Landscape Idea_v6

MEADOWBROOK COUNTRY CLUB
ESTABLISHED 1916
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Welcome, reader, whether you are a
current member of Meadowbrook,
someone who is considering joining
our club, or just someone with an
interest in our history.
It is one hundred years since our
founders created Meadowbrook
Country Club on 125 acres of farmland
and hired the expatriate Scotsman
Willie Park Jr to create the club’s
first six hole golf course, and almost
exactly one hundred years since those
holes were opened for play.
What, at that time, was well beyond
the bounds of the city of Detroit, has
become a suburb, but, if getting to our
course has become less stressful, the
quality of relaxation to be found once
one arrives is still unmatched.
“ It is just over a
century since our
founders created
Meadowbrook
Country Club
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WE HONOR OUR HISTORY
There may not be much left of the brook
architect Andy Staples, which, though it
that gave Meadowbrook it’s name, but in
takes its inspiration from the work of Willie Park
many other senses, the club is remarkably
authentic. We honor our history – the people
Jr, our original architect, has been designed
with a mind to carrying the club right into the
Randy Holloway
Chick Evans with Chick Harbert
that founded the club, the men who designed
middle years of the twenty-first century. We
the course, and the great golfers who have
are very proud of this work, as we are of our
played here in the course of our first century –
history, which is why we have commissioned
and we try very hard to live up to the values of
this booklet. Whatever your connection with
comradeship and hospitality that our club has
our club, I hope you enjoy reading it, and I
stood for since its creation back in 1916.
hope to see you at Meadowbrook in the near
Twenty-three businessmen from Detroit and
Northville founded our club just more than a
future.
With best regards
Andy Bertoni’s son prior to the 55 PGA
century ago, playing their six holes of golf out
of a six to eight room building – the original
home on the property. Since then, we have
expanded to eighteen holes, we have hosted
President, Meadowbrook Country Club.
many of the greatest golfers that ever lived,
On behalf of the of the Board of Directors
and now we have invested heavily in a major
and Past Presidents
renovation of our golf course, managed by
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Chick Harbert

Willie Park Jr
“
A STORIED
PAST
8 Mile Road
The hundred year history of
Meadowbrook’s golf course
includes two of the most
famous golf designers of all
time
Willie Park Jr is one of the most important names
in the history of golf. Twice an Open champion,
a famed club and ballmaker who became one of
the key figures in the evolution of golf course
architecture, he was, despite his lack of formal
education, clearly a man of many talents, and
is a key figure linking nineteenth century golf
– when most courses were laid out by Scottish
professional golfers in a rather rudimentary
fashion – to the twentieth, when course design
and construction became a profession, with
numerous dedicated and talented practitioners.
Over the course of his career, which spanned
more than thirty years, he built around 220 golf
courses, in the UK, Europe, the United States
and Canada.
None of these was more significant than
Sunningdale, southwest of London, which has
a good claim to be the single most important
artefact in the history of golf course design. Built
during 1899 and 1900 at a cost of £4,000 (over
a million dollars in today’s money), far more than
any previous course, Sunningdale had a number of
key firsts – it was the first course ever to be entirely
seeded from scratch, rather than just mowing
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out and improving the existing turf, and it
was the first ever to have water laid on to all
eighteen greens. Park, as well as architect,
was the contractor, a bold move indeed. At
the almost contemporary Huntercombe in
Oxford, about forty miles from London, Park
went even further; he was a key investor in the
development, which was intended to include a
new village of housing. These houses were never
built, due to lack of demand – Huntercombe
was too far from a railway station for affluent
Londoners to consider it a desirable address.
Park’s losses at Huntercombe almost destroyed
him financially, but with characteristic Scottish
grit he picked himself up and got straight back
to work. He remained busy up to the start of
World War 1, building courses of the stature of
Royal Antwerp in Belgium, Temple, not far from
Huntercombe in southern England and Mont
Agel at Monte Carlo.
