Macdonald and/or Raynor 1910-1916

[Tom MacWood]

Here is a timeline of courses Macdonald and/or Raynor were involved with between 1910 and 1916. Are there any suggested adds, changes or deletes?

1910 - NGLA
1911 - Sleepy Hollow, Piping Rock, Merion
1912 - St. Louis, Greenbriar
1913 -
1914 - East Lake, Lido
1915 - Islip, CC of Fairfield, Westhampton, North Shore
1916 - Blind Brook, Shinnecock Hills, Greenwich

[Tom MacWood]

1910 - NGLA
1911 - Sleepy Hollow, Piping Rock, Merion
1912 - St. Louis, Greenbriar
1913 -
1914 - East Lake, Lido
1915 - Islip, CC of Fairfield, Westhampton, North Shore
1916 - Blind Brook, Shinnecock Hills, Greenwich

The bold courses all have confirmed CBM involvement. Contemporaneous reports at Westhampton have Barker designing and Raynor constructing the course.  That leaves CC of Fairfield, and I have not seen any contemporaneous report that the course was solo Raynor job or a solo CBM job, I suspect, like the others, CBM was involved. If that is the case I don't think there is any doubt what CBM was referring to when he said Raynor became a post graduate in 1917.

[Bill_McBride]

Which East Lake are you referring to?

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Mountain Lake should be on this list.

[TEPaul]

"Mountain Lake should be on this list."

Tiger:

Why?

Is there any evidence at all from any source anywhere that Macdonald even saw Mountain Lake? I spoke with the past Green Chairman down there last week who was responsible for the relatively recent course restoration, and I asked him about the club's archives about the creation of the course. I went down there and stayed with him just before they did it and I think he had everything with him from the archives which he showed me about the creation of the course and I don't remember seeing a thing about Macdonald. If there is anything extant about him even being there I'd love to know what it is?

This question on here about relief models and whether Macdonald or Raynor did them and then stretching an issue like that into some assumption or conclusion that that might mean Macdonald might've been there doesn't really cut it, in my opinion. That kind of attempted connection is stretching logic to the breaking point, in my book, but there is little question MacWood tries to do that kind of thing on here pretty regularly.

I'm glad to see most of the contributors on this website now beginning to question him and call him on that kind of analytical method and tactic.

[Tom MacWood]

East Lake in Atlanta. CBM offered advice.

Mountain Lake GC was founded in 1917. I'm still looking for any contemporaneous reports that indicate who did what and when. If anyone has anything solid I'll be glad to add it.

[Mike Sweeney]

East Lake in Atlanta. CBM offered advice.

Mountain Lake GC was founded in 1917. I'm still looking for any contemporaneous reports that indicate who did what and when. If anyone has anything solid I'll be glad to add it.

Tom,

What facts do you have to support 1917 and challenge the clubs records? The club website states, "A private community founded in 1915, Mountain Lake also has a top-ranked golf course designed in 1916 by Seth Raynor."

I hope it is more than that newspaper report from Miami ?

[Tom MacWood]

Mike
The community was founded in 1915 - that is well documented. According to the Golf Course Guide (1917 through 1930) the golf club was founded in 1917. Do you have any contemporaneous reports that date the golf course prior to 1917, and/or any reports detailing who was involved in the design?

[Mike Sweeney]

Mike
The community was founded in 1915 - that is well documented. According to the Golf Course Guide (1917 through 1930) the golf club was founded in 1917. Do you have any contemporaneous reports that date the golf course prior to 1917, and/or any reports detailing who was involved in the design?

What is the Golf Course Guide. Who wrote it? Who is the publisher? Where did they get their information from on Mountain Lake? Thanks

[JC Jones]

Mike
The community was founded in 1915 - that is well documented. According to the Golf Course Guide (1917 through 1930) the golf club was founded in 1917. Do you have any contemporaneous reports that date the golf course prior to 1917, and/or any reports detailing who was involved in the design?

What is the Golf Course Guide. Who wrote it? Who is the publisher? Where did they get their information from on Mountain Lake? Thanks

Mike,

If you make other people prove you wrong, you never have to prove why you are right.  It's the same logical fallacy that Mucci engages in.

[TEPaul]

"If anyone has anything solid I'll be glad to add it."


The clubs archives have a lot solid on it. I saw it all before the relatively recent restoration. It is as Mike Sweeney mentioned above. If you want to see the original records and carefully consider them I suggest you actually get in touch with the club itself for a change. I do not remember anything in it that mentioned Macdonald's participation but it's been about five or more years since I looked at that stuff.

