22 SNYDER IN HAWAI I A golf historian visiting Hawaii quickly comes upon the warm shadow of architect and ASGCA Past President Arthur Jack Snyder, known as ‘the man who brought golf to Hawaii.’ Snyder designed seven courses on the islands, including Volcano Golf Course on the ‘Big Island’ and the beloved Grand Lady, otherwise known as Wailea Blue course, on the island of Maui. But this legacy was made possible, in part, by ASGCA Founding Member Robert Trent Jones, Sr. whose innovations revolutionized Hawaiian golf. While working on Mauna Kea, in 1964, Jones developed a drainage technique that allowed topsoil to survive on lava rock fields. Up until that point, no Hawaiian golf course had been built on a lava flow. By crushing the soft lava rock, Jones came up with a well-draining base on which topsoil could be deposited and many types of grass could survive. It would be three short years before Snyder designed and built Volcano Golf Course, a layout that sits on lava flows on the rim of the Kīlauea crater. The 110-year-old Volcano Golf Course, at 4,000 feet above sea level, dips and sways on the edge of the active Kīlauea crater. The 160acre course began as a three-hole attraction beside Volcano House, a tourist spot founded in the 1890s for people traveling to see the earth make more earth. The golf club went through various iterations until 1968/69 when Snyder designed a subtle, enjoyable eighteen-hole layout that dances on a northwestfacing slope in the shadow of the island’s two major, volcanic peaks: Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. ASGCA Past President Forrest Richardson, Snyder’s mentee and a principal at Richardson | Danner Golf Course Architects, recalls: “At Volcano, he was always quick Golf historian Mark Wagner reflects on the layouts created by ASGCA Past President Arthur Jack Snyder in Hawaii. Designing a golf course is a natural high Mark Wagner Mark Wagner is a golf historian and the founding director of the Binienda Center for Civic Engagement at Worcester State University
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