[Tom MacWood]

Mike
Technically Ridgewood is in Parma. The course sits on nice rolling terrain, typical of N. Ohio. Most of the greens are on rises, hills or ridges, not unlike a Ross course, which is not a surprise since Alves was a disciple. Short by modern standards, but fun.

[DMoriarty]

Mike Cirba,

Here is a NEW RULE for you:  No more snidely manipulating the title of the thread.  It is petty and immature.  Plus, if you cannot make your point in open discourse rather than by messing with the title, then you probably have no point to make.  

Speaking of which, here is another NEW RULE for you:  If you have to resort to circituitious speech to try and shift the issue, then your point is invalid to the topic at hand.  For example, in the other thread you asked.

Would you consider Rustic Canyon or Griffith Park and Trump National- LA as synonymous courses serving the same public purpose?  Or Torrey Pines and Aviara?

Huh?  

Your original claim involved public courses, municipal or otherwise, that were not part of a resort.  Like Del Monte and Pebble Beach.  What the hell does it matter whether or not courses are "synonymous courses serving the same public purpose?"  What is that supposed to mean, anyway?  

I don't recall anything in your original claim about the necessity that the course only be open only to the poor and the downtrodden.  
If that is your latest criterion, then you need to throw out a good portion of your municipal courses, too.   Maybe in Philadelphia everyone with any means only played private clubs, but in much of the country people across the social strata played munis and other publics And many of the muni courses served relatively affluent areas and were tourist attractions.   And, like with the developments and private courses like Merion, among the reasons they were built was to attract residents to the area.  

To answer your original question, courses like Trump and courses like Rustic are not synonomous.  They serve different public purposes or at least different sections of the public, in that courses like Rustic provide a place to golf for those members of the public with taste,  and courses like Trump provide a place to golf for those without.

But so far as I know they are both open to the public.  (Not sure what was originally intended for the course that eventually became Trump.)

Torrey and Aviara are strange examples and they show how foolish your distinction.  Which one is supposedly not a "resort community" course?  The one on the Ocean in tony La Jolla?  Or the one in Carlsbad?    I'd have to pay $400-500 to stay in the Hotel, plus play a hefty green fee and resort fee to play either one of them.  

[Jamey Bryan]

Gentlemen:

I find it hard to believe that this thread has gone to 18 pages (mostly petty animosity) without mentioning, even as an aside, the Kirkwood Links (now Camden Country Club).  Designed in 1923 by Walter Travis at 6634 yards, it was a demanding and recognized test.  Granted, it had sand greens, but it was Travis's prototype for "undulating" sand greens, the method for which he patented.  The Kirkwood links advertised in the American Golfer as a "daily fee" and, from 1903 forward, was available to public play.  The 1939 Donald Ross renovation grassed the greens and changed a few holes, but I would argue that Kirkwood/Camden was a very important course in the South during that period.

Jamey

[Mike Cirba]

Tom MacWood,

Thanks for the additional info on Ridgewood.  I may be in Cleveland later this summer and was hoping it was worth checking out.   Sounds like something I'd enjoy.

Tom/David,

You guys do seem to be struggling with my definition of a public course, and I apologize if I was unclear, and I know some of these areas can be a bit grey.

However, back in the very early 80s, Golf Digest magazine attempted for the first time to put together a list of the "Top 50 Public Courses" in the country, and they didn't seem to struggle at all.

In fact, it wasn't until years later, when for obvious marketing purposes they began to first include all resorts, and then strangely tried to break their listing into the Top 50 Expensive Publics and the Top 50 Cheap publics that things got vey odd indeed.

However, on the first list at least, they did know what a public golf course was, and didn't seem to fall into many of the traps that you two seem to keep tripping into.

We can debate the inclusion or exclusion of certain courses on this list based on quality, but there's hardly a course here that I wouldn't classify as "Public", at least in the 1982 timeframe the course was put together, with the possible exception of Edgewood Tahoe, which probably got on simply through having hosted the 1980 US Publinks tournament, and possibly beginning some of the confusion.

