"A more apt comparison might be to an artist or author who had some success commercially but was working in a genre or medium that was under-appreciated medium or genre, and died unrecognized only to become appreciated after his death.
Or, as Verdant Greene implies, maybe he just did not have the good sense to have been borne into a situation where he too could be an "Amateur" and therefor praised and remembered for his talent and contributions."
Perhaps the more apt question AND comparison is why were those few "amateur/sportsmen" architects of that relatively early time---eg Leeds, Emmet, Fownes, Macdonald, Wilson, Crump so praised not only in their own times but afterwards and today?
It also may be helpful to appreciate that those so-called "amateur/sportsmen" architects did not really begin new projects of the type that made them famous much after WW1. Is that coincidental or is there something important to take from that and learn from that?
I, for one, certainly think there is---eg they felt at the time they began those remarkable early projects that took them all so long to do that there was a need for what they set out to do because there basically was no evidence of quality architecture extant at that time in America. I think they felt they could fill that vacuum. It seems to me following approximately WW1 those original "amateur/sportsmen architects began to feel there was no real reason to continue doing what they once did as the professional ranks were beginning to come on stream then with more full-time professional architects who devoted their time only to golf course architecture and who were more organized and far more comprehensive in their products than the former so-called journeymen golf club professional/part-time golf architects who preceeded them.
Perhaps the best and earliest example of this new mold of full-time "comprehensive product" professional architect was Donald Ross. My own golf club, begun in 1916, spoke of him in their first founding/incorporation meetings as the best and best known professional architect in America.
It's hard to say where an architect like Barker fits in here. One question about him compared to say even early Ross (teens) is did Barker produce comprehensive course and hole plans the way Ross did at that time (with my club 1916 in Philadelpia)? If Barker did that has anyone anywhere ever seen them.
And let's not have another couple of pages where there is endless arguing over something like----"Well, just because no one has ever seen Barker plans doesn't mean they didn't exist."
I've never even seen photos from back then of what a Barker course looked like---other than those photos produced on here the other day of Springhaven by Wayne Morrison.
I wasn't very impressed with the look of some of that architecture but in fairness to Barker a lot of what we were looking at in those early Springhaven photos could have been from the original Springhaven architect, Ida Dixon.