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When Charles Blair Macdon-ald opened the NationalGolf Links in 1911, most of

America’s golfing elite beat a path tothe Long Island mecca to observewhat was touted as the greatest coursebuilt in North America. Macdonaldhad studied the venerable courses ofScotland and borrowed hole designshe considered uniquely challenging,adapting them to the Southamptonsite.

As his fame as a designer spread,Macdonald was asked to design pri-vate courses for Piping Rock, SleepyHollow and the St. Louis Country

Club, eventually catching the atten-tion of the owners of the GreenbrierResort in White Sulphur Springs,W.Va. The Greenbrier possessed anine-hole layout installed by AlexFindlay in 1910, but contracted withMacdonald in 1914 to plan one of hisclassic designs, slightly geared downfor the playing talents of resort guests.

The Old White, as the course even-tually was named, featured all the pro-totype holes Macdonald was knownfor, but as the years passed and othercourses were built on the property, theOld White lost its edge. Mounds were

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Above: Director of Golf Maintenance Pat McCabe, right, and Old White Superintendent Billy Bobbitt.Top: False fronts and flanking bunkers make a classic presentation.Continued on page B8

Honoring Classic Design The Old White is a testament to Charles Macdonald

by Bob Labbance

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removed, bunkers filled in, greenssoftened and the personality of theholes faded. Some at the resort werecontent to allow the layout to morphinto a gentle round of recreationalgolf; but not Director of Golf RobertHarris.

“For four years, Robert Harrisworked to get the approval to look atOld White and do this work,” says PatMcCabe, Greenbrier’s director of golfmaintenance. Harris brought in a suc-cession of golf architects to examinethe watered-down features, while edu-cating himself on the other Macdon-ald layouts that still existed. “It was aprocess for him because there’s a per-centage of people here and some ofour guests who liked it the way it was;but it was a big maintenance challengefor a long time. He gets a lot of thecredit for getting people on our side;that was his baby.”

McCabe has supervised all three ofthe resort’s courses for 18 years.“Twelve of the 18 years I’ve beenhere something has been torn up,”says McCabe, who engineered fouryears of restoration work on the OldWhite. With a sophisticated clientelethat expects the golf courses to be playable April to November,McCabe’s mission was to completefour phases of renovation in the off-season. “We generally just keep onecourse open for the winter, and cus-tomarily it’s the Meadows Coursebecause it has continual cart paths,”says McCabe. “The other coursesclose in October. The goal in three ofour four phases was to get the greensin by Thanksgiving. What I mean bythat is the sand in the greens welland the sod on the green surfaces. Alot of bunker surrounds were notcompleted, but our major objectivewas to give me some grow-in timecoming out of the winter. One of thephases, we got it done the day beforeThanksgiving.”

The Greenbrier wanted a golf coursearchitect who understood Macdon-ald’s dynamic designs and would makenumerous visits during the remodel-ing. Harris interviewed quite a few.“One of the big things with LesterGeorge was his location; we thoughthe could make a few more visits com-pared to some of the other architectsthat Robert interviewed,” saysMcCabe. George is based in nearbyRichmond, Va.

Harris, McCabe and George visitedclassic Macdonald layouts such as theChicago Golf Club, and they alsorelied on original photos of their ownproperty. “We had so many photos ofthe Old White. Even now things areturning up, but we had a good supplyI thought,” says McCabe. The motiva-tion to return to the old features wastwofold. “I think from a golfer’s standpoint it was bringing back the risk andreward play in the game. We had somebunkers that weren’t in play with themodern golf ball. From a maintenancestandpoint, I had bunkers that didn’tdrain; every half inch of rain we hadto pull the bunker pumps out. All thesand was flashed up on the bankswhere now we have the grass down tothe toe of the slope. We wanted tooffer our guests a different experiencetoo; I think that played a part in it.”

The team of George, Harris,McCabe and Aspen Construction ofDaniels, W.Va., worked well together.“Lester was fine to work with; themore we associated with him the bet-ter it got,” says McCabe. “Lester’sgreens mix is 100 percent sand withEcolite, which is a ceramic material,and Renovate, a nutrient package withhard and soft rock phosphates; a fer-tility package that was blended in. Likemost architects, he was very open-minded about the grasses. Basically,grassing was left up to us, and a lot ofthe discussion on the grass was donein that first phase.”

Billy Bobbitt was the superinten-dent of the Old White for three of thefour phases, coming over from Kin-loch, another course George haddesigned. “Billy was on the day-to-dayand weathered all the cold and wind,”says McCabe. Everyone was involvedin grassing choices. “L93 was chosenfor the greens, there really wasn’t anydiscussion regarding that. That’s thegrass I wanted, and that’s the grass weput on it,” says McCabe. “The bunkerfaces on phase one got a blend of blue-grass and fine fescue. We wanted seehow it was going to do, see the look,and we thought doing that small piecein phase one would lead us to a moredefinite choice of grass in phases two,three and four. We used an 80 percentbluegrass, 20 percent fine fescue and acouple of the bunkers got a 50/50blend. As the project progressed webasically went to 100 percent fine fes-cue. We had our reservations abouthow our guests would handle itbecause we wanted to produce a seed

Honoring Classic DesignContinued from page B6

Continued on page B10

Grassing choices for the bunker surrounds generated discussion for a coupleof years.

