By Brent Long (August 2009)
Prohibition era course gets a makeover at the hands of Ian Andrew
A group of eight or nine prominent Buffalo, NY businessmen founded Cherry Hill Club in 1922. This was in the midst of Prohibition, which lasted from 1920 to 1933 in the United States, but not it Canada. The businessmen owned summer cottages in and around scenic Point Abino, near Port Colborne, Ontario and they would come to Canada to enjoy summer vacations with family and friends and perhaps avail themselves of the less onerous liquor laws. As avid golfers, they wanted to keep their game sharp too, but in those days it was a full day’s journey to travel back and forth to Buffalo by ferry for a game of golf. So, they decided to build a golf course and called upon Australian-born Walter J. Travis to design one on the Canadian side of the river. Cherry Hill Club opened for play in 1924.
Today, despite hosting the 1972 Canadian Open, this summer retreat still remains a well-kept secret. Cherry Hill is essentially a Buffalo-based club with a membership of 360, of which 92 per cent is American!
Canadian golf course architect Ian Andrew recently completed an extensive bunker renovation at Cherry Hill. Andrew, who is now a partner of Mike Weir’s in their new course design business, added a few tee decks to get the layout to 7,022 yards and a par of 72. While Travis used horse-drawn wagons to haul and drop buckets of earth in the fairways, then scraped it around creating “chocolate drop” mounds that are the defining character of Cherry Hill – one of the flattest sites for golf that you will ever find, Andrew did the same thing with modern-day machinery. He also took out over 30 bunkers that had been added by architect Robbie Robinson to prepare the course for the ’72 Canadian Open, while adding and reshaping a few of his own. The removal of 30 bunkers may sound like a lot but Cherry Hill still has 95 of them and one of Travis’ guiding philosophies was that bunkers should exact a penalty except for those who can make an exceptional recovery shot.
The Cherry Hill greens are outstanding examples of Travis design, some of the best in the country. Andrew recaptured and expanded the putting surfaces on three greens to get them back to their original size and shape and also made improvement to wonderful greenside chipping areas.
Some readers will recall that 1972 Canadian Open, won by Gay Brewer. They’ll remember a well-kept course with diabolical bunkers and tricky greens that tested the best players of the day. Now, with the recent restoration work, Cherry Hill members and guests can appreciate why Walter Travis is held in such high regard amongst course architects and historians.
Andrew on Travis
Walter Travis (1862 – 1927) came to the United States as a young man and first played golf at the age of 35. In 1900, in his fourth full year of golf, he won the US Amateur Championship. He won it again in 1901 and 1903, while in 1902 he was the runner-up in the in US Open and in 1904 claimed the British Amateur crown using a Schenectady Putter. He was a prolific and influential golf journalist, golf teacher and innovative golf course architect.
Ian Andrew, a former design associate of Doug Carrick’s was an integral member of the design team that created award winning courses such as Copper Creek, Eagles Nest, Angus Glen and Muskoka Bay and also completed masterful renovation work including the bunker program at St. George’s G&CC which will host the 2010 RBC Canadian Open.
After leaving Carrick Design to create his own firm, Andrew worked on many key renovation and restoration projects on classic courses in both Canada and the United States. He is a noted expert on the works of Stanley Thompson and Walter Travis amongst other legendary designers. Andrew’s collaborative restoration work with American architect Gil Hanse at Scarboro GC in Toronto won high praise from members as well as his peers. Recently, Ian Andrew joined PGA Tour player Mike Weir in the launch of Weir Golf Design. Although they have yet to announce a new project, Andrew remains busy with projects like the Cherry Hill restoration.
What makes Cherry Hill Club a special place?
The greens are the heart of the golf course. There are 18 wildly undulating “original” greens that dictate where your approach shot must be played from if you want any chance to attack the hole. It’s hard to believe that after 80 years they haven’t been tampered with and that they have withstood the test of time. They’re a little small compared to today’s standards, but with so few rounds played at the club each year it’s not an issue. Some people refer to Cherry Hill as the Redtail of the south in that regard. In my opinion they are the best set of greens in Ontario to play on and from a historical point of view, are a wonderful testament to the genius of Walter Travis.
In your research for the renovations did you uncover anything interesting about Travis or Cherry Hill Club?
There was a plan for expanding to 27 holes. I’m not sure why the other holes weren’t built – it could have been the emergence of other competing clubs or the Depression. They still have enough land for it. It’s on the other side of the street where the driving range is, but I don’t think it’s something that they’ll ever do. Cherry Hill is just perfect the way it is.
Travis first designed nearby Lookout Point in 1919 and completed it in 1922. How are the two courses similar – or dissimilar?
I find them very different – Lookout Point is built right on the Niagara Escarpment and has 150-feet of elevation change, compared to only 20 feet at Cherry Hill. Travis requires you to use the land to bounce the ball onto greens or run a ball into position. The contour is so severe that it has an impact on everything you do right down to reading putts on greens. At Cherry Hill the land has little to no impact because it is so flat except for the final holes of each nine – so the bunker positions, greens and trees are the prime source of strategy throughout.
How would you describe Travis’ overall approach to golf course architecture? What are the hallmarks of a Travis design?
He mixed it up from project to project more than people think – but his wildly undulating greens were certainly the one area that distinguished him. His greens varied throughout the course using creases, wild undulations, sharp pitches, bowls, false fronts, and ridgelines. It was the compartmentalization of pin areas that set him completely apart from all others. He accomplished this by combining pockets and internal rolls. He created greens where putting from one pin position to another was extremely complicated. Not really a surprise from the man most considered the greatest putter in history. His use of interior contouring is rivaled by only the great Perry Maxwell, another well respected but lower profile known designer.
What are the strengths of Cherry Hill and how did you stay true to that style while renovating it?
The strengths are the greens – so we don’t touch them unless pin areas are missing and we return those areas. Everything we’ve done with removing, adding and reshaping bunkers has been to restore his vision on bunker placement and style. The tree removal program and restored chipping areas around greens areas have been done to encourage creative recovery shots. I think the bunkers at Cherry Hill are eminently fair. Travis certainly believed that if you went into a bunker you should pay the price unless you could hit an outstanding recovery shot and save yourself the stroke, so I worked with his philosophy. It takes a really great golf shot to recover from a bunker at Cherry Hill and not lose a stroke.
What is unusual about Cherry Hill compared to other Travis’ courses?
It’s so flat – none of the others I’ve seen are on flat sites. On many of Travis’s courses you will find blind shots, but there are none at Cherry Hill. What you see is what you get.
When did you visit your first Travis course in the United States?
I first visited Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York as a teenager in the early 1980s on a golf trip with my father when I was just learning about golf courses and architecture. I really liked the golf course. It was a lot of fun to play and had two really great short par-4s that stuck in the back of my mind.
How many Travis courses have you visited?
Travis was one of the early pioneers of the game whose efforts and accomplishments accelerated the popularity of the sport. I have visited 20 courses, mainly around New York State, but I’m going further afield as I continue to study his work. I started working on my first Travis project for Lookout Point in 1995 on a long range plan for the club and asked them to hold off for a few months so I could visit six Travis courses and make some notes and prepare for the project.
Where do Cherry Hill Club and Lookout Point fall in the scope of Travis’ other work?
Both were designed towards the latter part of his career. Lookout Point is one of his very best routings and Cherry Hill has possibly the best set of greens to study – so both are held in high regard.
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