Golf/Golf Architecture

The Charles Blair Macdonald Trail: Sleepy Hollow Country Club

By John Dunn ⋅ July 29, 2010 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

The first time I played Sleepy Hollow was a little less than a year ago, following the member-guest tournament at the Stanwich Club in Greenwich, CT, where I was caddying for the summer. A Sleepy Hollow caddie named Johnny came over to work in our tournament, as he had for many years, and invited me to join him the following Monday for a round at his course.

It was a sweltering July day without any breeze coming off the Hudson and Sleepy Hollow is a very hilly course. I immediately expressed my condolences to Johnny for having to climb those hills with fifty plus pounds on his back to make a living. Johnny laughed and said, “Wait till you see it.”

He was rightly proud of his course – the second Macdonald design to follow National (the first was Piping Rock). Sleepy Hollow (1914) was built on an extraordinary piece of property overlooking the Hudson River. The 338-acre “Woodlea” Estate was home to the single largest private residence in America: a 75-room “summer home” designed by Stanford White… and this is saying something in a neighborhood that includes Lyndhurst, Pocantico Hills and the Vanderbilt Estate. When you add in the area’s romantic history – the legend of Sleepy Hollow, the capture and hanging of Revolutionary war spy John Andre, etc. – golf is almost an afterthought. A croquet mallet and a picnic basket would more than suffice.

But there is golf to be played and Johnny turned out to be the best possible host, for he knew the original Macdonald routing precisely and we followed it as closely as possible, continuing my then-unwitting tour of the Charles Blair Macdonald Trail. Sleepy was the sixth of the nine original Macdonald courses I played prior to officially setting out on his trail this spring.

By “original Macdonald courses” I mean those he had a direct hand in designing. The success of National sealed his professional relationship with his engineer, Seth Raynor, and it’s no secret that he increasingly relied on Raynor to perform the nuts and bolts of the design work, but there is ample evidence that he contributed greatly to the nine on my trail and several others that no longer exist: Lido, the original Deepdale, the Links Club and Ocean Links. But a few of the nine have been so altered over time that there is some question as to whether they should be classified as Charles Blair Macdonald courses at all. Chicago, where only four of his holes remain, is the most obvious example, but Sleepy Hollow and the Greenbrier also come to mind.

Sleepy is a particularly interesting case because a major redesign was performed by A.W. Tillinghast in the early 1930s, and Westchester County, where Sleepy is located, is Tillinghast country – home to Winged Foot, Fenway and Quaker Ridge. It’s understandable then that the membership is as proud of its association with Tillinghast as Macdonald and, until recently, just as likely to tout that heritage. And pedigree aside, there is also the matter of familiarity. None of the members today ever saw or played the original Macdonald course, so when Gil Hanse and George Bahto were being considered to do the renovation, their first challenge was convincing the membership the original design was even worth attempting to restore.

On a personal level I can understand how familiarity breeds fondness… how one can become attached to the incarnation of the course they know best, history be damned. I grew up playing a Seth Raynor design in Connecticut: the Country Club of Fairfield. It is a beautiful setting for golf and a very good course, and I played it in blissful ignorance for many years, never questioning its origins or authenticity.

I was aware of an old abandoned green in the center of the property that is now a turf farm, but had no idea it was the original Alps hole. I was aware of an odd plateau bisected by a swale that rises awkwardly from the middle of the tenth fairway, but had no idea it was the original Biarritz green. And I was aware that several of the green shapes were out of character with the rest – the small circular fourth and fifth and the kidney shaped tenth, but had no idea they’d been added on. I would later come to regard the tenth as the greatest travesty because this problematic kidney supplanted the grand Biarritz. Now, burdened with all of this knowledge, it is impossible for me to hold Fairfield in the same esteem I once did. This was not just a matter of a few bunkers and greens being changed. Almost the entire course was rerouted. Entire holes were destroyed and new ones created.

In fairness, Fairfield is still a very good course. The renovation work (done by committee over the years – Tillinghast and RTJ among others) is quite good, admirable even, if not for what it replaced. And some of Raynor’s work survives intact, most notably the excellent Redan ninth, and lots of it in bits and pieces around the property, providing tantalizing clues to the shape of the whole but no real way to sew it back together. For this reason it would be difficult to convince a membership that has an emotional connection to the existing course and no memory of the Raynor original to spend millions of dollars and years of disruption on a thorough restoration.

