew for years that Colt actually did a whole course drawing for Pine Valley. John Arthur Brown never mentioned it when he wrote Pine Valley’s first history book. Warner Shelley never mentioned it when he wrote Pine Valley’s second history book and Jim Finegan never mentioned it when he recently wrote the third and last Pine Valley history book. When I started researching the creation of the course all the club thought Colt did for the design and left behind was that hole by hole booklet that has always been in the possession of the club.
Then that Colt whole course drawing turned up on eBay after all those decades and it certainly is pretty close to the hole-by-hole drawings in the Colt booklet.
So where the hell was that Colt whole course drawing all these years that we bought off of eBay? That’s a good question and I suspect at some point during the construction of the course it was just taken off-site by someone and it never returned. Wherever that Colt whole course drawing we bought ended up all these years I suspect it was somewhere around Clementon probably stuck in a closet or attic for the last 90 years or so until someone finally discovered it relatively recently and took it to a local flea market and sold it for $56 to a bartender from Clementon who put it on eBay and frankly made a ton of money on it! ;)
We bought that Colt whole course map off of eBay from that Clementon bartender.
But I’m pretty sure Colt’s whole course map we bought was probably used on-site to some extent for the simple reason it does have those typical “fold lines” on it which means it was in and out of someone’s pocket a lot on-site. The “blue/red” line topo map that’s hung in the clubhouse all those years has the same fold-lines on it as does Crump’s original stick routing topo map that probably preceded Colt’s first and apparently only visit in May/June 1913.
I do know the “blue/red” line topo map that hangs in the clubhouse was used on-site for years by Crump et al for the simple reason that it has numerous iterations and alterations of holes that occurred throughout those years. In this vein, Tillinghast’s constant writing about Pine Valley and how things were progressing and changing on various holes over the years is of tremendous help that way in the creation of a virtual timeline that explains those alterations on that “blue/red” line topo.
And so are the so-called "Remembrances" of Crump's two best Pine Valley friends, Carr and Smith, who chronicled either contemporaneously and/or just after Crump died the things he was doing and thinking and the things he planned on doing (had he lived).
But consider this for a minute because it could be one of the finest examples to date of what I call “looking through the prism backwards”. By that I mean we today must always keep in mind the things that we know and think that those men back then could not have known for the simple reason a number of things and a number of factors came after them that they couldn’t have known about.
And one of those things just could be certain forms of technology that did not yet exist such as how could one get Colt’s whole course drawing into a newspaper article in 1914? One couldn’t copy it and reduce it in size because those kinds of inventions wouldn’t come for maybe another forty years.
And if that’s all true to say which it seems to me it is, then how did that drawing above get into that Inquirer article and who did it? I doubt Colt did it because at that point he was back in England and I doubt they got him to do another drawing just for the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper. ;)
Maybe someone at Pine Valley or some artist for the paper did a copy of Colt’s whole course drawing just for that newspaper article and that would explain why that drawing has a number of differences from Colt’s whole course drawing that we bought on eBay.
In the next post I’ll go over what those differences are between Colt's whole course drawing that we bought and that newspaper drawing above and what those differences probably mean about the design and construction of the golf course at that point and who was doing it and who was changing things and why and how.
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Tom
Colt did come back to America in 1914, but I'm not sure of the exact date that he arrived.
How do these yardages match up with the Carr report? I haven't got that to hand. I think it implied only 3 par 3s; simlar to the article above.
On the plan above, the 14th at 390 yards seems too long for any of the iterations we have seen (including the cape hole).
It's interesting to that the above plan has roman numerals like the original blue/red one, whereas the ebay one has regular numbers.
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Here is another interesting passage concerning PV and Colt, etc. I hope I'm not posting things that have already been covered through the years here!
Citation:
Headline: It Happened in Golfland; Article Type: News/Opinion
Paper: Philadelphia Inquirer, published as The Philadelphia Inquirer; Date: 02-15-1914; Volume: 170; Issue: 46; Page: 11; Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The author is Verdant Greene. Here is the first part of that article:
(http://darwin.chem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/PV_Colt_2_15_1914_Inky_part1.jpg)
(http://darwin.chem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/PV_Colt_2_15_1914_Inky_part2.jpg)
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"How do these yardages match up with the Carr report? I haven't got that to hand. I think it implied only 3 par 3s; simlar to the article above."
Paul:
That's a very good question and I assume by the Carr report you mean the article by Carr written about the course and Colt in 1914.
In my opinion, and I've felt this for years, that perhaps the most important thing of all that Crump got from Colt during his visit was that type of basic course "balance" and "variety" in something of a shot-testing vein on particular parts of the course and on particular holes. If one thinks about it that is not an easy thing to layout so specifically on a complex piece of property when both a routing as well as a routings particular individual hole designs is not completely settled on first.
But what I'm saying (above) and will go into in detail later is how some of the actual holes were being changed in various ways such as length that were actually reflected in that newpaper drawing along the stick line in yardage numbers that did not match the actual hole drawing by Colt that was apparently copied by the newspaper.
Good examples were #13 that said 420 along the stick line but the hole was still Colt's 300 yard 13th as a drawing and the 14th which was still a par 3 in the drawing but said 390 yards along the stickline. #7 says 550 along the stick-line but on the drawing it's not much more than about 450 because the spot the green is drawn at is over 100 yards from where the green was built (which Crump's red lines show) and #15 says 520 and it doesn't measure more than the high 400s on the drawing because the tee is basically on the fairway side of what was to be the lake.
The newspaper drawing also cuts a lot of the club's property off behind the 13th hole which is pretty misleading too.
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Tom
What yardage does Colt give for 7 and 15 in his booklet?
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"Tom
What yardage does Colt give for 7 and 15 in his booklet?"
Paul:
As you said above I do not have that info to hand at the moment but I'll get it for you shortly.
That is a good question anyway for the reason that I'm not too sure where or at what point Crump came up with this fixated idea of his that his two par 5s should be always completely unreachable in two. That may not have been Colt's idea but perhaps more an idea he got from Tillinghast somewhat later. At least Tillinghast seems to imply that in some of his later articles, particularly in the "Three Shot Hole" article republished in "The Course Beautiful".
