Over the past month, I've been reading and re-reading some Donald Ross books, learning more about his style of architecture as I tried to dissect some portions of the HCC Golf Course Master Plan. If you haven't seen this book, I always felt it's the most comprehensive book on the history of the HCC architect and a worthy read. Bradley Klein did a nice job with this book. Brad is a great writer and a few years ago, I was honored to be able to take a creative writing class that he taught at our conference.
I've read this book before but as I did so a second time, I caught things I missed the 1st time. There is a lot of interesting parts of this book, specifically when Klein gets into his style of architecture. There is a lot of different aspects of HCC that make more sense architecturally as I read this a 2nd time. Holes like the HCC 12th, really fit the mold of having many elements of classic Ross design. In Chapter 7, Reading a Ross Course, the author gets into green construction. At a time when most architects were creating "push up" greens (top soil pushed up into an area to create a good growing medium) Ross was more meticulous about building layers of sand, gravel and topsoil that would create a root zone that drained well provided a firm surface. In effect, he was busy creating an early version of the USGA spec green, that wasn't officially developed until the 1960's. It goes on to say that it wasn't uncommon for Ross greens to have slope of 6-7% in order to create good surface drainage as well. Think about a pin on 6-7% slope...with green speeds what they are today, we cannot place a pin in an area greater than 2% slope!
Keep in mind, this was all done in a day where 1/4" was the lowest possible mowing height and the green speed was a 5 or 6 on the stimpmeter (this was considered a fast green). Over time, this led to many courses to soften the slope of the greens to account for the newer grasses and lower mowing heights that would ultimately lead to faster greens. This temptation to renovate has been a powerful one and led to the demise of many classic golf course features, according to Klein. Klein suggests one alternative, is to keep the green speeds around 9 and to simply enjoy the contours that Ross created.
I'm sure I'll be sharing some more aspects of the book, but if you have the interest and time, it offers great insight into the man who is probably the most famous golf course architect of all time.