[TEPaul]

.....what-all did he contribute to the evolution of golf course architecture in this country, how and why?

I've got a ton of opinons on the subject but I want to see what the feeling is on here.

Just consider, some of them (Emmet, Leeds, Fownes, Macdonald, Wilson, Crump, Thomas) created GCGC, Myopia, Oakmont, NGLA, Merion, PVGC, Riviera, LA C.C, Lakeside, etc, etc, etc.

[RJ_Daley]

I can't think of someone off hand that was an average joe in those years, who wasn't from a pretty well-to-do background, that 'laid out' some course that remains today, can you?  I'm thinking of the 'field of dreams guys' that converted the family farm to a course sort of character...

I imagine that golf was too much of an upper class activity in those early years to have some local yokel dream up his one-in-a-lifetime masterpiece...

[TEPaul]

RJ:

Every one of those seven guys I listed came from "money". I doubt that gave them the talent although it obviously gave them the "opportunity".

[Mark Bourgeois]

I would think it was their sales abilities that mattered foremost, given how unsophisticated their fellow golfers / clients were. In which case, those abilities were a gift to us.

Fortunately, unlike their English contemporaries, very few of them apparently were attorneys.  In our country, could you imagine what might have happened if the lawyers had got ahold of the game from the start?

Mark

[BCrosby]

Those are all impressive names and courses.

But what is forgotten about the era is that there were thousands of new courses being built and virtually all were built by local golf enthusiasts. Very, very few were designed and built by professional architects. Why? Because there were virtually no professional architects around at the time.

Myopia, Oakmont and PVGC weren't unusual because they were built by amateurs. They were unusual because they were good.

I'm talking every town and hamlet. In Athens, Augusta, Atlanta and the little towns in betweeen - places I happen to know something about - each had multiple courses by 1910, none of which had been designed by a professional architect (Bendelow at EL may be a minor exception). All of which courses are now either NLE or were redone by a professional architect later. (Come to think about it, "all" is not true. There are still some pre-1910 remnants out there.)

That is a huge missing chapter in the history of gca. It's like dark matter in physics. It comprises 80% of what's out there but nobody knows anything about it.

Bob

[TEPaul]

Bob:

I think the appropriate question might be to ask what those "amateur" architects I mentioned above did differently from the available professinal golf architects who were around at that time?

[Sean_A]

Those are all impressive names and courses.

But what is forgotten about the era is that there were thousands of new courses being built and virtually all were built by local golf enthusiasts. Very, very few were designed and built by professional architects. Why? Because there were virtually no professional architects around at the time.

Myopia, Oakmont and PVGC weren't unusual because they were built by amateurs. They were unusual because they were good.

I'm talking every town and hamlet. In Athens, Augusta, Atlanta and lots of little towns in betweeen - places I happen to know something about - each had multiple courses by 1910, none of which had been designed by a professional architect (Bendelow at EL may be a minor exception). All of which are now either NLE or were rebuilt by a professional architect later.

That is a huge missing chapter in the history of gca. It's like dark matter in physics. It comprises 80% of what's out there but nobody knows anything about it.

Bob

Well stated Bob.

Ciao

[Peter Pallotta]

TE,

I have no specifics to offer, but this general observation:

I believe the word "amateur" comes from the Latin "to love". I think that, at a very basic level, what those "founding fathers" you mention did was to infuse and stamp the game with a spirit that hasn't yet left it.  

That is, in giving sometimes years and years of dedicated attention and service to their golf course designs, and this out of nothing but a love for the game and those courses, they spoke volumes to future generations (which sometimes listened and sometimes not):

They said "this is a game like no other, one tied to its fields of play in a most profound way, and those fields of play are worthy of the utmost attention, which attention will reward ten-fold future generations of golfers".

The actions and attentions of those amateur founding fathers said, in short, "this is an important thing".  I think it was that stamp and spirit that lived on, leading not only to the birth of the professional architect, but to the eventual re-emergence of the idea that golf's fields of play are unique and valuable expressions.

Hope that doesn't sound too hippy-skippy; it wasn't meant to.

Peter

[BCrosby]

Bob:

I think the appropriate question might be to ask what those "amateur" architects I mentioned above did differently from the available professinal golf architects who were around at that time?

Tom -

Yes, that is the question.

First, what professional architects worked in the US between 1900 and 1910? Even Ross didn't view himself at that time as a professional archie. That came a couple of years later. Was Tillie working that early? I'm having trouble visualizing the pool of available "professional" talent circa 1905. Or if there even was a pool.

Second, and the real question, is what influenced the good amateur designers? What distinguished them from other local enthusiasts who built the other 1,000 courses of the era that have since sunk into oblivion?

Good question. Hard question. Big question.

Bob

[JESII]

Bob:

I think the appropriate question might be to ask what those "amateur" architects I mentioned above did differently from the available professinal golf architects who were around at that time?

Tom -

Yes, that is the question.

