I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball.
In a brid egg Frida Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg, fridagg bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course. Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode is one of our architect profiles. We are going to dig deep into the work of Walter Travis and to talk about Walter Travis, I have Brian Schneider joining me. He's been a longtime lead associate at Renaissance Golf. He also does his own solo work. You will be probably seeing a lot more
of Brian Schneider work in the years to come. Right now, he is he's busy building a eighteen hole design with Blake Conant at Old Barnwell in Aiken, South Carolina. But in terms of Walter Travis, he's done in extensive restoration work at a few of Walter Travis's golf courses, including Hollywood Golf Club in New Jersey Garden City, which is a devereue. Emmett and Walter Travis Design North Jersey, which he is actually doing right now, a restoration of and
Round Hill. So he has seen all but one of the Walter Travis courses that are left according to him, and no better person to talk to about Walter Travis, you know from a also you know, just building features, but the you know, the architecture of that made him unique. We talk about Walter Travis here and it was a real fun conversation. So without further ado, here is Brian Steider. All right, Brian, we're here to talk about Walter Travis.
I think you know, this is an architect that I got a little bit deeper into the weeds on this year, saw a couple more of his courses. I've seen a handful, and I know you really respect the man, respect his work, and I think sometimes it even shows through in a little bit into your work, some of the things you might see from you you see in Walter Travis's work.
You know.
My first question has to be, if Walter Travis was around today, do you think he'd go by Walter or Walt.
I think he was a Walter. I think he was a Walter.
Brilliant question though, I kind of think he'd be walled. I think he'd go that wall.
You can't go wrong with either one. Really.
Yeah, it's good.
It's a good dance. That's win win.
Tell us a little bit about background, obviously you consult at a number of Travis clubs, And tell us a little bit about the guy and how he got into golf and what you know about his background.
Yeah, I'm not a biographer, but you know he was. He was born in Australia eighteen sixty two or something like that, moved to the States as a pretty young guy in eighteen eighty six or so. Took up golf nine or ten years later, when he was thirty four years old. I think it was a pretty athletic guy. But yeah, took up golf grudgingly as I understand it, at age thirty four, and you know, four years later won the first of his three US Amateur Championships nineteen
oh four. Was the first brit to win the British Amateur, which didn't go over very well. He wanted Sandwich in England. The locals were none too happy about it. I forget the exact details of kind of the trophy presentation or whatever the fact or whatever. You know, the ceremony was after he won, but the fellow presenting his trophy was none too kind to him in that in his little speech. I don't think the locals treated him all that well,
at least according to Travis. But in any case, Yeah, he was the first non brit to win that important title at the time. He won it using the Schenectady putter, which was a mallet putter kind of center shafted that was banned by the RNA not long after that.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah, they they banned the center shafted putter. You wouldn't say it was necessarily directly retaliation against his win, but but you wouldn't discount that neither.
They've done some things to Bryson that might some might say or sim you know, he starts doing one thing and that it's banned a couple of weeks later.
Yeah, I guess it's uh has a long history of such things.
Maybe maybe Bryson will become the next Walter Travis golf architecture too.
Tra Travis was like the Shambo in that way. I mean, he was always experimenting with different equipment, and you know he was I feel like he was one of the first guys to adopt the haskellball for competition when other folks were very sternly against it. And I think that those things, especially the schonenectady, I think that led to his falling out with McDonald. Actually he was he was
pretty tight with Cebe McDonald early on. He was very much involved in the planning and development of the National Golf Links.
Is that how he started playing was because of Cebe McDonald's or you.
Know, no, you know, he worked when he moved to the States. He lived in New York City and just kind of ran in circle where people played golf as a as a social thing and it was a business, you know, kind of an essential of business at the time. In the circles he ran into play golf. So I think he took it up just because the folks he knew was socialized with were golfers. I don't know where
the connection to McDonald's started exactly. I mean, they were both they both spent a lot of time at Garden City together along with Emmett and a bunch of other folks. So it might have been through Garden City that he got to know McDonald well. And McDonald honestly respected him as a golfer and invited him to participate in the National.
Travis was none too happy. You know, McDonald was a pretty staunch traditionalist, and when it came to the rules of golf he almost entirely deferred to the RNA completely. And you know, when the RNA took away Travis's putter, Travis wasn't too happy that he didn't have McDonald's support.
So the two had a falling out. And you know, to read McDonald's book now, when he talks about the National Golf Links, I don't think Travis gets a single mention, but you know, the impression is that he was essentially a co designer. You know, he was very much involved there, and yeah, I don't know that. I don't know they ever got back to getting along, which happened with Emmett too. You know, he and he and Devereux Emmett were were buddies for a long time, and you know, Emmett had
laid out Garden City. Travis made some changes to the golf course and they had a falling out perhaps over some of that work. There's a beautiful letter at on the wall at Garden City from Emmett to Travis. You know, in like nineteen twenty one, I think where Emmett said something along the lines of, you know, dear Travis, you know, we were once very good friends, and I always regretted, regretted to our estrangement. Can we not be friends again?
It's like this sweet, you know, part felt letter, and there's there's no knowing if Travis ever responded. But yeah, apparently once Travis was crossed, he didn't didn't let go of grudges easily.
Him and McDonald would be a pairing that was just bound for an explosion. Probably, So I'd never really heard of Travis being a co designer of National Golf Links. And is there something about the design to you, like, is there a feature specific, you know, on a hole that really like stands out to you like this reminds me of a Travis feature?
