Robert Trent Jones
In the fall of 1928 Tuscarora contracted with a young Cornell university student to improve the aesthetics and playability of the course. The contract called for the student to redesign two holes per year in exchange for an annual payment of $200. In the fall of 1928 and into the spring and summer of 1929 the student worked on the course, adding a huge trap in front of the sixteenth green and gumdrop mounds to the left and behind a newly enlarged green. He added the same distinctive mounds behind the tenth green and a grass bunker to the right of the green. The young designer was Robert Trent Jones.
Jones looked forward to tackling two more holes in 1930 but it never happened. The stock market crash of 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression put an end to Tuscarora’s ability to pay Jones and finance the changes. However, the changes Jones made to Seymour Dunn’s original design are still evident today and the characteristics have been incorporated into the ongoing course improvements. The distinctive mounds bordering the tenth and sixteenth greens now frame the fifth, 11th and 13th greens.
Jones did not suffer from losing the Tuscarora contract. He went on to design or re-design more than 500 golf courses in more than 35 countries. His re-design work includes Augusta National, Baltustol, Oak Hill, The Olympic Club and Firestone.