{"id":1065,"date":"2013-08-06T19:07:57","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T00:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/?p=1065"},"modified":"2023-05-16T14:14:51","modified_gmt":"2023-05-16T19:14:51","slug":"what-makes-oak-hill-great-an-architectural-assessment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/golf\/1065\/what-makes-oak-hill-great-an-architectural-assessment","title":{"rendered":"What Makes Oak Hill Great? An Architectural Assessment"},"content":{"rendered":"

[A look at Oak Hill from John Strawn, from when the PGA Championship was played there in 2013.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York has hosted the Ryder Cup, three US Opens, and now three PGA Championships.\u00a0 It\u2019s always ranked among America\u2019s best courses, in one recent list rising as high as number 17.\u00a0 What accounts for Oak Hill\u2019s distinguished reputation? What defines Oak Hill\u2019s greatness?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In 1921, Oak Hill acquired 355 acres of treeless, nondescript farmland near two existing golf courses, the Country Club of Rochester and Irondequoit Country Club.\u00a0\u00a0 Oak Hill commissioned the Scottish immigrant golf architect Donald Ross to design its two new courses, a natural choice given that he had designed the two neighboring courses, and was thus familiar with this local landscape.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Getaway Holes at
Oak Hill.
Note Allens Creek<\/p><\/div>\n

Oak Hill\u2019s land was shaped like a bow tie. Ross sited the clubhouse at the knot. A branch of Allens Creek flowed north across the eastern half of the property, where Ross routed the East Course.\u00a0 Thirteen holes were on or around the Allens Creek parcel. (Walter Hagen, America\u2019s first great professional golfer, was born in a farm house on Allens Creek in 1892, not far from where Oak Hill would be built.) \u00a0Some fairways at Oak Hill run parallel to the Creek, providing at least the potential for strategic tee shots, but the holes Ross laid out perpendicular to the creek all use it simply as a cross hazard.<\/p>\n

Pete Dye thinks Ross\u2019s greatest skill as a course designer was in his routing plans.\u00a0 In his introduction to Brad Klein\u2019s biography of Ross, Dye noted that Ross \u201cwas the first designer to make the opening shot play one way, then switch the kind of play needed for the second.\u201d\u00a0 If the tee shot required a draw, Dye explained, then the second shot would require a fade.\u00a0 At Oak Hill, Ross laid out the East Course in an unusual way: the front nine returns to the clubhouse, with the holes laid out around the perimeter of the easternmost land.\u00a0 The 10th<\/sup> hole plays parallel to the 1st<\/sup>, as often happens, but a four hole loop inside the front nine has the famous par 5 13th<\/sup> returning to the clubhouse. \u00a0The 14th<\/sup> hole then heads south on a five hole loop, so the East Course returns to the clubhouse three times, with three \u201cfinishing\u201d holes\u20149, 13 and 18.\u00a0 These holes play in three directions: south on 9, west on 13, north on 18.\u00a0 \u00a0The “Hill of Fame”<\/a> on the right side of 13\u00a0uses Oak Hill’s trees not just to define the fairway, but\u00a0to honor great players. \u00a0The viewing opportunities from the Hill of Fame and\u00a0Oak Hill\u2019s clubhouse are matchless.<\/p>\n

One and ten are similar holes: Allens Creek defines the eastern end of the fairways, and the approach shots are wedges or short irons.\u00a0 Craig Harmon, the head pro at Oak Hill for the last forty-one years, does a great job describing all of Oak Hill\u2019s holes in a video on the PGA\u2019s website<\/a>.\u00a0 He says that both 1 and 10 should be \u201ceasy\u201d holes for the pros as long as they drive the ball well.\u00a0 Oddly enough, Harmon uses the word \u201ceasy\u201d to describe six of Oak Hill\u2019s holes, which is odd until you note the caveat \u201cif you drive the ball well.\u201d\u00a0 Harmon emphasizes the devious dips and slants of the greens, while observing somewhat matter-of-factly that success always depends on solid tee shots.\u00a0 Oak Hill\u2019s fairways are typically 24 yards wide, while the landing areas on some critical holes, such as 18, squeeze down to a mere 18 yards.\u00a0 Harmon\u2019s description of the holes is a great initiation into Oak Hill’s mysteries, while Terry Moore\u2019s Q & A<\/a> is an equally revealing introduction to Harmon, the quintessential club professional.<\/p>\n

Allens Creek crosses the fairway at just over 300 yards from the tee on the 1st<\/sup> and 10th holes, both par fours. Since the average PGA Tour player\u2019s drive in 2013 is 287 yards, players will have only a short-iron approach shot to these greens, and may not hit driver off the tee.\u00a0 The cross hazard, in other words, has no real impact on PGA Tour-level players.\u00a0 Harmon barely mentions the Creek in his analysis, and that\u2019s because it\u2019s not really in play.\u00a0 1 and 10 are two of only four holes on the East Course that play in an east-west direction.\u00a0 Twelve of the East course\u2019s par fours and fives, on the other hand, play north or south, so there is less overall\u00a0variety in the orientation of the holes than one might think. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The famous Ross greens at Oak Hill provide the gravest challenge, along with an element that was never part of Ross\u2019s plan\u2014the hundreds of trees that give Oak Hill its modern identity.<\/p>\n

Ross learned to play golf at Royal Dornoch in northern Scotland, a classic links course with no trees. He then tutored as a club-maker and greens keeper with Old Tom Morris in St. Andrews.\u00a0 Links-style courses were always the source of inspiration for Ross\u2019s designs.\u00a0 The so-called \u201cpark-land-style\u201d course, which Oak Hill evolved into, was pioneered in England, where the first golf courses outside of Scotland were built in the 19th century.\u00a0 But when Ross designed the East Course, trees were not in his plan, and he laid out a pair of courses which in his mind\u2019s eye resembled the links of his boyhood, not what Oak Hill would become.<\/p>\n

