For what it's worth, Tom's question sent me back to some old articles I'd saved: one from Henry Leach in 1912, and one from Horace Hutchinson in 1914, and both about their time spent in America on golfing tours. Here are snippets from those articles, that seem to me to parallel Macdonald's views.
Leach:
"From what I saw I came to the conclusion that the golf courses of the East were much in advance of those of the West. The Chicago course [in Wheaton] was the best I saw out West… I was astonished at its quality, and most particularly the excellence of its putting greens…After
leaving Chicago I did indeed encounter some better greens and marvelled more and more. At some of the courses in the Boston district, notably at Brookline and Myopia, they were
marvellous, and again at Garden City they were magnificent…
[Leach goes on to say that, while America had nothing to learn from Britain re: excellent greens, the same couldn't be said for fairways: “indeed, the only course on which I found a fairway which was something like our best was at Myopia.” He also suggest many courses would benefit from more bunkers.]
…Glen View is one of the prettiest courses I have seen…Onwentsia might be a most excellent course, but it stands most sadly in need of another hundred bunkers, and a hundred and fifty would do it no harm… Like every other golfer in my own country I had heard very much of Myopia and expected so very much of it that I was inclined at first sight of the course to be a little doubtful…But it grew on me in the shortest possible acquaintance. Shots have to be placed
here as hardly anywhere else in America, and there can be no doubt about the scientific nature of the course. It is a real test, a first-class one, and next time I cross the ocean I shall hope for a closer acquaintance with it. Garden City seemed a very good test also, but I had not time to study it properly. The National Links was the last course that I visited. I went on a Sunday and preferred to walk over it slowly and thoughtfully rather than play upon it, for I know
intimately all the holes that have served as models for those that have been made here. I admire immensely the earnestness of the promoters of this great enterprise, their knowledge, their skill and their determination. I wish for their sakes it were possible to realize to the full the dream that they had at the beginning, but is it ? However, the course is different from any other in America, it is most gloriously situated, and it must always be a great pleasure to play upon it."
Hutchinson
"Thence we went on by night, a sixteen hours' journey, to Boston, where Charlie Macdonald, the creator of the National Golf Links of America, met us. Immediately on arrival I started out for the Myopia Club, where Macdonald and I beat T. Stephenson and Herbert Leeds. The latter is the constructor of the Myopia course, and for its construction deserves no little credit. From what I have seen of American courses I put the National Golf Links first and this Myopia second, a very good second." (An aside: Hutchinson mentions -- it seems to me favourably -- that NGLA could and did irrigate its green and fairways during dry spells).
Peter