Snead
“
WHEN COURSE DESIGN
AND CONSTRUCTION
BECAME A PROFESSION
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‘THE GAME OF GOLF’
In his book, ‘The Game of Golf’, published in
1895, Park talked in detail about his theories of
design. “Holes which formerly required three
strokes to reach the green can now be driven
in two and hence larger greens are a matter
of practical necessity unless scoring is to be
reduced to an absurd minimum,” he wrote. “If it
can be avoided, putting greens should not be laid
down on a plain uninteresting piece of ground.
There should be a suggestion of a terminus of
the hole, or in other words the position should be
suggestive to the player that there is the place
to which he must aim to drive his ball.”
Park’s great-nephew Mungo, himself a buildings
architect specializing in golf clubhouses, and a
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tireless researcher into the past of his illustrious
family, believes Willie first travelled to the US
in 1895, and he certainly opened a New York
branch of William Park & Sons, the family
clubmaking business, in 1897. But it was almost
twenty years before he was to make his greatest
impact in America.

The six hole course that Park laid out for the
infant Meadowbrook club in Detroit must have
been one of his very first US appointments, for
it was on April 15, 1916, with war raging in
Europe and putting a stop to any golf
development, that he arrived back to America,
where he stayed for basically eight years.
Probably his highest profile work in those
years was the design of the north course at
Olympia Fields CC in Chicago, to this day a
venue for some of America’s greatest golf
events. The New York office of ‘William Park
— Golf Architect’ remained busy for those
eight years, working across the United States
— including at Battle Creek in Michigan - and
extensively in Canada, where he built the
Ottawa Hunt Club course and the original
Laval-sur-le-lac in Montreal.
His last design, in 1924, was the Castine Golf
Club in Maine. By this time though, his physical
and mental health was in steep decline, and his
brother Mungo Jr, who had been working, also
as a golf architect, in Argentina, travelled to
New York to take him back to Scotland, where
he died in Craigiehall Mental Hospital, west of
Edinburgh, on 22 May 1925.
Meadowbrook began when the club’s founders
bought 125 acres of farmland from the local
Cochran family, at a price of $225 per acre.
Park’s design, according to Bill Aston, an early
greens’ chairman of the club, included plans
for three additional holes which were not built
until 1919, shortly after which the club acquired
another 55 acres from Cochran, this time at
$300 per acre.
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“ AMERICA’S
GREATEST
GOLF EVENTS

It is interesting to note that, at that time, the
original 125 acres would have been quite a large
plot for an eighteen hole course – the Old course
at St Andrews, admittedly very compact even
by the standards of its time, occupies no more
than 95 acres. Now, of course, golf courses
need rather more space, both for the longer
holes that we expect today, and also to provide
players and passers by with a safe experience.
The club has its founders’ foresight to thank for
providing it with a plot of land adequate even a
century later.
Harbart Briggs Mike Shouchak Harbart
Harry Collis, born in England in 1878 but resident
in Chicago, as professional and greenkeeper of
Flossmoor CC, along with Jack Daray, later an
early member of the American Society of Golf
Course Architects, but at the time also Chicagobased,
as professional of Olympia Fields CC,
designed the club’s second nine holes. Collis
was clearly a man of talents; a fine soccer
player in his youth, he was responsible for the
remodeling of the Flossmoor course, developed
a turf cutter that he patented, and bred a strain
of bentgrass which was named after the club –
which led to his owning a substantial turf farm
in the Chicago area until it went bust during the
Depression. Collis designed around thirty other
courses, including Phoenix CC and San Marcos
in Arizona, and Glenwoodie in Illinois, as well as
remodeling several others, most notable Denver
CC and doing some work at the famous Medinah
club in Chicago. Daray, born in New Orleans, and
originally a jockey before he grew too big and
turned to golf, had also been at Flossmoor, as
caddymaster, but eventually graduated to Grand
Rapids, Michigan, as the constructor and first
professional of Highlands CC, before returning
to Chicago at Olympia Fields.
