WEBVTT - The First Modern Golf Course? (Great Courses 3) 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:02.520 I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. 0:00:02.640 --> 0:00:04.920 When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:06.400 And when I find my ball in a. 0:00:06.360 --> 0:00:09.840 Bride egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday, Frida 0:00:09.840 --> 0:00:12.360 Egg brid Egg Frida Egg bride Egg Lie, I'm about 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:35.320 ready to run off of the hump course GAG. Welcome 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:39.240 to the fridaygg Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today, 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:43.120 for the third installment of our Great Courses series, we're 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:47.440 discussing the old course at Sunningdale Golf Club, which is 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:51.559 about an hour southwest of London, England. It was designed 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:54.880 by Willie Park Junior and it opened in nineteen oh one, 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:59.639 after which it was extensively revised by Harry Colt, and 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:02.760 according to my guest today, it might be the most 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:07.280 important course in the history of modern golf architecture. That 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:10.800 guest is Adam Lawrence. Adam is the editor of Golf 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:14.840 Course Architecture magazine and the author of an upcoming biography 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:18.640 of Harry Colt. For this episode, I've decided to do 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:22.520 a somewhat extended introduction because I just have some thoughts 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:26.200 on Sunningdale and its era and this general subject in 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:30.000 golf architecture that I've been wanting to sort through and 0:01:30.200 --> 0:01:32.679 get out there. So that's coming up along with my 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:35.680 interview with Adam Lawrence. But first, a quick word from 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:40.040 our sponsor for this episode, Club Champion. Club Champion helps 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:43.640 golfers of any skill level play better golf through custom 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:48.360 fitted and custom built equipment. They're extensively trained master fitters, 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:51.880 provide an in depth, data driven, tour level fitting process, 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:54.800 and have access to fifty thousand hit able head and 0:01:54.840 --> 0:01:58.400 shaft combos as well as sixty plus brands. So this 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:01.320 is a truly brand agnow stick fitting. That's one of 0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:04.400 the great things about it. The fitters don't really have 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:07.600 any motive to promote one brand or another. They just 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:11.560 go with what works best for you. 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You can 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:12.600 use the code Frida Egg to get fifty percent off 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:15.560 the cost of your fitting with the purchase of a club. 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:18.600 So go to club Champion dot com and book You're 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:21.600 fitting today. Again, that's code Frida Egg all one word, 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:25.360 all right. So let's talk a little bit about Sunningdale 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:28.880 and why I think it's such an important course and 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:33.400 why I find its whole time in golf architecture that 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:37.200 first decade of the twentieth century to be so interesting. 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:41.040 So if you can picture this, I just got home 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:45.720 from visiting family for Christmas, and it's twenty sixth right now, 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:48.160 and I'm sorry to record this, and I have my 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:51.360 notes in front of me. You might hear some wrestling 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:54.080 of paper because I actually wrote them on the plane 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:59.119 flight back here. I decided to do this introduction pretty recently, 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:01.240 and so it's going to be a little rough and ready, 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:04.200 but I think I basically have the idea of what 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:07.600 I want to talk about. So, you know, Sunningdale is 0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:11.480 probably the least known of the courses that we're going 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:14.960 to cover in this series on Great Courses, and I 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:17.919 think the main reason for that is that it hasn't 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:22.360 really hosted a notable televised tournament for a long time, 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:25.680 and so people just aren't familiar with what it looks like, 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:31.240 how it plays. Another reason for its relative obscurity is 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:35.360 that it's just more private than most courses in the UK. 