Yale University Golf Course, CT, USA     

Inland golf's equivalent to the 16th at Cypress Point.

How well does a course stand the test of time?

In the case of Seth Raynor, there is something uniquely appealing about his engineered style and many of his courses have withstood the test of time. Shoreacres, Fishers Island, and Westhampton Country Club play largely as he intended. Recent restoration work at Yeamans Hall, Lookout Mountain, Camargo and The Creek have returned many of the best design features to those designs. Furthermore, Mountain Lake and the Country Club of Fairfield are presently pursuing master plans as well.

In the case of the Yale University Golf Course, despite more than 40 years of mismanagement that includes ineptly re-built bunkers, two greens that have been moved, green contours that have been flattened to promote 'more accurate putting', tree encroachment that has gone unchecked, famously bad maintenance, fairways that have shrunk by 30% in width, and some of the worse placement of carts paths that the authors have ever seen, Raynor's design at Yale to this very day still shines through as a monumental achievement.

Set on 700 acres (!), Raynor incorporated the lakes, ponds, hills, mountains, and rock outcroppings to create a course of such massive scale as to make most courses seem puny. The holes are big and burly with fairways that range to sixty yards in width and several greens greater than 10,000 square feet in size. The bunkers are deep and deeper with some requiring flights of steps, and the contouring of the greens are unsurpassed in the United States for boldness. When Raynor completed building Yale in 1926, Yale was the most expensive course built to date as the result of working with the rocky, hilly New England land.

This view from behind the 11th green up to the tee in the distance
highlights what Raynor faced: severe, rocky topography.

Given the severe terrain, the course was going to be a hit or miss - the architect would either get it right and create holes that would never be duplicated elsewhere or he would get it wrong and forever be fighting the land. Raynor, with input from Macdonald on the advisory committee, got it right in large part thanks to his superior routing skills. The end result is an original all the way with none of the holes reminding the golfer of those from other courses. There is no hint or whiff of blandness; nor is there any sameness that plagues fine but not great courses.

And as  George Bahto, the leading Macdonald/Raynor historian, points out, it is Raynor and not Macdonald that deserves the credit for Yale. Bahto found an article from Charles 'Steam Shovel' Banks, who worked on the Yale construction team. The article appeared in an Alumnae Bulletin in 1929 and in it, Banks writes, Raynor deserves credit for 'what is today considered by many to be the outstanding inland golf course of America.' Banks went on, 'Mr. Macdonald, who served on the advisory committee, was familiar with the plans from the outset, but Mr. Raynor was the real genius of this masterpiece, who made the layout, designed the greens, and gave the work of construction his supervision from start to finish.'

Not exactly an ordinary putting green!

Holes to Note

1^st hole, 410 yards; The adventure begins right away with one of the most intimidating opening shots in American golf. The tee is high above Greist Pond. The fairway commences some 170 yards from the back markers. A mid iron approach may well see the golfer onto the green. A snap hook mid iron might also see the golfer onto the green - this is one immense green. Its contouring looks like nothing more so than a heaving sea with the slope dividing the green left into a punchbowl and right into a higher plateau. This arrangement with the spine running from back to front through the middle is far more appealing than the modern, commonplace version where the spine runs across a green.

The intimidating first tee shot across Geirst Pond.

2nd hole, 375 yards; In many respects, this hole encapsulates the struggle that the design has gone through in the past fifty years. Firstly, Bahto has discovered that two rather large mounds were removed from the middle right of the putting green in order to promote 'more accurate putting.'  Unfortunately, the well-meaning individual who drove this change did not understand how those mounds could be used by the golfer to help work the ball over to the tricky left hand hole locations. Then in more recent times, a professional architect who graduated from Yale has tinkered with the bunkering but even his work (which shows no understanding of Raynor's engineered design style) can only slightly diminish the hole's inherent quality.

A true Cape hole features a green that juts out, and the 2nd at Yale fits that bill as well as any.

