City sued because golf course isn't a Donald Ross

[Tom_Doak]

Or, not.  My goodness that was a bery long article consisting of little more than speculation:  Ross could have done it, because he worked in the area, and the owner's brother built a course with Ross 100 miles up the road.  And it's a good course, and kind of like a typical Ross design, in the same way that most Florida courses are.


But one of Ross's associates could also have gone down and looked at the routing, or it could have been laid out by the guy who they know actually built the course, per the original plan.


I did not see - did anything ever result from the lawsuit?  Clearly it failed to establish any facts.

[Jim_Kennedy]

I did say 'might'.   

[Rick Shefchik]

This one really seems pretty easy, if we trust the journalism of the 1920s. From the Orlando Sentinel in 2011:
"A Sanford Herald clipping from April 20, 1922, reports that a 50-man crew was at work building the course, that it was 'laid out by Mr. Trent' and that he was supervising the work. Another Herald story two years later — Sept. 27, 1924 — reports that the city had hired W.D. Clark to supervise the laying out of the back nine and to rework the front nine."

Edinburgh native William D. "Bill" Clark did most of his work in Minnesota, and it was high quality stuff, as anyone who has played Oak Ridge, Minneapolis Golf Club or Minnesota Valley C.C. would attest. By 1924 he was working in Florida, where he designed Palatka, Riviera CC, Jacksonville Beach and Mayfair. His name faded from prominence in later years, but I think it speaks well of his abilities that his courses are sometimes mistaken for Ross or Raynor.

[Willie_Dow]

After reading all this !  I dropped back to the "Feature Interview" pages and looked over the Lincoln Roden December 2001 "Golf's Golden Age 1945-1954" writer.


My, how this discussion applies to todays thinking !

[jeffwarne]

Looking at news clipping over the years of events and projects I'm familiar with and/or directly involved with, it is amazing how often they get it wrong in print.
So using 100 year old articles as " fighting words fact " isnt always the best source.
Might be the best source, but doesnt insure it's correct.
No doubt articles then were as prone to mistakes as articles I'm first hand familiar with over the last 40 years.

[Rick Shefchik]

Looking at news clipping over the years of events and projects I'm familiar with and/or directly involved with, it is amazing how often they get it wrong in print.
So using 100 year old articles as " fighting words fact " isnt always the best source.
Might be the best source, but doesnt insure it's correct.
No doubt articles then were as prone to mistakes as articles I'm first hand familiar with over the last 40 years.

As a former journalist myself, I would tend to agree with you - mistakes happen. There is no ironclad guarantee that what you read in any paper is God's honest truth. But we have to weigh existing evidence. Unless a contract, a photo or another news story turns up that says B, I'm inclined to go with the news story that says A. To do otherwise is to give credence to a "source" that doesn't exist -- or at least, hasn't been found yet.

[Sven Nilsen]

It is a confusing history, but there is enough information to make the conclusion that the course "might have been designed by Donald Ross" a very untenable position to hold.

The story of golf in Sanford starts in 1916.

The 1916 Annual Guide has an entry for a course in Sanford, but provides no information as to the details.  March 26, 1916 The Sun and April 4, 1916 Tampa Tribune articles note an 18 hole course was under construction.

There are no further mentions of this proposed 18 hole course, which apparently died on the vine.  The timing just prior to the start of WWI may have something to do with the story.

In 1921 it appears that interest in a course was revived, with Cuthbert Butchart (as noted above in the April 3, 1921 New York Times article) being brought in to do the design work.  What hasn't been clarified is that this course wasn't for a club, it was for a hotel project to be built on the shores of Crystal Lake.  I'll leave it to others to determine what happened to the project, but we do know that Butchart's course was never built.

March 18, 1921 Sanford Herald -

[Sven Nilsen]

In 1922, perhaps due to the failure of the hotel project, Syd Chase and a number of other prominent citizens including the town's mayor Forest Lake, began the process of forming a club and building a course at a location away from the lake.

The Annual Guides in 1922, 1923 and 1925 note a 9 hole course with a date of formation of 1922 all with yardages around 3,000 yards.

March 29, 1922 Sanford Herald -







And then clear as day (with all debates as to the meaning of the phrase "laid out" put aside), we have Cameron Trent cited as being responsible for the arrangements of the course.

April 20, 1922 Sanford Herald -

[Sven Nilsen]

Around 1923 it was decided that the city would take over the club's course and it would be run as a municipal course (public play began in 1923 prior to the city taking the deed to the property in early 1924).  At this time there was a decision made to extend the 9 hole course to 18 holes.  By all accounts this work was managed by W. D. Clark.

