[BCrosby]

Mike -

Have you excluded the possibility that it was Hugh Wilson?

Bob

[TEPaul]

Bob:

Of course it's pretty hard to include or exclude most anyone (within that group sort of in-the-know people back then) of the actual identity of Joe and Billy Bunker or Verdant Green but Hugh Wilson just doesn't seem to me to be a particularly logical candidate.

From available letters we have from him he just didn't seem to put any stock at all in his writing ability and sometimes joked about that.

I think there're probably a ton of likely candidates from back then that even if we may not be familiar with their names now when we find out who they were and their connections it will probably make perfect sense to us.

But if a Wilson is a candidate I'd tend to favor Hugh's brother Alan Wilson. It's easy for most to underestimate his significance in architecture in those days and that should never be done. He had a lot to do with things like Pine Valley and he definitely was always around to see these things going on around town.

[Kyle Harris]

Wouldn't Juniata be considered near the Tacony section of Philadelphia?

[Mike_Cirba]

Wouldn't Juniata be considered near the Tacony section of Philadelphia?

Kyle,

That's correct.   Although, some early versions talk about approving land in Pennypack Park for a golf course.

I'm not sure if Tacony Park is/was considered part of greater Pennypack Park with all of the FPC gerrymandering and such.

[Phil_the_Author]

As an update to who Joe & Bily Bunker and Verdant Greene actually were.

According to the Philadelphia inquirer Editor's office... they don't know.

They only have two staffers who now do internal research. Fortunately, they have allowed me to contact the gentleman who runs the "Morgue" portion of their archives and hopefully he will be able to find an answer for us...

[Phil_the_Author]

The official word from the Philadelphia Inquirer as to who Joe & Billy Bunker and Verdant Greene really were is... they have no idea at all!

They searched personnel records, and even their "morgue" research section and couldn't even find a hint. They believe that these 3 were well-known by all and that was why no records were kept.

I will once again go on the record as stating that I don't believe any on the three was tillinghast (sorry Mike). The reasons for this conclusion are:

1- Tilly was already writinga weekly sunday column for the Inquirer's rival the Record.

2- Tilly was so very busy designing courses during this decade that he would eventually have to give up doing the column for the record. If he had a difficult time doing a weekly column, doing one that ran several days a week and more would have been an impossibility.

3- There are a number of contradictory statements to others that Tilly is known to have written about various aspects of golf course construction and community. A good example of this is Tilly writing in 1913 and later in both the 20's & 30's that Crump found the land for Pine Valley after seeing it out the train window on a trip to Atlantic City and that Crump swore him to secrecy about it until his 1913 article. "Joe Bunker" wrote that Crump took a number of friends on a horseback ride & hunt and accidentally discovered it during this outing. There are several other similar examples...

4- The writing styles and vocabulary are quite different. This becomes more apparent as more of the unknown authored articles are read.

I'm not yet ready to give up on this and have a few other avenues that I am pursuing to see if we can figure it out...

[Mike_Cirba]

Philip,

Thanks for the update, and for your search efforts.   I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of this eventually.  

[TEPaul]

Phil:

Thanks from me too for your efforts. If the identities of those pseudoyms are going to be found today I think we're just going to have to find some contemporaneous letters and such that identify them or else some unmistakable fact that links the real person.

[Phil_the_Author]

In addition, Joe Logan, golf writer for the Inquirer has been following this discussion and is also perplexed as to whom they might be. He is very interested in trying to find the answer also, but "hasn't the faintest idea of where to even start."

Maybe it's time for some outside the box thinking. Does anyone know the names of the original investors and potential investors that Crump might have taken out to the Clementine property on horseback?

Since Joe Bunker mentioned this as the way the site for Pine Valley was discovered, could there possibly be any information about this aspect in the Pine Valley archives? It may very well be that Joe Bunker was one of those that day on horseback with Crump.

[Mike_Cirba]

Phil,

I don't have it in front of me right now, but I was just looking at that article yesterday.   I'm sure Tom Paul could tell us right off the top of his head, but I know those original investors included Howard Perrin, Simon Carr, and, as a further Cobbs Creek connection, Ab Smith.    There were two or three more.

I'll be away from the computer today so unable to followup, but I think it's a good lead, Phil.

[BCrosby]

Simon Carr is an interesting possibility. At about the same time as the Philly Inquirer articles he wrote several pieces for the US Golf Illustrated. They were on PV, but he might have covered other topics as well. I will need to check my files at home.

Given the nature of the comments that Joe uncovered, it can't be just a beat writer. The author had to to have been someone clued in to gca issues of the day.

So Carr would be a candidate.

Bob

[Joe Bausch]

Simon Carr is an interesting possibility. At about the same time as the Philly Inquirer articles he wrote several pieces for the US Golf Illustrated. They were on PV, but he might have covered other topics as well. I will need to check my files at home.

Given the nature of the comments that Joe uncovered, it can't be just a beat writer. The author had to to have been someone clued in to gca issues of the day.

So Carr would be a candidate.

Bob

I think Tom mentioned Alan Wilson in an earlier post as a candidate.  If I was a betting man, I would be putting my $ on him.  Just a hunch.

[TEPaul]

I'll check the notes and info and stuff but it seems Father Simon Carr played so damn much golf that the Catholic Church at some point decided to move him far enough to the west of Philadelphia where they figured he'd apply himself to his day job a bit more!  

But there're probably all kinds of possible candidates for who those pseudonyms were. Alan Wilson is probably a good possibility but how about others connected to golf and architecture around here like Sam Heebner or even George Thomas before he left for the west?

[BCrosby]

Tom -

I too was wondering if George Thomas might be the mystery man.

