For that reason, very few bunkers [on the Beaconsfield Golf Club course, which Bendelow laid out the day before going to Caledonia Springs] are being placed directly across the [fair] green, but rather converging on it, allowing a long straight ball to go through. (Montreal Star, 18 May 1909, p. 2)

 

In other words, Bendelow favoured doing away with Dunn-family cross bunkers that had to be carried and replacing them with bunkers along the sides of fairways to direct golfers regarding the placement of their drives.

 

Whenever called upon to modernize an existing layout (as at Beaconsfield on May 18th and as at Caledonia springs on May 19th), Bendelow explained that he had always “striven to overcome” “what might be called ‘levelers’ holes’ – that is, holes when a shot could be missed and the advantage almost regained by a lucky second” (Montreal Star, 18 May 1909, p. 2). We can see that the main form of competitive golf in the early 1900s was match play and that Bendelow laid out golf courses with match play in mind. Four years before, he had made the same observation about poorly-designed holes where a player who had made a mistake could still play the hole level with an opponent: “On some courses,” he explained, “if a man foozles his drive, he can recover with a good iron to the green and hole out in the same number of strokes as his opponent who played an errorless game” (Gazette [Montreal], 14 November 1905, p. 2). According to Bendelow, the player who made the mistake should not be “level” with the player who made no mistake. “In laying out a modern course,” he argued, “the idea is to penalize a man for every mistake he makes” (Gazette [Montreal], 14 November 1905, p. 2).

 

An obvious solution to this problem was to lengthen any such existing “levelers’ holes” so that after a foozled drive, no second shot could reach the faraway green. Yet many existing golf courses that Bendelow was asked to modernize had no room for lengthening its golf holes.

 

And so, many of the short “levellers’ holes” that he encountered had to be redesigned at their existing lengths to penalize mistakes: “In the case of short distance holes, this is accomplished largely by careful bunkering and also by such devices as the ‘open island,’ where a player must place his ball just so in order to get on the green” (Gazette [Montreal], 14 November 1905, p. 2).

 

Bendelow’s concept of the “open island” refers to cutting through the woods on a golf club’s property and making golfers play between stands of trees either side of the cut-out fairway to reach the green. Only a tee shot placed in a certain position would provide access to the “open” line through the trees by which the “island” of the putting green in the woods could be reached. He used this strategy in his redesign of the Victoria Golf and Country Club in St. Lambert, Quebec, in the fall of 1905:

 

Some new ground at the southern limits of the club property, which is thickly wooded, will be opened ….

 

To approach the sixth hole, it will be necessary to play through a path which is to be opened in the timber, and here any inaccuracy will meet with severe penalty. (Gazette [Montreal], 16 November 1905, p. 2, emphasis added).

 

The player would have to “place his ball just so” to reach the “open island” green.

 

Bendelow probably deployed his “open island” strategy in laying out the 350-yard eighth hole at Caledonia Springs, which was called “The Woods.” A comment about the Caledonia Springs course by George Sargent makes me think that he had this kind of Bendelow hole in mind, and perhaps the eighth hole itself: “Playing on [the new course], he stated, was quite interesting inasmuch as there was always an element of luck in the play. One might make a good long drive and yet the ball land in such a position as to make it very difficult to negotiate the hole” (Gazette [Montreal], 8 September 1909, p. 9).

 

Bendelow’s fondness for cutting through woods to direct play toward an “open island” green was a particular instance of his general strategy of narrowing fairways on “modern” golf courses. In general, he thought that fairways had hitherto been too wide, allowing for inaccurate driving:

 

Mr. Bendelow considers … that a limit of 150 feet [50 yards] in a playing line is all that is necessary and comments that the man who can combine accuracy and distance deserves to reap all the credit his play warrants.

 

On wide courses, the player who slices and pulls is rarely punished for his error and a feature of the Victoria [Golf and Country Club] course is that such golfing sins will meet their deserved fate. (Gazette [Montreal], 16 November 1905, p. 2)

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The day before he went to Caledonia Springs, he said the same thing about modern fairways (called “fair greens” in his day) when describing his work at the Beaconsfield Golf Club:

 

Fair-Greens Too Wide

 

We have paid special attention to bunkering the course. Several new ones will be put in and pulling and slicing severely penalized.