Not really. I mean, Travis was known for his wild greens, and clearly the National has some of those, But but there aren't any greens at the National that I look at, and so that was definitely Travis.
You know.
Yeah, Mike's Cerba. I don't know if you know Mike or heard him. Yeah, he wrote a really interesting long article about that whole saga and how Travis was basically just written out of the history of the National by McDonald. That's a pretty good read if you ever want to get into it.
Further, Yeah, I will, I'll look into that now.
It's uh, it's uh McDonald. The McDonald is a cantankerous fellow. And you know you talk about the letter writing. I think I don't know if like club histories now, like when you think about if you go to a lot of these historic places and they have in their library or their history room these letters that were written by architects back to clubs, are those gonna be like emails printed out in the future, Like what that's gonna be?
But it just makes me think like, is uh, you know Skokie or you know, uh, North Jersey going to have an email printed out from you to them about the about the changes that you're making at the course?
That's what not.
Yeah, So if if I was somebody that never seen a Walter Travis design, how would you describe it?
Oh, it's hard to do that with architects, you know, just he was a product of the time, So there wasn't you know that clearly wasn't my much earth moving involved in building his golf courses, but he clearly also did a lot of work around his green complexes. You know, he packed a lot of contour and slope in typically small packages, you know, relative to to modern greens. Especially you know, he wasn't afraid of blind shots, so a lot of his courses featured blind shots off the tee
or even into greens. But it's hard, you know, it's just hard to stereotype any architect that way, but his you know, his greens. Definitely there are similarities from one course to the next, especially kind of in the heyday of his design career. You can go from one course to the next and you can definitely recognize the similarities. And I suspect that was at least partly driven by the people that were building his golf courses for him.
That you know, he did a lot of his work in the Northeast, and I presume that you know, he took shapers builders from one project to the next, and that helped him build the greens that he built, which he's.
Known with uh with the greens, and I think you zeroed in on those. And I think if a conversation about Walter Travis, probably like starts starts at the greens because you know, they are some of the most unique greens that you'll you'll encounter, and uh, you know, I think one of the things that I was most struck by is like how well they handle modern speeds. But can you explain, you know, like what it is that make Travis greens unique.
Yeah, I think you touched on that. I mean, the one of the things I love about them. I don't know that there's ever been an architect who's built more interesting greens, but they do continue that they're packed with contour, but they still work really well at today's green speeds, which is fascinating. I mean, there are there aren't many greens on his courses where it's just a steep five
percent back to front. You know, where you're gonna you're gonna put off the green or if you miss over here, you're just dead because you can't keep it on the green. You know, a lot of his greens are kind of segmented, and they contain little ridges and backstops and bowls and contour around the edges, mounting around the perimeters that kind of help you stay on the green even if you're in the wrong section and you're gonna have a hard time getting within six or eight feet with your first putt.
At least you're not gonna end up thirty yards down the approach in most cases. Again, it's hard to pigeonhole his greens to him, and there's a lot of variety, and that's one of the things that makes them really worth study. It's not the same thing over and over. So we did have a few greens that you might even call templates that he did kind of take from
course to course with him. But you know, a lot of them feature these broad swales across the greens, almost beter Ritz like or diagonal swales, little pimpoly mounds around the edges. There's just a lot going on. But it's fun to see, you know, it's fun to go from one course to the next and there's always you know, if it's a well preserved Travis course, you know you're gonna find a bunch of really cool greens and you're going to see some stuff you've never seen before.
Yeah, I think those act like kind of those pimply as you just rib them pipli edges around the exteriors of the greens are are so compelling because of you know, when you get the pins over into the edges right, they play such an interesting role if you're coming from
the right place. They're almost like helping contours. And then when you miss, like in a spot, say that you miss it just short right of a front right pin, you get these really awkward little pitches over and they're almost like Maxwell rolls, but bigger, right, would you?
Is that how you describe them?
Yeah, they're definitely abrupt, you know, they can be very pointy and pimply, But you're right. I mean, you don't want to short side yourself on a lot of his greens because you're often going up and over something and trying to stop at in a relatively small section of the green before it tumbles down to the next one, Whereas if you're missed on the other side, you often got a backstop, which makes that that recovery shot a
lot easier. So yeah, sorting out where to miss around his greens is an important part of playing well on his golf courses.
This that era of design, to me is so good because of the lack of ability to move so much dirt right, But he was by no means like a minimalist. You look at like what he did around greens, and there he did significant earth moving around greens in some cases, right.
Oh, absolutely, absolutely, yeah. And it's not on the same scale as Langford and Moreau or rain Or necessarily you're not not creating these massive pads, but they're you know, the contouring does extend out to the approaches and the surrounds, and he was kind of pinching up material to to create some of them mounting around the edges and to give the greens a little bit of elevation. So yeah, there was there was certainly some work that went into his greens. A lot of them aren't just laying on
the ground like Garden the City. A lot of greens. I bring up Garden City, but a lot of those greens aren't his. So I didn't mean to make that that comparison necessarily.
With him not building everything up.
But you brought up Rainer and lang for Moreau, and you know, Charles Banks would fall into this about too, where they a lot of their work was greens were built up. What advantage of keeping things on the grade did that provide Travis at the Green more often? Obviously he built some greens up, but like you.