The Redan hole is one of the boldest copies on the layout.

The renovation brought risk/reward play to the forefront.

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head and allowed that to happen, andthere were some challenges after itseeded out at the end of June. It was achallenge for our guests, playability-wise, so after the latter part of June, westarted to trim it back.”

McCabe was drawn to the look oftall fescue in the old photos. “I wouldhave gone with solid bluegrass aroundour bunkers and green complexesbecause it would have been a little biteasier to manage, but after looking atLookout Mountain and some others, Irealized it’s the design that makes therestoration, not the grass,” saysMcCabe. “Being a grass grower, I wasprobably hung up on that maybemore than I should have been. Mydesire was to allow the fine fescue togrow, seed out and give you that goodaesthetic, old-course look, but playcan’t handle that.”

Given the time frame, when grasseswere chosen, all surfaces had to besodded. “First of all, the time of theyear we did this restoration we had nochoice but to sod. Nobody wanted to,but we had to if we were going to haveit open for play in May,” says McCabe.“Anytime you sod greens you’reimporting thatch already in the grass,so we knew we had a big challenge infront of us with sodding the greens.The sod we purchased was from ColinBoyd up north of Pittsburg, and Iwent up there to look at it and it wasgrowing in 100 percent sand base,which is what the greens are at OldWhite, so it matched pretty well. He’sgot a very small nursery, and he treatsit like a green. It’s a little more expen-sive, but we wanted to match themedium we have here.”

McCabe also realized that he could-n’t expect miracles from the L93 inGreenbrier’s mountainous environ-ment. “We’ve learned that coming outof the winter, we can’t push that L93.Getting the courses ready for April 1play, if we want to do any aerificationwe have to do it before April 1, andL93 does not recover from an earlyspring aeration; it’s slow to come outof that dormancy and get going,” saysMcCabe. “Even with the old Poagreens on the other two courses, youhave to be very careful. You can getyourself into a situation, if you’re aer-ifying late in the fall, that you’re goingto look at those greens April 1 and itwill look like you just aerified them, soit’s a big challenge. If you think you’re

going to push it with fertilizer, it justwon’t work. You’ve got to have a fertil-ity program monthly or every twoweeks. You’ve got to spoon-feed it; it’ssure not as aggressive as Penncross.”

In addition to greens and bunkercomplexes, all the tees were redoneand some fairways were reshaped. Theamazing thing is that during four win-ters, the weather was never a projectkiller. “I have to admit we were very,very lucky with the weather on allphases,” says McCabe. “I couldn’t haveasked for better weather; I don’tremember any lengthy cover of snow.The contractor had to push snow outof the way to build some tees, and wedid it, but there was no prolongedstoppage of work because of the accu-mulation of snow. Now, we had thecold weather, but we’ve been very for-tunate the last six, seven years withsnow. It’s funny when you see a con-tractor take a chain saw out to cut in abunker edge, that can be interesting,but I can’t say enough about thoseguys at Aspen Construction, they’reawesome.”

McCabe also got to test the value ofgreens covers. “We played around withwinter covers to give that L93 everyadvantage we could, besides praying.In phase three we covered three-fourths of the greens that were built.We also incorporated black sand,some we put straight black sand as atopdressing, some we put covers only,and some we put covers with blacksand underneath and one green wedidn’t do anything to. And, we came tothe conclusion that neither the blacksand or the covers gave us any advan-tage. It didn’t appear to be any differ-ent than the one that was notcovered.”

The final product is a testament toCharlie Macdonald and the persever-ance of everyone at the Greenbrier.The Old White now features a dazzlingarray of classic holes, and the resorthas educated golfers with information-al signs at each tee. The massive Biar-ritz green at number three and theoutrageous Redan at number eight arestandouts, but every hole has unique,old-time features. The spirit of one ofgolf ’s greatest designers has been hon-ored, more than 90 years after he firstset foot on the acreage.

Bob Labbance is Turf ’s golf editor anda frequent contributor. He resides inMontpelier, Vt. He can be reachedwith your ideas and comments atblabbance@notowngolf.com.

Honoring Classic DesignContinued from page B8

Huge chocolate drop mounds just off the L93 putting surfaces demand chippingskills some modern golfers have never mastered.

Rectangular fairway bunkers honor an early era in American golf.

The par-3 third hole, known as Biarritz, features a huge green with a deep swalecutting through the green’s heart.

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