[Joe Bausch]

That is the name of this September 12, 1905 article from the Dallas Morning News.  No author is given.  I'm assuming it was reproduced from some other paper like the NY Times, but I can't find it in their archives.

Anyways, this article may be old hat to others, but a still relative newbie like me it is a great read as it talks extensively with C.B. MacDonald and his plans for what I assume eventually becomes NGLA.

[Jerry Kluger]

Joe: That article is very entertaining and what strikes me is the part where JH Taylor, the professional golfer, feels that no hole should be approachable using the ground game - every hole should have natural and created obstacles which force you to fly the ball on to the green.  Macdonald is an architect as well as an outstanding golfer and obviously, he didn't agree.  It does seem that today's professional golfers feel the same way as Taylor - Nicklaus clearly felt that way in his early designs such as Grand Cypress and as he matured as an architect his views changed.

[Bob_Huntley]

Don't know much about the golf club but sure do like the sandwich.


The name Monte Christo revives old memories of my first few months dining at The University Club in downtown Los Angeles. I was working for a regional brokerage house and at market closing time, would cross the street for lunch.

Sandwiches in Southern Africa were pretty plebian but when I was served a Monte Christo my salivary glands worked overtime. The trouble was,  I could order nothing else and at the end of the month I was beginning to look like the Michelin man. I called a halt to the gluttony and tried salads, didn't like them.

The nearest thing to a Monte Christo is the Croque Monsieur served up at lunchtime by the chef at Bouchon  in Yountville. I can taste it now.


Bob

[Mark Bourgeois]

Joe

It's a reprint of a 30 July 1905 NY Sun article, possibly the earliest newspaper reference to NLGA.

Mark

EDIT: If you look at the very end you will see the Sun attribution.

[Tony_Muldoon]

Was the aerial game a professional golfers invention?

Somewhere in Park’s ‘On Golf’ he writes of the desirability of the ability to hit a high ball that stops.  Here Vardon appears to bemoaning the loss of early target golf or you could even see it as an attack on firm and fast and width. I don’t recall reading similar thoughts in Hutchinson, Low or Darwin – all amateurs and gentlemen.  Was the ground game for toffs and those of the Corinthian spirit?

[BCrosby]

Tony -

Thanks for posting the article. A wonderful find.

I especially liked the line where Vardon says he prefers cross bunkers because they are "blunt and honest".  None of those weak-kneed "wing" bunkers for him. Great stuff.

The other interesting thing is that this article debunks the idea that the ground game dominated early golf. Vardon seems to suggest that he and his contemporaries played an aerial game and that it was the younger generation that used a "pull" shot.  Which Vardon thought, of course, was a mistake.

Note also that when talking about golf design, for Vardon it was all about shot testing. There is no mention of playing strategies as a consideration in designing a good course. 

My guess is that Vardon represented the conventional view of all that. (He probably still does.) Against that backdrop, the things John Low was saying about gca at the same time would have sounded way out there on the lunatic fringe.

Bob

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