David,
I'm trying to say that if we're looking for "breakout" courses prior to NGLA, then Chicago was hardly the "bully" that set the bar.
It had the advantage of being the first 18 hole course, but it wasn't very good, except in context of lack of competition.
Soon, Myopia, Ekwanok, Garden City, and then Pinehurst #2 were superior as golf courses and leaders in creating examples of strategic design and "scientific trapping".
Then, NGLA took it to a new level. Not Chicago.
As Mac said, let's have fun with it. I don't think there is any "misleading rhetoric" that I'm laying down, just trying to keep this in historical context and also trying to say that the Chicago Golf Club golf course we know today is most assuredly not the Chicago Golf Club course Macdonald originally laid out.
In fact, I think anyone would be hard-pressed to pick that routing and feature map out of a hundred or so other very rudimentary, cross-bunkered affairs that were practiced early on in golf in America.
It just had more of it.