[TEPaul]

Today PeterP said:

“Do you know what my speculation is in this case?

I think the Wilsons actually gave Macdonald MORE credit for his role at Merion than he deserved, not less.

Given who Macdonald was at the time and the type of man he seemed to be, I'm speculating that the Wilsons thought it best to be generous in their praise and thanks. 

I'm speculating that they probably found Macdonald to be mostly a pesky and over-bearing pain-in-the-ass know-it-all who they were glad to see the last of.”



To me, this is the most interesting kind of thread and discussion of all on here. Are answers to his questions speculation in the best of circumstances? Of course they are because they are only opinions although those opinions aren’t in any way unimportant! I think it's also more informative than arguing over whether it can be proven that Hugh Wilson went abroad before or after Merion East was built. 

His first speculation was that he thinks the Wilsons actually gave Macdonald MORE credit for his role at Merion than he deserved, not less. This, of course, who be about diametrically opposed to David Moriarty’s speculation or implication on his contentious Merion threads over the last year or so. 

What do you think about that? I know what I think about it and have for some years now. I’ll wait for some answers before I get into mine. And then we can go on to his next point—eg—given who Macdonald was at the time and the type of man he seemed to be, did the Wilsons think it best to be generous in their praise and thanks?

[Willie_Dow]

Perhaps CB was more interested in playing the game than he was interested in architecture.  That is why he most always was associated with Seth Raynor and later with Charles Banks.

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul, Peter P, et. al.,

I'll speculate that:

You may all be in for a big surprise in the not too distant future.

[wsmorrison]

Pat,

Since you seemed to be blessed with the favors of Moriarty and have seen the information he has that will change everyone's thinking about Merion, Pine Valley, NGLA and elsewhere, why don't you rise above his BS and stop aiding and abetting his traps and games?  He came back to do what?  Disseminate new information or to do so in a manner that harms others.  It is clear to me that if he can do both, he would rather.  You seem to be his ally in this mischievous plot.  Let's have it.  I hope it is not of the same poor quality as his mistake-laden mis=measurement thread.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Wayno,

Let me put it to you this way.

David came back ...... prematurely, ......due to my urging.

His premise, or one of his premises needs some fine tuning before being presented.

So, let's not bait him and try to get him to conform to anyone else's time table.

David will make his presentations when his research is complete and he feels comfortable with the final product, and it's getting close to that point.

I can assure GCA.com participants and lurkers that David's work is interesting if not intriquing and he appears to have done his homework as best as can be expected.

I will only tell you that I originally rejected the idea behind David's premise, but now, am leaning to embrace it.

Lastly, you have to let your intellect, not your emotions, react to David's premise or findings.

Thanks

[Peter Pallotta]

Pat -

I'll be just as interested if the surprise proves me wrong as I will be if it proves me right. As you know, I'm no expert at all on any of this, but it seems to me that those very early years of America golf course architecture were a time of trial and error and emerging thoughts and realizations across the board, for everyone involved in the field, professionals and amateurs alike.

My specific speculation -- i.e. that it was only natural that the Wilsons and those reporting on Merion give Macdonald as much credit as possible -- is based on a more general one that I'd been thinking about for a while.

I'd always thought about those early amateur architects in terms of what they DIDN'T have compared to the professionals; for example, I assumed that what they didn't have in terms of talent and expertise (relatively speaking) they simply made up for with extra TIME spent working on a site/course, sometimes years as in Mr. Crump's case. But now I'm speculating that I had that all wrong.

I'm speculating that in those early days, the line between amateurs and professionals was so thin as to be almost non-existent. I'm thinking that I could just as easily have focused on what the PROFESSIONALS didn't have back then, and what they didn't have -- it seems to me -- was a heck of a lot of real experience or genuine insight.

That is, I'm speculating that NEITHER the amateurs nor the professionals new what the hell they were doing most of the time, especially when moving from one kind of site to another. NO ONE did - which makes my guess that the Wilsons probably gave Macdonald MORE credit than he deserved for Merion rather than less seem plausible, at least to me. (Edit - I realize that Macdonald himself wasn't a 'professional' in our sense of the word, but he was as close to that as you could get in 1910ish).