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And here's another one I've run into.
Citation:
Headline: World's Greatest Golf Course is Now under Construction in Jersey; Article Type: News/Opinion
Paper: Montgomery Advertiser, published as The Montgomery Advertiser; Date: 09-17-1916; Volume: LXXXVII; Issue: 261; Page: Twelve; Location: Montgomery, Alabama. The author is Grantland Rice.
Here is part of the article:
(http://darwin.chem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/PV_Colt_9_17_1916_MontgomAd.jpg)
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"On the plan above, the 14th at 390 yards seems too long for any of the iterations we have seen (including the cape hole)."
Paul:
You can see that 390 yard par 4 14th iteration in stick line form only on the "Blue/Red" line topo but it's basically S lined out and/or Xed out along with the previous iteration for the placement of the 13th green which was about 125 yards to the right and short of where it was finally built.
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Tom
Also when does Tillinghast report on the extension of the 13th to a long par 4, from memory I think it was much later than 1914.
But here we have a 420 yard hole.
Also 12th is about right length.
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Just found when Tillinghast mentioned the 13th extension: March 1915.
http://www.tillinghast.net/cms/taxonomy/term/35
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Paul:
In Colt's hole-by-hole booklet #7 was listed as 430-470 and #15 was listed as 480-500. Both make total sense to me seeing as where I believe that green was drawn on #7 and where the tee was drawn on #15.
Interestingly, on Colt's 7th hole drawing in his booklet someone appears to have inserted 540 later. That too would make perfect sense as that's an increase which matches the distance from where Colt drew the 7th green and where Crump actually built it.
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On a side note... Paul, thank you for referencing the Tillinghast Association site and archive for the Tilly reference. It is for just this purpose that we've been working at getting his writings on there...
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I was surprised to see Herb Fowler mentioned so prominently in the article. Crump is referred to as a Fowler "disciple".
Is that news? Is it right? Bob
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Paul:
When Tillinghast reported on the extension of the 13th hole I do not believe he was as much reporting on the extended length of it but more on the fact of where the green site was changed TO!
The reason for that might be fairly obvious as Tillie also mentioned or implied that it was he who pointed out the new green site for #13 to Crump.
Previous to that the plan for the 13th hole had evolved from Colt's drawing that was a par 4 of 280 to 300 that had a green site just about over what's now known as Hollaman's Hollow towards the end of what is the landing zone of the 13th tee shot.
Before this January 1914 article Crump had obviously changed the 13th green site to a spot perhaps 125 yards to the right and short of the present green site. This shows up on the "blue/red" line topo and is clearly Xed out.
That iteration would've also left enough room for the 390 yard par 4 14th down the hill towards the present 14th green that we see in this article listed as a 390 par 4 but only as a yardage along the stick-line on Colt's 180-200 yard par 3 14th.
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Bob:
The revelation that Crump and his Pine Valley buddies were so high on Fowler and his architecture was total news to me and is a whole lot of the value of these articles and info Joe Bausch is coming up with via The Inquirer.
This stuff was clearly not being made up by some newspaper reporter. Obviously Verdant Green (whoever that really was) had been there at Pine Valley to talk with these guys and to see Fowler's plans under glass and all that.
I sure don't want to get into some big dispute again about Colt's role in all this but it sure isn't lost on me that one of these Verdant Green Inquirer articles in Jan 1914 also mentioned that Colt's major contribution to PV was the unraveling of the 5th hole and making it the great hole it is. On the other hand, I think few appreciate how much something like that essentially made the "jigsaw" puzzle effect of much of the rest of the course just fall into place because of that 5th hole alteration of Colt's. For that reason even if one hole it's more significant than it might at first seem and it appears Crump and his buddies felt that way too from what they apparently said to Verdant Green about Colt and the 5th hole.
Again, Verdant Green was clearly speaking directly to Crump and his buddies and it appears they're the ones who said that too!
I don't think this is any dissing or short-changing the contribution of Harry Colt to PV's design as Paul and Tom MacWood seemed to think a few years ago. I think this is the real deal from both close and contemporaneous reporting from someone who was right there to see it and hear it from the horse's mouth.
One would have been led to believe by Paul or Tom MacWood that just mentioning that Colt's primary contribution to PV was the 5th hole was something some at PV came up with years later to glorify Crump at Colt's expense but that description was offered in Jan 1914 when Crump was very much there and alive and with four more years to go before he died suddenly.
But again, this new news about Crump and his buddies feelings about Fowler and his architecture does not surprise me at all because for years I've suspected it was healthland architecture that Crump was really interested in and Fowler was certainly considered to be the best or one of the best of them at that point in 1914.
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I've thought for a while that the real history of gca is buried in newpapers and magazines of the era. Some of that stuff is now lost, but most of it is still out there to be discovered.
I've never had the time to do the digging to determine whether my hunch was correct. What Joe is finding seems to confirm my guess.
Great work Joe. Keep on truckin'.
Bob
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Bob:
The revelation that Crump and his Pine Valley buddies were so high on Fowler and his architecture was total news to me and is a whole lot of the value of these articles and info Joe Bausch is coming up with via The Inquirer.
This stuff was clearly not being made up by some newspaper reporter. Obviously Verdant Green (whoever that really was) had been there at Pine Valley to talk with these guys and to see Fowler's plans under glass and all that.
I sure don't want to get into some big dispute again about Colt's role in all this but it sure isn't lost on me that one of these Verdant Green Inquirer articles in Jan 1914 also mentioned that Colt's major contribution to PV was the unraveling of the 5th hole and making it the great hole it is. On the other hand, I think few appreciate how much something like that essentially made the "jigsaw" puzzle effect of much of the rest of the course just fall into place because of that 5th hole alteration of Colt's. For that reason even if one hole it's more significant than it might at first seem and it appears Crump and his buddies felt that way too from what they apparently said to Verdant Green about Colt and the 5th hole.
Again, Verdant Green was clearly speaking directly to Crump and his buddies and it appears they're the ones who said that too!
