Which Golden Architect Had the Best Business Model?

[Phil Benedict]

I assume Ross's mass production model model was the most lucrative - leveraging the brand and all that.  But I don't know for sure.  Did the Golden Age guys make much money?

[Phil_the_Author]

Phil, by and large they made more and less than most knew about. More in that they found many ways to charge for services most had never thought to do before and far less than what most think they were getting.

For example, it has been verry mistakenly reported that Tilly made millions in designing courses - he didn't.

In 1924, when he signed the deal to do 5 Farms (site of this years October Sr. Players Championship), his proposal letter reads:

      “Gentleman,
      “This will confirm the verbal agreement which I made with your committee on Monday, June 9th, 1924. It is agreed that the Baltimore Country Club retains my services to perform the following duties:
      “After a careful examination and analysis of the new property, I agree to lay out two (2) courses, each of eighteen (18) holes. These are to be staked on the ground and after the various points had been located by your surveyor, I am to prepare a completely detailed working plan of the thirty-six (36) holes, showing other vital features, such as Driveways, Parking places for motor cars, Tennis Courts and Practice Grounds for Driving and Putting.
      “I further agree to act in an advisory capacity during the construction of both courses, visiting the property from time to time to check up on the work, and while the periods of these visits are not set, it is understood that I will make the visits whenever necessary for the satisfactory completion of the work and hold myself in readiness to confer with the committee on the grounds at such times as they may deem necessary.
      “In addition to the detailed plan of the courses, I agree to provide working models or cross-section drawings, with elevations, for the construction of the Greens, for the 18 holes first to be constructed; and afterwards for the second 18 holes under the provision of an additional Two Thousand ($2,000) Dollars, incorporated in the following:
      “The Baltimore Country Club agrees to pay me a total fee of Four Thousand ($4,000) Dollars, (Two Hundred ($200) Dollars of which already was paid when the preliminary examination was made in February) and this $4,000 covers the planning of the 36 holes and specifications, models, etc. for the first 18 holes to be constructed. It is agreed that this fee is to be paid as follows:

1. A retainer of Five Hundred ($500) Dollars to be paid upon your confirmation of this agreement.
2. One Thousand ($1,000) dollars upon the delivery of the plans, specifications and models, and your approval of them.
3. Eleven Hundred and Fifty ($1,150) Dollars on September 10th, 1924
4. Six Hundred and Fifty ($650) Dollars on June 1st, 1925.
5. Five Hundred ($500) Dollars on June 1st, 1926.
6. Two Thousand ($2,000) Dollars to be paid as mutually agreeable when the second 18 holes are to be constructed.
      “I will arrive at the club on the morning of Wednesday, June 18th, to begin my preliminary work and it should be possible to have the courses staked completely within two weeks.
      “In addition to the fees, it is agreed by the Baltimore Country Club to defray all expenses for the transportation, between New York and the Baltimore Country Club, and lodging incidental to my visits.
      “Very Truly Yours,
      A.W. Tillinghast”

Unknown before the Tillinghast biography came out was how important a financial part the Tillinghast Rubber Goods Company (founded by Tilly's father and left to him at his death in 1918, though managed by his mother, his family drew on money from it until it was closed five years after Tilly died in 1942).

It carried him through the highs and lows of running the architectural business and allowed Tilly to purchase the house he was living in in Harrington Park in 1930 and to build another house on the property the following year and give it to his daughter and her husband.

It also allowed Tilly the money to squander on his bad land and business investments such as the Broadway shows he financed.

It also allowed him to afford the exquisite antiques he loved and these also allowed him a measure of large income during the hard times of the late 20's and on through the 30's. (See issue #2 of Tillinghast Illustrated on the Tillinghast Association website, www.tillinghast.net, this Monday.)

[TEPaul]

Ross had a very sophisticated and well oiled business model going for that era but in my opinion noone from that era came close to Toomey and Flynn for offering the client the most sophisticated business model imaginable. You want to talk about showing the client exactly what they would get for what they were paying for? Their model was ultra sophisticated for that era and probably one of the reasons it appealed to so many rich businessmen types.

In our opinion (me and Wayne) that was perhaps Toomey and Flynn's primary sales pitch.

[wsmorrison]

It is possible that Toomey, being an engineer, and the efficiency and time management work of Frederick Taylor had a large influence in how Flynn conducted the business side of his design and construction firms.  Most of the business work was handled by Toomey until his death in the early 1930s.  Of course there wasn't much work after this.

Flynn's connections to these sophisticated and ultra-rich businessmen that Tom Paul alludes to probably helped Flynn in his own finances.  Flynn loved the stock market and apparently did very well.  His family lived an upper middle class lifestyle on Philadelphia's Main Line.  In addition to his design firm and his construction partnership with Toomey, Flynn owned two car dealerships and was a part owner of the Philadelphia Eagles.  