In fact, with everyone in those early days learning and sharing new information about the details and nuances of golf course design and construction, I wouldn't be surprised if the truth was that the AMATEURS actually knew more and were learning more than the professionals, at least those well-connected and thoughtful amateurs who had the time and interest-level to ask questions and write letters and experiment.

What I think happened was that, over time (and with much tinkering), the professionals usually went on to design or oversee many more courses than the great amateurs did, and also to promote themselves through books and ads and articles etc such that now we've COME TO BELIEVE their hype in this regard, and have come to assume -- consciously or not -- that there's no way those early amateurs could have produced anything great without a professional’s help.

And I'm speculating that we're wrong in doing that; and that we're mistakenly projecting back onto that earlier time our MODERN ideas/examples of the professional architect, and of the level of expertise and experience he brings to the table.

I think that what Robert Trent Jones did post World War Two was not simply bring the profession of golf course architect back to life; he actually REDEFINED and maybe even INVENTED what it means to be a professional architect. 

I'm speculating that our mistake is that, in READING about Macdonald in 1912 we’re actually IMAGINING RTJ in 1960.

Peter           

[wsmorrison]

Pat,

I am containing my emotions.  It is my intellect that reacted to his mis-measurement findings.  That was not a very well conceived argument and easily overturned in general although a small number of specific holes may have been overstated, yet measurement points were a factor in those.  In general, Merion's measurements then compared to today (that is on respective tees, not the new  back tees) are not nearly as far off as David Moriarty proposed. 

As for him coming back prematurely at your urging, that was probably a mistake.  As has been his tactics.  Nothing new there.  If it is going to take time to complete, let him have all the time he needs.  But he should stop playing these petty games.

By the way, Pat.  Nobody is baiting him, on the contrary he is baiting us and you are complicit in his behaviors.  He makes a big deal about how he is prepared to come back if we behave and yet it is his behavior that is questionable.   You make no mention of that at all.  OK, some reacted severely to his actions.  But he has been an instigator and is not following his own set of rules.  I find him annoying regardless of his findings.   

If in fact Macdonald had a lot to do with the initial iteration of Merion East, much of it was removed and all of it improved over time.  From the information we have come across, it seems clear that Fred Pickering had much to do with the final initial product as anyone.  It was not the golf course we consider today and it had a lot of faults.   Fortunately, they were corrected over time and we know who was responsible for those corrections.

[wsmorrison]

Peter,

I like the questions you are asking and in light of the recent threads, I certainly appreciate the manner and tone of your inquiry.  It stands in stark contrast to David Moriarty's actions.

One thing Macdonald had going for him, more so than his talent as an architect (a talent that was in my opinion soon surpassed by a select group of architects--amateur and professional) was credibility and renown.  He was the most influential man in American golf.  His OK of the land and his advice was worth obtaining and more so, worth pronouncing.  Whatever degree of involvement he had on the initial iteration of Merion, a number of the holes and the overall look of the golf course were radically changed nearly from the outset in terms of look and intra-hole design.  The design proved flawed in a number of ways.  Not the least of them the decision to play over Ardmore Avenue 3 or 4 times!

David will try to prove that nearly all the holes were concept holes a la Macdonald.  We'll see what evidence there is to support that claim.  It seems part of a broader strategy to attach more attributions to the initial design of Merion East than has been previously reported.  Let us hope David doesn't use newspaper clippings as evidence because if he does it will be a curious act since any newspaper account that detracts from his argument has heretofore been ignored or declared in error though without any proof to the contrary.

While the routing remained intact except for holes 10-13, which were altered 10 years after the opening, the boundaries of the property would not have allowed very many alternative routings.  The finishing stretch was not envisioned until Francis had his late night vision.  David may come up with evidence to the contrary, but it seems unlikely that a significant amount of design attribution will shift from the committee and Pickering to Macdonald, Whigham and that other fellow. 

[TEPaul]

PeterP said:

"I think the Wilsons actually gave Macdonald MORE credit for his role at Merion than he deserved, not less."

My sense is the Wilsons and Merion, the club, and its members who knew Macdonald gave him just about all the credit he really deserved for what he did for them with Merion. But for people like us who tend to want to look at the design and architectural creation of Merion in more minute detail both at the beginning and during the following years they may've given him more than we might give him.