I don't think this is any dissing or short-changing the contribution of Harry Colt to PV's design as Paul and Tom MacWood seemed to think a few years ago. I think this is the real deal from both close and contemporaneous reporting from someone who was right there to see it and hear it from the horse's mouth.
One would have been led to believe by Paul or Tom MacWood that just mentioning that Colt's primary contribution to PV was the 5th hole was something some at PV came up with years later to glorify Crump at Colt's expense but that description was offered in Jan 1914 when Crump was very much there and alive and with four more years to go before he died suddenly.
But again, this new news about Crump and his buddies feelings about Fowler and his architecture does not surprise me at all because for years I've suspected it was healthland architecture that Crump was really interested in and Fowler was certainly considered to be the best or one of the best of them at that point in 1914.
Tom
"Verdant Green" appears to be underplaying Colt's work at PV. Particularly since he includes Colt's drawing in his article and doesn't mention it. And then there's his "minor sort" comment and the fact that he isn't consistent with other closer reports by Carr and Tillinghast. Let alone Colt's own comments.
The Fowler info is intriguing. We know his partner Simpson visited PVGC but not sure about Fowler.
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Tom Paul,
I think we can pretty much draw a straight evolutionary line about now between Fowler/Colt/Simpson and Heathland architecture and the naturalist movement (if I can call it that) in America that began around the early teens. It was probably exhibited earliest at places like Merion and Pine Valley, and even the original Shawnee pictures look to try and blend with nature.
The wild thing that I just realized yesterday is that Cobbs Creek, built by Wilson, Crump, Smith, et.al., in 1915 has some of the most natural looking greensites around, and they are ALL still original (except for 3 which got rebuilt after flooding). Many of them just flow out of the ground, which was much different given the earlier US models.
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"Tom Paul,
I think we can pretty much draw a straight evolutionary line about now between Fowler/Colt/Simpson and Heathland architecture and the naturalist movement (if I can call it that) in America that began around the early teens."
Mike:
As I'm sure you now know I've been thinking in that direction and looking in that direction for some years now and saying so on this site for some years now.
The reasons seem more and more obvious as time goes by and more documentary evidence is uncovered in newspapers and periodicals all over the place that've been hiding in archives for many decades---ie those guys were looking to build courses and do projects INLAND and to them the first really good attempts at naturalism with man-made architecture in the world was in the heathlands and that was their examples and their prototypes back then and they knew that. The fact is, at that time, there weren't any other examples in the world of good man-made architecture INLAND that was remotely natural looking!
We just have to pay more attention to what the difference and dynamics were back then between linksland golf courses and inland golf courses and what the differences meant to them at that time, not to us now.
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Tom,
I think I know what you're saying.
At the time, the whole idea of "inland golf" was revolutionary!
After all, by the late 1800's, golf had been played on the seaside links for decades...centuries, actually, and the idea of moving from that naturally open, sandy, choppy, undulating, wind-swept terrain into the inner-breast of the country landscape was a daunting and skeptical proposition, and it also seems if I read my history correctly that some of the first attempts were pretty dismal failures, because for the first time in golf, a course had to be more man-made than God-made, and there was really no precedent for that, either architecturally, agronomically, or culturally in fact.
So, when the first successful inland courses in the Heathlands began to pop up in the English countryside, which not incidentally was on terrain much more similar to what folks in places like...oh, let's say Philadelphia and south Jersey had to work with back in the states, it would have been natural for those pioneers in the US who weren't blessed with seaside terrain to stand up and take notice.
Especially considering that men like Wilson, and Crump, and Alex Findlay, and Tillinghast, and Samuel Allen, and likely others had made a number of golf-related pilgrimages overseas (following the Macdonald example), and were most definitely very aware of what guys like Colt, Hutchinson, Fowler, Simpson, etc., had accomplished, and in some cases, seem to have struck up personal relationships with these men, that were further strengthened when the Heathland gang made visits to the US and either contributed to or advised or simply visited inland courses that were being built in the states.
I wish I could find it, and it might have been part of Tom MacWood's research, but I do recall coming across something that mentioned Colt visiting Hugh Wilson at Merion, and also visiting Seaview.
I think that's part of why we still argue about who did what here, but to me, as in the recent Cobb's Creek research, it's more important to understand why these men worked together in the way that they did, and also to imagine the shared sense of discovery and adventure that they must have collectively felt. After all, they were both pioneers and trendsetters, breaking with centuries of tradition.
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"Tom
"Verdant Green" appears to be underplaying Colt's work at PV. Particularly since he includes Colt's drawing in his article and doesn't mention it. And then there's his "minor sort" comment and the fact that he isn't consistent with other closer reports by Carr and Tillinghast. Let alone Colt's own comments."
Paul:
I hate to disagree with you again as I did back a few years ago during those threads that so many on here seemed to appreciate on the creation of Pine Valley and the breakdown on the design of the finished product between Crump's and Colt's contributions.
I don't think Verdant Green (whoever that really was) was underplaying anything about Colt's role, particularly since he seems to be reporting directly from the participants---eg Crump and his buddies who were doing Pine Valley.
I don't think Colt's drawings of Pine Valley were all that important in the final analysis since much of what he drew was either already thought of and/or done by Crump before Colt got there or changed by Crump later from what Colt suggested and/or drew.
On one of these Pine Valley threads in the last few years I think I already offered the breakdown of what I firmly believe was Crump and what was Colt.
A thumbnail sketch for now would be something like this---eg Colt was responsible for the routing and design of holes #9 definitely, perhaps #8, definitely #10 and definitely #11. What he did with #5 is a well known fact and mentioned by Crump et al and Verdant Green and others---eg he moved the green site to where it is from a very different par 3 hole by Crump from the same tee.
In my opinion, on the front nine Crump is responsible for at least seven hole irrefutably. On the back nine it gets more complex but I don't think more than two holes on the back nine were solely Colt's, although Colt did ply the routing in some direction such as from #12 to #15 that Crump hadn't before Colt got there.
And more than that I think some of this new information backs up and confirms what I said above and said for some years now.
