Tom M and David M,
Is there some specific recognition either of you would like to bestow upon CBM for his involvement in Merion East? Acknowldeging his advisory and mentor type relationship with Wilson and his committee do not seem to be enough, what exactly would quench your thirst.....beyond Wayne and Tom stumbling into some demonstration of incompetence, that is...
Jim,
I've been asking that question all along, as well. Perhaps we'll never hear a straight answer?
What is it that David and Tom M. hope to accomplish here? What additional credit are they hoping to give posthumously to Macdonald & Whigham, even in the absence of providing not a single new shred of evidence that they deserve more?
This thread has been valuable for unearthing and distributing information from fellows like Tillinghast, Thomas, and Behr (or White?
) who clearly worked directly with Wilson through those years, who were onsite regularly, and who made very crystalline clear who the architect of the original course at Merion was.
David can say all he wants that we have the wrong "smoking gun", but is he really being forthcoming? Isn't the real purpose of this thread to cast doubt on whether Wilson actually designed Merion East, or whether he was just somehow Macdonald's errand boy, hopelessly lost in the task at hand without the wise and sage and continued counsel of CB Macdonald?
The fact that Macdonald and Whigham "advised" in some capacity has been noted by history and has been stipulated by everyone here. However, if their role had been more relevant than what is already known, why wasn't it noted by Tillie, by Thomas, by Behr, by news accounts of the time that clearly pointed to Wilson as the one who "laid out both courses at Merion"?
Why did Charles Macdonald write not a single word about his involvement at Merion from 1910 til his death 29 years later, even though he authored a complete book on golf and wrote extensively about his courses?
We keep hearing from Tom MacWood that the course was "redesigned" between 1912 and 1914, but what proof exists to back that assertion? Remember that at this time, the old Merion course in Haverford had closed, membership was literally bursting at the seams, so much so that less than a year after the East opened in 1912, construction began and the West course, which opened in 1914. Is he telling us that along with everything necessary to architect, build, and construct the West course, Wilson was also wholly redesigning the East course simultaneously? Where the hell where the members supposed to play?
The evidence is very clear here.
It has been postulated that somehow Macdonald and Whigham deserve some additional credit for the Merion East course that history has neglected to rightfullly provide them. Unfortunately, every angle supporting this hypothesis has been exhausted, and come up empty. If anything, ironically, this thread only proves that Macdonald and Whigham actually probably had LESS to do with the actual original design at Merion than had been suspected previously.
So, unless someone besides David and Tom Macwood wants to step forward and say they've been convinced to give additional credit to Macdonald and Whigham based on what's been presented, I think we're about done here.
After all, if that isn't the purpose of this thread, and what David was hoping to accomplish, then I hope David can finally tell us what his point is!