 

My criticism of almost all the Canadian courses I have seen is that the fair-green is too wide and there is not sufficient prominence put on accuracy. (Montreal Star, 18 May 1909, p. 2)

 

Note that in Bendelow’s days, “bunkers” comprised not just sand traps, but any hazard that could trap a ball, including creeks, gullies, natural waste areas, railway tracks, old buildings, roads, fences, stone walls, trees, and so on. The hazards he used on the eighteen-hole layout designed for the Victoria Golf and Country Club at St. Lambert were partly natural and partly artificial. He used “the railway track” and a “creek” as “natural” hazards (natural hazards being any obstacles that existed on the golf course before the holes were laid out). He dismantled another natural hazard, a “stone fence,” and redeployed it in artificially “built” hazards: “stone bunkers and mounds” (Gazette [Montreal], 16 November 1905, p. 2). Furthermore, “Sand traps of various kinds will guard the greens,” he said, and “circle traps and ‘T’ traps will be used liberally” (Gazette [Montreal], 16 November 1905, p. 2).

 

Reviewers agreed that Bendelow’s use of various natural hazards at Caledonia Springs was the making of the golf course: “It is … true that the course is short, but the natural hazards are puzzling and interesting enough to more than make amends” (Montreal Star, 17 August 1909, p. 2). The Montreal Gazette said: “There are enough natural hazards to arouse enthusiasm in the most persistent devotee of the game” (Gazette [Montreal], 2 September 1909, p. 2). The Ottawa Journal said: “There exist just enough ravines, water ditches, trees, etc., to make play interesting and exciting” (Ottawa Journal, 7 September 1909, p. 6). The Montreal Star observed that “Many more famous courses afford less real sport than this tantalizing little links” (Montreal Star, 17 August 1909, p. 2)

 

At Caledonia Springs, Bendelow’s favorite “bunkering” involved natural hazards such as gullies, creeks, ditches, and trees. In the 1909 hole-by-hole description of the golf course below, I highlight in bold print the natural hazards that Bendelow incorporated into his routing of the holes:

 

The layout is as follows:

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From the start at the north side of the hotel, to the first green, the Alpha, is 85 yards;

 

from it to the second is 160, with a deep gully between them;

 

to the third, the Green Lady, is 185 yards over another ditch.

 

From here to the fourth green, the Creek, is a long drive of 250 yards;

 

to the fifth, the Caledonia, is 400 yards [across a “water jump”];

 

to the sixth, the Drink, is 300;

 

to the seventh, the Circus Ring, is 98;

 

then to the eighth, the Woods, 350 yards,

 

and to the ninth, the Omega, 160 yards. (Ottawa Journal, 7 September 1909, p. 6)

 

Reports on play during the 1909 professional tournament confirm that many holes were routed across the creeks on the course and suggest that holes were designed in such a way as to use the creeks to guard certain greens. A change in wind conditions between the first and second day of play reveals to us some of the dangers that Bendelow had built into his green locations. On the first day, “the wind was high and alternately helped and hindered” (Gazette [Montreal], 7 September 1909, p. 4). But the next day, “the wind was not nearly so strong, falling away to nothing in the afternoon” (Gazette [Montreal], 8 September 1909, p. 9). Consequently, an entirely new strategy was required to play the course:

 

The difference in the [wind] conditions made it necessary to play short, in view of the numerous [creeks], on several second shots at some of the greens to avoid getting into the water.

 

Of the players who did not take those precautions more than one paid the penalty and landed the ball into the little rivers which wind about the course. (Gazette [Montreal], 8 September 1909, p. 9).

 

Bendelow seems generally to have used the creeks on the property not so much as hazards to be carried with a drive, but rather as hazards to be negotiated at the putting greens.

 

In addition to having abandoned the Dunn family’s cross bunkers, Bendelow had also moved on from the level, square greens that were the norm in North America until the early 1900s:

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“the old idea that the greens must be as level as a billiard table died a natural death” … [he said.] “On an absolutely true green, a woman stands as much chance as a man of holing out, whereas the real points of the putting game are only brought by forcing a man to use some judgement in making his strokes.” (Gazette [Montreal], 14 November 1905, p. 2).

 

Now, he explained, “In putting greens, the tendency is to the undulating” (Gazette [Montreal], 14 November 1905, p. 2). (How women must have been vexed!)

 

Below, we see an example of a flat square green on the eighteen-hole layout designed by Bendelow for the Ottawa Golf Club in 1903.