More importantly, Verdant Green's articles seem to be taken from direct interviews by Crump and his buddies and I don't see how you or anyone else can say and prove, at this point, that Crump was ever trying to diss or downplay Colt. Maybe some at PV tried to do that in the 70s and 80s and such but certainly not back then when these articles were written. Frankly, why would they do that back then when Crump was still alive?
I think this also underscores what I said years ago and that was that when the course opened for play around 1914 with a partial course Crump and Carr and his buddies, including Travis, really played up Colt's role and why wouldn't they? At that time Crump certainly understood that the famous English architect Harry Colt was more recognizable and more saleable than he was at that time.
But the thing that most fail to appreciate is there was still four more years to go of Crump working on that course and its routing and design every day (between 1914 and 1918 when he died suddenly and unexpectedly). Some seem to assume that what a guy like Carr or even Travis wrote about PV and its design and construction in 1914 was the final word about the design and construction of the course. It wasn't as Crump had four more years to go and he worked on the course practically every day doing with it whatever he wanted to do with no limitation on his decisions.
The thing I think you finally have to come to grips with Paul, is Crump was certainly not trying to downplay Colt or anyone else and the time is probably long overdue you stop saying that or implying that. The record shows he just didn't do things like that with anyone.
But the thing I think you need to appreciate more is Crump did a lot more regarding the way the course finally turned out before Colt got there and he did a lot more that deviated from what Colt drew after Colt left and never returned.
And why wouldn't Crump do it that way? After-all Pine Valley was basically his golf course and he could do with it what he wanted to. There was basically noone else he had to answer to and it's always been pretty clear that EVERYONE understood that including everyone at Pine Valley.
When I think back on some of those exchanges on Pine Valley with Tom MacWood and how he said Pine Valley was dissing Colt in some attempt to glorify Crump I have to laugh now. It only underscores what I said all along about him ---that he's an impressive uncoverer of raw research material but he doesn't have much facility or ability, in my opinion, in interpreting it regarding what really happened back then and why and how.
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"Tom,
I think I know what you're saying.
At the time, the whole idea of "inland golf" was revolutionary!
Mike:
What I'm saying is "inland golf" may not have been revolutionary but more like a progression of what first happened when golf and golf courses and architecture first began to emigrate out of Scotland for the first time.
The fact is it went to places and sites that, as Behr said, were wholly unsuited to receive it and that fact was probably responsible for the decades long era known as the "Dark Ages" or "Steeplechase" architecture of the 1870s, 80s and 90s in England and elsewhere.
And I'm not talking just about pre-existing natural features that are so benefical to golf that the linksland has always been imbued with and many of the first inland sites outside Scotland had so little of, I'm also talking about an agronomic makeup that the heathlands had that was the first found inland that was remarkably similar to the Scottish linksland after a few decades of early INLAND golf outside Scotland that had none of that.
The latter may've had a lot more to do with the architectural phenomenon that became the HEATHLAND prototype than anything else, much more so even than the first far more natural looking architecture that happened there INLAND!
It is probably not just a coincidence that after looking for some years in New Jersey for a site and then after traveling to GB Crump not only became enamored by heathland golf architecture but he also began searching for sites in sandy type soil as was the heathlands as well as the Scottish linksland.
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Mike:
Sorry but when I wrote the last post I hadn't read farther than your first paragraph.
Yes, of course, men like Wilson probably turned at first to the inland man-made heathland model but guys like Wilson did not at that time understand or appreciate the importance of the soil makeup. Crump may've gotten lucky with his site choice in going into sand but Wilson didn't at first appreciate the agronomic significance of that and he went to a clay based farm soil site and because of the resulting agronomic problems therewith basically came to create the USGA Green Section.
Crump, on the other hand, didn't seem to appreciate or understand the agronomic importance of going to a site that had too much of a sand makeup as Macdonald hadn't really appreciated the same fact just before him.
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"By 1904 it was evident that golf have come to stay in America, but the subclay soils among Philadelphia suburbs made it impossible to play with any degree of comfort more that seven months each year, despite expensive drainage systems, put in at the larger clubs like Merion."
"The grass planted even as late as October is coming along surprisingly, thanks to the top dressing of rich, black muck, taken from the swamp bottoms."
Both quotes above are from the 1914 article.
Was it simply luck that the PV site had both sandy high ground and swamp bottoms? Wow.
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Tom
No Verdant Green was playing down Colt's involvement. Particularly in 1914! No mention of the plan or booklet.
The whole argument using the Colt name as a promotional is ridiculous. Why would they suddenly decide to do this in 1915/1916?
And if Colt's contribution was so minor then whey did they call on Colt and Alison to finish the course design in 1921 when there were so many other qualified local architects at the same time.
You commenti on how Crump was drawing from the heathland architects but then fail to give them much credit for how PVGC turned out.
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Paul:
I don't believe Crump or those from Pine Valley who were involved in the creation of the course were playing down anyone and I think these additional articles are just proving that.
It appears to me they were just explaining what was going on and how they were going about it, and this new information on how interested they apparently were in the style and drawings of Fowler (who may never have come to Pine Valley) is just another example of how they were collaborating with all kinds of ideas as Crump worked on the course almost every day for five years doing what he wanted to do with it even if he was willing to talk to all kinds of people about it.
It seems to me Crump and his buddies in his bungalow were explaining to Verdant Green directly what they felt the influence of various people on them and the course was in early 1914 and they are the ones who mentioned what they felt Colt primarily contributed.
If they didn't know then who would? :)
I don't think any of those involved in the creation were playing down Colt and either was Verdant Green and so I can't understand why you keep saying or implying that as Tom MacWood did.
Eric:
Actually the laying of all that black muck from the lake bottoms and such on the holes created something of an agronomic disaster.
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Paul:
I certainly do think Crump and Pine Valley played up Colt and they did that around the time the course first opened for play at the end of 1914 and the beginning of 1915 when a flurry of articles appeared by Carr and Travis and others et al marking that occassion and basically saying the same things about Colt's involvement.
