We sure it was a Ross?I don't think it's Ross. I believe it's been confused with the NLE Hawthorne Valley CC in Michigan. It was opened in 1926, same year that the Ohio club claims it was opened.
I hope this course can keep it going somehow. It is a fine layout over a wonderful piece of property that sits mostly in a creek valley. I’ve always thought that the course could be a lot more playable and enjoyable with the removal of about 500-1000 trees (to start),
The DRS list is known to have a few errors - e.g. Sewell's Point in VA is a confirmed Wm Flynn design (his drawings match the course) but the club still claims a Ross pedigree. A sign that a DRS attribution might be speculative is the absence of confirmation from the Tufts Archives or the Ross listing from 1930. But putting that aside, what a shame to lose the course. It obviously cries out for tree removal but even without it, the property looks like a very inviting place to play golf.
I’ve always known it to be a Ross course. It’s even listed as a Ross course on the Donald Ross Society page, but Sven’s research seems to prove otherwise. At least it seems to have had an indirect Ross pedigree.
Click HERE (http://www.golfclevelandohio.com/hawthornevalley.html) to go to the GolfClevelandOhio.com page where there are a few photos of Hawthorne.
The DRS list is known to have a few errors - e.g. Sewell's Point in VA is a confirmed Wm Flynn design (his drawings match the course) but the club still claims a Ross pedigree. A sign that a DRS attribution might be speculative is the absence of confirmation from the Tufts Archives or the Ross listing from 1930. But putting that aside, what a shame to lose the course. It obviously cries out for tree removal but even without it, the property looks like a very inviting place to play golf.
I’ve always known it to be a Ross course. It’s even listed as a Ross course on the Donald Ross Society page, but Sven’s research seems to prove otherwise. At least it seems to have had an indirect Ross pedigree.
Click HERE (http://www.golfclevelandohio.com/hawthornevalley.html) to go to the GolfClevelandOhio.com page where there are a few photos of Hawthorne.
Sven's newspaper article appears to talk of HVCC west of Cleveland while the existing course appears to be east of Cleveland.
Dave,Westland is a suburb of Dearborn...
Sven's newspaper article appears to talk of HVCC west of Cleveland while the existing course appears to be east of Cleveland.
The article notes the course was on South Miles Road (which runs to out of Cleveland to the Southeast). I don't see anything in the article discussing HV being West of Cleveland.
Sven
Dave,Westland is a suburb of Dearborn so I think you can consider them the same as far as HV is concerned. The HV in Westland/Dearbon course was designed by Donald Ross as an 18 hole course. At some point it was reduced to 9 before closing a few years ago. The article Sven posted puts the Ohio HV on South Miles Rd which is SE of Cleveland, between Solon and Bedford Heights. As the article points out, it's was not designed by Donald Ross. The confusion comes from the DRS list and the Architects of Golf both attributing the Ohio HV to Ross. Both are wrong - which happens occasionally when dealing with sparse data.
Dave,The Tufts drawings are of the HV course in Westland/Dearborn, MI, not the one near Solon, OH which I believe we've established was not a Ross design in spite of the club's claim.
Craig,
The 15th holes do appear to be same course. The drawings do not resemble any holes from scorecard of HVCC in Solon.
Looking a little further today I saw that the W. Pete Jones and Ron Whitten lists from 1998/1996 show HVCC in Dearborn as a 27 hole course from 1925 originally known as Brightmoor Country Club
Dave,The Tufts drawings are of the HV course in Westland/Dearborn, MI, not the one near Solon, OH which I believe we've established was not a Ross design in spite of the club's claim.
Craig,
The 15th holes do appear to be same course. The drawings do not resemble any holes from scorecard of HVCC in Solon.
Looking a little further today I saw that the W. Pete Jones and Ron Whitten lists from 1998/1996 show HVCC in Dearborn as a 27 hole course from 1925 originally known as Brightmoor Country Club
It's a stretch to say that HV was in Dearborn. It was 8 miles or so to the west in Westland. It's also not near Brightmoor which has a 1920s-era public course just to the south - Rouge Park. I'm suspicious about the Brightmoor/HV connection.
Craig,I agree we've established HV in Solon, OH is not a Ross design in spite of the club's claim.HV in Westland 8 miles west of Dearborn makes sense.Any thoughts onBrightmoor CC being a 1925 Ross course in Dearborn? This shows up in "The Golf Course" and "The Architects of Golf"[/l]
Craig, you are correct. I don't believe Western opened as Brightmoor. The course opened with a name to do with district... I forget exactly. Nobody then or now would use Brightmoor if trying to recruit Detroit area members. It must have been some sort of operating name at first. The odd thing about that name is Western is not in Brightmoor...which is a part of Detroit....maybe even when Western was built. It could also be the case that Brightmoor was originally part of Redford...where Western G&CC is located. I know Redford was at one time much larger, but I don't know what became what. Being an area developed for auto industry housing, Brightmoor could well be a splinter of Redford.Brightmoor was the name of the housing/golf community developer B.E. Taylor planned in which the course played a central part. I don't know if it opened as Brightmoor Golf Club and if it did, how long it operated under that name, but it was owned by the Western Land Co. up until 1945, when the membership purchased the club and renamed it Western Golf and Country Country Club. Eventually, the housing community got absorbed into what became Redford, MI as other houses shot up around it. It's easy to differentiate the golf community homes from the rest of the neighborhood, as they tend to be larger and more stately.
PS...Rouge Park GC is not in Brightmoor either!
Ciao
Wow - not being a Ross is news to me. I could have sworn the course advertised itself as such. Anyway, there were some really neat holes out there that just don't get built anymore.Erik,
#2 was a short par 4 with an angled fairway that fell away from the tee. It almost required a hook off the tee (or a very short iron) and I thought it was the only place on the course where the trees added to the quality of the hole.
Number 8 was a par 4 with a cliff-top tee and little trouble, but the real challenge was the green that had a nasty little tier in it. The options on the second shot were limitless on the few times it was playing firm and fast (right after they went public).
And #16 was one of my favorite holes in Cleveland. Long par 4, dogleg left that just opened up beautifully on your 2nd shot over a valley. I normally don't like hitting woods into par 4's, but that was just a fun shot for reasons I can't quite put my finger on.
Besides losing an architecturally interesting course (Ross or not), the other bad part of closing courses like this is the added strain it puts on the good public courses like Sleepy Hollow and Manakiki - add some more people to those courses and the already 5-hour round gets another 30 minutes tacked on to it.