A. W. Tillinghast

You know, there was this old aerial that showed a really interesting bunker style in the '20s that was more very artistic.

Um, it looked like, um, you know, some of Tillinghast's work at, like, San Francisco Golf Club.

Wow.

And, um, so that was, that was really interesting.

It's pretty good about Bracken Ridge Park and the founding.

It's an A.W. Tillinghast course.

Tillinghast designed several courses in San Antonio, which we'll mention again in a few minutes, and is considered one of the great golf course architects.

The interesting thing about Bracken Ridge at the time, it got a lot of play.

And San Antonio, of course, is a dry climate, so they put mats on the ground to tee off from instead of regular tees.

In 50 and 51, the Texas Open was co-hosted by two courses, which is somewhat interesting, certainly by today's tour standards.

It was played at Bracken Ridge and at a course called La Loma at Fort Sam Houston.

That's another Tillinghast course.

But it's in Baltimore, and you don't think of great golf necessarily in Baltimore all the time.

But this is one of the great Tillinghast courses that he's ever, ever done.

And they're finding out this week.

They're going to find out what a Tillinghast green really is like.

The challenge they bring and the metal they test.

That's exactly right.

I thought it was a good pairing, you know, for this evening specifically.

Considering it's an 1898 AW Tillinghast designed golf course.

Yes.

Correct.

That land was occupied by a herd of bison that George Brackenridge himself had bought from Charles Goodnight, the famed rancher in North Texas in 1903, and he gave those buffalo to the city.

so lambert decided that he would move the buffalo he relocated him to near that old rock quarry that i mentioned on the northwestern side of the park and that eventually would become that area would become the san antonio zoo so the zoo and the golf course were born from the same real estate decision and the zoo exists because the golf course needed the pasture To design the golf course, they selected one of the most famous golf course architects in America, Albert Warren Tillinghast, A.W. Tillinghast.

He designed more than 265 courses, including such famous places as Wingfoot, Baltimore, Bethpage Black, where they had the last Ryder Cup.

He was only the sixth golf course architect inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.

All those animals that were over there, the wolves had taken up residence and they needed to relocate that too.

It's a good thing they did because that's the last thing we need when we're trying to hit our chip shot.

So Tillinghast Golf Course, which was called the Brackenridge Park Golf Links, although the newspaper refers to it as Brackenridge Municipal Links, The front nine opened in February 1916, and the back nine opened later that year.

And when the back nine opened, Texas had its first 18-hole public golf course.

And I've never been there, so I can't tout it, but I just know that that's one of them that, like, man, I wanna go play there.

Isn't Tillinghast another name from back then?

Tillinghast is another one, yeah.

I, I don't know what ones he's, he's done in, in our country, but I can find out.

[laughs]

Yeah.

Right.

You know, you go back to this Tillinghast thing.