Know, yeah, I love Langford of Moreau and I really like Rainer's work. But you know, I think one of the drawbacks of Langford's work is that it's not necessarily well suited to the ground game. You know, a lot of the approaches there are some pretty abrupt rises into the green where you're just better off flying it out of the green. And Travis was not like that. I mean to me, his greens are asking you to land
them all short and run it. On a lot of cases, Tom Simpson was kind of the same way, and Willie Park. You know, it's there are similarities to the old course, and then a lot of times there's an abrupt but very manageable contour at the front of the green, you know, a false front that's two feet high instead of on a rain or Langford course where it's six rate feet high, just asking you to land it short and climb that
little contour and then stop it on the backside. So I think it's very much geared towards running approaches and thinking about using the ten twenty thirty yards short of the green to get your ball close, especially the front hull locations, and that's what I love about it. It's he asks for different shots into his greens, and a lot of architects do.
Yeah, I feel like you can build a little bit more variety in too right, you know. Like one of the things that is, I think a lot of his greens are kind of deceiving where they can kind of run away or you're putting uphill and you feel like you might be putting down like there, and I think this might be and like I'm just you know, kind
of rubbaging off the top of my head here. But those things he created on the exterior, the big slopes on the edges of the greens almost obscure the way you see the smaller stuff in the green.
Does that make sense?
Yeah? Yeah, I think they can make reading puts confusing you. It's almost like when you're building greens on hilly ground, the stuff you're seeing in the background can throw off your impression of what the what your put's going to do. Yeah, And he wasn't afraid to build greens that fall away
or whole locations that are dead flat. And you know, I don't necessarily know the routing was his strength, but he did have a pensiant for you know, routing hole up and over a hill and then just benching the green on the backside, you know, lift up the back of the green six feet to hold it in, but everything's still falling away, and if you land on the green, you know you're gonna have a hard time stopping it. So a lot of times, like the tent that scrant
is a great example. Yeah, you've got to be thinking about landing it well short of the green, just letting it trick along and hope you don't fall off the back. That's pretty cool. You don't see that from a lot of architects, and that's something he'd like to do fairly often.
That might be like an example you mentioned like there were there's some common green slash holes that you've seen across his body of work.
Are there any? Are there?
What are some that come to mind that have you know, some shared similarities. I don't want to use the word template, but maybe some common hole designs and what those look like.
Yeah, he often did a riff on the beer ritz. You know, a swale, not usually as deep as what Rainer would have built, but you know, just a soft swale running across the center of the green or or oftentimes at a bit of a diagonal. That was something you see on almost all of his golf courses, and
you know, oftentimes it's arranged a little bit differently. It's the configuration of the rest of the green varies from course to course, but the diagonal swale across his greens is something you see quite a bit.
Be like country Club at Troy's twelfth Hall have something.
Like, yeah, that's a good one. And he built you know, kind of a maiden style green on a number of courses too. You know Miss Squamicat, I don't know if you've been Miss Quamakat in Rhode Island. It's you know, a bunch of guys worked there, including Rayner and Ross and Travis. At some point they mighted Travis on to take a look around, and the fourth green there, He and Ross were buddies. They work together a bit of Pinehurst.
Travis takes credit for Pineher's number two and some article or a letter, so I don't know the extent to which that's true, but he and Ross certainly knew each other well. But the fourth green and Miss Quamaicat, which theoretically is a Ross course, you know, is a very much a splitting image. Spitting image of kind of a maiden style green he's built elsewhere. It's you know, there's kind of a high crown at the front, a swale running across the middle, and then two little pads in
the back divided by a swale. That's a green I've seen more than once. I'm at North Jersey Country Club right now and there's seventeenth. There's a dead ringer for the fourth and Miskwamika.
That's that, yeah, I mean, and most probably would have you know, I didn't know Travis worked there or even you know, had been there. And it's like you'd probably think that's a Rainer because Rainer built maiden greens, right.
Yeah, but it's about half the size of what Rainer would build a lot packed into a little package. That The seventeenth here at North Jersey's at the end of a reasonably short par five. But it's all the work you can do to get up and down if you missed the green.
I think that's the thing you hit on is the size of these plateaus, right, And people probably think of like a Rainer green with plateaus, they're really big. I think this shocking thing about the Travis ones is sometimes how small they are and it's like, wow, you got to hit like I mean, they're so abrupt coming up and then there's just this little paddock of space and it's totally achievable, but it's extraordinarily difficult to do, and when you miss it leads to a lot of really
fun shots. Whether you're putting up onto it, you know, trying to get it up on there, or you're chipping from around the green it opens up. I mean, do you land it kind of into the slope, do you land it short of the slope, let it run up, do you try and hit a higher shot that lands up on the slope. It's really I think, you know, when we talk about how it has stood up the test of time. The thing with the greens is they have these these vicious slopes, these you know, really abrupt slopes,
but then there's such pockets of flat area. But they're small, you know, but they they still retain pain so many pin positions.
Yeah, there's often a counter roll on the other side that helps keep you win, you know, and that's that's why they continue to work really well. If they're almost little bowls that you know, if you get in the right spot, it's going to help you, but finding that spot,
because they're pretty small, can be a challenge. You know, it's not It's not lost on me too, that there are a bunch of really great superintendents taking care of his golf courses now, so you know there's a lot of shortcress around his greens and you've got a bunch of options, and you know, these guys are doing fantastic work taking care of his golf courses and that makes him a lot of fun to play.
You've done a lot of work and as you mentioned, you're at North Jersey right now a Travis that you're working on a restoration plan at What is it like when you try and recreate his work?
Is it?
Is it a difficult style to recreate?