The Annual Guides starting in 1926 note an 18 hole course with an inception date of 1922, with the 1926 stating a distance of 6,128 yards and the 1927 - 1931 Guides noting 6,380 yards.

Feb. 6, 1924 Tampa Tribune -



Sept. 27, 1924 Sanford Herald -

[Sven Nilsen]

The course would be renovated around 1939 using WPA funds.  Like the author of the article Jim linked to noted, there is no information out there as to who did this work.

Jan. 6, 1939 Miami Herald -



Is it possible Ross might have been involved somewhere along the way?  Perhaps, but in 1922 and afterwards the Ross name held a great deal of cachet.  If you had a Donald Ross course, you noted it. 

Nothing out there mentions his name, nor did the great players who chose Sanford for many of their matches.  All that was noted is that it was a good golf course. 

There are a number of other factors that suggest this wasn't a project Ross would have had any interest in.  First, it was initially to be a 9 hole course.  In 1922 Ross was quoted he preferred not to work on 9 hole projects. 

Second, the budget of this project was considerably less than those Ross normally took on, and it also seems like this wouldn't be a project where Ross could involve the construction arm of his business, which were most likely involved elsewhere in Florida at the time. 

Finally, the timing of the project doesn't fit for how Ross worked.  In 1922, he was booked out for months with a schedule that was probably set in stone.  He had a trip to California planned for the summer, along with a number of other projects on the East Coast lined up for visits.  The Sanford course had a very short period of time between conception and start of construction.  The window for Ross being involved in the 1922 9 hole course starts on March 15, 1922 when Chase's brother suggested Ross by letter and ends in the middle of April when Cameron Trent was already moving dirt.  And let us not forget that Chase was still conferring with William Langford about his possible involvement as late as March 27, 1922.

It would have been more likely that Ross was involved in the 1924 work or even possibly the 1939 renovation.  But again, these are both activities that would have drawn the attention of the press. 

As nice a story as it would be, it just doesn't make any sense.  Neither does the idea that because they erected a plaque years later it means that Ross must have been there.

[Jay Flemma]

If it turns out that this IS (was?) a Ross course, these statements will be priceless:

The greens are not all elevated and do not slope back to front, two hallmarks of Ross courses, Fay said.  "It's not a Donald Ross course. It's nothing like a Donald Ross course," he said Monday.

Even if it's not a Ross course, are those necessarily hallmarks of Ross courses? 

Carl, how long would it take someone with interlibrary loan access to track down some early newspapers around that time from Seminole County?

 

Just because you read it in a newspaper doesn't mean the article is accurate. Especially when it comes to hometown newspapers, always trying to overstate the case to create excitement, you have to question and investigate what was said, not just tackle it at face value. If you believe everything these old newspapers say, you;d be that Utica Golf Club by Walter Travis was set to be the greatest golf course in America. Always dig deeper...

[Philip Hensley]

Or, not.  My goodness that was a bery long article consisting of little more than speculation:  Ross could have done it, because he worked in the area, and the owner's brother built a course with Ross 100 miles up the road.  And it's a good course, and kind of like a typical Ross design, in the same way that most Florida courses are.


But one of Ross's associates could also have gone down and looked at the routing, or it could have been laid out by the guy who they know actually built the course, per the original plan.


I did not see - did anything ever result from the lawsuit?  Clearly it failed to establish any facts.

Ironic because another Sanford (in North Carolina) claims to be a Donald Ross. Research from the local papers makes no reference to Ross being involved at all.


When I asked how they know it's a Donald Ross course, and employee said "Well no one has proved that it isn't".


.....


When I mention it to a local that there's no evidence that Ross did any work here or had anything to do with it, I'm often met with similar arguments of "Well he was right down the road in Pinehurst, it's easy to see that he could've come up and worked on it" or "He did a lot of other work in the area (Pinehurst) so he MUST have been involved somehow"

[Sven Nilsen]

Before anyone wants to comment further on the accuracy of old newspaper articles, please at least educate yourself on the question.

The seminal work on the issue was written in 1936 by Mitchell Charney and is entitled "Preliminary Notes On A Study of Newspaper Accuracy." 

You'll learn a great deal about the fallibility of the press, but you'll also learn that the vast majority of mistakes made were so minor as to be insignificant.

Most of the questions we deal with are big picture questions, i.e. was Donald Ross involved with a project, not did they spell his name correctly. 

And yes, both the local papers and the architects themselves often resorted to hyperbole when discussing projects.  But that hyperbole didn't change the basic big picture story.

