I’d be surprised if 10 percent of the people that play in our league know anything about the guy who took Ruggles from a 9-hole to an 18-hole golf course in the mid 1960’s, and I’m guessing that Ed Ault (if he were alive today) would really even care to have you know. I’m guessing that he would just be happy to know you played on one of his designs and had a good time doing it.
There are golf course architects whose mere name encourages you to spend some time (and a few sheckles) playing their courses. Pete Dye. Alistair McKenzie. Donald Ross. A. W. Tillinghast. William Flynn. Robert Trent Jones. Gil Hanse. The name Ed Ault doesn’t have the same panache, but Ed had a huge impact on golf in the mid-Atlantic region, having designed more than 100 courses within a 3-hour drive of central Maryland. I’d hazard a guess that aside from Ruggles, we’ve all probably played at least one other Ault creation (and probably didn’t even know it). Although he died in 1989, his partner John Clark (a Penn State grad like me) and Ed’s son have carried on the business. They also added a new name to the firm in Dan Schlegel, who left to form his own company and was responsible for the most recent Ruggles course renovations developed in 2005.
The TPC at Avanel is probably the most famous of the Ault/Clark partnership, but there are other great ones. Crofton Country Club, Hunt Valley, Hobbit’s Glen, Turf Valley, and the Founder’s Course at Penn National are courses I’ve heard spoken of reverently (but I haven’t played yet).
I played another Ault design on Friday – Lost Creek Golf Club in Oakland Mills, PA. I was a single in a cart on the front nine and I was in no hurry, so I was able to think about Ruggles while I played another one of his earlier works. There were some similarities that made me thing about how privileged we are to be able to play on a quality golf course on a government installation. The first is course routing. Very few holes on an Ault golf course run in parallel. Aside from Ruggles holes 5, 6, and 7, and then 16 and 17 on the back side, the line of play varies, which makes you engage your brain a bit regarding wind conditions. The variety of the routing is also a key safety consideration – people aren’t trading fairways to play a different hole. (I like to play Tanglewood occasionally, but hate playing the back nine – it’s like a shooting gallery with balls flying all over the place, players trading fairways, etc.) Think about holes 1 through 5 at our course. Each hole is laid out in a different direction, and for holes 2 and 4, you’re faced with a dogleg which demands a precise drive to give you a play into the green, and makes you play shots with the wind in two different directions. The back nine at Ruggles in similar, with holes 10 through 14 playing in different directions. Another similarity was a minimal movement of earth and using natural terrain features to dictate the course design. Lost Creek was in the mountains, and the terrain changes dictated the placement of the greens and tees. At Ruggles, the major terrain feature is Romney Creek. At its widest, the thing is only 10 feet wide, but Ed used its placement to create #2 (in my opinion the toughest and best hole at Ruggles), and the creek is front and center on #7. Big hitters always have to consider the possibility of driving into the creek, and a weak tee ball means that the creek comes into play for the layup. I came to #6 at Lost Creek (nicknamed the Razorback) and immediately thought of the original design of #6 on our own course. Blind tee shot up a hill, hill sloping hard left on the landing area. I can understand the reasoning for taking the hill out of #6 in the redesign of Ruggles due to course safety and the ability to hold the ball in the fairway, but the old design was certainly much more interesting than playing the hole now. #6 at Ruggles is not an imposing drive for anyone any more. I love Dan Schlegel’s tee boxes, love the new bunkering, but think that holes 6 and 14 are a far cray from the holes they used to be. I know I’m not alone in thinking that.
Another similarity between the two designs was the use of unmown natural areas between holes. Up in the mountains at Lost Creek, there were areas of meadow and little copses of trees. At Ruggles, we have patches of thistle and fescue. Although I hate being stuck in these areas or losing a ball in them, they do serve a purpose – the course maintenance crew doesn’t have to maintain these areas more than a couple of times a year, and they do force you into keeping your ball in play. These areas remind me of similar situations on Pete Dye’s Bulle Rock – Pete’s rough is really ROUGH. Thick, knotty rough that grabs the hozel of your club and won’t let go. Keep the ball in play at Bulle Rock and you’ll enjoy the course. Hit it in the rough and you’ll be miserable. I played the same ball all day at Lost Creek. This is a typical reward for playing an Ault design where you keep the ball in play.
Lost Creek had a couple of short par 4’s (320, 330 yards). I’ve read that Ed and John always thought about putting one on every nine for variety and lift the spirits of the golfer after beating him up on longer holes. The original design of Ruggles (going back to the original tee boxes) had exactly ZERO short par 4’s (well, maybe one in #10). Playing Ruggles prior to 2006 was a punishing round. I always described playing here as “long and flat, with emphasis on long”. The course I remember in the 90’s was played driver, long iron or fairway wood. If you’ve ever played from the black tees (and I suggest you do that once in a while), you’ll remember. The tee redesign moved up most of the white tees and created the yellow (“senior”) tees which has altered the play of the course immensely. From the new white tees, the teeth have been removed from #1, #4, #5, #8, #10 and #13 which turned them from long iron approaches into wedge or short iron holes. From the black tees, though – it’s the course of old.
So, aside from a history lesson, what the heck is this wordy prose doing residing in a Rules Blog? Good question. Here are some of the Local Rules at Lost Creek – I think it’s interesting that these are printed permanently on the scorecard. Although these are all well intended and probably speed up play, I’m thinking that playing most of your rounds at Lost Creek would likely result in a slightly lower handicap index. We’ve also tried to implement a few of these in REGL (some successfully, some not so).
1) “You may lift, clean and place the ball within 6 inches no closer to the hole in your own fairway only, this includes the fringe”. (Our “Winter Rule” for your own fairway, although for us, we “roll the ball”.)
2) “All fescue (No Mow Areas) are considered lateral water hazards, even if not so marked.” (I kinda like this one for Ruggles use – how often have you pulled one left on #1 or #13 and ended up in the tall stuff? We’re encouraged to hit a provisional, but sometimes it ends up in the same place. This local rule would allow you to estimate where the ball last crossed the boundary and you’d be able to drop within 2 club lengths of that spot for the penalty of one stroke. We tried that a bit with the “Clover Rule” for lost balls that shouldn’t be lost, but this lateral hazard rule is probably a little easier to implement.
3) “You may take relief from casual water in a bunker.” (Good local rule, but totally unnecessary – the rule book already allows relief; BUT (as I’ve often stressed), in order to avoid a penalty stroke, you must drop in that same bunker.)
4) “You may remove stones in bunkers.” (Good Local Rule – and I think this is part of the changes coming in 2019. After the redo of the bunkers at Ruggles, you won’t typically find stones in the bunkers anymore, so I don’t think this one is needed for REGL.)
5) “Free relief from washouts and ditches in your own fairway only.” There are a couple of holes where it looks like the course was built on an old railway bed, and there’s a drainage ditch on either side in the fairway (sort of like the road that runs through #16 and #17 at Ruggles). If you’re in the bottom of that ditch, you can’t take a normal swing at the ball, so relief from the situation seems perfectly reasonable. There are also a number of holes where Lost Creek runs through the fairways, and occasionally this creek will flood onto the course and tear up turf. Rather than mark these as Ground Under Repair, the