Have just come across this article from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and as a keen Mackenzie researcher you can imagine that it got me a little interested (and thanks for the kind assistance from Joe Bausch). We know Mackenzie did some par 3 and pitch and putt courses, but exactly where? One apparently for Douglas Fairbanks and possibly Charlie Chaplin, and Mac refers to one in San Francisco in a letter to Clifford Roberts, but we had not heard of a possible NY one.
The writer is Ralph Trost, who wrote the articles on Bayside and as I understand it met Mackenzie during its construction. As the golf writer for the Daily Eagle, he would seem to be a fairly reliable source. So here we have a small article from 27 August 1933 mentioning that a pitch and putt tournament would be held - didn't say exactly when - on the
"little course laid out by Dr. Alistair Mackenzie, creator of Cypress Point." Not being an expert on Long Island geography, I do know though that Jones Beach is a state park created around 1927, by the same state park commission that created Bethpage. The pitch and putt course still exists today as I understand it. Various old threads here on GCA, especially those discussing the Burbeck/Tillinghast design credit furore over Bethpage Black, have mentioned Jones Beach with some suggesting Burbeck may have designed a proposed 18 hole course for Jones Beach that apparently was never built.
But here the plot thickens. I also found an earlier article in the Daily Eagle, from 14 October 1930, nearly 3 years prior to the article that mentions Mackenzie, but also written by Ralph Trost. It is quite a detailed article describing the new 18 hole pitch and putt course that had recently opened on a 4 acre plot at Jones beach, and built by the Long Island State Park Commission. Interestingly, the article credits the course's design to "Messrs Von Schaik, Berwick, Jones, Le Valley, et al." who had little knowledge of golf according to Trost but did a decent job in his opinion. Does anyone know of these particular gentlemen? Presumably they are engineers and horticulturists from the Commission. I even wonder if Berwick could be Burbeck?
So this begs the question - if there was a pitch and putt course at Jones Beach in 1930 designed by some engineers from the State Park Commission, why then is Mackenzie credited - by the same writer - with having designed the course only three years later? Was the 1930 course poorly built and designed (chances are that it was) necessitating a rebuild a short time later? A rebuild that was done by Mackenzie, quite probably with Wendell Miller if that was the case?
Quite a little mystery, and hopefully a NY based GCA researcher might care to volunteer to help us do some more digging - especially in the records of the State Park Commission in regards to the construction of this course. Any comments and suggestions would be appreciated.
And here is the 14 October 1930 article on the pitch and putt course.