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:38.839 Now in the UK, compared to a lot of private 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:42.760 courses in the US, Sunningdale is fairly easy to get 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:45.359 on and I think that most people could figure it 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:47.960 out if they really decided to take a trip to 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.679 this area. But you know, compared to the Old Course 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:55.200 for instance, or most Links courses in Scotland as well 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:59.400 as Ireland and England, Sunningdale is just a bit more private, 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:04.080 So if you don't have a clear idea of what 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:07.320 Sunningdale looks like, then I would highly recommend going and 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:12.599 finding the Shell's Wonderful World of Golf episode that features 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:17.440 Greg Norman and Nick Faldo playing Sunningdale in it's like 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:21.040 the mid to late nineties. It's an incredible episode. They 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:24.760 got a beautiful day of weather and the course really 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:28.400 looks pretty awesome, so i'd recommend that. I believe it's 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:30.760 on YouTube, so it should be pretty easy to find. 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:35.320 In any case, Since Sunningdale is less famous than most 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:37.520 of the courses that we're going to cover in this series, 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:40.719 I wanted to talk a little bit about why I 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:44.880 chose it and why I consider it so important to 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:49.040 the history of golf architecture. Sunningdale really stands at the 0:05:49.080 --> 0:05:52.440 beginning of a new wave in golf architecture, and this 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:57.599 new wave redefined what an inland golf course looked like, 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:00.839 and it also really set the mold for what just 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:06.279 modern golf courses looked like. Period. We are very much 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:10.800 still living in a world that this design at Sunningdale 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:15.839 helped to create. So what was different about Sunningdale One 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:18.839 big factor I want to focus on is just the 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:23.560 cost of building it. Simply put, Sunningdale had a much 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:29.400 bigger construction budget than any previous course that these numbers 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:31.760 are that I'm about to cide are based on research 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:35.040 from Michael Morrison. Michael has been on the podcast before 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:37.719 and written about the what he calls the Great English 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:42.560 golf boom. Sunningdale took eighteen months to build. At one point, 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:47.360 Willie Park had seventy men, thirty horses and ten plows 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:51.040 working on the course. In total, it costs about four 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:55.600 thousand pounds to prepare the course, and then the clubhouse 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:59.599 cost an additional eight thousand. Now these numbers might not 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:03.320 sound and all that big now, but to put it 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:05.600 in context, you have to know something about how golf 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:10.640 courses were built before Sunningdale. For starters, they weren't really 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:14.760 built in the way that we would understand that word now. 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:18.680 I think the more appropriate words would be designed or 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:21.800 laid out. This is true of both the seaside courses 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:24.840 and the inland courses that existed in Great Britain and 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:28.320 Ireland in the eighteen hundreds. And it isn't to say 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:32.640 that these courses were poor or unsophisticated. Many of them 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:36.680 were anything but but Compared to Sunningdale and most of 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:40.600 the well known modern inland courses that were built after Sunningdale, 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:46.280 nineteenth century courses were designed on an absolute shoe string budget, 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:50.240 you know, nowhere near four thousand pounds, like it just 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:54.720 didn't get even close to that. Links courses, because of this, 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:59.520 had a couple of key advantages over inland courses. One, 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:02.960 they were set on land that was very well suited 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:06.000 to the game. In fact, Lynk's Land is what inspired 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:07.760 the game in the first place. So it's kind of 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:10.760 even funny to say that that Link's Land was well 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:14.080 suited to golf, because it's really more like golf was, 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:18.560 in the first place, suited to Lynksland. So obviously creating 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:22.280 a golf course on links Land didn't require nearly as 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:27.000 much investment or intervention from the hand of man. The 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:30.080 second advantage that links courses had, I would say, aside 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:32.680 from the land, was that many of them had just 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:35.600 been around for a long time, and so they had 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:40.640 had a chance to be refined and tuned by you know, 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:45.400 sort of gradual improvements over time. And the old course 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:47.800 at Saint Andrews is the perfect example of this. We 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:51.400 talked about it in the episode that I did with 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:56.480 Scott Macpherson. You know, that course evolved over a huge 0:08:56.480 --> 0:08:59.320 amount of time and it just kind of got better 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:02.560 and better over the course of the eighteen hundreds. So 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:07.359 it's not that links courses were better funded or designed 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:11.880 with a different and more advanced philosophy than inland courses. 