To wit;

FIRST TEN

Brown Deer Park - Milwaukee, WI - 1929
Cog Hill #4 - Lemont, IL - 1964
Edgewood Tahoe - Stateline, NV - 1968
Indian Canyon - Spokane, WA - 1934
Otter Creek - Columbus, IN - 1964
Plumas Lake - Marysville, CA - 1926
Tanglewood - Clemmons, NC - 1958
Torrey Pines South - La Jolla, CA - 1957
Wailua - Kauai, HI - 1960
West Palm Beach - WPB, FL - 1947

THE OTHER FORTY

Alvamar Hlls - Lawrence, KS - 1968
Ancil Hoffman - Sacramento, CA - 1965
Arroyo del Oso - Albuquerque, NM - 1965
Bangor Municipal - Bangor, ME - 1964
Bear Creek - Dallas, TX - 1980
Braemar - Edina, MN - 1964
Bunker Hills - Coon Rapids, MN - 1974
Cranberry Valley - Harwich, MA - 1974
Downing - Erie, PA - 1962
Fall Creek Falls - Pikeville, TN - 1972
Flanders Valley - Flanders, NJ - 1963
Glenview - Cincinnati, OH - 1974
Grand Haven - Grand Haven, MI - 1965
Grapevine Muni - Grapevine, TX - 1979
Hershey Parkview - Hershey, PA - 1931
Hog Neck - Easton, MD - 1976
Hominy Hills - Colts Neck, NJ - 1964
Industry Hills - Industry, CA - 1964
Kemper Lakes - Hawthorn Woods, IL - 1979
Lawsonia - Green Lake, WI - 1929
Mangrove Bay - St. Petersburg, FL - 1978
Montauk Downs - Montauk, NY - 1969
Oak Hollow - High Point, NC - 1972
Oak Mtn. State Park - Pelham, AL - 1974
Papago - Phoenix, AZ - 1963
Pasatiempo - Santa Cruz, CA - 1929
Perdido Bay - Pensicola, FL - 1962
Pine Ridge - Timonium, MD - 1958
Pompano Beach - Pompano Beach, FL - 1954
Rancho Park - Los Angeles, CA - 1949
Richter Memorial - Danbury, CT - 1971
Salem Hills - Northville, MI - 1963
Sleepy Hollow - Brecksville, OH - 1923
Spook Rock - Ramapo, NY - 1970
Stone Mountain - Stone Mountain, GA - 1969
Stow Acres - Stow, MA - 1954
Tokatee - Blue River, OR - 1966
Turnwater Valley - Olympia, WA - 1970
Waveland - Des Moines, IA - 1901
Wellshire - Denver, CO - 1926


The courses were rated based on "excellence of design" and "course conditioning".  

According to the magazine, "Some pubilc courses blessed with good design and rich tradition, like San Francisco's picturesque Harding Park and the Black Course at New York State's Bethpage Park have been purposefully excluded because the reports on their current conditioning are negative."

For those who think ratings aren't worth anything, it was reported later that this exclusion of the Black course was the impetus for the later restoration/renovation.

I was also surprised personally to see I'd only played 14 course on this list.

[Phil_the_Author]

Mike,

That article did indeed inspire a general improvement to the Black course in the early 1980's. Yet it was a facelift at best and shouldn't be confused with what was done by the USGA nor was it any inspiration for that whatsoever. For example, they left the tree in the front right greenside bunker on 16 that had grown in it for about 10 years to that point. That was removed by Rees...

[Tom MacWood]

Pasatiempo?

[Mike Cirba]

Pasatiempo?

Yeah, Tom, I thought that was sort of an odd one, as well.

I'm not very versed on the history of that course and don't know what type of course it was back in 1929, and even though I played it I don't remember the public/private circumstances because it was in the "King's Putter".

Still, it makes the public lists today, it doesn't include any lodging or real estate components as far as I know, and I guess anyone could just drive up and play there at certain times each day, according to their website.

