Groundbreaking/Revolutionary Courses

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mac,
I thought someone said Tom and Willie Dunn for Le Phare.

There are a lot of Willies (glad this isn't a Tiger thread), but I'd go with 'yes', they're the same guy.  WC came to the US after he built Machrie and landed at Brookline.

edit: that last sentence got lost somehow?

[TEPaul]

Mac:

Willie Dunn did design Le Phare at Biarritz or at least that's what W.K Vanderbilt thought and said when he met Dunn at Biarritz in the late 1880s, was given a demonstration of golf by Dunn and consequently brought Dunn to America where he designed Shinnecock first and then Westbrook, Tuxedo etc.

I would think that would put Willie Dunn as one of the earliest immigrant architects in America with perhaps Alex Findlay who apparently got to America in 1888.

[Niall C]

Mac

The Machrie - original layout was indeed Willie Campbell however have seen newspaper reports which suggest 6 new holes in 1920's by John McAndrew (long time pro/greenkeeper at Cruden Bay)

Kelvinside - not only Old Tom but also Willie Fernie

Niall

[Niall Hay]

Mac:

As you know fairly recently I've been particularly interested in the very first really good golf architecture in America.

As seems to be confirmed by contemporaneous accounts from back then (including Macdonald's) the first good courses and architecture in America were Myopia, GCGC and Chicago GC. The first two both preceded NGLA by almost a decade and the latter by almost fifteen years.

I don't know that much about the entire architectural history of Chicago GC at Wheaton so I have no real idea how much it has changed since its beginning in the mid 1890s. Myopia and GCGC ironically are courses that happened just about simultaneously (with apparently little to no collaboration of ideas between their architects) right around 1900 and were pretty much the way they are now with their routings anyway. Myopia is probably the most similar now to back then. And as such it very well may be the FIRST of the best really early American golf architecture laboratories we have today that has changed the least from the furthest back. Some of the greens of GCGC were changed from back then and with Myopia fewer still were changed from back then (by my count probably only 2-3). Bunkering over the years was a somewhat different story on most all those courses because the interesting similarity with them is that their architects all kept working on improving them in little ways for many years and often decades. The same modus was true with Oakmont (1903), NGLA (1908), Merion East (1911), Pine Valley (1913).

Where does Newport Country Club fit in this conversation? 1893 or 5....and 1st US Am and Open venue a la Prestiwick?