Fellows,
I'm not going to stoop to insults. Fire away if you want but I'd prefer to keep this to facts and educated opinions.
Who was playing the course in 1909?? Macdonald? Emmett?? A friend or two? There certainly wasn't anything in the way of formalized or membership or regular play.
What month in 1910 did Darwin write his account? Was it around the same time Travis did for American Golfer that I linked to above, in the fall after the first Invitational tournament? Or perhaps he was given a sneak peak on an earlier visit?
If NGLA was so renowned and widely known throughout the land prior to 1910, then why were the two most powerful and prominent golfwriters of the time, Bernard Darwin and Walter Travis only writing about it in detail for the first time in 1910?
As far as my sources, I'm quoting from contemporaneous accounts and directly from George Bahto.
George writes, page 68 of "The Evangelist of Golf";
"On July 2, 1910, (ironically, the day after Merion's site committee sent their report containing Macdonald's agronomic recommendations - comment mine) 14 months before the official opening, the course was finally ready for it's test run. An informal Invitational Tournament was held for a select group of founders and friends invited to participate."
"A qualifying round was played on the first day, followed by two days of match play. The course was still rough with temporary tee boxes and a few bare spots on fairways and greens. Macdonald was still altering and refining the course. in fact, a new 9th green was already under construction before the course ever opened."....
"It was noted that the tournament served the purpose of revealing any design shortcoming that needed correcting. All holes received high praise, except the road hole, "which did not play as anticipated".
Because of CB's prominence in the game as a champion competitor and fervent administrator, as well as his vociferous personality and boisterous style, everyone knew that Macdonald was trying to build the ideal links and yes, it did have lots of buzz, excitement, and some admirers among the cognescenti before it opened, but to make the case the Macdonald was widely known as a great architect prior to 1910 is hyperbolic. He was an amateur sportsman, with a passion for building a great course, and he had gone overseas to study great courses and holes with the idea of emulating them here.
Others soon followed his lead.
Arguably, Macdonald's greatest contribution was that he proved what a committed, passionate, well-funded neophyte could build given time, willingness to learn, trial-and-error, and dogged sticktoitivness.