The above article came from Tom MacWood who has evidently been following some of the recent discussion and news articles.
He asked if I could post his following commentary;
Please by all means use my name. And if you could, while you are at it, add these comments:
Here is another praiseworthy article from the same timeframe. There is a lot of interesting material in this article. Alex Findlay was Kirkaldy and Herd's host; he was also the chaperone for Vardon & Ray, and also Ben Sayer, on their respective visits. Findlay worked for Wright & Ditson, the sporting goods company, and I suspect there is a connection there somewhere.
It is also interesting that Leeds' name is not used, nor the other Myopia member. I suspect that other fellow was either Leeds companion at the time James Parker (former chairman of the greens committee) or his friend FS Blake, who made at least one trip abroad with Leeds to study golf architecture. Boston at the time was loaded with architectural afficinados: Windeler, Lockwood, Shaw, Corey, Wylde, to name a few - a number of these gentlemen were Englishmen and traveled back home often - and you can add professionals like Ross, Findlay, Pickering to the list. Boston really was the epicenter for early American golf architecture.
I find it interesting that Kirkaldy & Herd associated Willie Campbell with Myopia. Today Myopia is not aware of any Campbell connection. Kirkaldy & Herd were decent architects in their own right, Herd, I think, was better than decent. He was responsible for Halifax, seem on another ongoing thread. Herd's visit to America proceeded HH Barker's (his protege) visit by one year - not a coincidence I think.
TM