[Mike Cirba]

Here is a timeline of courses Macdonald and/or Raynor were involved with between 1910 and 1916. Are there any suggested adds, changes or deletes?

1910 - NGLA
1911 - Sleepy Hollow, Piping Rock, Merion
1912 - St. Louis, Greenbriar
1913 -
1914 - East Lake, Lido
1915 - Islip, CC of Fairfield, Westhampton, North Shore
1916 - Blind Brook, Shinnecock Hills, Greenwich

Which of these projects did not have Raynor's involvement?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mike C,

Not sure if this is a quiz, but there was never any mention of Raynor at Merion, on CBM's early routing visit or later construction site visits (2 in total, I think)

That is actually kind of intersting, along the lines of TePaul saying that CBM basically only dealt with "his own kind."  Raynor was clearly part of the team before then and seems to have directed construction on all the projects in the same time period.  Did CBM consider MCC to be a mere consulting job for friends from the beginning, or was it a possible design job (I think we have established no, but could be wrong) or was it simply a funtion of them already having the Raynor counterpart on board and telling CBM that Raynor would not be required here, because they had Francis, Wilson, et al.

As they say in court, this goes to "state of mind".

[Bill_McBride]

Interesting about East Lake and CBM.  I thought it was Bendelow and Ross and then Ross remodeled Bendelow's original 18.

Bob Crosby knows all about East Lake, perhaps he'll chime in.

Tom MacWood, what's the basis of your statement that CBM consulted at East Lake?  Did he make a trip down to play?  Did he and Ross ever consult with each other?

[TEPaul]

"Which of these projects did not have Raynor's involvement?"


MikeC:

Merion's never did or at least his name was never mentioned anywhere contemporaneous to the timespan in which Merions East and West were created.

Some have speculated that Raynor was involved but the mention of Raynor and Merion is all fairly recent.

Even if I cannot find it specifically mentioned in any contemporaneous records I believe Macdonald probably mentioned to MCC that they should bring a professional surveyor/engineer on board on their committee to help in the design and construction of the East course, as he (Macdonald) had done with Raynor on NGLA. With Merion that of course would be club member and committee member Richard Francis, the man that it would appear generally drew the plans that would become Merion East. As part of that committee Francis was not paid for his work on the Wilson Committee.

From all the considerable contemporaneous MCC administrative records (financial and otherwise) there is no mention at all of any payment to anyone in the area of design. What the club mentioned was necessary to pay for in the creation of Merion East was a contractor by the name of Johnson & Co and then the hiring of a greenkeeper/construction foreman who appears to be Frederick Pickering. And of course the club paid its own maintenance crew to be part of the construction process. But for actual design Merion East and West they were strictly "amateur/sportsmen" designs.

[Phil_the_Author]

Mike,

The American Golf Course Guide was an somewhat annual book edited at first by P.C. Pulver and first pubished in 1916. Any golf course in America could be listed in it and the information it contained was very basic. It was basically a big book of advertising and if the club decided not to pay for the privilege their information was removed. The source of the information is never explained but is assumed that it came directly from the club itself.

That's the good news. The bad news is that it is a completely unreliable source for information for any serious researcher to use and Mountain Lake is a CLASSIC example of why. Shown below is information from every listing for Mountain Lake from the years 1917-1931. Tom Macwood wrote, "According to the Golf Course Guide (1917 through 1930) the golf club was founded in 1917."

Tom, you are WRONG! You should have looked them up and you would have found the following information:

YEAR                    ESTABLISHED                   HOLES                          LENGTH
1917                          1917             9/w9 under construction               3,168
1920                          1915             9/w9 under construction               3,168
1921                          1917                             18                              6,580
1922                          1915                             18                              6,166  
1923                          1917                             18                              6,166
1925                          1917                             18                              6,166  
1926                          1917                             18                              6,166  
1927                          1917                             18                              6,166
1928                          1917                             18                              6,166
1929                          1917                             18                              6,166  
1930-31                                      NO LONGER LISTED!

Depending on WHICH YEAR you read, it was established in EITHER 1915 OR 1917, had 9 holes or 18, and went from 3,168 to 6,580 to 6,166 yards in just over two years! One also might draw the conclusion that the club no longer existed from 1930 onward since it was not listed in the 1930-31 issue!

Actually, the information presented SUPPORTS exactly what the Mountain Lake website says, that in 1916 the course was DESIGNED by Seth Raynor. It DOESN'T say that it was open for play. The 1917 book indicates that the course was open for play in 1917 but was not completed. the 1920 book gives the same information, but I believe is suspect and is an example of the problem of relying too heavily on these annuals for detailed information. I would expect that the club finished the second 9 holes before then and that the information from the previous listing under "Holes" was carried forward without correction.

