2nd Edition Full Size: (12"x12"). When we started this project, we really did not know what we would end up with. We knew we'd have aerial portraits looking down of every single hole of the Wissahickon, Militia Hill and St. Martin's golf courses and aerial portraits of the Philadelphia Cricket Club's clubhouses, tennis courts, pool and other facilities but it wasn't until we reviewed the the first draft, with Dr. Michael Hurdzan's foreword, that we realized what we'd created was a study of the progression of style in golf course design over the last three centuries. As far as we know, nobody, has ever applied this level of detail toward visually presenting, the design elements, popular and implemented in golf course construction, in three different centuries, from the air. We wanted something new that had never been presented before, and the Philadelphia Cricket Club, being one of the few clubs in the World, maintaining three golf courses designed and constructed in three different centuries presented the perfect subject to delve into the intent behind the thousands of components comprising the fingerprint on the earth defining the character and shape of the golfers experience on the Wissahickon, Militia Hill and St. Martin's Golf Course.
The genesis of this book began over ten year ago years ago while I was flying over the Philadelphia Cricket Club's campuses, in a small Cessna 172, on the way back to Wings Field from an aerial photography shoots over Philadelphia. As I flew over first the St. Martin's and then Wissahickon and Militia Hill golf courses, I was struck by how remarkable and different each component of the Club's three golf courses appeared from the air. When you fly over a golf course at low altitude you see the course layout in it's entirety and each hole presents itself in a way impossible to imagine from the ground. The amazing golf course architects who designed these courses envisioned each hole in their mind before committing the design to paper. The exciting part about being an aerial photographer is presenting perspectives, to the viewer, they've never seen before, but combining these aerial photographs with Dr. Michael Hurdzan's foreword, explaining the design elements of each golf course and a guide to playing each hole by Jim Smith Jr. offers the reader an expanded understanding of these three golf courses which they thought they already knew.
I sincerely thank Dr. Michael Hurdzan, Jim Smith Jr. and my good friend Gib Carpenter, this book would not have been possible without you!