Some clubs defend against the ravages of time and the urge to change, preserving their holes in the spirit the course's architect intended. .

Alex Smith needed a birdie at the 72nd hole to win the 1910 U.S. Open. The 18th at the host Philadelphia Cricket Club was a 254-yard drive to a small green, which he reached on his tee shot. The solitary bit of slope on the putting surface caused Smith's eagle putt to run well past the hole, but he managed a par and backed into a three-way tie. Smith shot 71 the following day in a playoff against his brother, Macdonald Smith, and John J. McDermott to capture his second title.

Ninety years later, anyone playing the Cricket Club's 18th, which the members now play as the ninth, literally can stand in Smith's shoes. A nicely forgotten bit of golf history, that hole has been maintained without change to give today's golfers a rare glimpse of early American playing conditions.

But holes such as the former 18th at Philadelphia Cricket are as scarce as double eagles. Golfers love to describe courses as "venerable old tracks" or "historic layouts," but truth be told, it's more likely that virtually every hole on every course with more than 50 years under its belt has been altered.

Course architecture is difficult, perhaps almost impossible, to keep intact over time, thanks to Mother Nature and the whims of golfers. Through the years, measurable increases in the distance a golf ball travels have led course architects to lengthen holes, in effect changing the relationship of their components. Clubs, with or without the aid of designers, see fit to alter the size and shape of greens, add bunkers and even change the line of fairways as trees mature. The smallest alterations may seem trivial, but the value in a course's architecture is found in its details. Finding these original, untouched bits of golfing real estate provide architectural lessons emanating from the very roots of the game.

Myopia Hunt Club, located in the Boston suburb of South Hamilton, takes intense pride in having more untouched holes from the turn of the century than holes it has grudgingly revamped over the last 80 years. It opened with nine holes in 1896 and expanded to 18 in 1901; by 1908, it had become the first course to host the U.S. Open four times. Since its opening, only four or five holes have required major change. The rest have stood unmolested throughout this century. The scorecard shows par-4 holes with yardages under 300, reminiscent of the days when a 180-yard drive was a smash.

"Longer grass around the greens is now cut back so that, if not careful, a golfer can easily putt a ball off the green, just like in the early 1900s," superintendent David Herion explains. The club's maintenance program also reflects another era, where the rough is allowed to grow more naturally and areas around the greens are shaved to allow for bump-and-run play.

One of the hallmark spots at Myopia is Taft's bunker. Named for the rotund American president, the hazard has been restored to its old form of being penal in its depth. Each time Taft successfully extricated his ball from the bunker, architect Herbert Leeds instructed the staff to dig the bunker deeper. It became so entrenched, legend says, that Taft needed to be assisted out by caddies pulling him with a rope tied around his waist. Today, that cavernous bunker awaits balls on the 10th hole.

Based on his 20 years at the club, Bill Safrin, Myopia's head professional, gained an understanding of one major element of the course's preservation. "Myopia's membership viewed its course much differently than other clubs that would feel the need to improve teeing grounds or bunkering," he said. "By nature, they are a conservative membership to the point of eschewing any changes whatsoever to their course or other aspects of the club. For several generations, the attitude was that the course has served us well; we see no need to change it unnecessarily."

Another club in New England supports one pristine example of a century-old hole. Members of the Essex County Club in Manchester, Mass., lovingly, if not unromantically, refer to their third hole as the "bathtub" for a deep depression in its green. The large, 6,000-square-foot green, reached by an uphill path, is relatively flat, characteristic of early courses, but contains one deep depression that inspired its nickname. The club lists it as the oldest green in continuous use in the U.S.

"Most clubs would have removed it years ago," says Pat Kriksceonaitis, whose title is keeper of the green at Essex. "It's certainly not something you would design into a course today."

Before Kriksceonaitis' tenure, the Essex layout was maintained by a father-and-son team for 68 years, probably another reason few drastic alterations were effected.

The green may be the oldest in the nation, but the tee in longest continuous use is located some 700 miles to the southwest, in Hot Springs, Va. The stately Homestead resort has been a site for golf since 1892 and, despite a century of redesign and course additions to the original six holes, the Homestead avers that the tee for the No. 1 hole on the Old Course has been used by golfers for 107 years.

