Walter Travis and his Impact on H.H. Barker and Donald Ross

[John Challenger]

Brad Becken on Donald Ross mentions Raritan CC and Chevy Chase CC as H. H. Barker/Donald Ross collaborations. There must have been many other courses pre-WW1 from 1909 to 1914 that they worked on either in collaboration or in different stages of the same project.

Golf clubs often found architects by relying upon the golfing magazines or catalogs of the day. Started in November 1908, Walter Travis’ American Golfer was perhaps the most widely read golf magazine in the U.S. at the start of the Golden Age in the years just before WW1.Travis had strong ideas about architecture. He was in the midst of redesigning Garden City GC and writing constantly in the magazine about his plans and ideas for the golf course. He wrote often about golf architecture and how a modern golf course should be designed or not be designed.

Travis’ magazine was read by people in every corner of North America. As his reputation grew as a golf course expert, he was inundated by requests for help in routing and design. He decided to designate his new, young pro at Garden City, H.H. Barker, as his surrogate. Since 1907, Travis had been explaining to Barker the changes he wanted on the Garden City golf course and Barker helped him with the work. Travis realized he could set Barker up in business and pass the leads on to him. Barker quickly became a road warrior and for the rest of the time he lived in the U.S., he travelled thousands of miles each year around the hinterland of the country.  Travis started putting ads for Barker’s routing services in the magazine and then even more opportunities flooded in. Originally, Barker was the only architect whose services were advertised in American Golfer.

Pinehurst started to take out full page ads in American Golfer. Travis then started to cover events at Pinehurst and it was soon a featured section. Travis also played golf at Pinehurst on a regular basis in winter with Leonard Tufts and with Donald Ross. Next, Travis allowed two architects to advertise in American Golfer: H.H. Barker and Donald Ross. In the beginning, Ross was only allowed to advertise as an instructor, but after several months, Ross was allowed to position himself as a course designer. At the time, Ross seemed to be best known as a great bunker man but he was also building his reputation as a course designer and constructor. Before the WW1, Travis was able to help both Barker and Ross land scads of jobs.

Walter Travis was really at the center of everything in those first years of the Golden Age in the United States. He was an extraordinary golfer and entrepreneur and voice of golf, and he was the instigator of so many of the great brouhahas. It’s amazing he was able to keep his amateur status when caddy/golfers like Francis Ouimet and Chick Evans had such a difficult time of it.

[Joe Bausch]

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[MCirba]

Terrific post, John.  I'm hoping to do an IMO piece on the relationship between Travis and Barker if I can find enough contemporaneous material to substantiate my presently jello-thick theory. 

[Tom_Doak]

Wow!  I have been hanging around Garden City Golf Club for many years but I never realized that H.H. Barker had been the professional there.


Sounds like he didn't have a lot of time to give lessons!


John, you mentioned that Barker did a lot of traveling for work "for the rest of the time he lived in the U.S."  Did he go back to the U.K.?  And if so, do you know when that was?


It's interesting that Travis set up Barker, much like Macdonald set up Raynor, even though Travis was more of an entrepreneur and not independently wealthy like C.B.  I wonder if Travis owned part of Barker's company?

[Ronald Montesano]

The Travis Society is always on the lookout for new members.


Here is a link to our membership form (no application; we admit everyone!)


https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSedN74Kf8Q73q-DwZSFRqRuexcpuxzFU0Zcozy2fpKLp7rQeA/viewform

[John Challenger]

Tom, Barker left the U.S. in the summer of 1915 and did not return when the war was over. He started at Garden City in the fall of 1907. He moved to Rumson CC in early 1911. He must have also played a lot of golf during his U.S. years because he finished in the top 10 in three U.S. Opens in 1909, 1910 and 1911. He wrote an article for American Golfer in April 1909 titled "British and American Golfers," but it may have been written by Travis. It would be very interesting to know if Travis found a way to take a cut on Barker's golf course routing work. My guess is yes. He just seems too tenacious to give Barker all that work altruistically.

[MCirba]

The Travis Society is always on the lookout for new members.


