Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
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Speaker 1: can support our little podcast website newsletter there. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is with Wayne Morrison. Wayne Morrison is the uh I
Speaker 1: guess the country's most prominent William Flynn expert. So who's
Speaker 1: William Flynn. He's a golf architect. He designed a little
Speaker 1: course called Shinnakok Hills you may have heard of, as
Speaker 1: well as many others in the Golden Age. So we
Speaker 1: dove in and talked all things William Flynn. We talked
Speaker 1: about Wayne's book, The Nature Faker. If you are a
Speaker 1: member of a Flynn course or a William Flynn fanatic,
Speaker 1: you should check this book out. It's got basically a
Speaker 1: treasure trove of information and he talks about where to
Speaker 1: purchase it. You can send him an email. And it's
Speaker 1: a digital book, which is great because you have it
Speaker 1: everywhere you go. So anyways, Wayne and I talk in
Speaker 1: great length about William Flynn, the man, the golf architect,
Speaker 1: the player, and I hope you guys enjoy this. I
Speaker 1: think we'll probably do one of these about most golf
Speaker 1: architects if you like it, so let us know and
Speaker 1: thank you again for listening to the Friday Podcast. Here
Speaker 1: is Wayne Morrison.
Speaker 2: I miss the green for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 2: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 3: And when I find my egg Friday Egg, the dreaded
Speaker 3: Frida Egg Friday, Frida Egg, Brian Egg, Frida Egg, Bride Egg.
Speaker 2: Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.
Speaker 1: How did this whole thing start? How did you become
Speaker 1: enamored with William Flynn?
Speaker 3: Well, it's hard not to be enamored with William Flynn
Speaker 3: living and playing golf in the Philadelphia area because there's
Speaker 3: so many Flynn courses here. But I was commuting to
Speaker 3: New York every day for work and got tired of
Speaker 3: crossword puzzles and cryptograms and writing failed screenplays. So I thought,
Speaker 3: you know this guy, William Flynn has designed most of
Speaker 3: my favorite courses in the Philadelphia area. Nobody really knows
Speaker 3: anything about him. I see all this books and things
Speaker 3: coming out on other golf architects, and I thought, well,
Speaker 3: why not William Flynn.
Speaker 1: So where'd you start? What do you do to start?
Speaker 3: First thing I did was I reached out to Jim Finnigan,
Speaker 3: good friend of our families, and he's prolific golf writer
Speaker 3: and beautiful golf writer. And they asked him what he
Speaker 3: thinks I should do, and he said, research, got gotta
Speaker 3: you gotta find uh whatever materials you can. He suggested
Speaker 3: I talk to David Gordon, William Gordon's son. They had
Speaker 3: a design team together and William Gordon was a construction
Speaker 3: foreman for Flynn. So I reached out to mister Finnigan's advice.
Speaker 3: I reached out to David Gordon and I said, I'm
Speaker 3: trying to write this book on William Flynn, but I
Speaker 3: don't think it's gonna be more than a pamphlet because
Speaker 3: I can't find anything, and he said to me, what's
Speaker 3: your address. I gave my address. He goes, I'm going
Speaker 3: to send you something way, do you see. So about
Speaker 3: two weeks later I in, you know, in front of
Speaker 3: my house is this huge box. It's probably four feet
Speaker 3: by three feet and inside were probably about three thousand
Speaker 3: drawings that Flynn did on golf courses.
Speaker 1: So so you know, you had decided to write this
Speaker 1: a book or a pamphlet on William Flynn. How long
Speaker 1: were you waiting or looking for stuff on William Flynn
Speaker 1: before you talked to Gordon?
Speaker 3: Probably four or five months, and I wasn't getting anywhere.
Speaker 3: This was probably ninety eight, so a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: wasn't digitized then. And you know, there's some great historical
Speaker 3: societies in the Philadelphia area and great libraries, so I
Speaker 3: started going to those. I found some the papers of
Speaker 3: some important people at Marion and there was some really
Speaker 3: interesting things there. I found the Dollin collection, which is
Speaker 3: a wonderful collection of aerial photographs that this guy in
Speaker 3: the twenties and thirties would fly around doing industrial work
Speaker 3: and work for the federal government. I guess it was
Speaker 3: land management and things like that, but he also photographed
Speaker 3: golf courses. So in that was a collection of a
Speaker 3: number of courses in the Philadelphia area where he was based,
Speaker 3: but up and down the East Coast as well. So
Speaker 3: it just so happens there were probably twenty or so
Speaker 3: clubs that Flynn designed that I had old aerials of.
Speaker 1: So then this box comes full of.
Speaker 3: Stuff, you know, undreamed of riches as far as you know,
Speaker 3: investigating and trying to do a book on William Flynn,
Speaker 3: probably the largest collection of architectural plans by any architect
Speaker 3: pre World War Two. I mean, I don't think anything
Speaker 3: comes close. Even the toughs archives down in Pinehurst pairs
Speaker 3: and pales in comparison to what Flynn did.
Speaker 1: Take us to the like you open the box, like
Speaker 1: what what were you?
Speaker 3: I could? What did you do well after my jaw closed?
Speaker 3: Which it was incredible, I mean it was like it
Speaker 3: was the key to the whole project. Really. Without that,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have been able to write a twenty five
Speaker 3: hundred and seventeen.
Speaker 1: Page book Still Going getting Bigger, Still getting Bigger.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just found out last month that Flynn did
Speaker 3: a redesign of the Tuxedo Club's original course. So I
Speaker 3: had to add that chapter, but there were you know,
Speaker 3: I know there was. Dan Wexler did a book on
Speaker 3: lost courses, and one of the courses he mentioned was,
Speaker 3: wouldn't it be great if I could find the original
Speaker 3: plans for Boca Ratan South. Well there was the routing
Speaker 3: map for Boca Raton South and all the individual whole drawings.
Speaker 3: It's everything he wished he had when he was writing
Speaker 3: the book on the on the Boca Raton courses.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what was like the first at the
Speaker 1: top of the box, like the first thing that you
Speaker 1: opened and up or did you know immediately what was
Speaker 1: in it?
Speaker 3: I had no idea.
Speaker 1: He's like I'm saying, when you opened it, do you
Speaker 1: remember what the first thing that you looked at was Catanseit?
Speaker 3: Right there was right at the top were fourteen of
Speaker 3: eighteen hole drawings of Catanseit. And there was an interesting, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, revelation because most of the people at Catance
Speaker 3: had thought that it was a Frederick could course excuse me.
Speaker 3: He was the uh you know, the inspiration behind the project,
Speaker 3: and he oversaw the construction of it, but he didn't
Speaker 3: design the course. The Flynn plans matched the aerial photographs
Speaker 3: I had, and uh, you know, we found some documentation
Speaker 3: that later on that corroborated that it was a Flynn design.
Speaker 3: So that was a that was an interesting discovery of
Speaker 3: sorts where you know, we could find an attribute, you know,
Speaker 3: verify an attribution.
Speaker 1: So the box comes in total, how many how many
Speaker 1: golf courses information did it have on it?
Speaker 3: I think in the fifth low fifties.
Speaker 1: Low fifties, and pretty much really detailed, like what was
Speaker 1: the most detailed of the courses.
Speaker 3: Well of the drawing. The drawings we had access to
Speaker 3: was Denver Country Club, a redesign that Flynn was doing
Speaker 3: where it was one of the few courses where we
Speaker 3: had his detailed construction instructions. So if you look at
Speaker 3: Gil Hanson's drawings today, he uses as a template the
Speaker 3: Flynn plan the grid map, a grid paper where each
Speaker 3: box was ten yards and on the on the whole
Speaker 3: drawing and each green detail was ten feet. So and
Speaker 3: there was a list of construction, very specific construction instructions
Speaker 3: for each each whole the depth of the bunkers, the
Speaker 3: heights of the mounds, all kinds of really interesting detailed instructions.
Speaker 3: Because you know, Flynn had a very interesting. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you know this, but he had a really
Speaker 3: interesting business model where he grew up being a great
Speaker 3: suit you know, a really good player in high school
Speaker 3: competing against Francis we met, beating him most of the time.
Speaker 3: But he became interested in golf architecture really when he
Speaker 3: came down to Philadelphia. But he was a great agronomist,
Speaker 3: you know, he was one of the leading turf experts
Speaker 3: and experimenters in turf grasses. He developed construction techniques and
Speaker 3: seeding techniques and bent grasses that are used even today.
Speaker 3: So and he was a great architect so he was
Speaker 3: really a one stop shop. William Flynn Design Company was
Speaker 3: the designer and Toomey and Flynn was the construction and
Speaker 3: turf grass team.
Speaker 1: So they would consult on turf grass and build the
Speaker 1: golf course. Their model was like we'll help, we'll build you,
Speaker 1: we'll design it, build it, and then we'll also grow
Speaker 1: it in effectively.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, no other architecture firm back then was
Speaker 3: doing all those things and doing them at an elite level,
Speaker 3: so they got a lot of jobs that way. Flynn
Speaker 3: was also Philadelphia was an interesting place to be part
Speaker 3: of the golf revolution in the United States because it
Speaker 3: was a little behind the other cities. We talked about
Speaker 3: this a little earlier.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that. This is something I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you as a question, was how did William Flynn
Speaker 1: get to Philadelphia and how did he become part of
Speaker 1: this golf renaissance in the city.
Speaker 3: He came to Philadelphia to be on the construction crew
Speaker 3: because he was from Boston. He was from Boston, grew
Speaker 3: up in Milton, Massachusetts, caddied at Walliston Golf Course, and
Speaker 3: competed really, I mean golf. He was one of the
Speaker 3: leading high school golfers in the state. But he was
Speaker 3: also the captain of the basketball team, captain of the
Speaker 3: football team, and probably ran track as well. He was
Speaker 3: just a gifted athlete and really a brilliant, hard working guy.
Speaker 3: So he came to Philadelphia to work on the construction crew.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if it's on the East Course or
Speaker 3: the West course. Flynn's brother in law, Frederick pick Pickering,
Speaker 3: was the one of the leading golf construction guys in
Speaker 3: the country at the time. He, at the age of
Speaker 3: fifty two, married Flynn's eighteen year old sister, which even
Speaker 3: I don't know what it was like back then, but
Speaker 3: it seems a little scandalous today.
Speaker 1: And seems like a bad guy.