And why wouldn't a guy like Crump at that time do that? He obviously understood that Colt was a far more notable and recognizable golf course architect than he was at that time (1914).
It also appears Crump told some people that Colt was paid $10,000 dollars for basically a week's work at Pine Valley when no record of that has been found anywhere and certainly not in the fairly meticulous club records not to mention that was a pretty ridiculously high sum for that day and time.
Otherwise it's pretty hard to explain why the likes of Tillinghast wrote what he did about Crump's role and it's also really hard to explain what Carr and W.P Smith said about Crump's role some years later.
I think Crump and the club did patently promote Colt's name at the opening of the course in late 1914 and I think Colt willingly went along with it.
And again, why not do that at that time?
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Paul,
Whatever you think of Colt (I agree with you when I say that he was the best of all) it seems pretty clear that Crump was well into the design phase when Colt appeared onto the scene. For the short time that Colt spent at the scene and maybe some of the work he did after he left, he made some significant contributions and likely a good amount of sound advice. Wasn't it Colt that planted hundreds of trees at Sunningdale for the express purpose of hole segregation? That clearly was a huge influence on Crump and the way Pine Valley is presented. However, he left and Crump worked daily for the next 4 years. Over that time, he continued to be fascinated by Fowler (he surely saw Walton Heath on his study period abroad) as were his friends. Fowler's influence should also be considered and looked for on the course. A lot of talented and passionate people were involved. Colt had a significant role as was always noted by the club. Crump has to be considered the single most important figure in the design and development. Of that, there should be no doubt.
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"Tom
No Verdant Green was playing down Colt's involvement. Particularly in 1914! No mention of the plan or booklet."
Paul:
For someone to assume Verdant Green or Crump or the club was playing down Colt's involvement by not mentioning Colt's whole course plan or his hole-by-hole booklet one would have to assume Colt developed that entire plan and that it was being specifically followed.
Neither was the case and that's completely provable by all kinds of documentary evidence through the years of the creation of the course that seems to be getting larger as time goes on.
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TP did you note that PT's 1915 reprints include mention that January 1915 David Cuthbert, pro from HV had a hole in one on the 5th at PV. A blind pitch to a tricky green. Colt had declared that the hole was a thoroughly bad one.
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Eric, the 1914 article mentions expensive drainage systems put in by Merion. I wonder if this refers to the skating rink in the quarry ? Today the level of ground below the 17th in the quarry is above the stream, Cobbs Creek, so no drainage, or catch basin, is available.
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Willie:
The extensive drainage systems mentioned at Merion probably refers to the necessity to rebuild some of the original greens there simply because they just weren't working for the purpose of growing grass.
That kind of stuff shows up prevalently in all those so-called "Agronomy Letters" between Hugh Wilson and Piper and Oakley that eventually led to the creation of the USGA Green Section of which Piper, the former US Dept of Agriculture botanist, became the first chairman.
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"The wild thing that I just realized yesterday is that Cobbs Creek, built by Wilson, Crump, Smith, et.al., in 1915 has some of the most natural looking greensites around, and they are ALL still original (except for 3 which got rebuilt after flooding). Many of them just flow out of the ground, which was much different given the earlier US models."
Mike:
That's an important point, particularly if it's undeniable true. That's also pretty much the subject that Wayne Morrisson fixates on always wondering why the Macdonald/Raynor style never followed that direction in construction and certainly in look.
But to test what you say it probably would be worthwhile to discuss some of the greens or whatever of various architects just to see if they really did try to use natural landforms for most greens and if not if they really tried to hide what they manufactured. I think what we will find is architects of even vastly differing styles this way commonly did both.
Even at NGLA there're a number of greens that appear to be preexisting natural landforms and on other courses like Merion or Pine Valley there are some that look pretty manufactured if you know where and how to look at them.
The other day I spent some time looking at Piping Rock's redan with this in mind. My God does the entire left half of that green look entirely manufactured and naturally it looks that way because it is. But then the manufacturing is such a large quantity of earth I started looking around to see if I could figure out where they did the cutting to produce that much fill and I found it basically off to the right.
It's just so ironic that the cuts look so natural while the fill (green) looks anything but.
The other cool thing is to try to determine if the cuts and fills match or balance and if you know how to look for this stuff you can see it obviously almost always did in this old architecture.
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Here's an article about PV opening up all 18 holes. No author is given.
Citation:
Headline: Pine Valley Course Open for Play in May; Article Type: News/Opinion
Paper: Philadelphia Inquirer, published as The Philadelphia Inquirer; Date: 03-28-1920; Volume: 182; Issue: 88; Page: 21; Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Note the credit for laying out the course is given to Colt.
(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2200/2129499772_8c3ea5e4e2.jpg?v=0)
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Eric:
Actually the laying of all that black muck from the lake bottoms and such on the holes created something of an agronomic disaster.
Jeez, I whiffed on that one. I now remember a mention of the early problems growing grass at PV.
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"The wild thing that I just realized yesterday is that Cobbs Creek, built by Wilson, Crump, Smith, et.al., in 1915 has some of the most natural looking greensites around, and they are ALL still original (except for 3 which got rebuilt after flooding). Many of them just flow out of the ground, which was much different given the earlier US models."
Mike:
That's an important point, particularly if it's undeniable true. That's also pretty much the subject that Wayne Morrisson fixates on always wondering why the Macdonald/Raynor style never followed that direction in construction and certainly in look.
But to test what you say it probably would be worthwhile to discuss some of the greens or whatever of various architects just to see if they really did try to use natural landforms for most greens and if not if they really tried to hide what they manufactured. I think what we will find is architects of even vastly differing styles this way commonly did both.
The other cool thing is to try to determine if the cuts and fills match or balance and if you know how to look for this stuff you can see it obviously almost always did in this old architecture.
Tom,
You're just going to have to join us over at Cobb's Creek and look at them with us.
I could tell you, but then I'd ruin your joy of discovery. ;D
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This ongoing debate for attribution is interesting. I don't know Pine Valley well enough to notice, is/was there any marked difference in the construction and style of the "new" holes (12-15) opened in 1920? Is it possible to see any evolution or wholesale changes (like the deletion of the alpinization at Merion)?