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:15.199 It's more that they were on better land and had 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:19.000 been there for longer, all right. So now you look 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:21.640 at inland courses from the eighteen hundreds, what they were 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:25.760 like before Sunningdale, before the turn of the twentieth century. 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:29.240 Most of them were in England, first of all, and 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:32.000 most of them were built in the midst of an 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:36.960 incredible craze for golf in the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties. 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:42.160 England went absolutely nuts for golf during this time, and 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:48.400 English people found themselves very undersupplied with courses near population centers. 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:54.040 So to meet this new demand, courses were constructed very 0:09:54.120 --> 0:09:58.880 quickly on whatever land was available, and they were created 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:03.520 cheaply because golf was a brand new pastime for many 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:07.400 people in many places, and for all people knew it 0:10:07.440 --> 0:10:10.960 could just be a passing fat so they weren't necessarily 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:14.400 going to spend a bunch of money right off the bat. 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:17.360 That would have been too much of a risk. One 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:20.360 of the leading architects of this period was Tom Dunn, 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:25.640 who was a Scottish golf professional. His process was basically 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:28.960 to visit a site for a day or two, give 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:32.559 recommendations on where to cut the holes and maybe where 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:37.679 to dig a few hazards, and then he would leave. Obviously, 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:40.760 the courses that were built through this method were always 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:45.960 going to have some issues, drainage issues, functionality issues, and 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:48.640 generally they were going to lack the artistry that we've 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:53.360 come to expect from modern golf course design now. Because 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:55.960 of all this, Tom Dunn became a bit of a 0:10:56.240 --> 0:11:00.640 boogeyman to the next generation of golf architects. Alistair mackenzie 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:04.440 mentioned him a couple of times. Other architects would write 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:08.680 about Tom Dunn with a little bit of disdain, but 0:11:09.120 --> 0:11:12.199 if you look at him in the context of his period, 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:15.640 you can't really blame him for what he did. He 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:20.120 couldn't have had any concept that a golf course would 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:24.439 eventually be expected to even have a significant construction budget, 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:28.360 or to take years to build he was just responding 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:33.480 to the opportunities and possibilities that the market contained at 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:37.560 the time in the eighteen eighties and nineties. Now, when 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:40.480 money came into golf course development at the beginning of 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:45.840 the twentieth century, starting with Sunningdale, everything changed. Suddenly it 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:49.360 became relevant to talk about not just laying out a 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:52.680 golf course, but actually building a golf course. And suddenly 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:57.280 golf course designers started to think of themselves as golf 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:02.200 course architects. Right with the possibility of building a golf 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:06.520 course building, it came the desire to think more deeply 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:11.640 about the science and philosophy of creating golf courses. There 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:15.760 started to be much more discussion of what constituted an 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:20.240 excellent or ideal golf hole, and there was much more 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:24.280 investigation of golf course agronomy. This is really when modern 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:28.920 ideas of greenkeeping started to be formed, along with modern 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:33.480 ideas and philosophies of golf course architecture. Now, it wasn't 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:39.480 a coincidence that wealthier and more extensively more formally educated 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:43.120 people started to take an interest in golf course design 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:48.560 around this time. The infusion of money into golf architecture 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:53.200 had made the whole discipline a higher