Speaker 3: Well, he had he had some issues, for sure. The
Speaker 3: marriage didn't last very long and he had some alcohol
Speaker 3: problems and was fired during the construction of the West
Speaker 3: Course at Marian at Marion and then Flynn took over
Speaker 3: a construction head of construction for the West course. He
Speaker 3: was at the you know, really close, became close with
Speaker 3: Hugh Wilson, who was the member in charge of the
Speaker 3: new course which is now the East Course at Marion.
Speaker 3: But they moved from Haverford to Ardmore and they hit
Speaker 3: it off. You know, it was more like a father
Speaker 3: son relationship. And Hugh Wilson was, you know, obviously a genius.
Speaker 3: He imparted a lot of knowledge on Flynn. Flynn and
Speaker 3: he worked together on a number of projects outside of Marion.
Speaker 3: Even they owned the first public golf course outside of
Speaker 3: the city. They owned together and designed together. That was
Speaker 3: it was originally called Marble Hall, and then Green Valley
Speaker 3: Country Club, a Jewish club in the area, moved from
Speaker 3: one location and purchased that from Flynn's estate, and then
Speaker 3: they worked together on Catanseit a little bit, Cobbs Creek certainly,
Speaker 3: and Pine Valley after Crump passed away.
Speaker 1: So the Philly School, I think this is one of
Speaker 1: the coolest. Obviously everybody knows phil Delphia as a mecca
Speaker 1: of golf in America, in America, but that that reputation
Speaker 1: is rooted in, you know, the Philadelphia School of Architecture
Speaker 1: and the kind of a group of individuals that included
Speaker 1: Flynn Wilson uh Founds, the Founds, his father son from Oakmont,
Speaker 1: and then also Tilling Hassen, George Thomas.
Speaker 3: And Crump and Crobi Clauter and you know, George Mehan.
Speaker 3: There's you know, some lesser names, but they collaborated. They
Speaker 3: played a lot of golf. The Golf Association of Philadelphia
Speaker 3: is an incredible organization and it was from the very beginning,
Speaker 3: was the first regional golf association. But uh the intra
Speaker 3: club play, inter club play, sorry, really sparked a lot
Speaker 3: of uh movement towards the better golfers. You know, we
Speaker 3: we talked, we brushed upon the Leslie Cup. So Philadelphia
Speaker 3: was a cricket a bastion of cricket. Baseball took a
Speaker 3: long time to take hold in the Philadelphia area, and
Speaker 3: so did golf because it was mostly horses in cricket,
Speaker 3: which kind of gave Philadelphia. I guess Philadelphia an advantage
Speaker 3: in the long run because some of the you know,
Speaker 3: Victorian golf with the steeple chases and the cop bunkers
Speaker 3: and things like that, you were happening elsewhere. And then
Speaker 3: when Philadelphia started getting into it in the mid to
Speaker 3: late eighteen nineties, there was, you know, there was a
Speaker 3: bit of a freedom of expression they didn't have. They
Speaker 3: weren't tied to the old world clubs. They weren't tied
Speaker 3: to what was going on in Chicago or New York
Speaker 3: or Boston. And the Leslie Cup was I forget when
Speaker 3: that was established, maybe nineteen hundred or you know, sometime
Speaker 3: between nineteen hundred and nineteen ten, and Philadelphia was just
Speaker 3: getting slaughtered by New York and Boston.
Speaker 1: So that Leslie Cup, it was Montreal.
Speaker 3: That was later on they were okay, yeah, so it.
Speaker 1: Was Boston, New York and Philly and it was a
Speaker 1: team competition.
Speaker 3: Right, it was. It was really the right. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: it's not it's it's lost a little bit of its luster.
Speaker 3: Like the the Linwood Halk amateur event at at the
Speaker 3: Huntington Valley and the Hugh Wilson at mary And they
Speaker 3: kind of slipped away because all the college you know,
Speaker 3: tournament season and things like that.
Speaker 1: But we were getting into the Leslie Cup needs needs to
Speaker 1: be resurrected.
Speaker 3: Or well it needs to attract, you know, instead of
Speaker 3: the old guard you know, players from the different cities.
Speaker 3: You know, you could have a little bit of Yeah. So, uh,
Speaker 3: Philadelphia just you know, was getting hammered in all these
Speaker 3: tournaments and they decide what we need are better golf
Speaker 3: courses to develop better golfers. And that was the genesis
Speaker 3: for Maryon and Pine Valley.
Speaker 1: So, you know, New York at that time time had
Speaker 1: National Golf Links. Garden City would have been around then, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In Boston myopia, right, the country Club would have been
Speaker 1: Essex would have been around, but it would have been
Speaker 1: a different golf course then than it is now. In Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: what did Philadelphia have.
Speaker 3: Three cans of peas in the grounds pretty much? At
Speaker 3: Philadelphia Country Club? Not much. And you know we were
Speaker 3: late getting a public golf going in Philadelphia. Cobs Creek
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixteen, I think that's when it opened. Was
Speaker 3: the first public course in the Philadelphia, whereas Boston and
Speaker 3: New York had public courses long you.
Speaker 1: Know, they had Courtland, yeah in eighteen ninety four whatever.
Speaker 3: In the Bronx, well, we had nothing, so we weren't
Speaker 3: developing great golfers. And the movement towards creating golf courses
Speaker 3: to promote better play, you know, really sparked the Philadelphia
Speaker 3: scare of golf architecture.
Speaker 1: So Marion and Pine Valley, to obviously the most historical
Speaker 1: places were really born out of collaboration and h being
Speaker 1: tired of getting their ass kect in a in a
Speaker 1: competition pretty much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Pine Valley even more so a collaborative effort because
Speaker 3: Marion was, you know, mostly Hugh Wilson. He was a
Speaker 3: rather sickly man unfortunately, but he knew he was really
Speaker 3: tied into the USGA. He and his brother Alan Wilson,
Speaker 3: and they were Cebe McDonald hooked them up with uh,
Speaker 3: the guys at the US Department of Agriculture. He's forgetting
Speaker 3: their names for a second. And they they put as
Speaker 3: much effort into golf architecture as they did playing services.
Speaker 3: Sub soil, you know, subs you know, below ground and
Speaker 3: above ground. And there was a guy in Philadelphia call
Speaker 3: Frederick W. Taylor, and he was a really interesting guy.
Speaker 3: He was also on the executive board at Pine Valley
Speaker 3: and uh he developed which is kind of a an
Speaker 3: angle angled version of the U s GA Spec greens
Speaker 3: and developed. He was really big into time management for
Speaker 3: large enterprises, and Flynn learned from him how to develop
Speaker 3: cost models to to that would be very accurate. So
Speaker 3: he could he could tell a club, you know, what
Speaker 3: it would cost to design and build a golf course
Speaker 3: and he'd be spot on. Whereas and I don't know
Speaker 3: this for.
Speaker 1: A fact, but Yeibon took some architects now could.
Speaker 3: Benefit from that. I heard. I heard, Uh, there wasn't
Speaker 3: a course that Donald Ross did that came in on
Speaker 3: or under budget everything of her. Yeah, So so Flynn,
Speaker 3: Flynn was attractive in that sense and that he could
Speaker 3: really you know, he took a scientific approach to to
Speaker 3: management of his of his operations and also how he
Speaker 3: approached Gough design. He spent a lot of time on site,
Speaker 3: so you know, whereas Donald Ross was doing twenty courses
Speaker 3: a year, Flynn was doing two or three courses a year,
Speaker 3: where even Rainer and tilling Hass were doing, you know,
Speaker 3: several two hundred courses or whatever. Flynn's only you know,
Speaker 3: he only did about eighty designs. Not all of those
Speaker 3: were built, certainly not all of them lasted. The land
Speaker 3: bubble in Florida caused the no longer existing courses down there.
Speaker 3: But today I think there's only about fifty courses that
Speaker 3: are you know, had any version of Flynn, whether it's
Speaker 3: an original design, a redesign, or you know, a varying
Speaker 3: scales or agonomic work that he.
Speaker 1: Did with with Flynn, I guess you know, you hear
Speaker 1: the other names that we talked about, Crump found and
Speaker 1: obviously those two and Wilson are tied direct two a
Speaker 1: couple of the greatest golf courses in the country. But
Speaker 1: then you George Thomas and aw tilling Hass are in there.
Speaker 1: And why do you think that Flynn, despite his vast
Speaker 1: number of golf courses and sometimes the stature of some
Speaker 1: of them, is a little bit slept on in the
Speaker 1: world of golf architecture.
Speaker 3: That's the question I was hoping to answer when I
Speaker 3: first started this, because I thought he wasn't getting the
Speaker 3: credit that he was due. You know, I would play
Speaker 3: inn club matches and gap. I was a remember at
Speaker 3: Rolling Green at the time, which is a fabulous Flynn
Speaker 3: course and not too far from Marion, and you know,
Speaker 3: i'd play all these I'd want to play the away matches,
Speaker 3: and I'd go to the away matches and I'd ask
Speaker 3: who the architect was, and most of the members would go,
Speaker 3: I don't know, why do you care? So but I
Speaker 3: found out that most of the courses that I liked
Speaker 3: in the area were by this guy, William Flynn, who
Speaker 3: to me was I had no idea who he was,
Speaker 3: and so I started exploring that Connie Logerman, Flynn's daughter,
Speaker 3: was still alive for most of the i'd say, the
Speaker 3: first ten years that I was writing the book, so
Speaker 3: I was able to get anecdotes and a little bit
Speaker 3: of a profile of who he was. Like she she
Speaker 3: said that he was a wild and mild irishman that
Speaker 3: he could, you know, he loved to go up in
Speaker 3: airplanes and do death defying stunts with the pilots at
Speaker 3: the time. But he was also he was he did
Speaker 3: go up with Dolan and but he was, you know,
Speaker 3: he was a really great family man. He was, you know,
Speaker 3: beloved by most of the people that met him when
Speaker 3: he worked for the Rockefellers to developing the course in
Speaker 3: at Bolchanico Hills he lived. He they let him stay
Speaker 3: in the big house with the family. When he was
Speaker 3: working with Albert Lasker. He was treated like a you know,
Speaker 3: like not like a like not like a contractor. He was,
Speaker 3: you know, they really had a high regard for him.
Speaker 3: He was apparently very well liked.
Speaker 1: He came over. He wasn't from a well off family
Speaker 1: when he came to the States.
Speaker 3: Right, No, he well, he was born in the United States.
Speaker 1: And okay, he was born there, but his family was
Speaker 1: his parents were.
Speaker 3: No, they were, yeah, they were, and they were laborers.
Speaker 3: The father was Flynn. Grew up caddying at Wallaston and
Speaker 3: but he married a gardener. And you know, she's in
Speaker 3: the she's h The gardener family in Boston is pretty
Speaker 3: well regarded. You know, I'm sure there's many gardeners there.
