Restoring a Masterwork -- Baltusrol Upper, by Rick Wolffe

Submitted by bobtrebus on Wed, 2007-01-10 02:32.

Shortly after the 1993 U.S. Open, Baltusrol began a planned program to restore and modernize its Upper golf course. For almost fifty years, since the Upper saw Tony Manero beat out Lighthorse Harry Cooper in the 1936 Open, this course had played second fiddle to the Lower. It was not until 1985, that the national spotlight would return to the Upper, when Kathy Baker outdueled Judy Clark to win the Women's U.S. Open.

As the Lower was readied for successive Opens in 1954, 1967, 1980 and 1993, it was gradually modernized and extended in length from around 6,700 yards to over 7,200 yards. This design work was overseen by the great golf architect Robert Trent Jones for the 54' 67' and 80' Opens. His equally accomplished golf architect son, Rees, took the baton for 93.'

Realizing the Upper had lost some of its luster and strength over the years, Baltusrol retained Rees Jones to develop a Master Plan to restore the Upper to its 1936 splendor and return it to an equal footing with its sister course below. After all, Tillie had designed both Upper and Lower to be "equally sought after as a matter of preference."

At the commencement of the Master Plan, Rees Jones and his associate designer, Steve Weisser, met with the Baltusrol Green Committee Chairman and several interested Baltusrol members. The purpose was to establish the objectives of the Master Plan. These objectives could include redesigning and or remodeling the golf course or select holes. As it turned out, knowing that the Upper was a great Tillinghast design, the objectives were easy to set—the course would be restored and modernized consistent with the Tillinghast design. In the same fashion as Rees and his father had done on the Lower over the last fifty years.

With the objectives in mind, Rees developed a Master Plan for the Upper, and over the course of six years, a phased restoration and modernization was completed. In an effort to minimize the disruption to play during the golf season, the work was accomplished in the late Fall and Winter months.

With a design objective of restoring the Upper to the context of modern play, the Rees Jones Master Plan remained true to the original design. No new greens were built, no new holes were routed, no mounds were added. Nothing was done to change or alter the original design intent. In fact, hundreds of Tillie's design details on green sizes, approaches to the green and bunker edging were restored. In the words of Rees Jones:

We went back to past records to find as much of Tillinghast's original concepts for the courses as possible. We reinstituted pin positions on greens and the open fairway approaches into greens that he spent so much of his energy perfecting. We also extended tees back and shifted fairways to bring original hazards back into play. In Baltusrol, Tillinghast left the world a pair of golf courses that have multiple shot options requiring a premeditated strategy. The Upper course is tighter and requires more finesse; the Lower is a bold, demanding course. Our work has been an effort to reinstate the definition, the fairness and the challenge that Tillinghast courses are famous for.

A brief summary of the Rees Jones Master Plan of the Upper is summarized as follows:

Fourteen teeing complexes were expanded and/or extended in length. The expansion in width provided more teeing area to accommodate play, and the extension in length restored the shot value of the original design. On the seventh and eleventh holes, new back tees were constructed at the location of original Tillinghast tees that had fallen from use.

Every fairway and greenside bunker, over 100 in all, were restored to their original depths and contours. In the context of modern play, a fairway bunker on the 1st hole and one on the 17th hole were relocated from around the 150 yard mark off the tee to a position farther out in the drive zone. Late in his career, Tillie became a prolific eliminator of these short bunkers. He called them "Duffer's Headaches." For they only punished the weaker player, while the low handicapper thought nothing of them. Rees rebuilt these bunkers in the modern day drive zone in the same Tillinghast style. Rees also expanded the elbow bunker complex on the 16th from four bunkers to seven; and he enlarged and deepened the fairway bunkers in the drive zone on the 9th and 13th. Painstaking efforts were taken to reconstruct these bunkers in the same Tillinghast style as the originals.

Greens were expanded to the original size and lines, thus restoring numerous pin positions that had been lost over the years.

Approach ramps to the green were restored or reconstructed on the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 16th holes. This returned bump and run shot making to several holes.

Rough lines were redirected and fairway lines shifted on the 1st, 5th, 11th, 16th, and 17th holes.
Trees that had been encroaching the golf course from tee to green, were removed or pruned back. Some trees were also planted—a back-up to the specimen elm in the drive zone on the 5th, and to penalize a hooked drive, a few were located in the left rough of the drive zone of the 9th and 14th holes.

Tillie's greenside bunkers were restored on the short par-3 15th

 An abanded pro tee was rebuilt and the hole now plays 595 yards

As for the Lower golf course, Rees has also been implementing a Master Plan to keep this great U.S. Open test ready for the big show. As was mentioned, Rees made several modernization enhancements for the Lower prior to the 1993 Open. These included the lengthening of the 3rd, 5th, 13th, and 14th holes. He also built an alternate teeing ground on the par-3 9th, expanded the fairway bunker complex on the 7th and relocated a greenside bunker on the 14th. For this year's Amateur, Rees lengthened the par-4 6th and the par-3 12th, expanded the fairway bunker complex on the 8th, and restored the 12th green and its greenside bunkers. Substantially all of the 130 plus bunkers and every green were restored to Tillie's design specs.