status pursuit and 0:12:53.440 --> 0:12:56.920 a form of art. The most influential voices in golf 0:12:56.920 --> 0:13:01.600 course design therefore, were no longer those of working class 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:07.880 Scottish professionals. Instead, they were well off and usually Oxford 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:13.160 or Cambridge educated Englishmen like Harry Colt, John Lowe and 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:18.000 Bernard Darwin and their contemporaries. These men brought their tastes 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:22.680 and reference points into golf architecture. One of these reference 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:26.120 points you'll hear Adam Lawrence mentioned later in this episode, 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:30.120 which is the Arts and Crafts movement in building architecture. Basically, 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:34.600 this was a style that valued naturalism and a sense 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:39.360 of place in building architecture, and indeed that influence became 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:43.640 very important in golf architecture in this new era, because 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:46.880 you had people who were familiar with arts and crafts 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:51.320 and familiar with the philosophy behind it suddenly applying these 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:54.880 kinds of ideas to golf architecture. Now, of course, there 0:13:55.000 --> 0:14:00.560 is a downside to these developments. The greater amount of 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:05.880 money that was suddenly in golf course development made some 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:11.600 wonderful art possible, obviously, but it also caused a raising 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:16.319 of standards and expectations that has resulted in golf becoming 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:22.160 more expensive and less accessible. This was it turned into 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:25.560 an absolute spiral, right and it probably would have started 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:30.760 without Sunningdale. But there's no doubt that Sunningdale was one 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:34.440 of the very first courses, maybe the first to explore 0:14:34.920 --> 0:14:40.080 that high end of financing a golf experience. And so 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:44.360 when we say that Sunningdale is the first modern golf course, 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:49.880 we mean that it was, you know, an unusually artistic 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:54.040 and well worked out, an impressive inland course, and so 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:58.280 it was modern architecturally, but it was also modern financially 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:01.760 and that has not all has been a positive thing. 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:04.640 And this is this is a complexity of being a 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:09.160 golf architecture fan as well as somebody who likes affordable 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:13.960 golf courses. You know, good golf architecture doesn't have to 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:18.520 be expensive. But when you look at the history, you 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:22.680 come away with a clear idea that the invention of 0:15:22.800 --> 0:15:26.760 modern golf architecture that really started with Sunningdale set the 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:30.960 game on a path toward becoming more expensive. And you know, 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:35.720 history is always complicated like this. We can celebrate great achievements. 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:38.560 You know, Sunningdale was a great achievement National Golf Links, 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:40.720 which we talked about in the last episode of the series, 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:45.080 was an incredible achievement, but they also represented a new 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:51.360 era of golf course design and golf consumption overall that 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:56.280 has seen the game become unaffordable for many people, especially 0:15:56.320 --> 0:16:00.000 as compared to the eighteen hundreds when most golf courses 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:02.520 were just free to play, if you can imagine that. 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:05.680 All right, So that's basically what I wanted to say 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:08.600 about this era. I'm still working out those thoughts, but 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:12.000 I hope that you found them interesting. And with that, 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:15.000 we're going to toss it to me and Adam Lawrence 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:18.880 talking a little more specifically about Sunningdale and about the 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:27.600 people behind it. Let's get to that, all right, Adam Lawrence, 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:30.160 Welcome to the podcast, Thanks for being here, Thank you 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:34.920 for having me. So before getting into the Sunningdale project specifically, 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:38.440 maybe we could just talk about the general area where 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:41.760 Sunningdale was and where many of the great English golf 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:46.040 courses ended up being south of London. What was this 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:49.400 area like and why was it opened up in this 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:51.280 way for golf construction. 