Yeah, it's brutal. It's like, yeah, the guy was the best builder of greens ever, and it's like, well, yeah, just build eleven greens just like Travis would have. It's like, yeah, but it was that easy everyone to do it. It's hard. It's really hard. You know. One thing that's made it
easier is digital mapping of greens. So we didn't do that last year, but this year at North Jersey, I'm building the greens at grade, and you know, I just paint the line around the perimeter and say this is where the green is, and our contractor will map that, core it out, put the we're building USGA green, So they'll core it out, you know, they'll put the gravel in, they'll put the drainage in, they'll put the mix in, and I don't have to worry about getting screwed up.
You know. It's like they've got this this digital map of it so that once all that work is done, they could put it back exactly as I left it. So the hard thing about building a USGA green is often the little rolls at the edge, you know, getting the green over the top of these these pointy little knobs or these fall offs, the false fronts that can be really hard to do well in a bulldozer, to the point where last year I was using an excavator on the edges to kind of touch some of that up.
So it was a pretty involved process. But using the method we're using this year makes my life a lot easier. It's a little bit more work for the contractor, but it makes my life easier, which is more important to me. So I think we're getting really cool shapes. But it is hard. I mean it is hard. And I've spent a lot of time going back to Travis Courses over the course of the past couple of years to really hone in on his greens and you know, take some measurements,
check grades. Yeah, Unfortunately, they've got a handful of original greens here still and the other places I've worked, I've taken a transit to a lot of their greens and really studied what makes them work. So I hope I'm doing a decent job, but it is a challenge. It's definitely a challenge.
With all those travels.
What are some of your favorite holes of Travis holes at a few courses, maybe just give us a couple.
Yeah, you know, he built you know, according to the Travis Society, he built fifty one golf courses I think is their number, and I've got another four or five where I've seen articles that mentioned that he might have been there. So, you know, basically built or remodeled fifty to fifty some golf courses. Probably a dozen of them either never got built or have been wiped out completely.
You know, there's probably another ten or twelve where there's still a golf course in the place he built it, but it's no longer anything like what he built, you know. I think there's only half a dozen that you would say are well preserved that they're actually still pure Travis golf courses, and there's probably another eight or ten that are are awfully close. So it can be hard to find original, great, original holes by him. But there's a bunch of great holes, you know. The one that pops
into my head is the seventh that's Granton. You've not been as Grant.
Yet, I haven't. I kills me. It kills me.
I was Inton for a friend's wedding years ago, and I had my wife with me and it was my friend, you know, she didn't know anybody. It's just like one of those times where you can't you can't leave, you know. And it was like I was like, I'm right here. When am I ever going to be back and Scranton here? I want to go see this place, but I can't, and uh, you know, and then and then it pissed rain on Sunday.
It was like the one chance.
I was like kind of thinking, you know what, I'll sneak out, I'll walk out there, I'll walk in the morning, just just jog around it at least see it. And then it's like it was like an utter downpour, like a deluge, like you rainy wouldn't want to go out into.
It's still there. It's not going anywhere. I'm sure you'll be back in Scranton someday. Someday. But there's seventh holes really cool. There's a bunch of great holes there.
Is that that's a hillier site, right it is.
Yeah, the clubhost sits on top of a big hill, and yeah, I mean that's the hilliest part, but the rest of the ground does have some movement to it. Yeah. The tenth hole there, which I mentioned earlier, is just a really cool par four that's just racing down that hill and the green is tacked onto the steep hill at the bottom and he jacked up the back and there's a little stream behind the green, so if you go along, there's a fifty to fifty chancer in the stream.
That's a really cool hole. It's just a spine that runs across the green from right to left about halfway back, and if the pin's behind that, you've got to go up and over this eighteen inch spine and try and stop it on the backside. There's a great hole like that at glenn Lyden, this really cool little course up in New Hampshire, the nine hole course that's got a really similar green.
That's like a neighborhood course, right.
It's a I don't even know what to make in the place. Really. I don't think they have a pro necessarily. I think it's just attached to this funky, tiny little community and they have access to the golf course. And I got in touch with somebody there. It's hard, it's hard to get somebody on the phone, but you know, I was out that way and it reached out just trying to find someone to talk to and kind of explain, you know, what I do and who I am, and you know, do you mind if I take a walk
around your golf course while I'm passing through tomorrow. And the guy's kind of like, yeah, we don't really do that. We don't really let people walk around the golf course. So I got up really early the next morning, before I thought anybody would be there, and took a quick walk around and didn't see anyone. But yeah, it's a quirky little place, and that's a really hilly spot, but there's some great greens and a couple of really cool holes out there.
Somebody told me about that place at one of our events and he was like, you know, I don't even really know how how you play it, but you know, I think, he said, my son and I we just like just jumped out there and played one day because nobody was out there, and and it's just to cool play. He was telling me how cool it was. I like thought about trying to, you know, veer off course. I just didn't have enough time to veer off course to go up there and see it.
Yeah, it's pretty neat. It's pretty neat. It's very it's very hilly and pretty quirky. But there's some cool greens. It's really neat holes.
Yeah, I had seen so.
I'd seen Garden City, which obviously is is uh you know some Travis uh some ev't and you know, that's a more subdued site. I saw, you know, Cape Rundle is a little bit more subdued site, and I thought, you know, then we went and saw a country called Detroit, which is on a very severe site, and it was it was interesting. You know what you said about his
uh he maybe not the greatest router. You know, I did feel like I was climbing hills all day long, But I thought the greens, you know, I was curious if like the greens would be a more toned down on a more severe site like you see a lot of places, and definitely not it was.
You know, they're still hat packed as much of a punch.