First, what professional architects worked in the US between 1900 and 1910? Even Ross didn't view himself at that time as a professional archie. That came a couple of years later. Was Tillie working that early? I'm having trouble visualizing the pool of available "professional" talent circa 1905. Or if there even was a pool.

Second, and the real question, is what influenced the good amateur designers? What distinguished them from other local enthusiasts who built the other 1,000 courses of the era that have since sunk into oblivion?

Good question. Hard question. Big question.

Bob

I'll take a stab at these...

1) It is very difficult to sell something that has no measurable monetary value. In 1900, how many people within a concentrated area would put a specific dollar value on the priveledge of playing golf here in the US? Hence, the organized development of gold courses was to immature an industry to have many people trying to make a living at building those courses. My instinct is that most clubs would find a member interested in the game to lay out what they thought were interesting holes.

2) They were the better players...everyone knows the best players have the best eye for good and great architecture...

[Steve Burrows]

In my opinion, the differences between the "amateurs" and "professionals," at least in the early years of American design, were two-fold:

First, they were not necessarily governed by rules of design.  They had almost all spent time studying the British seaside courses and were well versed in golf strategy, but there were no real conventions as to how to design a course.  It's not as though the defied convention, but rather, they created them.  Their designs generally only go against our modern standards, and ironically, that is one of the reasons that we seem to love them.  But we probably couldn't "get away" with building them under today's rules and conventions.

Second, these were generally men of stong character.  They were, as stated, wealthy, and some were giants in their actual professions (hotels, steel, etc.).  Men of this nature rarely take no for an answer, and are often autocratic, if not dictatorial in their business style.  They do things their way because they believe it is right, not because such is the conventional way of doing things.  If that upsets people, then those people will simply have to deal with it.

These men contributed greatness to the game, but rarely can we create courses like these today.  A modern Oakmont, Merion, etc, might be viewed as quirky, or different (in the bad sense), or, heaven forbid, "unfair."  For similar reasons that the masses like McDonalds, we tend to flock to comforting golf courses, ones that don't scare us, or ones where we might be able to score well.  Perhaps their greatness lies simply in the general unwillingness to compromise an ideal, whereas the modern world is almost necessarily overflowing with compromise.  

[BCrosby]

JES II -

Certainly better players layed out many of those courses. But a lot of times it was just the guy who owned the land or started the club.

The elephant in the room here is the enormous social snobbism that attached the golf early on. It's what drove the early growth of golf. It was a status game and the quality of the golf was subordinate to the status of being in a club. (Not that things have changed a heck of a lot.)

With the obvious exceptions, the quality of the course was not the big deal. It was only later, when having a good course also came to have social status, that people started redoing their quaint little homemade courses.

Some back of the envelope historical analysis.

Bob

[BCrosby]

Let me ask again because I'm curious and don't have my books around.

Who were the professional architects practicing their craft in the US circa 1905?

Ross didn't start doing architecture full time until later. I'm having trouble coming up with names. Tillie? Bendelow was more a promoter of the game than someone in the design business per se.

Bob

[Peter Pallotta]

Bob

I hadn't realized that the "social" aspect of the game-course-club was that important that early one, especially for the hundreds of quaint little course built by local, amateur enthusiasts. If that's the case, there seems to have been a 4-way split in those days:

1) The noteworthy amateurs like the ones TE mentions off the top, who -- if the time they spent on designing and refining their courses is any indication -- cared deeply about the quality of their course (and the game to be played on it), even if there was some social aspect involved in their pursuit;

2) The less noteworthy amateurs, who built hundreds of now-forgotten courses (either quickly or slowly, but I'm guessing fairly quickly) primarily driven by the social aspect of the game;

3) The less-noteworthy amateurs, perhaps numbering very few, who shared the love and commitment of the noteworthy ones, and also tried to design quality and lasting golf courses -- but failed; and

4) The earliest professionals, who might've built their courses quickly or slowly, with care or without, with a focus on either the social or design aspect of the game (or a little of both) and in the pursuit money or honour (or a little of both).

I don't know where that gets us, but if it's a good description it means that answers to TE's initial questions seem a very complex affair. Here's a simplistic answer:

The amateur designers of GCGC, Myopia, Oakmont, NGLA, Merion, PVGC, Riviera etc had three qualities that set them apart all others: vision, dedication, and talent - in that order.

Peter

[JMorgan]

By 1904, there were 31 USGA associated clubs and 257 affiliated clubs, not to mention the ones under the radar.  By then, who was considered an amateur architect and who was the professional?

[Phil_the_Author]

Bob, although Tilly probably would have wanted to do design courses, it wasn't until 1909 that his good friend, C.C. Worthington, gave him the opportunity to create his first course at Shawnee which opened in the spring of 1911.

For what it's worth, he was 34 years old at the time.

[RSLivingston_III]

The Foulis' were busy in the midwest starting in the mid 1890's.
Alex Smith was here designing courses in thee late 1890's.

[RSLivingston_III]

Didn't Robert White get here in the mid-1890's and start working on some east coast courses?