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“
SCOTLAND’S MOST
SUCCESSFUL GOLFING EXPORT
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“
TWO OF GOLF’S GREATEST ARCHITECTS
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Collis was clearly a successful man and architect,
but it was in the early 1930s that Meadowbrook
had its next encounter with golf architecture
greatness when Donald Ross, another expatriate
Briton, stopped by to remodel two holes. Ross,
born in Dornoch but trained in clubmaking and
greenkeeping in St Andrews under Old Tom
Morris, became Scotland’s most successful
So the Meadowbrook course basically
remained for over thirty years, until Toledobased
architect Arthur Hills created a master
plan in 1972 that saw holes 14-16 rebuilt. In the
forty-odd years since, Jerry Matthews created
several plans, and consulted on several minor
changes, but no greens were rebuilt under his
stewardship.
golfing export to the US, emigrating in 1899,
settling first in Massachusetts and finally in
Pinehurst, from where he ran a huge design
business, claiming responsibility for over 400
courses before his death in 1948.
At Meadowbrook in 1933, Ross changed the
very long twelfth hole and also rebuilt the
twelfth and eighteenth greens. It is probably
not coincidental that this visit took place at the
height of the Depression, when we can presume
Which brings us neatly to 2016, and the major
redesign by Andy Staples which this booklet
exists to celebrate!
that other golf course work was hard to come
by – it seems unlikely that the great architect
would have felt such a commission worth his
while when business was booming in the 1920s.
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“
HOST
TO THE
GREATS
Chick Harbert 1955 Ryder Cup
Middlecoff misses a putt
Some of golf’s most famous
names have competed at
Meadowbrook
In the 1940s and 1950s, Meadowbrook was a
regular host to a number of tournaments that
featured many of the best-known players of
their day – both amateur and professional.
From the pre-WW2 days when amateur events
were the most prestigious to the later years
when professional golf had come to dominate,
Meadowbrook remained a fixture on the highlevel
tournament scene.
It was in 1938 that ten-times club champion
Randall Ahern, along with fellow members
Tommy Sheehan created the Meadowbrook
Invitational, a four ball matchplay competition
that attracted many of the leading amateurs of
the time. Wilford Wehrle, a three time Wisconsin
Amateur champion won the Invitational twice,
with different partners, and competitors
included Ed Furgol, who was to win the US Open
in 1954, Frank Stranahan, one of the great
names of amateur golf, and one of the most
famous of Meadowbrook names, Chick Harbert,
who later turned professional and became the
club’s pro in 1946, as well as winning the PGA
Championship at Keller GC in Minneapolis in
1954 and captaining the victorious US Ryder
Cup team in 1955.
Roy Mitchell, Clifford Rugg, Ed Seymour and
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Spectators on 18th green

1955 PGA Championship
The Invitational came to an end in 1943 with the US entry into World War II, but it had established Meadowbrook as a venue for
significant tournaments. Amateur events continued to be held at the club, but the longest-running was established in 1974, the Green
Coat Invitational. Founded by Dave McCabe, George Garcia and Joe Bileti, the event began as a matchplay competition, but in its
second year switched to the format it retains today, a three day best ball tournament for pairs, with each team getting 80 percent of its
handicap for the first two days. On the final day, full handicap applies – and both players’ scores count.
“
“
VOLUPTATEM
ACCUSANTIUM

“
CHICK HARBERT CONCEIVED
THE MOTOR CITY OPEN
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“ THE BIG
STORY OF THE
TOURNAMENT
Chick Harbert 52 PGA
Cary Middlecoff
Shortly after Chick Harbert joined Meadowbrook,
in 1946, he played in an exhibition match at the
club with Ben Hogan, Jimmy Demaret and Byron
Nelson. Hogan’s 66 and Demaret’s 67 were fine
scores, but both were put in the shade by ‘Iron
Byron’, then at the height of his skills, who shot a
63 to break the course record that had been set at
64 in a pro-am the year before by Al Watrous. The
match obviously got Harbert thinking, because
shortly after he convinced the club’s board to
back a substantial tournament for professionals,
the Motor City Open. The Open began in 1948 at
Meadowbrook and returned to the club the year
after, before beginning a round of Detroit’s best
clubs. It returned to Meadowbrook in 1954 and
1959. Hogan won that first Motor City Open – and
the $2,600 first prize – after a playoff with Dutch
Harrison. But the big story of the tournament
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was the Texan’s remarkable play of the par
four eighteenth hole, which he eagled twice in
succession – by holing two practically identical
125-yard wedge shots.
