Mike S
Thanks for your suggestion that I write an In My Opinion piece on this issue, but no thanks. I witnessed the incessant unconscionable barrage of abuse that TEPaul heaped on Tom MacWood while Tom MacWood researched Crump, and I don’t have time to deal with that.
Plus, I don’t really have a theory, especially not one of “MacDonald’s influence at Merion.” My thoughts are not necessarily profound or even original, and in my opinion don’t justify an In My Opinion. Plus, my thoughts are preliminary and subject to drastic change as I learn more, which is why I sometimes refer to them as hypotheses or working hypotheses (I’ve even been ridiculed for this.)
1. Before Merion, golf in the Philadelphia area was pretty horrible, and can best be understood as “Dark Age” or “Victorian.”
2. Merion, needing a new course for practical reasons, set out produce something different and better, so they sent Wilson to Europe in learn about what was going on over there (which was largely a rejection of the same type of Dark Age stuff) and a return to the principles and features of the great links.
3. Before he went, he spent some time at NGLA with MacDonald, learning about golf design and planning his trip.
4. MacDonald had also been crusading against the dark age stuff and for a return to the older, better links inspired stuff. He had built NGLA at least in part as an exemplar of how to apply the great ideas of links golf into American design.
5. According to the commentators of the time (and apparent from early photographs) the early version(s) of Merion East were a radical departure from what had come before in Philadelphia (and most of America.)
6. According to many of the most respected voices of the time and Merion’s club history, MacDonald advised on the design of Merion and had an influence on its early design.
7. According to many of the most respected voices of the time, Merion’s early design incorporated features that were also common on MacDonald’s ideal golf holes. Some commentators even went so far as to suggest that some of the holes could be characterized by the same names as some of MacDonald’s template holes.
8. Interestingly, according to Travis, Wilson may have been incorporating features directly from the originals, rather than MacDonald’s interpretation of the originals. Travis describes the original 15th green at Merion as “an attempt to reproduce the Eden green at Saint Andrews.” Had Wilson been copying MacDonald one would think that it would have been an attempt to copy the Eden green at NGLA. To me this raises the issue as to whether we ought to be looking for similarities not just with MacDonald’s holes but with the with the original holes, as well. Perhaps MacDonald told Wilson “these are the models at which to look” and Wilson took his advice and tried to emulate a few of the originals.
9. Given the overwhelming evidence of the above two points, we at least must assume that these men sincerely thought that what they were saying was correct. Accordingly, we ought to make an effort to understand WHY THEY THOUGHT WHAT THEY DID. This entails thoroughly understanding, not what exists now, but what existed then long before any of us were born. This includes an understanding of ACCURATE distances, ACCURATE elevation changes, and ACCURATE feature placement and size.
10. TEPaul and Wayne Morrison think they already know all this and will hear nothing that suggests otherwise. Given how wrong they have proven to be about so many issues on this thread alone, their level of hubris is inexplicable.
11. We don’t know just how much influence MacDonald had and we likely never will in full, but we do know that a pretty impressive list of men all thought that MacDonald, his golf holes, and/or the holes that inspired him had a fairly major impact on the Early Merion. And to ignore, dismiss, and/or disregard these mens' words without overwhelming evidence to the contrary is an arrogant and unjustified fictionalization of history, a slap in the face of the reputations of these great men, and frankly, a incredibly poor research methodology.