And you know, you see a lot out of like this game kind of of like where the ground with a lot of architects where the ground is wild, they might tone it down to the greens a little bit. But with then when it's flat, it gets really funky at the greens. And with him, it seemed that it had that same consistency at the green that you would see and maybe not quite as wild as a Cape Arundle,
you know, from one through eighteen. You know, there's a couple more subdued greens at Troy, but like overall it's still had those like big highlight greens.
Yeah. I don't think he knew how to turn down the volume necessarily that he just he went for it everywhere. And yeah, the greens at Troy or that's a wild set.
That place could be really really cool.
It is. Yeah, Garden City is different. You know what, I really do think of that as an Emmet golf course at this point. You know, I've been fortunate to work there a long time and and they've got two assistant superintendents there that are just you know, lunatics for finding everything they can about the golf course. So they've got this massive treasure trove of information, which is great.
Travis made a bunch of changes to the golf course over the years, especially before the nineteen thirteen Amateur, but most of that we were bunkers, you know. He had a bunch of bunkers to the golf course. He took out a bunch of Emmett's cross bunkers, or took out half of Emmitt's cross bunkers and left the other half to give you away around and he redone four of the greens prior to that event, the twelfth being one of them, which is you know, the crazy green at
Garden City. But somebody came in and undid his work on the other three at some point. And I don't know if it was Emit or somebody else, but a lot of his work to the greens didn't survive there. But a lot of his bunkers are still still intact, but it's very much an emmittt routing, and most of the greens are still original Emmitt. But yeah, that's a totally different place than than most of his work.
Is the par three the back line? Was it thirteen with a crazy twelve? Twelve? That is that Travis Green or I'm at Green.
I'm pretty sure it was Travis. They talked about you know, there's an article before the thirteen Amateur that mentions I think dromedary humps was the term they used to describe what he did to those four greens. So yeah, twelve wasn't the only one. There were three other ones. I think it was two and two and nine, and I forget the fourth one. But yeah, no, that green's crazy. That Green's crazy.
That's a great way to describe it. What is it?
Dramatary dromedary mounds, dromedary humps, I think is what the term was. That that green is interesting that I don't know if you've ever seen if you've been to Columbia Country Club near d C.
I've seen the photo, the old photos.
Yeah, there's a there are a bunch of great old photos of their sixteenth Oald which is a part three over a little stream back in the day. Today it looks like the twelfth in Augusta, but.
Maybe someday. H. H.
Barker was the pro at Garden City when Travis was doing his work, and Barker was hired to redesign the golf course at Columbia and stole the idea for the you know, of the twelfth hole of Garden City and rebuilt that green almost exactly as the sixteenth at Columbia.
And then before the Columbia host of the nineteen twenty one US Open, they hired Travis to come in and tweak the golf course and he blew that green up, so really yeah, and I think, you know, he and Barker were buddies, and I think they worked together on the renovation before the Open. But he changed that green completely, basically just filled in all the space between the mounds, and yeah, undid it. So Barker copied the idea and Travis was the one to wipe it out, which is
pretty interesting. I wish they'd put that back. I mean, that was a really cool feature and that was a really cool golf course. The two of them built some really wild stuff there, and unfortunately it's all gone at this point.
But you know that if there's one place that you could build some bold and you know, different stuff that would really stand out on the eastern East Coast, it'd be in DC.
Yes, you know you are ahead of Alter Travis course.
Yeah, DC's screaming for screaming for a golf course with that sort of character.
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What you know with his bodywork?
And this is kind of an impossible question, like, you know, given all the stuff he did in its hey like in its heyday, what course would you consider his masterpiece.
At this point? Probably Hollywood, and it's it's a bit of an anomaly in his portfolio. I mean, the bunkering at Hollywood is what gets everyone's attention, and for a good reason when he built it. You know, he built like two hundred and sixty bunkers and we've been shipping
away restoring those. We did a big bunker project there nine years ago in twenty thirteen, and at that point there were like one hundred and seventy and we've added a few more back and I think we're up to one hundred and eighty six at this point, so it's still missing a bunch of bunkers. But he didn't really do that anywhere else and the style of bunkers are
more flash sand and it's definitely an anomaly. And it was he built that on the heels of his time working with Crump at Pine Valley, so it's hard to think he wasn't inspired by by what was going on over there. Crump actually kind of enlisted him to try and make Pine Valley reversible, which was that Travis was into East Potomac Park, the MUNI and d C was reversible golf course. Hopefully we're going to get the chance
to restore that in the next couple of years. The West Course of Westchester originally was reversible, which is hard to believe when you walk that piece of property, you look at playing some of those holes backwards, it's like, yeah, it's pretty easy to understand why they settled on this routing. But yeah, there are drawings of the holes at Pine
Valley playing in the other direction. That was Travis's mission, and I don't think it was ever built to accommodate it, but that was something Crump had assigned him to do.
I mean reversibil you always think of as like you know, with the Westchester or the Pine Valley, right, you always think about a reversible course being a little bit more mellow on the ground. And I think like Tom talks about that with the Loop. When he saw the land, he was like, you know what, there's nothing like super crazy about this land.
But and that would.
Allow for a reversible golf course, right, and you think about East Potomac. I mean that's about his flat of a piece of property as you could find. And you know the old course, which was obviously was reversible. That is a very you know, very flat. There's a ton of contour on it, but for the you know, it doesn't have huge topographical movement.
The idea of building a.
