The Engineer, The Sculptor, The Legend
What if I told you;
- An Ivy league educated civil engineer with a degree focus in the science of geodesy
- Who sought to understand through applied mathematics the Earth’s geometric shape, orientation in space, and gravity field
- Who upon graduation worked as a Street Commissioner acclaimed for his skill in building sewers and storm drains
- Who exhibited a duality in personality which might cause concern for some
- Who although never playing golf was hired to build a golf course
Became one of the most respected, revered, and prolific golf course architects of all time.
Would you believe me or think this must be a fanciful fictional story. Well it’s non-fiction, rooted in reality, and a classic American success story lived out in the early twentieth century. Who is this engineer with a flair for draining water, who is this sculptor who formed earth into golf art, who is this legendary designer of great golf courses – his name is Seth Jagger Raynor (no relation to Mick).
Raynor was born on May 7, 1874 in Manorville, Long Island, N.Y. and attended Princeton University, before leaving in 1898. He married Mary Hallock in 1903, and for the first years of his working life Raynor engineered drains, roads and waterworks.
Macdonald the Mentor
Charles Blair Macdonald, often called “The Father of American Golf Architecture”, attended the University of Saint Andrews where his uncle was a professor. He learned to play golf at the Old Course where he met and often played with, Old Tom Morris. Upon returning to America he built the first 18 hole golf course in 1892, Chicago Golf Club a founding member of the USGA, and became the first USGA Amateur champion in 1895.
Macdonald dreamed of recreating in America the links golf experience he embraced and enjoyed in Scotland. During the years he lived in St Andrews, he had played all the best links courses, and done extensive research on what were considered the best holes and why.
Based on what he learned, Macdonald envisioned creating the “Ideal” links course by utilizing the best strategies and features found on Scotland’s best golf holes. In 1906 Macdonald, now a wealthy man of wall street, found a 250 acre piece of land in Southampton Long Island deemed worthy for his dream, and this is where Raynor enters the picture.
The primary challenge the property presented was drainage, so in 1908 Macdonald hired the local street commissioner known for his drainage skills to survey the property. As is often the case in life, this serendipitous interaction with someone who saw abilities Raynor was unaware of, and envisioned a higher purpose for the young street commissioner, radically altered the course of his life.
Macdonald, ever the visionary, demonstrated his belief in Raynor by hiring the man who did not play golf to supervise construction and build his ideal course in 1909-10. He stated at the time, Raynor barely knew the difference between a tennis ball and a golf ball.
The Macdonald designed and Raynor built National Golf Links opened in 1911, and more than a century later is perennially rated as one of the best courses in America, alongside Augusta National, Oakmont, and Pebble Beach. Eighty years before Coore & Crenshaw, Macdonald & Raynor were the original dynamic duo in golf course architecture.
Raynor’s Solo Act
By 1914 Raynor had become the front man for the Mac-Raynor partnership, as Macdonald grew weary of the challenges of dealing with the wealthy elite they were building courses for. Surprisingly Raynor smoothly navigated these challenges and deftly interacted with the top echelon of NYC high society; Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Astor, Macy, Colgate, and Whitney to name a few.
As the rave reviews for National Golf Links continued to spread throughout America, requests for new golf courses flooded in. Raynor became the promoted protege on the design front, established his own office in New York City, and began to accept solo projects throughout the country.
Way before “Where’s Waldo” we should have had “Where’s Raynor”, as from 1914 -1926 he lived almost full time on the road, relentlessly crisscrossing the country by train to wherever projects took him. During this time he exhibited the uncanny ability to visit a site one time, and by the next day have a clear picture in his mind of the course routing and where the ideal-template holes of his mentor would fit the terrain.
This remarkable skill was revealed in 1918 in the only interview of Raynor on record, documented in the monthly magazine of the Olympic Club in San Francisco. Raynor’s rare combination of engineering excellence and artistic genius, is what allowed him to be so prolific.
He was a classic workaholic who after a grueling 3 month trip from Tennessee to California to Hawaii in Oct-Dec 1925, returned to New York and then rushed to Florida for a course opening. Soon after arriving, he contracted pneumonia and suddenly passed away on January 23, 1926.
