Piping Rock Club, NY, USA

The elegant 450 yard 14th hole

How could Charles Blair Macdonald remain mad at such a club? Honestly!

To play the course today, one can only think of the great pride that any architect would take in such a course. However, not Macdonald. Ever the perfectionist, he wanted the complete run of the 340 acres for his beloved game of golf when he was awarded this project in 1911. Unfortunately, polo was the glamour sport at the time and the founders remained adamant that the land sprawling beneath the north side of the clubhouse be reserved for that gentlemenly pursuit.

Macdonald could often dominate a group of powerful men through the sheer force of his commanding personality but not at Piping Rock. The men who founded this Gold Coast club in Locust Valley were equally unyielding.

Taken from the 1st fairway, this view is across the one time polo fields that led to
so much friction.The 2nd fairway is in the distance.

Macdonald was thus forced to route the holes around the massive pair of polo fields. From some unclear reason, he never became comfortable with this task. He must not have felt that the best holes would result and yet, the holes that occupy the perimeter of the polo fields contain the better movement anyway. The elevated tees on the first two holes make them. Indeed, three other holes in close proximity to the polo fields (the Redan, the Road Hole and the Biarritz) are among the best on a course that has no poor holes. Macdonald may have preferred not to route the 4^th and 5^th holes against the side of a hill, but the holes are plenty fine as they turned out.

With Macdonald perpetually at odds with the club board, Seth Raynor oversaw much of the construction work and began liasing directly with the board. Raynor went on to build his first solo course at the Westhampton Country Club the following year and perhaps his experiences in dealing with the board here helped to give him the confidence to go at it alone.

Holes to Note

3^rd hole 185 yards; The Redan hole for many. Who can argue? The front left bunker is a full twelve feet deep, making it the most intimidating of Macdonald/Raynor’s Redan front bunkers. Still, the bunker should be avoided as the green has great sweep from front right to back left. The proper aim can be as much as twenty yards right of certain hole locations, and seeing the ball take the slope just perfectly is the favorite shot for many on this course.

The golf ball in the Redan bunker is
feeling lonely indeed.

6^th hole, 525 yards; An appealing serpentine three shot hole that is capped off by a green that can make this hole a bear. An abrupt three foot rise in the green creates a back plateau that provides hole locations that increase the day’s stroke average by almost a full shot. This back plateau is ringed by a series of  deep bunkers, from which recovery is a major accomplishment. Thus, many approach shots stay on the lower two-thirds portion of the green. The resulting sad three putt to a back hole location is of little comfort.

continued >>>

© Copyright GCA 1999 - 2000. All rights reserved.