Reversible course in Westchester is kind of crazy to think of. Yeah, And I think like Dan Hickson did a semi reversible course and that's on a more severe land at Sylvie's Ranch. But there's also nine other greens. It's not like the way you would think about reversible. So there's greens to accommodate the other route. You know, I think, you know, obviously flat land accommodations that I wonder if you could ever put back the reversible ability at Westchester.
I'd love to try. You know, that'd be high on my list of places that should be restored and not just for the reversible thing, but his bunkering scheme there was pretty wild, and he built a lot of little clusters of pot bunkers all over the place, and it was it was a really cool golf course back in the day. And they've done a good job of preserving the greens generally, though it's been a few years since I've been there. I know they've been doing some work.
I don't know if they've touched the greens necessarily, but they haven't really messed up the routing or the greens, thankfully, So that'd be a good one to put back together someday.
We've talked about the abrupt nature of his greens and the slopes and his greens. I think like something else that we haven't really touched on that you've you've talked a little bit about is are his but also his above ground features on the peripheries of fairways around greens. He was very big on building things up, it seems like, rather than down. What is it about What do you like about those above ground features that he built?
You know, I think he was just a very practical guy. And you know, a place like Hollywood that's a sandy site, so he went a little wild with the bunkers there. But you know here at North Jersey and Round Hill where I've worked, you know, there are rocky sites, and to try building bunkers here a is really hard, and b generates a bunch of rock if you can, if you can get in the ground, you're gonna dig up
a bunch of rock that has to go somewhere. So you know, at North Jersey, I think when we're done with our work here, there's going to be fifteen or sixteen bunkers. But he built mounds all over the golf course, including in the fairways between holes. You know, there was a bunch of rock and he had to do something with it. So instead of digging bunkers everywhere and fighting the rock, he just built moulins and all the spoils
from the construction work. And for the first few years of its existence, the members were asked to carry a little pouch with him as they played golf and pick up stones in the fairways as they played, and you know, Travis basically told him where to dump the stones. So there were piles of rocks all over the golf course for a few years, and eventually they either hauled some away or just grasp them over, you know, threw some
soil on him and grasped him over. But that's how they dealt with the rock problem.
Is a different kind of drop zone.
Yes, I mean, there's a funny article that North Jersey had a club magazine for a few years, and that's where they talk about picking up the rocks. But they also blast the architect for what a horrible selection of the site. And you know, they blame him for sticking and a rocky, difficult piece of ground where they had to pick up a rocks for three years. But you know, we're putting some of that stuff back and around Hill
was the same way. They had a bunch of mounds in the fairways that in the fifties they were superintendent took out, but he used that as as hazards instead of bunkers. You know, I'm sure he would have would have placed bunkers in a lot of the same locations if it was easy to dig a hole, but instead he just used the mounds. But they were very much in play. They were not just chocolate drops on the edges of holes. They were in the middle of fairways and they got in your way.
Seeks of a year work at Lanark and and your early work at Old Barnwell, to me seems like the above ground features that Travis kind of built you were you were incorporating somewhat into your work. What is it about the grass mound that that really appeals to you as an architectural feature.
Honest, I'm just kind of sick of bunkers, you know. The work Atlantic was was kind of like the thing I was just talking about, and we ended up with a bunch of material. They didn't have a dump. We had to find a place to put it, so we just built features with it. Old barn Wall's not quite the same, but I do think they're cool hazards. I think it's just rather than building bunkers everywhere, you can have some bunkers, you can have some mounds, you can
have some burns. You know. It's just another type of feature that adds to the overall complexity of the golf course and Tom's you know, Tom Doak has alluded to it on our projects in Houston where we worked with Brooks Kopka Memorial Park. Bunkers don't matter to good players, you know, especially green side bunkers and fairry bunkers. Generally, if you're a really good player and you hit it a long way, you're either you're going to try to avoid a fairry bunker if it's in your way, whether
you just swing harder or lay up. You know, very rarely to good players end up in ferry bunkers if they can avoid them. So they're not really effective hazards for challenging the best players, but they beat up the average player. And contour and mounds are a little different than that. You know, if Brooks made that point when we were working with them, that you know, if you've got an awkward lie in the rough, whether it's off the fairware, especially around the greens, those are the hardest
shouts for him. That's what makes that's what makes something challenging for him, Or is that doesn't really make golf a lot harder for the average player. Certainly not as difficult as playing out of a fairway bunker or a bunker forty yards short of a green. So I think it's a really effective way of testing the best players well, letting other people find their ball and get around and
not have to rake bunkers as often. So I just think they are a great alternative to immediately opting for sand everywhere you want a hazard.
With Travis, I think one of the things that, like a lot of these great golden h architects, especially the ones that worked in the Northeast, not a lot of
his golf is accessible. There is a course that I think is extraordinarily good in Maine, not too far from Boston, that everybody can play, and we've talked about it on our YouTube channel, Caper, and I'd love, you know, to talk a little bit about that golf course and to you what are the quintessential things that somebody could take away from that golf course that would help them understand Walter Travis.
That's a fantastic place. I mean, it's it's one of those places that feels like it hasn't changed in one hundred years in a really good way.
Absolute must see golf course, like maybe the most underrated golf course, one of the most underrated golf courses in America. And it's just because it's fifty eight hundred yards in my opinion, you know, it's like that place. If I played there every day the rest of my life, I'd be like the happiest human being.
In the world. George Bush, he loved the place. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, from the pro shop to the locker room to the pro ken has been there forever. Yeah, it's just a great place to hang out. And the Gulf is really fun. I mean it's it's a tiny piece of land. I mean, there's a reason it's fifty eight hundred yards and it's it's not wide any where. Yeah, especially on the front nine. It's it's a shooting gallery when it's busy.
