Wow, the lack of even a passing mention in that article just goes to show that some of the truly significant things that happen in golf and golf architecture and golf architecture construction and American golf agronomy may go almost totally unnoticed and unrecognized when they happen and perhaps even for up to a decade following.
My point is the apparent reason those Sunnybrook greens were so damn good (according to Hugh Wilson and others from that time) is that they were built to the remarkable "Taylor green construction" method!!
Many today believe the remarkable Taylor Green Construction Method was the first precursor to the USGA Spec Green Construction Method.
Frederick Winslow Taylor was one remarkable man, a founding member of Sunnybrook GC (as well as PV) and incidentally Joe Clark who is prominently mentioned as the long-term president of Sunnybrook in the Ford article above was Taylor's son-in-law.
In my opinion, the death of Frederick Winslow Taylor in 1915 is what prompted Hugh Wilson to go immediately to the executor of Taylor's estate, the same Joe Clark, and get Taylor's (and his personal agronomist Bender) experimental agronomy records and tests for the US Dept of Agriculture. This led within the next ten years to the creation of the USGA Green Section!