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9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023944597
The Golf Courses of Seth Raynor /
Writing by Michael Wolf & James Sitar
Photography by Jon Cavalier
Back Nine Press (USA)
Pages cm
ISBN 978-1-956237-13-9 (hardback)
The Lido Club • Links Golf Club • Shinnecock Hills Golf Club • Deepdale Golf Club • Greenbrier #3 • Greenbrier (Lakeside) • Mid-Pacific Country Club • Nassau Country Club • Greenwich Country Club • Monterey Peninsula Country Club (Dunes) • Oakland Golf Club • Condado Golf Club • Riddell’s Bay Golf and Country Club • Palm Beach Winter Club • Sunningdale Country Club • Taft School’s Watertown Golf Club • Statesville Country Club • Bon Air-Vanderbilt Hotel (Lake) • Lake Wales Country Club • Roselle Golf Club • Bellport Golf Club • OHEKA (Cold Springs) • Essex Fells Country Club
Club (Lakeside) • Hope Ranch
New Haven Country Club • St. George Country Club
Suffolk County • Glen Acres
FOREWORD: TO BE TRANSPORTED
BY MIKE KEISER
I’ve admired a pair of Golden Age architects for many, many years: Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor. The pair worked so well together, it’s difficult to separate the two in my mind. Their work, and their legacy, are important to me.
As many readers may already know, these two first started working together during the construction of National Golf Links of America, beginning in 1908. That course is nature perfected. When my mind wanders to the National—and it does, often—I think about the remarkable greens, which offer so much fun and defense. They’re exquisite. The 10th hole—named Shinnecock—runs alongside its famous neighboring course. This hole’s strategy and beauty stand out to me as well. It was here where Macdonald initiated his idea of creating golf holes in homage to some of the most “ideal” holes in the UK and Europe. He was trying to transport Americans to a kind of golf course design that he loved over there.
Macdonald could not have built National Golf Links of America on his own. He turned to a local engineer named Seth Raynor to survey the land and figure out how to convert this marshy wasteland into the greatest golf course in America. It’s the collaboration of these two at NGLA that has inspired and influenced so many architects from then to now. For Raynor, it was a stunning debut project: a dream opportunity to cut one’s teeth on. Whether intentional or not, he had found his life’s calling.
About a decade later, Macdonald insisted to Chicago Golf Club that they radically redo his own design, and he insisted that the man for the job was Seth Raynor. I may be biased, but Raynor’s work at Chicago Golf is a masterpiece. It’s a marvel to see what Raynor was able to achieve on this relatively undistinguished property. I don’t think anyone else, next to Old Tom Morris, was able to make so much out of subtle land movement. The standouts of Chicago Golf’s front nine, for me, are Holes 1 and 2: these may have the best greens in all of golf, and they’re original creations of Raynor’s. On the back nine, Holes 11 (a Cape hole with a huge green) and 12 (an uphill par-four with a massive Punchbowl green) are great tests of strategy and use of land. There’s not a hole I wouldn’t rank a 9 or 10 on the entire property. The entire course is truly a work of art. Part of this artistry involves the routing of the course, and the variety of holes and directions that keep us engaged and aware.
Anyone who’s been lucky enough to play a few Raynor courses will know that his use of template holes was genius. You’d think that template holes would resemble one another, but part of Raynor’s talent was his ability to find endless variations in these design concepts, from course to course. He took something that could’ve been easily derivative and boring, and turned them into unique holes. There’s also a sense of place to Macdonald and Raynor courses. Their courses make you think much more about the artfulness of their design than your score. They’re adventures in their own right. This is the golf I love. Raynor and Macdonald built golf courses that are fun to play. They can transport you back in time or to another place.
There’s also a sense of place to Macdonald and Raynor courses. Their courses make you think much more about the artfulness of their design than your score. They’re adventures in their own right. This is the golf I love. Raynor and Macdonald built golf courses that are fun to play. They can transport you back in time or to another place.
I’ve had a long-time fascination with the lost Lido course. Many writers in the 1930s thought it was the best course in America. By all accounts, it was a brute force in golf, and timeless. Sadly, the world had to move on. The Lido on Long Island is no more, but I always thought we should attempt to rebuild it as a tribute to Macdonald. I thought of recreating The Lido at Bandon, but Tom Doak and I realized that the land just wasn’t right for it, and a newly designed course using Macdonald’s design principles would be a suitable tribute and pro-
duce the best possible course on this land. Fast forward many years, and the idea has been moved over 2,000 miles away, where my two sons kept this idea alive. They’re transporting the lost Lido from the shores of Long Island to the ancient sand dunes of Central Wisconsin, and from the 1930s to the 2020s. My sons had the gumption to do it, with Doak again serving as the expert. This long-time dream of mine has now become a reality, thanks to my sons, Michael and Chris, and a talented team of researchers, shapers, and builders. We’re excited to see what people think, as they experience this revived classic course.
As in golf courses, many people must step in to keep great courses great—to have saved them from being hideously scrapped and completely refashioned decades ago, to have convinced golf committees and club members that their course can be truly special, if they agree to the proper restoration work in the right hands. Speaking of which, it takes a knowledgeable golf course architect, who is a student and perhaps teacher of history, to do the work right. And beyond that, it takes extremely talented superintendents and dedicated grounds crew to present these designs well and keep them playing as they were intended.
It’s also important to spread the gospel about these special designs. They’re some of our national treasures, and they require the care and upkeep that they deserve. They’re worthy of being studied by all kinds of architects and golfers, and to that end, this book is a great place to start.
I was delighted to learn of this book, which is attempting to preserve these great designs in photos and descriptions, allowing a wide audience to learn about them and enjoy them. Jon Cavalier’s photos capture the beauty and majesty of Raynor’s work, and Michael Wolf and James Sitar provide great overviews of the courses. This book distills the philosophies that connected the work of Macdonald and Raynor, and Raynor and his own protégé, Charles Banks, while being a highly enjoyable read.
A great golf course transports me, alters me in some way, and makes me appreciate something a bit more each time I play. Seth Raynor’s courses have always done that, and so does this book.
—MiKE KEiSER, June 2023
INTRODUCTION
Most of the best known golf course architects wrote at least one book explaining the philosophies that went into their work. The books were often used as marketing tools that they could give to potential clients. Intentional or not, the architect’s writings also contribute to the historical record of their work. Seth Raynor was an exception. When Raynor died in 1926, he left behind almost no writing, interviews, or paperwork of any kind. For most of the past century, Raynor’s work was left to speak for itself.
We have created this book to fill a gap on the shelf of golf course architecture.
About 30 years ago, a new appreciation for Seth Raynor’s work and career began to grow. Unimpressed by most of the new courses built since World War II, a new generation of architects began to look to predecessors such as C. B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor for inspiration. They were aided by a New Jersey dry-cleaner named George Bhato, who had spent decades researching Golden Age architecture. In 2002, he published The Evangelist of Golf: The Story of Charles Blair Macdonald. The book helped quantify what remained of Macdonald’s work. Bhato was researching companion volumes on Seth Raynor and Charles Banks when he passed away in 2014, at the age of 83. In the two decades since Bhato’s death, rumors of books about Seth Raynor have come and gone. In the meantime, two new factors would help continue to fuel the rise in popularity for Seth Raynor’s golf courses.
The first factor was the rise of the internet and social media. Many of the golf courses Raynor built were for Macdonald’s wealthy friends. For the past century, most of Raynor’s courses sat behind the manicured hedges and locked gates of some of the most private clubs in America. But in the past two decades, a growing number of clubs have been willing to share images and information of their newly restored Raynor golf courses. Chicago Golf Club, National Golf Links of America, and the Country Club of Charleston have hosted televised golf tournaments. Fans could join online communities on websites such as Golf Club Atlas, where they could share information (and strong opinions) on Raynor’s work. And podcasts such as Geoff Shackelford’s and Andy Johnson’s have provided in-depth examinations of courses that were previously out of sight.
The second factor has been improvements in photography and video recording. We can now see golf courses from almost every angle and in all varieties of lighting. Talented photographers such as Jon Cavalier know how to make golf courses look their best, which has helped sway even the most private of clubs to allow their courses to be shown to a wider audience.
Raynor’s golf courses are particularly photogenic. Most of the holes on most of his courses relied on just two dozen strategic concepts that he learned from Macdonald, yet Raynor gave each hole on each course a different look and feel. Seth Raynor simply built golf holes that look fun to play.
This book shows you each of Seth Raynor’s creations, so you can decide for yourself what makes them unique. We’ve also attempted to provide you with the story of every Raynor project, whether it was completed or not. Page counts limit the amount of detail we can share on any individual course, so we’ve tried to give you the reader a panoramic view of the golf courses of Seth Raynor.
NOTES ON T i MEL i NE AND DES i GN CRED i T
While many of you may have heard of template holes, also known as Ideal holes or strategies, we didn’t assume that all readers come to this book with this knowledge on the ready. We’ve created a guide to these templates that we hope is informative and easy to understand, using actual examples of golf holes from Macdonald and Raynor courses. If there are terms you don’t recognize, turn to that section in the back, and we’ll help you out the best that we can.
While much of this book follows a rough timeline, we have not organized everything in a purely chronological fashion. Instead, we’ve organized this book into parts that identify Raynor’s level of involvement with various courses, to the best of our understanding: starting with overlapping times of early apprenticeship, then more equal collaborations, then more solo work, Raynor projects that were only completed after his death, and finally the projects that were never realized. Anyone who’s observed the building of a golf course knows that the end product is the result of many people’s thoughts, ideas, and work. And like any business, Raynor worked on several ideas or projects at once. To seek a strict chronology
of storytelling is to tell a fragmented tale full of interruptions, confusions, and speculations, anyway.
What’s also often unclear is who exactly did what. As in music, where bands often create songs in a collaborative way, it’s likely that the features of these golf courses were the result of various duets of Macdonald and Raynor, and Raynor and Banks, and others. Unfortunately, space prevents us from following all of the others who may have contributed aspects to these remarkable golf courses. Where the line falls between Macdonald’s contribution and Raynor’s contributions at a place like Yale, for example, will likely never be known clearly. For us, deciphering these lines wasn’t our goal. We aren’t keeping score; while we do find these debates interesting, they already exist and continue elsewhere, and we can’t definitively assert answers in our limited space. Instead, we think the collaboration is the point: since these holes are like songs—these courses are like albums—so we choose to listen, watch, enjoy.
It is also important to keep in mind that—for better or worse—superintendents, greens chairmen, and club presidents have been looking after Seth Raynor’s courses for the last century. None of the golf courses in this book are exactly as Raynor designed them, although we have attempted to tell you which ones are closer than others.
We conducted a significant amount of research to provide the most accurate and intriguing details as possible. As many readers will know, facts in golf course history are debated, reargued, debunked, or verified year to year. We have used the best information available to us at the time of writing.
The purpose of this book is to discover, showcase, and celebrate Seth Raynor’s work, through gorgeous photos and informative and (hopefully) entertaining writing. We hope it fills that missing spot on your shelf.
—MiCHAEL WOLF & JAMES SiTAR
MACDONALD LEADS THE WAY
A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The man who would become one of the most influential people in American golf history was born on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls on November 14, 1855. The home that Charles Blair Macdonald lived in as an infant had been in his mother Mary’s family for generations. Macdonald’s father Godfrey, however, had emigrated from Scotland to Canada while in his mid-1920s. Godfrey Macdonald built a good life for his small family, thanks to a successful career in the railroad industry. By the time Charlie Macdonald was a teenager, the family had moved to Chicago and became American citizens. Macdonald was 16 when the Great Chicago Fire destroyed much of the city in 1871. The following summer, Charlie was sent to Scotland to study at the University of St Andrews. He would live with his grandfather William Macdonald, who was a professor who taught natural history and anatomy at the university.
Though he wasn’t aware of it, Macdonald’s time in St Andrews would coincide with a high point in the history of golf. Young Tom Morris was only four years older than Macdonald, but he had just won his fourth consecutive Open Championship when Macdonald arrived in 1872. To young Charles Macdonald, it must have seemed like every person in the ancient town played the strange game, including his grandfather.
William Macdonald was in fact a member of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. And so the day after young Charlie arrived in St Andrews, his grandfather took him to the shop of Old Tom Morris to buy his first golf clubs. During the two years that he lived in St Andrews, young Macdonald became proficient enough to play in matches with Young Tom and the other leading players of the era. More importantly, he also learned the rules, customs, and traditions from the high priests of the game.
Macdonald gave up golf for a time when he returned to America in 1874. These “Dark Ages,” as Macdonald called them, were all work and no play. Macdonald joined the Chicago Board of Trade and built up a successful business brokering stocks and bonds. By 1893, Macdonald was a member of the New York Stock Exchange.
Macdonald was also busy at home. In 1882 he married Frances Porter. Their first daughter Janet was born in 1884, followed by second daughter (also) Frances in 1886.
In 1878 Macdonald traveled to England, giving him an opportunity to visit Hoylake and play at Royal Liverpool. Macdonald began making annual pilgrimages to Liverpool, and he became a non-resident member in 1879. He spent almost all of 1883 living abroad, including a month in Hoylake, where he played Royal Liverpool every evening.
Still, it wasn’t until April 1892 that Macdonald laid out seven holes on the Lake Forest estate of Charles B. Farwell, followed by nine holes on a farm in Belmont, Illinois, so that he and some friends who’d also learned the game back in the UK could begin playing again. The size of the group steadily increased, and in the spring of 1893 Macdonald expanded the course to 18 holes. By July the charter for Chicago Golf Club had been granted.
had been billed as national championships: something Macdonald disputed soon after finishing runner-up in both.
Macdonald’s complaints drew attention to the need for a national organization to oversee the game of golf in America. On December 22, 1894, representatives from five clubs: St. Andrew’s, Newport, Shinnecock Hills, the Country Club (Brookline), and Chicago Golf formed what eventually became known as the United States Golf Association. Macdonald and Arthur Ryerson attended the meeting as representatives of Chicago Golf. Macdonald was soon leading a special committee that was charged with unifying the rules of golf in America.
In 1894 the newly formed club bought 200 acres, a mile outside the town of Wheaton. Macdonald was the obvious choice to lay out the latest new course.
That same summer, Macdonald played in a pair of invitational tournaments hosted by St Andrew’s Golf Club in New York and the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island. Both tournaments
The following year, Macdonald won the USGA’s inaugural Amateur Championship, hosted by Newport Country Club. Macdonald romped to a 12&11 victory over Charles Sands in the championship match. He was a champion.
Macdonald’s energy and determination kept him in the middle of almost every aspect of American golf through the turn of the century. There were more than 1,000 golf courses in America by 1900. He was determined to see the game played in America in a manner consistent with what he had learned 20 years earlier at the Home of Golf.
By 1900 Macdonald had moved into a new home at 7 East 47th Street in Manhattan. The home matched his growing wealth. He was ready to make his mark on American golf in another way: by designing courses that could match the great holes in the United Kingdom.
Macdonald was moving closer to creating his Ideal golf course . . . and meeting the man who would help him build it.
PART 1: LEARNING FROM THE MASTER
NATIONAL GOLF LIN k S OF AMERICA
1909
Southampton, New York | Par 72 | 6,505 yards
As early as 1897, Macdonald was beginning to form the idea that would become National Golf Links of America. In that year he wrote, “the ideal first-class golf links has yet to be selected and the course laid out in America.” Macdonald had moved from Chicago to New York when in the same magazine article he mentions Long Island as possessing natural linksland.
By the early 1900s, C. B. Macdonald was developing plans to make an ideal American golf course a reality. He had already made two study trips back to the UK, before expressing his vision in writing in 1904:
It is proposed to buy two hundred or more acres of ground on Long Island, where the soil is best suited for the purpose of laying out a golf course, and which, at the same time, is most accessible to the larger body of golfers in this country. The idea is to ask sixty men to subscribe $1000 each for this purpose.
Macdonald considered Cape Cod before deciding it was too remote. An area near Montauk had attractive land, but it had the wrong soil. Then Macdonald looked at several tracts of land around Shinnecock Hills, where he was a member, and finally settled on a little-known area north of Shinnecock, leading up to Peconic Bay. Parts of the land were so swamp-like that required a horse to access it. To make a golf course on this property, Macdonald would need a lot of help.
Colloquially known as The National and NGLA, this course was Macdonald’s opportunity to show America what great golf holes are. Famously using attributes of iconic, strategic holes from the United Kingdom, which Macdonald would call Ideal Holes, he would bring a new style of golf course design to the States. Macdonald had input from inspired minds on site who knew the original inspiration holes, including local friends Henry James “Jim” Whigham and Devereux Emmet, and visiting friend Horace Hutchinson. These three provided important suggestions and advice, and Macdonald incorporated their ideas where he could.
Macdonald originally hired Seth Raynor only to survey the property, but he was quickly impressed by Raynor’s abilities and asked him to do much more. Raynor would create a topographical map of the property and would also help to clear trees and rock and shape greens. As a water expert, he created irrigation and drainage, as well as wells, water pumps, and piping. It was said that this course would be the first to have a full system for watering grass. Raynor also had the ability to make calculations of how much earth would need to be cut and filled to make Macdonald’s plans a reality.
Macdonald oversaw Raynor and the early construction, then later gave the job to Raynor completely. While the site provided good, natural land movement, Macdonald’s design still required most of its features to be shaped. Additional dirt and manure were needed to provide the new soil for NGLA. By some accounts, the construction required roughly 10,000 full truckloads of soil. Records of course construction workers list the recognizable, historic names of John Shippen and Oscar Bunn. Shippen also worked here as a greenskeeper after the course opened for play. It would cost around $75,000 to build NGLA, which was almost four times as expensive as most courses built at the time.
The initial seeding of the course didn’t provide playable turf, and the re-seeding and re-plowing of many areas set back the course’s opening by at least a year. Macdonald knew he needed help, so he sought the professional advice of scientists at the US Department of Agriculture. Play began at the club in 1909, before the club’s formal opening on September 16, 1911. Macdonald would continue to tinker with the course for years after it opened, always looking for ways to make his Ideal course better. For Seth Raynor, the building of the National began a new career, and a new way of life. Raynor would spend the rest of his life traveling the country to build many of America’s greatest golf courses.
Past NGLA director Jim Lilly and president John Pyne remarked in the National’s club history book:
“Macdonald realized that his singular vision for what would become the first world-class golf course in American would not be possible but for the assistance of Seth Raynor, a civil engineer. Raynor’s contribution to the National cannot be understated, and it was his drainage and irrigation innovations that allowed Macdonald to implement his vision on a scale never seen before in golf course architecture. Their design and construction of our course awakened the golf world to the art of the possible at a time of tremendous growth and popularity of the sport in America.”
American Golfer reviewed the course in August 1910: “Here we have eighteen holes which constitute perfection, or as near thereto as it is possible to attain in any single course”
In September 1911 reigning US Amateur champion Harold Hilton wrote in the New York Herald, “You have accomplished wonders and will eventually have a course in every way worthy of American golf, and just about as good as any in the world.”
With the National Golf Links of America judged an instant success, requests for Macdonald to design other courses began to arrive, often from National members wanting a National-style course for their hometowns. Macdonald would agree to build five more courses, all with the help of Seth Raynor, before scaling back in 1917. The projects that Macdonald passed down filled the pipeline of golf courses Raynor would build for the rest of his new career.
Left: Leven 17th green, looking back up the fairway. Right: Eden 13th in foreground; Cape 14th, playing away.
NOTABLE CHANGES
As part of the deal to purchase the National property, Macdonald secured an agreement to use the Shinnecock Hills Inn as NGLA’s base of operations until a permanent clubhouse could be built nearby. The Inn, which was a short walk from today’s 9th green, burned to the ground on April 4, 1908. The fire changed Macdonald’s plans.
“We abandoned the site near the old Shinnecock Inn,” Macdonald wrote in his memoir Scotland’s Gift: Golf (1928), “and determined to build it on the high ground overlooking Peconic Bay; so our 1st hole is now what was intended to be our 10th, and our 18th hole is what was intended to be the 9th.”
Had the switch not been made, National’s course would still have ended with a par five, but the opening par four would have been more than 100 yards longer. Three of the final five holes would have been par fives, broken up by the Short 15th hole.
The Hog’s Back 5th hole was changed from a par five to a par four in 2006, lowering National’s par from 73 to 72.
NOTABLE HOLES
The 2nd hole—Sahara—takes its inspiration from the 3rd hole at Royal St. George’s in England. Though the prominent bunker on this hole is not nearly as large as the original in England, this hole shares the same strategy of risk and reward. By taking on the danger of this hole, including its massive bunker, successful shots will reap the rewards, while average or mediocre shots will be punished severely.
Narrows, the 15th hole, is named for its challenging tee shot. Fairway bunkers squeeze the landing area progressively tighter as it gets closer to the green. For the green complex, Macdonald took inspiration from the 15th at Muirfield.
Macdonald and Raynor occasionally used the Sahara and Narrows templates at other courses they designed, but not with the frequency of most of the other Ideal holes.
Macdonald designed the 14th at National out of necessity. He’d found the spot he wanted for his Eden hole by playing across Bullhead Bay, but needed a way to return players to the main property. His solution became perhaps his most significant contribution to golf course architecture. It should be noted that the name Cape comes from the angled green that is surrounded by trouble on three sides. Today the term Cape is often misapplied to any hole featuring a risk/reward decision from the tee.
The 17th hole, a Leven template called Peconic, is considered by some to be one of the best short par fours in America.
NOTABLE EVENTS
NGLA hosted the inaugural Walker Cup in 1922. The American team, which included Bobby Jones, Chick Evans, and Francis Ouimet, won 8-4 over a British squad that included the writer Bernard Darwin as a late substitute. The National hosted the Walker Cup again in 2013, with the Americans winning again, 17-9. The American team included Justin Thomas and Max Homa. The club will host the Curtis Cup in 2030.
Left: the Leven 17th at bottom, leading to the 18th above. The 1st green to the left. Right: above the Cape hole 14th, with the 4th, 12th, and 13th greens in lower right. Next: looking back over the Alps 4th hole.
ALPS
The Alps hole design can be traced to noble roots. The design takes its strategy from today’s 17th hole (originally the 2nd) at Prestwick Golf Club in Scotland. The approach to the 17th is blind, and just short of the green lies the infamous Sahara bunker. With both the tee shot and approach shot, accuracy is key.
Macdonald and Raynor’s versions of the Alps hole stayed mostly true to the original. Shots into an Alps hole are either blind or partially blind. Where it was possible, Alps holes were routed uphill to heighten the effect of hitting the blind approach shot. They both often incorporated a Punchbowl green when designing an Alps hole, including the ones at Fishers Island, Essex County, and the National.
The first Alps hole built by Macdonald and Raynor is still one of the best. A deciding factor in Macdonald choosing where to build the National Golf Links of America was his discovery of the land where he could place his perfect Alps and Redan—today’s 3rd and 4th holes.
The Alps is one of the toughest holes at NGLA. Most of this 426-yard hole plays uphill, and there are no fewer than 15 bunkers. The blind approach shot must carry over a hill that’s twice as big as the one at Prestwick, and hidden bunkers grab approach shots short and right of the green. First time visitors can be forgiven for thinking that the bell behind the green—to be rung when golfers have cleared the green area—might be signaling the next round in a fight.
