Golf Course Architecture - Issue 65, July 2021

57 most famous course modernisation/ toughening in all of golf history by Robert Trent Jones Sr in 1951. That’s when Ben Hogan fought his way to victory in the US Open and the course acquired its moniker as The Monster. In fact, Oakland Hills South has always been a Ross course in terms of the routing and basic bunkering; Jones’ notorious post-war adjustment packed the landing areas, along the way narrowing down fairways and shrinking greens so that a ground- game golf course became an aerial affair. That was enough to create a template of modernisation that defined architectural renovation for almost half a century. Subsequent work by Rees Jones in the 1990s and 2000s continued in the same vein, creating a linear alignment of f lanking fairway bunkers that loomed alongside virtually every landing zone. So demanding had play there become that in the years running up to the recent reworking, mid-handicap club members who should have been playing the course at 6,200-6,400 yards were opting to play it at 6,700- 6,800 yards in order to avoid reaching the fairway bunkers off the tee – which only put much longer clubs into their hands for second shots on the par fours and par fives and made these out of their reach in regulation. The course had also become heavily over treed. Sequential aerial imagery (which this author helped compile on a consulting basis) showed that the original width of the fairways had become narrowed down. Long interior views across the 160-acre site had been Photo: Larry Lambrecht