Hi Everyone,
Thanks for the welcome and the baiting. It's good to be back.
As far as the Merion question, I could tell you what I think but I prefer we do what Joe Bausch and others have been doing to date, and that is collecting all of the available evidence. Based on what we know to date, perhaps Robert Lesley wrote it best;
The ground was found adapted for golf and a
course was laid out upon it about three years ago by
the following committee: Hugh I. Wilson, chairman,
R. S. Francis, H. G. Lloyd, R. E. Griscom, and Dr.
Hal Toulmin, who had as advisers, Charles B.
Macdonald and H. J. Whigham.
I don't know that we'll ever know more than that, other than what their contemporaries wrote during their lives.
Still, I'm back because I'm hopeful we can all move past those type of disagreements, and because my friend Joe Bausch has inspired me with his ongoing search for the untold history of the game's architecture that he's been doggedly sharing here.