Left: above the 18th, looking at 1 (left), 2 (above), and the former polo field, now the driving range.
P i P i NG ROCK CLUB
1912
Locust Valley, New York | Par 71 | 6,850 yards
The design and build of Piping Rock is significant for several reasons. It was only the second Macdonald and Raynor built, and this one came shortly after the completion of the National Golf Links of America. Piping Rock would be an inland course where Macdonald’s Ideal Holes would need to be replicated on different soil and terrain than the National. Like every course he designed, Macdonald refused payment for his services at Piping Rock, but Raynor was being paid. Unlike the National project, Macdonald and Raynor would have clients to satisfy at Piping Rock.
The course Macdonald and Raynor delivered for Piping Rock included versions of seven of the holes they had built at the National: the Long, Road, Redan, Eden, Knoll, Short, and Home holes. The Biarritz 9th hole was the first of its kind built by Macdonald and Raynor, and the duo would plan for a Biarritz at almost all of their future golf courses after this one. The Piping Rock course would showcase Macdonald and Raynor’s abilities, and several of their future commissions came from people who saw their work here.
Piping Rock’s membership has always resembled the roster of New York’s high society, with old-money families and titans of industry, business, and finance congregating in an area of Long Island known as the Gold Coast, where F. Scott Fitzgerald set The Great Gatsby in the mid 1920s. Among its founding members were the recognizable the names of J. P. Morgan Jr., Louis Tiffany, Theodore Roosevelt, Frank Doubleday, Condé Nast, William Harkness, Theodore Havemeyer, as well as the families of Astor, Pratt, Whitney, and Vanderbilt. This was unlike the membership at NGLA, who were more golf savvy but a step below financially. At Piping Rock, Macdonald and Raynor would have to appease a powerful membership that always got their way. The members were accustomed to the best, and golf was only one of a number of club offerings. While NGLA was entirely devoted to golf, Piping Rock would also devote land to polo, hunting, horse shows, trap shooting, and tennis. Golf would have to compete for space at Piping Rock.
During the design process, it became clear that the golf course would not be the sole priority for the new club. Macdonald was upset that the club’s leadership insisted on
maintaining the land adjacent to the clubhouse as polo fields: a sport still wildly popular on the Gold Coast. He wanted to be able to work with all of the 350 acres the club possessed. Instead, he would have to route the course around two massive polo fields and a racetrack, which inhabited the center of the property, near the clubhouse. If anything, this restriction might have forced Macdonald to not route the course largely as an outer-loop/inner-loop concept. But he took a similar approach to the one at the original routing at Chicago Golf Club, placing holes where the danger—often the woods and edges of the property—were lurking to the left of play. As with many Macdonald courses, it’s better to miss on the right at Piping Rock.
Macdonald was soon on poor terms with Piping Rock’s founders, so Raynor would be the main point of contact with the board and serve as the leading man on the construction site. Much of the course construction took place in late 1911, and the course opened on May 30, 1912.
It was at Piping Rock where Raynor gained significant experience, which he would begin applying to his first solo designs the following year. Raynor’s performance and leadership here demonstrated not just what he learned while helping build NGLA, it was also an early look at the focused mind and diplomatic temperament that would make Raynor so successful in a sport he did not play. In Macdonald’s
memoir, Scotland’s Gift: Golf, written roughly 15 years later, he would barely mention Piping Rock Club, only to explain, “I employed Raynor on this job. It would have been difficult to accomplish this job without him. There was too much work and too much interference.” C. B. was a member of Piping Rock, and the chairman of its golf committee.
It’s safe to say that Macdonald and Raynor’s first two courses served as their proof of concept, with many influential and powerful people now witnessing and enjoying their unique hole designs in an elite, exclusive setting. Their work at Piping Rock opened the door to many future projects.
Piping Rock was the place to be, with few competitors in its early days. The Creek, which is Piping Rock’s sibling or rival club down the street, would be built by Macdonald and Raynor, but not for another decade.
Today, the two old polo fields are the driving range—as with Chicago Golf Club. This flat terrain must rank among the widest driving ranges of any private club in the United States. The Dutch colonial-style clubhouse was designed by famed architect Guy Lowell. There’s an old tale about the design of this clubhouse: when Lowell asked the members for input on the design, a member told him to make it look like the kind of house that George Washington would build, if he had more money.
NOTABLE CHANGES
Pete Dye was a consulting architect at Piping Rock in the 1980s, to bring certain elements of the course back in line with Macdonald and Raynor’s design. Then, in 2008, the club asked Tom Doak for his help tweaking and enhancing the course. More recently, Doak’s former associate Bruce Hepner has removed trees, expanded green pads, rebuilt cross-bunkers, and added run-off or collection areas around the greens. The club now takes great pride in their course conditioning and green speeds, which often reach 13 or 14 on the Stimpmeter.
NOTABLE HOLES
The Principal’s Nose greets players in the middle of the 1st fairway, protecting the green from short, run-up approaches. The Redan 3rd hole has one of the largest kickers of any Macdonald or Raynor course, and the green is often difficult to hold, as players often see their ball rolling off the left or front of the green, down into a bunker that sits at least 10 feet below the playing surface. The par-four 7th features an abrupt fivefoot drop—a mini-ridge running across the entire fairway—that’s so steep that it’s difficult to maintain with modern mowers. The 9th hole—a 160- to 220-yard Biarritz—was the first of its kind built by Macdonald and Raynor, with a green that measures about 60 yards long. The front-third is maintained as green, offering the chance for some very long putts down through the swale to either a front or back pin.
The back nine is hillier than the front, allowing for more dramatic elevation changes. The Knoll 13th is a short par four with a green tilted back-to-front on a hill that falls off on all sides. If players miss this green, especially long, they’re facing double bogey or worse. From there it’s a run of long par fours until the 155-yard Short 17th, followed by the 538-yard uphill closing hole.
NOTABLE EVENTS
In 1937 legendary songwriter and musician Cole Porter took his horse for a ride at Piping Rock, only for the horse to fall on him and crush his legs.
Left: aerials of the front nine (left) and back nine (right).
Top Right: side view of the 9th hole, Biarritz.
Middle Right: short right of the 3rd hole, Redan.
Bottom Right: behind the 10th green.
KNOLL
The Knoll template concept was inspired by the 4th hole at Scotscraig Golf Club in Scotland. Perhaps the least known of the courses that gave birth to template copies, Scotscraig is nevertheless a fine test of golf built by Old Tom Morris himself. The club is located along the coastline in Fife, Scotland, halfway between St Andrews and Carnoustie.
The concept for the Knoll is straightforward: a short par four whose main defense is a smallish green placed on top of an elevated bump or knoll. The greens on Knoll hills will often fall off sharply on all sides, often down into bunkers or a hazard at the bottom of the steep slopes. Raynor used the Knoll template at about half of the courses he designed. Macdonald never put his thoughts on the Knoll concept into his writing.
The 13th hole at Piping Rock is often cited as a nice example of Knoll. We would agree. There is no Knoll hole at National, so Piping Rock’s Knoll was the first one created by
Macdonald and Raynor. A couple of bunkers guard the right side of the fairway, but tee shots can be guided down the middle with an iron. One large bunker sits at the bottom of the slope in front of the green. Knoll greens will usually slope from back to front, but like several others they would build, the Knoll green at Piping Rock also has a small back shelf that can only be held by a very well struck shot. Shots that run off the back left of the green are lucky if they are held up by a narrow bunker. Most other misses will find their way 20 or more yards to the bottom of the slope. The severe price paid for missing a Knoll green is justified by the short distance the holes usually measure. The Knoll at Piping Rock plays just 300 yards.
Left: the knoll 13th.
Right: an aerial of the knoll hole.
Next: side views of the Road Hole 8th and Biarritz 9th.
SLEEPY HOLLOW COUNTRY CLUB
1911, 1915
Briarcliff Manor, New York | Par 70 | 6,880 yards
Many people first heard of Sleepy Hollow from the short story by Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” In it, he writes, “If ever I should wish for a retreat, whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.”
Some 91 years after the publication of Irving’s famous story, titans of American industry gathered by Frank Vanderlip, a leading newspaperman and banker of the day, came together to form the Sleepy Hollow Country Club. Among them were William Rockefeller Jr., a co-founder of Standard Oil; his son Percy Rockefeller, the founder of Owenoke Corporation and board director of dozens of companies; Cornelius Vanderbilt, a railroad and shipping magnate and one of the richest Americans of all time; John Jacob Astor, hotelier and real estate giant who would die a year later when the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic; and V. Everit Macy, industrialist and philanthropist who, at the age of five, inherited today’s equivalent of $570 million. For his efforts in wrangling these strong-willed and accomplished New Yorkers to a common goal, Vanderlip would rightfully be dubbed the “Father of Sleepy Hollow.”
For the location of their club, the founders chose the hillside overlooking the Hudson River and the valley made famous by Irving. For their clubhouse, an opulent mansion dubbed Woodlea, which was designed by McKim, Mead & White, the leading architectural firm of the day, for Colonel Elliot Fitch Shepard, an attorney and founder of the New York Bar Association. Shepard desired a country home for his wife, Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt. Completed in 1895, the 140-room, 70,000 square-foot Italian villa, named Woodlea, was one of the largest private residences in America, and it was immediately and passionately despised by the newly widowed Vanderbilt.
Against this magnificent backdrop, the founders knew that any golf course built on this property had much to live up to. Coming off of their work at National Golf Links of America, where several founding members also belonged, Piping Rock Club, and St. Louis Country Club, C. B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor were the only choice. And for Macdonald, who was beseeched by many of his well-to-do friends to provide design services throughout New York and elsewhere, the chance to paint his Ideal holes upon the dazzling canvas at Sleepy Hollow was far too tempting to pass up.
Raynor, as had become custom, was tasked with turning Macdonald’s conceptual vision into a reality on the ground. Immediately, the course was regarded as among the best and most beautiful of the early American golf scene. After his first visit, renowned travel writer Ralph Knight wrote, “well informed golfers are there who, speaking of Sleepy Hollow, will tell you that it is the most beautiful country club in all the world. Admittedly, it is the fairest I have ever looked upon—but, then, all the world I haven’t quite traveled.”
Almost immediately, however, things began to change at Sleepy Hollow. First, and perhaps most tragic, in 1918 the club sold a parcel of its northernmost land for residential development, and in so doing, forever lost four holes on the original Macdonald course. No known photos remain of these holes—only a hand-drawn map—but it is said that these holes, with views to rival the best on the present course, and in particular the original par-five 17th, were spectacular.
To replace those holes, the club chose locally-based Tom Winton, an associate of Willie Park Jr., who used the slope below Woodlea to create the replacements. While these holes were initially well-received, they matched neither the style or the quality of the Macdonald-Raynor originals.
Below: the par-three 10th hole. Right: Above the 2nd and 16th greens.
Then, in 1930, the club hired A. W. Tillinghast to expand the offerings to 27 holes. By that point in his career, Tillinghast was an architectural superstar with world-class designs from coast to coast. However, Tillinghast was also, by that point, delegating most of his design work to less-skilled associates. While Tillinghast’s addition of holes 1 and 2 and 8 through 11, were solidly routed and well constructed, they lacked the boldness of design and exacting quality that Macdonald had instilled from the outset. They also created, for the first time, an obvious break in the cohesion of the golf course.
Lastly, in the early 1990s, the club brought in Rees Jones to add bunkers and toughen up the golf course. While Sleepy Hollow was not alone in this thinking, and difficulty was often prized over playability at this time, with clear hindsight, this marriage between course and architect was doomed to disaster. As Jones put his personal signature on the design of the very man who notably said, “glaring artificiality of any kind detracts from the fascination of the game,” Sleepy Hollow’s golf course reached its nadir.
Fortunately, a savior emerged. George Bahto, a drycleaner by trade and self-taught authority on the architecture of Macdonald and Raynor, visited the club in 2002, whereupon the ever-direct Bahto delivered a clear and prescient message to Greens Committee Chair George Sanossian: “You guys have f*cked your course up.” Bahto passionately believed that the heart of Sleepy Hollow was in the design and concepts of its original architect, and that the club should go back to those Golden Age roots.
Bahto brought Gil Hanse to the project, and together with Sanossian and committee members Phil Cuthbertson and Corey Miller, the five men began the long process of restoring the original Macdonald holes and renovating the holes designed by other architects to the Macdonald style, a hybrid project that author Jason Way dubbed a “retrovation.”
Hanse spent considerable time on site at Sleepy Hollow over the course of this 15-year project—so much so that his daughter got married at the club and he was made an honorary member—and the result is undeniable. In 2019, Golf Magazine named it the “best course renovation of the last five years.”
Although the journey back to its Macdonald-Raynor roots was a winding one, most of those involved in the process would tell you that they wouldn’t change a thing, save one: that George Bahto could be around to see the end result.
NOTABLE EVENTS
NOTABLE HOLES
The routing of Sleepy Hollow quickly moves away from the clubhouse, over a massive ravine, and into a large, rolling tract of land for holes 3-15, returning back to stretch down the hill and back to the clubhouse.
Current holes 6, 7, and 8 on the Lower Course are the original 1, 2, and 3 of the 1911 Macdonald-Raynor design, including a wild downhill Biarritz (which is why today’s main course does not have one).
The 5th hole plays back toward the Hudson River and features an infinity green, and one of the best views on the course. The downhill par-three 7th is one of the best reverse Redans that Macdonald or Raynor ever built.
The par-four 15th is a dogleg right that drops down to a Punchbowl green. Hanse lengthened this hole, so players would need to hit a fairway wood or long iron to reach the green. Not only do players rush to the edge of this plateau to see where their balls ended up, it’s also one of the greatest reveals in all of golf: a stunning view for miles, high above the Hudson River.
In 1916, Sleepy Hollow’s father-son tournament was won by Devereux Emmet and Devereux Emmet Jr., resulting in the USGA banning course architects from competing in tournaments as amateurs.
Sleepy Hollow was the host of the 2002 U.S. Women’s Amateur, won by Becky Lucidi, 3&2 over Brandi Jackson. It also hosted the 2023 US Mid-Amateur.
Below Left: 18th green with clubhouse. Below Right: 18th green from clubhouse patio. Right: the Punchbowl 15th green.
SHORT
There is no mystery to the name or strategy for the hole called Short. Almost always the shortest hole on the course, Short template holes are often the favorites for golfers of all levels.
Like their contemporaries Donald Ross and Alister MacKenzie, and modern masters such as Pete Dye and Tom Doak, Macdonald and Raynor both embraced the idea that players should be confronted with a hole that requires a precise shot with a short iron at least once per round, often near the end of the round. The only strategy for most Short holes is do or die: these greens are often small, pitched up, and surrounded by trouble.
Macdonald’s inspiration for his Short came from the 4th hole at Royal West Norfolk in Brancaster, England. Raynor’s Shorts usually played between 130 and 165 yards to a green surrounded by bunkers or water on all sides. The interior of the greens sometimes include a horseshoe-like elevation
with a thumbprint depression in the middle. The pin is often located inside of the inner thumbprint, but it can also be placed outside of it, nearer the edges of the green.
The Short we’ve chosen to focus on is the 16th hole at Sleepy Hollow. And of course that is a play on words. It’s impossible to take a bad photo of 16th at Sleepy Hollow, but it’s the work of Jon Cavalier that has become synonymous with the hole. Jon’s interest in photography, Gil Hanse’s resuscitation of the hole, and the rising influence of social media have combined to make this the most recognized golf hole that Macdonald and Raynor ever built.
Twenty years ago, the hole had been reduced to a flat circle green with a few round bunkers in front, with many trees obstructing the air flow and views. Today it has introduced a new generation of golfers to the brilliance of Macdonald’s and Raynor’s work.
THE CREE k
1923, 1924
Locust Valley, New York | Par 70 | 6,537 yards
Much like Piping Rock before it and Deepdale after, The Creek was created to be a sort of “in-town” club, where its wealthy members could still enjoy a round of golf on days when they weren’t able to make the longer trip out to their clubs on the eastern tip of Long Island. With Piping Rock just a few miles inland, The Creek sits in the area that F. Scott Fitzgerald would make forever famous in his 1926 novel, The Great Gatsby, two years after this Macdonald-Raynor course opened.
Harvey Gibson and a friend are credited with first identifying in 1921 what would become the 186-acre Creek property. The land was part of the Gold Coast estate of Paul Cravath. Charles Blair Macdonald was approached with the idea of forming a new golf club and after inspecting the land agreed to become a member of The Creek’s organizing committee and oversee the building of its golf course. Many of the other 11 men on the 1922 organizing committee were also members of the National Golf Links of America. Those 11 included recognizable names like Vincent Astor, Marshall
Field, J. P. Morgan and Payne Whitney, enough to earn The Creek the moniker “The Million Dollar Golf Club” in a January 20, 1923 New York Times article.
According to The Creek’s organizing documents, the club was founded “to provide and maintain a golf course, tennis courts, bathing beach and other facilities for outof-door recreation and sport, and to conduct and operate a social club for the benefit of its members.” The 200 members of The Creek would split all expenses evenly, and there would be no initiation fee. The actual name of the club, which is just The Creek—not The Creek Club—took its name from Frost Creek: an inlet of the Long Island sound that comes into play on several holes on The Creek’s back nine.
Twelve holes of the golf course, along with the Dormie House and Beach House, were opened on September 15, 1923. The rest of the golf course and clubhouse were ready the following year. The Creek celebrated its official opening with a golf tournament played on June 3, 1924. The winner received a founders cup donated by Macdonald.
Left: An aerial from above the beach, looking at the Cape 10th and island Biarritz 11th.
The course that Macdonald designed and Raynor constructed for The Creek was a strong example of their work. They used Eden, Redan, Biarritz, and Short designs for the four par threes. There is a three-shot Long hole and versions of Alps, Plateau, and Punchbowl par fours. The one oddity for The Creek? It’s a rare example of a course designed by Macdonald or Raynor without a Road Hole.
The opening five holes of The Creek are played across what members called “the Parade Grounds” to the south of the clubhouse. After the three opening par fours, visitors making their way to the 4th tee will often stop in the middle of The Creek’s entrance drive. Linden trees stand at attention on both sides of the 525-yard long driveway, making it a nice spot for a photo.
It’s when players reach the 6th hole at The Creek that they are greeted by the main event: the final 12 holes are in an almost-treeless corridor that drops from the clubhouse high on a hill down to the white sand beach a mile away. On clear days, you can see Greenwich, Connecticut across the Long Island Sound.
Below Left: looking back down the 12th hole.
Below Right: the Punchbowl green of the 6th hole.
Far Right: a look back from the 18th green.
NOTABLE HOLES
The 6th hole, called Soundview, is a 453-yard par four that is played downhill from the crest of the property near the clubhouse. There are a pair of bunkers to the right of the landing zone: one is a clever, new dual-use bunker that Gil Hanse created by extending the bunker that was already behind the 16th green. The green on 6 is a Punchbowl, and it is a great one. The green sits diagonal to the fairway, sloping from front-left to back-right. The only opening into the green for a running shot is front-left, but a bunker with a steep grass face is positioned 30 yards in front of that opening. The rest of the Punchbowl is hidden by a high berm that Macdonald and Raynor built up along the front-right of the green. For good measure, they also built a bunker into the fairway-side of the berm.
The 11th hole is a 220-yard island Biarritz that sits in the middle of Frost Creek. Measuring 85 yards long and 32 yards wide, almost every foot of the small island is green surface. Two footbridges allow access to the green.
Hole 15 is a medium-length par four that begins the climb back up to the clubhouse. The Plateau green is shaped like a backward “L.” The back-right of the green is an elevated shelf. Complicating matters is a fairway bunker that sits in the exact spot where straight drives would normally land.
NOTABLE CHANGES
Tom Doak and Gil Hanse began the restoration of The Creek in 1992. When the project began, fewer than 60 of the course’s original 110 bunkers still remained. Gil Hanse completed a major restoration of The Creek in 2017.
NOTABLE EVENTS
Middleweight boxing champion Rocky Graziano is buried in a small cemetery next to the course.
Top: the large bunker guarding the Cape 10th green. Middle: above the cemetary, looking at 18 (left) and 17 (right).
Bottom: the short par-four 15th.
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
Conditions during World War ii led to brief discussions of a merger between The Creek and Piping Rock. The two clubs are separated by only a couple of miles and share similar memberships. instead, it was with another neighboring club that The Creek formed a unique but short-lived partnership. Women’s National Golf and Tennis Club was an all-female club and was developed by Marion Hollins around the same time The Creek was founded. On May 8, 1941, The Creek and Women’s National agreed to merge into a new organization, to be called the Cedar Creek Club. At the time of the merger, The Creek had 240 members and Women’s National had 270. There were 43 families that were already members of both clubs. The Cedar Creek Club operated both The Creek and Women’s National golf courses until 1947, when the Women’s National was leased to the new Glen Head Country Club. On July 1, 1948, Cedar Creek Club changed its name back to The Creek. The Women’s National course was sold to Glen Head in 1951.
LONG
The 14th at the Old Course in St Andrews is considered by many to be the finest par five in the world. During recent Open Championships, hole 14 has been stretched to 614 yards, although when C. B. Macdonald was studying in St Andrews in the 1870s, the hole wasn’t the longest on the Old Course.
The key Old Course feature that Macdonald replicated in his Long hole designs was the penal obstacle that complicated the second shot. At St Andrews, it’s the Hell bunker: the largest and deepest on the Old Course. Macdonald wasn’t usually as overbearing with his cross hazards: his and Raynor’s versions usually allow some way around as well as over the obstacle.
For the 7th hole at The Creek, they placed a smaller bunker as the penal obstacle. But the depth and centerline placement of the trap still creates the intended effect: the tantalizing choice between attempting to carry the bunker with your second shot—making birdie a realistic outcome— or playing safe short of the bunker and leaving a much longer third shot. For other Long holes, Raynor sometimes used a land feature like a steep slope to force the same decision on players.
Long is the only template strategy that was specifically intended for a par five, which is why a Long can be found on almost every golf course Raynor built or designed.
A. W. Tillinghast created memorable “Great Hazards” on several of his versions of the Long hole: either a very
Right: the Long hole 7th.
Next: the famous reveal on the 6th tee, with views down to the shore, and Connecticut across the Sound.
large or series of bunkers that completely interrupt the width of the fairway, if not wider. The concept continues to be popular with architects designing today’s new courses, with water hazards often used as the feature that must be carried.
An examination of Raynor and Macdonald courses reveals very few patterns to where specific template holes are spaced in a routing. Both men usually placed their Ideal hole designs wherever the land on the job site best suited that hole, but the Long template is an exception: almost half of the courses designed by Raynor feature the Long template on the 18th or 9th hole. A 9th hole that uses a Long design might also be a clue that the front and back nines have been flipped, as they have been at National Golf Links of America and Blue Mound.
Left: A commisioned painting of Seth Raynor (courtesy of the Metairie Country Club).