Here's why I say that and think that.

Probably the most direct source of information about what Macdonald did for Merion comes from the two Wilson brothers when they were asked to write their story about Merion at particular times. Hugh Wilson did that once in 1916 and Alan did it in 1926.

I think it is pretty telling what they said about the beginnings for Merion and what they said Macdonald did for them all in a solid two day span. When that two day span was exactly is still debatable but it was before Merion began their project in Ardmore.

Hugh Wilson said both he and his committee learned more from Macdonald in that two day span at NGLA then any of them had known about construction (architecture) in all their years of golf. Wilson also said in 1916 that if any of them had known how little they knew about architecture after that two day span with Macdonald they probably never would have done it.

One really does need to consider seriously if they gave him that much credit that long after the fact for helping them at that particular time, why would they not give him credit for significantly helping them after that? Some of the answers given to this basic question by some on here are bizarre and ill-considered, to say the least!  It might be somewhat understandable if they gave him all that credit in 1910 or 1911 for what he did for them at NGLA and then just stopped giving him credit later if he did more but that's not the way it went. Those Wilson reports were written years later and that's important to seriously consider the meaning of when it comes to what Macdonald really did for Merion, or didn't do for Merion.

But then there's nothing much more about Macdonald and Merion from them in those reports done some years later. The reason for that is probably as obvious as it's ever been----Wilson and his committee with the help of foremen and construction men the likes of Fred Pickering and young William Flynn and young Joe Valentine really did route and design and build those golf courses themselves.

Certainly they did not ever seem to brag about that but the evidence is all over the place in my book---from Francis (an engineer member of the committee) mentioning his constant pouring over plans to his description of the ease of finding most of the holes below the top of the L but not at the top.

Hugh Wilson, seemingly early on was most concerned about agronomy from which he developed into one of the few most recognized authorities on that in the country. He was also asked by others to design other courses fairly early on which is pretty indicative of how much the people around Philadelphia understood he did for the Merion courses.

Did Macdonald come down a few times to look things over? He sure did but all it seems he contributed was his approval of certain holes and such. This would certainly make sense as there isn't and never has been a scintilla of evidence that Merion or anyone from it actually asked Macdonald to get involved in the actual architectural creation, and certainly not on a basic day to day basis which is the way they were all involved, and that is undisputable. Somewhere this story that Wilson himself used maps and drawings he did himself abroad for the design is obviously part of the reality of the Merion creation.

And that fact leads me to what may be the most important and interesting point about Merion and Macdonald----which is why did Merion decide to do it the way they did in the first place?

To understand that fully, I think one really does get the full impact of Macdonald's influence on Merion.
Macdonald really was one of the most visible men in golf back then, and mind you, not just in architecture but in everything to do with golf----eg top tournament reputation, the original "go-to" guy in golf organization and administration and certainly in Rules interpretation which was far more important back then for a lot of reasons than most of us today realize.

And then about in the middle of this he pulled off an amazing creation at NGLA with some help from some of his amateur friends and seeming "golf" experts (Emmet, Travis, Whigam et al).

With that Macdonald didn't just create what may have been the first really good course in America he created a whole new and novel process in doing it that certainly got the attention of Merion and others. Where did Macdonald even come up with this new process in architecture of an amateur team really concentrating for years on a course? He explains that in his book but I sense he could see what Emmet and particularly Herbert Leeds had done that way before him (Macdonald mentions in his own book that other than Chicago Golf Club the only good courses in America before NGLA were GCGC and Myopia).

And then there was the Lesley Cup that formally began in 1905 between Philadelphia, New York and Massachusetts. In that tournament which got about as much paper press as the US Open does today, all the top golfers and movers in golf in those regions came together annually. From Philly there was Lesley, Merion president and president of Gap, Howard Perrin, Merion member and eventual president of Pine Valley, Rodman Griscom eventual Merion president and Merion golf patron. There was Crump and Tillinghast (for a time) and eventually Fownes from Pittsburgh who the Philadelphia team pulled in by creating the Pennsylvania Golf Association basically to get Fownes on their team. And you should see who those players were from New York and Massachusetts. They were the best players the had and some of the best in the country---Travis, Travers, Ouimet and eventually Marston.