Well, I mean you drive in. Your car is in jeopardy when you drive in right through the middle of the golf Yeah, yep.
There's no wasted space. That sends the message from the get go that you got to be on your toes. A lot of the land, especially on the front nine, is pretty flat. You know, there aren't a bunch of features. There are some really great holes that kind of play across the waterways that run through the golf course, but
a lot of the property is really flat. It's just a great example of you know, there are a handful of holes that are reasonably short, not very wide, and dead straight, but they've got these brilliant greens that turn an otherwise dull hole into something really interesting. So it just illustrates that you don't have to move heaven and earth to creat interesting golf. Just build a cool green and you've got something worth playing. And that place is
loaded with cool greens. Yeah, that's one of the wilder sets. You know. Bruce Heppner's worked there for years, my good friend, and he's done a great job with the Club of preserving and restoring and it's just I think it's maybe the most authentic Travis course in America. But yeah, it's all about the greens. And I think that's Travis's architecture. You know, generally, he didn't overdo the bunkering, he didn't overdo hazards, wasn't really into dog legs all that much.
You know, he built a lot of straight holes, but every one of his holes had a really cool green. And I think Cape Ronald is the perfect example of that.
I mean, some of those holes, and I think one of the advantages I had I played it in like a hurricane was passed by, so it was like a thirty mile in our wind. So like, you know, you have these three hundred and fifty yard holes that I was hitting long irons in too, because you know, you're playing under the wind. I mean it made it it.
I think it enhanced the experience so much. But you go through that golf course and you think about the greens out there, and it's like, you know, I mean a perfect example, like the first hole is a great, extraordinary green, but in a way it's like one of the more dull greens on the entire golf course, which is crazy when you play the first hole and you're like, oh, this is an unbelievable look at this green, and then you think through the round and you're like, well, half
of the green is pretty you know that right, half of the green's pretty tame outside of that you know kind of front feature and that that's really you know, you go through that golf course and it's like, you know, when you talk about greens that you'd want to have in your backyard, there are like there are six to ten examples of greens that you would want to have in your backyard, and in some of them are even those like I think some of the cool ones out there are like the more subdued greens.
Yeah, I mean there's some wild stuff like seven, eight eleven. Those greens are bonkers, but Yeah, there's great variety. You know, there are some quieter, more subtle greens, but they're never flat and dull. You know, there's always a little something going on that makes a back right hole location totally different than a front left hole location. Yeah, it's a beautiful set. It's a beautiful set.
I assume you know, and you could correct me if I'm wrong here, but you would say that Walter Travis was the greatest green builder ever.
I think so. Yeah. Yeah, I love his greens and I've I've got a pension for greens that have a lot going on. I like wild greens, but yeah, I think they're fascinating. I love going to one of his golf courses, especially when I hadn't seen a bunch of them. Was it was always really exciting to to go see a new one and just you know, oh, I can't wait to see what he came up with here. You know, so many of his places have wiped out a lot
of his greens. There are a lot of his golf courses that only have three or four of them left, but they stand out, you know, they're they're worth the effort to go see it, even if it's only a small handful of greens that are left.
Who would you place like in the near class below him as an architect, Just to give people you know that may not have seen traviscore.
Donald Ross, Yeah, Donald Ross comes to mind. I mean his his best work is exceptional. I think he built so many golf courses that you know, it can be a crapshoot whether you're going to find something really cool or not. I mean they're almost always well routed and interesting, but they don't all have the same level of detailed to the contouring that that you might find it some of his best golf courses. But yeah, Ross's best work
is is exceptional. And tilling Hast is the same, you know, a little uneven through his whole body of work, but his best courses place like Wingfoot and Fenway. Yeah, the greens are terrific. Somerset Yeah, yeah, Harry Colt did some beautiful work is another one.
I mean, I can't believe that that the same guy. It Maybe this is the credence to like telling Gas maybe didn't build best page Black, but I can't believe the same guy built the greens at Bethpage Black is the guy that built the greense at Fenway or wing Foot or Summerset, it's you can't It's it's utter banana land. How dull the greens are at beth Page in comparison to.
Those, Yeah, I don't know the whole story behind that place, but you have to believe that something's happened there or or they just never got built the way he intended, because yeah, they're they're a far cry from those other places you mentioned. He was great. I mean, I think Tom Doak is really good at varying his style from golf from course to course, and I think tilling Has did that better than any of those old guys. Yeah, the places you just mentioned, from beth Page to Wingfoot
to Somerset to San Francisco Golf Club. It's hard to believe the same dude built all those places. That's one of the things I love about his work. But he built some cool that said it, Fenway's really good.
I know a lot of people probably won't see all three of these, but like I think one of the testaments to tilling Has is just like if you go you see the two courses at Wingfoot, the course across the street at quaker Ridge and the course about mile away at Fenway, And these are four courses that I mean, I don't know if there's ever been an architect that's built four courses closer together other than maybe like donal Ross at Pinehurst, but like there's four courses right next
to each other, and they are like so drastically different from each other.
Yeah, even the two at wing Foot like they're Yeah, they're very different golf courses. Both great.
What if Travis's work have you not seen yet that you have on your like wishless to see?
