Tom Bendelow golf course architect

[Carl Johnson]

What do you think about this man?  I'd never heard of him, but prolific, apparently.  Just got interested through totally random connection (LaGrange Country Club).

[Joe Bausch]

Here's a good place to start, Carl:


https://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,59812.0.html

[Terry Lavin]

He’s a legend. Prolific, and in his own way, an original minimalist.


I’ll leave the rest to Sven Nilsen.

[Jeff Schley]

Did alot if work in midwest and chicago area.  Many courses have his name attached.

[Carl Johnson]

And now a Bendelow course in the news and on the site.  https://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,69607.0.html

[Tim Martin]

He’s a legend. Prolific, and in his own way, an original minimalist.


I’ll leave the rest to Sven Nilsen.

I asked Sven a while back about how many Ross courses Bendelow had been to first and he thought between fifty and sixty. He would be able to give more specific information as to as to original routings and where Ross added another nine holes to an existing nine. Sven if you see this and it needs an edit please chime in.

[Andrew Harvie]

He was the guy before the guys we respect now. Built a lot of courses and really wanted to bring golf to small rural areas. I like him

[Rick Shefchik]

He’s a legend. Prolific, and in his own way, an original minimalist.


I’ll leave the rest to Sven Nilsen.

I asked Sven a while back about how many Ross courses Bendelow had been to first and he thought between fifty and sixty. He would be able to give more specific information as to as to original routings and where Ross added another nine holes to an existing nine. Sven if you see this and it needs an edit please chime in.

One of those courses is Northland Country Club in Duluth, MN. Bendelow was brought in to redo Alex Smith's 1913 expansion of the course from 9 to 18 holes. Smith's back nine had four parallel holes crossing Superior Street, the main east-west route through the eastern side of the city. That layout would probably have prevented the state golf association from awarding the 1914 state amateur championship to Northland, so the club hired Bendelow - who'd been advising the club on various matters since 1909 - to rearrange the course. Bendelow's redesign eliminated the holes that crossed the street, and the club got the 1914 amateur. His new routing was in place for the next dozen years, until Donald Ross's redesign opened in 1927.

[Peter Pallotta]

Wow - I'd assumed that over-active club committees and the renovation craze were a relatively new phenomenon, but looking at Rick's post was an eye opener: Smith does a renovation-expansion in 1913, Bendelow comes in just a year later and renovates the renovation, and even though the course gets the US Amateur, a little over a decade later it's bringing in Ross to do yet another renovation. Keeping up with the Joneses clearly has a very long history, even in Minnesota!

[Jeff_Brauer]

He’s a legend. Prolific, and in his own way, an original minimalist.


I’ll leave the rest to Sven Nilsen.

I asked Sven a while back about how many Ross courses Bendelow had been to first and he thought between fifty and sixty. He would be able to give more specific information as to as to original routings and where Ross added another nine holes to an existing nine. Sven if you see this and it needs an edit please chime in.

One of those courses is Northland Country Club in Duluth, MN. Bendelow was brought in to redo Alex Smith's 1913 expansion of the course from 9 to 18 holes. Smith's back nine had four parallel holes crossing Superior Street, the main east-west route through the eastern side of the city. That layout would probably have prevented the state golf association from awarding the 1914 state amateur championship to Northland, so the club hired Bendelow - who'd been advising the club on various matters since 1909 - to rearrange the course. Bendelow's redesign eliminated the holes that crossed the street, and the club got the 1914 amateur. His new routing was in place for the next dozen years, until Donald Ross's redesign opened in 1927.

Rick,


Not sure if it was you or Dan Kelly, but I spent some time here figuring out the pre Ross routing (not sure if it was pre Bendelow, didn't know there were two versions of holes across the street) and I think using a scorecard and some other article I was able to come up with it.  Now, if I can search my old servers to find the chicken scratch stick line routing I did, it would make for interesting discussion.  At one time, I also had a copy of the irrigation plan from that era.

[Rick Shefchik]

He’s a legend. Prolific, and in his own way, an original minimalist.


I’ll leave the rest to Sven Nilsen.