Here is a link to our membership form (no application; we admit everyone!)


https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSedN74Kf8Q73q-DwZSFRqRuexcpuxzFU0Zcozy2fpKLp7rQeA/viewform

Fixed that font for you, Ron.   


Good to see John C. that you are thinking along the same lines as I am.  For the record, unlike many golf professionals who emigrated to the US during that period, Barker had never designed a golf course prior to coming to the United States.  Within two years he was getting plum assignments at the most toney golf clubs in the country with absolutely  no resume of architectural accomplishment.

[Jeff_Mingay]

Fascinating history.


Barker's history reminds of Willie Watson, another pioneer in America who may also be under appreciated.

[MCirba]

I'll need to go back and look but I believe Barker was already receiving plum architectural jobs in the US by 1908 without any prior direct architectural experience.

[Ira Fishman]

Fascinating thread. I have not been able to find a good list of courses designed by Barker. Does anyone have a list that they can share?


Thanks.


Ira

[John Challenger]

Thanks Mike. I do hear you in regard to your first post. It would be valuable to know if Barker did any work in the U.S. in 1908 and if so how he came by it.  Perhaps, he did some initial work in the NYC area as Travis started to test him out. Hoping Sven might have something and know of other courses where both Barker and Ross worked from 1909 to 1915 when he left the U.S. for good. He had  health problems and he moved around a lot after he left Garden City. Before coming to the U.S. in late 1907, Barker was a strong, young amateur golfer in the Yorkshire area. There seemed to be surprise in the local professional community when he landed a professional's job in the United States. And, it was Garden City! It would be good to know how Garden City and/or Travis found him.

[Ronald Montesano]

Thank you, Mike. I cannot understand the functionality of this discussion board app. Why it does that, in the year 2022, is beyond me.

[Ronald Montesano]

Whoever Speedy Jeff is, great to have you along at the WJTS. Hope more folks join at our low price, and help us in our Travis-based mission.

[MCirba]

John,


Thanks!   I'm going to wade into these thickets as a winter project.  Wish me luck!

[Niall C]

Robert Calton, a member at Belle Meade Country Club in Nashville, wrote a booklet on HH Barker that he published back in 2013. Somewhere on here there is probably a thread where he asked for info and I was happy to give him what I had from UK publications.


Firstly in terms of prior design work before he arrived in the US, Barker was a member at Huddersfield where Sandy Herd was the professional. As a former Open champion Herd got a reasonable amount of design work although I don't think he chased the work too much. He certainly wasn't in the same league as Braid, but anyway, in 1907 according to the club history Herd "staked out" an 18 hole course for Bradley Hall Golf Club. The club centenary book goes on to say that "Mr HH Barker, the Yorkshire and Irish Champion, has also seen the ground, and agrees with Herd that it is eminently playable. The promoters, therefore, have every encouragement to proceed with the work." 


Calton suggests this was probably Barkers first taste of golf course design. By this time Barker was one of the leading amateurs in the country. At the end of June 1907 he was playing in the Open, partnering Harry Vardon in the first two rounds. This was probably his swan song in the amateur ranks as he quickly thereafter (June/July) accepted the post at Garden City.


He doesn't seem to have been in too much of a hurry to get there though as Calton has him arriving in New York on 29th September. Calton speculates that Walter Travis might have had something to do with Barker getting the job at Garden City although doesn't suggest how the connection came about. Was Barker at Sandwich in 1904 for the Amateur and met Travis then ?


Anyway, when Barker arrived, Travis apparently was in the process of making changes to the Garden City course which he discussed with Travis. Thereafter Barker seems to have had a number of commissions. The American Golfer of July 1909 gives his designs as follows;


The Richmond Country Club, Richmond (Va)
Waverly Golf Club, Portland Oregon
Spokane Country Club
Rumson Country Club, Seabright, NJ
Mayfield Club, Cleveland, Ohio
Bedford Springs Golf Club, PA
Columbia Golf Club, Washington DC
Arcola Country Club, Arcola, NJ


Courses he was "improving" included;


Springhaven Country Club, PA
Philmont Country Club, PA
Atlantic City Country Club, NJ
Newport Golf Club, RI


The booklet then goes on to describe Barker's career including his various visits back to UK, moves to different clubs and other design work that he did. I haven't got time at the moment to go through that but will try and do so later. I'll also see if I can find Robert Calton's email address for anyone interested in contacting him for a copy of his booklet.