Speaker 1: I thought you were talking about like an actual garden Chauncey, No,
Speaker 1: like a like somebody that.
Speaker 3: The Gardener family one of those Brahmin families out of Boston.
Speaker 3: And uh so he he married well, I mean she
Speaker 3: wasn't you know, not everybody in those illustrious families were wealthy,
Speaker 3: but he married very well and he was accepted in
Speaker 3: the Philadelphia society. I mean, if you look at you know,
Speaker 3: the movers and shakers in Philadelphia were some of the
Speaker 3: biggest names in industry, and the Pennsylvania Railroad was the
Speaker 3: first billion dollar company in the in the country and
Speaker 3: most of those executives were Marion Golf Club members or
Speaker 3: Marion Cricket Club members at the time. So, you know,
Speaker 3: his relationship with with Hugh Wilson was, you know, sort
Speaker 3: of opened up a lot of doors for him. He was,
Speaker 3: you know, working on some of the big you know,
Speaker 3: in any given city where he was working, it was
Speaker 3: generally the elite club of the of the area. If
Speaker 3: you look at Cleveland, it was Pepper Pike Club and
Speaker 3: the Country Club and Pepper Pike. Shinnacock on Long Island
Speaker 3: it was, you know, the fanciest summer vacation spot for
Speaker 3: the New Yorkers. Cherry Hills in Denver, Cherry Hills in Denver,
Speaker 3: Indian Creek in Florida. You know, there's it's it's it's
Speaker 3: an interesting dynamic. Who his who his clients were. He
Speaker 3: didn't take on a lot of projects. Like we said earlier,
Speaker 3: he only did two or three courses you know, a year,
Speaker 3: spent a lot of time on site, so he was
Speaker 3: he kind of was the precursor to Corn Crenshaw and
Speaker 3: to Doak and Dehants where they design build teams. He,
Speaker 3: you know, as opposed to you know, some other architects
Speaker 3: that just put together a plan on a piece of
Speaker 3: paper and a construct and a contracting team builds it.
Speaker 3: He was on site quite a bit and as a result,
Speaker 3: his courses were built as he you know, if you
Speaker 3: took his preliminary or you took his final architectural plans
Speaker 3: and you overlaid those on an aerial photograph, an ald
Speaker 3: aerial photograph, they match exactly. So he you know, he
Speaker 3: was very precise in his planning and execution of his
Speaker 3: of his design work, didn't leave things to chance, so
Speaker 3: to speak, and had his own construction crew that went
Speaker 3: with them everywhere to me, to me and Flynn, Yeah, uh,
Speaker 3: well with you know, William William Gordon and Read Lawrence
Speaker 3: were the head of his construction crews who.
Speaker 1: Then later became a solo architecture Dick Wilson was he
Speaker 1: got fired once from flip by Flynn, but William Gordon
Speaker 1: had him rehired the Later that day, Flynn came back from.
Speaker 3: A trip somewhere and went back to Shinnacock and saw
Speaker 3: that that Dick Wilson took some liberties with his plans
Speaker 3: and flipped out and fired him on the spot. Dick
Speaker 3: Wilson's brother was also on the team, so probably a
Speaker 3: combination of Dick Wilson and Dick Wilson's brother and and
Speaker 3: William Gordon you know, pleaded up, you know, and Flynn
Speaker 3: hired him back. But he was very particular about how
Speaker 3: his golf courses.
Speaker 1: Seems like he was very type A very much so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think I think his courses benefit from
Speaker 3: his time on site.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think when you play, when you play a
Speaker 1: Flynn core. From my experience, it seems like one of
Speaker 1: his strengths was finding the best green sites and really
Speaker 1: maximizing properties by you know, you think about some of them.
Speaker 1: Lancaster is a perfect example where you know, effectively three
Speaker 1: focal points. Where the clubhouse is, where the the tenth
Speaker 1: green is, there's a ridge, and then where the first
Speaker 1: green is there's there's a ridge. And pretty much like
Speaker 1: you know, those three ridges control all but a few
Speaker 1: holes of the golf.
Speaker 3: Their hubs for the for the design. Yeah, and Flynn
Speaker 3: did that in a lot of places. His plans for
Speaker 3: the Country Club of York, which he didn't get, was
Speaker 3: very much like that. That's a fascinating study, by the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with the Ross and the Flynn Rouse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were both competing for the same job, and
Speaker 3: it had the same starting and finishing point because the
Speaker 3: farmhouse was going to be the clubhouse. So it's it's
Speaker 3: really interesting to see those two great golf architects how
Speaker 3: they've varied in their approach to the same site.
Speaker 1: For anybody that's there was a golf club Atlas article
Speaker 1: written about that, I believe, yeah, in the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, and if you just google that, I think
Speaker 1: it pulls up if anybody wants to look at that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you would have thought that maybe they were running back,
Speaker 3: you know, they ran in the same direction, or maybe
Speaker 3: at worse, they were playing opposite directions, but they were
Speaker 3: mostly ninety degrees from each other.
Speaker 1: And sometimes these you know, they had these effectively bake
Speaker 1: off that. That's exactly what a lot of modern architects
Speaker 1: hate is having to do a routing plan for a
Speaker 1: job they don't have, and Ross and Flynn did it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's it's I mean, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 3: a rare opportunity to just try to get into the
Speaker 3: minds of two celebrated architects but who looked at the
Speaker 3: same piece of ground very differently.
Speaker 1: What would you say some of the other strengths outside
Speaker 1: of spending time on site from William Flunn of courses
Speaker 1: and characteristics that say somebody could pick up on at
Speaker 1: a fun course.
Speaker 3: That's a good question. I think, well, from an architectural standpoint,
Speaker 3: he spent a lot of time tying the features into
Speaker 3: the ground natural to look natural. That's the name of
Speaker 3: your book, The Nature Faker. Yeah, he called his daughter
Speaker 3: said he called himself that. I didn't know that was
Speaker 3: a pejorative term, because I guess there was some anti
Speaker 3: scientific sort of effort going where, you know, people were
Speaker 3: talking about, you know, it was pseudoscience and there was
Speaker 3: something to do with evolution and you know, fake pilt
Speaker 3: down man and those kinds of things. But Flynn was,
Speaker 3: you know, self deprecating. He never took himself too seriously.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't think back then the architects took
Speaker 3: took each other all that seriously. They would undo each
Speaker 3: other's work without very you know, Flynn redid ross courses
Speaker 3: within a few years after they opened, or redid tilling
Speaker 3: half courses a few years they were open. And I'm
Speaker 3: sure other people you know, did the same. There wasn't
Speaker 3: Somewhere along the line. Golf architects became rock stars and
Speaker 3: are held in a in a certain regard, and the
Speaker 3: courses are held in a regard as well.
Speaker 1: Well. That's the thing I've I've always heard about golf
Speaker 1: course architects though, is well, when they came to town,
Speaker 1: they were like celebrities versus like golf pros. Like they
Speaker 1: were treated much differently than like golf pros. They created
Speaker 1: like almost like dirt. They couldn't go in the club,
Speaker 1: couldn't go in the clubhouse like you know. But golf
Speaker 1: course architects were always celebrities.
Speaker 3: Is that's right.
Speaker 1: I didn't really know that, I think for a while,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know, at a certain time, probably
Speaker 1: around the era of Hogan, you know, is when things flipped.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. So Flynn, I think he was able to
Speaker 3: to to make use of his successes in the Philadelphia
Speaker 3: area and his and his accomplishments in turf that when
Speaker 3: when clubs were looking for, you know, who should we hire,
Speaker 3: you know he was he was. He got the reputation
Speaker 3: as being an outstanding designer, construction guy, and turf grass expert.
Speaker 3: And you know, why hire three different people when you
Speaker 3: can hire one person and get it?
Speaker 1: Makes it easy, right, if they all want the bundle,
Speaker 1: that's I think bundle.
Speaker 3: I think that it's as I think Comcast before. That's right.
Speaker 3: He was. He was up for the you know, the
Speaker 3: Rockefeller family when they decided they were going to redesign
Speaker 3: the Willie Dunn course that they had on their estate
Speaker 3: in New York. When on a pretty long search the
Speaker 3: sons were, you know, trying to develop a golf course
Speaker 3: and celebration of their father who was a you know,
Speaker 3: avid golfer, and they had their engineer, you know, do
Speaker 3: do a search for golf architects, and he wrote this
Speaker 3: interesting letter to John D. Rockefeller Junior. Uh, there aren't
Speaker 3: really any good golf architects in America. Uh, if you know,
Speaker 3: the only two I could possibly recommend a the Donald
Speaker 3: Ross of Pinehurst and William Flynn of Philadelphia, and uh, he.
Speaker 1: Goes just throwing shade at so many architects.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, so uh, I think you know, the knowing
Speaker 3: the Rockefeller family as I do, and knowing how you know,
Speaker 3: what their approach was, I think they really appreciated the
Speaker 3: fact that here was a guy that was going to
Speaker 3: tell them exactly how much it was going to cost
Speaker 3: to build the golf course and he was going to
Speaker 3: deliver it on or under budget. They were thrilled with
Speaker 3: the course he did. And uh, he stayed in like
Speaker 3: I said, he stayed in their house, in in in
Speaker 3: mister Rockefeller Senior's house while he was doing that work.
Speaker 3: And uh. The the reporting afterwards was that they, you know,
Speaker 3: they he took them on a journey. You know around there.
Speaker 3: It's one of the most beautiful player in America. But
Speaker 3: you know, the course wound through this estate with lots
Speaker 3: of long views over the Hudson River and beautiful specimen
Speaker 3: trees and things like that, and it was it was
Speaker 3: a journey. And Flynn, I said, you said, you asked me,
Speaker 3: you know, what are some of the characteristics of Flynn?
Speaker 3: He was his routings are phenomenal, His use of the
Speaker 3: natural land and maximizing the use of the features at
Speaker 3: hand are brilliant and I think that creates some sort
Speaker 3: of uniqueness about his courses because every piece of land
Speaker 3: is a little bit different, and if you use the
Speaker 3: land rather than manufacturing like today, you know they have
Speaker 3: those big bulldozers and you know they replicate you know,
Speaker 3: whole number three with green number B or whatever. You know,
Speaker 3: he really liked to use the site as much as possible.
Speaker 3: But where he would build things and create architectural elements,
Speaker 3: he tied them into look natural and that that's kind
Speaker 3: of you know, in a way, I think he's you know,
Speaker 3: they look at they look at some of his work.