Next: Raynor bust adjacent to the 1st tee at Blue Mound. Looking at Raynor’s headstone from Macdonald’s grave.
MUCH MORE THAN AN ENGINEER
A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Seth Jagger Raynor was born May 7, 1874 in the town of Manorville on eastern Long Island, and he was raised in nearby Southampton. Seth was the third of David and Ella Raynor’s four children. Raynor was named after his paternal grandfather, and his unusual middle name was his maternal grandmother’s maiden name.
His father David Raynor was a surveyor in Southampton. In 1891, David surveyed the land for the original Shinnecock Hills course. Seventeen-year-old Seth Raynor is said to have helped his father with the job.
Raynor attended Princeton University, where he studied civil engineering and geodesy, which is a branch of applied mathematics used to measure the geometry, gravity, and spatial orientation of the earth as a function of time.
After graduating in 1898, Raynor returned to work as the village engineer and street commissioner for the town of Southampton. Raynor married a woman named Mary Araminta Hallock on February 13, 1903.
For the next decade, Raynor would be responsible for the town’s roads, waterworks, and storm drains. In hindsight, it was ideal preparation for the new project he began working on in 1907. One of America’s leading figures in the growing sport of golf intended to build a new golf course in Southampton, and he hired Seth Raynor to help.
Surviving invoices indicate that Raynor was paid $6 per day to survey the National Golf Links of America property and then to create a way to drain the land. One invoice shows Raynor worked on the project for approximately 20 days between August 1908 and March 1909. He was still employed by the town of Southampton at the time.
Raynor knew nothing about golf when Charles Blair Macdonald hired him to help build the National. That was fine with Macdonald: he knew enough about golf for both of them. Macdonald had already spent years developing the plans for his Ideal golf links, and what he needed were men who could make his plan a reality. The quality and range of Raynor’s skills immediately caught Macdonald’s attention once the two men began working together.
Raynor was put in charge of the National’s construction. The young engineer who didn’t know anything about golf was soon building bunkers according to the heights and depths prescribed by Macdonald. Raynor measured the precise distances Macdonald wanted the teeing grounds, bunkers, and greens placed around his Ideal course. Raynor’s work for Macdonald was consistent and effective. In return, Macdonald showed Raynor the strategic elements of the holes they were now building together. He would teach Raynor the what, but also the why.
from his job in Southampton to work with Macdonald on more courses.
After the National, Macdonald and Raynor built Piping Rock and Sleepy Hollow in New York, then built St. Louis Country Club. Macdonald designed the courses, and Raynor oversaw their construction. When Macdonald grew frustrated with the Piping Rock project, Raynor demonstrated his value as a calming influence while dealing with the club’s leaders.
The unprecedented scale of work to build The Lido Club course began in 1915. It was the largest project Raynor and Macdonald had worked on. The two men became partners in 1915, but Macdonald had already decided that he wasn’t interested in continuing to build new courses. In his memoir Scotland’s Gift: Golf (1928), Macdonald names only a halfdozen clubs that he says he gave attention to after 1917. Macdonald referred the rest of the requests he received to Raynor. By the early 1920s, Raynor had set up an office in New York City, although he wasn’t able to use it much.
“Raynor was a great loss to the community, but still a greater loss to me,” Macdonald wrote in Scotland’s Gift: Golf. “I admired him from every point of view.”
Macdonald’s referrals set Raynor up with a pipeline of projects to build golf courses for some of the wealthiest men in America. His work at Mountain Lake in 1915 also led to several large projects through his relationship with the famous Olmsted firm. Raynor’s polite manners made him easy to like, and his disciplined working style easy to work with. He seemed to have little trouble holding the confidence of the wealthy and powerful men who had hoped for the great C. B. Macdonald to build their course.
The National gradually opened for play beginning in 1909. Glowing reviews began to appear in print, and Macdonald started to receive requests to build new courses for his friends in other parts of the country.
On paper, Raynor and Macdonald were an odd pairing. Raynor was 19 years younger than Macdonald, and Macdonald was likely 100 times wealthier. Raynor hadn’t even tried to play golf yet, while Macdonald was completely immersed in the game. And yet by the time they completed the National, the two men had developed a relationship strong enough that Raynor made the decision to resign
The quality of the courses Raynor designed and built stayed consistent over the course of his career. The quantity would steadily increase.
Even when Raynor designed courses on his own, he did not work alone. Charles “Josh” Banks and Ralph Barton—both educators who met Raynor while he was working on projects for the schools where they taught—both left teaching to work for him. They helped Raynor build his courses at their respective schools, and both were captivated by the experience.
Even with the help of Banks and Barton, Raynor’s workload continued to increase over the course of his 18-year career as a course builder and designer. Raynor lived almost full time on the road, working in hotel rooms, on trains and steamships, and anywhere else new projects took him. By this point, Mary Raynor was accompanying her husband on many of his trips. In November 1925, the couple traveled across the country together and sailed from California to Hawaii, where they stayed for two weeks while Raynor designed courses at Waialae and Mid-Pacific. They then set sail for the five-day passage back to California, followed by five more days of train travel, as they made their way back to the east coast.
By the end of 1925, Raynor was exhausted, but he had little time to recover over the holidays. Raynor needed to be in southern Florida. He’d previously built a course for Everglades Club founder Paris Singer, and now Singer had hired Raynor to design courses for two new projects Singer was developing near Palm Beach.
Florida would be Raynor’s final trip. He had contracted pneumonia, and his health rapidly worsened while he was staying in a West Palm Beach hotel. With his wife at his side, Seth Raynor passed away on January 23, 1926. They did not have any children.
“Raynor was a great loss to the community, but still a greater loss to me,” Macdonald wrote in Scotland’s Gift: Golf. “I admired him from every point of view.”
Macdonald would outlive Raynor by 13 years. When Macdonald died in 1939, he left instructions that he and his wife were to be buried in the Southampton Cemetery close to the grave of his partner and friend.
At the time of Raynor’s death, he had over a dozen courses in various stages of construction, along with several others designed but not begun. Charles Banks—Raynor’s only named associate—would finish many of these projects faithfully to Raynor’s vision and drawings.
Absent of ego, and not believing that his work would amount to much of historic import, Raynor did not keep many records or drawings of his work. As a result, many courses have had to manage their own historical research into Raynor’s work on their courses, with some courses remaining unaware of their Raynor pedigree until the 1970s or 80s. Thankfully, almost all of his known designs have been restored or renovated to return Raynor’s genius back to life.
PART 2: SETH RAYNOR’S SOLO DESIGNS
WESTHAMPTON COUNTRY CLUB
1914
Westhampton Beach, New York | Par 70 | 6,548 yards
Formed in 1890, Westhampton sits to the south and west of the other Hamptons clubs where Raynor had a hand: the National and Southampton. It may receive less of a spotlight than its famous neighbors, but Westhampton exudes a casual charm with a golf course that is both challenging and fun.
Today’s Westhampton course, designed by Raynor and believed to be his first or second solo design, opened in 1914. Notably, Raynor’s plans included significant use of mounds: an attribute that occurs in places on other Raynor courses, but perhaps none to such a degree as Westhampton. These mounds are more of an obvious, deliberate style, rather than attempting to give the appearance of natural land movement.
The routing of Westhampton is in the shape of a “T.” The round quickly moves away from the clubhouse, across a few country roads, and out over a stretch of fields that doubles back on itself and eventually heads toward the water of Moriches Bay.
It’s a mostly flat layout that can feel somewhat tight when compared to some of the bigger ballparks built by Macdonald and Raynor. In reality it’s not a small property: 140 acres is a more than reasonable size. It’s the proximity to the water, and the accompanying breezes, that can make the course play narrow at times.
The core of the clubhouse—now the ballroom—is a converted boathouse from the 1800s. The rest stretches out from this center, featuring Shingle-style forms, classical pavilions, and details that combine to form the signature style of the Hamptons. A premature visit to the clubhouse can occur with airmailed approaches on the final hole: the back of Westhampton’s 18th green sits just 20 feet from their clubhouse.
NOTABLE HOLES
Among the standout holes, the 3rd is a likely consensus favorite. This par three features a slightly blind shot over a pushed-up mound that protects a somewhat lowered greensite, which features Punchbowl contouring on its edges. The thin bunkers protect all sides, and from above the bunkers resemble a horseshoe crab constellation. It is the only known example of Macdonald, Raynor, or Banks building a Punchbowl par three.
The Short par-three 11th is a dramatic tee shot to a small, elevated green, with nowhere to miss. The combination of winds off the sound and an infinity surface, with the water (and a substantial house) in the immediate background, makes this tee shot intimidating.
The par-five 15th features a series of five bean-shaped bunkers that form the “V” shape roughly 60 yards in front of this green.
The 17th reveals a look at the clubhouse in the distance, announcing the end of your round is near. This Biarritz green features a flatter-than-usual green, offering more opportunity for low-flighted 200+ yard tee shots to climb up to the back tier. It makes for a challenging shot with a match on the line.
NOTABLE EVENTS
In 1938, a category-three hurricane hit the area, leveling the town and greatly damaging the course. A large boat was washed into one of its bunkers, and the Westhampton clubhouse was temporarily used as a morgue.
The course was rebuilt in 1989 by Brian Silva, and Gil Hanse has made improvements to the course since 2009.
Top: front-right of the 15th green. Middle: the Biarritz 17th. Bottom: the drive on 16.
Right: the Leven 13th from behind the green.
LEVEN
The Leven template takes its name from the Scottish town where the original hole of this design is still located. Well, sort of. Ten miles from St Andrews are two charming small towns named Leven and Lundin Links. Today each town has its own golf club, but they originally shared a golf course that ran between the two towns. Members of one club would begin at their home club and play the nine holes running toward the neighboring town, then turn around and play the nine holes that came back. The other club’s members would do the same, beginning in their own town. Eventually, overcrowding caused the 18 holes to be cleaved in two, and each of the clubs added nine new holes to combine with the nine they had been apportioned. This explains why the 7th hole of “Leven” template fame is now actually the 16th hole of Lundin Links.
What has not changed is the strategy of the Leven template. It is as clever as it is simple. A solitary fairway bunker or some other feature is used to guard the side of a fairway. This fairway bunker is at a distance that can be carried by a well-struck drive. Successfully clearing the trap leaves a short pitch on an open line to a good birdie opportunity. Driving into the bunker introduces a likely bogey.
A player not wanting to challenge the fairway bunker is welcome to play to the safer right side of the fairway. This decision still leaves the player with a short approach to the green. But our timid golfer must now loft their second shot over a mound or bunker obscuring their approach. Leven templates are often more visually intimidating than the reality, since the actual shots they require are usually straightforward. That does not mean those shots are easy.
Leven holes typically feature smaller greens that slope severely off of all sides. It’s a green style that punishes golfers who miss with their short approach shots.
The 13th at Westhampton was a hole entirely manufactured by Seth Raynor. The quality of this short, flat par four is evidence of how quickly Raynor’s skills had developed by 1914.
Raynor chose the western edge of the routing to build Westhampton’s Leven hole. Two bunkers cross the fairway diagonally, from short right to long left from the tee. It is only 150 yards to reach the fairway on the right. Playing up the left side of the fairway requires a carry of 200 yards, but leaves just a pitch into the green on this 330-yard hole.
The green is the main attraction. The only ground opening is between 6 and 7 o’clock when viewed from the fairway. A deep, narrow bunker wraps around the left side of the green from 7 to 12 o’clock. A small bunker sits between 1 and 2 o’clock. And a grass berm wraps around the entire right side of the green from 2 to 6 o’clock. The berm is tall enough to block any view of the flagstick from the right side of the fairway, and steep enough to make recoveries difficult for shots that have floated into its sides.
Westhampton’s 13th is a great hole that could be replicated on any golf course in the world. It prompts the question: why hasn’t it?
MOUNTAIN LA k E COUNTRY CLUB
1916
Lake Wales, Florida | Par 70 | 6,677 yards
In 1915, Fredrick Law Olmsted Jr. was developing a master planned community for a group led by a wealthy Baltimore lawyer named Frederick Ruth. The Ruth family owned a 3,000-acre pine forest just north of Lake Wales, and by 1915 Frederick Ruth had developed an interest in creating a planned golf course community that could serve as a winter retreat for him and his friends.
Seth Raynor was not the first choice of golf architect to design Mountain Lake’s golf course. Ruth and Olmsted had tried to hire Donald Ross, but Ross, like Raynor, had a full schedule. Francis Ouimet, the amateur hero of the 1913 US Open was also at least briefly considered for the project. Olmsted may have been connected with Raynor through Oliver Gould Jennings, who at the same time was already involved with Raynor on the Country Club of Fairfield design. Raynor was initially reluctant to take on the Mountain Lake project. He’d never worked in the Florida climate before, and he had little knowledge of the local agronomy. Olmsted’s promise of full support for the project eventually swayed Raynor to take on the work.
The club reached an agreement with Raynor to route the golf course while he was on site, and then return to Southampton and create plasticine models of the holes. Mountain Lake’s first greenskeeper, Ralph H. Lindermann, would then build the golf course based on the models. At this same time, Olmsted was laying out housing sites, roads, and even the locations for orange groves that would border the golf course.
Mountain Lake was a great opportunity for Seth Raynor. He had been helping build golf courses such as the Lido Club, Yale, and St Louis for most of the past decade, but most of the projects were under the tutelage of Macdonald. It was Mountain Lake that helped form Raynor’s strong relationship with Olmsted, which in turn led to future jobs like Fishers Island.
It was a point of contention between Raynor, Olmsted, and agronomy advisors as to what grass to plant for the greens at Mountain Lake. Belleair, a well-regarded nearby Ross course, had recently become the first golf course in the area to try Bermuda grass on their greens. Those involved in the turf decision exchanged many letters. Ultimately, the group ran out of time, and they gave Bermuda the go-ahead.
Nine holes were ready for play by the end of 1916. Members and guests could play holes 1-6 and then 16-18. The remaining nine holes were targeted to open by the fall of 1918. Financial issues and the outbreak of the US’s involvement in World War I delayed the completion of the second nine holes.
Mountain Lake clubhouse was completed in time for the 1916-7 winter season. Named Colony House, the three-story, Bermuda-style building also served as a guesthouse for Mountain Lake members who were not building houses at the club.
The full 18-hole golf course was finally ready by 1920. The new club received a favorable review from legendary sports writer Grantland Rice, when he visited the club later that same year. Rice’s endorsement helped spread the reputation of the club.
In the 1920s, the club used a series of exhibition matches to generate publicity for Mountain Lake.
Below Left: approaching the 15th Punchbowl green.
Below Right: a sign displaying the logo and slogan of the club.
Far Right: the island tee on the par-five 6th hole.
NOTABLE CHANGES
In the 1920s, the club used a series of exhibition matches to generate publicity for Mountain Lake. Charles Banks was hired by the club to rework the layout in 1929. The most significant change was a redesign of the 8th hole. Banks combined the old 8th and 9th holes, and then built the new 9th hole discussed below. In 2002, the club hired architect Brian Silva to lead restoration efforts. Gil Hanse is the current consulting architect for the club.
NOTABLE HOLES
The 9th hole is a 146-yard par three. At first glance, it appears to be a rather benign version of the Short template. Closer inspection up at the green shows a large depression in the green, which creates the appearance of horseshoe. It’s this horseshoe-shaped indentation that makes Mountain Lake’s 9th hole so interesting. The Short was designed and built by Charles Banks. The Punchbowl template here is also a favorite.
B i ARR i TZ
The Biarritz template is often the most photographed and discussed hole on the golf courses designed by Seth Raynor and C. B. Macdonald. But ironically the National Golf Links of America, doesn’t have a Biarritz in its routing. Macdonald’s “ideal course” on Long Island only has three par threes. The Biarritz is also a curiosity among the template holes because no photos or detailed descriptions exist for the hole or holes that Macdonald is believed to have developed his Biarritz strategy from. This is the only example of a commonly used template design whose inspiration is now lost to time. For some Raynor fans the mystery of its beginnings only adds to the appeal of the Biarritz.
What’s known is that Macdonald drew inspiration for at least elements of his long par three from a golf course in the southern French resort town of Biarritz. Unfortunately, the original hole or holes are now completely gone. Complicating matters further, the course has changed many times over the years, so the version of the golf course Macdonald borrowed from is long lost to time. The Biarritz design we know today is likely largely original to Macdonald and America.
The American version of the Biarritz was first built by Macdonald and Raynor at Piping Rock in 1911. This template shares several distinctive features including a long rectangular green, with long parallel bunkers on the left and right, bisected by a deep swale in the middle. Some clubs keep the front half or plateau of their Biarritz green cut at fairway length, others cut it as green surface. Many historians now believe that the front half of the green in front of the swale was always originally intended to be maintained at fairway rather than green height.
In very few instances, the pin may be located on the front half, before the swale, if that area is cut to green height. Yale’s Biarritz often has the pin in the front position, which is uniquely guarded by a pond in front. As a result, Yale’s Biarritz has adopted a completely different shot strategy than the typical concept.
The Biarritz template is almost always the longest par three on a Macdonald or Raynor golf course. Prior to modern equipment, the ideal strategy was to play a long, low tee shot that lands on the front half of the green and chases forward— disappearing for a few thrilling seconds into the hidden swale, only to reemerge on the back half of the green.
The Biarritz design always produces a difficult golf hole, and Mountain Lake’s is no exception. Playing as long as 211 yards, the 5th hole at Mountain Lake is relatively flat from tee to green. Biarritzes played on level ground like Mountain Lake’s can sometimes create depth perception challenges from the tee box. The swale on Mountain Lake’s Biarritz bisects the green directly in the midpoint. The front half before the swale is maintained as a green. The bunkering at Mountain Lake is also very typical: two boxy traps lining the left side of the green (allowing for golfers to exit toward the next tee) and a larger bunker running parallel along the right side. Some Biarritzes designed by Macdonald and Raynor also had a horizontal bunker guarding the front entrance to the green. Mountain Lake’s does not. Regardless of the variant, pars always feel like birdies on Biarritz holes.
Left and Right: Mountain Lake’s Biarritz 5th hole. Next: the approach on 18, with the Colony House in the background.
EVERGLADES CLUB
1919, 1929
Palm Beach, Florida | Par 72 | 6,006 yards
The Everglades Club began from the idea of one man, Paris Singer, to build a club for himself and his friends to enjoy while they spent winters in Palm Beach, Florida. By any standard, Singer was an unusual man. The 22nd of 24 children fathered by sewing-machine magnate Isaac Singer, Paris was only eight years old when his father died in 1875. Paris’ share of his father’s inheritance allowed the young man to pursue his interests without the inconveniences of holding a job.
Paris Singer was said to be a reserved man who was satisfied to learn by watching others do. But Singer was also a man of ideas. While WWI casualties mounted in Europe, Singer and his close friend and business partner Addison Mizner became involved in constructing hospitals in England and France that would care for wounded soldiers.
In July 1918, Singer commissioned Mizner to build the Touchdown Convalescent Club on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, intended to be a facility that would treat American soldiers who had been injured in the Great War. The war ended in November 1918, before construction of Singer and Mizner’s facility was complete.
The duo then reconfigured the building as a social club. A yacht club, villas, and tennis courts were added to complement the main building. It was during this time that Mizner, a trained building architect, began developing his own unique style of design that would eventually become synonymous with Palm Beach’s golden age.
The Everglades Club opened its doors to its 25 charter members on January 25, 1919. Singer retained sole authority over all club decisions, including who to admit as a member. By June of that same year, workers cleared 40 acres of the south Florida jungle behind the clubhouse, and Paris hired Seth Raynor to build a golf course. The first nine-holes were ready to play by February 4, 1920. The 2,830-yard course included a Road Hole template as the starting hole and a dramatic version of the Biarritz template as a finishing hole. During this time, Singer had been making big bets on local real estate. In just two years, the Everglades membership roster had swollen from 25 to over 500 members. In the years that followed, Singer and Mizner reclaimed about 500,000 cubic yards of lake silt to create 60 additional acres of land for the club. In 1925, Singer hired Raynor again to finalize the design for what would become the Everglades Club’s 18-hole course.
Left: the par-three 12th hole.
This was not the golf course opening that Raynor was attending when he died in January 1926. That was a different golf course Raynor had built for Singer that was eight miles north of Palm Beach. That course, which opened February 15, 1926, was eventually named Palm Beach Winter Club, and later renamed the North Palm Beach Country Club.
Raynor’s death in early 1926 was quickly followed by a bust in Florida land prices, and then a hurricane in September 1928. The Everglades Club’s second nine holes were finally completed by Charles Banks a year earlier, in 1927. Two holes on the original nine-hole course were reworked to accommodate the new nine holes. One of the holes that Banks reworked was presumed to have been the old Biarritz 9th. The completed 18-hole, 6,006-yard course had a par of 34-36-70, and it fit into just 75 total acres of valuable Palm Beach real estate.
Paris Singer was arrested in early 1927 and charged with real estate fraud. Singer denied any criminal intent but eventually relocated with his wife to London, where he died in June 1932.
The Everglades Club defaulted on its debts in 1933. A group of members of the club purchased its assets out of receivership and recapitalized the club in 1936.
William Langford, a lesser-known but well-regarded contemporary of Raynor’s, was engaged by the Everglades Club in 1936 to perform work on the course. The specifics of Langford’s changes at Everglades is unknown, but the club’s own history book says Langford completed the work in a manner consistent with Raynor’s approach.
Unlike most clubs that employed Raynor, the Everglades Club has always been first and foremost a social club. No particular notice was paid to the heritage of its course design until the club hired Brian Silva in 2002. Silva expanded and redefined greens, widened fairways, and worked with the club’s superintendent to improve Everglades’ notoriously bad drainage.
The course gets more use—about 19,000 annual rounds—than readers might expect, particularly since the club’s members use it primarily as a winter club. Everglades members have always valued their club as a quiet sanctuary, so it’s a particularly difficult course to secure an invitation to play.
Top: the approach to the 13th.
Middle: the par-three Biarritz.
Bottom: tee marker features the club’s alligator logo.
NOTABLE CHANGES
A number of significant ponds and lakes were added to the interior of the golf course between 1927 and 1985. The two nines were flipped sometime after 2002.
NOTABLE HOLES
The golf course Brian Silva renovated for Everglades is a par-70 layout that features five par threes and three par fives. Everglades still only plays 6,006 yards from the back tees. The Biarritz measures 193 yards and the Valley 17th tips out at 178.
But the Redan is just 158 yards, and the Short is 151. The other par three, the 8th, is a 129-yard pitch to a fun Punchbowl green, instead of being an Eden template.
Today’s Everglades routing begins with the longest hole on the course: the 545-yard hole called Away. Players don’t encounter other two par fives until the back-to-back par-five 15th and 16th holes.
The 5th hole is a short par four that demands precision from the short pitch shots played to the namesake Peninsula green. This is not an original Raynor hole design, but it’s a fun hole that makes clever use of a pond that’s likely there to improve drainage.
Below: side view of the green on the par-five 1st hole. Next: side view of the Biarritz.