Niall

[MCirba]

Thanks, Niall...that's very helpful and produces a number of inquiry leads.

[Sven Nilsen]

Thanks Mike. I do hear you in regard to your first post. It would be valuable to know if Barker did any work in the U.S. in 1908 and if so how he came by it.  Perhaps, he did some initial work in the NYC area as Travis started to test him out. Hoping Sven might have something and know of other courses where both Barker and Ross worked from 1909 to 1915 when he left the U.S. for good. He had  health problems and he moved around a lot after he left Garden City. Before coming to the U.S. in late 1907, Barker was a strong, young amateur golfer in the Yorkshire area. There seemed to be surprise in the local professional community when he landed a professional's job in the United States. And, it was Garden City! It would be good to know how Garden City and/or Travis found him.

John:


I don't have any record of him doing any work in 1908.  There's a Sept. 1909 American Golfer article which talks about him getting into design work but notes that the work had all been done in the last several months.  My guess is that the first full year he was here (arriving in late 1907) was dedicated to his duties at Garden City.


Curious where you get the health problems fact from.  He was healthy enough to return to his home country to serve in WWI at the start of the war (and to return to the US during the war to procure airplane timber).


Also curious as to why his landing the pro job at GCGC was a surprise.  He had just won the Irish Amateur in 1906 and played as the No. 2 on the English squad in the England/Scotland match, so he was certainly a known entity in the golf world.  Perhaps the surprise is that he opted to turn professional at that time, but perhaps the grass was a bit greener across the pond.


As for Barker and Ross between 1909 and 1915, here's what I have:


Druid Hills - Barker did the layout around 1912 with Ross designing traps a year later.
East Lake - Barker was here around 1910, but I'm not exactly sure what his input amounted to.  Ross arrived around 1913 and made suggestions on the traps.
Indian Hill - You would know best what happened here.
Skokie - Barker in 1910 rearranging to incorporate new land, Ross in 1914 with his workmore than just traps.
Columbia - Reports of the two working together on the layout in 1909.
Detroit GC - Barker remodeled the old course in 1911, Ross did the new course in 1914.
Charlotte (Mecklenburg) - Barker consulted here before Ross did the new course.
Atlantic City - Barker improved the course, Ross brought in a few years later and his engagement cancelled.
Raritan Valley (Somerville) - Barker first, with ross doing trap work in 1914.
Newport - Barker improvements in 1909, Ross work in 1915, although I haven't seen documentation of this.


Sven

[Sven Nilsen]

Brad Becken on Donald Ross mentions Raritan CC and Chevy Chase CC as H. H. Barker/Donald Ross collaborations.

At Raritan, Barker preceded Ross by about a year.  I have no record of Barker at Chevy Chase.  There are articles discussing Ross and Travis working here at the same time.  I haven't seen anything to suggest either course was a collaboration.
 
Golf clubs often found architects by relying upon the golfing magazines or catalogs of the day.

I'd venture word of mouth was a stronger source.

Started in November 1908, Walter Travis’ American Golfer was perhaps the most widely read golf magazine in the U.S. at the start of the Golden Age in the years just before WW1.

Golf Magazine and Golfers Magazine started a few years prior to AG, with The Golfer and Outing magazine predating both of those.  In addition, Bendelow and Spalding were producing an annual Official Golf Guide that was widely distributed. 

Travis started putting ads for Barker’s routing services in the magazine and then even more opportunities flooded in. Originally, Barker was the only architect whose services were advertised in American Golfer.


This is a little confusing, as it makes it sound like Travis was the impetus for the ads being placed.  Are we sure Barker didn't do this himself.  And would Travis have let other architects advertise if they'd wanted to?  About the only person I can think of that advertised design services before this date was Bendelow (as early as 1900).