Mike, I agree with you concerning the greens at Cobbs. Most are leveled out of broader landforms; very economical.
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Eric,
The evolution of Pine Valley between inception and the early 20s when it was finished included quite a bit of revision and tinkering and outright revamping in spots.
In fact, it's interesting that you mention the Alpinization that was discarded at Merion because Tillinghast's description of the first holes on the course prior to 1915 stated that the 3rd hole had Alpinization, which also doesn't exist anymore.
Today, I would defy anyone who doesn't know to point out which holes were created/completed after Crump's death in 1918 because the look and stylings are consistent throughout.
If anything, I think it was always this way. It seems that after Crump's death, great care was taken to build these holes as a tribute to what he did at Pine Valley, and to the memory of the man himself. The fact that men who knew and revered Crump so well, like Hugh and Alan Wilson, were the men involved in the creation of the final holes, almost ensured this successful outcome.
p.s. Hope you can join us next time our little group convenes at Cobbs.
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By the way...the following should be required reading for anyone interested even a little bit in golf course architectural history..
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/opinionmacwood7.html
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I believe holes #12-#15 were a lot more designed before Crump died than most have believed.
The record shows that Crump was attempting to make some minor alterations to the front left of green #12 which would lead one to believe it was basically done before he died.
Tillinghast's reporting of finding the green site on #13 around 1916 is also pretty interesting and various things the record shows Crump was planning to do with #13 indicate the tee and green on that hole was in place. Carr or Smith also reported that Crump had stripped away a ton of trees on the left that the green might be visible from the tee.
George Govan, the son of Jim Govan, Crump's pro/foreman gives his father the credit for the idea of #14.
Father Carr's "remembrances" say the last words he had with Crump was that he was not completely satisfied with #15 which leads me to believe the basic hole was in place and perhaps "rough shaped" but without the rest of the design in place.
And one cannot forget that most of the delay at that time was WW1 and there were no avaibable crews or labor around. Construction had basically been shut down at that time.
#12 fairway had been turned into a "Victory Garden" for God's Sake! ;)
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When the question comes to who these writers were who were using pseudonyms it is of course an interesting question and any of us would love to find out who they really were.
My sense is that the ones who used pseudonyms were probably people fairly well known back then and people we might recognize.
Others who used their own names were probably just newspaper reports. Newspaper articles with no bylines are the ones which over time don't seem so interesting or informative to me and don't report fresh facts for probably obvious reasons.
I was telling Wayne today that when I played tournament golf around here in the 1980s and 1990s the Philadelphia golf reporter for the Inquirer was Meyer Branschein and he knew all of us really well and we all who ever did anything knew him really well. Consequently the reporting about the tournaments and the courses and the players was informative and personal. Meyer was a pretty old guy in the 80s and 90s and when he died Inquirer reporting on golf and the players got a whole lot more indirect and consequently much less informative as a result.
The same was probably true back then about reporting and with newspaper writers.
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Joe
Who authored that 1/4/1914 article, the one with the plan. I assumed it was this "Verdant Green" chap, but you haven't listed an author.
Thanks
Paul
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Joe
Who authored that 1/4/1914 article, the one with the plan. I assumed it was this "Verdant Green" chap, but you haven't listed an author.
Thanks
Paul
Paul, the article does not state the author. However, the article is part of a page of the sports section that was almost completely dedicated to golf stories. And just below this one was a typical "Golf Queries by Verdant Greene" article and just to the right of the drawing of the Colt plan was a "It Happened in Golfland" article by VG. Hence, I'm >99% certain this article was Greene as well.
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Coincidence?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Mr._Verdant_Green
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Perhaps that Verdant Green was known in Philadelphia several decades later and inspired the name. Though our correspondent spelled his last name Greene.
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This probably isn't news to you PV aficionados, but I uncovered this tidbit in a section called "Camden news" in this Philadelphia Inquirer article:
Headline: Camden News Delaware Ferry Co. to Erect New Dock; Article Type: News/Opinion
Paper: Philadelphia Inquirer, published as The Philadelphia Inquirer; Date: 04-09-1913; Volume: 168; Issue: 99; Page: 3; Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
It states (note, in the first sentence that one word is 'county' and not 'country'!):
"With the object of establishing one of the finest golf links in the county, the Pine Valley Golf Club Company was incorporated yesterday in Camden. The capital is $20,000, the incorporators being George A. Crump, Howard W. Perrin, Simon Carr, C. B. Buxton, Joseph S. Clark, J. Walter Zebley, Wirt L. Thompson, A. H. Smith and W. P. Smith.
It was stated that a fine tract of land has been secured at Clementon, a dozen miles below Camden, where the links will be laid out. It was further asserted that golf tournaments on an international character will be played and that New York capitalists are backing the project."
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Gents - thanks for a great discussion. It's really striking how much was bubbling up all together say between 1910 and 1920 i.e. agronomy, designs principles, great courses etc.
The mentions of Colt and Fowler (who with Perry Maxwell have become my favourite must sees) reminded me of this article from 1910:
"While talking with a member of the golf committee of a club, with considerable pretentions, near Boston, we observed that Mr. Herbert Fowler recently had said that a bunker was not something to be carried but was something to avoid. It was our intention to convey the idea or present a picture of a golf ball running on to a large green after a full shot and just avoiding a pot bunker cut into it, near which the flag stood in the hole. The man looked at us in astonishment. He had never heard of such a thing and instead of having courted a discussion as to whether Mr. Fowler were right in his dictum, for surely it is well to have something to carry occasionally as well as to have something to avoid, we were regarded as the opponent of the things that are - and right because they are -- and in fact as a very dangerous person or one very soon to become the inmate of a lunatic asylum. Except at one or two clubs in the Boston district the theories of such men as Mr. Herbert Fowler, Mr. H. S. Colt and the British professionals who have made a study of golf construction, especially in regard to bunkers, are utterly unknown and pride seems to be taken in this ignorance."
A lot of stuff 'in the air' back then.
