AYE MON, THIS IS MACKENZIE
Dr. Alister MacKenzie Learned About Invisible
Bunkers Battling Boers in South Africa
By BOB DAVIS
THE AMERICAN GOLFER - NEW YORK
MARCH 1931
:::
Bob Davis, who claims he can make an invisible portrait, prefers in this case to reveal the entire landscape of the golf architect from Scotland, complete in its sturdy native vigor and ruggedness. — Copyright Robert H. Davis
IN SEPTEMBER, 1928, over the Jasper Park, Alberta, golf course I played a round with Dr. Alister MacKenzie, the canny Scotchman who laid out the celebrated Cypress Point links in California, and other courses in Great Britain and the United States. Inasmuch as the Canadians — and all Americans who have had the good fortune to play Jasper Park — consider it one of the finest pieces of golf architecture thus far designed by Stanley Thompson, I was somewhat astonished to observe Dr. MacKenzie bursting into loud laugher as we sauntered home down the eighteenth fairway. And such unseemly laughter….
“Aye, mon,” said I, addressing the visitor in pure Scotch, and with a deference that to say the least was highly appropriate, “I dinna ken the cause o’ yer mirth. Ye wadna’ laugh like that on St. Andrews.”
“Ah well, laddie,” said the MacKenzie, “I wasna’ laughin’ at Jasper Park, but at Sir Redvers Buller on the trail o’ the Boers in South Africa. Des-respect is na’ ma’ hobit, mon.”
“That being the case,” said I returning to the lingo of Edward V, “what is the big idea?”
“The British General,” replied the Doctor, “was not aware that Cronje, the Boer leader, was a master of camouflage and protective coloration. I happened to be in that campaign in Tugela, which was a costly experiment for the English, and got what I have since successfully, at least in a measure, turned to good account in a strategic system of golf course bunkering.
“We trained our guns on what we suspected were the Boer earthworks. Our shrapnel barrage churned the defenses like an earthquake. It was a great show followed by a ringing order to advance and complete the annihilation. Presto! The Boers opened fire from unscathed trenches dug on low ground close to the river’s bank. We had been trapped. The sharply etched trenches half way up the bluff had been manned by dummies. Except for a few snipers to heighten the illusion those sham breastworks were empty. You get the idea? Yes.
“So, instead of digging traps along either side of the fairway, where one obviously expects to find them, I decided to located bunkers on the fair green itself, placing them at strategic points, so that the players would be forced to shoot for clearly defined areas.”
“Invisible bunkers!” I remarked, just to make conversation.
“Not at all,” retaliated the architect. “On the contrary I took particular pains to make my bunkers plainly visible from the tee or the fairway. I want bunkers and sand traps to look more terrible than they actually are. Properly designed bunkers should grip the golfer’s imagination, impart a challenge, but they should look natural; seemingly a part of the surrounding scenery. The greatest compliment that can be paid a golf architect is to have players think this artificial work is natural. Monotony is the foe that golf course designers must everlastingly fight. I am partial to disappearing bunkers. By that phrase I mean traps, which though glaringly visible viewed from a position when facing the green, fade out when looked at from the reverse direction.”
“Dr. MacKenzie,” said I, “the dictionary makes the announcement that invisible means ‘not capable of being seen.’ At any hour of the day or night I can see thousands of them. You never designed one that I couldn’t see from any point of the compass. It can’t be done, and you know it. Ask any honest golfer…”
“I’ll show you what I mean when we get back to New York,” he broke in. “By that time there will be some photographs on from California. You must have a look at the fifth hole on the Cypress Point course, near Monterey. In the mean time, remember that the Boers wasted their talents. What they could have achieved in golf course architecture is something to think about.”
Our paths did not cross until recently, when Doctor MacKenzie dropped into Manhattan and gave me a look at the celebrated fifth hole. “Observe,” said he, “how garishly the traps stand out in the snap-shot which is taken from the tee. Those near the green look like white bellied sharks with gaping jaws. Now gaze on this picture of the same hole looking backward from the spot near the flag. Where have those bunkers gone? Eaten out of the low swales they can be seen only from the front. They disappear mysteriously when viewed from the rear.”
I suggested that they had gone to sea, there to mate with shad roe, return in the spring by the millions and overrun the fairways of my native land. But Doc. MacKenzie is Scotch and a hard person to convince. Just to show the caliber of the man, and to prove that he has all the resistance of his inflexible race, I turned my camera loose upon him and produced a psycho-graph that reveals the same sort of opposition that one encounters in a vitrified brick called upon to endorse Prohibition.
It was within my power to make an invisible portrait of my friend but it seems advisable to present him untrammeled of architectural revision, and complete in his sturdy and agreeable personality.
:::
A striking picture from the tee of the sixteenth hole on the Cypress Point course near Del Monte, California, one of Dr. MacKenzie’s creations, and a most interesting and picturesque course. The putting green appears ensnared in a network of bunkers in the distance. — J. P. Graham Photo
