[Joe Bausch]

Thanks to Peter Pallotta for pointing out that the Library of Congress is slowly building a nice collection of digitized old newspapers.  Here is the link:

http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/search_fulltext_advanced.html

For instance on the fun to be had there, I was quickly able to find this informative article from the August 23, 1908 edition of the New York Tribune on the upcoming "to be best in world" golf course:

[TEPaul]

Joe:

You're the best at finding old articles that have seemingly not been seen or reviewed by anyone on this board and contain snippets of information not previously known on here.

Interesting article there from 1908 when the course was obviously into enough of a "roughed out" construction state for the holes to be that idenitifiable and explainable.

A couple of interesting wrinkles on the course and otherwise, at least to me.

1. The eighteenth (the present 9th) is described as some imitation of the Bottle hole. As we know now it was the seventeenth (the present 8th) that turned out to be the Bottle Hole imitation.

2. No mention of Raynor and this point even though a man who must've been a very good greenkeeper is mentioned (Mortimer Payne).

3. We also see the Shinnecock Inn has already burned down and the club is right in the middle of deciding what to do about another Inn or a clubhouse and obviously where.

4. It seems the tee on the present 16th was definitely on the high ground on the left.

5. It seems the tee on the present 15th was perhaps considerably to the right of where it is now  (perhaps close to today's 14th green as the original green to the right and into the bay) and played out diagonally across marshy ground.

6. It definitely appears Macdonald's primary tee on the seventeenth (present #8) was on the left (of the Raod Hole green) even though the article mentioned he'd put another one far removed over on the right (right of the Road Hole green).

[RJ_Daley]

Joe, it was not I sir.  Give full credit to the erudite gentleman from Toronto, Peter Pallotta. 

[Joe Bausch]

Joe, it was not I sir.  Give full credit to the erudite gentleman from Toronto, Peter Pallotta. 

Oops, sorry Peter!  I'll correct my attribution in the first post too.

[BCrosby]

Tom -

Perhaps everyone knows that the holes at NGLA were renumbered, but I didn't. Could you provide some background?

Bob

[TEPaul]

Bob:

Sure. Initially the nines were reversed in the routing. The reason was in the very beginning they were thinking of using the Shinnecock Inn which was somewhere near the present 9th green but it burned down in 1908. That apparently precipitated building the clubhouse where it is now (although that may've been Macdonald's original intention) and the reversing of the nines. Obviously that article above is describing specific holes with the nines reversed from the way we know the course (ex. original #17 (Bottle Hole) is today's 8th etc, etc)

[BCrosby]

Thanks.

I note in passing that every time Joe and Peter find these old gems, the articles all seem to assume that everone knew what a Redan hole was.

Above the author notes that the [13th] "will remind one of the Redan at North Berwick." It was not a hole unfamiliar to US golfers at the time.

In fact, the author assumes that most of the models for the referenced ideal holes were famous holes that needed no introduction to golfers.

Which suggests that what was new about NGLA was not that MacD discovered a set of ideal holes. His ideal holes were already well known. They had already been widley acknowledged as among the best holes in the world.

What was new about NGLA was MacD's idea of replicating them.

Bob

[TEPaul]

Bob:

I can think of app three logical reasons why that might have been the case over here at that time even though it may've been true pretty much about people who were fairly sophisticated and knew golf generally.

[Mike_Cirba]

Bob Crosby,

You are definitely correct.

I think the whole idea that CB Macdonald was the only one in the US with knowledge of the great holes overseas and therefore all knowledge and achievement in early American GCA had to flow directly from him (or a Scottish professional) has been clearly disproven on multiple occasions here.

LOTS of American golfers went abroad and played the great, famous courses and those holes and their reputations were made well in advance of Macdonald.

His fabulous and unique idea was simply to build a "ideal golf course", where EVERY hole was to be a corker, and he had the vision, drive, and connections to make it happen.   

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mike,
I think you and Bob are making a mound out of a pimple.

Bob said:  "Which suggests that what was new about NGLA was not that MacD discovered a set of ideal holes. His ideal holes were already well known. They had already been widley acknowledged as among the best holes in the world."

You said: "I think the whole idea that CB Macdonald was the only one in the US with knowledge of the great holes overseas and therefore all knowledge and achievement in early American GCA had to flow directly from him (or a Scottish professional) has been clearly disproven on multiple occasions here."