I asked Sven a while back about how many Ross courses Bendelow had been to first and he thought between fifty and sixty. He would be able to give more specific information as to as to original routings and where Ross added another nine holes to an existing nine. Sven if you see this and it needs an edit please chime in.

One of those courses is Northland Country Club in Duluth, MN. Bendelow was brought in to redo Alex Smith's 1913 expansion of the course from 9 to 18 holes. Smith's back nine had four parallel holes crossing Superior Street, the main east-west route through the eastern side of the city. That layout would probably have prevented the state golf association from awarding the 1914 state amateur championship to Northland, so the club hired Bendelow - who'd been advising the club on various matters since 1909 - to rearrange the course. Bendelow's redesign eliminated the holes that crossed the street, and the club got the 1914 amateur. His new routing was in place for the next dozen years, until Donald Ross's redesign opened in 1927.

Rick,


Not sure if it was you or Dan Kelly, but I spent some time here figuring out the pre Ross routing (not sure if it was pre Bendelow, didn't know there were two versions of holes across the street) and I think using a scorecard and some other article I was able to come up with it.  Now, if I can search my old servers to find the chicken scratch stick line routing I did, it would make for interesting discussion.  At one time, I also had a copy of the irrigation plan from that era.

Jeff, that was a discussion you and I had a few years back. Since then I located a newspaper story that included the following map of Alex Smith's redesign. You can clearly see the four parallel holes that crossed superior street. That routing was in play for just one year, and you can imagine the chaos it created for both golfers and motorists.








I have not been able to find a map of Bendelow's re-routing, but based on other stories I found in Duluth papers, I'm pretty sure the following map is pretty accurate. This is how the course played from 1914 until Ross's 1927 redesign:

[Sven Nilsen]

Rick:


Do you have anything on what William Watson did at Northland in 1920?


Sven

[Rick Shefchik]

Rick:


Do you have anything on what William Watson did at Northland in 1920?


Sven

I have this from my file on Northland's history: "In October 1921, the club acquired 160 acres of land on a bluff above the course from T.F. Cole for $84,000.  A month later a proposed plan for the new course, prepared by William Watson, was presented to the club. Watson was recommended by Donald Ross, but the members wanted Ross himself to lay out the course." I believe this information came from a brief club history prepared sometime in the 1950s. I haven't come across that information in local newspapers. It would be interesting to find that Watson plan to see how it compared to the Ross redesign. In any regard, Watson didn't do any work at Northland; the club was able to persuade Ross to take the job. Watson's brother, J.Martin Watson, was Northland's first golf instructor (what we would now call the head pro) in 1903.

[Sven Nilsen]

Rick:


Here's a local report of Watson having done work on the course in the summer of 1920.  This doesn't really jibe with account from your file.

Sept. 10, 1920 Duluth Herald -




Edit:  Not sure why the image is fuzzy as my copy is pretty clear.  Here's the relevant text from the end of the first paragraph:

"He did some work here this season on the Northland Country Club links."

"

[Anthony Gholz]

To All:


If I were reviewing any midwest or east coast USA Golden Age (defined as 1911-1934) course renovations, I'd look at both Bendelow and Walter Travis.  While researching Colt & Alison in NA I ran into both architects multiple times before C &/or A showed up. When Port Huron Golf Club's tee renovation project begins on August 16th, the original Tom Bendelow first tee from 1912 will be restored.  It will "restore" 40 yards and, more importantly, four feet of height to the view of the hole.  This because Bendelow (and later Alison) used several of the shallow lake bottom sand ridges for many of his tees and greens. 


Historian's can dream and sometime the dream comes true.
Anthony

[Rick Shefchik]

Rick:


Here's a local report of Watson having done work on the course in the summer of 1920.  This doesn't really jibe with account from your file.

Sept. 10, 1920 Duluth Herald -




Edit:  Not sure why the image is fuzzy as my copy is pretty clear.  Here's the relevant text from the end of the first paragraph:

"He did some work here this season on the Northland Country Club links."