In a class by itself is the 1884 Oakhurst Links in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. The course fell into disuse about three decades after it opened, and was kept as pasture land for the next 80 years. When its present proprietor, Lewis Keller, bought the farm in 1959, the owner showed him the original hole locations. When Keller embarked on restoration in 1993, the original teeing grounds and greens were badly overgrown but essentially undisturbed. A two-year effort brought Oakhurst back to its 1884 glory and today it is available for play, but only with supplied, period-style, wood-shafted clubs. The average length of a hole at Oakhurst is about 240 yards, and with minuscule greens, it gives players an accurate picture of the game when the standard golf balls were rated at about 60 compression.

Other ancient holes in America exist, but proving they're still in their original form is often a painstaking task, if even a possibility. That's because record-keeping by clubs rarely included detailed changes made to the course. Often, the memory of long-time members is the only substantiation as to how the layout stood generations ago. The Philadelphia Cricket Club, however, makes a fair substantiation of its claim on the authenticity of its four original holes. The club's historian, Joe Murdoch, knows they haven't been altered during the 45 years of his membership and can produce strong evidence backing the claim to 1910.

"Two aerial photographs, taken 50 and 70 years ago, show the holes exactly as they are today," Murdoch says. "Distances and features today are the same as those listed in a 1910 article from American Golfer magazine. An old member substantiated the layout and length of the holes from his playing days, both orally and by drawing a course map. The completeness of this documentation in golf architecture is extremely rare."

Roughly kidney-shaped, each green has two flat areas linked by a section with slope. This two-level design is a conscious departure from the flat, saucer-shaped greens many early courses maintained. Turf is soft and lush at the Cricket Club, again closely simulating the slower texture of early greens in the U.S. These early surfaces were built with two approaches. On one side, the preferred avenue to the hole was level with the fairway. The opposite side greeted golfers with a raised bank and included a nasty pot bunker or two. It was a simple formula employed on many holes; the Cricket Club's old holes provide a taste of turn-of-the-century architectural philosophy. Using three-foot-high flagsticks also hints at yesteryear.

The outstanding examples of ancient holes found at Myopia, Essex and Philadelphia Cricket have survived in part because of protective private club memberships. But a few century-old pristine gems exist on municipal courses, too.

Beaver Meadow Golf Club in Concord, N.H., was laid out in 1897 by legendary Scottish golfer Willie Campbell. Today, the third, fifth and seventh holes remain just as Campbell left them. Beaver Meadow's finest is the third, a 151-yard chute with a curious, sandy waste area 30 yards in front of the green and one small greenside bunker. Lined by white pines on either side, its foliage raises another consideration.

"We have trouble keeping grass on the teeing ground," course manager Chris Jacques says. "A hundred years ago, the bordering pines were 10 feet tall. Today they are 100 feet high and they keep the tee continually shaded. They are so full now we've had to prune limbs to keep open the view to the green." Despite infringement by the conifers, Beaver Meadow managed to preserve its originality through municipal parsimony and finding little need for change. Some might call it Yankee stubbornness, but others contend the course never required alteration, having been designed and built well to begin with, a credit to Campbell.

Not quite in the same architectural spirit as century-old layouts, courses constructed after 1920 are also difficult to find intact. The Sagamore Resort and Golf Club on Lake George, N.Y., offers its patrons a gorgeous Donald Ross design that has withstood changes for almost 80 years. Chicago Golf Club, first laid out in 1892 by C.B. MacDonald, remains on its original land but was subjected to major work in the early 1920s. Since then, the club's membership has permitted scant changes.

Course changes are sometimes far more unobtrusive than lengthening a hole or adding a bunker. Pinehurst No. 2, Donald Ross's masterpiece and the site of this year's Open, is the ultimate tinkerer's workshop. For 47 years, Ross tweaked every detail to give it the subtleties that make it one of the world's best layouts. But even after Ross ceased making modifications himself, the course continued to evolve.

"Over the years, occasional doses of fresh sand had raised and flattened the bunker bottoms," says Brad Kocher, who heads the maintenance crew. "Some were several inches higher and others were several feet above their original depths. This also made them flatter and, in effect, easier to play from. Similarly, years of top-dressing with sand had raised the elevation of some greens as much as a foot or two from earlier days." Those greens were restored three years ago when the drainage system underwent maintenance.

Scarce as they may be, there are other bits of aged architecture at courses throughout the country, waiting for their pedigree to be verified. These pieces of old ground exist as working monuments to the earliest golfers and designers, just as architecturally significant as our old buildings. They serve as a history lesson in golf, one to be played, enjoyed and, most certainly, appreciated.

Peter Georgiady is a freelance writer living in Greensboro, N.C. His last story for Golf Journal was about Oakhurst Links