 

[Mike Cirba]

Jeff/Tom,

Merion didn't have Raynor involved...any others?

Phil,

That guide, while useful as a supplement, is chock full of inconsistencies as you mentioned.   I would never use it as a primary source for anything than perhaps the existence of a course at a particular time, but even that could be suspect, also for the reasons you mentioned.

[Tom MacWood]

Mike
The Golf Course Guide was published by the Golf Course Guide Co., apparently the company had some relationship to Golf Illustrated because of GI editor was also the editor of GCG. GCG is an excellent source of information because the info came from the clubs themselves. Here is an example of the information (1917 entry):

[Mike Cirba]

Tom,

I have it...thanks.

But you are sort of proving the point, right?   If nine holes were already open in Florida by 1917, and another nine already under construction, then didn't the design and construction and grow-in process have to have been sometime prior to 1917, which you seem to want to hold out as some landmark date.   

I'm not sure I understand the significance of that year and I don't read that in Macdonald's words either.   Is there more to the story?

[TEPaul]

"Jeff/Tom,
Merion didn't have Raynor involved...any others?"



MikeC:

I really don't know; some of those clubs I've never even been to much less analyzed their records. For that kind of thing on here arguably the best man to turn to at first for information on Raynor or Macdonald would be George Bahto, in my opinion. Unfortunately he may've decided to beg off some of these threads because as he last said he does not want to get into some pointless arguments with the likes of Tom MacWood, or at least that is what he said in his last post on this over-all subject to MacWood.

[Tom MacWood]

Interesting about East Lake and CBM.  I thought it was Bendelow and Ross and then Ross remodeled Bendelow's original 18.

Bob Crosby knows all about East Lake, perhaps he'll chime in.

Tom MacWood, what's the basis of your statement that CBM consulted at East Lake?  Did he make a trip down to play?  Did he and Ross ever consult with each other?

I don't know if Ross and CBM ever collaborated. The source was a little blurb is Golf Magazine.

East Lake was originally designed by Bendelow and then redesigned by Barker and George Adair, and then Ross added bunkers, followed by CBM in 1916, after that I'm not sure. I don't know why CBM was in Atlanta. George Adair was very well connected in golfing circles, and I know he made trip East to study architectural developments, including the NGLA. So if I was to guess I'd say Adair had something to do with CBM advising.

[Tom MacWood]

Tom,

I have it...thanks.

But you are sort of proving the point, right?   If nine holes were already open in Florida by 1917, and another nine already under construction, then didn't the design and construction and grow-in process have to have been sometime prior to 1917, which you seem to want to hold out as some landmark date.   

I'm not sure I understand the significance of that year and I don't read that in Macdonald's words either.   Is there more to the story?

That is very possible, and hopefully someone will be able to produce documentation showing who did what and when.

[TEPaul]

"That is very possible, and hopefully someone will be able to produce documentation showing who did what and when."


Tom MacWood:

Do you also think it is very possible there is some documentation showing who exactly did what and when at NGLA, and that hopefully someone will be able to produce that too?

Perhaps you may want to explore whether the contributions of Jim Whigam and Walter Travis have been minimized with NGLA in some attempt to create a "legend" out of C.B Macdonald. Perhaps the contributions of Devereaux Emmet, Joseph P. Knapp, James A. Stillman, Charles A. Sabin and others have been minimized at NGLA too. Interesting that Charlie mentioned them all in connection to the creation of NGLA!  

Or do you think we should just forget about all of them regarding what they may've exactly done and when and where with NGLA simply because we are also talking about C.B. Macdonald?

[Tom MacWood]

TEP
If we had 1/100th of the documentation at Mountain Lake as we have for NGLA we wouldn't be having this discussion. To date no one has produced any contemporaneous info on ML.

[TEPaul]

"TEP
If we had 1/100th of the documentation at Mountain Lake as we have for NGLA we wouldn't be having this discussion. To date no one has produced any contemporaneous info on ML."


We? Who is "We?"

There is plenty of documentation on Mountain Lake at Mountain Lake and some of us have seen it just like some of us have seen Merion's, Pine Valley's, Myopia's, North Shore's, NGLA's etc, et al.

The fact that you've seen none of it because you've never even attempted to go to those clubs to establish a working relationship with them is completely irrelevant. I realize it's a very hard concept for you to grasp but this kind of material is not considered to have been "produced" unless and until someone shows it to Tom MacWood.