From the other thread, but probably even more pertinently here...sorry for the double post.
Tom Paul,
I slightly disagree about time for a routing.
We know that HH Barker put together a routing for Joseph Connell of the Merion property during a day's visit. We also know Merion dismissed it and for reasons I'll mention later, they were probably insulted, as well.
We also know what CB Macdonald and HJ Whigham recommended for the property during their one-day visit in June 1910 and they did in fact "lay it out" for the Merion Committee. They recommended a "sporty" 6000 yard course with rote, formulaic hole lengths and they put it in writing. They also recommended purchase of an additional 3 acres because they weren't sure that the property looked at was quite big enough for their pre-fab 6,000 yard course. I'm sure someone sitting down could place those pre-defined, hole-length jigsaw puzzle pieces
somewhere on the map of the property for better or worse, so that would evidently make them the architect of Merion in David's eyes..but evidently the Merion Committee didn't think too much of this stupid idea either, as they shortly started to lay out "many" possible plans for the new property on their own.
We also know that various early "architects", mostly Scottish professionals, would lay out "18 stakes on a Sunday afternoon" for another set of starry-eyed novices, each believing they were going to get a first class course, the very best of its type, and those professionals would receive about $25 for their "services". Of course, this always happened when members of a club hadn't the slightest idea or intent of how to begin on their own, ESPCIALLY and almost solely when a club was just getting started in golf, which was not the case with Merion.
However, THIS is now what David and others are now boiling their arguments down to....that Macdonald and Whigham did an "18 stakes, single-day" routing of Merion in some sudden flash of arrogance and inspiration!
This of course ignores several important facts.
Although there were many one-day early routings, none of them were very good, or seem to have lasted the test of time. In fact, there were all sorts of problems with them, including drainage, lack of interest, agronomy, etc.
Perhaps Macdonald's sterling "out and back" routing at NGLA was done in a day, because they moved heaven and earth to create the holes there and it's almost "anti-minimalist" in construction and wholly different from Merion in that regard.
This theory also ignores the fact that Merion never asked Macdonald and Whigham for a routing.
It ignores the fact that there is no record or mention of a Macdonald and Whigham routing, layout, plan, construct, or anything else meaning authorship not only in the Merion minutes, but in any news accounts of the time or for the next 25 years Macdonald was alive.
It ignores the fact that the Merion Committee themselves had laid out many plans over the winter of 1911, and also ignores the fact that they "rearranged the course and laid out 5 different plans" of their own after visiting NGLA, and it morevover ignores the fact that the only other mention of plans in the MCC minutes says that Macdonald "reviewed" their plans, and approved one.
It also ignores the fact that for Macdonald to suggest "18 stakes on a Sunday afternoon", he'd be dealing with a whole bunch of more important people than the starry eyed novices just starting clubs that most of the early Scottish pros dealt with. Here he was dealing with Captains of Industry, men of HUGE import, and men who had already built a 15 year old very successful, highly respected golf club that had hosted major championships on their original course and he was dealing with men who had played all over this country for a decade and had travelled abroad and who knew a ton about the early game.
He'd also be telling them that the work they had done for the previous 4 months wasn't worth a damn, and that he could do better in an afternoon!
Think about that!
For him to come in there in the few hours of early April daylight, between meals and reviews of plans and other social niceties, presuming to do a half-assed job of routing a golf course for this well-established, highly respected club in a single day, a practice that was already regularly criticized severely by a maturing and more knowledgeable US Golf world, after he himself had just spent FIVE YEARS trying to get NGLA right, would have been an insulting societal slight of the highest order, and the height of arrogance and stupidity.