The 1949 tournament was no less remarkable. Cary
Middlecoff and Lloyd Mangrum shared first place
money after tieing on a score of 273. The event,
naturally, went to a playoff, but after eleven holes
of sudden death the two contenders could not be
separated, and, with darkness falling, a shared title
was agreed (Mangrum won the title on his own the
following year at Red Run). Middlecoff triumphed
again when the Open returned to Meadowbrook,
while Mike Souchak won the tournament in 1959
— tieing a course record score in the process —
while a young Arnold Palmer and an even younger,
and still amateur, Jack Nicklaus, were among the
competitors.

Harbert Inverness 49
PGA Doug Ford Trophy
Harbert 54 PGA
54 MCO Middlecoff
But we must backtrack. In 1952, Meadowbrook
pro Chick Harbert reached the final of the
(then matchplay) PGA Championship, but two
years later, as mentioned above, he went one
better and won the title. By glorious coincidence,
the course selected to hold the 1955 PGA was
Meadowbrook, so Harbert had the glory of
returning as defending champion to his own
club!
Doug Ford took medalist honors, with an
impressive 36 hole score of 135, before the
championship went into the matchplay rounds
which then decided the winner (it is worth
noting that the Meadowbrook event was among
the last matchplay PGAs – the event went to
its current, 72-hole strokeplay, format in 1958).
Chick Harbert put up a stout defense of his title,
qualifying for the matchplay section well, but in
the second round of matchplay, he was defeated
by North Carolina pro Johnny Palmer by one hole.
Ford continued to dominate the event, winning
his quarter-final by 5&4 and his semifinal by 4&3.
In the final, he came up against Cary Middlecoff,
something of an irony, as the great golf writer
Herbert Warren Wind pointed out in his report of
the championship: “Ford... is certainly the fastest
golfer in captivity today, and may be the fastest
ever to have won a major golf title....
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He is quite a sight, and has inspired many
highflying descriptions, but none as graphic
as ‘Ford always looks like he’s playing through
the foursome he’s playing in’.... If [Ford] is the
hare of the pro pack, [Middlecoff] is indeed the
tortoise.... This raised all sorts of speculations.
Would Ford try to make Middlecoff gallop at his
pace? Would Cary be hoping to get Ford to join
down – who made the significant break when, at
the 230-yard par three eighth (their 26th hole)
he launched a four iron to within nine feet of
the hole. Another birdie at the next par three –
the 29th – after hitting a fine four wood into the
tightly guarded green put him firmly on his way
to his first Major title. He went on to win another,
the 1957 Masters.
him in his Tennessee Waltz?”
Wind’s report says that neither man played so
well in the final as he had done earlier in the
week. But it was Ford – who had never led at any
point of the morning round, and had lunched one
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“
A GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE
In the year of its centenary, the
Meadowbrook course underwent its
most significant rework. Now, the
new-look course is ready to debut –
truly back to the future
Like almost every golf club of a comparable age,
Meadowbrook had tinkered with its course over
the years. Although the eighteen hole routing
completed by Collis and Daray was relatively
intact, some individual holes had been significantly
altered, by a number of different architects,
with inevitably different styles, and the detailed
features of the golf course had altered over time,
as is always the case.
Maintenance standards in the twenty-first century
are a degree of order higher than they were a
hundred years earlier. It is, in fact, remarkable that
so many of the features – especially greens – that
were built in the Golden Age period have endured
so long, a testimony to the skill of their builders
and the adaptability of the people who have cared
for them over the years.
