Macdonald and Scotland's Gift

[Mac Plumart]

Bob...I couldn't agree more.  That is indeed fascinating.

At the end of Scotland's Gift, CBM says, "In August of 1926, after 18 years of service" I resigned from the R&A rules committee.

Interesting stuff.

[BCrosby]

Mac -

Sounds like Low signed up CBM about 1908 for the R&A rules committee. Interesting.

Note that the R&A rules committee at the time it was founded (1897) and for a number of decades thereafter had a large number of members who were golf architects. I don't think that is accidental. Many of the basic policy issues that came up in resolving rules issues also came up in debates about the objectives of golf architecture. Low was a pivotal figure in the middle of both debates.

Bob

 

[TEPaul]

"TEP -

A propos CBM's interest in the rules, CBM was appointed by John Low as a member of the R&A rules committee around 1910. The idea was, given CBM's clout with the USGA and his friendship with Low and others, he would be the liaison between the two groups. CBM was a also member of the USGA delegation in 1921 that met with a R&A delegation to iron out cross-Atlantic rules inconsistencies. I don't know if CBM was still on the R&A rules committee at that time. I would doubt it due to obvious conflict of interest reasons."


Bob:

I have for some years now believed that within the context of those remarks of yours is contained a truly remarkable story and hugely important history that both at that early time and into the future just might be one of the most important of all for American golf and perhaps even how golf played out world-wide, at the very least from an administrative perspective.

In my opinion, it was probably primarily Macdonald who managed to hold the twain together between our side and the other side through some potentially dangerous times and potentially catastrophic rifts. I feel in his mind there was just one completely necessary and ultimate goal----eg unity, Unity, UNITY!!

And I also feel that even if Macdonald probably was an incredibly opinionated and complex person with complex opinions generally hard to easily categorize he was one of those old-fashioned classic "compromisers" who both knew how and was highly capable of framing various resolutions to certain problems between highly disparate factions and philosophies that could look to both sides as some kind of victory for each when all it really was, in effect, was a framework not to completely split or rift right there and then.

And I also believe he was centrally behind the construction of the ultimate resolution of a rift even more potentially catastrophic to American golf than the USGA and the R&A----eg the on-going but particularly late teen potential rift between the USGA and the Western Golf Association.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Pat:

Sure it could be but in my opinion Macdonald was most definitely of such central importance to early American golf it's far more interesting to look a lot deeper into his life and times than just that.

Welcome back. Have you been chasing pretty young skirts around fancy swimming pools in Southeast Florida again and maybe playing a little golf on the side when the pretty young skirts were still sleeping it off?

TEPaul,

I have, and I must say that I enjoyed every moment.

The skirts have gotten incredibly shorter, and the bathing suits seem to be nothing more than dental floss.

I view CBM as one of the first Americans to be consumed by the game.

However, his stature as a golfer, combined with his personality, allowed him to become GOLF's "Renaissance Man" in that he indulged of the game at every level, almost to the exclusion of everything else in his life.

At the time, I doubt that he had a peer, making him quite a unique character and force in American golf.

"Scotland's Gift" seems to project that image, almost like an American Bible of Golf.

[TEPaul]

"At the end of Scotland's Gift, CBM says, "In August of 1926, after 18 years of service" I resigned from the R&A rules committee."



Mac:

That's true, and just three months later he also suddenly resigned from obviously the extremely important presidency of the Kellenworth Corporation, the holding company of The Creek Club which arguably had the most impressive array of heavyweight Captains of the Universe of any golf club ever created.

At that time he was 70 years old. He would live for another thirteen years. But I would challenge anyone on this website to try to chronicle anything else of any significance at all that he had to do with after 1926 in or involving architecture or golf.

I believe, at that point, and even somewhat before, he was pretty much done, and then really done, and perhaps depressed and perhaps feeling ultimately a beaten or even a neglected man somehow. Often, men like that, when they come to a point like that in their lives, what do they do? They go off as he did for an extended time away from it all, as he did to his cottage in Bermuda, and they write their memoirs, their autobiography, their last and final words of advice and feelings, which in fact it looks like "Scotland's Gift Golf" was for Macdonald. I truly think he had come to be or to feel that way, at that point, and to me it is just so hugely ironic, at least for us, so tragic in fact, even if perhaps not uncommon for a man like that, who had seen and done all that he had seen and done and had been through with the entire fabric of golf over so many decades of its aborning and organizing eras over there, over here and around the world.

This is why I think it is so funny really when I get accused from time to time on this website of trying to criticize or minimize Macdonald somehow. Even though I am not completely certain he should have the sole designation as the Father of American golf architecture, for sometime now I have felt that he perhaps should very much be considered not just the real Father of American golf, but, all-in, and all things considered with everything he did spanning two continents in his long lifetime in so many facets of golf----arguably Charles Blair Macdonald very well may be the most important man the game of golf has EVER KNOWN!

[Mac Plumart]

Tom...

I think you just might be correct regarding the importance of CBM to golf.  I am damn glad we battled through some of the rough spots and have had this disucssion.  I know I learned a boat-load.  I will continue to dig into his life more...and other important golfing figures.  The moving pieces of the puzzle are BEGINNING to fit together...I think that is really neat!!

Thanks!