Tom - I don't understand why you want me to chime in on the drinking side of Macdonald's life? Certainly he drank and was often did lots of other things much worse - was tillie even worse as well as others
If you like to hang out his dirty laundry, fine with me - I'm not into it beyond occasionally referring to it.
His "story" is about his contribution to the game - and they were huge - his drinking etc (and there was a lot of etc that I know about and will not talk about) is a sidebar to his life.
About Raynor after he went on his own:
page 206 - Scotland's Gift - Golf:
Macdonalds (first about Sleepy Hollow, obviously one of my favorite subject these days - sorry, I can't resist this one: "..... James A Stillman's friends lassoed me to lay out a golf course in Sleepy Hollow. It seemed an almost impossible task to carry through; because we were told that William Rockefeller would not consent to any trees being removed. I was almost inclined to throw up the task. However, at a meeting which Cooper Hewitt, Jim Whigham (oh no, him again), and I had with William Rockefeller and Frank Vanderlip, I was given a free hand. This was a hard task for Raynor in appalling summer heat (I guess he was having cool drinks while good old Seth was out there working around all the stone outcroppings)."
... but to my main point about Macdonald's influence on Raynor's work - this spoken by the "man" himself:
"Next came St. Louis Country Club, then the White Sulphur Springs layout, and then finally came the colossal task of the Lido at Long Beach. By this time Raynor had become had become postgraduate in golfing architecture, and since 1917 (until this book was written in 1927) built or reconstructed some 100 to 150 courses, which I have never seen. The Mid-Ocean Club, the Yale Golf Club, the Links Golf Course, the Gibson Island Golf Course, the Deepdale, and the Crook Club were the only ones I gave any personal attention to after 1917.
Raynor built courses in every climate, in Puerto Rico (gb: Berwind), the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), three or four in Florida (gb: I know those), two in California (gb: well I know of one for sure?), and numberless elsewhere (gb: don't you love the word numberless?). he was a world builder. I had given him all my plans and ONLY OCCASIONALLY WAS I ASKED FOR ADVICE.
Sad to relate he died ere his prime at Palm Beach in 1925 (gb: Jan. 1926) while building a course there for Paris Singer (gb: no, not Everglades Club but the Winter Club). Raynor was a great loss to th community, but a still greater loss to me. I admired him from every point of view."