*Or maybe the English "Tom Buchanan"...
To all,
Reading the Rye history last year, I was struck by the economy of words used to described HC Tippet's collapse and death in connection with post-war rehabilitation of the course. There appeared much more to the story.
Fortuitously, albeit in a sad way, as I completed my reading of the Rye history, last summer there appeared in
The Daily Mail this obituary of Major Bruce Shand, the most-amazing, Gatsby-esque sketch of the life of HC Tippet.
So there was much more to the story. As Tom MacWood writes, "Tippet was not your average retired British officer turned club secretary, he had been an accomplished golf architect during the Roaring 20s, creating a number of high profile American designs, among them Montauk Downs, Meadow Brook and LaGorce."
I searched in vain for more on his life and how his architectural career intertwined with it. And what an "intertwining" it must have been! Based on the sketch one can nearly see him as a minor Tom Buchanan, or perhaps a Babbitt.
Fisher should be a red flag as to the Florida work: he was instrumental, if doltish, in the fabrication of Miami Beach, an avatar of the Florida real-estate bubble of the 1920s. To be connected to Carl Fisher is to be neck deep in that milieu.
And then...to that "toff of toffs" club, Rye!
What do you know, and what can you find out?
Thanks,
Mark