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Breaking Down the Bendelow List
Sven Nilsen:
Bendelow in Carnegie Hall?
From the Feb. 1898 edition of Golf Magazine.
BCrosby:
Bendelow might have been one of the first, but there were many pros who gave indoor lessons in NYC, Boston and Chicago. Alex Morrison among them. They seem to have reached a peak of popularity in the 1920's.
Bob
Sven Nilsen:
--- Quote from: BCrosby on October 28, 2014, 04:26:16 PM ---Bendelow might have been one of the first, but there were many pros who gave indoor lessons in NYC, Boston and Chicago. Alex Morrison among them. They seem to have reached a peak of popularity in the 1920's.
Bob
--- End quote ---
Bob:
How many of them gave lessons at Carnegie Hall? I thought there was an interesting parallel to the old joke "How do you get to Carnegie Hall..."
There were quite a few indoor golf schools, as well as a number of indoor golf courses, but that's an exercise for another thread.
Sven
RJ_Daley:
Sven, I missed the earlier spring post as we were in transit those days, Tassie, Melbourne, NZ. Nice find! I was looking at the Google aerial of that area of Marseilles-Ottawa IL and found this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3578451,-88.6946546,1142m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
Do you think those straight ditches were what was referred to in your posted news article about digging the ditches to drain the area?
At any rate, I am happy you are taking up a new search for such artifacts and news stories. As far as the content of the article, it bolsters or drives home the probable methodology that Bendy used to make those many site visits and place so many projects on his resume. Your find does indicate he was on site (perhaps only a day or so) and left those general instructions in a letter to that club. We see similar instructions for the agronomy aspect of preparing greens, fairgreens, and such in both Ross's book and MacKenzie's. Interesting that your article introduces Bendy as; "the recognized authority on golf courses in this country". Again, this would tend to suggest that whilst Bendy was doing the Johnny Appleseed thing to spread the game to more public participation (as his leading authority and expert consultant of the Spaulding Co. implies), he was also considered among the few that were plying the trade or profession in the 1890-1910 period as "the man" and I would think that the elite country club set would seek his counsul out as much as the community project planners. I think Bendy had it going on both fronts as the people's man for golf consulting, and the elite club's go to man. What do you think?
BTW, Stuart's book has a reference to how Bendy had some large building space a block or so down from his Chicago Spaulding office where he also gave indoor lessons in the winter...
Sven Nilsen:
RJ -
If you had asked me about Bendelow a while back, I would have given the stock answer that he was pretty good at churning out courses. But after delving into the old magazines and tracking down old newspaper articles on his work, I'm pretty well convinced that he was the most important figure in early American golf (and not just golf architecture).
In addition to laying out golf courses, he ran many of the larger tournaments as an official. He also gave lessons, consulted with numerous clubs, wrote articles on a variety of topics, lectured on golf architecture at the University of Illinois, edited the Official Golf Guide for a number of years, organized and participated in the tours of many of the great UK golfers who came to the US and was a general "go to" guy for all things golf related. I was just reading an account of his travels in 1903 to five different states as a survey of the state of the game. There may have been business reasons for his travels, but those travels certainly gave him an insight into what was happening where that few others could have garnered.
There is no doubt to me that he was highly sought after by the bigger name clubs. He traveled to California around 1910 to consult with Los Angeles CC on the prospects for their newly acquired land when the club changed sites. Perhaps he was involved in the design of what became the South course, or perhaps the committee that worked on that project just wanted the advice of a well seasoned veteran. Its just another in a long line of meetings that I wish I could have been a fly on the wall. But I think his real interests lay in making the game accessible.
Back to the chronology.
Sven
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