OK I am going to dip my toe into this thread but I am begging for your mercy ahead of time.
I have enjoyed the articles and the back and forth and I have learned a tremendous amount about Merion. I also think I understand where both sides are coming from and why the exchanges can get vitriolic at times.
Let me preface my questions with the following comment and observation. I understand the difficulty of writing a club history that is accurate and certainly understand the politics of what to include or not include. The notion that history is written by the victors is never more true than when a club tries to credit or omit whomever they wish in "their" hsitory. At my club for example the original partnership my father has was not a good one and ended badly. When a club history was written for the 25th anniversary I can assure you the former partners role and contributions were deliberately downplayed or simply omited.
The question of who designed the course would be an intersting one now. The course was originally done by Joe Lee in 1973 and it was a pretty good Joe Lee. In 2006 Michael Riley re-did every tee, bunker and green and changed the routing or location of six different greens. I was very involved and on a daily basis was part of the process as well.
Let me be clear that I knew then and know now that I in no way could have been the designer. I would no more know where to place a pump station or how to drain a bunker or build a green than the man on the moon. However I personally "approved" everything. I spent hours going over drawings with Mike, discussing every single aspect of the courswe, came up with my own "amateur" drawings and contributed a lot to the finished product.
Joey the shaper actually built the course and the greens and Juan created the bunkers. Mike and I would draw and re-draw pics, look through books for insppitrarion,and, of course, have our own ideas and then communicate those to Joey or Juan. We'd come back in a few hours and go back and forth over what should be re-done or not. One gren site we "found" was just about perfect on the ground. Mike likened it to a "potato chip" and used that exact word to describe to Joey what it should look like. Joey would pull out his eye level device? and usually look at Mike and I like "are you sure!" and we would say yeah, laugh and then wait for him to create the funky shape.
At the end of the day Michael Riley is 100% the designer but it is a hugely collaberative process. In the case of Merion and many of the Philadelphia courses I think you had some tremendous minds all working together as the course evolved and I am not so sure it makes sense to try and find who was THE designer in that case.
Now to my question:
I was reading a book "Keepers of the Green" and I will quote from it a passage or two that further confused me about Merion. Let me first mention that months ago I quoted from the Shinnecock Hills book purchased from SH where a passage seemed to credit Dick Wilson with a lot of the design and while I tried to make it clear that I was not suggesting anything some felt I was saying Wilson not Flynn was the architect. I was only trying to find out why the SH history would have given him so much credit--but that's another story.
In this book under the heading "Other Grenkeepers at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century" and "Joe Valentine, America's Famous Greenkeeper" are theses passages:
"Willian Flynn was the first greenkeeper at the Merion GC when it was laid out by Hugh Wilson in 1911. He stayed for a short time and then became a full time architect. He was succeeded by Joe Valentine who was hired at the Merion Cricket CLub in 1907 before there was even a golf course. He (I am not sure who the he is in this case) became construction foreman when the course was built. Valentine's talents...contributed much to the fame of that old course." (pg. 57).
I also understand that William Flynn had by 1909 laid out his first golf course in Vermont.
In writing about Valentine the book quotes an article written by Valentine's grand-daughter for the "Bonnie Greensward", "In 1907 he (Valentine) became a grounds worker at the Merion Cricket Club in Ardmore, PA. When Merion's East Course was laid out in 1912, Valentine became foreman under greenkeeper William FLynn. When the latter had to take a leave of absence to do war work in 1918, Valentine became temporary greenkeeper. Over the years Valnetine maintained a close working relationship with William Flynn, partly because their skills were complimentary: Valentine an expert on turfgrass and course maintenenace and Flynn, a well-known golf architect skilled in course construction."
Later the book quotes Dean Hill, the Merion Green Chairman at the time of Valentine's death to have remarked that their superintendent had acted "pretty much the part of course architect during his long years of service." I include this last sentence/quote only to show how in perhaps an attempt to eulogize or magnify a person's contribution, people stretch the truth a bit. Please understand I am not trying to make the "Whittenesque" super as architect argument at all--I just found it interesting how that comment got recorded by a club official and preserved so to speak.
My question is what would the Merion experts (I mean that seriously) say about the quotes in the "Keepers of the Green" book? Was Flynn, assuming I got the right guy who had designed and constructed a course in 1909, as the only one with true construction experience by 1911-12 perhaps more helpful than given credit for at the early formation of the East Course? Again, I am just asking and apologize if this seems stupid.