Tom,
If it's not a contour map, then why does Hugh Wilson tell Piper/Oakley he's sending them a contour map in his very first letter?
John Cullum,
Whigham referred to Merion Circket Club as a "Maconald/Raynor course" along with a short list of others in 1939, after everyone including both Wilson and Macdonald were dead. He was writing a eulogy for his father-in-law, Macdonald. He said,
"The Macdonald-Raynor courses became famous all over America. Among the most famous are Piping Rock, the Merion Cricket Club at Philadelphia, the Country Club of Saint Louis, two beautiful courses at White Sulphur, the Lido (literally poured out of the lagoon), and that equally amazing Yale course at New Haven, which was hewn out of rock and forest at the expense of some seven hundred thousand dollars."
What makes the comment even stranger is that by 1939, the Merion Cricket Club last seen pre-construction on April 6th, 1911 by M&W on their second one day visit to the property (the previous was 10 months prior) was vastly different than the golf course that by 1939 had hosted 3 US Amateurs, 1 US Open, and was arguably the most famous course in the country by that time.
Nearly half the routing had completely changed, reems of bunkers had been added, whole greens moved and reconstructed and a series of major fundamental changes to the course had been applied over the course of nearly 30 years.
For Whigham to try to glom onto Merion's evolved fame to further Macdonald's legend at the time of his death was an unfortunate, if perhaps somewhat understandable gross exaggeration of his involvement.