MORRIS COUNTY GOLF CLUB
1894, 1920
Morristown, New Jersey | Par 70 | 6,522 yards
The Morris County Golf Club occupies a unique spot in American golf history. Founded in 1894, Morris County was the first golf club in the United States to be organized and run entirely by women. It was a success from the day it opened in June 1894. A year later, membership had grown to 400, and the club was formally recognized by the USGA. In 1896 Morris County GC hosted the Women’s US Amateur. It would be the one of three USGA championships contested at Morris County in the club’s first 11 years.
Morris County’s first setback came in September 1915, when their clubhouse burned to the ground. Following the fire, the club decided the time was right to move their golf course to a new plot of land that was north of the Lackawanna rail line. Seth Raynor was
hired in 1915 to prepare a topographical map of the land north of the rail line. By July 1916, Raynor was building the new course. Several large interruptions, including World War I, delayed the opening of the new golf course until 1920. Recently uncovered letters between the club and C. B. Macdonald suggest Raynor’s mentor was involved in the project to a greater extent than previously known.
Raynor’s design used several standard hole templates, but his routing also included a couple of notable occurrences: three of the final six holes are par threes; Morris County was originally a par 73, 6,153 yard course. Today it measures 6,522 and a par of 70.
Left: the uphill Redan, fronted by a steep fairway.
NOTABLE CHANGES
Rees Jones redesigned several holes in the mid-1980s. In 2001, the club hired Ron Pritchard to renovate the golf course. Ron Forse and Jim Nagle completed the latest restoration in 2016.
NOTABLE HOLES
The opener at Morris County is a derivative of the Road Hole design. Measuring just 351 yards, it’s much shorter than traditional Road hole designs, but the small bunker on the right side of the fairway poses a familiar challenge. The 116-yard, par-three 3rd is a rare example of a Short hole occurring early in the round. The photogenic, wedding-cake green is surrounded on all sides by bunkers.
Over The Top, the uphill, par-four 4th, features a blind tee shot, and an approach to a uniquely shaped green. The Big Ben 7th hole is a long par four with a fairway that makes two steep drops down to a green protected by seven small bunkers.
The 12th hole is a short par-four with a Cape green that is guarded by bunkers on
all sides except front left. Wedge shots that miss right of the green can end up at the bottom of a slope more than 20 feet below the surface of the green. The par-three 13th is a reverse Redan measuring 204 yards, with the clubhouse in the background. The green falls off sharply in the front.
NOTABLE EVENTS
In the 1896 Women’s US Amateur, Beatrix Hoyt defeated Mrs. Arthur Turnure 2&1 in the final match. It was only the second Women’s Amateur ever played. It was the men’s turn in 1898 to play a US Amateur at Morris County. C. B. Macdonald reached the semifinals, but Scotsman Findlay Douglas defeated Walter Smith 5&3 in the championship match. The Women’s Amateur returned to Morris County in 1905.
Pauline Mackay won 1-up victory over Margaret Curtis in a hard-fought final match.
In 1920 Morris County celebrated the long-delayed opening of their new Seth Raynor golf course by hosting an exhibition match that paired Harry Vardon and Ted Ray against Bobby Jones and Chick Evans.
Below Left: the short par-four 5th hole.
Below Right: the Plateau green on 4.
Right: the toboggan-run fairway of the Big Ben 7th hole.
CHICAGO GOLF CLUB
1892, 1894, 1923
Wheaton, Illinois | Par 70 | 6,950 yards
CB. Macdonald originally laid out nine holes for Chicago Golf Club in Belmont (now Downers Grove), 18 miles west of Chicago, in July 1892.
The nine-hole layout was quickly doubled, becoming the first 18-hole course in the United States. And yet, the club soon outgrew the Belmont course and looked to move farther west. Two hundred acres were found conveniently near Macdonald’s home in Wheaton, and in 1894 Macdonald laid out a new course using lessons learned at Belmont and on his backyard design projects. The new Chicago Golf Club course would set the standard for golf in the Midwest and beyond.
And yet, by 1922, Macdonald was pushing his old friends at Chicago Golf to improve their golf course—the one he himself had designed in 1894. Macdonald had moved to New York in 1900, and since then his trips to Chicago had slowed almost to a stop. Macdonald would still attend USGA events hosted at Chicago Golf, but for more than a decade his interest in golf courses had been focused on the Ideal-hole strategies he would replicate at his National Golf Links of America and elsewhere.
So by 1917, Macdonald knew his work in Chicago two decades earlier no longer matched the quality of the newer courses he and Raynor had built. The original Wheaton course had a relatively limited routing: the first eight holes moved in a clockwise loop, with every hole set directly against the edges of club property and out-of-bounds to the left. (In fact, the concept of out of bounds originated here.) The final seven holes then reversed and played inside the front nine, in a counter-clockwise loop with almost every hole immediately adjacent to a hole from the front-nine loop. Except for the polo field, the entire center of the property was left unused. In letters to club officials, Macdonald made it clear that he no longer approved of his own Chicago course, and he advocated for Raynor to be the man who would rework the course:
“You may rest assured Mr. Raynor will go out with a free mind. He naturally has absorbed my ideas of golf architecture, as he has done all the work for me during the last ten years. … so far as I know there are no golf courses in the country that compare to his.”
World War I delayed Raynor from making any changes until 1921. Raynor visited in March 1921, then returned to New York to consult with Macdonald on possible changes. Raynor was back at Chicago Golf in April to present his plans. The club gave Raynor the go ahead to get started in May, and Raynor was soon at work in a room in the clubhouse turret, overlooking the course.
Raynor’s new design utilized much more of the center of the club’s property, allowing more room for players to miss left, and more space for each hole in relation to one another. (By 1923, the club was no longer actively using their polo field.) Raynor’s use of templates added variety to the course and took better advantage of the interesting land movement in the center of the property. By September 1, Raynor had completed 11 of the new greens. The golf course reopened June 30, 1923.
Today, Chicago Golf Club holds one of the smallest memberships of any top club in America. For anyone lucky enough to receive an invitation to play here, a unique experience awaits. Teenagers from local neighborhoods work as caddies, and cell phones are banned. The scarcity of trees, combined with the relatively
low volume of daily play, makes it easy to be aware of who else is playing that day and where they are on the property.
For those looking to keep score, Chicago Golf requires skill in every aspect of the game. Many of the greens are massive, but pinnable in a small percentage of places. The aprons surrounding the greens are often shaved over the side of the hill bordering the green surface, so balls can easily roll off of greens and into intimidating bunkers. The course is almost unchanged from what Raynor built in 1923, and it’s still a serious test of golf, while providing a quiet refuge to members. Visitors to Chicago Golf often liken their experience to what it must have been like to play in the early days of American golf, at a place that—after Raynor’s redesign—has stood the test of time for over 100 years.
the
Below Right: a closer look at the Jarvis Hunt clubhouse. Raynor worked in the turret while redesigning the course. Right: side view of the Punchbowl 12th hole.
Below Left:
Biarritz 3rd hole.
Top & Middle: above the Redan 7th.
Right: contours of the 12th green.
Far Right: side view of the Short 10th, with the only water feature on the course.
Next: side view of the par-four 6th hole, featuring the Principal’s Nose bunker 40 yards short of the green.
NOTABLE HOLES
The 6th hole is a new concept and construction from Raynor’s redesign. It is a medium-length par four that plays over or around a Principal’s Nose bunker that sits in the middle of the fairway 40 yards short of the green. Past the Principal’s Nose, the fairway begins to climb until it blends into the false front of the green. Approach shots that come up short will roll 50 yards back down the slope into the fairway. The Double Plateau green is another of the many masterpieces Raynor constructed for greens at Chicago Golf. The green is shaped like a backward “L.” The back-third of the green is a small shelf surrounded on three sides by bunkers.
The 12th hole is another medium-length par four, which Raynor created more out in the center of the property. It plays in the same northeast-to-southwest diagonal direction as the 6th hole. Drives and layup shots must dodge four bunkers that pinch into both sides of the fairway at various distances. A small bunker lurks just before the green, in the middle of the fairway, and a large bunker guards the green just short-right. The green is a classic Punchbowl design with an opening in the front-left. Right-side hole locations create blind approach shots from the middle of the fairway. Because it’s an elevated green, the sides of the Punchbowl are built up.
NOTABLE EVENTS
On December 22, 1894, representatives from Shinnecock Hills Country Club, Newport Country Club, The Country Club (Brookline), St Andrew’s Golf Club (New York), and Chicago Golf Club meet in New York and agree to form the United States Golf Association (USGA). Arthur Ryerson and C. B. Macdonald represented Chicago Golf at the meeting. Both the US Open and US Amateur were played at Chicago Golf a few years later, in 1897. The Amateur was won by H. J. Whigham, who would marry Macdonald’s daughter Frances in 1909. The Open was contested over 36 holes that were played in between the semifinal and final round matches for the Amateur. Englishman Joe Lloyd won the Open with a score of 162 and was awarded a prize of $150.
Chicago Golf’s original clubhouse burned to the ground on August 24, 1912, just 10 days before the club hosted the US Amateur. The current clubhouse, designed by Jarvis Hunt, opened the following year. Hunt also designed NGLA’s clubhouse.
The 1928 Walker Cup was the first USGA event contested on the course Raynor redesigned for Chicago Golf. The American side overwhelmed Great Britain by a score of 11-1. The lopsided final outcome is perhaps less surprising when you consider the American roster contained names such as Bobby Jones, Francis Ouimet, and Chick Evans. Laura Davies won the inaugural US Senior Women’s Open in 2018, hosted by Chicago Golf.
EARNING A LIVING
Chicago Golf is one of just a handful of clubs that has detailed records of Seth Raynor’s work. According to the club’s 1991 history book, the total cost of the 1923 redesign was $212,653. The largest expenses included $64,060 for an irrigation system, $55,993 for labor, and $23,208 for grass seed. By 1923, Chicago Golf had paid Raynor $5,000 for his work on the project. in 1924, Raynor was paid “somewhat over $2,000” for additional expenses. These were in line with Raynor’s typical fees during that time frame.
Raynor was paid $6 per day when he began working for Macdonald on the NGLA project in 1908. But Raynor was charging up to $7,500 per course by the time he passed away in early 1926. Taking inflation and his heavy workload into account, it’s not unreasonable to assume Raynor was earning today’s equivalent of $1 million annually during the later years of his career.
VALLEY
Found at about half of the courses Macdonald or Raynor designed, a Valley hole often—but not always—plays downhill into a small valley on the tee shot before climbing back up to a green on the other side. Valley holes often occur very early or late in the round. A simple explanation could be that many clubhouses were (and still are) built on high ground, creating a need for hole designs that would work over elevation changes early and late in the routing.
Neither Macdonald or Raynor were interested in extending a gentle handshake to begin the round at Chicago Golf. Like the opener at National Golf Links of America, the 1st hole at Chicago Golf is based on the Valley strategy. But while National’s opener measures just 327 yards, Chicago’s checks in at a muscular 450 yards. The current hole is very similar in distance and direction to the original 1st hole Macdonald designed for Chicago. A large bunker cuts into the right side of the fairway at the bottom of the valley 100 yards short of the green. Smaller bunkers sit just off the left side of the fairway, up closer to the green. A deep bunker is benched into the hill in front of the left side of the green. Narrow bunkers guard the left, back, and right sides of this green, situated well below the green surface. And the large green slopes hard from right to left.
Conservative second shots should usually be played to the short-right of the green. This position leaves a relatively straightforward third shot that feeds down the slope of the green to left-side hole locations.
There are two more notable bunkers that quickly inform visitors that they are in for a firm test of golf: the first is a set of fairway bunkers that also guard the entrance to the right side of the 18th fairway, running parallel to the 1st. These traps are also perfectly positioned to catch any nervous drives that are sliced off of the 1st tee. There is a similar dual threat bunker that sits behind the back right of the 17th green. Not by coincidence, it’s also perfectly positioned to capture approach shots on the opening hole that drift outside of the ideal layup spot. In the rough to the left side of the fairway is a mound that was added at the suggestion of Harry Colt after his visit in 1913. It was the only one of Colt’s suggested improvements that was implemented.
Left: behind the Valley 1st hole. Right: the Valley from above.
YALE GOLF COURSE
1923
New Haven, Connecticut | Par 70 | 6,409 yards
In 1923, Yale University sought C. B. Macdonald’s help to build a course for the university on a large plot of woodland and marshland four miles north of campus. The land had recently been donated to the school by a prominent family of Yale alumni. The 68-year-old Macdonald was not interested in leading another major construction project, but he agreed to act as an advisor and suggested the services of Seth Raynor to manage the major challenge of making a golf course work on the relatively severe property. Raynor was paid $7,500 and given a budget of $400,000 with which to work. It is also worth noting that Raynor’s protégé, Charles Banks (a member of Yale’s Class of 1906), managed the day-to-day operations of course construction. If any course could be said to encompass the lineage of MacdonaldRaynor-Banks, Yale is that golf course.
Building Yale required clearing dense hillside woods, blasting rock, moving earth, and routing the course over rugged and rocky terrain. Macdonald and Raynor originally wanted to build 36 holes on this land, but due to high construction costs the pair were only able to complete one 18-hole course. “The building of [the Yale Golf Course] was about as difficult an engineering problem as that of the Lido or the Mid-Ocean,”
Macdonald wrote in his book Scotland’s Gift: Golf (1928). “The land was high, heavily wooded, hilly and no part of it had been cultivated for over forty years. There were no roads or houses upon it. It was a veritable wilderness when given to Yale.”
A crew that at times numbered 150 men used roughly 50 tons of dynamite to clear the land. Local laborers and college students from Yale and Dartmouth on summer break helped dig over three miles of ditches to create drainage, and they laid almost seven miles of pipe for irrigation. The costs would ultimately run to roughly $440,000 (equivalent to $7.55 million in 2023 dollars), which at the time was a record for course construction. The course opened for limited play in the fall of 1925.
Routed through massive rolling hills and valleys shaped by granite and other rock, Yale is a muscular layout with frequent blind shots. The land used at Yale has the most elevation change of any course Raynor was involved with. The layout is still considered one of the most penal courses that either Macdonald or Raynor designed. Missing a green in the wrong place may result in your ball finding a deep bunker 30 vertical feet below the green surface.
Left: the Biarritz par three.
At only 6,635 yards from the back tees, readers can be excused for assuming that this golf course plays short. In fact, it plays far longer than the yardage on the scorecard. Many holes require uphill shots that lengthen the yardage, or downhill shots requiring precision off the tee, so driver is often taken out of one’s hand at Yale. The scale is large enough that it will often shock first-time visitors. It’s a broad and brawny test, meant to be a physical examination for the Yale students. Its deep bunkers rank among the deepest that Macdonald or Raynor ever designed.
NOTABLE HOLES
The rolling short par-four 3rd provides intrigue, with a ridge that traverses the fairway, creating a blind approach to a green that might have originally been a double punchbowl. A high ledge and knolls protect the left side of this fairway, forcing players to bring the water that protects the right side into play.
Below: behind the 2nd hole. Right: the 12th hole.
The 9th hole is one of the most unique Biarritzes ever designed by Macdonald or Raynor. The hole features relatively short, downhill tee shot over a pond that guards the front of a green that is 64 yards long. Banks asserted that the front third of this Biarritz should be left as an approach area, not cut as green. Today that front-third is not only part of the green, the pin is very often located here, bringing the pond more into play. Front hole locations require a towering mid-iron for a ball to finish close to the hole. Even more skill (and a longer iron) are needed on the memorable occasions when the hole is placed on the back-third of the green. The downhill tee shot, combined with a larger-than-most swale make back pins on Yale’s Biarritz extremely difficult to access.
Yale demonstrates Raynor’s talent for building original holes when the land called for something unique. Weary golfers who reach the 18th tee face a harsh reality: the finishing hole at Yale is the harshest physical test on the course. The 18th is a 621-yard par five that plays up a steep hill, and then around another hill. From there, it plays up another hill, before dropping to a green that sits below a hill. It is a mammoth final exam that reminds you that you’re at an Ivy League school.
NOTABLE EVENTS
Yale has a unique place in Raynor’s profile as the only university golf course he worked on. Yale is still considered one of the best campus courses in the country. It’s a notable accolade considering the notoriously poor shape the Ivy League school allowed its masterpiece to deteriorate. Nevertheless, Yale has hosted a number of significant collegiate tournaments, including the NCAA Regionals in 1991, 1995, 2004, 2010, 2015, and 2022.
Finally, after years of inoperable budgets for maintenance and upkeep for the golf course, as well as a long closing during the Covid pandemic, Yale University has announced they will be investing over $25 million to revive this remarkable layout, complete with a restoration by Gil Hanse and a $10 million endowment to maintain it for years to come. With his sights focused on doing this course justice, Hanse stated, “our hope is that when we are finished, we will paint the landscape in the same tones and dimensions that Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor created.”
A LAND FROM AND FOR ATHLETES
The land where Yale’s golf course now sits was owned by a successful businessman and prominent Yale alumni, John Greist. Greist died in 1916, and the property was acquired in the early 1920s by the Tompkins family, another prominent Yale family., with the purpose of donating it to Yale for athletics. Ray Tompkins was an exceptional athlete at Yale, as a member of the undefeated football teams of 1881, ‘82, and ‘83, and won three consecutive national championships. He was a captain of that team for his last two years, and a member of Skull and Bones. Ray’s widow purchased and then donated about 725 acres to the university in 1923, and this Macdonald and Raynor design opened in 1926. At the time, Yale had one of the best college teams in the country, with celebrated amateur Jesse Sweetser (Class of 1923), who won a national collegiate championship and a US Amateur, and had served as a member of two winning Walker Cup teams, all before graduating college. According to Yale sources, Sweetser served on Yale’s golf committee and was present when they “toured the Greist estate on a bitter cold day in February of 1923 to determine if the Tompkins’ gift would be an appropriate site for a golf course.” The efforts of these alums have created a true gem for the university for the past 100 years.
: the Short green.
FOX CHAPEL GOLF CLUB
1923
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | Par 70 | 6,705 yards
The creation of Fox Chapel was set in motion by events that started as early as 1910. The mayor of Pittsburgh had the golf course at Schenley Park converted into a public facility in that year, and it began a decade of speculation among the city’s golfers about the potential for a new private golf club in Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh Golf Club president George Laughlin led the search for possible sites for a new club. It wasn’t until 1922 that the present site of Fox Chapel was identified. Demand by then was strong enough that a dinner for 50 potential founders of the new club raised $152,000 in subscriptions that first night. R. B. Mellon, brother of Andrew Mellon, suggested the name Fox Chapel. The unusual name originated in 1889, after the daughter of John Fox donated some of his farmland to the Methodist Protestant church for a chapel to be named for her father. The burrough where Fox Chapel is located was not incorporated until 1928.
Seth Raynor was hired to build a golf course for the eager new club members. It
is unconfirmed but probably logical to assume that Raynor was hired through the C. B. Macdonald connection. Construction began in May 1923.
From the outset, the project encountered difficulties. Excavation work uncovered new challenges, heavy rain washed away grass seed before it had time to germinate. It would be two full years before the first round of golf could be played on the course on June 13, 1925. When the costs were finally added up, the course had cost $220,000 to build. Almost twice the $120,000 budget that had been given to Raynor.
It wasn’t until Memorial Day 1931 that the new clubhouse opened, designed by Brandon Smith. The clubhouse has since undergone several expansions, including a major one that was completed in 2016. Today the clubhouse is home for a full array of busy club activities. For many of today’s members, Fox Chapel is much more than a golf club.
Somewhat unusually for Seth Raynor-designed courses, many of Fox Chapel’s holes are bordered by public roads rather than houses or parkland.
Left
NOTABLE CHANGES
Fox Chapel’s course has been through several rounds of significant changes. Seth Raynor’s original design only lasted about a decade before the club asked A. W. Tillighast to make changes. This occurred during the Great Depression, when Tillinghast was finding work by pivoting from building masterpieces like Winged Foot and San Francisco Golf Club to a new role of consulting for clubs that were looking to lower their expenses. Much of Raynor’s work at Fox Chapel was lost as part of this process.
It wasn’t until the mid-1990s, when the club hired Brian Silva, that Fox Chapel members began to embrace the legacy of Raynor. Silva’s work for the club focused on identifying elements of the Raynor design and reintroducing them on the golf course.
Then in 2020, the club hired Fazio Design for a more robust project. Fazio lead associate Tom Marzolf restored what was possible from the original Raynor plans. Where original holes and features could not be recovered, Marzolf and his team reworked holes in a style in keeping with Raynor’s work.
NOTABLE HOLES
The 4th hole at Fox Chapel is a long par-four where Raynor employed two common design features in unusual ways. The green shape and deep road hole bunker are flipped in this transposed version of a typical Road Hole template. Players should approach the green from the left side of the fairway. Two narrow bunkers are positioned long and left of the green, replicating the danger of overrunning the green on the original version in St Andrews. Back in the fairway a set of spectacle bunkers are positioned in the right side of the landing zone, and a large solitary bunker intrudes on the left side of the fairway, 50 yards short of the green. Old aerials confirm it was included in the original Raynor design.
The 6th hole is a memorable variation of the Redan template. Like the Road Hole 4th, Fox Chapel’s 6th hole has its strategy reversed from the usual layout. This Redan has a large kicker on the left side of the green, with the green running away to the backright. For right-handed players, it offers a rare chance to hit a fade into a Redan. The hole measures 190 yards, typical for the medium-length template. A tongue of fairway sits short of the green that’s fronted by a bunker. To discourage direct approaches, a deep bunker guards the entire right side of the green. A third bunker is long-left of the green. The kicker on the left side of the green is so steep that it appears it could be surfed. Any shots missing the green to the left will be almost impossible to get up and down.
Players don’t confront the Biarritz at Fox Chapel until the 17th hole. That’s unusually late in a Raynor routing for the longest par-three template to make an appearance—only the 16th at Yeamans Hall is similar. It is worth the wait at Fox Chapel. The hole plays 230 yards from an elevated tee down to a green that is huge even by the exaggerated standards of Biarritz designs. Following the recent Fazio restoration, the green now measures 85 yards long. The swale bisecting the 17th green is five feet deep according to the club.
the Road Hole green. Right: behind the 5th green.
Left:
NOTABLE EVENTS
Robert Kiersky defeated George Beechler on the first extra hole to win the 1965 US Senior Amateur. It was the first USGA event hosted by Fox Chapel.
In 1985 Michiko Hattori beat Cheryl Stacy 5&4 to win the US Women’s Amateur.
Fox Chapel hosted the Curtis Cup in 2002. The US defeated the Great Britain and
Ireland team by a score of 11 to 7. Carole Semple Thompson made her 12th and final appearance on the US team.
The 2012, 2013, and 2014 Senior Players Championships were played at Fox Chapel. A major championship for the Senior PGA Tour, the winners were Joe Daley in 2012, Kenny Perry in 2013, and Bernhard Langer in 2014.
The USGA selected Fox Chapel as the host site for the 2024 US Senior Women’s Open.
