I admit I’ve been hooked on Ron Whitten’s lists for a long time. Was Ron even around with GD’s first list in 1966? So when my February 2017 issue arrived I was excited once again to see the latest list of America’s Top 100. I read every word as to why AN has once again pushed PV out of the top spot, or was it vice versa? And I’ll read it again in 2 years, and hopefully many more after that. However, further down the list, I was unhappy to learn that Sea Island’s Seaside course was designed by Tom Fazio (1999). That must be news to the resort, which advertises fine dining in their Colt & Alison Restaurant.
I was determined to immediately write to Ron to ask: what he was smoking. Unfortunately real life got in the way and I procrastinated.
Then earlier this week my hard copy of Golfweek’s April 2017 issue arrived, the one with the crouching Tiger ….. errr …..Sergio on the cover. I ignored that abberation and went immediately to Mr. Klein’s “Best of” rankings. As I said I’m a sucker for lists. Much to my joy Mr. Alison’s name was listed, with his partner Colt, and definitely for the same Sea Island course that Ron listed. But in the Modern category. Huh? This time the date was 2000, a minor deviation from Mr. Whitten’s list; maybe he used the date when DLIII struck the first blow. Anyway, along with Charles H. Alison and Harry S. Colt were the names of Tom Fazio and Joe Lee, in that order.
Disclaimer:
Mr. Klein on these pages once accused me of being a single course expert. I believe he’s in error in that judgment. I’m definitely a two-course expert, Black River CC and Port Huron GC, both from my hometown of Port Huron, Michigan. Because of the accident of history that put C&A’s NA headquarters in Detroit I’m also fairly familiar with the partners’ efforts in the Midwest and Ontario.
However, I do get the point he was trying to make. He and Ron (and formerly TD) are the heads of brands that sell magazines and they have to deal with thousand of raters, course owners, subscribers, and yes those of us who are one (or two) course experts. I don’t envy or want to be in their positions. I find architectural history tough enough when dealing within a narrow range of the Golden Age. I also respect them and turn to their pages, and books, often while doing my own research.
Background:
The leading light among Sea Island’s original founders was Detroiter Howard Coffin. He was a member of every club worth it’s salt in the Detroit area in the teens and twenties including The CC of Detroit. He was good friends with John Sweeney, a fellow CCD member, but more to the point Sweeney was an architecture buff. He was instrumental in securing C&A’s services for the CCD’s first Grosse Pointe Farms course in 1911 and selecting Alison for the CCD’s new course in 1926. He also founded and designed the Lochmoor Club in Grosse Pointe in 1919 with Walter Travis consulting. Through Sweeney’s connections C and/or A designed, and mostly supervised, the construction of approximately ten courses in the area.
Therefore when Coffin needed an architect for his new resort he turned to his friend John Sweeney who recommended Travis, the grand old man of architecture at the time. The emphasis was on old. Travis started the Sea Island project in 1927 with construction of 9 holes completed in 1928. Unfortunately the old man was dying and Coffin knew that. His back up plan was Charles Alison who was active all through the 1920s in Detroit and especially at The CCD. His new course at CCD was completed in 1927. Coffin had already started “building” his 2nd nine holes with no plan. The reason he could do that is he had to actually build the land with barges pumping ocean sand into the low lying marshes to the east of Travis’s course (Lido anyone?). Alison was brought on while that operation was in progress and presumably had some say in where the sand was dumped.
In a series of drawings dating from 1928 through April of 1929 Alison designed 9 entirely new holes and totally revised Travis’s new 9-holes. By that I mean the complete removal of chocolate drop mounds, new bunkering, and sometimes new greens in new locations. If Fazio can claim Alison’s Seaside 9 has his, then Alison can certainly say he designed the new 18-hole course at Sea Island. It was this 18 holes that served as SI’s calling card through 1959 when the resort added Wilson’s Retreat 9 and in 1973 Joe lee’s Marshside 9. Mr. Fazio was brought in to “update” the Seaside Course in 1999 in preparation for the Tour’s arrival. I have to believe DLIII was consulted on that effort.