But what about Hugh Wilson, was he on the Lesley Cup? I don't believe he was but obviously those men from Merion who apparently controlled Merion definitely trusted him to do essentially what Macdonald had done with NGLA, and I think when you come to understand Wilson and the manner in which he worked and sought out answers and solutions in his life you too will understand why he was selected by those men to head the Merion Committee.

What Macdonald really gave to Merion was a process that they could use themselves which was essentially the same process he'd used to create NGLA---eg an amateur architect building a course with a team of friends of like mind.

And that's what they did and that's precisely what Merion and the Wilsons gave Macdonald so much credit for later in their reports. I don't think anyone from Merion actually asked Macdonald to help them design and build the course they merely asked him to show them how to do what he'd done. And it certainly does not seem that Macdonald asked to do more and the reasons for that should become obvious too.

And that's essentially what he did in a two day span and what they gave him so much credit for. It also explains why in those later report there was very little if anything mentioned about him.

Later, I think Wayne and I can give you all some fascinating glimpses into some of the personalities of these people as time goes by from their own letters through the years about what they were doing and also about Macdonald's personality.

The truth of Macdonald's career in golf and in architecture is that with almost every project he was involved with in architecture and most of what he did with golf administration he basically burned his bridges early on or later in almost every single one of them and almost without exception, including, sadly, probably NGLA itself near the end of his life.

You will like some of the remarks from some of these direct and personal letters (mostly from the so-called "agronomy" letters). They actually say a lot about the people involved "through the lines", if you know what I mean. 

[TEPaul]

Patrick:

If David Moriarty came back on here just on your urging then I wonder why he said this on that email chain:   


"Is gca.com ready for open  and frank discussion about the World's great courses? After having been  encouraged by a poster for whom I have great respect, I’ve been reconsidering  TEPaul’s kind invitation asking a few of us to return to gca.com."

I can assure you I had no idea at all that you'd been urging him to come back, and you know that. I asked him to come back after talking to ed getka for a while recently.   

[JESII]

If you two lunatics are now going to battle over who gets credit for David returning I think I'll probably get sick...

[TEPaul]

Sully:

Good point indeed. At this point, I sure hope Pat Mucci takes full credit for it as I don't want it and am embarrassed I even asked.

[Peter Pallotta]

Wayne, TE - thank you. Good reading and insights.

I made myself chuckle this morning. I imagined sketching out copies of the best golf holes designed in the last twenty years and then asking Joe Hancock to build them while I hung out at the bar.

If I then started calling myself a golf course architect, would the professionals here be bugged at me? (Envy doesn’t count  ).

Peter

Sorry - that's as brazenly provocative and astonishingly uneducated as I can get (at least, I think it is...)

[Peter Pallotta]

Shivas -
the striking thing about you on this board is how easily and well you can go high-brow and low-brow both, and be right so often..especially on the low-brow stuff

Btw, your question on the other thread about the Crump mis-spelling I've wondered about too. But also, those 800 or so H. Wilsons who travelled to the UK in those years is striking...a well-heeled lot those Wilsons were

Peter

[Mike_Cirba]

On the site that Tom MacWood and David are using, Tom told me that the manifest had been entered as George R. Crump instead of George A. Crump so it wasn't found on the search.  That site is ancestry.com

I used the site Rich Goodale mentioned called findyourpast.com and it's not as persnickety about middle initials.   In fact, if I enter George Crump, or any other name, it will find anything it thinks is even close, including all middle initials, middle names, etc.

It didn't find George Crump's return visit either, but it did find 800+ H. Wilson's coming back from England between 1908-1912.

At about $7 a lookup, I stopped at $100.   

[Joe Hancock]

Sorry - that's as brazenly provocative and astonishingly uneducated as I can get (at least, I think it is...)

Peter, you ain't been readin':  It's binary.  You only get one of the two.  Ain't nobody allowed both....'xcept a good stripper

Dave,

I'm sorry, as i don't have much experience with strippers, but I assume as with golf courses, there are attributes and characteristics that separate a good stripper from a bad one?

 

Joe

[TEPaul]

PeterP said:

"Given who Macdonald was at the time and the type of man he seemed to be, I'm speculating that the Wilsons thought it best to be generous in their praise and thanks. 