3^rd hole, 410 yards; Even though modified from Raynor's original design, the hole still retains strategic appeal. The closer one drives to the pond on the right, the less of the hill you have to hit over on your approach and the better your angle. Unfortunately, when the Raynor's original double punchbowl green was moved away from the pond to its current position, its replacement green lacked the same imagination that Raynor enthused into virtually all the other greens. There exists no reason why the double punchbowl green should not be completely restored.

Apart from the atrocious placement of the cart path, this view from the 4th tee shows the direction
marker for the partially hidden current 3rd green, the right half of which was once where the
cart path is today. The 4th fairway is in the left of the picture and bends to the right around the pond.

4^th hole, 430 yards; One of Ben Crenshaw's favorite holes and it marks the end to an all-world start. National Golf Links of America and Chicago are clear indications that Macdonald enjoyed starting his courses with the very best holes and perhaps Macdonald's influence as an advisor to Raynor at Yale can be seen in this regard. Raynor used the pond to re-create the angle of the out of bounds at the famous Road Hole at St. Andrews and created a Road bunker twice as deep as the one in Scotland.

Unfortunately, the Road bunker has recently been made considerably shallower than Raynor intended.

6^th hole, 420 yards; Though one of the less dramatic holes on the property, it is a fine example of Raynor's command of angles, an attribute of which Pete Dye much admired and later emulated. A stream dominates the inside of this dogleg left and by the green, a large bunker once protected the full length of the green's right hand side and extended well out into the fairway. If the golfer successfully flirted with the creek, he had an uninterrupted view down the length of the green. If he bailed to the right on his tee shot, the approach had to carry this right hand side bunker and would come across the green at an awkward angle. Unfortunately, Roger Rulewich's current bunker work has undermined the strategic principles of this hole.

7th hole, 375 yards; Raynor's engineering skills were invaluable during the construction of Yale and he used dynamite to great effect in the creation of the 7th and 14th fairways. Without the selective use of dynamite to create what would become the 7th fairway, the 8th and 9th holes might never have existed. As it is, the 7th fairway appears natural and unforced and the hole is capped off by a mammoth green which features a pronounced back to front pitch and fascinating interior contours. Given its myriad of interesting hole locations, the golfer appreciates part of the reason why the members at Yale never tire of playing the course on a regular basis.

The view from the 7th tee to one of the few relatively flat fairways on the course.

8^th hole, 420 yards; A testimony to Raynor's superb routing skills, the 8th bends to the left around a natural fall off. The approach shot is a delight to a severely sloping right to left green that is surrounded by deep bunkers on both sides (how deep? the bunker on the right is fifteeen feet deep and is the shallower of the two!). Yet, the hole is within most players' capabilities and one never tires of trying to shape his approach shot and use the ground to maximum advantage. Though the fairway is plenty wide, the approach is often times blind, unless the golfer places his drive in a precise area in the right center of the fairway.

Note the steps leading into the bunker on the left of the 8th green.

Not much better to the right of the green either!

9^th hole, 215 yards; Our favorite inland par three hole, the view from the tee will stay with the golfer until his dying days. The tee is perched sixty feet above Greist Pond. On the far bank, perhaps twelve feet above the pond is a green. All you have to do is hit it and it isn't exactly a postage stamp either. This full Biarrtiz green is sixty yards from front to back and has a five-foot gully running through the middle of it. Other than that, it's just your usual one shotter! In theory, the player is to use the front slope of the gully to help sling the ball to the back hole locations but the scale of the hole dwarfs the golfer and such control of your swing is rare under those circumstances. Like with every Biarritz, it should be mandatory that the hole is placed on the back half of the green the vast majority of the time as the tee ball is more varied and interesting.

The awesome 9th, as seen from the back of the green, past the swale,
over the pond and up to the distant tee.

continued >>>

© Copyright GCA 1999 - 2000. All rights reserved.