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:56.600 So Sarah was a very rural county into the early 0:16:56.680 --> 0:16:59.720 middle part of the nineteenth century. If you look at 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:03.240 the population starts for the town of Working, for example, 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:08.520 it was tiny, minuscule in the early nineteenth century, and 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:11.440 then the railways came. And as London grew and the 0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:15.399 railways came, the city in the area around the city 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:21.560 became less suitable in the eyes of affluent people or 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:23.679 where they wanted to live and where they wanted to 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:28.040 bring up their families. They moved out, they became commuters, 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:33.600 they became suburbanites, and that's how suburbia developed. Suburbia followed 0:17:33.600 --> 0:17:37.919 the railways. And it's not coincidental that so many of 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:41.800 the golf courses in Surrey have railway lines very close 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:46.000 to them because the guys used to go there by train. 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:51.600 Sunnydale has a railway station three minutes walk away. Working 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:54.479 is further away, but the railway goes straight past it. 0:17:54.920 --> 0:17:58.000 People took trains out there and then they used to 0:17:58.040 --> 0:18:01.280 fight like hell from the stations of the golf course. 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:05.159 So it grew up in the second half of the 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:10.880 nineteenth century as the railways got established, and golf followed 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:13.760 that because the people who were moving to Surrey were 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:18.359 affluent and they wanted leisure, and as they discovered golf, 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:20.680 golf became popular. 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:23.040 And it just so happened that some of the land 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:28.439 that was available out in Surrey was sandy heathery. 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:34.440 It is it's the most amazing johincidents. But absolutely that 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:39.040 is true. There was no great Oh my god, look 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:41.760 at all this beautiful sand out here, we must build 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:45.840 dozens of great golf courses. That never ever happened of 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:50.240 certainly at that time it was there are people here, 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:53.800 we need land. Here is land and coincidentally it was 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:55.080 fantastic land for golf. 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:57.840 It did take a little bit of investment to make 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:00.560 the land golf ball though, and that's what other funny 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:01.159 things about it. 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:03.880 Absolutely for sure, and that was part of the issue. 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:08.240 The one hundred pounds golf courses were impossible as soon 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:13.919 as you went onto those heath sites because there was 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:16.240 no grass. It was all heather, It was all gorse. 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:20.800 They had to be cleared, they had seeded. They had 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:24.399 to be built in ways that the previous golf courses 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:28.200 never did because and this is one of one of 0:19:28.240 --> 0:19:33.400 the most fundamental changes. All the golf courses of the 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:40.480 nineteenth century were formed using existing turf and in many 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:46.280 ways on sites where the turf is good, naturally good. 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:48.840 That's a brilliant thing because you end up with turf 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:53.000 which is suited to your site, but it's setting there. 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:56.520 For example, there was no turf, so it all had 0:19:56.560 --> 0:19:58.960 to be seeded and selling those. As far as I 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:01.520 can tell, was the first golf course ever to be 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:04.320 entirely seeded, and that's why it was so much more 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:07.119 expensive than anything that came before it. 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:11.480 Right, This was such an important moment in golf architecture 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:15.480 because you know, for the first time golf courses were 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:20.080 truly being built in the modern way that we understand 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:23.199 golf courses to be built. And so of course it 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:25.240 was a huge advance, not with the. 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:28.840 SEME equivalent, but there would be the soil was being prepared, 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:32.680 seed was being sown, they were waiting for it to grow, 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:36.359 they were putting it, they were refining it, blah blah blah, 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:38.560 and then they went to planet Yeah. 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:44.280 And you know before that, golf courses were sometimes really amazing. Obviously, 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:48.600 if they were on excellent land like seaside links land, 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:51.679 you know that the land would determine the quality of 0:20:51.680 --> 0:20:54.520 the course. But if a cheap course is built inland 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:57.399 on a site that's not particularly well suited to it. 0:20:57.400 --> 0:21:01.080 It's probably not going to be particular early good. And 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:04.399 so that's that's what happened to this day. If you 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:09.359 have a site that has heavy soil, you're gonna have 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:11.159 to spend some money on it if you want to 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:13.880 make it good golf. All right, why don't we get 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:19.440 into the Sunningdale project specifically? How did the project get 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:20.040 off the ground? 