Tom,
I was just about to re-post from the same article, May 1933 Golf Illustrated.
One would think that if Tillinghast lied about this, or made up the story back in 1913, he'd have enough respect for his dear departed friend to correct the record after his death.
Oh...what an evil rogue that Tillinghast was!
"I have told of our winter habit of taking train from Camden for the hour's run to North-field. George Crump invariably was of the party and on several occasions I observed him looking intently from the train window as we passed through a section about twenty miles out. As a matter of fact his attention had been attracted by a freakish bit of country in South Jersey, freakish because it was so totally different from the monotonous flat lands of those parts. At first he said nothing to any one, but quietly, as was his wont in everything
he did, he visited the tract and took option on one hundred and eighty acres of gently-hilled, pinecovered, sandy land—the tract which he had so intently studied from the passing trains.
Then he told a few of us of a plan, which he had in mind. This was in 1912, and at that time the Philadelphia district really possessed no course of true championship requirements. The best golfers of that district bemoaned the fact that their play was over courses that were not sufficiently exacting to develop their strokes to such high standard as to make them serious factors in the national events. George Crump's dream, was to build a course, which would offer a great diversity of play in really exacting form, a course that
would have no single hole designed with the limitations of the ordinary player in mind. He contended that each club in Philadelphia had enough class players, who could cope with such a super-course, to insure an ample membership. With his own money he purchased the property and entirely financed the work. But, above all, his own ideals entirely dominated the plan and this truly great course must ever remain, a lasting, glorious monument to his genius. True, he sought opinions from others.
I was one of the first to walk the property with him and that George Crump finally incorporated two of my conceptions entirely (the long seventh and the thirteenth) will ever be the source of great satisfaction. He also had opinions on various points from Walter Travis and C. B. Macclonald, also from many others of his friends, who, as amateurs, were capable of offering valuable suggestions because they were numbered among the great players of the country at that time.
In January of 1913, George Crump gave me permission to publish in my syndicated weekly golf column of that period the first word of the new course. An excerpt from this read: "The Philadelphia section is to have a great golf course - one which may eclipse all others. Although I have known of the plans for more than a year, only recently have I been relieved from secrecy and the announcement appears in print today for the first time. I predict that it will attract the cream of players throughout the entire year."
In March, 1913, I published a full description of the work already accomplished and described in detail the first four holes, which had been completed entirely to George Crump's own plan and personally directed building, and also the plan of the first nine holes and the 10th and eighteenth, all of which remained as George determined with the exception of the ninth. IN May it was announced that the British Golf Architect, H.S. Colt, was in Canada and that probably he would visit Pine Valley to collaborate in the final drafting of plans, which he did during the following month, June, and most excellently. So it will be seen by all this, exactly how Pine Valley was conceived, and how it developed. In some respects the course represents a consensus of opinion, carefully edited by the master mind of George Crump, to whom must be given credit to the fullest measure. Certainly one of the world's greatest golf courses, it reflects the genius of one man after all and must ever be a tribute to his memory..."
Here's the other three contemporaneous accounts again (January 1913) from the Philly newspaper, the American Cricketer and the American Golfer;
