By Wayne Morrison, Bob Crosby, Craig Disher, and Andrew Green
If a list of great Golden Age Golf Architects is considered, William Flynn and Donald Ross would arguably be part of anyone’s top five.
It is often said that golf architects of this period rarely competed directly against each other for design commissions. But on a quaint parcel of ground overlooking York, Pennsylvania, we are given a tremendous opportunity to see how two of the best designers the game has ever known approached the exact same piece of ground. Why is this important? Well before mass earth movement was possible, the way golf architects used the ground shows us clearly how they used their vision and experience to create a journey over the available property to inspire a game that is defined by their routing.
Golf was introduced to York, PA, by Mr. Grier Hersh in 1894 with a nine-hole course of 2,281 yards on his Springdale estate. Hersh introduced Mr. A.B. Farquhar to the sport, and the two purchased 67-acres of land, leasing the grounds to the Country Club of York. A new nine-hole golf course was opened for play on July 1, 1900. By 1923, the club was interested in moving to larger grounds for a full eighteen-hole golf course and modern clubhouse. On January 12, 1924, the board of directors, led by Elmer Smith, authorized a committee to locate new grounds for the club. In early 1925, the club located the grounds in York and began the search for a golf course architect.
In late 1925, William Flynn and Donald Ross were asked to submit routing plans to the Country Club of York. Each visited the property, and each completed his proposed routings at approximately the same time. Whether or not they knew it at the time of planning, they were participating in a design competition. To add an additional element to this story, another giant of the time, A.W. Tillinghast, was brought in to evaluate two separate properties – apparently prior to the commission of Ross and Flynn. Tillinghast seemed to value an alternate piece of ground from the one Ross and Flynn were asked to consider.
Local golf historians point to the preexisting Flynn courses at the Country Club of Harrisburg and especially the rival Lancaster Country Club as influencing the membership in York to select Ross. Lancaster Country Club hired William Flynn to modernize their golf course in 1920. Flynn produced a solid design, which he continued to improve, as consulting architect, over the next twenty-five years. The men of York wanted a design by a different architect, the most famous one in the land, to differentiate themselves from these other two clubs. It is ironic to consider the central Pennsylvania clubhouses of Lancaster and York in the early part of the twentieth century were rivals like the houses of Lancaster and York in fifteenth-century England.
The new course for the Country Club of York was constructed in 1926 based upon the plans submitted by Donald Ross. Now, more than ninety years later, that competition provides a unique opportunity to compare and contrast aspects of the Flynn and Ross design philosophies. At York it is possible to hold constant the things that typically make comparisons of architectural styles so elusive. The location of the clubhouse, maintenance buildings, parking lots and access roads were all set at the time the two designers submitted their work. The differences in their routings are solely the result of different design preferences and philosophies.
As will become apparent in the discussion to follow, Flynn and Ross took remarkably different approaches to the County Club of York property, and two remarkably different golf courses would have resulted. It is rare that two architects prepare detailed routings for the same property at the same time. It is rarer still that they are both among the most important architects in the Golden Age. Ross ultimately won York’s design commission, but their competing routings make for a sort of natural experiment for comparing their design philosophies. Almost all the variables that usually make such comparisons so difficult were held constant at York. The competing plans were done at the same time, prepared for the same property, subject to the same budget, and, significantly, obligated to accommodate a pre-positioned clubhouse, maintenance buildings, parking lots and other infrastructure. Which leaves only one explanation for the differences in their routings – their different design philosophies.
Click Here to Open the Full Newsletter