Nevertheless, time takes its toll on old greens. At
Meadowbrook, drainage problems, essentially
down to the material used to build the greens in
the first place, were the severest issue. As well as
this, the dominant grass species covering them
was poa annua (annual bluegrass) – a weak-rooted
grass with very little ability to fend off weather
extremes or disease pressure, and one that needs a
great deal of water and heavy chemical treatments
on an annual basis, causing increased costs to
maintenance and soft greens.
Many in golf espouse the belief that poa is
inevitable and cannot be beaten, so courses should
learn to live with it. However, recent advances
in grass technology, notably new varieties of
creeping bentgrass (agrostis stolonifera) that
establish quicker and form an incredibly dense
sward – as well as displaying resistance to
chemicals that can be used to destroy poa – have
been a game changer in this regard.
MCC hired Arizona-based golf architect Andy
Staples to produce a masterplan that would
address these issues. Staples, as part of a
comprehensive research process, took several
of the club’s key decision makers on a trip to
the UK to see some of original architect Willie
Park Jr’s key courses, most notably Sunningdale
and Huntercombe, which Park built contiguously
around 1900, and which, together, changed the
face of golf course architecture. That trip was to
be hugely influential in shaping the form of the
renovated Meadowbrook course.
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Park’s green style was to be the foundation for
the new work at MCC. As a historical reference,
all five of his original greens were GPS surveyed
and recorded on a five foot grid to document his
work at MCC. The attributes of Park’s greens are
timeless, and the club was keen to preserve – and
indeed enhance – that look and feel be used as
inspiration for all future work. By adjusting grades
slightly, the style of Park’s greens lives on at MCC.
It gives the course its flavor, its style and without
a doubt, its teeth. In fact, Staples went further
– he used the influence of Huntercombe, where
Park built some of his most adventurous greens,
to enhance the vintage feel of Meadowbrook, and
give it a style entirely unique in the US.
Staples says: “Bringing the ‘Huntercombe’ style
to Detroit was a fairly sizeable leap of faith by the
club and its committee. There’s a few greens now
that really challenge a player’s thought process
of not only how to play a particular shot, but also
through visually giving them something they may
not have seen before. My hope is the course will
continue to reveal itself over multiple rounds, and
if my experience proves out, some of the greens
will catch people by surprise. The 3rd green will
be one that most people will notice (inspired by
the 4th green at Huntercombe). The internal
green contours are also something that we feel
we pushed the limits on. I have to give as much
credit to Scott Clem, our design shaper, in this area.
He really helped push the creative envelope on
how these greens were going to play, and receive
shots. We also spent a lot of time walking around
the edges to think about a player’s recovery if the
green is missed. To me, this is the area that really
separates the best courses – how a player feels as
they manage their way around the course, and how
interesting the set of greens are.”
Within the boundaries of MCC’s property exist
some incredibly interesting and dramatic
topography only found on the greatest courses
in the world. However, much of this land was not
used to best effect within the old golf course. The
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alterations have changed that, and the new course
makes much better use of its remarkable site.
On this subject, Andy Staples says: “The largest
change I would say is the maximization of the
property. A slight rerouting of holes five, six and
seven and a slight adjustment to hole eleven
and twelve tees really improved the flow of the
course, as well as allowing a player to experience
the course differently than if they were to just
simply walk the property. The look and feel of the
course is very different in that most of the greens
are square-ish in nature, and all the bunkers were
rebuilt to more of a grass faced, flat sand bottom
style. And, with the introduction of more short
grass, there are many more ways to play each hole,
with a great variety of short game alternatives
and recovery shots.The rest of the holes used the
existing corridors, with minor modifications in the
teeing grounds or green locations.”