The Present:
On a vacation trip to Savannah last year (2016) we spent four days at SI, both to play the Seaside course and eat at their wonderful C&A restaurant. BTW Fake News was invented by Sea Island’s marketing department as they “found” the only photograph of C&A together, complete with drawings in hand ala Tillinghast. Suitable for framing, I tell ya’.
In addition I had the pleasure of spending a couple hours with the resort’s now part time archivist, Mimi Rogers, reviewing their Alison first generation blueprints. They are wonderfully maintained in an acid free box. Unfortunately some of the drawings are missing, but with the help of the C&A restaurant’s GM I was able to spend a couple hours the next day reviewing their copies on the walls of the restaurant, sepia colored, to match the décor. On the recommendation of Rogers, a few days later I was back in Savannah in the Georgia Historical Society’s Sea Island Company archive, donated when the Company was last sold, and they (mostly) got out of the historical business.
In the GHS collection I found many dining room placemats and scorecards (1938 -1962) commemorating pro events on the property with the course(s) layout(s) at the time. Also there were several stand alone scorecards including one from Jones in 1938 and Patty Berg from 1949. These allow for following the hole lengths and par. For the record Jones shot 67 and Berg 76. Jones’ June 1, 1938 card had only one set of tees listed at 6541, while Berg’s March 30, 1949 card had 3 sets with no indication which tees she played. The 1957 tournaments listed the same 6541 yardage.
The best finds at the GHS were two 8”X10” B&W aerial photographs from 1929, taken shortly after, or just as, the course was being finished. The photos were taken from opposite ends of the new 18-hole course and together show it in great detail. A GA who’s name you would find familiar and who has done work all over the world reviewed the photos to help determine the potential for grow-in so quickly from a March/April 1929 construction start to a late fall finished course.
I’ll save your total boredom of the process for another time, but I reviewed my copies of all the SI/GHS Alison drawings, photographs, and scorecards against each other and what I found in my library, and came to the conclusion that the contractor actually built the course almost exactly as Alison drew it, bunker for bunker and elimination of Travis choc drops, one for one. In one photograph you can also clearly see the clubhouse and practice areas including a practice target green as well as a raised circular practice putting green totally surrounded by sand. It looks totally as a Travis throwback vs the other “new” Alison greens on Travis’s original course.
Designer Names:
It has been covered in many separate GCA threads that Alison was entirely in charge of all work by the C&A firm on the North American continent from 1920 through 1931. Colt did not come to NA after his last trip in 1914. So courses by Alison during that time either should be named corporately as Colt & Alison or Colt, Alison, & Morrison after 1928, or be named for their stand alone designer: Capt. Charles Hugh Alison.
NOTE: For you history buffs, I ignore the use of MacKenzie’s name in the firm title, technically from 1920 through 1927, as a non-starter. Even Colt struck it out on the firm’s letterhead by the end of 1921.
Conclusion:
Today’s Seaside is still made up of 9 Alison playing corridors and at least 7 of 9, if not 8 of 9, green sites. If as everyone down there says, Fazio rebuilt all the sand areas, bunkers and dunes, he certainly made use of the SI archives or else channeled Alison via osmosis. Comparison of his bunkering to Alison’s is a;most one for one. On the front side, which is on the site of the completely bulldozed Lee nine, fazio has also channeled Alison very nicely. I would lay claim for Alison for two playing corridors on that side form his original revisions to Travis’s Plantation nine, specifically numbers 8 and 9. So that makes 11 playing corridors blessed by Capt Alison.
For those of you who doubt that Fazio could be that faithful to an Old Guy architect, I give you #13 where the 3 bunkers on the sightline of the drive are either direct dupes or the same bunkers Alison put there 90 years ago.
Therefore I respectfully ask Mssrs: Whitten and Klein to consider using the following when referring to the Seaside course:
Colt & Alison 1929 and Fazio 1999 (I should actually substitute the corporate name of the Fazio firm)
Or
Alison 1929 and Fazio 1999 (as individuals)
Your thoughts?
Anthony (Two-course expert)