Sleepy Hollow is a very different case. The major changes were done in such a way as to leave the majority of the original routing in tact, but alter most of the stylistic and strategic features. I don’t know which dilemma I’d prefer to have. On the one hand it is fun to see all of Fairfield’s history written right there on the ground, even if half of it is out of position and hidden in bullrushes and people’s backyards. On the other, it is great for the members of Sleepy that they have the main body of their course to work with and were able to bring back some semblance of the original – the greatest and only irretrievable loss was a corridor of holes (the original 14-17) on a ridge overlooking the Hudson. This valuable property was sold off sometime prior to 1926 (the holes are not on the 1926 aerial but I think you can make out some recently defunct bunkers from the old fifteenth in the top right below and the cross bunkers that guarded the second shot on the downhill par five sixteenth in the second aerial.)

It is my understanding that the course, as seen in the aerial, shows the recently completed redesign by Scottish architect Thomas Winton, son of a clubmaker from Montrose, Scotland, who learned his craft from Willie Park (Maidstone, Olympia Fields). Winton also did work at Apawamis and Siwanoy and the holes he added at Sleepy Hollow (down in front of the mansion where the driving range is today) look incredible. The picture (to the left) of his new par four third from a newspaper article at the time shows work as bold as Macdonald at his best (compare the green shape to the red circle in the aerial above ). But sadly it was short-lived. Tillinghast came in the ’30s and  built the beautiful eighteenth leading up to the main clubhouse and the first playing down away from it right over Winton’s first and fourth holes. Winton’s second and third were converted to a driving range and Macdonald’s three starting holes were incorporated into a new nine hole short course. To make up for these lost holes, Tilly added a five hole corridor in the woods away from the river (I’ve attempted to illustrate these changes below.)

Macdonald’s original starting holes remain adjacent to the present day championship course so it’s still possible to begin the round by playing them and then continue right on to the old fourth (the present day second) thereby playing the original Macdonald front nine in its entirety, ending on what is now the seventh hole – a spectacular reverse Redan. This is where the ’30s Tillinghast’s corridor ventures out into the woods and back, but, again, it’s simple enough to follow the original routing by skipping these five holes and walking right over to the original tenth (present day thirteen) and playing through to the original thirteenth (present day sixteen) – the beautiful Short hole. Here is where the Macdonald routing turned north and followed the ridge overlooking the Hudson and where Macdonaldphiles will feel their one major pang of loss… these four holes are gone forever. But a shortened version of the original eighteenth (present day seventeen) remains, making for a total of fourteen original holes. Not the complete course, but pretty darn close.

But, as they say, God is in the details and a loss of holes is not the only degradation a course can suffer. Much more common is the removal or reshaping of bunkers, the natural shifting and reshaping of greens and the repositioning of tees. According to Bahto, Sleepy Hollow suffered all of the above. And without many early photographs or much evidence remaining on the ground, he and Hanse were forced to recreate features they think Macdonald would’ve designed or know he designed on other courses – like the Principal’s Nose bunker they added on the par five sixth. Their one coup is a classic, old photo of the Short hole framed against the Hudson – far and away the most memorable and beautiful Short hole Macdonald ever created. They used the photo to replicate the par three’s huge, wrap around bunker and also used it as the visual basis for much of their excellent bunker work elsewhere on the course.

However, they did not attempt to restore the pronounced horseshoe or thumbprint contour (a horseshoe shaped back plateau with a thumbprint depression in the center) on the surface of the green. Bahto explained why this feature was lost and why it was likely never restored, “Many of these features have been lost and softened over the years through top dressing and redesign and often removed because putting with this feature on the green was too hard for the membership.”

I personally would’ve preferred them to go all the way and bring the contours back to their full glory,  but there is no arguing with their overall reshaping of the green complex – it is impeccable. The photo montage below speaks for itself and while I will concede that aesthetics are somewhat a matter of taste, the shape of the bunkers does effect the way a hole plays. Tillinghast’s flashed faces are designed to funnel a ball back towards the flat part of the bunker so the player will never face a lie right up against the wall of the bunker – a highly punitive result Macdonald considered integral to golf because of his experience at St Andrews and one he no doubt thought was especially deserved following a misfire at the Short hole. Rees Jones’s shallow saucers and kidneys make little sense to me aesthetically or strategically. There are so many of them scattered all over the place that they muddy up the serenity of the site, distract the golfer’s eye and just throw more luck into the equation. Macdonald’s full wrap-around visually complements the flat, flowing lines of the river and hills behind it and doles out the most consistent punishment. And, like the sound of Jerry Garcia’s guitar, there is no mistaking this style for anyone else. It is his alone.