Speaker 3: For people today look at some of his work and say,
Speaker 3: you know, he got a great piece of ground. Well,
Speaker 3: if you look at the Cascades where it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's not really a mountain course. It sits in
Speaker 3: a valley, but it's surrounded by mountains. That was an
Speaker 3: engineering marvel. I mean, I don't know how many tens
Speaker 3: of thousands of pounds of dynamite were used and moving
Speaker 3: streams and rebuilding land areas for for fairways and greens.
Speaker 3: It But but if you look at it. You can,
Speaker 3: you can look at the list of all the engineering
Speaker 3: work that was done. But you look at it, it
Speaker 3: looks it looks like it's nature made it, not not Flynn.
Speaker 3: So I think routing is key. The use of the
Speaker 3: natural features is key. And those are hard concepts for
Speaker 3: most people to either go to a golf course once
Speaker 3: or twice, or even members at a club to really
Speaker 3: pick up on pick up on it. Those are hard
Speaker 3: things to see.
Speaker 1: It's not like eccentric greens, like like a tilling, like
Speaker 1: a like a Alistair Mackenzie or a Walter trapt.
Speaker 3: With flourishing bunkers and the eye candy.
Speaker 1: So bold external features like a rainer course that were
Speaker 1: built up by steam shovels, or a Charles Banks course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his architecture was much more, almost below the surface in
Speaker 1: a way.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They I mean he was an outstanding builder of
Speaker 3: golf courses. They drained great. You know, he and he
Speaker 3: had a he had an understanding that the technology was
Speaker 3: affecting the game. You know, when he grew up, it
Speaker 3: was the gut approcher ball and hickories, and then it
Speaker 3: became Basco ball and steel shafts and better, better, athletes
Speaker 3: were playing the game. So even in nineteen twenty seven,
Speaker 3: he said, if we don't do something about the ball,
Speaker 3: we're gonna have to start building seventy five hundred and
Speaker 3: eight thousand yard golf courses. So he proposed around that
Speaker 3: time that instead of bastardizing and lengthening existing golf courses
Speaker 3: that would negatively effect member play at some of these
Speaker 3: you know, old guard clubs, why not just have some
Speaker 3: geographically diverse seven or eight golf courses that the USGA
Speaker 3: would you know, just hold their championships on. Probably would
Speaker 3: have saved clubs a lot of money and maybe maybe
Speaker 3: maybe make for a better playing experience on a day
Speaker 3: to day basis.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is that's still being said. Now, why don't
Speaker 1: we just build them a rota courses? And maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: they everybody probably scoffed at the idea and said that's financially,
Speaker 1: you know, ridiculous, and then you know, one hundred years later,
Speaker 1: effectively it seems like god, they would have saved a
Speaker 1: lot of money if they had done that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, you know, and Flynn designed elasticity into his courses.
Speaker 3: You know, we had a little bit of effect of
Speaker 3: that walking around today where you play a hole and
Speaker 3: there's plenty of room to go backwards, but you got
Speaker 3: to walk, you know, one hundred yards back to get
Speaker 3: to the to the t and then then walk forward again.
Speaker 3: But he designed asticity into his courses. I think if you,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you'd agree with me, but I
Speaker 3: think most of his courses are more relevant today than
Speaker 3: some of his other contemporaries.
Speaker 1: Well, I think one of the things that I've found,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen nearly all of them, I've seen a
Speaker 1: fair amount of them, is that the number on the
Speaker 1: card rarely represents how they play like because of his
Speaker 1: use of natural features. A lot of times the yardage
Speaker 1: on the card isn't representative of how you feel at
Speaker 1: when you get done with around you know where it's like, ah,
Speaker 1: that was sixty five hundred yards felt like seven thousand,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Or at Marian for instance, he plays sixty one hundred
Speaker 3: yards from the White teas and it feels like sixty
Speaker 3: eight hundred or sixty nine hundred yards. Some of that's
Speaker 3: because you know, if you think about it, on one, two,
Speaker 3: you know, six, the bunch of the holes, you're fourteen
Speaker 3: into up slopes, so you don't get a lot of
Speaker 3: roll out of the out of the t shots.
Speaker 1: Hitting from it. In a lot of times it would
Speaker 1: be you hit from a ridge seemingly into an upslope,
Speaker 1: and then the green is further up the slope. You know,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of that too. He was an
Speaker 1: architect in the aerial age when aerial Gotha is being born. Effect.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm glad you brought that up. Think about the
Speaker 3: the the holes that Marion Pine Pine Valley in Shinnacock,
Speaker 3: the mix of and this is this is this is
Speaker 3: a design theory and practice of Flynn's. The holes that
Speaker 3: you have ground game options on and aerial demands on.
Speaker 3: It's about fifty to fifty and he believed very much
Speaker 3: in shot testing, so he designed holes that rewarded the
Speaker 3: ability to hit certain shots. At Huntington Valley, you know,
Speaker 3: it's hitting fades off of draw lies or draws off
Speaker 3: of fade lies that's often required. You think the tenth
Speaker 3: hole rolling Green, it was designed. It was intended to
Speaker 3: be a two hundred and sixty yard uphill par three
Speaker 3: in nineteen twenty six. I think they built the tee
Speaker 3: at round two forty. But there he wanted you to
Speaker 3: be able to hit a low running straw and the
Speaker 3: ground before the green and the green itself except a
Speaker 3: low running straw. So he you know, we talked about
Speaker 3: some of the long holes today at Merriam. You had
Speaker 3: a hit driver on a lot of it, and you know,
Speaker 3: at least one part three around he wanted you to
Speaker 3: be tested with a driver on a part I think the.
Speaker 1: Par three's would definitely be one of the things that
Speaker 1: stands out about his designs in general. There you know,
Speaker 1: there's always seemingly a good short part three, but then
Speaker 1: also some brawny long par threes that are really taxing,
Speaker 1: and you know, in general typically a pretty good variety
Speaker 1: as opposed you know, and I think one of the
Speaker 1: things is that he built par fives that were more gettable.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Interesting, you know, I have you know, what people said,
Speaker 3: you know, call a bias, but I think you.
Speaker 1: Might be biased. You got twenty five hundred pages and
Speaker 1: under you it's an informed bias. Yeah, but uh well,
Speaker 1: maybe you're just more of well researched than one one arc.
Speaker 3: That's very true.
Speaker 1: If you duck into someone else, you might you know.
Speaker 3: Even nobody interests me enough to do that you know,
Speaker 3: I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: You need to move out of Philadelphia and then you
Speaker 1: might you know, then you might be exposed to somebody else.
Speaker 3: That's true there. And that's maybe one reason why Flynn
Speaker 3: isn't as is regarded as highly as some others, because
Speaker 3: his courses are geographically centered in areas that, you know,
Speaker 3: the population shifts in the United States aren't really around anymore.
Speaker 3: You know, he didn't do any The only thing he
Speaker 3: did out west was a little bit of Denver Country
Speaker 3: Club in Cherry Hills. He did that pine meadow and
Speaker 3: and uh and uh for the gardenal r.
Speaker 1: Ip Joe Lee.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it used to be there.
Speaker 1: That piece of land is just a beautiful piece.
Speaker 3: I've never been there.
Speaker 1: Oh the well, I think the Nuns of the Covenant
Speaker 1: owns it. Yeah, and they listened to the Gemsicks who
Speaker 1: owned cock Hill too. But it is is a wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful property and unfortunately not much of any Flynn, if
Speaker 1: that's a shame. Jolie took care of that.
Speaker 3: A little bit of Flynn was implemented out of a
Speaker 3: plan that he did for the Glen View Club.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 3: But you know, I don't even I don't even know
Speaker 3: if you think that maybe there's twenty five percent of
Speaker 3: the courses Flynn that might be generous.
Speaker 1: Place had I believe they had cold plants, is that
Speaker 1: Rightross plants, they have Flynn plans, and somehow it's none.
Speaker 3: It's a bastardization of yeah, somebody, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a fine, fine golf course. It's a great club.
Speaker 1: It's a great club, and uh, fine fine golf course.
Speaker 1: But it's just interesting. You always wonder if you just
Speaker 1: kind of went with one of these, would you be
Speaker 1: in a different place, a different different place, because it's
Speaker 1: really it's a pretty interesting ground. He's a ground for Chicago.
Speaker 3: Flynn didn't do a lot, you know, he did a
Speaker 3: lot of ultra private clubs, so you know that would
Speaker 3: prevent you know a lot of people from understanding his
Speaker 3: portfolio and where it stands in the pantheon of golf architects.
Speaker 3: But you know, like Ross had Pinehurst where you know,
Speaker 3: you know, anybody who was anybody was wintering there or
Speaker 3: you know, it was a trip south. They were always
Speaker 3: stopping there. Flynn. You know, the Cascades helped Flynn a
Speaker 3: little bit, but you know, in general, they were very
Speaker 3: private clubs that didn't get a lot of play.
Speaker 1: Well, I think what we talked about earlier too, it
Speaker 1: is like a lot it seems like a lot of
Speaker 1: places didn't even know they were William Flynn designed for
Speaker 1: a long time, like I had heard at one point,
Speaker 1: like people thought Shinnacock was a Dick Wilson design.
Speaker 3: That's because Dick Wilson went in there in the sixties
Speaker 3: and said it was his design. Oh, William Flynn was
Speaker 3: my boss, but this is really my design. And you
Speaker 3: know he's just total bs and helps of you know,
Speaker 3: general rating. I guess, uh, you know, other business.
Speaker 1: So here's maybe arguably the best championship golf course in America,
Speaker 1: and for decades it's masqueraded as a Dick Wilson design
Speaker 1: when in actually, well Donald Ross is building his law
Speaker 1: on all of his championship courses and Tilling has You know,
Speaker 1: Shinnacock is thought to be Dick Wilson.
Speaker 3: Yeah, their first history book it was a Dick Wilson course.
Speaker 1: So you know, this is also a possible reason why
Speaker 1: maybe he's not as well regarded. Is you know that
Speaker 1: probably his most well known golf course wasn't always known
Speaker 1: as his.
Speaker 3: That's of course. Yeah, that's a great point. Even in
Speaker 3: Indian Creek, which is a very private club down in Florida.
Speaker 3: It's on it's private island. You know, Red Lawrence said
Speaker 3: that he designed the golf course, so.
Speaker 1: Well they learned that from RTIJ.
Speaker 3: Is that right? I believe well they learned well.
