Reynolds Park 1924 and 2024 (Dynamic Duos Design Contest)
Mar 20, 2024 10:04:52 GMT -5
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Post by BrendanOR123 on Mar 20, 2024 10:04:52 GMT -5
Reynolds Park 1924 + 2024
This story takes us all the way back to 1924, in the peak of the golden age era of golf course architecture and Old Town Club in its early stages of construction in Winston Salem. The Reynolds family who owned the estate next to the newly established Wake Forest University in the city, decided they wanted a golf course on some of their land as a way of making money due to the number of golfers soaring in the area.
Although they didn’t want just any old course. They wanted a course that could in the future, host a US Open.
They decided to hire 2 architects to design the course, A.W.Tillinghast, and a new guy on the block that no one had really heard of, Matt Wild, as head architect. And Mr. Shields (forename never discovered) as superintendent.
With Wild as head architect, Reynolds Park 1924 was opened to the public,rather quickly after the project being started.
Wild then mysteriously died a few days after and Tillinghast went missing for several months but was eventually found trying to redesign the abandoned Ogopogo Golf Course by hand.
With only Mr. Shields left as superintendent, he hired Sam Boyns as head greenkeeper. After a week Boyns left after falling ill because of Shields asking “is this mowable” too many times for any sane person to handle. The course then became abandoned in October 1926.
Some 100 years after first opening. The Reynolds family wanted to commemorate Wild’s death by redesigning and reopening the golf course for the 100 year anniversary of his death. They hired 3 architects this time. Coore, Crenshaw and O’Reilly. They designed and built Reynolds Park 2024. This course has a very similar routing to the original course and most holes take inspiration from the originals but the main difference is the bunkers. Coore, Crenshaw and O’Reilly made the executive choice to use rugged edged bunkers instead of golden age bunkers.
The Reynolds Family decided O’Reilly should be the golf course superintendent and hired Sam Boyns (yep he’s still alive) as head greenkeeper. And in March 2024, Reynolds Park 2024 was opened.
The gravestones of Mr. Ben Page and Mr. Brian Petty are situated behind the church as they drowned in a waterlogged bunker (which occurred due to Sam Boyns’ bunker water plane trick) while spying on our team by playing a beta of my course. May they rest in peace.
Thanks to Oskins for hosting the comp. It's been a blast. Huge thanks to wildy33 for his ideas, brilliant course and for putting up with me for 4 months. Best of luck to all competitors and hope everyone enjoys the courses.