[RSLivingston_III]

Sorry, those guys were Scottish.
There was a family in landscaping in Chicago that did some early Golf courses.
I believe it is Simmons, but have seen some different spellings of the name in early articles.

[BCrosby]

Athens GA is an interesting case study in the missing dark matter in the history of gca.

In 1930, Athens had a population of less than 10,000. It had four courses. Two organized by old line Confederate families, a new course organized by a nouveau riche type and designed by Ross in ('25-Athens CC) and a club with a primarily Jewish membership. (There seems to have been a fifth, but nobody could tell me what the deal was there.)

All but the Ross course were designed by locals between 1900 and 1910.

By 1950, only one course remained, Athens CC.

I suspect Athens was pretty typical. There were a huge number of courses designed and built by amateurs in the US. Few joined the USGA. I doubt they were of any architectural distinction. But they were there and people played lots of golf on them.

For this and other reasons I sometimes think that the face of American golf courses pre-1930 would be something of a shock to us today.

The courses we talk about here that were designed by the famous Golden Age designers are the thin top layer of a very big cake.

Bob

[john_stiles]

Bob,

Tom Bendelow wasn't American by birth but came to America for a newspaper job, not a 'golf professional' job, at a young age.  He stayed in America for his entire golfing career.

He was very active in early 1900s and was manager of Van Cortlandt Park.  

Bendelow designed many courses in the mid west and would have been considered a 'professional'.

John

[BCrosby]

John -

Agreed about Bendelow.

My question is simply who were the people working as professional architects in the US (without regard to their country of birth) during the first 20 years of golf in the US. Say, 1890 to 1910.

It seems that there were very few of 'em. Which suggests that almost all the early American courses were local amateur jobs. Because there were a lot of new courses built during those years.

My guess is that that had a big impact in the direction of US gca and helps explain why it diverged early on from UK gca.

But at this point I'm too tired from work to try on an answer my own questions.

Bob

[TEPaul]

"Tom -

Yes, that is the question.

First, what professional architects worked in the US between 1900 and 1910? Even Ross didn't view himself at that time as a professional archie. That came a couple of years later. Was Tillie working that early? I'm having trouble visualizing the pool of available "professional" talent circa 1905. Or if there even was a pool."


Bob:

That's an excellent question and obviously a good place to start. It hadn't exactly occurred to me but this most certainly is a very important question if we are going to attempt to track the history and evolution of American golf course architecture. Perhaps we should begin to construct our lists that reflect as best as can be known who it was exactly who worked professionally over here in the 1890s, 1900s, and even into the teens. Maybe the best method would be to just go through C&W alphabetically and see who comes up from that. I think we will find all the "usual suspects" of immigrant Scottish, English or even Australian player/pro/greenkeeper/club-maker/teacher/architects.

Here they are out of C&W:      
Herbert Barker
Tom Bendelow,
Harry Collis,
George Cumming,
James Dagleish,
Seymour Dunn,
John Duncan Dunn,
Willie Dunn Jr,
Willie Davis,
Devereux Emmet,
Arthur Fenn,
Alex Findlay,
James Foulis,
Robert Foulis,
Walter Fovargue,
Robert Johnstone,
George Low Sr,
Norman MacBeth,
Charles Maud,
George O’Neil,
John Park,
Willie Park Jr,
Robert Pryde,
Donald Ross,
Herbert Strong,
A.W. Tillinghast,
Walter Travis,
William Tucker,
H.J. Tweedie,
Willie Watson,
Bert Way,
Robert White,
George Wright.

All the foregoing apparently did architecture professionally in the teens or before in America.

“Second, and the real question, is what influenced the good amateur designers? What distinguished them from other local enthusiasts who built the other 1,000 courses of the era that have since sunk into oblivion?

Good question. Hard question. Big question.”

They certainly are good questions, Bob.

It seems to me one of the primary things that influenced those great early “amateurs” who produced the great courses mentioned above is just about all of them took the time early on to go over and study the linksland and particularly the early heathland architecture before launching into their projects which were notably very limited in number.

And I think the thing that distinguished most of the foregoing early “amateurs” mentioned above who produced such great courses from the early professionals mentioned above was simply that almost none of those professionals spent anywhere near the amount of time on their projects that all those early “amateurs” mentioned above did.

We are generally probably talking a few days or weeks at most with the early professionals compared to literal years or even decades for those early "amateurs" mentioned above.

[TEPaul]

Bob:

Now I guess the thing to do is to pick a year---say 1915 or 1919 and look at the courses in America at that time that were considered to be the best and look at who (amateur or professional) it was who designed and built them and how.

[Mike_Young]

I think the biggest factor in much of this is "staying power"....
It wasn't necessarily that the best architect's work survived and grew as much as it was the financial condition of the clubs that could survive.  Of course there are always the few exceptions but it is amazing to me how good an architect can become to most people when he has a good supt with a proper budget and the patina and maturity that comes to a course with years of such behind it.....JMO

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