Here's what it says;

Pasatiempo welcomes public play and accepts two types of tee time reservations: Regular (up to 7 days in advance) and Priority (up to 365 days in advance), which are fully explained below. Since Pasatiempo is a semi-private golf club certain tee times—mainly early morning times on weekends and holidays—are reserved for members.

http://www.pasatiempo.com/web/

What do you think?

How about the rest of the courses on the list?   Is it now pretty clear the type of course(s) I was talking about as "public" courses, in that they were not resorts or resort communities?   

[Mike Cirba]

Tom,

I may be wrong about Edgewood Tahoe, and from what I've been looking at it seems that the course has no onsite lodging of any type and/or real-estate component, and may simply have just been a public course all along.   Perhaps I was thrown simply by the fact that it's in the Lake Tahoe area.    What do you think?

[Tom MacWood]

Mike
I have no idea what point you are trying to make. First of all I have excluded all resort courses just as this list has done. Second there are plenty of high end courses on this list. So much for the idea that the list should be tailored only to the lower classes. Third, this list has courses in the resort communities of Lake Tahoe, Kauai and Pompano Beach, so I guess it is OK to have a daily fee course in a resort area. Daily-fee courses in vacation/resort areas are on an equal footing with municipal golf courses. Lastly my list is more selective and less inclusive than this one. This list includes a number of courses that were formerly private clubs. Your claim would look even more ridiculous had I opened it up to those courses.

[Tom MacWood]

Here is an aerial of Max Behr's Montebello Park, along with an article. The aerial is a little hard to make out, but I think you can see the interesting way in which the green complexes are designed and oriented. Most of the bunkering is found near and around the greens, and the shape and orientation of those greens is consistent with Berh's design philosophy at the time, which was very similar to Tom Simpson's.

[DMoriarty]

Gentlemen:

I find it hard to believe that this thread has gone to 18 pages (mostly petty animosity) without mentioning, even as an aside, the Kirkwood Links (now Camden Country Club).  Designed in 1923 by Walter Travis at 6634 yards, it was a demanding and recognized test.  Granted, it had sand greens, but it was Travis's prototype for "undulating" sand greens, the method for which he patented.  The Kirkwood links advertised in the American Golfer as a "daily fee" and, from 1903 forward, was available to public play.  The 1939 Donald Ross renovation grassed the greens and changed a few holes, but I would argue that Kirkwood/Camden was a very important course in the South during that period.

Jamey

Jamey,

Interesting stuff.   I recall seeing a letter Travis had written to the City of Pasadena as part of his pitch to design what became Brookside (next to the Rose Bowl) aind in which he propose using the type of sand greens you mention.  He also highlighted a Southern course where such greens had been quite successful.  I don't remember which course it was, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was Kirkwood.  Travis was working with one of the Dunn's at the time, maybe George.  He did not get the Pasadena job.  It went to local boy, William P. Bell, who built grass greens.  

This was the mid to late 1920's and by that time many of the courses with sand greens in California had switched to grass.  I wonder if the Travis sand green method wasn't about a decade too late?
____________________________  

Mike Cirba,

All that list tells me is they threw about anything in there and are much looser about what is public than Tom.  

Industry Hills is part of a hotel and conference center.  

[Phil_the_Author]

David,

You stated, "This was the mid to late 1920's and by that time many of the courses with sand greens in California had switched to grass.  I wonder if the Travis sand green method wasn't about a decade too late?"

Tilly was hired by a number of California courses in the late teens and early twenties to convert their greens from sand to grass. On a number of them he brought Low out to supervise the work... He was not the only architect doing this work at that time.

It appears your supposition is correct.

[Mike Cirba]

David,

Could you please tell us which of those fifty courses you don't consider to be public courses and why?

Please name all you find to be something other than pay-as-you-go facilities available to everyone?

Thanks.

[Tom MacWood]

Jamey
I would have loved to include Kirkwood, but I think technically it was a resort course.

[DMoriarty]

David,

Could you please tell us which of those fifty courses you don't consider to be public courses and why?

Please name all you find to be something other than pay-as-you-go facilities available to everyone?

Thanks.