[Phil_the_Author]

Now I know why I never liked Flynn, an Iggles owner!?!

Go Big Blue!!!

[BCrosby]

Tom Simpson had the best plan. His father had tons of money.

Bob

[Mike_Young]

Did any of them consider it a viable bsiness.  Seems like most had family funds etc to exist between projects etc.....with a few exceptions.

[Craig Van Egmond]

Ross is probably the only one with a viable business model. Most of the others seem to have more of a hobby model. I doubt any of the others made any kind of living off golf architecture, most of them didn't have to and more than one died penniless.

[wsmorrison]

Flynn made his money in golf course architecture and construction.  He invested wisely, enjoying the market, and had provided a very comfortable living for his family.  The stock market crash did not impinge upon his family though business certainly dried up.  The projects for Tyng at Shinnecock Hills, for Geist in Boca Raton, Indian Creek in Miami and Rockefeller in Tarrytown kept things going for Flynn and his crew during the height of the Depression.  Flynn's daughter, though young at the time, did not sense any difficulties for her family.  According to her, they still vacationed at all the same places they had before the Depression and had a very comfortable lifestyle.  At the time of Flynn's death in 1945, the family was well off.

[TEPaul]

"Ross is probably the only one with a viable business model. Most of the others seem to have more of a hobby model."

Craig:

I can guarantee you Toomey and Flynn's business model was no hobby model.

The only sort of ironic thing about Flynn or Toomey and Flynn is how many of their fellow "Philadelphia School" compartriots in architecture were those so-called "amateur" architects who always refused to get paid for anything they did in architecture. Most of them had money but the reason they didn't get payed is most all of them were very good amateur competitors and they didn't want to jeopradize their amateur playing status. Tillinghast was the real exception. He was a good amateur player and the USGA pulled his amateur playing status. Interestingly, when the USGA changed the amateur status rule in the early 1920s to exempt professional architects Tillinghast didn't even bother to get his amateur status back.

[Craig Van Egmond]

Toomey and Flynn going once.... any others???   going twice....  

[TEPaul]

SOLD!

[Mike Nuzzo]

Wayne & Tom,
Would you share a little of their model?
I'm very curious.
Did they have a marketing effort?
Thank you.
Cheers

[wsmorrison]

Mike,

They never advertised their construction business or Flynn's design business (two separate entities).  He only did a few projects a year.  Flynn let Tillinghast, Ross and those other rejects fight for the chaff  

His efforts at resorts such as Atlantic City CC, Homestead and Boca Raton probably meant a lot of business as the movers and shakers that played those courses wanted the same designer.  Flynn's "rolodex" was very impressive and word of mouth about his skills and his engaging personality along with his methodical pricing and efficiencies swayed a lot of patrons.  His one stop shop of design and build was an effective combination.

[Tony_Muldoon]

The answer to historical questions on GCA is often a four letter word. Colt.

He gradually eased himself out of employment at Sunnigdale, where he was well regarded. At first, I believe, mainly to consult on agronomy and then increasingly to design courses.  


He lived a very comfortable life -but then it's possible (but not likely) his wife came with a large dowry. Also his father was comfortably off and that helps.

I think you would have to say that he was an astute businessman and very hard working too.

[David Lott]

Bill Diddel:

He was able to continue making a living as a golf course architect through the Depression, WW II and up to the 1970's. Who else did that?

[Tom_Doak]

MacKenzie's business model was fascinatingly different than others'.  He very freely adopted partners as he traveled the globe, and trusted them to carry out his plans, so that he never even went back to see how many of his courses had turned out.

Some people have denigrated MacKenzie for his m.o., insisting that his associates should get more of the credit for their contributions [as they certainly should]; however, without his routings and sketches they didn't do nearly as well on their own.

[Patrick Kiser]

Ross for sure.  He was like the Henry Ford of design.

An inteesting twist would be to debate how much things have changed ... or not.


Tony,

I was going to state Colt as well as having a viable business model.

I seem to recall Mackenzie even referencing it quite a bit.


Tom,

I wonder how much Mackenzie followed through with some of Colt's ideas of running a business.

The answer to historical questions on GCA is often a four letter word. Colt.

He gradually eased himself out of employment at Sunnigdale, where he was well regarded. At first, I believe, mainly to consult on agronomy and then increasingly to design courses.  


He lived a very comfortable life -but then it's possible (but not likely) his wife came with a large dowry. Also his father was comfortably off and that helps.

I think you would have to say that he was an astute businessman and very hard working too.

[Mark_Fine]

There are lots of good choices and every one will lean toward who they know.  "Best" is a subjective word.  Kind of like the ranking process, what is best?  However, it is hard to argue against the business model of someone like Ross.  To turn out the quantity and quality of courses that he did is simply amazing.  Ross new how to network and empowered his associates to get the projects done.  He otherwise could never have accomplished what he did.  