Peter
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Joe,
I'd just point out that the "A. H. Smith" from your article is the same guy who worked with Hugh Wilson, George Crump, and George Klauner on Cobb's Creek.
I've seen Smith referred to as Ab Smith, A. Haseltine Smith, as well, and he and his brother W.P. Smith were exceptional players.
Incidently, A.H. Smith won the first Philadelphia Amateur Championship in 1897, so there was very good reason that he would have been placed on a GAP-appointed team of experts.
He also gave up all his Sunday's for half-year or so to work on the construction of Cobb's Creek.
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One little tidbit from Verdant Greene's reporting on Pine Valley and Crump and his buddies and their interest in the plans and drawings and architectural philosophy of Herbert Fowler that should not be missed or glossed over was what Verdant Greene mentioned was their search for the "ideal" in golf architecture.
Greene set the stage for this in one article by couching the context of the article with the question of---Is golf too hard the way some of these guys are considering building courses?
Some on here and many in golf think the "Ideal" in architecture is to figure out some way of designing to accommodate all levels of golfers and apparently Colt felt that way even if it meant intentionally dropping a shot on a hole.
But it seems like Fowler wasn't of that mind philosophically (or at least Crump et al didn't think he was) and that may've been what appealed to Crump and his buddies at Pine Valley.
There can be no doubt at all that Crump was in no way trying to construct his course as something that could in any way accommodate the duff. He didn't even want that kind of player at Pine Valley and he joked about that fact.
What Crump wanted was a course that would be a training ground for champions and apparently he and his buddies considered THAT to be an "ideal" or THE "Ideal" in golf and architecture.
The message was clear---eg if you want to play this place bring a pretty fine game and if you ain't got it go find it somewhere first or stay away from Pine Valley.
Is this kind of thing and its apparent popularity some kind of fascination like trying to ring the bell at the State Fair or to see how far up the poll you can send the weight?
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Phil:
I've been reading over all my files from Pine Valley and I came across a reprint from the Tillinghast Society 12/13/04 that seems to be a compilation by Tillie of many of his articles that's entitled "The Development of Pine Valley". The inclusions from his old articles run from 1913 until 1919.
Can you tell me when Tillie wrote this? I seem to remember Tom MacWood or someone saying some years ago he wrote this compilation on Pine Valley as late as the early 1930s.
One of the reasons I ask is something Tillie said in that article, again, entitled "Number 14 The Development of Pine Valley"----and that is;
"In January of 1913, George Crump gave me permission to publish in my syndicated weekly golf column of that period, the first words of the new course. An excerpt from this read: "The Philadelphia section is to have a great new course---one which may eclipse all others. Although I have known of the plans for more than a year, only recently have I been relieved from secrecy and the announcement appears in print for the first time."
Phil---what was that "weekly" syndicated column Tillie is referring to? I know he wrote as "Hazard" for American Golfer and for other golf magazines but weren't they all monthy periodicals? What newspapers did the "syndicated weekly" columns he referred to appear in or do you think he was mistaken when he said "weekly" perhaps meaning monthly?
I've certainly never been that aware of all the periodicals Tillie wrote for but do you think one of those newspapers that carried his column or perhaps columns was the Philadelphia Inquirer?
And if you are aware of this "weekly" syndicated column he referred to, did he write it under his own name or some pseudonym or perhaps a series of pseudonyms?
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Tom,
The answer to the question of what was the weekly colmun Tilly wrote can be found in his column titled "Eastern Department" by "Hazard" in The American Golfer dated March 1919, Tilly wrote:
Mr. A.W. Tillinghast, who for may years contributed the golf column in each Sunday's edition of "The Philadelphia Record", has resigned from that publication's staff. His activities as a golf course architect prevent him from writing so much as of old."
Although since I haven't seen any of the articles I can't be definitive, I do believe, based upon his announcement that he wrote it under his own name.
I am certain that these columns contain a wealth of information but, unfortunately, that is one of the reasons I must make a research trip to Philadelphia so that I can look these articles up as I can't find them through the internet.
though we know that he resigned this position in 1919, we are unaware of when he began writing for the Record. That would have precluded his writing for the competition at the Inquirer, but that doesn't mean that he hadn't before then, and there are reasons to believe that he had which is why the question of who "Joe Bunker" is has fascinated many.
The article about Pine Valley that you are refering to is titled "The Genius of Pine Valley" and was published in the May 1933 issue of Golf Illustrated. It is reprinted as chapter 33, pages 124-26 in "Reminiscences of the Links."
Sorry I missed your call last night. It wasn't too late at all. Unfortunately my son was tying up the line...
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Phil:
The main reason I was going through everything I have in the written word in newspapers and periodicals on Pine Valley including Tilly's writing about it over the years and including that article on Pine Valley you say he wrote in 1933 as well as everything Simon Carr and others including what Travis wrote about the creation of Pine Valley over the years is to try to figure out why almost all of them seemed to assign so much more credit for the desgin of the course to Harry Colt right around the end of 1914 and the beginning of 1915.
This was when the course formally opened for play (Nov. 7, 1914) although the course would not have a full 18 holes in play for over five more years.
What was written at that time does not seem to jibe logically with what was written by the same people both before and after that time perhaps even including what Verdant Greene wrote.
I'm trying to understand why that was and I certainly have an assumption on why that was.
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Tom,
I agree. For a course that had more written about it during its creation than most any other and more people interested in its progress, it seems as if no one was getting the story straight.
From Joe Bunker on 9/20/1914: "The Pine Valley club has closed the course and it will not be open again for play until the Middle of October when fourteen holes will be ready. The entire course has been seeded..."
That certainly sounds ("entire course") as if all 18 were
finished...
Then he writes on 8/1/1915, nearly a year later: "Four new holes of the Pine Valley Golf Club will be opened this fall but the entire course will not be ready until next Spring..."
Well, if 14 holes were open for play 10 months before, and now 4 new holes are scheduled for opening in two months time, how can it be that the "entire course" will not be ready for play until next spring?
Then on 7/9/1916, he writes: "Three of the new holes at Pine Valley are now open for play so that fourteen of the eoghteen holes are now in play..."
