Marion Hollins essentially started the Womens National golf club. Apparently the idea for it came from Hollins.
For those who aren't much aware of Marion Hollins, she was one helluva athlete in more sports than just golf. In golf, she won the US Amateur championship.
For a few months I had the book that contained the origins of the Womens National right here at home. This was not a book written about the club, it was the Womens National GC's own book containing all the papers of its origins. Unfortunately it had nothing about the architecture of the golf course---it only contained reams and reams of legal documents containing incorporation papers and membership rolls and things pertaining to membership.
I grew up in Glen Head, Long Island about five miles from the Womens National and if there is anything I really do recognize its those names contained on those membership rolls of the Womens National.
The fact is just about every single big time name in Long Island from that time is contained in those early membership rolls. It's amazing.
And the other thing that's really amazing to me is just how independent some of those women like Marion Hollins and those on those membership rolls were in relation to golf at that time. They were 1000 percent more independent than women are today in golf.
I don't really know why that was----whether it was because they understood they just weren't very welcome in some other clubs compared to today and for that reason they just went out and did their own independent thing in this way back then.
The fact is the very idea of strictly women's golf courses was so much more prevalent back then compared to today.
Rand Jerris, the USGA Museum/Library director has also said he is just amazed at how much went on in strictly women's golf in America in the 1920s and the 1930s.
In the 1940s the Women's National GC wasn't making it and because of its close connection to The Creek Club it became incorporated into The Creek Club.
I'll have to check my records but at that time I think the combined operation was known as "The Forest Creek Club".
Shortly after that The Creek Club sold the club and course formerly known as The Womens National and I guess at that point it became the Glen Head GC.
Surprisingly, there are some older generation people in Long Island today such as my uncle who are still furious at The Creek Club and some significant members like Irving (or was it Charles?) Pratt for being responsible for dumping the Womens National and selling it. They feel a really wonderful, significant and obvious unique (being just women) club got sold down the river by The Creek Club in Locust Valley.
However, long before that point, I think we all know the real principle of the club, Marion Hollins, had moved to California and was on to other things in golf and architecture.
We can also definitely put C.B. Macdonald on site at the creation of Women's National, even if we can't tell what he contributed to the design of the course.
But according to some, and even some in California, if you can put Macdonald on site in a golf project, even for a day or two, than logically that golf course should probably be attributed to Macdonald architecturally.
Some of the details of the creation and design of the Womens National are shrouded in time and they're mysterious now. But one thing I think I can say with 100% certainty is that even if he wanted to or tried to, C.B probably never "got it on", so to speak, with Marion Hollins, for a variety of reasons.
Another piece of trivia is Devie Emmet actually served as the secretary to the Womens National for a time.
By the way, C.B. Macdonald had a rather huge residence in Roslyn, Long Island back then, and Roslyn is right next to Glen Head.