2nd Edition: Small: (7" x 7") 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 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 in three different centuries. As far as we know nobody has ever applied this level of detail toward visually present the design elements implemented into golf course construction over the last century, 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 represented the perfect subject to delve into the intent behind the thousands of components comprising, the fingerprint on the earth, that makes up the character and shapes of a golfers experience on the Wissahickon, Militia Hill and St. Martin's Golf Course.
The genesis of this book began years ago while flying over the Philadelphia Cricket Club's campuses in a small Cessna 172 on the way back to Wings Field from aerial photography shoots over Philadelphia. Every time I flew over the Club I was struck by how remarkable and different each component of the Club 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 see from the ground. The exciting part about being an aerial photographer is presenting the viewer with perspectives 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 golf courses which they think they may already know.