Again, your methodology amazes me.  You throw out a list and then ask me to go through it and tell you which were public and which not?   Shouldn't you have done that yourself?  Before you held out the list as evidence your definition of public is correct?

Besides, you misunderstood and/or misrepresented my comment, which was that this list had lax standards compared to Tom's list.  I didn't say anything about whether they were really "public."  My point is that many of these courses wouldn't qualify for Tom's list.  And if they did, your claim would look even more foolish.  Not even you would have the nerve to claim that Cobbs was better than Pasatiempo, would you? 

Perhaps you meant to ask how the standards were more lax?  To only name a few reasons off the top of my head, this list includes former privates  (Rancho Park) semi-privates (Pasatiempo and Plumas Lake Country Club)  and hotel courses (Industry Hills and Rancho.) 

And despite your lame attempt to exclude actual publics because they are located in a "resort community," you have the nerve to conclude that Edgewood is just a public course?    Did you forget that you have been trying to exclude all such courses suggested by Tom?   If there was ever a public course that doubled as a resort course it is Edgewood, which it is the de facto golf course for the big Tahoe hotels. Plus plenty of the courses on your list are in what could be called resort communities or communities that draw tourists. 

Speaking of developments, as for your incoherent exclusion of courses built as part of developments, the list includes those as well.   The list even includes Montauk Downs, which might just qualify as as a former private, hotel course, and development course.    And contrary to your claim that as far as you knew it wasn't, Pasatiempo was created as part of a large real estate play.  "As far as I know" may count as proof where your from, but it it doesn't make it so.

But then that was your approach with the entire list, wasn't it?   You would like there to have been a list of purely publics excluding the types of courses you wanted to exclude, and you found this list so you just threw it out there.  As far as you knew (which isn't very far) this list was based on the same rules as your list.   Hardly compelling research and analysis.   But come to think of it, that is your entire approach to most of this material, isn't it? 

--  As far as you know  Cobbs is the best early public in the country.  Never mind that you know little or nothing about many of  the best publics of the era.   But then that is based on your expertise . . .
--   As far as you know  you are the KING of early publics, and claim to have played more early public courses than anyone else in the World!!  You don't know anyone who has played more, and that is your idea of backing up the claim.
--  As far as you know,  every public course built in the early 1930s was built as part of a depression era recovery program. 

About all you have taught us, Mike, is that you don't know nearly as far as you think you know.

[Mike Cirba]

David,

I thought so, thanks for the deflection, ignorance, mean-spiritidness, and disinformation.

[Mike Cirba]

Tom,

You questioned Pasa which was also a eyebrow-raiser to me, but do you know if it was public when it opened, and how would you classify it now?

Thanks.

[DMoriarty]

David,
I thought so, thanks for the deflection, ignorance, mean-spiritidness, and disinformation.

No deflection Mike.  From you question to me it is obvious you did not understand my previous post.   So I tried to expand upon it and explain it in terms that you could understand.    Besides, you should quit asking others to take care of your due diligence.  I am not your research assistant.

As for ignorance and disinformation, I don't think so.   If you disagree, then odds are you didn't understand that post either.

[Tom MacWood]

I'm still looking into Pasatiempo. As far as how I would classify it today I don't know, I do know it is a far cry from your recently expressed ideal of inexpensive municipal. In fact a large percentage of these courses do not fall under that ideal and contradict some of your other complaints (daily fee courses in resort areas for example), which begs the question what point were you trying to make with this list?

[Mike Cirba]

Tom,

I would classify a public course as one that is open to the public on a pay-as-you-go basis that is not a resort or resort community, both of which have onsite lodging accommodations, often with a perm or time-share real-estate component.   Oftimes, in a resort setting, one has to stay to play, but not always.

For instance, the reason I think Industry Hills made Golf Digest's list of Top Public Courses, circa 1980, is because the just opened (November 1979) course was indeed a public course at the time, with no lodging accommodations on site, or direct real-estate component.

When opened, it was a municipally built course, and although a private concern without direct affilation with the course was building a hotel on the site, I don't believe that ever got finished in the time-frame in question.

