Interview with Daniel Wexler

The idea was sparked by a telephone conversation that I had several years ago with the late Dave Marr. We were discussing various classic courses and when the Lido's name was mentioned, he became very enthusiastic, saying that Claude Harmon had once told him that it was 'the greatest golf course ever.' That set me to thinking and pretty soon I was compiling a list of deceased courses built by the great Golden Age architects. I wasn't familiar with very many of these layouts but when the list quickly grew beyond 100, I began thinking in terms of a book.

Since these layouts obviously can't be visited or researched on the internet, I wanted to present them in depth, to provide as complete a picture as possible of their layouts and history. To that end, I selected 27 to profile thoroughly, with each receiving its own chapter featuring a color map and scorecard, photos and diagrams, and text that includes both history and something of a hole-by-hole tour. I also added my thoughts on how each layout might stack up in today's numerical ratings game, a subjective area which will probably generate some discussion among readers. Finally, I included secondary chapters for each of the great architects summarizing their other lost works, plus an appendix and maps locating New York, Chicago and Los Angeles's most significant lost layouts.

3) What types of sources did you use in researching The Missing Links?

Anything I could find. There was a wide range of difficulty involved in the research. Certain courses (generally those which hosted major events or were frequently profiled in period publications) were relatively simple to piece together. Other more private layouts could be quite difficult.

Obviously the location of an aerial photograph was important in nailing down the particulars of any facility. Between the National Archives and local planning departments and historical societies, I did pretty well in that regard. The old magazines, Golf Illustrated and The American Golfer primarily, were invaluable sources, as were a variety of old scorecards, maps and promotional pieces. As always, the USGA library in Far Hills was extremely helpful. But more than anything, I am very fortunate to live within driving distance of the Ralph W. Miller Golf Library here in Southern California, a place which truly deserves some form of landmark status for all of the information it contains.

But those, relatively speaking, were the easy parts. It was the location and contacting of so many local sources that consumed the most time.

4) What was the hardest lost course to track down? The easiest?

The hardest, easily, was Mill Road Farm, located in Lake Forest, Illinois. It was the private estate course of a famous advertising executive named Albert Lasker and was seen by very few people outside of Lasker's inner
circle. In fact, it seemed so obscure (and was so short-lived) that I initially thought about skipping it entirely. The problem was that it was built by William Flynn, it measured roughly 7,000 yards (enormous by 1920s
standards) and was cited by people like Bobby Jones, Johnny Farrell and Grantland Rice as being among the best and toughest layouts in America. In any case, after striking out with a number of potential sources, I was bailed out by the local planning department who managed to produce one very good aerial photo from before WWII. Even so, I had to measure the hole yardages by scaling them from the frequently-published 7,000-yard total. All in all, a tough find but definitely worth the trouble.

The easiest was probably Fresh Meadow, an old A.W. Tillinghast layout in Queens, New York. It opened to a great deal of publicity, then hosted the 1930 PGA Championship (won by Tommy Armour) and the 1932 US Open, which Gene Sarazen won with a record final-round 66. Given all of the associated publicity, not much was left to chance.

5) Were the courses of any particular architect harder to find than others?

Not significantly. The degree of difficulty was generally tied to an individual course�s geographic location. Those built in major population centers tended to be easier, those situated in rural areas more difficult. By that measure, some of Donald Ross's lost works perhaps posed a bit of a challenge as he seems to have built (or at least drawn plans for) a greater number of far-flung layouts. One disappointment, for example, was my
inability to produce solid routing maps for the Country Club of Havana and the Havana Biltmore Yacht & Country Club, both of which disappeared following Castro's rise to power in Cuba. But generally the big-name architects
followed the money which meant they were all building courses in the same large markets.

6) Did any particular architect�s lost courses reveal anything new or different about his style?

