THE MODERN CLASSIC
Links Magazine, April 1996 Edition

There are reasons why some new golf courses turn out so well. When a young layout is deemed by so many visitors to be a classic, it is attributable less to the spontaneous efforts of one genius than to years of meticulous planning by a whole brigade of artisans. Such is the case with Huntsville Golf Club in Lehman, PA, near Wilkes-Barre.

Although the bunkers are relatively flat, they get progressively deeper as you approach the greens, as illustrated by the 429-yard, par-four 7th.

The northeast corner of the state is coal mining country--used to be anyway. That's how Wilkes-Barre and its northern neighbor, Scranton, got their starts. This land at the upper end of the Appalachian Mountains near the Poconos is lovely terrain -- heavily wooded, rolling hillsides, dotted by the occasional farm.

For years, golfers drew inspiration from three fine private courses in town, all of them bearing the considerable design imprint of A.W. Tillinghast. He created both Wyoming Valley Country Club and Irem Temple Country Club in 1923 and also redesigned Fox Hill Country Club. All proved to be popular with area golfers, and by the mid-1980's they sported waiting lists for membership.

That's when a group of golfers from the established clubs in town decided to see if they could bring to Wilkes-Barre a golf course modeled after the game's classic traditions. The wider region already sported the likes of Saucon Valley, Merion and Pine Valley. Two hours to the east lay the great golf offerings of Metropolitan New York. Why not build a similar kind of classically inspired facility in Wilkes-Barre? Do it as a shrine to golf, with no real estate or commercial development cluttering up the golf holes.

Such was the inspiration behind Huntsville Golf Club. The founding directors included five successful area businessman who were all fascinated by golf: Richard Caputo, David Hall, Paul Lumia, Richard Maslow and Richard Pearsall. None, however, had previously developed a golf course. Where to start, then? A focus group? Raise money? Option a piece of land? Hire an architect? Wisely, the first thing they did was the first thing a great number of people do when they undertake a new golf course: They hired a golf course consultant - in this case, Jim McLoughlin.

Maslow says hiring him was "the luckiest decision I made." McLoughlin, from Westchester County, New York, is one of the world's most widely respected golf project analysts, with successful undertakings throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Unlike many in the business, he has on occasion written feasibility studies that said, "No." So Maslow and friends were particularly delighted when their own hopes for Wilkes-Barre received a preliminary green light. With the financial side of things looking good, the next steps involved finding the right piece of land - and the right designer.

In the late 1980's, Rees Jones was coming into his own as an architect of national reputation. Born in 1941, this youngest son of Robert Trent Jones was initiated into the ranks of the family design business when he helped measure drives during the 1954 U.S. Open at Baltusrol. After studying at Yale and studying landscape architecture at Harvard, Rees signed on with his dad as design associate before heading up his own shop in 1974. Four years later, his colleagues thought enough of him to vote him in as president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects.

A steady stream of well-respected courses came across his drawing board, many of them in the Southeast: Arcadian Shores (1974), Oyster Reef (1982) and Country Club of Hilton Head (1986) in South Carolina and Pinehurst #7 (1986) in North Carolina. His work at Haig Point (1986) on Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, won rave reviews for its routing alongside Calibogue Sound, an ingenious circuit that created optional tees and greens on a number of difficult forced carries across wetlands. But without question, it was his sensitive restoration of The Country Club in Brookline, Mass., for the 1988 U.S. Open that catapulted him into the front ranks of his profession.

The 448-yard, par-four 11th provides the ultimate risk reward opportunity, as a split fairway offers alternate routes to a heavily guarded, elevated green.

More than any single redesign project in U.S. history, Jones' work on The Country Club displayed the virtues of turning back the clock to an era of natural looking mounds, swales and flow lines. Rather than imposing himself on the course, Jones allowed the site and its original features to set the tone for his work. Indeed, he was most successful at The Country Club when he literally undid some very clumsy renovation work that had been committed there in the 1960's. No wonder Jones spent tournament week in the press tent giving interviews. The media discovered what course owners had known for years: This was a man who loved his work and who shared that enthusiasm with his clients.