REDAN
It’s a word commonly heard when discussing golf courses, but what actually is a Redan? The “redan” was a heavily bunkered, fortified, and nearly impenetrable Russian fort, dating back to the 19th century, located at Sevastopol during the Crimean War. The par-three 15th hole at North Berwick, laid out by David Strath, invoked comparisons to the defenses of the fort, and the name Redan was applied to this hole.
Redan golf holes always feature a long green, usually set at a 45-degree angle to the line of play, with the green opening to the front. Most Redan greens slope from a high on the front-right to a lower back-left. Often a small mound or “kicker” is built into the high side of the green. The effect is to create a set of conditions that strongly encourages a right-to-left shot shape that will land on the front of the green and chase to a hole that has been located near the back of the green.
Raynor used the Redan in almost every one of the golf courses he built. The hole’s design took on widespread popularity after Macdonald wrote an article for Golf Illustrated praising its attributes.
The Redan is still the par-three hole strategy that is copied the most today. Even longer two- and three-shot holes are being designed with Redan greens by modern architects. When the property he was working on called for it, Raynor would sometimes flip the design and a “reverse Redan” was created—including playing characteristics that were mirror copies of how the original Redan hole was shaped.
The 6th hole at Fox Chapel is a dramatic example of a reverse Redan. This one is 190 yards long and has deep bunkers guarding the front
entrance and the entire right side of the green. The left side of the green curls upward until it is almost vertical, giving it the appearance of a grass wave that is about to fold back over onto itself. For right-handers, it’s finally a chance to play a fade into a Redan. Well-executed shots will gather momentum as the angle of the sloping green pushes the rolling ball toward the hole in the back right corner.
Under no circumstance can a player allow his tee shot to go long-right on the Redan (or left on a reverse Redan). Recovery from over the back of the green is extremely difficult. At Fox Chapel, a third bunker lurks behind the green. Taking a direct line to a Redan’s hole location also invites real danger. The short bunker is also a test.
A moment of pleasure awaits those who properly execute the preferred shot shape—the satisfaction of watching the ball land and begin its slow roll down toward the hole.
Left: the dustpan 9th green.
Right: the Redan hole.
ESSEX COUNTY COUNTRY CLUB
1897, 1916, 1925
West Orange, New Jersey | Par 71 | 6,617 yards
Essex County Country Club was formed by members of the Essex County Hunt Club in May 1887, making it the oldest country club in New Jersey. The club purchased its first clubhouse in 1889, and in 1897 the club’s first 18-hole golf course opened. That first course was built by Alex Findley.
The club hired A. W. Tillinghast to build a new course in 1916. That new course, referred to as the West or Upper course, was located several miles away from the original one. The property at the original location was sold off piecemeal over the course of several decades. At the same time, the club was acquiring more property at their new location.
By 1925 Seth Raynor was hired by Essex County CC to design and build two 18-hole courses to replace their Tillinghast course. Before passing away in 1926, Raynor had reworked most of the holes on Tillinghast’s front nine. Charles Banks would complete the back nine for the course that would become known as the East Course.
It’s believed that Banks was almost completely responsible for designing and building the West course after Raynor had died. With the club struggling under a heavy burden of debt, the West course was sold to the local park commission in 1939 and is known today as the Francis Byrne course.
NOTABLE HOLES
Today’s holes 1 through 6 and hole 9 are original Tillinghast holes that were reworked by Raynor. The 9th is a rare example of the Short template that is played uphill, featuring a massive, deep bunker that protects the front of the green. In a feat of great routing and land use, four greens sit—in close proximity to one another—on a ridge near the clubhouse: the 3rd, 9th, 12th, and 18th.
The back nine is considered by some to be the best nine in New Jersey—very high praise, considering its competition. The 10th hole bounds down a massive slope, while the par-three Eden 11th plays over a ravine, to a green with a spine running down the middle. The short, par-four Alps 14th has a uniquely-shaped Punchbowl green, with what is arguably a Lion’s Mouth bunker protecting the center front. The long par-three 15th plays down a steep hill, and has Redan-like tendencies.
Essex County’s dramatic land movement allowed Raynor to show off his skills in applying his template concepts to a highly interesting and undulating property. Miss on the wrong side of these greens, and you might have a flop-shot to a green that stands 10 vertical feet above you.
NOTABLE EVENTS
Essex County Country Club has been the host for many New Jersey State Opens and State Amateur Championships, but it might be the exhibitions here that are the most noteworthy.
Harry Vardon and Ted Ray played at Essex County on October 6, 1920. The two Englishman were in the final stages of a tour of America that had included Ray winning the US Open earlier that summer.
What was billed as “Golf’s greatest foursome” played an exhibition match on September 25, 1931. Billie Burke and George Von Elm, the winner and runner-up in that year’s US Open, were able to hand an 8&7 defeat to a couple of amateurs named Bobby Jones and Francis Ouimet. And on May 27, 1945, Essex celebrated its 50th anniversary by hosting a charity match between Byron Nelson and Sam Sneed.
Below Right: the Eden 11th.
Below Left: wild Punchbowl green on the Alps 14th.
Right: approach to the difficult par-three 9th.
Next Left: the 5th (right) and 6th (left). Two of Tillinghast’s holes that Raynor reworked.
Next Right: the Maiden 12th.
ROC k SPRING GOLF CLUB
West
Orange, New Jersey | Par 71 | 6,600 yards
ASeth Raynor design that is operated as a munipal course by a New Jersey township? A public golf course with original template holes? For a $60 green fee? And it’s so close to New York City that the course has views of the Manhattan skyline? The latest chapter in the history of Rock Spring Golf Club seems too good to be true. It’s possible that this feel-good story could soon end. In the meantime, Rock Spring is a rare example of a public Raynor golf course that everyone can enjoy.
The idea for Rock Spring began as an alternative to an amusement park that was being proposed for West Orange, New Jersey. Ten “well-known and outstanding” citizens of West Orange met on February 18, 1925 for the purpose of planning a new country club for local families. The group of 10 men elected Mr. Powers Farr as their leader. Farr had previously been one of the founders of Essex County Country Club, but as a devout Baptist he loathed the prohibition parties held at Essex. Well aware of the championship layouts at Essex and nearby Baltusrol, Farr envisioned something different: “a family club of nine holes where children would find a place to play and eventually learn golf amid a carefully selected and exclusive membership of 300.”
Rock Spring Country Club was named for the fresh water spring on its proposed location.
Seth Raynor was paid $1,500 to design the new course, which by then had been planned as 18 instead of 9 holes. Raynor died before construction began. Charles Banks was responsible for building Rock Spring. Banks oversaw a crew of 75 men and 12 teams of horses. Nine holes were ready for play on September 3, 1927, the full 18-hole course opened the following spring. Early scorecards show a 6,404yard course that played to a par of 71. Early descriptions of Rock Spring invariably mentioned the views of the Manhattan skyline from club property.
Like many clubs, Rock Spring Country Club struggled during the Great Depression and eventually declared bankruptcy in 1933. The club was reorganized under the new name Rock Spring Club. The new club’s heavy debt load resulted in almost no improvements being made to Rock Creek’s facilities until the end of World War II.
Left: high above this public Raynor design.
Rock Spring Club ran into financial troubles again in more recent times, and on January 1, 2016 the club was absorbed by Montclair Golf Club. Montclair then operated the Rock Spring course for three years before it also threw in the towel. Montclair Golf Club sold the Rock Spring course to the township of West Orange for $11.3 million in April 2019.
West Orange township has operated Rock Spring as a public daily-fee facility since acquiring the property. That may not last. As this book went to print in late 2023, West Orange government officials have hinted at their future plans for developing at least some of Rock Spring’s 138 acres into housing.
NOTABLE HOLES
Rock Spring only has three par threes, but they include nice examples of the Short and Redan templates. The 8th hole is a 414-yard par four that doglegs right. The hole plays uphill to a Punchbowl green that Banks created by building up a berm that surrounds the back and sides of the green.
NOTABLE CHANGES
Hal Purdy altered the sequence of holes in the late 1950s, but today’s routing has returned to the original Raynor-Banks plan.
Architect Ken Dye performed work on Rock Spring in 2001, including filling in fairway bunkers, building new tee boxes, and reshaping greenside bunkers.
NOTABLE EVENTS
Harold Baker was a Rock Spring member who had competed in the Olympics. Baker was later diagnosed with a circulatory ailment in his legs. Faced with the loss of golf, Baker improvised an early version of the golf cart. Fashioned from a motorcycle, Baker’s creation had three wheels but no muffler or reverse gear.
Below Left: behind the 8th hole. Below Right: above the 10th. Right: the Redan 3rd plays along an old quarry.
YEAMANS HALL CLUB
1925
Hanahan, South Carolina | Par 70 | 6,808 yards
Atrip to Yeamans Hall feels like a step back in time. Visitors enter the Yeamans property by driving past an old gatehouse and making their way up a winding dirt road, under and through groves of live oaks draped with Spanish moss and across the 1st fairway, before arriving at the quaint buildings that serve as the pro shop and locker rooms. From there, it’s a short walk to the 17th-century former-plantation mansion that serves as the namesake clubhouse. Any sense of modern stress disappears by the time members and their guests reach the front door.
For almost a century, Yeamans Hall has been a winter retreat for successive generations of New York and New England patricians. Located just 12 miles north of Charleston, the club still serves as a winter retreat, though the club does offer a limited number of summer-only memberships to young local residents. The Yeamans Hall Company was chartered in December 1924, but the earliest signs of the future club can be traced as far back as a visit Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. made to the property in 1915.
Olmsted Jr.’s plan called for two 18-hole golf courses, a hotel that would accommodate 200 overnight guests, and 200 private residences connected by roads that would gracefully wind through the club’s 1,000 acres of land. Instead, the Great Depression halted sales after only 35 cottages and 18 holes were built. Members quickly learned to appreciate the lack of development inside their club. A century later, there are still just those 35 cottages and a small quadrangle of guest cabins behind the clubhouse.
It was a century ago, in September 1923, that Seth Raynor made his first site visit to Yeamans Hall. Raynor returned in November 1924 to walk the golf course with construction superintendent William Nugent and to direct any necessary alterations. Raynor visited again in March 1925, and then for a final time in early October of that same year to see the completed course.
Yeamans Hall was one of the final golf courses Raynor completed before his death, and it remains among the best examples of the skill Raynor developed in finding
clever ways to apply the Ideal-hole strategies across a large variety of topographies and climates. During his short decade-plus solo career, Raynor was able to solve routing puzzles as diverse as those at Fishers Island and Mountain Lake.
At Yeamans Hall, the challenge had been routing golf holes across the flat lowcountry bordering Goose Creek ,while avoiding spots associated with poor soil. Raynor delivered a course that runs out to the river and back several times. His liberal deployment of fairway bunkers keeps the club’s members and their guests on their toes. The greens at Yeamans Hall are as fun as they are challenging.
Golf magazine architectural editor Ran Morrissett had this to say about Yeamans Hall: “the greens … capture the charms of the random swales, dips, mounds and ridges of the Old Course at St Andrews. … As a set of targets, the greens at Yeamans Hall are among the most appealing I have ever encountered.”
NOTABLE CHANGES
Starting in 1996, Tom Doak and Jim Urbina have performed significant restoration. All 18 greens were rebuilt in 1998 and expanded to their larger, original sizes. The project was guided by several of Raynor’s maps that were discovered in the Yeamans Hall clubhouse attic by former superintendent Jim Yonce.
Doak and Urbina also widened the fairways to their original dimensions, adding over 60 acres of short grass to the course. And most importantly, the duo restored the dozens of steep, grass-faced fairway bunkers that seem to jut into the fairways at exactly the spots where a golfer would otherwise like to direct their tee shots. The cumulative effect of the updates can create the feeling that you’re not just golfing at Yeamans Hall, you’re also playing on a giant grass chessboard designed by one of the game’s grand masters.
Below Left: next to the Biarritz 16th green. Below Right: Some of the artful shaping built up at Yeamans Right: the famous gates to Yeamans Hall.
YEAMANS HALL CLUB
NOTABLE HOLES
The 3rd hole—a par-three, 144-yard Short design—features an elevated infinity green set in front of a wide expanse of savannah marshland. The hole naturally draws comparisons with the Short 16th hole at nearby Charleston Country Club.
The 4th hole at Yeamans has benefitted from a great deal of work by Doak and Urbina. Raynor only described the hole as “a two shot bottle hole.” The hole begins from teeing ground out by the creek and running inward. Today the hole once again features a diagonal bunker in the middle of the fairway. The center bunker creates three distinct options for players to consider when aiming their tee shots: left, right, or over. Going over is tempting, because this par-four can play as long as 494 yards. Successfully carrying the center bunker will give the player at least some chance of reaching the falsefront green. But there is significant risk: like many of Yeamans’ fairway bunkers, the ones on the 4th have steep grass faces that block almost any chance of reaching the green.
Hole 8, called Creek, is a bespoke design. The green on this 427-yard par four is set against Goose Creek, with a gorgeous backdrop of the creek and the marsh beyond. According to Tom Doak, “its setting is so perfect … it’s the hole I first think of when someone first mentions Yeamans Hall.”
A set of severe mounds sit just beyond and to the right of the green on the short, 345-yard 12th (Narrows). The mounds are referred to as “dragon’s teeth”—a name borrowed from similar mounds MacDonald built at the Greenbrier’s Old White course. Yeamans and Greenbrier are two of the infrequent examples of MacDonald or Raynor employing the feature. It’s theorized that the mounds were a convenient way to cover rock or unwanted building material instead of hauling the debris away.
NOTABLE EVENTS
1938 Masters and 1939 PGA Champion Henry Picard served as Yeamans’ club professional from 1949 to 1951.
Nancy Fitzgerald defeated Toni Wiesner 1-up to win the 1997 USGA Senior Women’s Amateur championship at Yeamans Hall. Fitzgerald called her tee shot on Yeamans’ 16th hole her “shot of the century.” The ball settled four inches from the hole on the long Biarritz, propelling Fitzgerald to victory in the only USGA championship ever hosted at Yeamans Hall.
PLATEAU
At Yeamans Hall, Raynor chose the Plateau design for the opening hole. It’s the only time either Macdonald or Raynor used the Plateau strategy on an opening hole. Yeamans’ opener is a par four that measures 423 yards on today’s scorecard, about 20 yards longer than Raynor’s original design. Just beyond that entrance crossing, on the left side of the fairway up toward the green, is a Principal’s Nose bunker. From the tee, the Principal’s Nose is a convenient aiming point for all but the very longest bombers. At Yeamans, the opening drive is also notable for the cars crossing the fairway on the club’s charming, unpaved entrance road.
The front-left area of the green is elevated several feet above fairway height. The middle and front-right of the green sit lower, at fairway height. The back-third of the green is elevated the same height as the front-left section. The effect is to create three distinct shelves—high, low, high—which are usually best approached from the left side of the fairway, just behind the Principal’s Nose bunker. There’s also one smaller opening front-right that can be accessed from the right side of the fairway.
The Plateau design at Yeamans is highly consistent with versions of the same template found at other Macdonald and Raynor designs. Another common Plateau variant used by the pair was a more “L” shaped green (sometimes an upside-down L or backward L), with elevated front-left and back-right squares, and a lower-middle square connecting the higher ones. Plateau holes are also often called Double Plateau holes, in reference to the two higher green levels.
Macdonald based his Plateau concept on the 17th hole at North Berwick. He replicated Berwick’s design strategy on the 11th hole at National Golf Links of America, and both he and Raynor would use the Plateau template at least once on virtually every golf course that either designed. No matter
the variant, the strategy is similar: a medium-length par four that asks for a short- to mid-iron played to a distinct section of a larger green. Two-putting from one green section to another can be challenging. Scrambling for par after missing the green is often very difficult.
The Principal’s Nose bunker is a notable feature found at a notable place: the 16th on the Old Course at St Andrews. Named for its distinct look—a raised mound with two or three flared “nostrils” of sand dug into sides, evoking a lurking, angry school administrator—Principal’s Nose bunkers can serve as a visual break from bunkers typically dug below ground level. The goal is for golfers to avoid an admonishing visit, where they will surely be met with stern reprimand.
Pairing the Principal’s Nose bunker with the Plateau green was a common practice for Macdonald and Raynor. Both men were willing to employ different combinations of design elements on the same hole to best use the space available. Macdonald and Raynor’s skills were much more than just repeating the same designs: their talent was in applying their Ideal hole strategies in ways that would work best with the routing and land.
Left, Top: the entrance to the clubhouse.
Left, Middle: the Redan 6th.
Left, Bottom: side view of the 1st green.
Right: the Plateau 1st green.
WA i ALAE COUNTRY CLUB
1925, 1927
Honolulu, Hawaii | Par 72 | 6,458 yards
Seth Raynor and his wife Minta arrived on Oahu, Hawaii, aboard the steamship Wilhelmina in November 1925. Raynor had been coaxed to Hawaii by the Territorial Hotel Company. Territorial was developing a “Grand Scheme” to kickstart tourism to Hawaii by building what they hoped would be the world’s most luxurious resort: the Royal Hawaiian. With the hotel plans in motion, they now wanted a golf course to match.
The site that the company chose for the development was on the southern shore of Oahu, a couple of miles to the northeast of the Diamond Head volcanic crater. They had purchased a 250-acre plot of beachfront property known as the Waialae Ranch for $155,000.
Raynor spent two weeks working out plans for Waialae, including creating a set of models of the future greens. During the visit, he also developed the plans for MidPacific Country Club in Lanikai, about 20 miles to the northeast. Raynor and his wife departed Hawaii a month after they had arrived. Passage back to the West Coast took five days. From there, it would take them five more days to reach the East Coast
by train. Raynor was headed to Florida to oversee the February opening of a new golf course he was building just north of Palm Beach for the philanthropist Paris Singer. It was in Palm Beach that Raynor would suddenly pass away on January 23, 1926, after a brief bout of pneumonia.
Back in Hawaii, construction started on Waialae in the early autumn of 1926. Like many unfinished Raynor projects, there are few details available on the completion of Waialae. Veteran course-builder Joseph Mayo and local Fred Schattauer led the construction locally. Publications from the time note that special bermuda grass seed was imported from Atlanta, Georgia, for use on the new course. There are no known records of Charles Banks traveling to Hawaii. Nine holes were ready for play when the Royal Hawaiian Hotel hosted its grand opening on February 1, 1927. The full course opened six months later, on July 7.
Surviving photos and descriptions of the new course portray a typical Raynor design. The course played to a par 72 of 6,458 yards when it opened. The standard four
templates were used on the four par threes. He used templates for three of the four par fives: Long, Plateau, and Road Holes. The par fours were a mix of templates, including Punchbowl and Plateau, as well as some unique designs, like the 405-yard 17th hole with a Redan green. Four of the holes were routed along land just steps above the beach.
What the golf course lacked in its early years was customers. Golf was still growing on the mainland, and not many visitors were thinking about the game when making the long journey to Hawaii. It wasn’t uncommon for 650 passengers to disembark from the grand new Malolo steamship with only a half dozen golf bags among their luggage.
The course operated under the name Waialae Golf Club, but it was wholly owned and operated by the Royal Hawaiian. To help offset the operating losses on their mostly empty golf course, its management began allowing local residents to play the golf course for a daily fee. By the 1930s, enough locals were playing the course regularly that hotel officials had allowed them to build a small clubhouse on the property. Then on August 6, 1941, a fast-spreading fire destroyed the course’s food-and-beverage facility. It was the only area of the golf property that generated any profits for the Royal Hawaiian. Four months later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, just 14 miles away from Waialae. The United States declared war the following day.
Hotel management, tired of 15 years of losses, with no prospect of Hawaiian tourism for the foreseeable future, approached local golfers with an offer too tempting to turn down: the Royal Hawaiian was willing to hand over their golf course and maintenance facilities for free. By the following year, a group of the locals had accepted the Royal Hawaiian offer and on September 30, 1942 organized themselves as the Waialae Country Club.
The Royal Hawaiian hotel itself was turned over to the Navy during this same time period. For the remainder of World War II, the hotel would be used as a retreat for Navy submariners. Military personnel were allowed to play the golf course, and rounds almost doubled from 19,000 in 1943 to 37,000 in 1944. Very little maintenance was done in these years due to war rationing. Predictably, the course was in rough shape by the time it was returned to the members of the new Waialae Country Club. The decade following World War II was mostly a quiet one for the club and course.
Below Left: greenside bunker on the 17th hole.
Below Right: Waialae at sunrise.
Far Right: the sun sets on the 16th hole.
Hawaii’s admission into statehood in 1959 would be the indirect cause of big changes for Waialae. Becoming the 50th state was expected to boost tourism to Hawaii. The members of Waialae had by now been operating their golf course for almost two decades. But the land the golf course was on was still owned by holding companies controlled by the original developers of the Royal Hawaiian. Club members were defenseless in 1960 when Hilton Hotels acquired the rights to build a new hotel on the 12.5-acre strip of beachfront land that was currently occupying Waialae’s 1st, 2nd, and 7th holes.
Robert Trent Jones was hired to rework Waialae’s front nine. It was the beginning of five decades of changes that would erase almost all traces of the original Seth Raynor design. For more than 50 years, a constantly revolving lineup of architects and members made changes to Waialae. Some of the changes were necessitated by additional losses of land, and some were made to accommodate Waialae’s transformation into one of the world’s busiest golf courses. Still more changes were made in response to the play of the world’s greatest golfers during their annual visits to Waialae for the Hawaiian Open.
Finally in 2012, the club brought in Tom Doak to sort through everything done to Waialae since 1960. Waialae presented two challenges for Doak unique from most of his projects. First, the golf course had to stay open during any work that was done. Today’s Waialae has a large and active membership that takes advantage of Oahu’s sublime weather and keeps the course full from dawn to dusk almost every day of the year. Second, since Waialae is also one of only two Raynor courses—the Greenbrier is the other—that has hosted an annual PGA Tour event, any changes Doak proposed to make would need to be completed before the following year’s tournament.
Beginning in 2015, Doak and his associate Eric Iverson slowly began to reintroduce Seth Raynor’s designs and strategies. Some of the work involved restoring Raynor and Banks’ original holes. Other parts of the project—like the Punchbowl green on 15—are all new. Much of what was lost at Waialae can never be recovered. Today the Redan 8th (Hole 17 when the nines are switched during the Sony Open) is the only surviving original hole at Waialae that plays along the oceanfront. It’s a tantalizing reminder of how special this course might have once been.
NOTABLE HOLES
The long 7th hole requires a drive of at least 225 yards just to reach the corner of the dogleg on this tough par four. Approach shots into the green play directly toward the ocean. This hole features the oceanside palm trees that form a perfect “W” behind the green. They’ve only been there since 2009, and yes, they were deliberately planted to form the W, for Waialae. The 18th is a difficult dogleg left, which requires long hitters to hit a high drive over a grove of trees protecting the inside of the dogleg.
NOTABLE EVENTS
All but 10 Hawaiian Opens have been held at Waialae since the tournament was founded in 1928. The Open has been an official PGA Tour event since 1965. Isao Aoki holed out from the 18th fairway to win the Hawaiian Open in 1983, and became the first Asian golfer to win a PGA Tour event.