No one has ever suggested that CBM 'discovered' those holes, not even CB himself, and I question your and Bob's motives in repeating this falsehood.

[Mike_Cirba]

Jim,

Are you telling us that it hasn't been presented by some on here that CB Macdonald brought the whole idea of what constituted a good golf hole to America, and that all American golf was suffering in the dark ages of architectural ignorance until he enlightened everyone?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mike,
That is not the question, but in addition, I question your assumption that "LOTS of American golfers went abroad and played the great, famous courses" and I also question Bob's, that "It was not a hole unfamiliar to US golfers at the time.

"Lots" is overdone, and "not..unfamiliar" is too.   

[BCrosby]

Jim -

A number of people have argued here that but for MacD, it is inconceivable that others in the US would have know what a Redan was or what it looked like.

My point is very simple. Such views are false as a matter of the historic record.

Bob

[TEPaul]

Mike:

The thing that really got everyone's attention with Macdonald's idea, and on both sides, was not just that he came up with the idea of a course with eighteen great holes to make what he termed "an ideal golf course", even though that was a revolutionary thought at that time because no one had really thought of that before or said it that way, but that he was going to basically create a course like that from essentially copies of holes from abroad.

Even the idea that he should have to go abroad mystified some over here because many felt there were enough good holes over here to copy to make an ideal course.

Macdonald seemingly even admitted that so why did he think he should go abroad to find copies? He felt those old holes that were selected by that group of experts around 1901 just had so much more time in play that they were famous with so many more people probably including a pretty healthy number from over here too than the ones over here that weren't more than a few years old at most at that time (first half of the first decade of the 20th century).

We don't even need to guess about this as it's all in those early articles.

And frankly, one can't miss the point in some of those early articles from around 1905-1907, particularly from the golf magazines, that at that particular time it wasn't even Macdonald that most thought was the best expert over here on all things to do with golf, playing golf and architecture too----it was Walter Travis.

[JMorgan]

Vardon's commentary to the press re: sad state of American courses and players when he got back to England in 1900 probably put a bee in a few bonnets, as well.

He said the only one who was any good was Findlay Douglas and the only place that deserved to be called a golf course was Atlantic City. 

[BCrosby]

JMorgan -

The reaction of the Oxford Cambridge Golfing Society to US courses in 1903 also put a bee in people's bonnet.

In two of their matches in the US, CBM played against them. So he heard it first hand.

Bob

[Mike_Cirba]

The NY papers complained that Vardon's 1900 tour was hardly representative because supposedly almost all of his play during that tour was in the south, with pretty raggedy fairways and rockhard sand greens.

Vardon stated he quickly learned to play for just short of the greens and had better success that way.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Bob,

I cannot remember any posts on this site that have postulated the idea  that, if not for CBM, no one in America would be familiar with the great holes existing in the UK, and I'll hold that opinion until I'm shown the error in doing so.

...and if you can offer the proof, please let it come from someone who should otherwise be knowledgeable on the subject, not just from some random opinioner shooting into the dark. 

[BCrosby]

Jim -

Noted frequently in Moriarity's piece on Merion is that the course has a Redan. David thought it followed that CBM ought to get some design credit (for that and other reasons) because but for CBM, Wilson would not have known how to build one. Afterall, David argued, Wilson never went to N Berwick to see one.

I objected to that line of argument at the time. David and I discussed it here. He defended his views and thought they made sense. But as I read things that Joe and others have dug out of old newspapers, I am more convinced than ever that David's argument doesn't shovel much coal. What a Redan hole was at the time, was no mystery. Even if you had never been to N Berwick to see one in person.

No one is making this stuff up.

Bob 

[Jim_Kennedy]

Bob,
Earlier you mentioned that the author wrote:  ..."the [13th]will remind one of the Redan at North Berwick." and you suggested that somehow proves: "It was not a hole unfamiliar to US golfers at the time."
On the other hand, I wonder just how the author knew. You are supposing he had first hand, familiar knowledge, I propose that was he given that information by someone who knew what those holes represented.

There is no way to know who's correct.

