Was it just the fashion to have a Scottish Greenkeeper ,100 years ago?

[Tony_Muldoon]

There’s a lot of good stuff on GCA today and this is more than just tangential to it.


In The Evangelist of Golf, our own, "Uncle" George Bahto relates the difficulty Macdonald had getting fine greens at NGLA.  He established a nursery at his home and eventually published a paper The Growing of Fine Turf Grass on the Sandy soils of Long Island.  George states "These findings became the basis for modern greeenkeeping, and ushered n a new era of using science and experimentation to improve the turfgrass quality of American golf courses."

However he was also very prone to importing green keepers from Scotland, this was despite the fact that he discovered that the soils of long Island contained a lot less loam than typical linksland and he virtually invented irrigation systems for greens.

So I'd like to know of examples of Scottish Greenkeepers who came to the USA, say prior to 1914, and are there examples of them going to non sandy soil sites?  Did these guys write anything of note on the subject or were they just there because it was assumed they would know how to grow grass the "green fingered way"?

[TEPaul]

Tony:

Don't forget, with the time you're talking about it wasn't that long before Americans had to import just about everything to do with golf from Scotland.

[Steve Burrows]

"We borrowed golf from Scotland as we borrowed whiskey. Not because it is Scottish, but because it is good."
                        -Horace Hutchinson

[Rich Goodale]

Tony

I've got some realtively detailed information on the golfing emigrants from Carnoustie in the 1898-1914 period, and the number is in excess of 150, just from that little town.  Most of them became professoinals, which in those days included club making and greenkeeping, and they practiced the latter at hundreds of courses, as most of them moved around frequently in those years, as well as some having both summer and winter clubs.  Bob S. Simpson (not THE Robert Simpson), for example, emigrated in 1899, starting at the Oconomowoc CC in WI, moving to Riverside CC IL in the mid-1900's; then to CC Of Memphis in 1906.  He left that job after the following incident:

"It appears he was coaching Mrs. Joseph Skinner, a reputed beauty, and on her invitation at the close of the round proceded to the clubhouse for lunch.  While the couple were sitting on the verandah, Mrs. Skinner's husband appeared on the scene and, producing a revolver, fired point blank at the pair.  Mrs. Skinner stepped between Mr. Simpson and her husand, and receiving the shots in her own body was killed."

He moved to Blue Mound CC, WI for two years and then in 1910 to Kenosha for the highest salary paid to a pro at that time.  Worked as head pro at Coronado CC, CA for a long time, and after that club was made NLE in WWII ended up his years living in the back of his shop at a driving range in 1945.

Somehow, I think that guys like this knew their biology/agronomy as well as their golf......