Mike
Have your heard the phrase, with friends like you who needs enemies? In this case the opposite is true. This 1909 article begins: "Apawamis easily ranks today as the fourth best Metropolitan course..." And this before the course was readied for the 1911 US Amateur. In 1910 the Metropolitan district was the pinnacle of golf architecture in America.
Tom,
Have you heard the phrase, "in the land of blind men, the one-eyed man is king."?
Yes, probably if one were to name the best 25 courses in the US in 1910 then Apawamis would be among them. So what? There were so few courses of any quality at all that a course that would be a Doak Scale 3 today would probably make that list!
That's the point I think you're not getting here, Tom. The record of the foreign professionals in the US up to 1910 is one of dreck and sludge. Of the over 1000 courses already in the ground most ranged from horrid to putrid to simply crude.
Compared to the very best courses in the US at the time...Myopia, Garden City, NGLA...as well as compared to most good courses abroad, courses like Baltusrol and Apawamis and Fox Hills paled in comparison.
THAT is why courses like Garden City and NGLA made such a splash when they were being developed and opened.
As this thread indicates, there was a second tier of courses that probably included Ekwanok, Pinehurst #2, and Oakmont, and possibly one or two others that all were probably equivalent to Doak 4 to 6 at the time, but after that things fell precipitously.
David Moriarty, who seems to be much more realistic than you as regards the work of the old professionals, made an excellent point on a recent post when he described the different states of evolution various courses of the time were in. He wrote, quite perceptively and historically accurately;
"I'd like to explore it as well, but it is tough to understand what was going on right then. Everything was changing. What was considered to be state of the art in the middle of the first decade was outdated five years later. So very likely some of the courses that were the considered the best in the late aughts might have been considered antiquated shortly thereafter. So even courses that had been considered good went through significant changes either in the latter part of the first decade or in the beginning of the second."
As to your broader question as to the evolution of the discipline, I think what you have is NGLA which despite its rough conditions was considered above and beyond all the others in terms of quality design, and then two groups of golf courses somewhere below this:
1) The old established courses that may have started out to be very much in the dark ages, but that were making changes to try and keep with the evolving expectations for the courses; and,
2) The new courses, which were being built from scratch. These were generally based upon what most could consider to be closer to better, more enduring principles of quality design, but were generally young and immature and works-in-project in their own way.
"Over time some of the old established courses did adapt through significant modifications, while others had to start over from scratch. And of course many of the new courses eventually matured and were considered quite good. By in 1910 this next wave had begun, but it is perhaps a bit early to see the full impact."
The Fox Hills, Baltusrol, and Apawamis courses all can be seen in this light as they "started out...in the dark ages, but were making changes to try and keep with the evolving expectations." Over time, the Fox Hills course and early Baltusrol course perished, and Apawamis continued to make any number of changes over time, and today is still a bit of a relic.
I'm looking at a map right now of the 1910 Baltusrol course and one can see exactly the point, which is also described quite well in the article on Baltusrol I posted earlier. The course is a mix of old and new, with most holes still containing cross-bunkers, and most holes run stick-straight with no turning, no use of angles or diagnonals, but yet a smattering of more sophisticated bunkering is also in evidence.
I'm not sure what you're talking about when you contend that some of this course made it to the present Baltusrol because that is clearly not true. Perhaps the corridor of the first and second hole is the same, but after that the course veers along and across today's courses, and bears not a scant resemblance to what Tilly built.
I do hope this makes my point a bit clearer, Tom.
I'm not saying that some of those courses you listed weren't among the best courses in the US at the time. It's just that 1) compared to the Top three in the US, all designed by amateurs for their own clubs, they fell far short of that standard, and 2) compared to the best courses abroad, they were similarly lacking.