The writing style in the articles - he was a good writer - reminds me of someone, but I can't put my finger on who.

Bob

[Joe Bausch]

Tom -

I too was wondering if George Thomas might be the mystery man.

The writing style in the articles - he was a good writer - reminds me of someone, but I can't put my finger on who.

Bob

Bob, I have downloaded hundreds of these articles (Joe Bunker, Billy Bunker, Verdant Greene, A. Jin Rickki) over the last couple of months.  If you wish a DVD containing all of them, send me a private IM.  The more people reading all these articles I'm very confident we can come up with the author(s).

[Joe Bausch]

Judge for yourself if you think the tee on the 4th was very close to the creek, and perhaps even on the other side based upon these photos and this 1916 Philly Ledger photo.  After the Ledger photo is a Google map of the 4th annotated to show approximately where each photo is shot from and the angle (the best I can remember!).





Here's a view (A) from the green with the current tee in view.  I believe the original tees were to the right of this, probably on the other side of the creek.



This is shot (B) back to the green:



View C:



This is a view (D) from the walking path back to the 3rd green.  My proposed original tee area you'll see soon is just to the left of where this photo was taken.



Here's a view (E) of a possible teeing area, and would be fairly close to 150 yards.



The green is visible from this area (F):



View G, from about 100 yards:



Pic H:



Pic I:



Another possibility (J) for the tee, or the back tee, is from this spot to the right of the creek closer to the current tee:



This is another view (K) of the first possible teeing area I mentioned:



I'm very confident now that the current tee location is close, but not the same as when the course opened in 1916.

As Shivas would say:  Discuss!

[TEPaul]

Joe:

"A Jin Ricckki"

I have got to find out who those pseudonyms really were now, particularly A. Jin Ricckki.

Whoever those guys really were they must have laughed all the way to the printing press.

[Kyle Harris]

Joe,

I'm fairly certain the Philly Inquirer picture you posted is of the green and not the tee. If you'll note in the picture of the 12th hole shown in Shackelford's book, the hole sign indicating it as the 12th is next to the green and not the tee.

[Geoffrey_Walsh]

Judge for yourself if you think the tee on the 4th was very close to the creek, and perhaps even on the other side based upon these photos and this 1916 Philly Ledger photo.  After the Ledger photo is a Google map of the 4th annotated to show approximately where each photo is shot from and the angle (the best I can remember!).



View G, from about 100 yards:

For a view of the current angle of the 4th, see this link.  The photo was taken by Joe at a much different time of year!

http://darwin.chem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/Cobbs_Creek/pages/page_18.html

Maybe, Mr. Bausch could make that photo visible on the thread.  I couldn't quite figure out how to do it.

Joe,

Phenomenal job taking these pictures!  The photo labeled "G", which I have included above, jumped out at me immediately as how I envisioned the angle of the hole was originally played (even though the back tee must have been further back along that line, possibly by J or K).  Doesn't it look twice as appealing given that angle?  Wouldn't the creek come much more into play?  It just seems to me that it makes much more sense to utilize the creek from there.

Assuming the tees were over there, why would they move them?  I think flooding is the most plausible answer and I know that whole area was under water the last time they had issues.

Kyle - Both Joe and I knew that was the green in the Philadelphia Ledger picture, but we both speculated that it was taken from an angle much closer to the original shot corridor angle than the one currently used today.  If you look at the original routing, the line showing the hole is aligned further left than the current hole and does not play over the small island short of the green.

See in the lower right corner of the original routing picture below:

[Geoffrey_Walsh]

In addition it occurs to me that our research has indicated that all of the greens tilted back to front and face their original approach shots.  The same seems to hold true for the fourth if the tee was located where we think it was.

[Joe Bausch]

FYI:  the 4th green was rebuilt by Hanse a few years ago.  And it was moved closer to the creek (farther to the left as viewed from the current tees).

[Kyle Harris]

Geoff,

If you'll look at the Vodges map, and the current aerial - something is terribly amiss in the area of the 4th hole.

I don't think the island in front of the green today exists on the Vodges map for a number of reasons:

A: The creek that goes in front of the present 17th green is drawn WAY differently than what is on the ground today. Take a look at the angle at which that creek intersects Cobb's Creek on the map, and compare that to the google aerial.

B: The same creek is directly behind the fifth tee today. Which would be directly to the right of the 4th green today. On the Vodges map. both the green and tee are almost 75 yards from that intersection.

Just take a look at the aerial and compare, but I think that the island in front of today's green was manufactured and the island shown on the Vodges map was in the neighborhood of the present 4th tee.

I believe there may have been 3 versions of the hole. The one as drawn by Vodges, the one you and Joe are describing, and the one as played today.

[Kyle Harris]

All:

Here is how I think the creek during Vodges's time was superimposed over a Google Earth aerial. I think the island in front of the green today was constructed to provide a higher and drier bail out area for the golfer that hit a worm burner. I'd imagine the original area between the tee and the green was QUITE wet and that whenever it rained the creek coming from 17 spilled out over hard left turn it made before reaching Cobb's Creek - creating a SWAMP right in front of the green.



Joe,

Did Gil rebuild the green or did they just change what was cut as green?

[Joe Bausch]

My ears heard recently that Hanse rebuilt the 4th green.  I'll try to confirm what I heard.

[Mike_Cirba]

Well, thanks to Joe Bausch we finally know who designed the second course at Cobb's Creek, Karakung GC.

According to a new article from 1926 that Joe just sent to me, it was laid out by Park Engineer Alan Corson (who took over after Jesse Vodges) and our good friend Ab Smith from Huntingdon Valley.

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