Speaker 1: Well RTIJ allegedly, and I think it's it's from difficult
Speaker 1: par the book he took. He took the quotes. I
Speaker 1: might be citing this wrong, but he took the quotes
Speaker 1: from that Alistair mackenzie said about Stanley Thompson and used
Speaker 1: him for his US flyers right after the Great Depression ended,
Speaker 1: and you know, sent him around every club in the
Speaker 1: United States with these quotes about what Alistair Mackenzie said
Speaker 1: about Stanley Thompson, saying that's about him said about him.
Speaker 1: And you know, of course Stanley Thompson was in Canada
Speaker 1: didn't see any of these flyers. And RTJ also picked
Speaker 1: up all this work.
Speaker 3: Well, that's that's kind of that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1: But that's what Read Lawrence and Dick Wilson did collectively.
Speaker 3: Let's talk a little bit about Indian Creek because you know,
Speaker 3: the leader was supposedly this great engineer. It was a
Speaker 3: great engineering feed and was considered a you know, monumental
Speaker 3: design at the time. And now it's being replicated pretty
Speaker 3: closely up. And is it Wisconsin where they're doing that. Yeah, yeah, right, Well,
Speaker 3: Indian Creek was built on a piece of land that
Speaker 3: was three feet in dead flat, three feet above sea level.
Speaker 3: Then they were dredging Biscayne Bay. Indian Creek became a
Speaker 3: you know, a development project and they used a lot
Speaker 3: of the fill from the bay to build up the island.
Speaker 3: Flynn designed that Every contour on that design above three
Speaker 3: feet flat was was by Flynn, you know, by Flynn's
Speaker 3: happened in Flynn's mind and he put it on, you know,
Speaker 3: he put it onto the ground. The clubhouse is thirty
Speaker 3: five feet above sea level. It's the tallest spot in
Speaker 3: Dade County. And uh but you stand on you walk
Speaker 3: around that island and it looks you know, it looks natural.
Speaker 3: I mean, it really is. It's an amazing place. Some
Speaker 3: of the best approach shots in all of golf.
Speaker 1: While he was down there, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: I always have thought of having seen, you know, done
Speaker 1: research on the Normandy Shores that he did do a
Speaker 1: public golf course right there, Normandy Shores, which was you know,
Speaker 1: out on an island, and you look at the old
Speaker 1: aerials of that place and it looks just absolutely unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And this is something that I found from your book.
Speaker 1: I just stumbled upon that and I was I looked
Speaker 1: at it and I'm like, oh my god, I gotta
Speaker 1: go see this place. But you know, yeah, part of
Speaker 1: the thing is.
Speaker 3: Ain't there anymore.
Speaker 1: The public courses that he did, they aren't. They didn't
Speaker 1: get the treatment of Pinehurst. They didn't get the treatment
Speaker 1: for the most part of beth Page, where you know
Speaker 1: tilling hast work is largely preserved there. They fell victim
Speaker 1: to the nineteen nineties and the nineteen eighties, the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: Cobbs Creek is a good example of that. That was
Speaker 3: a good I mean it's not a you know, original
Speaker 3: William Flynn, but that was a collaborative effort by those
Speaker 3: Philadelphians that and and it was a phenomenal golf course.
Speaker 3: But you know, a ICBM, you know, you know interceptor
Speaker 3: missile site and driving range and you know, changing dynamics
Speaker 3: in the in the neighborhood. You know, there's the course
Speaker 3: that you see today is a lot different than than
Speaker 3: what it was, but it's going to be put back.
Speaker 3: And I think if that gets put back, the design
Speaker 3: intent of Hugh Wilson and William Flynn and Crump and
Speaker 3: those guys are going to be returned and it's going
Speaker 3: to be as I mean it has. I think it
Speaker 3: has the potential to be as highly or more highly
Speaker 3: regarded than any of the beth Page courses. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's the thing is that bes Page Black
Speaker 1: is the looming monster and municipal golf and obviously everybody
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of it's because of the
Speaker 1: championship history. But when you look at some of the
Speaker 1: other public golf court, great public golf courses that haven't
Speaker 1: gotten the restoration or in that case of restoration, they are,
Speaker 1: you know, if those courses get the brush up, there
Speaker 1: might be a question as to what the best is
Speaker 1: because you know, you look at the greens at bath
Speaker 1: Page Black and they leave you wanting a lot more.
Speaker 3: Though it's a head scratcher why those greens. That means
Speaker 3: when you're designing a golf complex that's supposed to be
Speaker 3: you know, gradually harder and harder and more championship of
Speaker 3: a golf course, with black being the pinnacle of championship
Speaker 3: design of that complex. The greens are you know, there's
Speaker 3: a couple of good greens on there, but most of
Speaker 3: them are not that interesting.
Speaker 1: I took a trip to Cleveland Heights in Lakeland one
Speaker 1: one time when I was in Florida.
Speaker 3: There's one I haven't been to yet.
Speaker 1: There's a lot left there. Yeah, there's not it's not
Speaker 1: all there, but there's like definitely holes that you you know,
Speaker 1: that's that looks like, you know, something he might do,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, it's just interesting how the whole
Speaker 1: stories of these places work like that. That was the
Speaker 1: Lakeland was the spring training site of Cleveland, the Cleveland Indians.
Speaker 1: The owner probably got to know William Flinn from his
Speaker 1: work at Pepper Pike.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly. He was probably a member of both of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and then all of a sudden he says,
Speaker 1: come down to Lakeland and designed a course at by
Speaker 1: spring training facility. Right, you know, it's just wild to
Speaker 1: think about, like the how you know these guys got
Speaker 1: around the country.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that was the the spring training site
Speaker 3: for the end. Well, I thought it was because of
Speaker 3: the guys from Cleveland. Oh, I knew they were. I
Speaker 3: know where they were, Cleveland guys, but I didn't know
Speaker 3: that's where the site for the for the the spring
Speaker 3: training was for the team. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I believe that that's interest correct story.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Now, it was so long ago that I always doubt
Speaker 1: myself and I didn't you know, I know what you mean.
Speaker 1: But but I believe that was the story behind that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Cobbs Creek obviously could be a good spot
Speaker 1: where like you know, obviously it's being restored by Gil
Speaker 1: Hans and Jim Wagner and Hans Golf Design. Obviously, Jim
Speaker 1: being from Philadelphia, spent a lot of time there and
Speaker 1: I know he's put a lot of like pro bono
Speaker 1: work over the years, and.
Speaker 3: He played a lot of golf at Cobbs Creek and
Speaker 3: he was a fence member Marion. It's great that, you know,
Speaker 3: it's kind of interesting. You know, Gill's Philadelphia is an
Speaker 3: adopted home for Gil and it's the home of Jim Wagner,
Speaker 3: and they take tremendous pride in the in the in
Speaker 3: the in the you know, the architectural legacies of Philadelphia,
Speaker 3: and I'm so glad that there they work on many
Speaker 3: of the courses around here because we're all the better
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 1: So in your mind, you know, what are the outside
Speaker 1: of you We've talked about Indian Creek and Shinnacock and Catanta.
Speaker 1: What are the other top flight William Flynn courses that
Speaker 1: are of the first class?
Speaker 3: Well, I'll tell you. I mean, according to Connie Logerman,
Speaker 3: Flynn's daughter, Philadelphia Country Club was his favorite course in
Speaker 3: the Philadelphia area of his original designs. And they moved
Speaker 3: the clubhouse and unfortunately the routing progression changed and the
Speaker 3: finishing holes is not is not up to the to
Speaker 3: the ret the rest of the golf course. But I
Speaker 3: think Philadelphia Country Club has some spectacular, unique landform holes.
Speaker 3: You haven't been there, right, no, but you know there's
Speaker 3: you know, you know, the sixteenth hole is a downhill
Speaker 3: short par four with a bunker that was added later
Speaker 3: on for the thirty nine and open right in the
Speaker 3: middle of the fairway, shorter of the green that you
Speaker 3: have to carry that bunker land it shorter the green
Speaker 3: to keep it on. You know, it's a very precise
Speaker 3: shot you have to hit so it's a short hole,
Speaker 3: but it's a high demand hole. I think we talked
Speaker 3: a little bit about earlier today about the country Club
Speaker 3: and pepper Pike. There are three golf holes there that
Speaker 3: are really unique, and they're all world golf holes. The
Speaker 3: twelfth is a par five, the fifteenth is a is
Speaker 3: a par four with a you know, elevated platform for
Speaker 3: the the green sits on. And the seventeenth is one
Speaker 3: of the great holes in America. It's got an interesting
Speaker 3: offset a fairway, so you have to pick the right
Speaker 3: line in distance. You know. One of the things that
Speaker 3: you see in some of the older golf courses. You know,
Speaker 3: I'll say it. You know McDonald and Rayner courses a
Speaker 3: lot of straightaway holes with very little offset. You really
Speaker 3: are just challenged on direction, but not not distance. If
Speaker 3: you have an offset fairway, line and distance. You think
Speaker 3: it the first hall at Chittacock.
Speaker 1: It's interesting you say that. And you talked earlier about
Speaker 1: how Flynn was almost like an early iteration of Corn
Speaker 1: Crenshaw Bill when he talked about trinity force and how
Speaker 1: he wanted to test the best players in the world.
Speaker 1: He talked about how making holes that forced them to
Speaker 1: worry about hitting the right distance and direction, not in
Speaker 1: bending holes to create that type of thing, not a
Speaker 1: dog leg per se, but just the way the hole
Speaker 1: just kind of gently moves a certain direction with fairway
Speaker 1: angled a certain way. That creates a situation where you
Speaker 1: need to hit a line and a distance rather than
Speaker 1: just a line.
Speaker 3: It's a much more exacting test of you know, your
Speaker 3: t shots. And Flint did that in a lot of places.
Speaker 3: He offset greens, he offset fairways and his bunkering for
Speaker 3: whatever reason. If you look at you know, the bunkering
Speaker 3: at Marion for instance, it hasn't changed. You know, they
Speaker 3: changed a little bit on the second hole when they
Speaker 3: lengthened the hole, but the bunkering today is the same
Speaker 3: as it was, you know, eighty ninety years ago.
Speaker 1: What was his involvement at Marion? Obviously he was friends
Speaker 1: with Hugh Wilson. He was he was a growing super
Speaker 1: at the West Course and he was I think he
Speaker 1: was in charge of contendent, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: So he was, so this is interesting also he was
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's interesting because Hugh Wilson and Flynn
Speaker 3: never you know, documented who did what, and you know, it.
Speaker 1: Was very type a individual who seemingly documented all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff didn't document Marian's.
