This John W. Gates appears to be quite an interesting fellow. A little bit of research has me greatly intrigued about both him and that "Battleground of Titans" as the Washington Park golf course in Chicago was known, the course where John W. Gates came to be called "Bet-a-Million" Gates.
In 1907, it was reported that "According to a New York dispatch millionaire John W. Gates is negotiating for the purchase of the New London Club, of the Connecticut League [minor league baseball]. Two years ago the great financier erected a palatial summer residence at Ocean Beach, a suburb of New London, at a cost of $1,500,000, and last season he became an ardent baseball fan and was a regular attendant at the games played by the New London nine on its home grounds..."
In 1910, in an article in the Sporting Times that spoke about how the great horses of America were being sent overseas, it also reported that, "Japan is introducing our trotter blood... and the other day, it is reported... John W. Gates plunged on Royal Flush... and plucked the bookmakers to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars!"
Gates was evidently very well-known as a greedy financier, gambler and sportsman, being looked down upon in the media and the public in general. When a young man at Yale was accused and then expelled for cheating on an exam so that he could continue playing sports, the American Golfer w stated, "It is all in line with the John W. Gates doctrine. It is all because of the frenzy for winning..."
Yet, by 1933, Gates was actually being quoted by the American Golfer as an educated source for golfing information. In the May, 1933 article titled, "A Battle-Ground Of Titans," T.AS. Ballantyne wrote of his introduction to golf some 30 years prior. Of the Washington Park Golf Course in Chicago, he wrote, "I got my first glimpse of a golf course; a golf course which I was to put down later as the queerest, quaintest most maddening and most famous of all the hundreds which now dot the middle west... Who designed this golf course, John W. Gates, the noted plunger, insisted that "It was designed by the devil to give men who bet on horse races a preview of hell..."
"Evidently the Washington Park Golf Course was noted for money matches and personalities, yet as Ballantyne wrote in his article, "The pair that lent undying fame to Washington Park were John W. Gates and John A. Drake. Few knew that "Bet-a-Million" Gates was a more ardent golfer than he was a follower of the horses.
"This robust. jovial titan of finance and of steel, and Drake, owner of a great racing stable and a multi-millionaire, were inseparable companions off the links and implacable foes on it. They were never partners in a foursome; always opponents. Others of those foursomes were mere phantoms; Gates and Drake were the dynamos...
"Both had the build and swing of twenty-handicap men. But anybody who played them on that basis was sure to lose - even a professional. Both were great 'money players.' They were born to concentration by their incessant gambling. They bet on every shot, every putt. That is why they rarely made bad ones. Every shot was the 'money ball'...
"Once on the third green Drake paused before a six-foot putt. 'What's the bet I make it?' he inquired of Gates. 'A thousand you miss,' replied gates, blowing a cloud of smoke from his big cigar. 'You're on,' said Drake and settled down calmly to his putt. No long séance over the ball; no lining it up; a steady, calm action and plunk into the cup...
"This pair had nerves of steel. But never get the impression that they were dour, irascible golfers. They would bellow defiance at each other as they went from shot to shot, joke, chuckle and thoroughly enjoy themselves. I have seen them bet on which quarter the wind was blowing from, the distance of drives, even on whose caddy could run faster. And their bets were not idle, mental bets. I have seen one or the other peel scads of money from a roll at the end of play.
Unfortunately for all in Chicago, and I think golfers everywhere after reading about this course and those who played it, "Washington Park's dramatic life was drawing to a close. In 1905 a hostile legislature banned betting. The sport of Kings was doomed. Golf kept the club alive for a year or so longer but the enormous realty value of the property imposed ruinous taxes. It disbanded about 1907..."
Still, a bit of it lives on, for Ballantyne continues, "But parts of the old course exist as surely as though it had been rolled up and carried away to a museum. When the South Shore Country Club, that paradise of pleasure on Chicago's south side was organized, it purchased the marvelous greens of crumbling Washington Park and re-laid them on its own course..."
I have this itch to want to venture out on those greens one day and play someone for a few bucks...