SSOUTHAMPTON GOLF CLUB
1925
Southampton, New York | Par 70 | 6,407 yards
ituated in the shadows of Shinnecock and the National Golf Links of America, this course doesn’t get the attention and recognition it deserves. The course’s land features much of the same, rolling land movement of its neighbors, with a routing that is highly playable and walkable. Seth Raynor created a stunning layout in his hometown: one that now shines bright again.
Sixty residents of Southampton gathered in January 1923 to discuss the need for a third golf course in the area. William Dunes, the president of First National Bank of Southampton, thought there should be an option to play golf for those who didn’t have access to the Shinnecock or National courses. It was agreed at the meeting that a third club would be built in Southampton, one that would serve the town’s year-round citizens as well as summer visitors. The name Southampton Country Club was chosen, and $54,000 was eventually pledged toward the purpose of purchasing a tract of land bordering Peconic Bay called Cow Neck.
Hometown architect Seth Raynor was involved with the project from the beginning. Raynor’s name was listed as an officer and second vice president of the newly formed corporation. The project stalled when a local landowner filed an objection to a
proposed bridge that would need to be built to access the Cow Neck property.
The idea was given new life in 1925 when a local man named Charles Sabin donated property just east of Shinnecock Hill Golf Club for the purpose of building what became Southampton Golf Club. Seth Raynor once again agreed to build the new club’s golf course, and he became a founding member of the club. Raynor and fellow Southampton engineer Charles Baird laid out the course on October 25, 1925. Following Raynor’s death, it was Baird who completed work on the course. Southampton Golf Club opened for play in June 1927.
There is no surviving documentation of Raynor’s original plan, but the club found a detailed map of the course prepared by Wallace Halsey dated May 1927.
Southampton’s is an exceptionally solid Seth Raynor design. The four par threes use the standard one-shot templates. The two par fives—both on the back nine—use the Long and Narrow templates. One unique feature to the Southampton layout is the rare instance where the Biarritz (183 yards) isn’t the longest of the par threes, losing out to the Redan (212 yards).
Left: high above the 5th (left) and 4th holes (right).
The first 11 holes at Southampton are played down corridors within a forest. On most of those first 11 holes, only the current hole you are playing is visible. The final seven holes are played in an open paddock. The result is a front and back that can feel like two different courses.
NOTABLE CHANGES
The club hired architect William Mitchell to modernize Southampton’s golf course in 1967. Mitchell removed many of Raynor’s cross bunkers and rebuilt the greenside bunkers so that they would extend higher than the surfaces of the greens. Large numbers of silver maple trees were planted in lines on both sides of multiple fairways. The course quickly lost any resemblance to a Seth Raynor design.
In 2004 the club hired Brian Silva to create a master plan, which the club soon acted on. By 2010, Southampton Golf Club was looking like her old self.
NOTABLE HOLES
Drives on the 443-yard 4th hole land in a fairway full of wonderful mounds and swales. Shots that don’t make it past the green’s false front can roll 50 yards back down the fairway. A shallow bunker—and a fence—collect shots that go long. The bunkers that guard each side of the green are at the bottom of grass slopes that are so steep that the club has built a set of steps just to help players reach the next tee safely.
The 6th hole, Raynor’s Prize Dog Leg, features a fairway tilted to the left, well-guarded by small bunkers on each side. The green of this hole sits right next to the 12th hole at Shinnecock Hills, near Tuckahoe Road.
The 16th is a cute, 330-yard hole. Its Punchbowl green is squeezed into a wedge of land on the eastern tip of the club’s property. Most shots into the green are blind, due to the tall, grass face of the large bunker sitting in the middle of the fairway 40 yards short of the green.
Below Left: the approach to the 6th green, with Shinnecock Hills in the background. Below Right: behind the 16th. Right: the approach to the Punchbowl 16th green.
MA i DEN
The original 6th hole at Royal St. George’s in England was Macdonald’s model for the Maiden hole. The word ‘maiden’ refers to the design of the green, which are are typically open in front but have raised shelves in the back-right and back-left, with a narrow channel separating them. One explanation given for the name has it originating based on the view from the fairway toward the green, which was claimed to resemble that of a buxom woman laying down.
Maiden greens are very similar to Double Plateau greens, and some would also compare them to a Biarritz green rotated sideways. So it’s understandable that the Maiden title is sometimes used interchangeably with the others. Very few holes designed by Raynor were originally referred to as Maiden holes, and they were all par fours. In addition to the shape of the green, the other feature shared by most of Raynor’s Maiden holes
was their difficulty. The 11th hole at Yeamans and the 12th at Essex County are very difficult holes when their pins are placed on top of one of their mounds.
The 3rd hole at Southampton shares this trait. Teeing off beside Tuckahoe Lane, a 210-yard carry is needed to drive over a bunker that cuts into the right side of the fairway. The hole plays 410 yards, so approaches into the green are typically played with short- to mid-irons. A second fairway bunker guards the left side of the fairway 40 yards in front of the green.
Narrow bunkers run parallel to each side of the green. Each of the green’s back shelves are pronounced, creating cleavage that is several feet deep between them. Behind the green is another bunker that’s directly in line with the cleavage, ready to gather any shots that run through the green.
Left: above the Maiden 3rd hole. Right: side view of the Maiden.
TLOO kOUT MOUNTAIN CLUB
1925, 1927
Lookout Mountain, Georgia | Par 70 | 6,613 yards
he story of Lookout Mountain’s golf course is an unusual one. One can think of Lookout’s history as a rewound version of the typical order of events at other Seth Raynor designs. As this book goes to print, Kyle Franz and Tyler Rae have just completed the latest work on the “Grand Opening” might be just as appropriate a term as “re-opening,” because it’s only now—96 years after Raynor’s death—that the golf world will finally be able to see and play the course that he designed for Lookout Mountain.
Straddling the border between Georgia and Tennessee, Lookout Mountain inhabits a particularly attractive mountain ridge on the Cumberland Plateau. The northern edge of Lookout Mountain overlooks a horseshoe bend of the Tennessee River and the growing city of Chattanooga. For more than a century, Lookout Mountain has been visited by those seeking a pleasant escape from the heat and humidity below. Tourists come to “SEE ROCK CITY,” as the billboards say.
Garnet and Freida Carter knew the Lookout Mountain location was special. In 1925, together with O. B. Andrews, they founded a private club called Fairyland on top of the mountain. Fairyland was to be the premier summer escape for wealthy families.
The project had the support of Adolph Ochs, the owner of the New York Times and himself a Chattanooga native.
The Carters hired local architect William Scars to build the English Tudor clubhouse that is perched on the edge of the mountain. Ten overnight cottages would be added in 1928 to form the Mother Goose Village, and streets for private residences were laid out with names like Red Riding Hood Trail and Cinderella Road. Warren Manning—a landscape architect from Cambridge, Massachusetts—was the man hired to develop the Fairyland plans. This was not an Olmsted project; Seth Raynor’s involvement in Fairyland came through a more chance encounter.
Scott Probasco Sr. was a Chattanooga resident and supporter of the Fairyland plans. He was also a golfer and an alumnus of the Hotchkiss school in Connecticut. When Hotchkiss hired Raynor in 1923 to renovate their nine-hole course, Probasco was one of the donors who paid for the work. It was at Hotchkiss that Probasco met Raynor and Charles Banks, the Hotchkiss English teacher who would eventually switch careers and become Raynor’s successor, completing Lookout Mountain after Raynor’s death.
Left the Punchbowl 11th green. (All Lookout Mountain photos by doug Stein)
Probasco recommended Raynor to Garnet Carter, and Raynor agreed to take on the project. It would be among the very last projects that Raynor was working on when he died unexpectedly in January 1926.
Banks oversaw the completion of the Fairyland course in 1927. By then soaring costs had created the need to slash the scope of the project. Raynor’s plans included 81 bunkers, but fewer than 20 were built. Still, the course was said to have cost more than $400,000 to build. At this time, only The Lido and Yale had been more expensive to build.
The Great Depression was the end of the Fairyland dream. The golf course would eventually be reorganized as Lookout Mountain Golf Club. It’s only in the last 30 years that the golf course has reached its full potential.
The beginning of the final steps for completing Seth Raynor’s “last” design began in the mid 1990s. Head pro Brett Mullen and a few of Lookout’s members began to find clues that their course might be more than the average setup that it appeared. Two members of Lookout’s board, Doug Stein and King Oehmig, had formed a “Raynor committee” and tasked themselves with searching for information about their golf course and the men who built it. The group visited other Raynor courses and met
and exchanged information with anyone they could find who shared their interest in Raynor. From this activity, the Seth Raynor Society was formed in 1995.
The club took a big step forward when Doug Stein found Seth Raynor’s original six- by three-foot design plan for Fairyland. The plan was still sitting in the files of a Chattanooga firm that completed the topography surveys for the original project. By 1997 the club hired Brian Silva and approved the first step of a long range plan to complete Raynor’s plans for the golf course. Silva installed 50 fairway bunkers, reworked a number of tees, and reshaped the Alps and Double Plateau greens. Silva’s renovation work was widely praised. Smaller projects followed, but the combination of financial struggles and membership disagreements delayed several attempts to complete Raynor’s plans. The club hired Gil Hanse to guide the next phase of restoration, but the Hanse plan also failed to gain support. The tide finally turned in 2020, when the pandemic created an unexpected boom for golf. A new generation of younger members were ready to support the final step. Hanse was already fully committed to other projects, so he recommended his associates Kyle Franz and Tyler Rae, and in 2021 the club approved the project. In the summer of 2023, the final Seth Raynor design was completed.
Below Left: the 1st and 3rd greens. Below Right: the approach to the 1st hole. Right: sideview of the Redan 13th.
NOTABLE CHANGES
Raynor’s original plan was for the clubhouse to be located in the southeast corner of the routing, behind what is today the 2nd green, to take advantage of the stunning views of the valley below. Today’s 3rd hole was meant to be the opening hole, and today’s 1st and 2nd holes were originally the 17th and 18th.
The present clubhouse was built on the intended site for today’s 12th (Raynor’s 10th) green. The build also forced builders to shorten the 1st hole (Raynor’s 17th) and convert it from a par five to par four.
NOTABLE HOLES
The 11th hole is a particularly memorable version of the Alps. The second shot on the 418-yard par four is a blind approach that is played toward a large American flag that doubles as the only aiming point. The green that finally comes into view is one that won’t be forgotten. Square-shaped and one of the largest on the course, the 11th green is set against the backdrop of a neighboring mountain range many miles in the distance. There may be no picturesque hole on any Seth Raynor golf course when the leaves are changing color.
The 6th hole is a unique opportunity to play a teeshot from on top of a large rock. This Short par three measures only 126 yards, so there is no reason not to try a shot from the back tee box that is perched on a huge rock 15 feet above the green surface. This massive rock is a reminder of the challenges that had to be overcome to build this “Raynor on a mountain.”
Right: approach to the 2nd green, with the Chattanooga valley in the distance. (All Lookout Mountain photos by doug Stein)
CAMARGO CLUB
1925
Indian Hill, Ohio | Par 72 | 6,600 yards
Among Seth Raynor’s most prominent designs, the specifics of his golf course at the Camargo Club may be the least widely known. Situated just northeast of Cincinnati, Camargo is a sleepy private club with a membership that often stretches back multiple generations.
Raynor didn’t get to this area of the country much. In fact, Camargo is his only design in Ohio, and his next closest course is 300 miles away.
While many of Raynor’s courses were built for golf-only clubs, the Camargo Club has been a place to ride, shoot, swim, volley, and lunch with neighbors for almost 100 years. The club’s logo memorably features a heeled shoe and rifle, symbolizing riding and hunting. Horse stables across the street are still active, and the course used to wrap around a polo field.
Raynor had laid out the course by July 1924, a month before construction began with a budget of $150,000. Raynor’s protégé Charles Banks worked extensively on the project, with Raynor visiting to review the work during the three-year project.
The back nine opened to members in September 1926, and the full 18-hole course opened around May 1927.
Raynor routed the course in a way that utilizes the property’s changes in elevation to provide a substantial amount of variety and challenge: in fact, its ravines and valleys are the defense on this course, which has no water features. Some early holes work their way through a woody area, while most of the back nine is spread over a wide expanse. Almost every hole plays in a different direction than the previous one.
Many visitors remark how large the greens are, especially the 8th hole Biarritz. Early photographs of this green confirm that turf on the front-third has always been left at fairway height, rather than cut as part of the green.
Not much has changed in Camargo’s understated clubhouse that is reminiscent of a country cottage. There is no grand ballroom, or really many unused rooms, and it’s a pleasure to eat or have a drink out on the large patio, which overlooks the 9th and 18th greens.
NOTABLE CHANGES
Following Raynor’s death in early 1926, members of Camargo’s early greens committee oversaw the completion of the final holes. Raynor’s original plan called for the 16th hole to be a long par-five with a Double Plateau green. Raynor designed a 420-yard par-four version of the Road Hole for the 17th. Instead, the lengths and pars of the two holes were switched. The 12th hole—Channel—had an alternate fairway that was abandoned in the 1930s. The fairway of the shorter route was instead extended back toward the tee.
The club hired Robert von Hagge to perform a course modernization in 1963. He moved and rebuilt many of Camargo’s bunkers to feature flashed faces, removing the Raynor style from them. In the 1990s, Camargo hired a young, relatively unknown architect named Tom Doak to begin a long-term restoration of the course. On the advice of Alice Dye, one early task Doak worked on was an improved set of forward tees. Don Placek succeeded Doak and has been Camargo’s consulting architect for the past 15 years.
NOTABLE HOLES
Golf course architect Pete Dye believed Camargo had one of the world’s best collections
of par-threes. The Eden, Biarritz, Short, and Redan here are all excellent. The 2nd hole is a par-five Valley. The drive is a relatively straightforward carry over a valley, but from the landing area the hole turns 90 degrees, and second shots are played across another shallower valley to the green set back from the top of the hill on the other side. A deep bunker guards the inside corner of the dogleg. The 7th hole is an Alps strategy that was entirely manufactured: instead of a hill or mound, Raynor designed the hole with a grass berm that blocks the entire entrance to the green. A sunken square green—the largest on the course—sits hidden behind the berm. Also hidden are two traps that lurk between the berm and the green.
NOTABLE EVENTS
Since 1930, Camargo has been an almost-annual host of regional qualifying for the USGA events. They are always a quick sellout, and a rare chance for players and spectators to see top-level golf played on one of Raynor’s best designs. Local up-and-comer Jack Nicklaus played in five Amateur qualifiers at Camargo, from 1955 through 1959. On July 5, 1931, Bobby Jones played in a charity exhibition that helped spur large interest in golf in Cincinnati. Jones returned in 1938, setting a course record of 65 in a social round.
EDEN
The Eden template is a concept that has been frequently repeated not just by Macdonald and Raynor, but also by almost every golf architect of the past century. The Eden is based on the design of the 11th hole on the Old Course of St Andrews: a medium-length par three that takes its name not from the Biblical paradise of Adam and Eve, nor from the Old’s 11th hole—which is actually called High In. Instead this template gets its name from the Eden estuary basin, which looms behind the original at St Andrews. The winds off this body of water are known to create havoc for incoming shots to this well-guarded green.
The 5th hole at Camargo is an Eden template. It’s the first of Camargo’s four par threes, and it announces that pars on these shorter holes will need to be earned by solid play.
Eden templates typically feature a green that is pitched from back to front. The front of the green is open, allowing for a well-judged, lowrunning shot. But the ominous Strath bunker is usually placed short right of Eden greens. Named for the champion Scotsman Davie Strath, who had several major calamities in the trap at the Old Course, the Strath bunkers are typically small but very deep. To the left of Eden greens are the Hill bunkers—fashioned after the one at St Andrews where Bobby Jones famously couldn’t get out, so he gave up and withdrew, in his first attempt to win the Open. And on some Edens there is a third bunker, typically a large one, short and to the right of the Strath bunker called Shell.
Right: the Eden.
Next page: looking back on Alps 7th.
With so much trouble in front of the green, the obvious thought is to play long. But playing long is strongly discouraged on Raynor’s versions of the Eden by a variety of methods—bunkers, water, steep drop offs—depending on the best fit for the site.
Due to their medium length, sometimes players can approach Eden holes aggressively on calm days. And yet, if the wind is up and the playing surfaces are firm, any tee shot that comes to rest on this Eden’s putting surface is met with relief.
The bunkering scheme is flipped on Camargo’s Eden—two on the left, one on the right. All three bunkers here were enlarged during renovation work during the 1990s. Camargo’s club history notes that the green had a steeper back-to-front pitch prior to a 1960s reworking.
Left: Camargo’s Biarritz and Redan.
COUNTRY CLUB OF CHARLESTON
Charleston, South Carolina | Par 71 | 6,776 yards
After enjoying over two decades of golf at courses along the Cooper River in the early 1900s, Country Club of Charleston members purchased a tract of land on James Island, just across the Ashley River from downtown Charleston. Here in the early 1920s, a group of local visionaries hired the Olmsted Brothers firm to create a club that would become a hub of Charleston golf for nearly a century. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. made his first trip to the Charleston area in August 1915. He had come to inspect the Yeamans Hall property just outside of Charleston. It’s reasonable to assume that the Olmsted Brothers firm would have been well known to the CC of Charleston members by the time they were hired.
At the recommendation of the Olmsteds, the club engaged the services of Seth Raynor to design the new CC of Charleston golf course. Raynor obviously worked
well with the Olmsteds, and they collaborated on designs not only at Yeamans Hall and CC of Charleston, but also at Mountain Lake and Fishers Island.
Raynor designed and built the course from 1923 to 1925. Raynor’s design for Charleston is a special one. He routed template holes from the salt marsh edge of Wappoo Creek to the rolling hills of live oaks to the west.
This mostly flat course gathers its character from the unique combination of ponds, marshland, and trees that its holes are routed over, around, and through. Raynor created wide corridors to create angles and strategy, rewarding players who take the safest angles to avoid the most intimidating, deep bunkers, and sloping green surrounds.
NOTABLE CHANGES
The course has been restored several times over the past 40 years, beginning with John LaFoy’s work in 1990, after the destruction caused by Hurricane Hugo. Brian Silva performed restoration work here in 2006, adding updated irrigation, draining, and sub-air systems, while also renovating roughly 40 bunkers. When the club discovered more information about its original design in the mid-2010s, Kyle Franz came in to restore six holes more closely to their originals.
NOTABLE HOLES
The 11th hole is known as Old Fateful because of its propensity for wrecking low-scoring rounds of golf. This 177-yard par three presents a particularly severe version of a reverse Redan. Players who miss the green on either side can face a blind second shot from a bunker.
The 464-yard 16th is made all the more daunting by its narrow Lion’s Mouth green. The pin position on this green should dictate a player’s strategy off the tee; leaving yourself a long-iron approach over this massive center greenside bunker is a recipe for a high score. The par-three 17th is a Short that includes a wrap-around bunker almost completely surrounding the green, which features a thumbprint. A precise tee shot will yield a birdie opportunity, while anything on the wrong side of the thumbprint will become a difficult two-putt par.
NOTABLE EVENTS
Henry Picard served as a club professional here from 1925 to 1934, before winning the Masters in 1938. Hall-of-Famers Beth Daniel learned how to play golf here. Charleston hosts several amateur tournaments each year: the Azalea Invitational is hosted every year before the Masters, as well as the Azalea Senior and the Beth Daniel Junior Invitational. Past champions of the Azalea Invitational, which has been held since 1946, include D. J. Trahan, Webb Simpson, and Cole Hammer. The club held the 2013 US Women’s Amateur, which was won by Emma Talley. Lee Jeong-eun won the US Women’s Open here in 2019.
Top: the Redan 11th. Middle: the 10th green.
Bottom: a forced cary on a par four.
Right: the 10th green with Charleston across the bridge.
L i ON’S MOUTH
The Lion’s Mouth is somewhat of an oddity among the template hole designs. It’s a hole design strategy that was only used infrequently by C. B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor: their best known surviving example is the excellent 16th hole at Country Club of Charleston. Nevertheless, this hole strategy has become increasingly popular in modern times. Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore deserve some credit for the upswing: the longtime design partners have included variations of the Lion’s Mouth on many of their best known courses, including the 8th hole at Sand Hills.
The Lion’s Mouth hole obviously takes its name from the deep greenside bunker that occupies the front, center area of the green, which looks like a lion opening its massive mouth to let out a roar. The green will then have two arms that wrap around both sides of the bunker. When viewed from directly overhead, the green often looks similar in shape to a molar tooth. The 13th hole on the Old Course at St Andrews was the inspiration for the Lion’s Mouth. The St Andrews version only bears a passing resemblance to Raynor’s. New versions of the Lion’s Mouth were part of recent renovation work at Metairie and Fox Chapel.
Like most Lion’s Mouth holes, the 16th at CC of Charleston is a handful. It’s a long par four that can play as long as 464 yards. The greenside center bunker is
deep and intimidating. The two “wings” of the green protrude out into the fairway. The wings give better players the option to try and run their long approach shots up the wings on either side of the bunker. For mere mortals, a more realistic plan is to play a drive and approach with the idea of getting the ball up close to the green in a position to best take advantage of the backboard slope on the back of the green. If you are expecting a longer approach, smart players will lay up left of the Lion’s Mouth for a left hole location, or to the right for a pin on the right.
Some of the awareness and popularity for such a hard hole might be due to how stunning the Lion’s Mouth bunker looks from an overhead perspective. Lion’s Mouth holes are difficult ones to play well, but their strategies are easy to understand.
Left and Right: Charleston’s magestic Lion’s Mouth green.
B LUE MOUN d GOLF & COUNTRY CLUB
1926
Wauwatosa, Wisconsin | Par 70 | 6,743 yards
Blue Mound Country Club was organized in 1903, just a decade after its southern neighbor Chicago Golf was formed by C. B. Macdonald and others. Golf at Blue Mound was first played over a basic nine-hole layout. That course was expanded in 1908 to 18 holes. Then in 1923, faced with a land lease that was going to expire in 1929, the club acquired two adjoining farms and hired Seth Raynor to design and build a golf course on the new property.
Construction on the new golf course began in the spring of 1924. The course opened for play on Memorial Day, 1926. Club records confirm Charles Banks had been hired to replace Raynor by at least 1927.
Like many of the clubs Raynor and Banks worked for, Blue Mound members were hit hard by the stock market crash of October 1929. Unable to meet its obligations, Blue Mound Country Club was dissolved in 1933. Members reorganized as Blue Mound Golf and Country Club and acquired the title for the land and assets of their old club in 1936.
Since 1926, much has changed on the land surrounding Blue Mound. What was
once a quiet farmland has filled with development. A large shopping mall crowds to within 150 yards of Blue Mound’s stately clubhouse, and the opening three holes are bordered by commercial buildings and a major four-lane road. But on the inside of Blue Mound’s fence line, time stands still.
Visitors get the sense that Blue Mound is comfortable with what it is and what it isn’t. It is the only Seth Raynor course to have hosted a PGA Championship, but there is no wild talk of trying to host another one. Plans to move to a bigger piece of property were shelved decades ago. There are also no tennis courts or pool. Blue Mound is just golf on a great Raynor design that is now properly presented.