There's one left. It's in Canada. It's between Quebec and Montreal. It's called Grand Mayor Resort. It's been tinkered with. Charles Allison did some work there after Travis, but I think, as best I can tell, I think it's slightly neglected, pretty well preserved, and I've seen some pictures of some pretty cool greens. So Quebec City is a place I've wanted to visit for a long time. So at some point I'll find three or four days to head up to mind Trel and I think Grand Mayor and check
out Quebec City. That's that's the last one on the Society's list that I need to see, there are a few others that I mentioned earlier that have been mentioned in articles here or there where, or he may have been associated that I want to check out, but I'm not sure what I'm going to find at those places.
Did his his career working at was it the American golfer being he I mean, he wrote a ton, Like That's one of the things I think that's interesting about Travis is like, you know, he opined about golf and golf architecture a lot, and you can kind of like, you know, you always like the architects that you can read. You know, a lot of them wrote a ton, some of them didn't write at all, but he wrote a lot.
Is there anything that you did you find stuff in articles that like give you a lens into his brain?
Yeah, you know, it's yeah, it's good that you mentioned that because he was not just a golfer and he was not just an architect. I mean, he was you know, he's on the short list of people you would say, or you know, maybe the most important figure in early American golf. I mean, he was fascinated by the game. Once he took it up, it'd been him pretty hard and he you know, he was into turf grass, he was into equipment, and he wrote about all that stuff.
And The American Golfer was a really influential magazine and he wrote a lot for that magazine. So it Yeah, it's great to have somebody like that that put their thoughts in words. You know, when you're working on rain of courses, it's impossible to find anything he ever wrote. Maybe McDonald wouldn't let him, but yeah, Travis loved to write, which which is really helpful for trying to get inside
his head. And he wrote really well and he didn't pull any punches when he wrote, which makes him interesting to read.
If you were creating a Travis itinerary for people, you know, what would be on like the let's just say the shortlist, like the the five to five to eight courses that you you must see or try to go see. And obviously you already mentioned Hollywood, and we talked about Cape Rundle, which I assume would be on there.
Yeah, I think there are six that are really well preserved, those two Hollywood, Cape Arrundle, Troy, which you mentioned in Albany.
Cool place.
It is a cool place. Yeah, it's a very cool place.
Kind of kind of like one of those clubs where it's like great that they never had money, but also you're like, if you just had a little bit of money.
Yeah.
You could, you could do some really cool stuff here.
But then you know, the fact that they never had that much money is why it probably never got changed.
And that's yeah, that's probably the case with a lot of his work. I mean, he didn't work in metropolitan areas all that often. He's kind of like Langford, like, his stuff is scattered in little towns in the countryside, the places that never had money to screw it up. So yeah, so there's those three. You know. Cherry Hill Club in Ontario, just across the river from Buffalo is another one that's pretty well preserved. I wouldn't say it's
one of his best courses necessarily. It's a pretty flat, quiet piece of lamp there's a cool set of greens there. And the other two or nine hold is grand Leyden is well preserved in New Hampshire, and the other one is it's an eighteen hole golf course, but he only did nine at Penhills in western Pennsylvania. The front nine is Travis the back nine he routed eighteen holes, but Dick Wilson built the back nine years later.
That had to be a big, big juxtaposition those two nines.
It is, it is. They've been doing a little bit of work to try and make the back feel a bit more like the front. But they've got a ways to go. But that's a pretty neat place. They've got a beautiful little clubhouse. That's a cool place to visit. Those six places are all really far from one another. You know, he did a bunch of work in clusters. You know, New Jersey here has a handful of his courses in this one called Lakewood, not far from Hollywood,
which is well preserved but neglected. You know, there's a there's a really cool trip. If you go from all the Ney to Buffalo, you can see six or seven of his courses that way. Jan and Dassis is a really neat golf course near I think that's near Utick or Syracuse. They've got a very cool set of greens. Handful of holes have been changing there, but the stuff that remains is really neat.
It's it's like, you know, a much like like Langford. There's only a few really great examples, more so with Travis than Langford.
I feel like.
But yes, you know, we'll have to do this about Langford one of these days too. You know it'll be uh. That's my my constant campaign to restore Kanky elks is, you know, going even even while I moved out of the state.
I hope it happens. Yeah. Yeah, that's a cool place waiting for some love.
Hey, Brian, thanks so much for coming on and sharing some wisdom on Travis. We're I'm looking forward to seeing your work at North Jersey as well as the new work that you are you're building down in South Carolina, and I'm excited to see you get more and more work.
Appreciate that, Amy, It's been fun.
Thank you for listening to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast. Big thanks to Matt Russis. He is a new member of the Frida Egg. He edited and produced this podcast. Will be uh. He'll be doing a lot more, a lot of video and audio stuff, so you will you'll hear his name a bunch and thanks Matt for putting this together. As a quick reminder, we're really excited we launched Club TFE. It will officially start kick off
January second. Club TFE is a membership. It's for people that want more content from a nothing's changing for you the podcast listener, newsletter reader. But if you are wanting more particular into golf architecture, we are going to be writing, talking, and doing more video content around golf architecture as well as all other facets of the game, so it's not just a golf architecture product. We'll have the Club TF blog and if you're interested in learning more about this,
go to Thefrida egg dot com slash membership. It is one hundred and twenty dollars a year, so ten dollars a month that comes out to it's one hundred and twenty dollars a year, and we're going to deliver.
Loads of content. So we just put up on the.
Blog a thing about how we're going to rate golf courses and we will be putting up a sample review and rating so everybody can kind of see what we're talking.
About with this.
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So thanks to Brian for coming on talking to Walter Travis, and I hope everybody has a great holidays,