Long before any contracts were signed, Jones made half a dozen trips to Wilkes-Barre to help Maslow and his founding group scout out prime golf ground. After four years of searching, they finally secured 290 acres of rolling farmland and hardwoods adjacent to the campus of Pennsylvania State University's Wilkes-Barre extension.

A routing was prepared, and after Rees presented his plans, he turned to Maslow and pointed to an adjacent parcel. "I can build a very good golf course with what you've given me, Dick. But if you can get hold of this additional piece, I can deliver an outstanding golf course." Maslow gulped. But the next day, he initiated talks that led to gaining the extra land Rees had asked for-all 184 acres of it. The outcome is a golf course routed the old-fashioned way, with the owner and architect roaming over the land rather than having to shoe-horn holes onto cramped quarters.

This was not, however, a simple construction process, not on land with 147 feet of elevation change. Much of the subsurface is siltstone and sandstone. During construction, 65,000 cubic yards of rock were dynamited. At the practice range, by the way, the raw rock ledge was blasted out to provide a backdrop for the target greens.

All told, some 420,000 cubic yards of earth were moved to make way for the holes. The golf course proper occupies just over 200 acres, with an additional 35 acres designated as protected wetlands. The result is an unusually spacious golf course, the more so because no homes will be developed on site and the only buildings surrounding the golf course are historic barns and farmhouses.

Rees Jones is not someone who throws bunkers and lakes in your face and dares you play over them. His craft is of a more subtle variety, with artfully carved fairway bunkers and greenside sand placed on diagonals to offer options and wide streams of play for those who prefer the safe route. He works hard at building flow into his greens, so that instead of harshly shaped decks and swales there is a more natural movement to putting surfaces. And wherever possible when water affects a hole, there's always an alternative (if longer) path.

These traits of generosity are all in play at Huntsville. There isn't anything close to a weak hole. How could there be since Jones had complete freedom to build holes anywhere the land looked good? The par-72 layout can stretch to 7,154 yards (135 slope/75.1 rating), but every hole affords five sets of tees. The greens, of Pennlinks creeping bentgrass, average 6,750 square feet and so offer plenty of landing room - more so since at least one side of each entrance has been kept open for low-running shots. The grassing textures - bentgrass fairways and tees, bluegrass for the close rough and a hybrid fescue mix for mounds and the secondary rough - enhance the look of each hole by highlighting features and framing each vista.

The par-five 12th plays 532 yards along a serpentine bunker to a green flanked in front by a lake and surrounded by bunkers.

The front nine is routed through woods and occasionally steep terrain. The back nine, by contrast, has a much more open look and feel to it. Huntsville opens with a gently rising par-5 that looks much tougher than its 518 yards would suggest. Surely that's because the initial tee shot has to skirt a wetlands to the right. No problem, there's plenty of fairway to the left. By the second tee, you get a sense of how strong a golf course this is, what with all the hang-time on the tee shot. The fairway on this 391-yard dogleg left tumbles nearly 80 feet.

From there in, the holes flow easily over land that could not have been simple to work into shape. Trees frame nearly every hole on this side. There's scarcely a level lie, but no trickery or blind shots. Jones also holds your interest by virtue of his bunker shapes. There's nothing linear or predictable about them. Nor on such rolling ground is there any need to bulk them up or flash them. Instead, they have been cut in below natural grade, in a style championed decades ago by Charles Blair MacDonald. Especially on the open holes, Jones has given the bunkers large, flowing shapes, in some cases serpentine.

Among the many sound principles that Jones follows is keeping the sand relatively flat, and then simply adjusting the depth of the front edge proportionately to the distance of the shot. The closer to the green, the deeper the bunker. As interestingly shaped as the fairway traps are, there's a fair chance of advancing a bunkered ball down the fairway rather than having to play out to the side.