Some people may think that this Raynor course is flat, but they’ll be impressed by the more-than-subtle land movement, which includes a noticeable ridge in the middle of the property. Raynor used this ridge artfully to provide strategy and interest for several of the holes. And first-time players will be surprised by the number of fairway bunkers that cannot be seen from the tees, providing a similarity to old links courses, especially the Old Course at St Andrews. They’re a subtle, genius move on Raynor’s part, providing complexity and challenge to many seemingly straightforward tee shots.
NOTABLE HOLES
The 5th hole at Blue Mound is a Road Hole template that plays more similar to its St Andrews namesake than most of the Road Holes that Macdonald or Raynor built. It’s a 497-yard par five: a perfect distance to tempt a modern player to go for the green in two. A birdie four seems achievable, while a bogey six is much more realistic. The long, curving fairway has three bunkers guarding the right side of the fairway. It’s a risk to flirt with these bunkers, but like at St Andrews, players gain a large advantage if they place their tee shot on the right side of the fairway. Up ahead is a narrow green in standard Road Hole configuration: a skinny bunker running diagonal behind the green that substitutes for a road, and a small, deep bunker in front of the middle of the green: a Road Hole bunker that’s as round, deep, and nasty as the original. These two hazards force playing strategies similar to the 17th at St Andrews. A long drive up the right creates an opportunity to run a second shot onto the green.
A drive on the left of the fairway or left rough will make approach shots around or over the road hole bunker almost impossible to hold on the green. Playing a second shot short-right of the green is never a bad play, since it creates a reasonable angle for getting the third shot near the hole.
After the Short 7th hole takes you down to the low-lying, northeastern corner of the property, Raynor brings players back out with the long, uphill 8th hole. Avoiding the short-left fairway bunker is important on this 450-yard par four. The second shot needs to clear a pair of diagonal cross bunkers about 40 yards short of the green, so missing the fairway with your drive can lead to a tough decision for the second shot. Up at the green, Raynor has benched a Punchbowl green partially into the hillside. The opening is front-right, while the other three-quarters of the green has an outer lip that is curved upward several feet higher than the floor of the green. There is also a small trap short left for good measure. This must have been a very difficult finishing hole before the nines were reversed.
Blue Mound’s 10th hole—originally the opening hole before Raynor’s nines were flipped—is a rare use of the Raynor’s Prize Dog Leg template.
The 13th hole is a 185-yard Redan with an oversized slope on the right. The medium distance tee shot means that many golfers don’t need to use the kicker to funnel the ball to a back pin, but the attractive wave of green turf makes you want to try a low runner anyway.
Top: the approach to the double Plateau 2nd green. Middle: the 8th hole’s Punchbowl green. Bottom: side view of the Biarritz 3rd.
NOTABLE CHANGES
A number of Raynor bunkers were eliminated in 1942 as a cost-saving measure.
The front and back nines are flipped from Raynor’s original plan. This is believed to have occurred sometime after 1945.
Tom Doak’s Renaissance Golf Design was hired in 1999 to help restore the Blue Mound golf course to Raynor’s original designs. Bruce Hepner from Renaissance led the effort to clear non-specimen trees, expand fairways, and restore more than 45,000 square feet of putting surfaces. The results have been met with high praise from Blue Mound members and visitors. The club continues to improve the design, removing more trees and presenting the course better each year.
NOTABLE EVENTS
Blue Mound became just the second C. B. Macdonald or Seth Raynor golf course to host a men’s major when the PGA Championship was played in 1933. Gene Sarazen defeated Willie Goggin 5&4 in the final match. It was the third PGA win for Sarazen, and the sixth of the seven majors he would win.
Blue Mound had another big name champion when Babe Didrikson Zaharias defeated Mrs. Russell Mann 5&4 to win the 1940 Women’s Western Open.
And in 1955, Dr. Cary Middlecoff won the Miller High Life Open: the only PGA Tour event ever played at Blue Mound.
In recent years, Blue Mound has served as the companion course for the 2011 US Amateur and 2022 US Mid Amateur held at Erin Hills.
Below Left: above the Redan green (Photo by Jerry Rossi).
Below Right: side view of the 9th green, with clubhouse (Photo by Jerry Rossi).
Next: the tee shot on the Hog’s Back hole at Blue Mound.
HOG’S BACK
The term Hog’s Back describes a hump or the domed shape of a fairway or internal contour of a green. There is no specific hole design or strategy called Hog’s Back, although at several Seth Raynor’s courses, there are holes named Hog’s Back.
Golden age architects often designed holes with Hog’s Back-shaped fairways out of necessity. In the 1920s, cutting away a large hill or ridgeline wasn’t practical. Finding a way to incorporate highpoints of a property into a usable hole design made more sense. Holes with Hog’s Back fairways reward accurate driving. Wellplaced tee shots would typically settle into spots on the fairway that left easier angles into the green. Drives not finding the ideal line would be repelled by the slopes of the Hog’s Back into a far less favorable position.
On putting greens, the term Hog’s Back refers to an internal ridge or spine on a green. The spine will divide a large green into smaller zones, and in the process help separate good approach shots from great ones.
The 12th hole at Blue Mound shows the demand that a Hog’s Back fairway can place on tee shots. Second shots must be played from the fairway to have any realistic hope of hitting the green on this 480-yard par four. But only well- placed drives have a chance of staying in the fairway. Drives pushed to the right will kick farther right into the rough. Drives pulled left of center meet a similar fate. Whether it’s the drive or the approach, only the best will be well-received on a Hog’s Back hole.
FISHERS ISLAN d CLUB
Fishers Island, New York | Par 72 | 6,556 yards
Because Seth Raynor unexpectedly passed away six months before his course on Fishers Island was completed, the 51-year-old engineer never saw the final version of what some consider his best design. Fishers Island’s beauty is matched by few other courses in the world.
The Fishers Island Club sits on the eastern tip of its namesake island in the east end of the Long Island Sound, about two miles off of the southeastern coast of Connecticut. Maps report that Fishers Island measures nine miles long and one mile wide. Anyone who has been lucky enough to play golf on Fishers can tell you the island is the ideal size and scale for a great golf course. Raynor’s routing takes advantage of the coastlines and hills to provide dramatic golf while retaining the width and strategies that make his golf courses a favorite of golfers of all skill levels. Remarkably, 14 of Fishers’ 18 holes either begin or end at the very edge of the blue water of Fishers Island Sound to the north and Long Island Sound to the south. No fewer than six of Fishers’ holes could warrant serious consideration for inclusion on any list of most beautiful holes. The photos accompanying this chapter tell that story better than the words that you are reading right now.
But Fishers is more than glamor shots, ferry rides, and unforgettable summer days. It’s a design worthy of its setting, and a highpoint of creativity and problem solving by a man operating at the peak of his talents.
Template holes are a good solution for creating interesting courses on less than interesting land. To the contrary, Fishers Island demonstrates Raynor’s skill for identifying the best opportunities to apply the Ideal strategies on a great piece of property.
The history of this island is notable. The Pequot Indians were the first group known to spend time on the island. They called it Munnawtawkit. The first European to visit the island was a Dutch fur trader named Adriaen Block in 1614. It was Block who named the land Visher’s Island, after one of his travel companions. Future colonists used the island to raise livestock and eventually develop a small town and fishing industry on the island.
In 1889 Edmund and Walton Ferguson purchased 90 percent of the island for $250,000. By 1925, the second generation of Ferguson owners had become the
primary shareholders in the Fishers Island Farms Company. The Fergusons had observed the development of the Mountain Lake resort community in central Florida and decided to create a similar retreat on 1,800 acres of unused land on the eastern end of Fishers Island.
The Fergusons hired the Olmsted Brothers company to develop the project, and Seth Raynor to design and build two 18-hole courses. Work on the first golf course began in the spring of 1925. The project had a budget of $1 million. Raynor’s associate Charles Banks completed the golf course following Raynor’s death in January 1926. Raynor’s final masterpiece opened for play in July 1926.
The stock market crash of 1929, a major hurricane in 1938, and America’s entrance into World War II all caused Fishers Island to be developed at a much slower rate than investors had planned.
In recent decades, the club has made up for lost time. Today’s Fishers Island has about 300 year-round residents. In the summers, the population swells to more than 2,000. Families with notable names like Rockefeller, duPont, Firestone, Whitney, and Roosevelt are said to have spent past summers on the island.
It’s more difficult to stay on Fishers Island than two comparable, somewhat-nearby islands: Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Tourism is discouraged here by the lack of overnight accommodations.
Visitors to Fishers Island Club will see clear signs of prosperity. The club built a huge new clubhouse a few years ago. The few private homes that are visible from the golf course could be mistaken for a clubhouse. But the golf course remains very well preserved, without being polished or stuffy. The club protects its Seth Raynor crown jewel, but they haven’t spoiled it. Playing surfaces are well maintained but not manicured. The course also famously thrived without an irrigation system, as rainfall and moisture from three directions off the island keep the turf in good, fast, and firm condition. The effect is a feeling that playing the golf course today isn’t much different than it would have been decades earlier. The peanut butter, jelly, and bacon sandwiches at the small halfway house are the famous delicacy of this club: just another charm of this elite island retreat.
Below Left: the Short 16th hole. Below Right: looking out to the Connecticut coast. Right: the 10th and 11th holes, playing along the water.
NOTABLE HOLES
The 4th hole at Fishers is not just one of the best golf holes at Fishers Island, it’s a candidate for one of the best holes in the world. The 397-yard par four is based on the Alps hole strategy. Running along the southeastern shoreline of the island, the hole requires only a long iron for the tee shot up to a fairway that’s located on a plateau 30 feet above the water. There are no bunkers anywhere on the hole. Even golfers who have successfully placed their drives in the fairway will have their views on the second shot completely blocked by a small hill that Raynor put to good use. Approach shots on the 4th are memorable. The approach is played with a short- or mid-iron over the hill and down into a huge Punchbowl green that is completely hidden from the fairway and set on the edge of the shoreline, with a large flagpole directly behind the green. Water drains out the Punchbowl through a notch in the front-left of the green. There are few moments in golf more pleasing than cresting the mound on the 4th, putter in hand, and taking in the panoramic views of Block Island Sound as you walk down to the green to confirm who the owner is of the ball that’s nearest to the hole.
Players exiting the 4th are immediately greeted by the Biarritz 5th, an uphill 207-yard par three that could also be a candidate for any list of world class golf holes. Raynor has again found the seemingly perfect spot on the island for Fishers’ version of the Biarritz template. The hole hugs the southeast coastline, playing uphill to the greensite. Fishers maintains the landing area in front of the green’s swale at fairway height, but that front apron plays firm and bouncy condition, so low flying balls that land short of the green have a chance to run through the swale and up onto the back of the green.
The 7th hole, an original design known as Latimer, is the next visual stunner at Fishers. Running from south to north, the 363-yard par four begins in the center of the narrow island and runs down to a square green that’s perched above the northern shoreline. Latimer presents strategic decisions with every shot. Hitting driver from the tee brings small ponds on each side of the landing zone into play. Driving onto the right side of the fairway yields a better angle for the next shot. Approaches are intimidating on the 7th: the elevated green can look like it’s hanging out into the Long Island Sound. The green is defended by a false front and steep drop offs on the other three sides of the green. The green slopes from back to front, though the view from the fairway can make it seem otherwise.
Hole 12, named Winthrop, is a 389-yard par-four that plays uphill from the tee to fairway and uphill again from the fairway to a reverse Redan green. The slopes on the 12th green are severe and cause approach shots to feed from left to right and from front to back of the green.
Top: the 4th green from atop the Alps hill. Middle: the 9th (left) and 10th (right).
Bottom: the 11th (left), 12th (middle), and 13th (right)
Right: side view of the Biarritz 5th.
NOTABLE EVENTS
On September 21, 1938, a powerful hurricane caused significant damage to the entire island, killing three people and injuring 20. The original 2nd green at Fishers Island was lost to storm damage.
Gil Hanse is the consulting architect at Fishers Island.
Above: side view of a green through the tall fescue.
Right: aerial of the par-four Alps hole with Punchbowl green.
PUNCHBOWL
The 4th hole at Fishers Island is an impressive example of what can result by combining two strategic design elements on one hole. In the case of Fishers’ 4th hole, an Alps hole strategy is combined with a Punchbowl green design.
The Alps template is discussed in detail in the National Golf Links of America chapter. Punchbowl greens don’t take much to describe. Their name comes from the shape the greens resemble: punchbowl greens are sunken in the middle and have higher edges around most of the perimeter of the green. Their effect is to catch approach shots and funnel them back toward the center of the green when they land. Punchbowl greens are sometimes built into hillsides (as it is at Mountain Lake) or natural bowls in the ground (as it is at Sleepy Hollow). In other cases the floor of the Punchbowl will be at fairway level while the edges of the green are built up: not unlike what you might see at a skateboard park. These greens are usually large.
Punchbowl greens are often used in combination with template hole strategies. By their very nature, most approaches into Punchbowl greens will be blind–even the one at Camargo is blocked by a small hill–since the edges of the green are much higher than the middle. Sometimes this is accomplished by architects finding clever places to fit them into an existing landscape. Other times, Punchbowls are entirely manufactured into their sites.
The 9th hole at Royal Liverpool was the inspiration for the Punchbowl template. Most of the earliest Punchbowl greens were not built by man, but by sheep or Mother Nature. Punchbowl greens were far more commonly used in courses built during the golden age of golf course design of the 1910s and ‘20s.
Punchbowls must be well-designed and constructed if they are to drain water properly. Some Punchbowls did have drain tiles in their centers, but look carefully on most Punchbowl greens and you’ll
usually find one small low corner or trench that evacuates water during heavy rains.
The creator of a Punchbowl green must be comfortable with the inevitable criticism from players who are unhappy playing to a hole they can’t see. Ben Hogan might have reminded the critics that blind shots are only blind the first time you play them. For other players, the Punchbowl has strong visual appeal. Those with local knowledge can find they experience a boost in confidence when hitting toward a Punchbowl green that they know will funnel the majority of their slightly-off approach shots back toward the hole.
One of the more enjoyable moments in golf is the feeling of playing what you think (and hope) is a good shot that disappears from view as it streaks toward its intended target. There’s often the anticipation that builds as you climb above the green to see where your ball has ended up, often closer to the hole. For these reasons, it’s difficult not to love a Punchbowl green.
Left: the Punchbowl 4th green from the top of the hill.
Right: side view of the Punchbowl hole.
THE TEACHER BECOMES THE STUDENT
A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Charles Henry “Josh” Banks was born in 1881 in Amenia, New York, just across the state line from the private boarding school, Hotchkiss. Banks began attending Hotchkiss as a high school sophomore. He was athletic enough to play fullback on the football team, pitch for the baseball team, and captain the track team. Banks graduated from Hotchkiss in 1902, and like many graduates of the prep school he continued his education at Yale. While an undergraduate, Banks was voted Hardest Worker by his classmates. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1906.
After graduation, Banks briefly took a job working for a railroad before accepting a job back at Hotchkiss. For the next 19 years, he taught English and Bible studies and coached several of Hotchkiss’ athletic teams. Banks also played golf well enough to finish runner-up in a tournament for Hotchkiss teachers.
Banks first met Seth Raynor sometime around 1923. Raynor was building a golf course for Yale 60 miles down the road, and had just agreed to redesign Hotchkiss’ golf course, which was the only documented instance of Raynor waiving his design fee. By 1923 Banks was working as a fundraiser for Hotchkiss, and he agreed to serve as a liaison between the school and Raynor.
The renovation of the existing Hotchkiss course took place over a two-year period. It was during this time that Banks became interested in golf course architecture. He and Raynor struck up a friendship during the two summers that Raynor visited Hotchkiss.
A member of the Hotchkiss golf committee wrote after the fact that “Mr. Raynor entrusted Mr. Banks with making models for most of the greens and superintending the construction.”
By early 1925, Banks had resigned his position at Hotchkiss to work for Raynor full time. Raynor was juggling a dozen projects at the time, and records would indicate that he entrusted Charles Banks with responsibilities almost as soon as he was hired. Advertisements naming Banks as a Raynor associate began appearing in the summer of 1925. Banks was the only one of Raynor’s employees whom Raynor referred to as an associate.
time together, though we worked steadily in the field by day and on the maps by night, often up to midnight.”
When Raynor died suddenly three months later, it was Banks who was left to complete the string of projects Raynor was working on. In a March 12, 1926 New York Evening Post article, Banks is described as working on Cragin Park, Essex County, Rock Spring, Knollwood, Camargo, Fairyland, a second course for Fishers Island, and the course in Hawaii that was eventually be named Waialae.
“When the two new courses of the Essex County Country Club . . . were to be built, the late Seth J. Raynor was engaged as architect. At the time I was associated with Mr. Raynor and studied the conditions with him very carefully. How well I remember his reply when he was asked by a member of the Board of Governors how much the courses would cost. He simply said, ‘I don’t know,’ and the Board could see the reasonableness of this reply.”
—Charles Banks, American Golfer, May 1930
Banks oversaw the completion of some of Raynor’s work in person. He likely managed others through correspondence: there is no record, for instance, of Banks having traveled to Hawaii. Among the golf courses that Banks completed for Raynor are some of the best in Raynor’s portfolio. He proved an able understudy to Raynor, as Raynor had been to Macdonald. Banks continued to use the Ideal hole templates his predecessors handed down to him, but like Macdonald and Raynor, many of Banks’ most notable holes were original designs.
By October 1925, Charles Banks’ name was listed alongside Raynor’s on the Fairyland project plans. The following month was the last time the two men would be together. Banks wrote later: “I went with him to Lookout Mountain, Tennessee where we worked together for a week on the layout of the Fairyland Golf Course. Mrs. Raynor accompanied Mr. Raynor on this trip and we had a most delightful
Like Raynor, Charles Banks’ career as a golf course architect would be short. Banks had just returned from Bermuda in March 1931 when he died of a heart attack in New York City. Banks was just 49 at the time of his death. He had only made the leap from educator to architect six years earlier. Besides completing many of Raynor’s projects, Banks managed to design about 15 courses on his own.
Unlike Raynor, Charles Banks did sometimes write about his new career, most notably in a seven-part series for American Golfer magazine in 1930. His writings provide at least a brief epilogue for the three-act story of Macdonald, Raynor, and Banks.
PART 3: GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
: the original Lido course on Long Island, 1940 (Courtesy Peter Flory).
Left
For most fans of Seth Raynor’s work, this will be the most frustrating section of the book to read.
The profession of architect—golf or otherwise—often involves drawing up plans that never come to fruition. Part 4 will offer tantalizing glimpses into some of those never-completed plans.
Presented within this chapter are the more heartbreaking subjects: those projects Raynor designed and/or built that no longer exist. Once upon a time, there were two dozen more Seth Raynor golf courses than those that survive today. These were actual courses, that real golfers played, that for at least a moment in time were among some of the best examples of Raynor’s work.
Financial problems caused some of these no-longer-existing courses (NLEs) to close. Others were swallowed up by municipal development, or redesigned or reconfigured to the point where most of Raynor’s contribution is now unrecognizable. Still more fell victim to the indifference of stakeholders to maintaining the intent of Raynor’s work. This is not an unusual occurrence in the history of golf. Every new generation of decision makers has their own ideas on how to improve their favorite courses, or to decide how best to serve the needs of their community.
The authors hope this chapter will serve as a cautionary tale to those who make decisions on the future of Golden Age designs. Perhaps we can add to the current movement to protect and restore the work of Raynor and his contemporaries.
THE L i DO CLUB LONG BEACH, NEW YORK
At one time, the Lido was as famous as any course Macdonald and Raynor created. It may soon be again.
Built between 1915 and 1917, the Lido was an entirely manufactured
creation. In an incredible (and expensive) feat of engineering, Raynor devised a system that used five hydraulic dredges to transport 2 million cubic yards of sand from the Long Beach Channel onto the 115-acre Lido Club work site. Macdonald’s design required as much as 40 feet of elevation changes to be shaped throughout the property. 2,500 tons of lime, 6,000 tons of fertilizer, and 35,000 cubic yards of topsoil were then spread over the property so that an estimated 1 million sprigs of native grasses could be planted. The final bill was more than $800,000, almost double what any previous course had cost to build.
Par at Lido was 72. The course measured just over 6,400 yards long and was a stern test on days the seaside winds were blowing.
The 4th hole was an example of the seldom-used Channel template. The Channel hole had a small alternate fairway surrounded by penal grass and weeds. Successfully driving onto the alternate fairway opened up a much shorter route to the green.
The 18th at the Lido was a modified version of dr. Alister Mackenzie’s winning entry in the Country Life magazine contest to design Lido’s closing hole. Macdonald and Raynor also borrowed ideas from one of the contest’s runner-up entries to create the 6th at the Lido. The hole is the first example of what became known as Raynor’s Prize dog Leg template. Almost every other hole at Lido was also based on an Ideal design.
Faced with the headwinds of World War I, the Great depression, and finally World War II, the Lido Club would only survive for a quarter century. In 1942 the property was acquired by the Navy and converted into a naval base. Still, the impressions created by the Lido during its short existence were strong enough to keep its reputation alive for 75 more years: just long enough for a student of golf history named Peter Flory to begin recreating the Lido in digital form using a video game simulator. Flory’s three-year project caught the eye of Tom doak, then Bandon dunes owner Mike keiser. As this book goes to print, the keisers have opened the almost-exact recreation of the Lido at their Sand Valley golf resort in Wisconsin.
The Links Club on East 62nd Street in Manhattan was founded by C. B. Macdonald in 1916. The Links started as a sort of in-town golf clubhouse, and it is very much alive and well today. The Links doublebrownstone clubhouse is full of silver trophies and significant paintings from golf and American history that reflect the makeup of its membership.
The Links Golf Club was also founded a couple of years later by Macdonald and many of the members of The Links. The two clubs shared a logo—a single kolfing figure similar to NGLA’s two kolfers—but always remained separate entities. Similar to later versions like d eepdale, Links Golf Club was conceived as an option close to the city for golfers who didn’t have time for the much longer commute to their Southampton clubs. Links Golf Club was only one mile east of the original deepdale location, about 40 minutes from Manhattan.
Macdonald designed the golf course and Raynor built it. Twelve holes were ready for play on September 1, 1918, and the rest opened the following spring. Links Golf Club was 6,313 yards
long and played to par of 72. At least 10 holes were versions of templates, including the long reverse Redan 13th. But the golf course was seldom played or even seen. The Links Golf Club was meant to be a low-key place where its 100 or so members could sneak in a quick round; guest play was discouraged. At the direction of Macdonald, the course was kept as firm as possible. Almost nothing changed on the course or at the club during the 67 years it existed. Incredibly, that included their superintendent Benny Zokosky and head professional Joe Phillips, who both worked at the club the entire seven decades it was open.
The downtown Links Club did play two annual tournaments: the Presidents Cup was held each May, and the Macdonald Cup was played for each November, typically on election day.