I'm still checking the deal with Edgewood Tahoe during that timeframe, but am interested as well as you are to find whether Pasatiempo opened as a public course and will share whatever I find, as well.

Thanks.

[TEPaul]

To understand the model Pasatiempo was created with all one has to do is read the biography of Marion Hollins. It most certainly was not created on some model of or for just a municipal golf course.

As for the quality of original architecture I would say Pasatiempo is awesome. I don't know much about the history of California architecture but from what I've seen Pasatiempo is pretty unique.

And, by the way, if after 18 pages you three guys cannot or have not yet decided and agreed upon what the point or purpose of these public course lists are supposed to be my suggestion would be to just forget about it because you probably will never agree. This thread is not much more than an on-going excercise in argumentation with no real productive purpose other than to just argue.

[Mike Cirba]

Tom MacWood,

Of the list that Golf Digest put together in 1980, I can see why they included Industry Hills at that time but would question the inclusion of Edgewood Tahoe, which to me sounds like a resort course, even if open to the "walk-up" public.

The fact that the US Publinks was held at Edgewood in 1980, the first time it went to a course with a large Lodging and/or Real Estate component probably contributed to the blurring of lines.  

We also both agree that Pasa needs further discovery.

Any others from that list you'd see as not being a true public course?   David seems to think that list is fraught with any and all type of courses; obviously, I don't.   I don't think you do either.






Tom Paul,

I think we're making slow, steady progress, even if it is like pulling teeth and trying to provide an education at the same time.

If you want to disagree simply for the sake of doing so, however, you've come to the right place.    

[DMoriarty]

Mike,

More with the specious logic, selective reasoning, and your patented "as far as I know" approach to research, where you 'research' just enough to enable you to pretend you have supported your argument.

- You claim Industry Hills had no onsite lodging accommodations.  Those familiar with it will get a laugh at that.  Did you miss the part in the article about the hotel being 1/3 finished?

- You claim no affiliation between the hotel and course?  Poppycock.  Did you miss the part about the entire facility (including the hotel) being part of a huge redevelopment plan?   The source of money for the hotel has nothing to do with the central role (literally and figuratively) the hotel was to play in the project.

-  You don't believe the hotel was ever completed within the timeframe in question?    What, pray tell, is the basis for this belief?   Surely you are simply posting out your ass once again, making shit up to suit your needs.

-  And when a Hotel is an essential component in a Hotel-Golf Course-Conference Center redevelopment plan from the very beginning, just what is the time period in which it must open anyway?  More made up distinctions to support an unsupportable claim.

- Explain to me just who the conference center with the 2500 parking spaces was supposed to serve?  The Tuesday afternoon Ladies League?

When are you going to learn that you cannot just make shit up to support your claims?  We should start calling you "As-Far-As-I-Know Cirba" because that is about as close as you get to actual research and analysis.

From the Pacific Palms Resort website:

Located on a glorious hilltop and set against the majestic San Gabriel Mountains, Pacific Palms is Los Angeles’ only full-service, destination hotel appealing to both leisure and business travelers.

The recently renovated, 650 acre property features 292 beautifully appointed, oversized guest rooms, each with balcony, a variety of food and beverage options including fabulous fireside dining and cocktail seating on the patio overlooking Celebration Lake and a new spa & fitness center. Celebrating more than 25 years of tradition,Pacific Palms also boasts LA’s only 4-star rated golf experience with 36 holes of completely refurbished championship golf on the legendary ‘Ike’ and ‘Babe’ courses.

Just 25 minutes from downtown Los Angeles and centrally located near four major airports and four major interstates, Pacific Palms is Southern California’s finest and most accessible destination hotel and conference center.

[Mike Cirba]

David,

Thanks for making my point and clearing up the timing of the subsequent hotel construction, which clearly was sometime after the course opened in 1979 and more importantly to this discussion, after Golf Digest compiled their initial list of the Best Fifty public courses I listed above.

[Tom MacWood]

TEP
I've read the Hollins biography (I wouldn't recommend it by the way), and the Pasatiempo club history, and neither book details when the club became a daily-fee. What is your point?

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