In addition, a key goal of the project was to
increase the environmental sustainability of the
golf course. A truly timeless golf course makes
use of features that give a course an authentic
feel and unique style while not overextending the
maintenance budget. Irrigation water and fertilizer
are now focused on the main play areas, which
will help the course blend in better with its natural
thinking. Through careful planning of grassing
lines, and a significant reduction in the area of
maintained rough, fairways have been widened,
increasing the strategic appeal and playability of
the golf holes, more than a quarter of the property
has been transformed into low maintenance
native grass and landscape areas. A uniform,
fast-and-firm playing surface was the goal.
environment – a central pillar of sustainability
Finally, and very importantly in respect of the
club’s commitment to be a venue of choice for
golfers of all ages from juniors to super-seniors,
and also for both genders, is the wider choice
of forward tees. Using the new Longleaf Tee
Initiative pioneered by the American Society of
Golf Course Architects, of which Andy Staples is
a member, tee lengths were arranged according
to actual swing speeds to try to give golfers of all
abilities a roughly equivalent challenge. With the
most forward tees as short as 4,000 yards, and
sets also at 4,800 and 5,100 yards, Meadowbrook
now has far more flexibility to accommodate
golfers of all kinds.
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“
THE MEMBERSHIP
EXPERIENCE
Why has Meadowbrook remained popular
among Detroit golfers for over a century?
What makes Meadowbrook feel like home
to so many members however, is the family
atmosphere created throughout every
facet of the club’s operations and offerings.
From great summer fireworks parties to
holiday celebrations, the entire family can
spend time together, while meeting others in
the community who share similar values and
interests.
Meadowbrook features a variety of
membership options, making the club
accessible to golfers of all ages, from juniors
through intermediates (a group that is
forgotten by many clubs) to full members.
Men and women alike thrive at the club.
Tennis and swimming get the same level of
attention as golf.
By joining the club, you’ll be following in
the footsteps of some of its most eminent
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members, people like Shirley Spork, born
in May 1927 and a founding member of the
LPGA. When Shirley was a teenager, in 1947,
the club gave her an honorary membership
so she could play in significant tournaments.
Without the club membership she would
not have been allowed to participate. She
won the 1947 Meadowbrook women’s club
championship, and, in the same year, the first
ever national inter-collegiate women’s golf
championship, today the NCAA.
A charter member of the LPGA in 1950, she taught
school during the week, then flew to Florida for
tournaments, and back to Detroit to teach the next
week. In 2015, aged 87, she was given the LPGA’s
Patty Berg Award for “exemplifying diplomacy,
sportsmanship, goodwill and contributions to the
game of golf.”
MCC’s original clubhouse was an eight room white
frame building which had been the old Cochran
home, with a kitchen and dining room on the first
floor, while the upstairs had been made into a
storage place and cloakrooms.
The present clubhouse was erected on a former
apple orchard. The original lesson and practice tee
was located near where the swimming pool is now
situated. The balls were hit out towards the 17th
green. The range was moved to its present position
in the 1940s.
bar area, many TVs and became the Willie Park
pub. The former golf shop was moved to the north
wall of the club house and the Centennial dining
room took its place.
In short, Meadowbrook remains what it has been
throughout its history — a welcoming club with its
eyes on the future. A fully commited membership
has made the investments in clubhouse,
kitchen, and most of all the Willie Park inspired
new course designed by Andy Staples, to set the
club up for a successful second century.
In 2015, the north end of clubhouse was completely
redone. The men’s locker room was enlarged,
wooden lockers installed and a larger bar was put
in. The old mixed grill was renovated with a large
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Our vision is to be the premier golf & social club where family & friends choose to play, relax & connect.
Our mission is to welcome families into an engaging private country club community,
providing exceptional service, superior facilities and premier golf, built upon a century of camaraderie and tradition.
MEADOWBROOK
COUNTRY CLUB
Meadowbrook Country Club | 40941 W. Eight Mile Rd | Northville | MI 48167
T (248)349-3600 | www.meadowbrookcountryclub.com
Produced by Oxford
Golf Consulting
New course photos courtesy
Brian Walters
Design by
Eyecatcher Design