The Links Golf Club wasn’t just private, it was secretive. No records exist of how it was run or who was in charge. The club’s insular nature also led to its demise. The membership was reportedly restricted to the male descendants of existing members. As few as 13 members
AERIAL OF THE LIN k S CLUB
remained when the Links’ golf course was finally sold to a real estate developer in 1985. The land is now covered in residential housing. Template holes included: 1 Leven, 2 Alps, 3 Biarritz, 6 Road, 8 Short, 12 Plateau, 13 Redan, 14 Long, 15 Valley, 16 Eden.
SH i NNECOCK H i LLS GOLF CLUB SOUTHAMPTON, LONG i SLAND
Most profiles of Seth Raynor include the story of a then-teenage Raynor helping his father david survey the land that would eventually become Shinnecock Hills’ first golf course. Lesser known is the role that Raynor played in building today’s version of Shinnecock Hills decades later.
Willie davis, a Scottish pro by way of Royal Montreal Golf Club, was hired in 1891 by William Vanderbilt and some friends to build that first golf course for Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. davis’ 12-hole course straddled the Long Island Railroad. Willie dunn routed six additional
holes while working as Shinnecock’s golf professional. This full 18-hole course was ready for play in 1895, and in 1896 it hosted the second playing of the United States Open.
By 1897 the Shinnecock course had been stretched to more than 5,000 yards, but even that was no match for the new Haskell ball that was being played by increasing numbers of American golfers. By 1915 Shinnecock Hills decided they needed a new golf course, preferably one that would no longer be bisected by trains. C. B. Macdonald, who had just finished building his Ideal golf course right next door, was also still a member of Shinnecock. So Macdonald was a natural choice to help Shinnecock lay out their new course. Raynor supervised the construction, which was completed by 1917.
The new version of Shinnecock that Macdonald designed was 6,249 yards long and played to a par of 71. The new course included five holes from the Shinnecock’s original 18-hole golf course, which included several template holes, including the Short 3rd, Biarritz 6th, Eden 11th, Long 12th, Redan 14th, Cape 15th, and Road 17th.
The Macdonald version of Shinnecock Hills remained mostly unchanged until 1930. Facing possible threat from a proposed new highway, Shinnecock purchased 108 acres of land to the north and east of the clubhouse. Raynor was dead by 1930, and Macdonald had worn out his welcome at Shinnecock, so the club hired William Flynn and Howard Toomey to build Shinnecock Hills’ next edition.
William Flynn’s new routing for Shinnecock reused bits and pieces of seven holes from the previous Macdonald course. Today’s 7th hole at Shinnecock has the strongest tie back to the course Macdonald and Raynor built. This famous Redan was the 14th hole in Macdonald’s routing. Flynn built a new tee farther to the left, but it was eventually returned to its original location. Flynn enlarged the green and also raised the surface several feet. But Macdonald’s original intention for the hole is still quite alive.
THE MAC d ONAL d -RAYNOR RE dAN 7TH AT SHINNECOC k
DEEPDALE GOLF CLUB
LONG i SLAND, NEW YORK
deepdale Golf Club was designed by C. B. Macdonald and built by Seth Raynor, at the behest of William kissam Vanderbilt II. Vanderbilt, the grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, was founding a club on a 200-acre parcel of land he owned near Lake Success, just outside of New York City.
Vanderbilt envisioned the club as a private playground for himself and his friends on days when they couldn’t spare time for the long trip out to their golf clubs in Southampton. descriptions of the golf course indicate a Macdonald feel—bunkers in odd shapes, the lack of geometric greens—rather than the solo designs Raynor was already building. But there’s almost no surviving documentation of the specific roles that Macdonald or Raynor played. Macdonald did write in Scotland’s Gift: Golf that d eepdale was one of only a half dozen courses that he “gave any personal attention to after 1917.” What’s certain is that Vanderbilt was a difficult man to refuse.
Template holes included: Valley 1st, Raynor’s Prize dog Leg 6th, Short 8th, double Plateau 9th, Punchbowl 10th, Alps 11th.
The deepdale of today bears no resemblance to the original. The new course was designed by dick Wilson. Most of the Macdonald/Raynor golf course was destroyed in 1954 to make way for the new Long Island expressway. The few original deepdale holes that did survive became part of the new Lake Success Country Club golf course. There is very little resembling Macdonald or Raynor work left at Lake Success.
GREENBR i ER #3
WH i TE SULPHUR SPR i NGS, WEST V i RG i N i A
known today as simply “the Greenbrier Course,” Seth Raynor designed the third course at the Greenbrier Resort in 1922. The course opened for play in the fall of 1924. The course featured one of the most curi-
ous sequencing of holes of Raynor’s career: there were no par fives until the back-to-back 15th and 16th. The front nine also had only one par three, which meant the outward nine had eight par fours. Still, it’s said that Raynor’s design was the more popular of the Greenbrier course offerings.
The resort hired dick Wilson in 1962 to expand the resort’s golf facilities from 45 to 54 holes. The Raynor routing was broken apart as a result. Holes 3, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, and 18 remained original and were joined with six new Wilson holes.
More changes came with Jack Nicklaus’ engagement ahead of the 1979 Ryder Cup, and again for the 1994 Solheim Cup. The most serious setback occurred more recently, when the entire resort was devastated by heavy flooding in 2016. Any semblance of Raynor’s work on Greenbrier #3 was washed away. Today, the Greenbrier Course has been rebuilt as a nine-hole course.
GREENBR i ER (LAKES i DE)
WH
i TE
SULPHUR
SPR i NGS, WEST V i RG i N i A
Working on the Greenbrier’s #3 course also required Raynor to rework a couple of holes on the Greenbrier Lakeside course, which was originally designed by Alex Findlay.
In 1962 dick Wilson was hired to create a new 18- hole routing. Then in 1999, Bob Cupp reworked the course again. Today the course has been converted back into a nine-hole layout (with riveted bunkers!) called the Meadows. Most of Raynor’s version of the Lakeside course was on land that’s occupied today by the Greenbrier’s practice facilities.
PART 4: OTHER RAYNOR PROJECTS
RAYNOR DESIGNS THAT WERE NEVER BUILT • CONSULTING WORK •
ESTATE COURSES • SMALLER RAYNOR JOBS • COURSES WHERE RAYNOR’S CONTRIBUTION IS UNRESOLVED
Left: close-up of Raynor’s plan for a private-estate course for E.C. Shotwell. (all maps in Part 4 courtesy of the US National Archives)
DESIGNS THAT WERE NEVER BUILT
Like most architects of all kinds, Seth Raynor devoted some of his time to projects that never began or weren’t completed. Raynor’s career in golf coincided with turbulent times for the US economy and real estate markets. Several clients suffered financial setbacks that shutdown projects Raynor was working on. Raynor made drawings for the following courses, but they were never built, or they were built to someone else’s design.
CORAL KEYS CLUB
ENGLEWOOD, FLOR i DA
In 1923 the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm produced plans for a development in Englewood, Florida, to be called The Coral keys Club. The Olmsted plans included a layout Seth Raynor had made for two golf courses. Raynor’s design called for 27 golf holes that would be played in different combinations depending on which of the two 18-hole combinations was being played. None of the holes were ever built, and houses and condominiums now occupy the site.
CRAG i N PARK
S i NGER i SLAND, FLOR i DA
In december 1925, the Palm Beach Ocean Realty Company announced plans to build an 18-hole golf course in the center of Cragin Park. This was to be another course Raynor would design and build for Paris Singer, who was president of the company. Cragin Park was connected to the Blue Heron hotel project that Singer had his Everglades
partner Addison Mizner designing. The $4 million hotel was being built on Singer Island and would be connected to the mainline via cable car. This was the project Raynor was scouting immediately preceding his sudden death in January 1926. Charles Banks did design a course in March, but the collapse of the Florida land boom that same year bankrupted Singer, and the Cragin Park project was abandoned.
HAY HARBOR CLUB
F i SHERS i SLAND, NEW YORK
Seth Raynor designed plans for Hay Harbor in 1918. None of the Raynor plans were acted on. The work is still noteworthy for the timing and the clients: the Fergusons. This was before Fishers Island Club was built.
PEBBLE BEACH, CAL i FORN i A
One of the great “what ifs?” in golf history. In the mid 1920s, Marion Hollins hired Raynor to design and build what is now one of the world’s greatest golf courses. Raynor had previously worked with Hollins while she was developing Women’s National back in Long Island. It’s known that Raynor worked on several projects on the Monterey peninsula in late 1925 before continuing on to Hawaii for the Waialae project. But until recently there were only hints of how far Raynor might have gotten with his Cypress Point plans during his final visit. A recent find by Raynor historian Sven Nilson could be evidence that as early as 1924, Raynor (or someone else) produced a routing plan that mostly resembles today’s Cypress Point.
Alister Mackenzie is rightly credited with designing Cypress Point. It’s hard to imagine a better version than Mackenzie’s. Cypress Point would look much different if Hollins had chosen Charles Banks to proceed with the project, instead of pivoting to Mackenzie following Raynor’s sudden passing. For better or worse, the sharper features of Raynor would be quite the contrast with the more natural—and camouflaged—look of Mackenzie’s work.
DEL MONTE L i NKS MONTEREY, CAL i FORN i A
Not satisfied with just developing Pebble Beach, Cypress Point, and Monterey Peninsula Country Club, Samuel Morse’s golf plans for the area also included the expansion of golf offerings at Hotel del Monte. In 1919 Morse had purchased 18,000 acres of land from his employers. Morse had also acquired the Hotel del Monte around the same time, along with the hotel’s 18-hole golf course, which had been built in 1897. Morse wanted Raynor to redesign the course and build a second one for the hotel. Raynor apparently found time to create a routing that
would have extended the golf courses farther south of the existing one. Plans were abandoned when the owners of the needed land declined to sell.
MA i DSTONE CLUB EAST HAMPTON, NEW YORK
It is believed that Raynor helped with the 1916 expansion of Maidstone’s course. He returned in 1921 to develop further plans, but there is no evidence that any of Raynor’s 1921 plan was implemented.
GRAND HOTEL GOLF COURSE
H i GHPO i NT, NEW YORK
Raynor may have been involved with creating this nine-hole course that no longer exists. It’s more likely a case of mistaken identity with Len Raynor (no relation), the actual designer. There is one curious link: flour heir Julius Fleischmann had developed the area. Fleischmann owned a succession of yachts, each of which he named “Camargo,” where he was a longtime member.
OLYMP i C CLUB (LAKES i DE)
SAN FRANC i SCO, CAL i FORN i A
In a deal brokered by William Humphrey and Arthur Vincent, the Olympic Club purchased Lakeside golf links on March 20, 1918. Earlier that year, Olympic had Seth Raynor examine the property and develop a plan for improving the Lakeside golf course. Raynor reportedly approved of the setting and the soil conditions of the Lakeside location. Olympic did not go forward with his ideas, but the redesign plan Raynor developed for the club still hangs inside the Olympic clubhouse.
F i SHERS i SLAND CLUB (2ND COURSE) NEW YORK
Raynor completed designs for a second course on at least three different spots on Fishers Island. There was still some consideration to build a second course at the time of Raynor’s death. Banks inherited the project, but no serious work ever began.
MONTEREY PEN i NSULA CC (LAKE) PEBBLE BEACH, CAL i FORN i A
Along with Cypress Point, the club originally contracted Raynor to design two courses for Monterey Peninsula. The courses were referred to as the dunes and Lake courses. Before his death, Raynor’s work at MPCC was focused on what would become the dunes course. After Raynor’s death, the club hired Robert Hunter and Alister Mackenzie to design the second course, but again nothing materialized. It wasn’t until 1960 that Bob Baldcock and Jack Neville built the second MPCC course, now called the Shore course.
YALE GOLF COURSE (2ND COURSE) NEW HAVEN, CONNECT i CUT
The early plan was for Yale to have 36 holes. The widow of Ray Tompkins had recently donated 900 acres to the school, and 300 were set aside for golf. But the severe topography of much of the donated land caused the 36-hole plans to be abandoned. Another proposal called for three nine-hole loops that would start and return to a clubhouse. Macdonald and Raynor found enough challenges in building 18 holes for Yale, and no other holes were ever built.
M i D OCEAN CLUB (3RD N i NE) ST. GEORGES, BERMUDA
Raynor designed a third nine for Mid Ocean that was routed on Tucker Point land that’s occupied today by Castle Harbor. This third nine was never built. Charles Banks later designed and built the original Castle Harbor golf course after more land was acquired, but none of Raynor’s design was implemented. The Banks design at Castle Harbor has also been replaced by a new course built by Roger Rulewich in 2002.
YEAMANS HALL CLUB (2ND COURSE)
HANAHAN, SOUTH CAROL i NA
An Olmsted Brothers plan dated 1925 shows a Raynor routing of corridors for a second golf course that has never been built. The second course would have been placed between the gate entrance and the existing course, to the east of the first course, including along the current entry drive. Notes on the plan suggest the second course could be 9 or 18 holes. There are also 255 homesites on the plan that were never built, likely due to economic downturns, and the membership changing its mind on the development. This Olmsted plan is displayed on a wall in the Yeamans Hall pro shop.
PRIVATE ESTATE COURSES
Some of America’s wealthiest men became familiar with Seth Raynor’s work, often through the endorsements of C. B. Macdonald. Raynor received several commissions to build private courses on the estates of these magnates.
E. C. SHOTWELL COURSE ENTERPR i SE, FLOR i DA
Raynor drew up plans in June 1920 for a small course on the Florida estate of E. C. Shotwell. Raynor’s design was part of a larger Olmsted Brothers project. The Shotwell course was never built, but it would have been an interesting layout. Raynor’s design called for a 2,300-yard layout of nine holes played back and forth between three greens.
PAYNE WH i TNEY COURSE MANHASSET, NEW YORK
As a young man William Payne Whitney inherited $63 million from his uncle. Over the course of his life Whitney turned it into real money. A member of NGLA and The Creek, among others, Whitney had Macdonald and Raynor build a nine-hole course on his Greentree estate on Long Island. According to Macdonald, Whitney originally requested an 18-hole course but settled for three greens which could be played from multiple angles to form a nine-hole
BLUEPRINT FOR THREE-GREEN SHOTWELL d ESIGN
routing. Whitney died suddenly in May 1927, after collapsing while playing tennis. He left behind $180 million, which was the largest inheritance left by any individual until that time. Whitney’s daughter Joan used some of the inheritance to become the first owner of the New York Mets. 400 acres of the Greentree estate are still preserved by a foundation, and features of several of the Raynor golf holes are still easily identifiable on Google Earth. Greentree is immediately north of deepdale Golf Club.
EDWARD S. MOORE COURSE
NEW YORK
This is a three-hole course that Raynor built on the estate of Edward S. Moore. In 1926, Moore won the inaugural Wayne Johnson Cup at NGLA, but he is best known for serving as treasurer of the USGA and donating a new Havermeyer Trophy after the original US Amateur trophy was destroyed in a fire at East Lake in 1925.
JOSEPH PALMER KNAPP COURSE NEW YORK
J. P. knapp founded the American Lithograph Company in 1891. The company eventually became the leading printer of popular Sunday magazines. knapp was a charter member of the NGLA and helped with its development following the exit of Walter Travis. After the National was completed, knapp hired Raynor to build three holes on his 180-acre property in Mastic Beach. knapp eventually sold the property in 1938, and none of Raynor’s work survived.
OCEAN L i NKS (T. SUFFERN TA i LER COURSE) NEWPORT, RHODE i SLAND
Raynor built this nine-hole course on the estate of T. Suffern Tailer in 1920. He routed Ocean Links on land between Newport Country Club and the beach. Template holes included a Redan 3rd, Short 6th, Road 8th, and
Raynor’s Prize dog Leg 9th. Ocean Links was the site of Tailer’s annual Gold Mashie tournament, which featured many of the era’s top players. The Gold Mashie helped make Ocean Links the most notable of the courses Raynor built on private estates. Belt tightening brought about by the Great depression motivated Tailer’s widow to sell the Ocean Links property in 1931.
UNRESOLVED
These clubs believe Seth Raynor designed their course, but no proof or contradictory evidence exists.
BLOW i NG ROCK COUNTRY CLUB NORTH CAROL i NA
The course was called Green Park-Norwood when the first nine holes opened in 1915. A second nine was added in 1923. Claims have been made that donald Ross and/or Seth Raynor were involved. There is contemporary reporting from 1923 that Raynor worked at Blowing Rock. Unfortunately, a 1974 fire destroyed the Blowing Rock clubhouse and all of the club’s records, so it’s difficult to know Blowing Rock’s complete history. One possibility would be Ross designing the first nine and Raynor the second nine, but the donald Ross Society credits Ross with the 1923 work. Alternatively, Raynor was known to have been in the Carolinas in 1922-3 working on projects for C. V. Henkel, including nearby Statesville. Today only the Redan 2nd hole at Blowing Rock resembles work typical of Seth Raynor.
M i NNESOTA VALLEY COUNTRY CLUB
BLOOM i NGTON, M i NNESOTA
Golf was first played at Minnesota Valley Country Club in 1925, but the genesis for the club began a decade earlier. The Automobile Club of Minneapolis built their AAA Auto Club at Bloomington-on-the-Minnesota in 1911. By 1922, the club had acquired 160 acres on Old Bluff Road, across from their existing clubhouse. Bloomington Golf Club was the name chosen for the new venture, a
THE GOLF COURSES OF SETH RAYNOR
farmhouse was converted into the clubhouse, and AAA members were granted membership rights. Bloomington also welcomed public play. Following a 1938 change in ownership, Bloomington’s name was changed to Minnesota Valley Golf Club, and it became private. MVCC’s own club history traces the design of their golf course to Raynor. It’s unlikely Raynor oversaw the construction of Bloomington Golf Club. The only documentation of Raynor spending time in Minnesota took place during the creation of Somerset Country Club, which opened in 1920. Raynor did sometimes design courses meant for land that had not yet been acquired, so it’s possible that while Raynor was in Minnesota he made an early contribution to the Bloomington project. Raynor was persuaded to perform similar design work for University of Minnesota GC, known today as Midland Hills CC. But several local newspapers credited Bill Clark with creating MVCC. Whoever designed it, the course that exists today is consistent with the philosophies Raynor learned from Macdonald. With the exception of new tees that can stretch past 7,000 yards, the club believes their course has remained mostly unchanged over the past century. There are several anomalies here, including back-to-back par threes and a par four with a Biarritz green. MVCC’s clubhouse is in the southwestern corner of the property, and there is a lake that several holes needed to be routed around. Bill Bergin has advised MVCC since 2017 and oversaw a 2018 renovation.
WATCHUNG VALLEY COUNTRY CLUB
NEW JERSEY
This club has gone by many names during its long history before returning to the name Watchung Valley in the 2010s. It was located miles away until the move to the current property in the mid-1920s. It’s believed that Raynor designed the course on the new property in 1925, and after Raynor’s death the club turned to Marty O’Loughlin to supervise construction. O’Loughlin was the golf professional at nearby Plainfield Country Club and had overseen the completion of their golf course after donald Ross had departed. O’Loughlin was familiar with Raynor’s style; he had won the 1922 Met Open at the Lido. Nine holes were ready for play in 1927, with the second nine opening in 1929. How much of that 1929 version of Watchung should be credited to Raynor versus O’Loughlin is a matter of debate. Original 8th hole was lost when the club put in a driving range. In 2001 Tom devane made changes to holes 1, 3, and 10. In the late 2010s, architect George Waters oversaw a restoration project. Watchung design included many Ideal hole designs, but it does not have a Biarritz; instead, the 4th is a 152-yard par three that plays to a Punchbowl green surrounded by seven bunkers. The 16th hole is a Raynor’s Prize dog Leg template hole. The 465-yard par four turns right through the middle of the Watchung course. A bunker guards the corner of the dogleg, but it’s the three bunkers that cut across the fairway short of the green that have our attention. They are ideally placed to grab recovery shots played from the trees that line the inside of the dogleg.
THOUSAND i SLAND COUNTRY CLUB WELLESLEY i SLAND, NEW YORK
Thousand Island Yacht Club included nine holes of golf when the club was established in 1894. documentation refers to an A. B. Raynor as the “expert golf engineer” involved in expanding the course to 18 holes in 1922. It’s believed Raynor worked primarily in the southwest side of the course. Raynor’s nine holes would have started at the current 15th hole.
WATCHUNG VALLEY CC
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A book project of this size and scope is only possible through the help and support of many. We would like to thank the following people for their contributions to our project: Joe Arnold, Matt Beyel, Rob Bidermann, Asya Blue, Sam Bozoian, Greg Brabec, T. Michele Clark, Wendy and George David, Tom Doak, Peter Flory, Rob Fuller, Gil Hanse, Nigel Islam, Steve Lapper, Brent Lawrence, Robert Mayer, Adam McDaid, John Moran, Tommy Naccarato, Anthony Pioppi, John Sabino, George Sanossian, Stacy Schiff, John Simons, Jamie Slonis, Doug Stein, and Tyler Petrovich.
Jon would like to thank his dad Rich, who taught him the game. To his wife Heather, who encourages him to play. And to his pup, Gracie, who keeps him company on the course.
Michael thanks his wife Tracy–you are the Ideal partner–and his sons Andrew and George. He’s sorry if his late-night typing kept you awake.
James thanks his wife Molly for all of her support, as well as his father, mother, and stepfather for encouraging his love of golf.
We thank Doug Stein for the use of his new photographs of the 2022-3 restoration of Lookout Mountain. Thanks to Metairie Country Club for permission to use a reproduction of their painted portrait of Seth Raynor, and to Peter Flory for the archival aerial of The Lido Club. Photos of Waialae are courtesy of Alamy (p. 194-Design Pics Inc, p. 196-John Brown (l.) Pamela Au (r.), p. 197-Cal Sport Media) Archival images on pages 262, 264, 268, and 269 are courtesy of the United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. All other archival images are believed to be public domain, and all efforts have been made to trace any copyright holders. We thank Jerry Rossi for his photos of Midland Hills and Blue Mound, and Mason Savage for his photos of Somerset Country Club. Shoutout Panther Mike for his help.
ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER
JON CAVALIER is an award-winning photographer, author, and avid golfer who has played and photographed over 1,000 golf courses. He is the founder of LinksGems, a leading golf photography brand (Twitter/Instagram: @LinksGems) through which he has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for dog rescue and animal sanctuary charities. When he’s not golfing, Cavalier is a partner at an AmLaw100 law firm, where he is a civil litigator and trial lawyer. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Heather and his golf-dog Gracie.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
MICHAEL WOLF has spent much of the last three decades traveling throughout the world to learn about and document interesting golf courses. This is his second book on golf course history. Wolf writes and hosts No Laying Up’s Office Hours video series and serves on the USGA’s Museum and Library committee. He lives in Alabama with his wife Tracy and their sons George and Andrew. On Twitter/Instagram, he is @BamaBearcat.
JAMES SITAR has been a professional writer, editor, and publisher for over 20 years. An instructor at Loyola University Chicago, he earned his MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) and PhD in English and Editorial Studies from Boston University. Sitar founded Back Nine Press in 2020. He lives in Chicago with his wife Molly. He runs @golfclubhouses on Instagram.