I'm speculating that they probably found Macdonald to be mostly a pesky and over-bearing pain-in-the-ass know-it-all who they were glad to see the last of.”


Peter:

I think your speculations above seem pretty much the actual fact, and I think in many ways those speculations are provable.

The way we can probably prove them is it certainly appears that Merion and the Wilsons gave Macdonald a whole lot of credit for what he did for them mostly being that two day "study" trip to NGLA that gets prominent play in both reports. They also mention in various newspaper accounts that he came down to Philly and looked things over.

It seems logical to believe that was the extent of it and if it was more they would've said so. Macdonald was a well known commodity at that time in their type of process (the "amateur" architect on a longterm project) due to the significance at that time of his NGLA.

As far as Macdonald being pesky and a pain-in-the-ass at any point in time that one is virtually undeniable and we can make available a number of letters from the Wilsons and others at those times and into the 1920s in how they felt about him that way. Hugh Wilson was fairly humorous about that as you will see from some of his letters. Piper and Oakley could be pretty humorous about that too. Wynant Vanderpool seemed not as humorous about the way Macdonald could be.

One issue which some may not have even considered is even if Merion wanted Macdonald to get more involved in their Merion project, Macdonald may not have been interested in doing that for any number of logical reasons.

To me, the other and far larger point is not just that Macdonald could be and was a pain-in-the-ass quite often but perhaps why he was. It's pretty clear to me that a lot of things involved in golf back then were not going in America the way he apparently had always hoped they would.

To me that story and the discussion of it on here just could be one of the most important historical subjects this website has ever dealt with.

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks, TE.

This is an obvious point that I'm guessing has been made many times before, but it just struck me for the first time:

That "two day" study trip to NGLA upon which the Wilsons' gratefulness to Macdonald was mainly based -- what could Hugh Wilson have really learned there in those two days? Or even, what could an apparently very bright and studious young man like Wilson have even HOPED to learn there?

What I mean is, though it was early days for everyone involved in golf course architecture back then, wouldn't it be clear to everyone that the coastal NGLA and its original site and its agronomic qualities were all very different from the in-land site for Merion?

Actually, I'm sure that Wilson could've expected to learn something about techniques and processes and likely challenges in the CONSTRUCTION of Merion; but given the very different nature of the two sites involved, would Hugh Wilson have expected to learn about how to DESIGN Merion during his two days with Macdonald?

It doesn't seem so to me....but, as I said, I have a feeling all of this has been covered before and the answers (probably) well documented.     

Peter

I guess what I'm saying is that it seems to me there was as much "paying homage" involved in Wilson's trip to NGLA as there was "studying".

Sort of like a young capo visiting The Godfather on the day of his daughter's wedding with an envelope stuffed with cash in hand

[Mike_Cirba]

Peter,

I'm more imagining a young Hugh Wilson ala Ben Stiller as Gaylord Fokker going to meet Macdonald as the suspicious, grizzly Robert DeNiro! 

"You're in insurance?!?!  What kind of work is THAT for a man?!?"

[TEPaul]

"That "two day" study trip to NGLA upon which the Wilsons' gratefulness to Macdonald was mainly based -- what could Hugh Wilson have really learned there in those two days? Or even, what could an apparently very bright and studious young man like Wilson have even HOPED to learn there?"

Peter:

I don't know what Wilson expected to learn from that two day visit to NGLA and Macdonald but we can certainly answer what he thought he did learn because he very much went into that in his 1916 report on the creation of Merion.

He claimed he and perhaps some members of the committee learned 'construction principles'. By that I assume he meant architectural principles AND construction principles. He also claims he went over drawings for NGLA which I would assume would've been the drawings it is claimed Macdonald got from his own studies of architecture abroad in the beginning of the century. I hadn't thought of it before but if those were the drawings he went over with Macdonald that would confirm that Macdonald did have such things because they to have been lost.

I think it would be fairly safe to assume that in discussing architectural or construction principles with Macdonald at NGLA the subject of template holes or the template principles in parts of holes abroad very much came up.

[TEPaul]

"What I mean is, though it was early days for everyone involved in golf course architecture back then, wouldn't it be clear to everyone that the coastal NGLA and its original site and its agronomic qualities were all very different from the in-land site for Merion?"