As for Moriarty/Wilson, if no conclusion has been reached that he visited N. Berwick, how could he have drawn an unshakeable conclusion as to the merits of the hole without seeing one, or maybe he saw drawings or plans, or perhaps a photo or two, or talked about the hole with others?  
I seem to remember that these fellows had some relationship to one another. Even if Wilson already knew about the hole, it's entirely feasible that Macdonald's love of the stratagem may have had an influence on him, and I'm afraid it would be impossible to prove the question either way.

David's posts are one man's premise, and one man's opinion on a particular golf course, not an insinuation that no one in America would have ever known about the great UK holes without him.

I remain unconvinced, but open minded.

   

[Phil_the_Author]

It seems to always be forgotten in discussions as to how much those in America at the turn of the 20th century were aware of the great golf courses and holes in Scotland that not only were prominent Americans traveling there to play, but that some were returning and both writing about them and also sharing their own photographs of them.

I refer, of course, to Tilly. His first article about the golf courses of Scotland was published in GOLF Magazine in December 1899. It is titled "A Visit to St. Andrews." Among the hpotographs that he took and are part of this issue are of play from the 1st tee of the Old Course and his most famous image, that of Old Tom Morris in the doorway of his shop.

Among other of his photograps published in those early years are can be seen the "Hell" bunker, the Links by Eden, "Strath" bunker, multitudes of players and caddies...

The courses of the U.K. were also written about in the early magazines by "Foreign Corresspondents" with these including photographs...

[BCrosby]

Jim -

The mendtion of the Redan in the article above accords with a wide range of other articles from the same and earlier eras about good golf holes. The Redan is mentioned often and everyone seemed to know the hole. Everyone seemed to agree that it belonged on any best holes listing.

You layer on books by Hutchinson (1898), Henry Leach (1905), John Low (1903), Darwin (1911), Taylor (1905)  that also talk about great holes - the Redan is almost always included - and you get a sense that the "ideal" hole thing was something a lot of people had been thinking about for a long time by the time CBM got around to building NGLA.

Until I had looked at some of the things written back in the day, I thought that CBM had discovered his ideal holes pretty much on his own. Turns out that, other than maybe the Biarritz (which Hutchinson steered him to), almost all of CBM's template holes had already been identified for him in mags and books. He wasn't being particularly original. He was mostly following the consensus view in the UK.

If others don't find that a little surprising, I certainly did. I'd guess that most people today, like I did, think CBM "discovered" his template holes. I at one time had this vision of CBM as a lonely explorer/hero slogging across Scotland and England, seeking out great architecture in a sea of architectural ignorance. Or something.

If that is not the modern conventional wisdom about CBM, then I stand corrected. But my best guess is that it is. And if so, it basically gets the history wrong. Which was my point above.

Bob

[Mike_Cirba]

Bob Crosby,

I had the same very naive view of Macdonald going to the mountaintop, and I do believe that probably 90% of golfers have that assumption.

It's also why certain theories seemed very plausible on the face of them, which later proved untrue.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Philip,
Thanks for that post, well said.

Bob/Mike

I was probably lucky that my impressions of CBM were mostly gleaned by listening to George Bahto talk about him while he (George, of course) was working here.

I don't believe there is an assumption on this site that without CBM no one else would have known anything about great UK holes, and quite frankly, I think that most of the criticisms of him on this site seem to be directed more at taking him down a peg rather than as a search for the truth.
I'm not accusing anyone in this discussion of doing that, I'm only suggesting that the pattern exists.

Just my opinion, but even three-finger Pete has enough digits to correctly place CBM in the pantheon of GCA.   

[Peter Pallotta]

Jim -

I spilled more ink on this than I should have a while back (and more than I had a right to, given all that I'm still learning). But I have to agree with Mike and Bob on this -- I believe that crediting CBM with "promoting" the principles of golf course architecture (as manifested in some of the great golf holes of British links golf) is high praise indeed, and enough for any one man, especially when no one argues that anyone else did it with such single-minded passion and commitment and on such a large (i.e. national) stage.  But there is in my mind a big difference between "promoting" those principles in America and "importing" them to America...let alone "identifying" them for Americans.  And yes, I felt that David M was blurring that line a little bit, maybe not intentionally, and giving CBM credit for "importing" the principles via great holes like the Redan.  Maybe it's all a very minor point, and maybe its putting too fine a point on things....but it seemed important at the time 

Peter
   

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