As a challenge, I'd ask anyone here to look at the big picture of the Sanford story and find an instance where the press lead the reader astray in any kind of meaningful way. 

[MCirba]

Sven,


I've found the exact same thing.


This idea that newspaper articles are potentially fallacious and therefore should be disregarded is one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetuated on Golf Club Atlas.  Of course it's best to have as many evidentiary sources as possible but I can count very few times when I've been thrown off the trail by something I came upon in a newspaper article that was flat out wrong as far as spelling out the big picture.


Thanks for the work you do in unearthing Golf Course architectural history.

[Jim_Kennedy]

So I'm guessing that the author of the essay, Paul R. Dunn, who held the position of historian at Pinehurst CC for a half dozen years, must have completely missed the newspaper articles that Sven posted. 


I think it's been proven on this site that internet access to millions of previously unseen newspaper articles has really had an impact on what was once thought to be the facts surrounding the formation, construction, and attribution of numerous golf courses, and for all but those few who are too stubborn to believe them, it has been a very positive development. 

[Sven Nilsen]

Jim:

If you mean the April 20, 1922 article that notes Trent as having laid out the initial 9 hole course, Dunn certainly read it, as he quotes from it in his piece:

"On April 20, 1922 the Sanford Herald reports the Sanford course is being constructed by Cameron Trent.  It states,  “There are now 50 men and teams clearing the fairways…the first five holes are practically completed. Many of our local people are members of the club.  Practice expected in May.”  The reporter noted, “Present plans are but for a nine-hole course.  An 18-hole course will gradually be built when finances permit.”  Syd Chase is reported to be “energetically working to complete this project, which he fathered as Chairman of the Golf Course Committee of the Sanford Chamber of Commerce.”  No correspondence or news reports identify the architect of the project at this stage of development."

What is curious to me is that he leaves out the most relevant part of the article in his discussion:

"These features will also be found on the Sanford course and with the arrangement as laid out by Mr. Trent every hole calls for real golf."

Sven

[Jim_Kennedy]

Sven,


Missed that, I went back and read it and also noticed that he did the same thing with Clark. Seems to me that he did not consider 'laying out' or 'laid out' to mean 'designed' for the purpose of his essay.   

[BCrosby]

Before anyone wants to comment further on the accuracy of old newspaper articles, please at least educate yourself on the question.

The seminal work on the issue was written in 1936 by Mitchell Charney and is entitled "Preliminary Notes On A Study of Newspaper Accuracy." 

You'll learn a great deal about the fallibility of the press, but you'll also learn that the vast majority of mistakes made were so minor as to be insignificant.

Most of the questions we deal with are big picture questions, i.e. was Donald Ross involved with a project, not did they spell his name correctly. 

And yes, both the local papers and the architects themselves often resorted to hyperbole when discussing projects.  But that hyperbole didn't change the basic big picture story.

An important post whose significance should be acknowledged. A part of the historical record previously inaccessible (for all practical purposes) is now accessible on-line.  We can view historical details in daily, local newspapers that were previously lost to time. Inaccuracies that might exist, and it sounds like they are minor, pale in significance to the abundance of information now available.
 
As importantly, day-to-day events in the game found in journalistic accounts were not, with rare exceptions, covered by club histories, magazines or books. But until ten years or so ago club histories, magazines and books were the only way to get at that history. Not only were those sources limited, I suggest that they were/are no more accurate than the accounts of daily journalists.   

Put differently, Sven is doing traditional history (or maybe better put, it is data-gathering) with non-traditional, powerful new tools. I don't think the history of golf looks back. This is pioneering stuff. Thanks to Sven we now know much more that we did a decade ago about Bendelow and Ross, to take two examples. We have examples of hundreds of routing plans taken from newspapers few of us had seen before. Sven dug them out. He has made them part of the public record that we can all now see. That's a big deal.

So congrats Sven. May you continue digging.

Bob   

   

[David Harshbarger]

Put differently, Sven is doing traditional history (or maybe better put, it is data-gathering) with non-traditional, powerful new tools. I don't think the history of golf looks back. This is pioneering stuff. Thanks to Sven we now know much more that we did a decade ago about Bendelow and Ross, to take two examples. We have examples of hundreds of routing plans taken from newspapers few of us had seen before. Sven dug them out. He has made them part of the public record that we can all now see. That's a big deal.

So congrats Sven. May you continue digging.

Bob   

 

+1  Making it easy to see these sources is fantastic.  Thanks for putting that history into more hands.