Speaker 3: Or correct Well, you know, we know all the drawings
Speaker 3: are by Flynn, you know, and starting in nineteen sixteen
Speaker 3: through the last bit of changes that were prepared for
Speaker 3: the thirty four Open. But you know, Hugh Wilson was
Speaker 3: in charge of everything until he passed away soon after
Speaker 3: the nineteen twenty four Amateur. And he was in charge
Speaker 3: of everything, so you know, he wasn't you know, he
Speaker 3: wasn't He didn't have a shovel or anything like that.
Speaker 3: But he he was the inspiration, the planning and the
Speaker 3: X and design. Everything ran through him. So when Flint,
Speaker 3: when when the course, when the club bought some new
Speaker 3: land and added the t on ten instead of crossing
Speaker 3: the road on ten to you know, everything was on
Speaker 3: the on the east side of Ardmore Avenue, you know,
Speaker 3: for for ten and eleven and twelve. You know who knows,
Speaker 3: you know, you know it was done. It was done
Speaker 3: in twenty two in preparation for the twenty four Amateur.
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know how much of that work
Speaker 3: was Flynns and how much of that work was Hugh Wilson's.
Speaker 3: They were you know, they were seemed like they were
Speaker 3: they were they were you know, like I said, it
Speaker 3: was like a foster father and son relationship. So I
Speaker 3: think they collaborated on that. But certainly work was done
Speaker 3: at Marion four or five years after Hugh Wilson died.
Speaker 3: The whole first hole is was redesigned for the thirty amateur.
Speaker 1: What were the things that he brought to the Pine
Speaker 1: Valley because obviously that's a huge collaboration. You know, there's
Speaker 1: stuff that Colt did to help, there's stuff that Tilling
Speaker 1: has obviously, if famously with the Hell's half Acre was
Speaker 1: allegedly a Tilling half feature. Crump was kind of the
Speaker 1: mastermind that brought everything together. But what were what are
Speaker 1: the the things that Flynn brought.
Speaker 3: To Well, well, I'll start with agronomics. The course was
Speaker 3: it went into agronomic failure. They were building basically building
Speaker 3: the course on straight sand and they kept you know,
Speaker 3: they couldn't keep grass on the golf course. So I
Speaker 3: think from nineteen eighteen to nineteen twenty Flynn was the
Speaker 3: superintendent at Marion and Pine Valley.
Speaker 1: And at that point it was like a winter club
Speaker 1: Pine Valley, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean all those those big shots from Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: They would go to Atlantic City to play in the
Speaker 3: wintertime because of the sandy soil and a little bit
Speaker 3: more temperate. Well, you know, it might have been ten
Speaker 3: degrees Tramer, right. They took a train from Philadelphia to
Speaker 3: Atlantic City. It went past Pine Valley. George Crump looked
Speaker 3: out the window and.
Speaker 1: Said, does it still go past Pine Mountain?
Speaker 3: I don't think it's not a passenger train anymore. I
Speaker 3: think you know, when you walk, when you drive into
Speaker 3: Pine Valley, you have to go over railroad tracks, and
Speaker 3: then after driving past the schlocky water park, splash for
Speaker 3: all that, and you get into Pine Valley and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, it's like, you know, like Darthy must
Speaker 3: have felt in the Wizard of Oz, because it's it's
Speaker 3: an incredible place in a field to Pine Valley. But
Speaker 3: Flynn did a fair amount of work there. After Crump
Speaker 3: passed away and he committed suicide, there was a committee
Speaker 3: that was formed to you know, sort of compile his
Speaker 3: remen their reminiscences of what Crump wanted to do, and
Speaker 3: Hugh Wilson and Flynn and a few others worked together
Speaker 3: to act to implement those twelve or fifteen weren't finished,
Speaker 3: and so Flynn did the bunkering below the second Green.
Speaker 3: He did the bunkering below the eighteenth Green, neither of
Speaker 3: which exists today. They were modified by modern architect and
Speaker 3: Flynn built the seventeenth Green. He built the bright Green
Speaker 3: on nine with with with George Thomas and a few
Speaker 3: other things. He took the pimple out of the green
Speaker 3: on eighteen. But Toomey was on the executive committee at
Speaker 3: Pine Valley and Flynn was a member from the very beginning.
Speaker 3: So that's another that's another example where you know, here's
Speaker 3: this art. You know, this guy from a blue collar
Speaker 3: Boston town comes to Philadelphia and he's you know, he's
Speaker 3: on you know, he's a member of what you know,
Speaker 3: founding member of one of the you know, premier clubs
Speaker 3: in the world. Yeah, that doesn't happen too many places,
Speaker 3: but you know, Quaker Philadelphia is there, you know, sort
Speaker 3: of hope, hopefully we still have the you know, we're
Speaker 3: open minded and and you know, we celebrate anybody that
Speaker 3: you know that works hard and has some talent, and
Speaker 3: you know Flynn was certainly that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, going back to your book, uh twenty, you know
Speaker 1: this is this is where it started, and I uh
Speaker 1: went on numerous tangents that I often do the book.
Speaker 1: It's twenty five hundred, twenty six hundred, twenty five seventeen
Speaker 1: at the moment. How did you start? How did you
Speaker 1: put this together?
Speaker 3: Boy? It's interesting because you know, when I started, I
Speaker 3: guess it was ninety eight or ninety nine, there wasn't
Speaker 3: much that was digitized and online. I mean, I I
Speaker 3: don't even kind of motive my head back then. It
Speaker 3: was hard to you know up probably yeah, you had
Speaker 3: to wait for you know, a page to load AOL
Speaker 3: right sign then. So there wasn't that much information, you
Speaker 3: know that it was available like there is today the newspapers,
Speaker 3: dot com and magazines that are digitized and things like that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm still constantly mining those sources, minding.
Speaker 1: Like alerts or something or no. But I probably should
Speaker 1: just go on.
Speaker 3: You know, we did. You know, I'm on the Archives
Speaker 3: committee at Mary and uh, you know, we have alerts
Speaker 3: for anything that comes up on eBay or you know,
Speaker 3: got when it's a green jacket off auctions and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. But you know, I there was a guy
Speaker 3: I was. I was an early participant in golf club
Speaker 3: Atlets got off it for a number of reasons. But
Speaker 3: there was a fellow that, you know, I really liked
Speaker 3: the way he wrote. I really liked his insights and
Speaker 3: his you know, he was immersed in the world of
Speaker 3: you know, elite golf and elite clubs. His name's Tom Paul.
Speaker 3: It became one of my closest friends. Tommy, if you're
Speaker 3: out there, come out of your hermit gave and you know,
Speaker 3: let's get together. But we went around and we visited
Speaker 3: all the flynt clubs that you know, well, we didn't
Speaker 3: go to Denver and we didn't go to there's a
Speaker 3: Plymouth Country Club nine hole small course in North Carolina
Speaker 3: that I haven't seen either. It was built by a
Speaker 3: member that he owned a paper mill and he was
Speaker 3: a member at Pine Valley. But we, you know, we
Speaker 3: would go visit the superintendents and they're usually a great
Speaker 3: source of information at any club. You know, they're they're
Speaker 3: the go to guys for preserving documents and things like that,
Speaker 3: and their insights are you know, tremendous because they're maintaining
Speaker 3: something that was built by this guy one hundred years ago,
Speaker 3: and uh, it was it was kind of interesting. The
Speaker 3: clubs love the fact that we were digging up information
Speaker 3: and providing them information, and you know, this became something
Speaker 3: that was theoretical and academic became very practical practical because
Speaker 3: those historic assets are invaluable to architects today that want
Speaker 3: to do restorations or imagine.
Speaker 1: It's like, I mean, any anybody that's a member Flint
Speaker 1: Course or any architect who's looking at a Flint Course,
Speaker 1: I mean the plans that you have in this book
Speaker 1: and the aerials and everything, I mean, it's pretty clear
Speaker 1: of what needs to be done at almost all of them.
Speaker 1: It's just yeah, and you look at I look at
Speaker 1: some of that I've been to and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, you know really how difficult it
Speaker 1: is and how it's not back to here like this
Speaker 1: is you got what everything you need to know right here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you have the architectural plans and you have
Speaker 3: good aerials, I mean, you don't need much more. A
Speaker 3: good friend of mine, and he does terrific research on
Speaker 3: aerial photographs is Guy Craig Disher, who spent i mean
Speaker 3: hundreds of hours that the National Archives filming film, you know,
Speaker 3: filming negatives and filming, taking photos of aerial photographs that
Speaker 3: the Department of Defense, the Tartan of Agriculture and all
Speaker 3: those would take pictures. And you know, these assets are
Speaker 3: available to clubs. But and you can see when those
Speaker 3: assets are available and utilized what the outcome is versus
Speaker 3: places that didn't do it. And it's a shame. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to name some of these courses or
Speaker 3: architects that were involved, but the you know, if the
Speaker 3: goal is to historically restore something in terms of William Flynn,
Speaker 3: those assets are around. I don't know to what effect,
Speaker 3: you know, to how much that's around for rainer courses
Speaker 3: or tilling hass courses or bare That's what I thought.
Speaker 3: You know, you look at the landforms that rain are
Speaker 3: built and I think of you know, uh uh Fox
Speaker 3: Chapel for instance. You know, you could see where the
Speaker 3: where the greens extended to because the the tie ins
Speaker 3: are not as natural looking as as as as a
Speaker 3: lot of places. So you know, in Flynn, you know,
Speaker 3: you and I could walk around and and get a
Speaker 3: you know, we have a critical, you know, experienced eye
Speaker 3: to find these things. But a lot of clubs, you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's not that not that simple. But I I
Speaker 3: hope that if the mission is to do a historical restoration,
Speaker 3: that people would, you know, try to do the research.
Speaker 3: You know, it's hard for these architects that are traveling
Speaker 3: all over the place and managing a lot of different
Speaker 3: golf courses in the one hundred or so hours that
Speaker 3: are needed to really do a historical You.