These 3 reports spanning 2+ years in time makes one wonder exactly what was Crump & everyone else doing in the Clementon and, even more so, what 14 holes were they playing during all that time?
It also makes one reconsider exactly how "in the know" Joe Bunker really was about Pine Valley and his relationships with everyone involved...
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Phil,
That's some really interesting stuff. I'm thinking that some intrepid person is going to find the Philadelphia Bulletins sometime soon. If we get there, of course we'll pass the on to you.
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Phil:
That kind of thing and that kind of reporting is not what bothers me or interests me because I know exactly what was going on down there with the various holes. I have the ability of understanding the situation through hindsight while those men writing at the time about what would happen or what was expected to happen did not have that luxury.
When one speaks about new holes "opening" and then those same new holes being ready for play quite a while later they are simply referring to the approximately 10 months to a year it takes for those holes to "grow in".
But there was a lot more than just that going on down there.
First of all, Pine Valley is routed in such a way that when those fourteen holes came into play, the course both could and did play something like an 18 hole course simply because the golfers would play the first four holes over again and be right back at the clubhouse (#4).
So for that reason alone Crump may not have felt all that constrained to proceed that quickly with the last four holes (#12-15) that would make up a full 18 hole course.
And there were other reasons. WW1 hit for the USA at this time and he basically lost most of his construction manpower.
He also had some pretty severe agronomic problems during this time that had to be attended to as a priority with the holes that were in play.
What I'm interested in unraveling is why all those writers who apparently knew Crump and Pine Valley so well assigned so much credit to Colt for designing the course right around the end of 1914 when they did not do that in writing either before or afterwards.
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"What I'm interested in unraveling is why all those writers who apparently knew Crump and Pine Valley so well assigned so much credit to Colt for designing the course right around the end of 1914 when they did not do that in writing either before or afterwards."
Phil:
I'll be more specific.
Obviously I realize with that statement above that no writer familiar with the ENTIRE creation of Pine Valley as it evolved from the very beginning to completion (as Tilly clearly was) is going to assign any credit for the design of the course to Colt BEFORE he first arrived there. ;)
What interests me is how specifically Tilly chronicled in writing what was done there BEFORE Colt first arrived and how the things he chronicled before Colt first arrived is the way those parts of the course turned out in the end.
And then Tilly mentioned (contemporaneously in May/June 1913) that Colt was to come to Pine Valley and offer advice. Then he mentioned (contemporaneously in July 1913) that Colt had been there and apparently offered advice.
But then over a year later (December 1914) Tilly says that Colt essentially "laid out" or designed the course. How in the world could that be if he's already reported so much about what had already happened BEFORE Colt first arrived and that is the way those parts of the course turned out in the end?
The same seems true of Simon Carr and exactly at the same time---eg the end of 1914 and the beginning of 1915 (Carr's article in Golf Illustrated of Jan 1915) when the course was first opening for play.
Travis writes another article at the same time essentially saying the same thing Carr and Tilly did---eg Colt designed the golf course.
And now we have an article from Verdant Greene in the beginning of 1914 who appears to have been right there in Crump's bungalow reporting directly from Crump and Smith and the rest involved there that essentially Colt's role with the course was to alter the 5th hole and how important that seemingly small alteration was.
It is important to insert at this point that Colt came to Pine Valley only one time in May 1913 and he never returned again.
But then about 10 months to a year later (between the beginning of 1914 and the end of 1914) everyone is giving Colt credit for laying out or designing the golf course.
On the face of it this just doesn't make a lot of logical sense unless of course George Crump, particularly, was trying to make it look like that at that time for some reason.
Paul Turner says he thinks this assumption is just ridiculous. I don't think it's ridiculous at all if one just sits back and calmly tries to analze precisely why Crump and his buddies down there may've wanted to do that and did it.
And the additonal problem is that at that time they did not realize all that would happen in the next 3-4 years and what that meant about the design and construction of the golf course.
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What I'm interested in unraveling is why all those writers who apparently knew Crump and Pine Valley so well assigned so much credit to Colt for designing the course right around the end of 1914 when they did not do that in writing either before or afterwards.
Is the explanation related to the thread I started last night ("early amateur architects") and could Crump not wanted to lose his social caste during this time the USGA was monkeying around with the definition of an amateur?
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Joe:
Absolutely not. I doubt any amateur status issue entered Crump's mind for the simple reason he was not getting payed for anything he was doing in golf or architecture. Matter of fact he was the one doing the paying. ;)
The USGA had no problem with any amateur architects practicing golf architecture as long as they didn't get paid for it.
I think Crump may've managed the news to some extent around the time the course was opening for play and getting press for that reason simply because it would look better if the course was thought to be designed by the guy who many felt was the best golf architect of that time---eg Harry Colt.
I don't know that everyone felt Colt was the best in the business but seeing as this information has been uncovered that Crump and his buddies were so high on Fowler and his philosophy and designs it sure looks like Crump et al at Pine Valley were pretty high on the Heathlands style and philosophy and both Colt and Fowler sure were two of the best of the heathland architects.
It seems to me if Crump could've gotten Fowler over to Pine Valley for a week the way he got Colt there, he probably would've tried to make it look like Fowler laid out and designed Pine Valley because if they had as much admiration for him as Verdant Greene's apparent first hand account said they did why wouldn't he try to make it look like that?
George Crump has never appeared to me to be in any way proprietary about what was going on at Pine Valley since it was he who fostered and inspired all that opinion and collaboration from almost anyone and that's exactly what all his friends and acquaintences said about him.
He probably figured at that time that the name of a famous architect like a Colt or a Fowler would look a lot more impressive attached to Pine Valley as its architect than his name, a guy who'd never done anything before in architecture.
I'll tell you right now if I was involved with a course as Crump was with Pine Valley in the end of 1914 and Bill Coore had spent a week with me going over all the plans and construction the way Colt did, I think I'd probably try to make it look like Bill Coore laid out and designed the course.
And why wouldn't I? He sure has a whole lot better and wider reputation in the business and in the things I like than I do. ;)
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bump