Next, Travis allowed two architects to advertise in American Golfer: H.H. Barker and Donald Ross. In the beginning, Ross was only allowed to advertise as an instructor, but after several months, Ross was allowed to position himself as a course designer.


Allowed seems like a strong word unless there is evidence that indeed Travis only allowed these two men to advertise.  Is it more a case of these two being the only kids on the block?


At the time, Ross seemed to be best known as a great bunker man but he was also building his reputation as a course designer and constructor.


Let's be clear that this is your interpretation of Ross at the time.  There are plenty of accounts from the years around 1913 that describe Ross as more than just a bunker man, including as the "preeminent golf architect in America."

[John Challenger]

I was just reading Mike Cirba's great three-part GCA piece on Walter Travis and NGLA. In the third part of Mike's essay, there is a clipping from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle titled "Sweeping Changes at Garden City Links" on January 7, 1908. Could it be the first time Barker talks in the press about a U.S. golf course?  "H.H. Barker, the new professional from Ireland, says the links, even with the forty-odd new bunkers, is not hard enough yet. Travis, as chairman of the greens committee, is actively supervising the changes."

It's really an extraordinary article. It describes a near insurrection at Garden City led by Walter Travis. Just 15 months before, he had made wholesale changes to the course. "More striking changes are (now) to be made...It is hardly fifteen months since the course was revolutionized."

"The improvements...were made only after months of the keenest agitation, being carefully limited by vote." Inside the clubhouse, it apparently became so heated that the changes were voted on, perhaps one-by-one in order to limit them. "Some of the older members were bitterly opposed to the shifts, before and after, and much unfair comment was printed theron in the press." The changes were made "...despite the ridicule and abuse which abounded in certain quarters."

Into this NYC cauldron lit by his furious competitive drive, Travis brings in a fresh recruit, an innocent amateur just turned golf professional, the 24-year old H.H. Barker. Travis won't let him go on a listening campaign, appease the older members, and win friends in his first 100 days on the job. Instead, Barker is thrust into the spotlight and forced to take sides, and in the newspapers no less. Before he arrived, for at least 15 months, the controversy had spilled out of the club's boardroom and into the newspapers for the public to read and savor. "H.H. Barker, the new professional says the links, even with forty-odd new bunkers, is not hard enough yet."!!

It goes on to say "Travis, as chairman of the greens committee is actively supervising the changes." His friend, Devereaux Emmet's original design is derided. Emmet has little say in the matter. Travis is the whirlwind driving the revolution.

[John Challenger]

Thank you Sven. I think Robert Calton has done the best work on researching and writing about H.H. Barker. He writes about Barker's health issues and he seems dubious that Barker could have written the article that appeared in American Golfer in April 1909. Calton writes about this article saying, "This (article) would seem to be quite an undertaking for a young 26 year old Englishman with only a grammar school education, who had only been in the U.S. - and a golf professional - for a period of eighteen months."

I was looking through early American Golfer magazines, which begin in November 1908. In Travis' fifth issue in March 1909, he goes out of his way to introduce H.H. Barker. Items about him appear in various places. There is one item that describes his amateur golf bona fides and Travis writes, "he is a man of keen observation and pretty wide experience, especially on the other side."

There is an item in another spot which reports that Barker has "recently completed the laying out of new eighteen-hole course for The Richmond (VA.) Country Club...he is now at Portland, Oregon, on a similar mission." Travis may have felt that by sending him on a railroad mission to remote Oregon, Barker couldn't do too much harm.

Then, there is the first commercial advertisement for Barker's services, and for any golf course designer, in the back of the magazine. It says, "I make a specialty of laying out new, and re-arranging old, courses on modern lines."

In the following issue in April 1909, there is the above mentioned bylined article by Barker called "British and American Golfers." In this article, he writes first about how American golfers swing too hard and slash at the ball and try to hit it too far. He gives advice about putting properly. He mentions golf architecture once when he says, "Too many of our courses here are not bunkered sufficiently near the greens and too much opportunity is given for the runner or pitch-and-run shot stroke. On the other side, greens are much more closely guarded and balls have to be pitched with cut - sometimes with decided cut." Travis seemed to refer to the British Isles as "the other side."