"

Interesting find. I doubt that the Duluth Herald or News Tribune covered whatever specific work Watson did at Northland. The club has no record of it. Watson seemed to be doing a fair amount of nip and tuck work on Bendelow courses in Minnesota that year. Elsewhere in the Watson thread you noted that you couldn't find any evidence that Watson had worked on the Golden Valley Golf & Country Club course, but I found a story in the April 4, 1920, Minneapolis Tribune that said Watson was going to do an "extensive rearrangement" of the Golden Valley course. Club president Jean Hartzell told the paper that the work would cost $15,000 and take about 60 days, with temporary greens used during construction.


Neither club was ultimately satisfied with Watson's renovations. Northland hired Ross in 1922, and Golden Valley hired Tillinghast to remodel their course in 1926.

[Sven Nilsen]

Is there anything out there that indicates that Northland wasn't satisfied with whatever Watson did?  The club acquired new land which led to Ross doing what he did. 

[Sven Nilsen]

As for Golden Valley, have you seen anything that says that work was actually carried out?  The press in the subsequent months following that article seem to indicate it was business at usual at the club with no interruptions for ongoing work and no conversation about temporary greens.


The Annual Guides do note a jump in yardage of around 100 yards between 1920 and 1923.

[Rick Shefchik]

Is there anything out there that indicates that Northland wasn't satisfied with whatever Watson did?  The club acquired new land which led to Ross doing what he did.

According to the June 19, 1919, Duluth News Tribune, "The property belonging to Thomas F. Cole, situated on the north side of the club’s west 40 and containing 180 acres of land, was ordered purchased. The club has had an option on the land before but the lease expires this fall." I don't know why it took two more years to execute the purchase, but the expansion was planned before Watson did work there in 1920. Whatever he did at Northland was probably considered stopgap.


As for Golden Valley, the Watson changes aren't documented in club records (I wrote their 100th anniversary book) but the project was announced in April and the course was back to normal operations in June, suggesting the work was not all that substantial.

[Jeff_Brauer]

He’s a legend. Prolific, and in his own way, an original minimalist.


I’ll leave the rest to Sven Nilsen.

I asked Sven a while back about how many Ross courses Bendelow had been to first and he thought between fifty and sixty. He would be able to give more specific information as to as to original routings and where Ross added another nine holes to an existing nine. Sven if you see this and it needs an edit please chime in.

One of those courses is Northland Country Club in Duluth, MN. Bendelow was brought in to redo Alex Smith's 1913 expansion of the course from 9 to 18 holes. Smith's back nine had four parallel holes crossing Superior Street, the main east-west route through the eastern side of the city. That layout would probably have prevented the state golf association from awarding the 1914 state amateur championship to Northland, so the club hired Bendelow - who'd been advising the club on various matters since 1909 - to rearrange the course. Bendelow's redesign eliminated the holes that crossed the street, and the club got the 1914 amateur. His new routing was in place for the next dozen years, until Donald Ross's redesign opened in 1927.

Rick,


Not sure if it was you or Dan Kelly, but I spent some time here figuring out the pre Ross routing (not sure if it was pre Bendelow, didn't know there were two versions of holes across the street) and I think using a scorecard and some other article I was able to come up with it.  Now, if I can search my old servers to find the chicken scratch stick line routing I did, it would make for interesting discussion.  At one time, I also had a copy of the irrigation plan from that era.

Jeff, that was a discussion you and I had a few years back. Since then I located a newspaper story that included the following map of Alex Smith's redesign. You can clearly see the four parallel holes that crossed superior street. That routing was in play for just one year, and you can imagine the chaos it created for both golfers and motorists.








I have not been able to find a map of Bendelow's re-routing, but based on other stories I found in Duluth papers, I'm pretty sure the following map is pretty accurate. This is how the course played from 1914 until Ross's 1927 redesign:

Sven, the routing we came up with looked more like the second one, a la was done by TB rather than the original Alex Smith one.


OT, but what courses still have road crossings?


Omaha Field Club and Mid Ocean come to mind.

[Rick Shefchik]

White Bear Yacht Club still has one. The tee for the fifth hole is on the south side of Dellwood Road, and the rest of the hole is north of Dellwood Road. (A bridge across the road takes you to the eighth tee from the seventh green, and a tunnel takes you under the road from the 11th green to the 12th tee, and the 16th green to the 17th tee.)