“Subconsciously the genius is feared as an image breaker; frequently he does not accept the opinions of the mass, or man’s opinion of himself.”“
— Loren Eiseley
In the fall of 2001, the discovery of a nearly complete collection of William S. Flynn’s original course drawings initiated an intense study into the work of one of the great yet least known golf architects of all time. Prior to this event, there was little material available for a proper study of his designs and far less known about Flynn himself. No longer elusive, the drawings, aerial and ground photographs, archival materials and interviews shed a bright light on the outstanding accomplishments of one of golf’s greatest talents, both agronomic and architectural.
“If I remember the sunflower forest it is because from its hidden reaches man arose. The green world is his sacred center. In moments of sanity he must still seek refuge there.”
— Loren Eiseley
In the fall of 1998, the discovery of a nearly complete collection of William S. Flynn’s original course drawings initiated an intense study into the work of one of the great yet least known golf course architects of all time. Prior to this event, there was little material available for a proper study of his designs and far less was known about Flynn himself. No longer elusive, the drawings, aerial and ground photographs, archival materials and interviews shed a bright light on the outstanding accomplishments of one of golf’s greatest talents, as architect, builder, and turf grass expert.
William Stephen Flynn
(September 28, 1890 – January 24, 1945)
William Flynn was a decorated schoolboy golfer. Flynn grew up in Milton, Massachusetts regularly competing against Francis Ouimet. Not only one of the finest high school golfers in Massachusetts, Flynn was also captain of the basketball team and football team. Flynn’s career in golf began when he was hired in 1909 to design a 9-hole course in Hartwellville, VT for Wiliam Plunkett. Flynn furthered his career in golf course design, construction, and maintenance when he accompanied his brother-in-law, Frederick Pickering, to work on the development of Merion Cricket Club’s new East and West Courses. Pickering was one of the most prolific builders of golf courses and when he was sacked for excess drinking, Flynn took over as construction supervisor. In this capacity, Flynn worked under Hugh Wilson, the lead designer of the East Course at Merion. As a result of their close collaboration, Wilson became a father figure for Flynn. Flynn made suburban Philadelphia his home base and was the only non-Pennsylvania native in the Philadelphia School of Golf Architecture, the group responsible for many of America’s greatest golf course designs.
1908 Boston Globe
Flynn offered clients a one-stop shop after partnering with engineer Howard Toomey. Flynn’s one-man company, William S. Flynn, Golf Course Architect handled all the design work. The firm of Toomey and Flynn handled course construction and turf development.
Flynn is arguably considered the finest router of golf courses in the United States. He was able to study the land and design routing plans on sites where other architects failed to come up with a suitable plan. At the Cascades Golf Course in Virginia, Tillinghast, Raynor, and Lees couldn’t come up with a routing plan. As a last resort, the owner of The Homestead turned to Flynn, who laid out the plan in a single day. Flynn would first locate potential green sites and then determine which sites worked best in an optimal routing progression.
Flynn’s design practice was to utilize the natural features of the land as much as possible in order to create unique site-specific designs. Where nature came up short, Flynn would engineer designs in ways that replicated nature. As a result, it is often difficult to discern what was pre-existing and what was man-made.
Flynn believed in specific shot testing as a design element to identify the best players. On a number of courses, Flynn required hitting a driver to a par 3. For instance, at Rolling Green Golf Club, the uphill 10th hole, planned at 260 yards, was built at 245 yards in 1926. A low running draw was the only shot in the mid-1920s that could reach the green. At Huntingdon Valley Country Club, golfers that could hit a fade of a draw lie or a draw off a fade lie were rewarded. As one of the earliest proponents of short grass around greens, Flynn allowed golfers to have a variety of recovery shots to get up and down. Flynn designed quite a few dogleg holes where the ideal approach angle was from the outside of the hole rather than what many of his contemporaries were doing in rewarding play that cut the corner of the dogleg, shortening the hole.
With a limited design portfolio due to his preference to spend a lot of time on site to maximize the potential, Flynn has had 102 USGA events played on his courses with another 16 championships planned. 3 PGA championships have also been held on his courses. If you’d like to learn more about William Flynn’s career in golf architecture, construction, and maintenance, please consider joining the William Flynn Society where you will have access to his biography, The Nature Faker – William S. Flynn, Golf Course Architect, an archive of drawings, photographs and other historical assets related to his work, and an opportunity to play in a number of events each year.