Not in dramatic ways, but there were all sorts of smaller things worth noting. I was fascinated, for example, to discover some very rudimentary designs done by A.W. Tillinghast in his earlier years. His first course, at
Shawnee-On-Delaware, Pennsylvania was so interesting and his most famous creations - the Winged Foots, Baltusrols and San Franciscos - are so obviously sophisticated that I'd always assumed his style to have been relatively consistent. But his early work at St. Petersburg Country Club in Florida, for example, was extremely basic: straight, flat holes, round greens, geometrically-precise crossbunkering. Nothing like the varied, artistic work which we associate with him today.

I was also impressed by some of William Flynn's lost layouts. Previously I'd thought of his Philadelphia-area parkland work as being his 'style,' with Shinnecock Hills being something of an aberration. But after seeing his lost courses at the Boca Raton Hotel and the old waste-area-strewn holes at Atlantic City Country Club, I came to view him much more as an architect capable of working wonderfully with the natural aesthetic of the land.

7) Which state has lost the most gems through time?

New York, by a mile.

Actually, the New York City area by itself has probably lost more really fine courses than most states have ever had! Here's something that absolutely amazed me: Before WWII, just the borough of Queens and its very immediate environs featured courses designed by Dr. Alister MacKenzie (Bayside), A.W. Tillinghast (FreshMeadow and St. Albans), C.B. Macdonald (The Lido), Seth Raynor (Oakland) and Devereux Emmet (Pomonok, Queens Valley, Hillcrest, etc.), NONE of which still exist today.

Then you move slightly east, onto Long Island and the high-profile losses continue. A top-flight Macdonald/Raynor layout at Deepdale, another of their collaborations at the Links Club, some really good Devereux Emmet designs at Old Westbury, the Meadowbrook Hunt Club, the Huntington Crescent Club and his five course (!) facility, the Salisbury Country Club. And, of course, one of the really amazing pre-war layouts, C.H. Alison's Timber Point.

8) What made Timber Point so special? Where would it rate today against the finest courses on Long Island?

Aside from being immensely difficult from the back tees (6,825 yards, par 71, in 1925), Timber Point probably offered about as much terrain-oriented variety as one could imagine. It's front nine initially ventured near the ocean, then proceeded back inland through a series of British heath-like holes, then across some Pine Valley-like sandy terrain. The inward half, which was largely constructed on reclaimed marshland, included several of the boldest holes of my acquaintance, including the 460-yard par-four eleventh (featuring three distinct driving areas), the 470-yard par-four fourteenth and the 205-yard into-the-wind fifteenth, modeled after Dr. MacKenzie�s famous Gibraltar hole at Moortown, England. The sixteenth and seventeen were true seaside holes and the 510-yard eighteenth, one of the few holes routed with the prevailing breeze, offered the aggressive player a chance to close in style.

Timber Point does still exist, but in a heavily-altered state since its present owner, Suffolk County, long-ago turned it into a 27-hole facility. Were its original design still intact, it would surely rate very near the top
of Long Island's best. Perhaps not as highly as the National, Shinnecock Hills or the Lido, but certainly comparable to Garden City, Bethpage (Black) , Maidstone, etc.

9) How would you compare the design quality of the Lido to Timber Point?

It's a tricky question since they were really like apples and oranges. Timber Point was built upon a very large tract of land with a variety of natural settings and features. The Lido was shoehorned into a much smaller site which, prior to massive shaping, offered virtually no features. This discrepancy certainly gave C.H. Alison more freedom in his routing with the result being a layout that offered starkly contrasting backdrops, a bit like Cypress Point's mix of seaside, forest and sand dunes. The Lido, on the other hand, looked and surely felt rather uniform from start to finish.

In terms of strategy, however, the Lido was clearly the better golf course. Nearly every hole offered what today's P.R.-minded architects like to call 'risk/reward' situations, especially at the celebrated fourth and eighteenth holes, but also nearly everywhere in between. This is not meant to imply that Timber Point was especially lacking in this regard. But I am of the school that believes it's much easier to build great strategy into shorter holes where simply reaching the green in regulation is not the player's primary concern. The well-conceived short par four is my favorite hole in golf, and is rather conspicuously absent from Timber Point's design.

There's no doubt that Timber Point was the grander, more spectacular layout, but I think most knowledgeable observers would agree that the Lido was, on the whole, noticeably better.