Though his paid staff never got very large, he had some great hires and very capable people.  Some of the drawings for example that Johnson Jr. did for him are simply amazing.  The detail and three dimensional perspective drawings are things Ross himself could never do.  Ross couldn't possibly pay close personal attention to all his courses but to those he did, you can usually see the differences and how special they are.  And the others while maybe not to the same standards, still introduced decent quality golf to many golfers clamoring for a Ross branded design.  

He was extremely busy but appeared to be having fun with the whole process at the same time.  He didn't appear disgruntled, paraniod, suspicious, arrogant, or a drunken and egotistical individual like some others might be described and was content with his life and the enormous responsibilities his business entailed.  

This model is totally opposite some of the others, but which one was "best" is a matter of personel preference.  

[TEPaul]

Bob Crosby touched on Tom Simpson above but who could be a more visible "business model" than this guy---eg touring the countryside in a Rolls Royce (probably chauffeur driven), inspecting sites in a cape and beret etc? This guy must have been to early golf architecture what Walter Hagen was to early professional golf.  

One other interesting aspect to some kind of business model back in the Golden Age has to be related to those who bragged about how much some of their golf courses cost and those who didn't.

There's no question at all that some, particularly after WW1, were very much into some serious cost effeciencies in golf course architecture.

Just look at some of the old golf magazines and particularly the USGA's Green Section Record---some of them wrote about cost efficiences in a very detailed and comprehensive manner.

Part of that may've been to sell more comprehensively the cost efficient services of "professional" architects vs the cost inefficiencies of so called "amateur" architects---at least in theory.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom:

Reading those early architects' discussions of cost-efficiency made me think that would be a selling point when I started my career.  It took me several years to figure out that in the Roaring 2000's, clients didn't want to appear to be concerned about money.  Look at Tom Fazio's approach.

[TEPaul]

"Tom, you've got so many stories...and I need a good one.  
Will you please tell me a story about somebody you know who wore a cape?"

Shivas:

Sure, I'd be glad to.

However, the only cape story I know involves my cousin and contemporary Horace Wood Brock. (We've always called him Woody).

But to tell the story I sort of have to set up Horace Wood Brock for you.

He went to prep school with me---eg St Mark's School outside Boston. He was a slight little kid but frighteningly brilliant in a bunch of ways. Sometimes I had to actually protect him from the bigger kids he was so "out there" intellectually.

He went on to Harvard and became one of the whiz-kids in mathematics and related things such as Game Theory (later in life he actually personally took John Nash to the Nobel Prize awards. John Nash, as you may recall is the Princeton professor about which the movie "A Beautiful Mind" was made).

Anyway, as you can imagine there are plenty of brilliant and outrageous eccentrics at and around Harvard at any particular time but in Woody's time he was probably the most famous. In a sense he was the ultimate negotiator although perhaps in a theoretical way, if you know what I mean.

At one point, this is back in the 1960s, there was some serious student vs faculty discontent at Harvard and it dumped out into Harvard Yard and surrounding areas one night with students yelling at faculty and vice versa.

Things were getting pretty intense and right in the middle of all this, Woody with some of his intellectual minions in tow showed up in the midst of this conflagration with a full length cape on, a miter of some sort and some kind of a wand and began to bless people on both side.

Seeing as how famous he was and how outrageous he was this created something of a total riot in the streets and within the nearby coffee houses and restaurants and such and the police were called into to break it up and control it.

Before they could catch him Woody fled through the streets in his full-length cape and miter and wand back to his room with the entire riot cheering him on.

The police knew where he lived so they went to his room and pounded on his door demanding that he come with them to the station for inciting a riot.

Eventually Woody unlocked the door and the police were confronted by Horace Wood Brock standing in the middle of his totally dark room naked as the day he was born.

They demanded that he get dressed and come with them to the police station.

Woody calmly refused to get dressed and incredibly logically proclaimed that if they were going to take him to the police station he could only go in a totally unadulerated form which meant just as he was---totally naked.

WELL, the police at Harvard being what they are didn't want to physically have to dress him (and they obviously knew they couldn't take him outside naked or Cambridge might go up in flames when the throngs saw him) so after a while they just called it quits and went away making the culimination of the whole event legend at Harvard.

Today, Prof. Horace Wood Brock travels the world advising major corporations and governments on things I could not possibly explain to you.

He also occassionally moderates major world cultural forums and such of the biggest eggheads imaginable.

In one of those major forums Brock was once asked, as he lead the forum, what the most significant cultural event in all of human history was. God only knows what kind of response they were expecting but he thought about that for a time and then proclaimed the greatest single cultural event in human history was contained in these four words:

"Madam, dinner is served!"

I saw Woody Brock this past summer after quite a few years and I reminded him of that remark he made but all he said was:

"Well, at least it was reported in the New York Times".

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