Park-land courses introduced two new types of hazards unknown to links golf: trees and ponds or lakes.\u00a0 These would come to define American-style golf courses, reaching their epitome in the creation of Augusta National. Alister Mackenzie used trees and water hazards to brilliant effect at Augusta, while at the same time insisting that his inspiration for its design was the Old Course at St. Andrews, which is defined above all by its commodious fairways and the infinitely optional number of routes from tee to green.\u00a0 There are optimal<\/i> routes most days, depending on the wind, but I once hooked a drive so bad on the second that it bounced off the stonewall along the right side of the Road Hole, and I still managed par.\u00a0 But a drive like that at Oak Hill would mean doom, for reasons Ross would not have anticipated.\u00a0\u00a0 Modern park-land courses, especially when they\u2019re set up for major championships, require consistently long and straight drives.\u00a0 The winner this week at Oak Hill will miss very few fairways\u2014scrambling is not really a viable approach to success on a tree-lined course.<\/p>\n

When Ross designed Oak Hill, he focused his energy on the greens, which are small, elevated, and undulating.\u00a0 A classic Ross green requires a precise approach shot; if you miss, the ball spills off the green into steeply-banked catchment areas, and requires a delicate chip or pitch back onto the perched green surface. \u00a0Harmon doubts that even the great players competing in the PGA Championship will be able to get up and down at Oak Hill. \u00a0All of Ross\u2019s great courses\u2014Oakland Hills, Pinehurst #2, Inverness, and Seminole, for example\u2014were designed with this style of green, the most distinctive among the great course designers.\u00a0 Seminole\u2019s greens have been described as \u201cturtle backs,\u201d although Pete Dye, a Seminole member, insists they no longer resemble the greens Ross originally designed.\u00a0 Even Pinehurst #2, Dye insists, was modified by top-dressing and other maintenance practices that inadvertently, over a long period of years, altered the green surfaces.<\/p>\n

A prominent member of Oak Hill, according to the club\u2019s history, \u201cconcluded that Ross’ wonderful designs would be enhanced by trees,\u201d so starting in 1926, Dr John Williams planted literally thousands of trees to \u201cenhance\u201d Oak Hill\u2019s landscape.\u00a0 The members thought a treeless golf course was \u201ccheerless,\u201d which was doubtless the mood Scottish golfers expected their courses to convey, however offensive Americans may have considered gloomy golf to be.<\/p>\n

Golf course architects have a complicated attitude toward trees.\u00a0 Trees provide beauty and shade, but they can overwhelm the strategic intent of the original design, especially as they mature and their canopies intrude into the line of play. Trees can make it difficult to grow healthy turf, competing for nutrients, water and light, which is why courses such as Oakmont, Riviera and Waverley Country Club, among others, have recently embarked on tree removal plans, sometimes over the strenuous objections of members, especially the ones who remember Joyce Kilmer\u2019s kitschy paean from junior high. A tight, tree-lined course can provide a great test for the world\u2019s best golfer, but it also strictly defines the way each hole must be played, eliminating strategic decisions.\u00a0 Oak Hill is such a course.<\/p>\n

Ross\u2019 original East Course design was not only modified by the introduction of trees, it was also remodeled twice\u2014first by Robert Trent Jones, who grew up in Rochester and said that he \u201ccaught the architectural bug while watching Donald Ross design\u201d Oak Hill, in 1956 and 1967; and then in 1979 by George and Tom Fazio, who had the audacity to eliminate one Ross hole entirely, shorten another, and create a new short hole, the present 6th.\u00a0 Jones first measured average drives at the 1956 Open, stationing his sons along the fairways to run out and compute the lengths of the drives.\u00a0 \u00a0After the Fazio remodel, the original Ross-designed 5th hole, a beautiful par 3, would sit forlornly in the far northeast corner of Oak Hill, an orphan of the alteration. \u00a0The current 6th<\/sup> is a Fazio hole.\u00a0 Tom Weiskopf was so offended by the Fazios\u2019 changes to Oak Hill that he jokingly suggested that defenders of classic courses should carry guns to scare off any future attempts to change them.<\/p>\n

When the 1956 US Open was held at Oak Hill, the oaks Williams had planted were at most thirty years old.\u00a0 \u00a0Even when Trevino won in 1968, the trees were barely forty, so their canopies were modest compared to today, given that oaks can live hundreds of years and reach their maturity slowly.\u00a0 Oaks in forest tend to grow taller, while individual oaks in open terrain tend to be shorter but with broader canopies.\u00a0 The trees dominate the views from the tees, and lock into the minds of the players.\u00a0 The drives the thing, even if it\u2019s hit with an iron, a hybrid or a fairway wood and not the driver.<\/p>\n

Oak Hill is thus a hybrid course, combining elements of Donald Ross\u2019s design, preserved mostly in his greens; an arboretum, which defines most drives; and the revisions by Jones and the Fazios.\u00a0 \u00a0Despite its complicated origins, it is a course revered not only by its members but by professional golfers.<\/p>\n

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[A look at Oak Hill from John Strawn, from when the PGA Championship was played there in 2013.] Oak Hill… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,9,17,10580],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf-course-architecture","category-golf","category-courses-and-travel","category-golfontheweb"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2013\/08\/oak-hill-131.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1065"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1210,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065\/revisions\/1210"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}