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Donald Ross
1872-1948
Birthplace: Dornoch, Scotland
Residence: Pinehurst, NC
Founding member and honorary president, American Socie ty of Golf Course
Architects member, World Golf Hall of Fame
Transplanted Scotsman Donald Ross
transformed the American sports landscape in the first half of this
century. At his death in 1948, he left behind a legacy of 413 courses,
including such gems as
Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina,
Seminole in Florida, and the site of the 1996 U.S. Open,
Oakland Hills outside Detroit. Over 100 U.S. national championships
have been played on his designs. Small wonder his name still resonates
among the game's aficionados.
Ross was born in 1872 in the north Scottish coastal town
of Dornoch. There on crumpled dunesland, he grew up playing one of the
world's purest links, Royal Dornoch. As a young man he took up "the
keeping of the green." After a year of apprenticeship at St. Andrews
under the tutelage of 4-time British Open champion "Old" Tom Morris, he
returned to his native Dornoch. In those days, there was no rigid
division of labor for golf professionals, so Ross became adept not only
at maintaining the grounds but also as a player and club maker.
He was of common stock, making an adequate if
unspectacular living. But all that changed when an American professor on
golf pilgrimage to the sport's holy land invited him to come to the New
World to help spread the game's gospel. Ross arrived in 1899 to build
and run the Oakley Golf Club in the Boston area. The next year, he
landed an assignment with the The Tufts family on a property in North
Carolina's sand hills called Pinehurst.
Eventually, he designed and (re)built four courses at
the Pinehurst resort, none with more love and care than the No. 2
layout. Drawing upon his extensive background in turfgrass management,
he revolutionized southern greenskeeping practices when he oversaw the
transition of the putting surfaces at No. 2 from oiled sand to Bermuda
grass. The work was done just in time for the 1935 PGA Championship. The
result was devilishly quick domed greens and a sense of impending doom
for any wayward shots. s
During his summers, Ross started designing and building
courses throughout New England. Eventually, his practice spread into the
Midwest and down the Southeast coast. In association with design
assistants J.B. McGovern and Walter Hatch, Ross maintained a summer
office in Little Compton, Rhode Island and satellite offices in North
Amherst, Massachusetts, and Wynnewood, Pennsylvania.
Of all the courses that bear Ross' name, either as
original designs or as renovation projects, he probably never even saw a
third of them, and another third he visited only once or twice. Given
the constraints of train and car travel in those days, repeat visits
were difficult to arrange. Though Ross was a voracious traveler, he did
much of his design work from his home in a cottage behind the third
green at Pinehurst. There he worked from topographic maps, drew up
blueprints, and wrote simple but sharply-worded instructions that his
construction crew knew how to implement.
Ross had a genius for sound routings, with very little
walking required from one green to the next tee. He would commonly route
his short par-4s on uphill ground. Other trademarks included greens that
invited run-up shots, but with deep trouble over the green - usually in
the form of fallaway slopes - to punish the overly bold golfer. Ross was
also not averse to placing cross bunkers in play to punish the topped
shot - off the tee, or some 50 yards short of the green. Sadly, a great
number of these hazards have been taken out of play over the years in
the misguided pursuit of "ease of maintenance" or "making the course
more playable."
Regrettably, many of Ross' original works have
deteriorated over time - or worse yet, been effaced by subsequent
generations of less sophisticated "re-designers." Among the victims of
such a heavy-handed efforts have been Aronmink GC (1928) outside
Philadelphia (where Robert Trent Jones-Roger Rulewich created all new
bunkers), Inverness (1920) in Toledo, Ohio, and Oak Hill (1923) in
Rochester, New York (at both of which, Tom Fazio created several new
holes that didn't fit).
Ross was a founding member and first president of the
American Society of Golf Course Architects, a group that formed at
Pinehurst in December 1947. This year, a manuscript he drafted in 1914
called "Golf Has Never Failed Me" at long last will be published.
Donald Ross's best:
Pinehurst
#2, Pinehurst, NC (1903-35)
Worcester, Worcester, MA (1913)
Wannamoisett, Rumford, RI (1914)
The
Highlands, Grand Rapids, MI (1916)
Plainfield, Plainfield, NJ (1916)
Oakland Hills, Birmingham, MI (1917)
Essex, Manchester, MA (1917)
Interlachen, Minneapolis, MN (1919)
Inverness, Toledo, OH (1920)
Oak Hill, Rochester, NY (1923)
Salem, Salem, MA (1925)
Franklin Hills, Franklin, MI (1926)
Holston Hills, Knoxville, TN (1928)
Seminole, North Palm Beach, FL (1929)
by
Bradley S. Klein , www.golfcourse.com
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