[MCirba]

John Challenger,


Thanks for the kind words about the Travis/NGLA series of essays.   Your point about Barker learning under Travis's tutelage while Travis implemented changes to toughen the golf course at Garden City is noted, and this May 1908 New York Tribune article suggests that both Travis and Barker were out on the course with shovels digging bunkers!   

[John Challenger]

Mike, The phrase "pressed into service" is very interesting.

In just five months, Travis added 60 new bunkers at Garden City, from the 40-odd reported in January 1908 to the over-100 new bunkers built by May 1908. He must have worked feverishly, even using shovel and spade himself, to make this happen. H.H. Barker, the new golf professional, was "pressed into service" by Travis in what may well have been the first course construction work of Barker's career.

By March 1909, H.H. Barker was featured throughout American Golfer as an "expert" in laying out courses. Even though it must have been hard for Travis to pass on the golf course design projects coming his way through the magazine, his extraordinary amateur golfing career was still in full swing, which must have been a great source of pride. Travis was still competing at the highest level with golfers nearly half his age. Travis would have put a priority on protecting his amateur status. He needed to find a solution.

Travis had utilized Garden City's previous golf professional, Stewart Gardner, for the same kind of construction work in the summer of 1906 when Travis had first made his revolutionary changes to the Garden City golf course. In late 1906, Gardner had resigned from Garden City in a dispute with Travis over payment he felt he was owed by Travis for club repairs. By January 1907, Gardner was hired by Exmoor in Chicago for the upcoming season.

On January 2, 1907 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported on Gardner's resignation. In the article, the reporter said:  "The Garden City course, because of its prestige and location, is one of the most coveted posts to be found, and the club is likely to have plenty of talent to choose from in deciding upon his successor."

It is remarkable that Garden City, no doubt led by Walter Travis who in the previous summer had won a contentious battle with older members over his golf course overhaul, decided to hire H. H. Barker, a young, successful amateur golfer from the north country of England. Travis was a force of nature. He may have felt that he needed to find someone, perhaps unlike Gardner, who would do his bidding.

[MCirba]

By March 1909, H.H. Barker was featured throughout American Golfer as an "expert" in laying out courses.

John Challenger,


In April of 1908 it was mentioned that Barker had not had an opportunity to play any other US courses besides Garden City since arriving in the states, not even the nearby Salisbury Links in Garden City, but planned to visit Nassau Country Club later that month to play against the professional there.   Through most of that year one could reasonably assume that both men were fairly preoccupied with getting the Garden City course ready for the US Amateur being held there in September.   Tough to imagine that Barker had any real experience outside of working with Travis on the Garden City course by March of 1909.


One thing to keep in mind is that Travis was an "amateur" at a time when the Macdonald-driven USGA was seeking to purge anyone who gave off any hint of "professionalism" and Travis, unlike Macdonald, was not born into wealth and privilege and often walked a very thin line in his dealings, leading to multiple accusations of professionalism for various perceived offenses.   By 1916, near the end of his playing career, Travis finally just gave in and became a professional architect but prior to then he was involved in a LOT of course designs and renovations and the terms of those endeavors is shrouded with time.   


I have a theory I'm looking to substantiate further that Barker was essentially the "professional beard" for Travis's architectural endeavors, whether for profit or to further his passionately held beliefs in "Scientific Architecture", or out of convenience given the challenges of travel schedules to meet demands, at least through the period from 1908 through 1911 when Barker left for Rumson, if not beyond.   More to come.

[Joe Bausch]

Thank you, Mike. I cannot understand the functionality of this discussion board app. Why it does that, in the year 2022, is beyond me.

You’ve figured out how to post in the largest font size of any member here but cannot see when you have a link in 0.5 font?


Must be something in the western NY aqua. Grin.

[John Challenger]

Mike, I think your theory is plausible especially in the beginning in 1909 when he started to get on the train and travel around the country. I would think Barker learned on the job and improved as he did more work. There was a lot of demand and he had the name of Garden City, American Golfer, and Walter Travis' endorsement as his calling card.