Top: Macdonald/Raynor, 1914. Middle (L): Tillinghast, 1932. Middle (R): R. Jones, 1990. Bottom: Hanse/Bahto, 2006.

Hanse and Bahto also did some of their best work at the long par four Punchbowl (today’s fifteenth) which was at some point converted to a par five, replacing the long, challenging approach with an uninspiring and inconsequential layup and an easy short-iron third. This change defeated the purpose of the Punchbowl green which is designed to reward the long, accurate approach by funneling the ball in towards the hole. A short iron renders the Punchbowl defenseless because a high, soft ball flight easily carries any bunkers or mounds guarding the front of the green and produces very little roll negating the bowl or funnel effect.

Bahto and Hanse returned it to a long four. They also built a pair of staggered bunkers in front of the green that must be threaded to access the downsloping neck that feeds the ball into the Punchbowl. When I played it with Johnny I pured my three wood right between them and had a putt at birdie. The strength and pleasure of this hole is heightened further by some tree clearing behind the green that opened up the panoramic views of the Hudson, prompting one member to ask George, “When did you put the river in?” Perhaps it is just coincidental, but the Punchbowl green at National and the Punchbowl tee at the Creek Club open up to equally sudden and expansive water views.

In his beautiful book on Charles Blair Macdonald, The Evangelist of Golf, Bahto opines that Sleepy Hollow was never intended to be a true championship layout, but rather a more playable, member’s course. The dearth of fairway bunkers in the 1926 aerial does seem to support this and a paragraph from an April 9, 1916 New York Times article could be interpreted to mean the same:

“A.J Sanderson, the new professional imported from England by way of France, has been entrusted with the problems of providing a better surface for the putting-greens than the Scarborough Club (original club name) formerly posessed, and it is the intention of Wilson S. Kinnear, Chairman of the Golf Committee and the other prominent officials of the club to bring the Sleepy Hollow links forward as a fitting stage for the most important tournaments in the country.”

Winton’s dramatic work was certainly championship caliber and moved the club in the desired direction. But I would also argue that the course must’ve been quite good to begin with to even consider vying for the nation’s top tournaments and there are enough sophisticated green structures to suggest that Macdonald did some very fine work here and created a course that was quite inspiring to play. Sleepy Hollow’s reverse Redan (pictured below), for example, is one of the finest versions of this hole that he or Raynor ever built.

National’s right to left sloping Redan is the standard by which all others are judged and it is indeed near perfect, but Sleepy’s is so different, so creative, that it really showcases Macdonald’s talent and range as a designer. National’s green sits at eye level and tilts away from the tee, obscuring the putting surface and leaving the golfer to wonder about the outcome of his shot until he walks up over the berm in front of the green. This creates suspense and uncertainty and makes for interesting decision making in match play. Sleepy’s green slopes in the opposite direction – left to right. It is longer than National’s and, like Mid Ocean’s and Yale’s, plays steeply downhill. It is thrilling to watch a mid to long iron shot hang against the sky as it sails towards the green here and this hole provides its own special form of anticipation because the bounce and roll of the Redan effect is in full view so a well executed shot always holds the tantalizing prospect of getting the perfect kick and going in for an ace.

This brings us to the 1930’s Tillinghast redesign which I wish I could report enhanced the course even further. Sadly, it appears to have done just the opposite. Except for the beautiful 18th up to the clubhouse, the Tillinghast holes are unremarkable, especially when compared to his world class work elsewhere. And to think he destroyed those incredible Winton holes for the sake of a driving range and broke off three Macdonald holes to use in a short course! Tilly, how could you?

The current membership wisely decided to focus on their Macdonald roots. And George and Gil did a remarkable job bringing the course back as close to those roots as possible. Macdonald once said, ” Would that I could hand on unimpaired the great game as it was my good fortune to know it.” The amazing restoration of Sleepy Hollow proves that he did.

*I would like to thank George Bahto for providing me with many of the photographs, quotes and much of the history contained in this chapter. I had a blast doing the research on this one. I would also like to thank my good friend Bobby Ward for inviting me to join head professional David Young and him for a game this spring – my official stop on the CB Trail. And I would separately like to thank David Young for providing the beautiful photo montage of the Short hole and for shooting an effortless 68 that showed me how the course is supposed to be played.

Tags: Charles Blair Macdonald, George Bahto, Gil Hanse, John Dunn, Sleepy Hollow Country Club