At the time of his passing he had a myriad of projects in the pipeline stretching from New England to Hawaii. Raynor’s estimated earnings in today’s dollars during 1924-25, is more than a million dollars.
“Sad to say he died ere his prime at Palm Beach in 1926 while building a course for Paris Singer: Raynor was a great loss to the community, but a still greater loss to me.
I admired him from every point of view”
(C.B. Macdonald – Scotland’s Gift; Golf)
Seth Raynor’s rise into the greats of the Golden Age of golf architects was remarkable. If not for his early demise he most likely would have become the most prolific golf course architect of all time. The estimated number of courses Raynor was involved with has varied wildly over the years, from 60 to 100+.
The reason the exact number of courses he designed remains elusive, he had an uncanny inability to keep any records of his work.
“Absent of ego, and not believing that his work would amount to much of historic import, Raynor did not keep many records or drawings of his work. As a result, many courses have had to manage their own historical research into Raynor’s work on their courses, with some courses remaining unaware of their Raynor pedigree until the 1970s or 80s.”
(The Golf Courses of Seth Raynor)
In the 2023 Golf magazine rankings of the best classic courses in America, Raynor had twelve in the top 75 – seven in the top 50 – two in the top 10!
Recognizing a Raynor Design
The centerpiece of a Raynor design are the greens partly because many of his mentor’s ideal-template holes were primarily defined by the green complex (Redan, Biarritz, Eden, Short, Cape, Plateau, Knoll, Road). He was known, often criticized, for moving considerable amounts of dirt to sculpt his raised-push up greens. Overall quite large with amazing variety, most have bold internal contours and slopes, yet there are usually a few which are relatively flat.
Raynor’s standard practice was to sculpt models of all 18 greens, so even in his absence the all important green complexes were built to his standards, as he was not onsite to supervise construction at the majority of his designs. He sculpted his models in line with the concepts he had learned from Macdonald, who firmly believed the most important part of a golf course lay in the greens as he said;
“The right length of holes can always be adopted, after that the character of the course depends upon the building of the putting-greens. Putting-greens to a golf course are what the face is to a portrait. The clothes the subject wears, the background, whether scenery or wether draperies – are simply accessories; the face tells the story and determines the character and quality of the portrait – wether it is good or bad. So it is in golf; you can always build a putting-green. Teeing grounds, hazards, the fairway, rough, are accessories.”
For Macdonald and his protege Raynor, the greens tell the story and determine the character and quality of a golf course.
Raynor was lauded for his routing and ability to fit Macdonalds ideal-template holes seamlessly into the available topography of a site. The foundation for Raynor designs was the consummate set of par 3’s found on a majority of his courses – Biarritz, Redan, Eden, Short. It seems he first determined where these classic par 3 designs best fit the topography of the site, and then routed the rest of the course around and upon this foundation.
One way to recognize Raynor routing is by the enjoyment experienced when walkinu is the course. Perhaps more than any other classic architect, he was known for his “walkable” courses. In his 1918 interview he stated one of his principles in construction was cutting out all unnecessary climbing.
Raynor designed “Links” courses and included classic links strategies throughout. Wide playing corridors providing multiple lines off the tee, a considerable amount of bunkers in the fairway and around the greens, choices with consequences-risk with reward, multiple shot options including on the ground links style, were all Raynor standards.
Raynor bunkers have a distinct style, often geometric in shape-flat bottoms-steep grass faces. Around the greens there are always a few bunkers to be feared because of their depth. In the fairways he focused on strategic placement in the line of play, so the golfer would have options to think about and choices to make. Cross bunkers were the norm although he usually provided a way around for the average player.
Raynor was consistently credited for creating masterpiece courses. His overall approach in doing so was more reverentially consistent than randomly creative. Proving that in the hands of an engineering and artistic genius like Raynor, repetition is a beautiful thing.
“While other architects of the era were adept at self promotion, and often penned books and magazine articles on the subject, Raynor felt no need to express himself beyond the courses he built. He never sought to re-invent golf architecture, but instead honored the past by anchoring his work firmly in time-honored themes. Like a great symphony conductor, Raynor’s masterful interpretations of classical compositions were ever new and ever fresh, yet grounded firmly in timeless genius.”
George Bahto – The Evangelist of Golf