Speaker 1: Think with how much money they spend and how much
Speaker 1: money they get paid, that the historical stuff would be
Speaker 1: kind of a prerequisit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, some and some and some of the one hundred
Speaker 4: hours for you know, if you're going to spend ten
Speaker 4: million dollars on a restoration or five million dollars in restoration,
Speaker 4: one hundred hours of research really isn't that much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. But and I and you know, I'm
Speaker 3: happy to make you know, use of all the materials
Speaker 3: I have. You know, I'm on the archives committee at
Speaker 3: Mary and our archives Chairman John Caper's has done a
Speaker 3: phenomenal job in developing one of the real great archives
Speaker 3: of any private club in the world. And we you know,
Speaker 3: it's open to members. It's open to members to make
Speaker 3: use of the ass the assets, the hard assets, and
Speaker 3: the digital assets that we've created. But it's also open
Speaker 3: to anybody, you know, as long as you follow the
Speaker 3: right proto calls to UH to make use of all
Speaker 3: the materials we have, and we have over two hundred
Speaker 3: and thirty thousand digital files. About a third of that
Speaker 3: it's Marian, but you know, there's also digital files on
Speaker 3: a lot of significant American and worldwide courses. And it's
Speaker 3: a it's a research it's it's a it's really a
Speaker 3: research library and any and I hope people make use
Speaker 3: of it. There's one you know, your book more of.
Speaker 1: A research book than a than a novel.
Speaker 3: It's not Yeah, it's not a it's not a it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't think I'm a very good.
Speaker 1: Writer, but nobody are a good writer.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's I don't think I am a
Speaker 3: very good writer, then you probably aren't a good writer.
Speaker 3: But it was meant to be. You know, when I
Speaker 3: when Tom and I first started really working on this book,
Speaker 3: we didn't know the direction it was going to go,
Speaker 3: and we didn't know what we were going to find
Speaker 3: or anything like that. But what we what we thought
Speaker 3: about doing is, you know, clubs, I think modern clubs
Speaker 3: today if if any new golf courses are being built,
Speaker 3: you know, take the take the opinion you or take
Speaker 3: the approach of documenting the work and getting the architect
Speaker 3: to do videos and commentary on what they're thinking and such,
Speaker 3: so you know, the you know, I take more pride
Speaker 3: in the book being a resource for people to you know,
Speaker 3: have a go to place for William Flynn restoration.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean for me personally, I bought your book
Speaker 1: maybe four or five years ago.
Speaker 3: It was only sixteen hundred pages then.
Speaker 1: Early days of the Frida Egg and for me it
Speaker 1: was a huge resource. It was something that inspired me
Speaker 1: to go see more of william reources and appreciate some
Speaker 1: of the stuff so much more like it was, you know,
Speaker 1: and then also like one of the things that I
Speaker 1: loved digging, and it was I grew up in Lake Bluff.
Speaker 1: In Lake Forest. You built a course called Mill Road Farm.
Speaker 3: Oh oh, I'd like to talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 1: One of the great courses that no longer exists. And
Speaker 1: it was Albert Lasker, a rich guy who had a
Speaker 1: state and like Forest, who couldn't get into on once Hea.
Speaker 3: Or I don't probably anywhere else.
Speaker 1: We were in Lake Forest and decided to just build
Speaker 1: his own golf course and hired Flynn and it was allegedly,
Speaker 1: as you said in your book, the Oak mount of
Speaker 1: the Midwest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was seven thousand yards. In the
Speaker 3: nineteen twenties, there was a I think Laskar had a
Speaker 3: standing wager, not really wager, but he would you know,
Speaker 3: he was going to pay somebody, you know, with the
Speaker 3: first pro to or first golfer to break part. And
Speaker 3: it took years for somebody to do it. I think
Speaker 3: it was Tommy Armoor. Tommy, yeah, yeah, that did it,
Speaker 3: and it was it was an interesting I mean I
Speaker 3: don't know that area very well thousand bucks I think
Speaker 3: five hundred or one thousand something like that.
Speaker 1: Which was then a large money right late one.
Speaker 3: Well, Laskar was super rich. But you know that. I
Speaker 3: mean the topography it's relatively flat.
Speaker 1: Around there, very flat.
Speaker 3: So so what is Flynt do? What does Flynn do
Speaker 3: in flat areas? He uses more bunkers to create interest.
Speaker 3: If you think about Shinnacock, where there's a lot of topography,
Speaker 3: there's not a lot of bunkering, but you know where
Speaker 3: there's not much going on, especially to say the sixth hole,
Speaker 3: for instance, that's about as flat as it gets on
Speaker 3: the course. Look at the bunkering and the sandy waste
Speaker 3: areas that he put in there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Eight too, Yeah, be another good example. Everybody always talks
Speaker 1: about nine through eleven at Shinnecock, and I always say, well,
Speaker 1: what about eight?
Speaker 3: Eight? It's a great hole, and you know it's sort
Speaker 3: of a counterintuitive hole, which Flynn did quite a lot
Speaker 3: of where really the ideal line of play is on
Speaker 3: the outside of the dog leg. So when you talked
Speaker 3: about courses playing longer, if you've got to play on
Speaker 3: the outside of a dog leg, you're adding, you know,
Speaker 3: yardage all the time.
Speaker 1: That also, like thirteen at Shinnecock would be another example,
Speaker 1: which is.
Speaker 3: That's a great hole that nobody talks about.
Speaker 1: You see a lot of other places and is you
Speaker 1: know similars. Another one would be twelve at Rolling Green
Speaker 1: would fit that where you know you play to the
Speaker 1: outside there of the dog line.
Speaker 2: Do that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, do that fair amount of Rolling Green. I just
Speaker 3: think his courses are enjoyably difficult. I mean we talked
Speaker 3: about this earlier today. You know, you and I can
Speaker 3: design a difficult golf course, but who'd want to play it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe we can do it, maybe if we collaborate with better.
Speaker 1: And here's anybody can make a golf course hard that is,
Speaker 1: that is, but very few can make a golf course
Speaker 1: that's uber challenging for a really good player but still
Speaker 1: playable for the regular player. That was yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean Shittacock's the perfect example of that. Like from
Speaker 1: what I've heard, it's it's a far more enjoyable course
Speaker 1: for a low trajectory player such as a senior or
Speaker 1: a lady or a junior than National Golf Links, which
Speaker 1: most meant male you know, ten handicaps and less. Would
Speaker 1: consider one of the most fun golf courses in the
Speaker 1: world Shinnakock, which is a toursure chamber as we see
Speaker 1: for the pros as they you know, complain whenever they
Speaker 1: go there.
Speaker 3: I think pros complain wherever they are, they complain.
Speaker 1: Well, anywhere that they they things don't go the way
Speaker 1: it normally goes on their tour, they complain. But at Shinnikock,
Speaker 1: you know, that golf course is as hard as it
Speaker 1: can get for a really good player, and then for
Speaker 1: you know, an average player who plays along the ground,
Speaker 1: it's far more enjoyable than the course across the streets.
Speaker 3: Oh, I agree, because you know I've seen I've played
Speaker 3: Shinnacock many times. I haven't played National very many times,
Speaker 3: but you could see you know, women in their eighties
Speaker 3: playing Shinnakok and enjoying it like and you know, having fun.
Speaker 3: It is an enjoyably difficult golf course. The more precise
Speaker 3: you get, the more penalty you have for missing. I mean,
Speaker 3: you see the short grass areas around the green, which
Speaker 3: is something that Flynn was an early advocate for.
Speaker 1: It's unfortunate that many Flynn courses do not have those
Speaker 1: short grass areas around greens.
Speaker 3: Well, certainly the ones that were done before the mid twenties.
Speaker 3: He didn't do that very much. But then it started.
Speaker 3: You know, you saw you can and and that's how
Speaker 3: the book is written in chronological order. You can you know,
Speaker 3: you can see the growth and the and the and
Speaker 3: you know, the evolution of his design theories. It's pretty
Speaker 3: it's it's really pretty interesting. Those short grass areas at Shinnacock,
Speaker 3: which were recently restored, create a lot of interesting, uh
Speaker 3: decision making for the really good players, but for high
Speaker 3: handicappers or you know, or or people with you know
Speaker 3: that the that that have difficulty hitting out of rough,
Speaker 3: the the the short grass areas are much more you know,
Speaker 3: uh playable for the for the high handicappers, you know,
Speaker 3: they could use their putter if they, you know, worry
Speaker 3: about chipping yips like I've seen be going through these days.
Speaker 3: I got the chunk and skull down really well. But
Speaker 3: you know, to me, Shinnecock is the high water market
Speaker 3: of that era of golf course design because it is
Speaker 3: challenging to the best players and enjoyable to the to
Speaker 3: the all classes of golfers, and to me, that is
Speaker 3: the essence of great golf architecture.
Speaker 1: So how I guess, yeah, real quick on that the
Speaker 1: US Open, like the first ten minutes of the US
Speaker 1: Open or twenty minutes of the US Open prove that
Speaker 1: with the players playing the first in the tenth hole
Speaker 1: and where the ball was going on both of them,
Speaker 1: and just the sheer carnage right after that of what
Speaker 1: short grass does around greens. Yeah, it's a good players.
Speaker 3: I agreed, And you know, I was kind of curious
Speaker 3: to see because you know, before that there was a
Speaker 3: rough really close to the greens, and that's sort of
Speaker 3: how the USGA liked to set up their golf courses.
Speaker 1: It's how they still like to set up there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, so so great credit to Charles Stevenson
Speaker 3: and the board and the and the Green Committee and
Speaker 3: at Chinnacock they were dedicated to putting to doing a
Speaker 3: historical restoration to to uh, you know, reclaiming the interest
Speaker 3: and the shot varieties that that those those kind of
Speaker 3: short grass areas provide. It's fun because you don't have
Speaker 3: to just you know, take a sixty degree wedge out
Speaker 3: of the rough near the and try to pop up
Speaker 3: the ball. And you know, there's all different kinds of
Speaker 3: shots you can hit.
Speaker 1: All right, before we get you out of here, we
Speaker 1: that's it.
Speaker 3: We have to come back.
Speaker 1: I know, well, this is this is the first, you know,
Speaker 1: the first of the Flynn Flynn chronicles or something saga
Speaker 1: come up with some alliteration. Alliteration might be getting a
Speaker 1: little over you is, but but the first of the
Speaker 1: first of them. Before we get it out of here.
Speaker 1: What what's the flint course that you haven't seen that
Speaker 1: you most like to see?
Speaker 3: Cherry Hills?
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, that it seems like one you got to
Speaker 1: get to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and and you know, I just haven't been to
Speaker 3: been to Colorado most of my travels to Denver, I
Speaker 3: don't I mean, I you know, I know it's highly regarded,
Speaker 3: I you know some and there's some interesting holes there.
Speaker 3: I don't know how it stacks up versus the other
Speaker 3: Flints in in say Philadelphia or Pepper Pike or you know,
Speaker 3: or certainly Indian Creek Brookline. We haven't talked about Brookline.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wanted to talk about that. Can we talk
Speaker 1: of the US opens next year there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: What was Flint's involvement there? I'm I this is on
Speaker 1: my list, but I'm unorganized as always, and you.