The four holes that occupy nearly half of that additional 184-acre parcel Jones asked for are far and away the strongest at Huntsville.

The par-four 11th alone takes up 19 acres. Initially, the hole measured 419 yards straightaway, but the drive and approach would each have had to carry over wetlands. An old, gnarled white pine stood to the right of the original landing area, and leading part of the way to it was the ruins of an old stonewall. During the design process it became obvious that these should play more of a role in the hole. The decision was made to create a second fairway for an alternative path-longer, but less risky-edging in from the right side and eliminating the double forced carry. The result is a true option hole of stunning texture and scale.

This stretch of holes is enormous in scale. The par-four 13th, for instance, plays down a roller-coaster fairway that opens up long views of farmland to the east. Up toward the green on this hole is a natural spring well surrounded by an ancient stonewall. You get the distinct impression playing Huntsville that the land and the golf course have been here a very long time.

The 502-yard, par-five 14th hole is a brilliant example of risk/reward. Few holes that Jones has ever built offer more exacting options for players. The bold line off the tee leaves a long second shot to an elevated green fronted by bunkers. The smarter play is well to the left, with the second shot across a ravine to a dogleg fairway that leaves but a short pitch in. In every round there comes a point where you simply must play a good stroke. At Huntsville, that moment comes at the 14th fairway.

Players have several options on the 502-yard, par-five 14th, which allows longer hitters to have a go at the green in two from the right side, but provides a much safer route down the left side.

At the 15th tee, a bit of sadness sets in as you realize you're approaching the end of the round. This lengthy par-3 offers enough room for a low-running shot, while those who opt to fly the ball in must avoid an overhanging tree to the right and a greenside bunker to the left. The 16th appears modest for a par-4, unless you drive it left into wetland. Seventeen, drop shot par-3 into a green that feeds the ball from right to left, looks lovely, but can play deadly. At the 18th tee, fasten your seatbelts for the ride up the fairway to this 456-yard par-4.

Behind the final green extends Huntsville's modernist clubhouse, a single-story, 15,000-square-foot, steel-frame building with glass walls set onto a base of Vermont slate and Pennsylvania bluestone. The effect is to open up the interior to the outside. This was building architect Peter Bohlin's first golf clubhouse - although he did go on to design Bill Gates' $45 million home in Washington State. Among many of the things that consultant Jim McLoughlin did on behalf of Huntsville was to accompany Bohlin on a tour of prominent clubhouses in Weschester County to see what works and doesn't work in a golf setting.

McLoughlin also conducted the national searches that led to the hirings of golf director Tim Foran, club manager Kandy Krampitz and course superintendent Scott Schukraft. In fact, Schukraft was brought on board six weeks before the first tree was cut down and was involved in everything from permitting and quality control of construction to testing five different sand samples. "It saves money and time in the long run," says Schukraft, "knowing where the drainage lines are, ensuring that cart paths are properly placed, and seeing that irrigation controls are accessible."

Besides keeping Huntsville in impeccable shape, Schukraft has been responsible for the club's participation in the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf Courses, a joint undertaking of the USGA and Audubon International. The program is designed to encourage golf course wildlife habitats. All that big bluestem, redtop and indiangrass not only looks great; it also provides food and cover. That's also why golfers at Huntsville will spot so many bluebird boxes on the grounds. Last year alone, 28 bluebirds were born there, according to horticulturist Karen Balchunas.

Two years after opening, Huntsville is now a thriving golf club with a nearly full membership of 300. "I knew we'd make a go of it in town," says Maslow. "What's surprised me is the extent of interest from afar. We're even drawing corporate memberships from New Jersey and New York."

As a serious golf club, Huntsville draws people who love the game and who understand its refinements. When founding member (and golf chairman) Richard Caputo created the area's only caddie program, he was helping Huntsville develop its reputation as a place where the classical game flourishes.

Copyright © 1996 Bradley S. Klein    All Rights Reserved
Reprinted with permission.