0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:26.800 So there were two brothers, there were the Roberts brothers, 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:34.760 and they built a house at something now and there 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:38.880 had been according to there's a history of the sending 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:40.560 the old club called the sunning the Old Story. It 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:44.000 was written in the late fifties by Guy Bennett, who 0:21:44.040 --> 0:21:48.640 was next secretary of the club, and was revised ten 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:51.320 or twelve years ago by John Churchill, who was a 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:53.680 long term member of the club, and basically the club 0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:57.800 is his story. According to that, there were a few 0:21:58.080 --> 0:22:00.440 there had been a small attempt to play golf in 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:02.879 the area, and there were a few holes on what 0:22:03.119 --> 0:22:07.640 is now the setting their Ladies course, and the Roberts 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:14.600 built house bursts in their station and they decided to 0:22:14.600 --> 0:22:17.560 build the golf course and it was essentially a piece 0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:21.359 of land speculation. It wasn't the sort of master planned 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:25.840 golf estate that we know nowadays. But the land was 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:28.760 owned and still is owned, most of it by Saint 0:22:28.840 --> 0:22:33.159 John's College, Cambridge, and they got they acquired the rights 0:22:33.200 --> 0:22:36.520 to build on the land from Saint John's and they 0:22:36.560 --> 0:22:40.040 started trying to build some houses along with the golf 0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:43.560 and obviously the area was growing apple and people were 0:22:43.600 --> 0:22:48.000 moving there. It was a pretty good proposition. They hired 0:22:48.560 --> 0:22:51.679 Willie Park to build, but not only to design but 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:54.280 also to build the golf course, and the value of 0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:59.880 the contract was three eight hundred pounds, which it would 0:22:59.880 --> 0:23:03.240 be way, way, way more than ever been spent in 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:06.680 a course. At that point. They had a company called 0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:11.440 the Ridgemont Estate Company which took large scale leases from 0:23:11.480 --> 0:23:14.639 Saint John's for land clots of land in the area 0:23:14.680 --> 0:23:18.080 on which they could build the houses. So, as I say, 0:23:18.480 --> 0:23:22.320 it was essentially an anspecabation project, but just andrew more 0:23:22.320 --> 0:23:23.480 of their golf clubs in. 0:23:23.400 --> 0:23:28.080 The world, and they raised far more money than had 0:23:28.119 --> 0:23:31.680 really ever been raised for a golf course project. As 0:23:31.720 --> 0:23:34.320 you say, I what allowed them to do that. 0:23:34.800 --> 0:23:38.120 Because these were affluent people who could see a return 0:23:38.640 --> 0:23:44.440 irrespective of the golf. They were able to bring significantly, 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:48.639 massively larger sums of money to bear on the project 0:23:49.359 --> 0:23:53.480 than had previously been the case. And you know, money 0:23:53.520 --> 0:23:57.040 has always followed money. If you have money, you can 0:23:57.119 --> 0:24:00.520 raise more, and they could see a return, so they 0:24:00.520 --> 0:24:01.720 were able to raise the money. 0:24:02.240 --> 0:24:04.399 Who was Willie Parker Jr. 0:24:04.840 --> 0:24:08.840 At this point he was already pretty damn well established 0:24:08.880 --> 0:24:12.560 and he'd only opened twice. He was a very go 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:18.120 getting fella. He was very entrepreneurial and he clearly saw 0:24:18.320 --> 0:24:23.040 in Sonnydale a big opportunity. He built Huntercom in Oxfordshire 0:24:23.119 --> 0:24:26.800 pretty much at the same time as Sonningdale, and he 0:24:27.000 --> 0:24:30.919 was essentially the owner at Huntercombe. And it was Huntercomb 0:24:30.960 --> 0:24:34.040 going bust in nineteen eight or whenever it was that 0:24:34.200 --> 0:24:36.200 basically destroyed park financially. 0:24:37.160 --> 0:24:39.560 So he had a number of things going on. Suffice 0:24:39.560 --> 0:24:42.560 it to say that he had built a few golf courses, 0:24:42.880 --> 0:24:47.680 but certainly nothing on the scale and ambition of Sunningdale 0:24:48.359 --> 0:24:49.560 or Huntercombe. 0:24:50.119 --> 0:24:53.120 Nobody had done anything on that scale, well, not part 0:24:53.320 --> 0:24:54.600 not done not anybody. 0:24:55.280 --> 0:24:58.560 Yes, And he turned out to be the guy I know. 0:24:58.800 --> 0:25:01.600 And he had written about architecture previously. I know he 0:25:01.640 --> 0:25:05.919 had written one of the very early sort of chapters 0:25:05.960 --> 0:25:08.320 that there was a chapter in his book. I forget 0:25:08.320 --> 0:25:09.960 what the book is called, but there's a chapter in 0:25:10.000 --> 0:25:13.200 his book on the art of laying out golf courses. 0:25:13.680 --> 0:25:15.720 And this was one of the first times that somebody 0:25:15.760 --> 0:25:19.560 had really written something like this that went into detail 0:25:19.600 --> 0:25:24.640 about golf architecture. But certainly to him, even to him, 0:25:24.880 --> 0:25:28.560 this was something quite new. So what do we know 0:25:29.040 --> 0:25:33.000 about the construction process at Sunningdale, how that played out, 0:25:33.040 --> 0:25:35.440 who was involved that sort of thing. 0:25:36.359 --> 0:25:41.200 I've never seen a good description of how many people 0:25:41.200 --> 0:25:43.960 were involved, but it was a big job. There is 0:25:44.359 --> 0:25:49.480 a very nice description in the Sunningdale story. There was 0:25:50.760 --> 0:25:54.879 a chap called Bert Chapman who grew up in the 0:25:54.920 --> 0:25:58.800 Sunday Sunningdale area and he worked for the club for 0:25:59.640 --> 0:26:04.359