An abandoned pro tee was rebuilt
on the 225 par-3 7th		 The right side of the 10th green was expanded to its original lines

While the Master Plan was progressing, a state of the art irrigation system was installed on both the Upper and Lower courses. Baltusrol now has the irrigation power to keep its rough up for tournament play.

One of the features of Tillie's genius in the Baltusrol design is the expandability he built into it. Back in 1919, when he was designing the Upper and Lower courses, Tillinghast had the foresight to realize that his design would not stand the test of time if it could not be lengthened. He wrote at the time:

In these days of long flying balls we are forced to insure the future values of the various holes against even more lively balls than those of the present. A few years since, a course which measured up to six thousand yards was regarded as a thoroughly satisfactory, championship test. Now we are creeping up to sixty-five and sixty-six hundred yard totals from the back teeing grounds, with the average daily play several hundred yards less. Holes of four hundred and twenty-five yards once were regarded as long two-shotters. Today we are adding fifty yards to this length because of the constant introduction of longer flying balls.

Tillie's answer to this design dilemma was in the placement of the teeing ground. He demonstrated this principal in the following commentary and sketch:

A plain little sketch may be worthy of a place upon this page. The drawing is intended to provide a construction "Don't." A putting green is shown with the next teeing ground placed directly behind it. This fault is not encountered frequently on courses of the highest class but often upon those built in the days when the golf architect did not keep in mind so many details as now.

In the case of teeing ground, marked 1, there can be no lengthening of the hole from that end, but by building on the side as in the cases of 2 and 3, the hole may be lengthened without serious inconvenience.

We must endeavor to make our modern courses as elastic as possible, and when we are forced to lengthen out it is far more economical to build new teeing grounds and hazards than to construct new putting greens.

With this expandable design, Tillie's Upper was lengthened by nearly 230 yards, from 6,756 yards in 1993 to just under 7,000 yards at 6,985. This is the length of the course for this year's Men's U.S. Amateur. A hole by hole comparison of the lengthening is shown below:

The Lengthening of the Upper

Hole
Par
1933
Yardage
2000
Yardage
Net
Change
1
5
473
473
0
2
4
422
433
11
3
3
191
198
7
4
4
384
408
24
5
4
390
390
0
6
4
428
443
15
7
3
214
225
11
8
5
533
541
8
9
4
338
356
18
Out
36
3373
3467
94
         
10
3
151
166
15
11
5
551
596
45
12
4
333
359
26
13
4
363
386
23
14
4
395
395
0
15
3
139
139
0
16
4
435
447
12
17
5
557
571
14
18
4
459
459
0
In
  
3518
3518
135
Total
  
6756
6985
229

Many other great courses by the designers of the so called "Golden Age," are not so fortunate. They were not designed with Tillie's expandability feature. Consequently, they cannot be lengthened much at all for today's "long flying" ball, or when they are lengthened or modernized, the original design is radically altered by rebuilding greens and rerouting golf holes.

A very important point about both the Upper and Lower's expansion in length is that it was not done solely for the sake of length. It was done after a careful analysis by Rees Jones of the requirements of modern play, the design intent of each hole and the overall balance in the lengths of all eighteen golf holes. In every case, the added distance enhanced the shot value from the tee and from the approach to the green. As Tillie wrote in 1936 on the subject of lengthening for the sake of length:

Why it is actually a fact that we have encountered the effort to produce "the longest hole in the world." The merit of any hole is not judged by its length but rather by its interest and its variety as elective play is apparent. It isn't how far but how good!

But the fetish of length is worshipped entirely too often and there should be a quick end to it. Very recently, in California during one of the open tournaments, we heard a noted player asked his opinion of the course. "Its too damned long!" came the instant and candid reply—and this answer was made by one of the longest hitters in our land. And with this note of confidence from one for whom long holes have no terrors, we are for the present content to rest our case.

Like his Father before him, who said, "What I did at Baltusrol, I believe, was faithful to the Tillinghast concept," Rees has said "I'd like to imagine that Tillie would be proud if he stood on the terrace today overlooking his creation."

Is this it for the Upper? Can the Upper break the 7,000 yard mark? Did Tillie leave any more expansion room left? The answer is yes. Several holes have more room. The par-5 eighth can be lengthened another 15 to 20 yards, which would bring the pinching fairway bunkers back into the drive zone and balance out the overall yardage of the front nine as compared to the back nine. The ninth could also be lengthened through the restoration of an alternate teeing ground and fairway that have fallen from use. Will this occur? Perhaps. Hopefully though, the overall length of the Upper won't have to grow much more. This can certainly be said for most golf courses as well—if the "powers to be" are successful in putting a stop to the increasing distance a golf ball travels. Tillie warned us back in 1936! And if the distance game continues, it may spell a Malthusian set back for golf as we know it today. As golf courses continue grow to over 7,500 yards and start approaching 8,000 yards, they will become impossible to walk—certainly impossible as we have known golf for over 100 years. Surely the goal of playing and walking eighteen holes in four hours or less will become six hours or more!

The author of this article, Richard "Rick" C. Wolffe, Jr. has been a member of the Baltusrol Green Committee since 1992 and served as Green Chairman from 1996 through 1998. He had the pleasure and honor to work with Rees Jones and his associates in the completion of the Upper and Lower Master Plan.

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