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