By the way, Tom…over time I’ve come to the belief that HJ Whigham wasn’t being purposefully disingenuous while grieving Macdonald's passing in the 1930’s when he wrote that the “Macdonald-Raynor courses became famous all over America”, and then included Merion Cricket Club in that list, even though he knew full well at that point that the course that had recently hosted the 1934 US Open was a far cry from the open, undeveloped farmland he and Macdonald had seen on their last visit to Ardmore prior to course construction in April 1911.
I think what Whigham meant was simply that the original genesis of the Merion course was exactly what Macdonald had hoped for when he built the National, which was to spread strategic design principles across the United States based on copying those principles from holes overseas.
The intent of the new Merion course seems to originally have been to emulate what Macdonald had done at NGLA and use holes overseas as templates for at least some of the holes. That was the basis of Macdonald’s sketches of holes abroad that he showed to the Merion committee when they visited NGLA and seeing them in person prior to trying to copy/construct their features seems the very reason for Wilson’s later trip abroad. I do believe that initially Hugh Wilson and the others at Merion were intent at least conceptually to build any number of template holes, but I think pretty quickly that their thinking evolved away from that, probably as they realized that trying to copy holes from GBI that were built on heaving dunesland is a much different proposition than doing them on inland PA clay soil. Macdonald had much more in the way of micro-variations in the seaside land and sandy soil as his base (not to mention the ocean views and winds) as a palette at NGLA, by contrast. It couldn't have helped that Merion's original "Eden" green at the 15th was roundly criticized and I can't imagine anyone with a sense of aesthetic balance being happy with the incongruous visual of their "Alps' mounding rising monstrously from open farmland behind that original 10th green.
Also, after the course originally opened, “Far and Sure”, whether he was Tillinghast or not, after mentioning some of the foreign-born inspirations that Wilson and committee had copied on the Merion course, commented quite perceptively and intelligently when he stated;
I think that the very best holes
at Merion are those which are original,
without any attempt to closely follow
anything but the obvious.
It had to be pretty obvious very quickly to Wilson and those at Merion, as well, that the best way to go was to use their natural features to develop golf holes and then just use little copied features here and there where they made sense, such as the “Valley of Sin” created when the rebuilt the 17th green in 1916, rather than slavishly attempt to copy holes outright.
Still, from Whigham’s perspective, Merion started out indeed with the principles brought from overseas by Macdonald, and was inspired by his example and followed his advice initially, even if things quickly evolved quite differently.
By the time of the second (West) course at Merion, which rapidly followed the East, there was no attempt to reproduce any famous holes, but instead just find the best golf holes that the property would yield.
Indeed, similiarly at Seaview, writer “Verdant Greene” pointed this out somewhat interestingly when he almost seemed to state that the course was somewhat built in opposition to the idea that one needed to obviously copy holes or features from abroad.
And finally, that last paragraph speaks exactly to what the “Locals” were working on at Seaview in Wilson’s March 1914 letter to P&O.
Construction on the Seaview course stated in the May/June 1913 timeframe, and was completed and seeded in the fall of 1913. So to state that Wilson said “locals” designed and built the golf course is not reading very carefully, much less considering the relevant timelines, or perhaps it's just wishful thinking on your part.
So, that's my take on HJ Whigham's statement on Merion, as well as pretty clear documentation on what "locals" were working on at Seaview.
I don't know what the heck to say in response to your theory about Barker's "Midnight Train to Georgia"!