Speaker 3: Know, well he uh, you know, coming from Boston, it
Speaker 3: was you know, I'm sure it was a commission that
Speaker 3: he was, you know, thrilled to get earlier. You know,
Speaker 3: they were to expand the golf course. It was eighteen holes.
Speaker 3: They wanted to expand the golf course. It's a big membership.
Speaker 3: I think it's a big membership. It's a big club anyway,
Speaker 3: and there's probably a demand for more golf, just like
Speaker 3: Marion had a you know, expand into their West course.
Speaker 3: But Donald Ross did a plan originally that a couple
Speaker 3: of years later, Flynn did a plan, and Flynn was
Speaker 3: the Flynn plan was chosen. Most people think that that
Speaker 3: the original eighteen holes were intact and then the new
Speaker 3: nine was the Primrose nine was was a separate golf course,
Speaker 3: but in fact Flynn designed nine new holes but created
Speaker 3: three separate nines that were mixtures of the new holes
Speaker 3: and the and the established holes. And on the established
Speaker 3: holes he redesigned many of them. So there's there was
Speaker 3: quite a lot of Flynn there, but you know, they've
Speaker 3: had a lot of architects in the interim too, and
Speaker 3: you know, some of that Flynn stuff isn't there anymore.
Speaker 3: I haven't been back to see Gills work there, but
Speaker 3: I'm excited to do that. I think some of the
Speaker 3: interesting holes, you know, some of the interesting landforms are
Speaker 3: really on the on the Primros.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that par five, that will be the uphill par five. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I forget the Himalayas I think they call it. It
Speaker 1: is just yeah, that's that whole screams William Flynn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then it seems like it's just taken out a
Speaker 1: Felly and put into Boston environment.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One thing we should talk about at some point
Speaker 3: is these interrupted fairways that Flynn liked to do that
Speaker 3: most clubs didn't either didn't want to see it build
Speaker 3: or got rid of it. But there was some of
Speaker 3: that at Brookline. But the Downhill Park three par four sorry,
Speaker 3: with the pond on the right is a great golf
Speaker 3: of too. I forget, I don't even you know. The
Speaker 3: routing progression has been changed so much and it's going
Speaker 3: to be different for the twenty two Open is also
Speaker 3: as well. But you know, you look at the bunkering,
Speaker 3: you look at some of the greens, you know, it's
Speaker 3: screams William Flynn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just some of the way the land use, Yeah, reminiscent.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the things with the with
Speaker 1: the country club Brookline, Like the highs are really high
Speaker 1: out there because of just the topographical interest in.
Speaker 3: The rocky outcrops stuff. I mean, it's really.
Speaker 1: Cool, super cool. It's just a it's a really neat place.
Speaker 3: So Flinn did to the country clubs. Yeah, how about
Speaker 3: that Brookline and Pepper Pike.
Speaker 1: They're confusing. Where can people get your book?
Speaker 3: I think I have a Facebook page, but I hardly
Speaker 3: ever go on Facebook. Probably the best way if they're
Speaker 3: really interested. Is just to email me? Is that is that?
Speaker 3: Is it okay to give my email address?
Speaker 1: Yeah, give it away. You're gonna you know, people are
Speaker 1: hopefully going to email I hope. So you're gonna get
Speaker 1: probably a lot of emails from people at Flynn Courses.
Speaker 3: That's great. I'm happy to get it out there. The
Speaker 3: more people know about Flynn, the more people you know,
Speaker 3: even in green committees and stuff like that, the better
Speaker 3: off the restorations are going to be if they realize
Speaker 3: these assets are available and will make them certainly available
Speaker 3: to them. But my email address is W. S. Morrison
Speaker 3: M O R R I S O N at hotmail
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 1: It's a digital book. It's one. Yeah, it's uh. I.
Speaker 1: One of the things I love about it is that
Speaker 1: you can use the control F function whenever you need to.
Speaker 1: You just hit control F or command F and it's fined.
Speaker 1: And like if I'm if I'm at want to you know,
Speaker 1: I've read most of it, I don't. I haven't read
Speaker 1: all of it. I've definitely read more than Tom Paul.
Speaker 1: I have looked through almost all of it. And and
Speaker 1: if I ever thinking, you know, want to see something,
Speaker 1: I just hit control F and type of course name.
Speaker 3: And that's what's great about a searchable b.
Speaker 1: And it just it makes a book a lot smaller.
Speaker 3: Well in terms of making things bigger, you know, having
Speaker 3: that on a computer screen and looking at the aerial photographs,
Speaker 3: the ground for potographs and the drawings. The drawings are
Speaker 3: pieces of art, yes, and you could really study them
Speaker 3: and see what you know, what was planned, what was built,
Speaker 3: and figure out what's what's there now. And that's really
Speaker 3: the only analytics that you need to do to do
Speaker 3: a restoration. Here's a question for you. Can I ask
Speaker 3: a question what course of Flinns that you haven't played
Speaker 3: or haven't seen would you like to see?
Speaker 1: Oh? Man, probably, I mean Cherry Hills, Indian Springs, Indian
Speaker 1: Creek or Indian Creek. Got Indian Springs?
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 1: That lives in my mind?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean Flynn did Indian Springs redesigned Donald Ross's
Speaker 3: Indian Springs outside of d C.
Speaker 1: I do you know there's a bunch of them that
Speaker 1: I want to see.
Speaker 3: You gotta go to you got to see, you gotta
Speaker 3: see Indian Creek.
Speaker 1: I want to see. I want you know a place
Speaker 1: around here that I've driven by a bunch of times
Speaker 1: that I want to see, is McCall.
Speaker 3: Oh that yeah, so that's an that was a redesign
Speaker 3: of a ross course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, just driven by and I've seen some
Speaker 1: of the greens at the bottom of that big hill.
Speaker 3: For a guy from Chicago, you've been around Philip Philly.
Speaker 1: I've just I pay attention to stuff. I drive, I
Speaker 1: see stuff and I look at every time I drive by. McCall.
Speaker 1: I like Rubberneck. It's really unsafe, and it's usually at
Speaker 1: like before sunrise, and I'm looking. I see grounds crew
Speaker 1: out there mowing, and I see the big hill and
Speaker 1: these greens at the bottom of it, and I think
Speaker 1: to myself, man, that place looks mild.
Speaker 3: That is you know, it's a it's in it's in
Speaker 3: the city. And there's another course, Balla country club that's
Speaker 3: also in the city. Or Balla golf club. Sorry, that's
Speaker 3: also in the city. Really short courses, but those courses
Speaker 3: are hard to score on. You can It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Way I understand it is that public play can be
Speaker 1: or public play can play those at certain times.
Speaker 3: McCall at least, yeah, McCall, I don't know about Balla
Speaker 3: is you know, that's a course, that's you know, ups
Speaker 3: and downs in terms of.
Speaker 1: I don't think those places are are necessarily like on
Speaker 1: the inaccessible scale. I think with a little bit of
Speaker 1: work you can go just about anybody can find their
Speaker 1: way onto those. Yeah, you know like that that you know,
Speaker 1: like Shittacock on the next the accessible skills low. But
Speaker 1: that's the thing is like some of this stuff you
Speaker 1: can there. There are attainable flints that you can go see.
Speaker 1: It's not like you know, if you want to go
Speaker 1: see a CB McDonald of course and you don't have
Speaker 1: any connections like good luck, but like I think you
Speaker 1: can there's places that you that can be had in
Speaker 1: the Flynn you know directory that can you can see
Speaker 1: great Flynn architecture. If you're safe from California and you
Speaker 1: don't have any friends in Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: Well somebody's playing, you know, some guests are playing these
Speaker 3: courses because you know, some of these courses it's a
Speaker 3: member and three guests every tea time, just about yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But the other one, I want to see the
Speaker 1: cascades too.
Speaker 3: That's one that's a fascinating course. If you know what
Speaker 3: was really you know what that it wasn't just draped
Speaker 3: on the land that it really was an engineering marvel
Speaker 3: to create that thing moving a stream that is a
Speaker 3: catch basin for fifty square miles for instance. Stuff like that.
Speaker 3: It's kind of cool. Yeah. And in the greens, you know,
Speaker 3: Flynn's greens are amazing. They look simple, but they're really complicated,
Speaker 3: and they really are. You know, there's long interplays of
Speaker 3: slopes that makes it hard to read and hard to
Speaker 3: judge speed sometimes.
Speaker 1: And they're always benched into hills which obscure the you know,
Speaker 1: because he did so many he built it into so
Speaker 1: many landforms. What happens is then by doing small little things,
Speaker 1: you can create these subtleties where that the green actually
Speaker 1: runs away when it looks like it's going you're putting.
Speaker 3: Strangers perceptual miscues. Yeah, I mean, there's so many of
Speaker 3: them that they have to be dut by design. And
Speaker 3: there's some of them that are located like the third
Speaker 3: green at Rolling Green and the fourth green at the Cascades,
Speaker 3: they're very similar where the landform around that green is
Speaker 3: steeply downhill. So you change that pitch a little bit
Speaker 3: so it really in effect is still front to back,
Speaker 3: but your eye makes it seem like it's steeply back
Speaker 3: to front, and you know, putts in one direction go
Speaker 3: way past the hole and putts in the other directions
Speaker 3: are way short because it's hard to perceive the you know,
Speaker 3: you can trick the mind. Yeah, and if you and
Speaker 3: if you, and Flynn was really good at manipulating the
Speaker 3: top lines of bunkers to accentuate that miss miss read you.
Speaker 1: Know, and where that comes from? What how you do that?
Speaker 1: Spending a lot of time on site, Like that's the
Speaker 1: stuff that the best architect you know, and we see
Speaker 1: it today with the with the architects that spend the
Speaker 1: most time on site. Generally, those little details are and
Speaker 1: that you know, people will roll their eyes when I
Speaker 1: go on. You know, I rants about little things, but
Speaker 1: you know those are the things that make golf courses
Speaker 1: great versus good.
Speaker 3: And timelessly great too. I agree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So hey, everybody check it out the nature faker.
Speaker 3: They can email you, yeah, ws Morrison at hotmail dot com.
Speaker 3: Or there is a Facebook page, but I don't check
Speaker 3: it very often.
Speaker 1: I think I got it through the Facebook page.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe I should check it more often.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll have to find my receipt, you know. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming.
Speaker 3: This is enjoyable. I don't know how long we talk,
Speaker 3: but it went by it to like, you know, an instant.
Speaker 1: Today's episode of the Friday K Podcast was edited by
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