Peter:

That might be the best and certainly the most interesting question of all from an historical point of view for us today.

I have a very strong sense that golf agronomy over here was just so rudimentary and misunderstood at that time that Wilson may not have had much sense of the agronomic differences and necessarily different expectations between a seaside sand soil site like NGLA and an inland compacted soil farmland site like Merion's.

Frankly, as far as growing grass at NGLA originally, Macdonald had little idea what he was doing initially and that's exactly why NGLA had a couple of real agronmic failures initially. To resolve those problems it was Macdonald who first turned to Piper and Oakley at the US Department of Agriculture and this was advice from Macdonald to Wilson that led Wilson to establish his 14 year relationship with Piper and Oakley. We have Wilson's first letter to them from Feb 1, 1911 introducing himself and asking for their help for the Merion East project he was about to begin.

Over the next 14 years something around 1,500 letters of correspondence would be generated between Wlson (and his brother) and Piper and Oakley eventually leading in the early 1920s to Piper and Oakley going to work for the USGA and the creation of the USGA Green Section. In the process H. Wilson came to be considered one of America's best experts on golf course agronomics.

[TEPaul]

"Tom, do you have a chronology of the dates of those letters?"

Shiv:

I'm not sure what you mean. All the letters have dates on them and the ones from the Wilsons to Piper and Oakley at the US Dept of Agriculture mostly have "Received" stamps with the date in them.

The odd thing to me about this collection of correspondence between basically the Wilsons and Piper and Oakley at the US Dept of Agriculture is they are both ways but the entire collection arrived at the USGA about five years or so ago. Apparently they'd been sitting in a USGA regional Mid Atlantic agronomist's attic for decades and they were sent to the USGA something like five years ago. We have no idea how they got in that regional agronomist's attic but at some point after Piper and Oakley went to work for the USGA Green Section The Wilsons' letters from Piper and Oakley must have been sent to DC or something and put together with the Wilsons' letters to Piper and Oakley. I guess it's possible that the letters from Piper and Oakley could've been carbons. I don't know how far back carbon copying of letters goes. All the letters out of DC were typed and most of the letters from the Wilsons' were typed but some were hand-written.

I'll tell you one thing, the mail back then could be pretty fast. It looks like Wilson could throw a letter in the post during the day and it would be on the night train to DC and it would have a US Dept of Agriculture "Received" stamp on it the next day.

I think Wayne and I will go through those files again next time we go to Far Hills because our files are only copies of the letters that seemed to mention Flynn or Merion to do with the architecture or the Merion courses that wasn't just about worms or bugs or fertilizers or turf diseases or whatever. Scanning through those 1,500 or so letters about 3/4 of them aren't about very sexy subjects for us, that's for sure.

At one point about five years into it there are some interesting letters on construction economics and efficiencies. One of the things that really got Wilson going was the death in 1915 of Fredrick Winslow Taylor of Philadelphia. Wilson considered his greens and green construction method and general agronomic research so interesting and important he basically went right after his estate for that stuff through his executor, Joe Clark, immediately after he died. In a real way that got the Wilsons and Piper and Oakley along with a few guys from other cities like Walter Harban from Columbia Maryland to start thinking and planning for what would become the USGA Green Section with Piper as the original chairman of it.

There are some interesting insights into the early agronomics of Pine Valley and even NGLA in those letters.

But we'll take another look through those files next time there because one thing they can help us with is when Wilson was in Philadelphia and that can help with "time-lining" for some of the subjects on these threads.

[TEPaul]

Would any of the contributors on here like to see some quotes from letters of some who dealt with Macdonald through the teens and 1920s that seem to be quite relevant to PeterP's speculations about Macdonald (and perhaps the creation of Merion) or do you view things like that as "nonfactual"  and less relevant to the golf and architecture of those times than the reliability of ship manifests? 

[Mike_Cirba]

Would any of the contributors on here like to see some quotes from letters of some who dealt with Macdonald through the teens and 1920s that seem to be quite relevant to PeterP's speculations about Macdonald (and perhaps the creation of Merion) or do you view things like that as "nonfactual"  and less relevant to the golf and architecture of those times than the reliability of ship manifests? 

Tom,

(waving hand excitedly in the back of the classroom)   I do!  I do!! 

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