Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture Discussion Group => Topic started by: TEPaul on March 25, 2007, 10:51:40 PM
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.....what-all did he contribute to the evolution of golf course architecture in this country, how and why?
I've got a ton of opinons on the subject but I want to see what the feeling is on here.
Just consider, some of them (Emmet, Leeds, Fownes, Macdonald, Wilson, Crump, Thomas) created GCGC, Myopia, Oakmont, NGLA, Merion, PVGC, Riviera, LA C.C, Lakeside, etc, etc, etc.
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I can't think of someone off hand that was an average joe in those years, who wasn't from a pretty well-to-do background, that 'laid out' some course that remains today, can you? I'm thinking of the 'field of dreams guys' that converted the family farm to a course sort of character...
I imagine that golf was too much of an upper class activity in those early years to have some local yokel dream up his one-in-a-lifetime masterpiece...
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RJ:
Every one of those seven guys I listed came from "money". I doubt that gave them the talent although it obviously gave them the "opportunity".
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I would think it was their sales abilities that mattered foremost, given how unsophisticated their fellow golfers / clients were. In which case, those abilities were a gift to us.
Fortunately, unlike their English contemporaries, very few of them apparently were attorneys. In our country, could you imagine what might have happened if the lawyers had got ahold of the game from the start?
Mark
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Those are all impressive names and courses.
But what is forgotten about the era is that there were thousands of new courses being built and virtually all were built by local golf enthusiasts. Very, very few were designed and built by professional architects. Why? Because there were virtually no professional architects around at the time.
Myopia, Oakmont and PVGC weren't unusual because they were built by amateurs. They were unusual because they were good.
I'm talking every town and hamlet. In Athens, Augusta, Atlanta and the little towns in betweeen - places I happen to know something about - each had multiple courses by 1910, none of which had been designed by a professional architect (Bendelow at EL may be a minor exception). All of which courses are now either NLE or were redone by a professional architect later. (Come to think about it, "all" is not true. There are still some pre-1910 remnants out there.)
That is a huge missing chapter in the history of gca. It's like dark matter in physics. It comprises 80% of what's out there but nobody knows anything about it.
Bob
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Bob:
I think the appropriate question might be to ask what those "amateur" architects I mentioned above did differently from the available professinal golf architects who were around at that time?
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Those are all impressive names and courses.
But what is forgotten about the era is that there were thousands of new courses being built and virtually all were built by local golf enthusiasts. Very, very few were designed and built by professional architects. Why? Because there were virtually no professional architects around at the time.
Myopia, Oakmont and PVGC weren't unusual because they were built by amateurs. They were unusual because they were good.
I'm talking every town and hamlet. In Athens, Augusta, Atlanta and lots of little towns in betweeen - places I happen to know something about - each had multiple courses by 1910, none of which had been designed by a professional architect (Bendelow at EL may be a minor exception). All of which are now either NLE or were rebuilt by a professional architect later.
That is a huge missing chapter in the history of gca. It's like dark matter in physics. It comprises 80% of what's out there but nobody knows anything about it.
Bob
Well stated Bob.
Ciao
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TE,
I have no specifics to offer, but this general observation:
I believe the word "amateur" comes from the Latin "to love". I think that, at a very basic level, what those "founding fathers" you mention did was to infuse and stamp the game with a spirit that hasn't yet left it.
That is, in giving sometimes years and years of dedicated attention and service to their golf course designs, and this out of nothing but a love for the game and those courses, they spoke volumes to future generations (which sometimes listened and sometimes not):
They said "this is a game like no other, one tied to its fields of play in a most profound way, and those fields of play are worthy of the utmost attention, which attention will reward ten-fold future generations of golfers".
The actions and attentions of those amateur founding fathers said, in short, "this is an important thing". I think it was that stamp and spirit that lived on, leading not only to the birth of the professional architect, but to the eventual re-emergence of the idea that golf's fields of play are unique and valuable expressions.
Hope that doesn't sound too hippy-skippy; it wasn't meant to.
Peter
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Bob:
I think the appropriate question might be to ask what those "amateur" architects I mentioned above did differently from the available professinal golf architects who were around at that time?
Tom -
Yes, that is the question.
First, what professional architects worked in the US between 1900 and 1910? Even Ross didn't view himself at that time as a professional archie. That came a couple of years later. Was Tillie working that early? I'm having trouble visualizing the pool of available "professional" talent circa 1905. Or if there even was a pool.
Second, and the real question, is what influenced the good amateur designers? What distinguished them from other local enthusiasts who built the other 1,000 courses of the era that have since sunk into oblivion?
Good question. Hard question. Big question.
Bob
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Bob:
I think the appropriate question might be to ask what those "amateur" architects I mentioned above did differently from the available professinal golf architects who were around at that time?
Tom -
Yes, that is the question.
First, what professional architects worked in the US between 1900 and 1910? Even Ross didn't view himself at that time as a professional archie. That came a couple of years later. Was Tillie working that early? I'm having trouble visualizing the pool of available "professional" talent circa 1905. Or if there even was a pool.
Second, and the real question, is what influenced the good amateur designers? What distinguished them from other local enthusiasts who built the other 1,000 courses of the era that have since sunk into oblivion?
Good question. Hard question. Big question.
Bob
I'll take a stab at these...
1) It is very difficult to sell something that has no measurable monetary value. In 1900, how many people within a concentrated area would put a specific dollar value on the priveledge of playing golf here in the US? Hence, the organized development of gold courses was to immature an industry to have many people trying to make a living at building those courses. My instinct is that most clubs would find a member interested in the game to lay out what they thought were interesting holes.
2) They were the better players...everyone knows the best players have the best eye for good and great architecture...
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In my opinion, the differences between the "amateurs" and "professionals," at least in the early years of American design, were two-fold:
First, they were not necessarily governed by rules of design. They had almost all spent time studying the British seaside courses and were well versed in golf strategy, but there were no real conventions as to how to design a course. It's not as though the defied convention, but rather, they created them. Their designs generally only go against our modern standards, and ironically, that is one of the reasons that we seem to love them. But we probably couldn't "get away" with building them under today's rules and conventions.
Second, these were generally men of stong character. They were, as stated, wealthy, and some were giants in their actual professions (hotels, steel, etc.). Men of this nature rarely take no for an answer, and are often autocratic, if not dictatorial in their business style. They do things their way because they believe it is right, not because such is the conventional way of doing things. If that upsets people, then those people will simply have to deal with it.
These men contributed greatness to the game, but rarely can we create courses like these today. A modern Oakmont, Merion, etc, might be viewed as quirky, or different (in the bad sense), or, heaven forbid, "unfair." For similar reasons that the masses like McDonalds, we tend to flock to comforting golf courses, ones that don't scare us, or ones where we might be able to score well. Perhaps their greatness lies simply in the general unwillingness to compromise an ideal, whereas the modern world is almost necessarily overflowing with compromise.
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JES II -
Certainly better players layed out many of those courses. But a lot of times it was just the guy who owned the land or started the club.
The elephant in the room here is the enormous social snobbism that attached the golf early on. It's what drove the early growth of golf. It was a status game and the quality of the golf was subordinate to the status of being in a club. (Not that things have changed a heck of a lot.)
With the obvious exceptions, the quality of the course was not the big deal. It was only later, when having a good course also came to have social status, that people started redoing their quaint little homemade courses.
Some back of the envelope historical analysis.
Bob
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Let me ask again because I'm curious and don't have my books around.
Who were the professional architects practicing their craft in the US circa 1905?
Ross didn't start doing architecture full time until later. I'm having trouble coming up with names. Tillie? Bendelow was more a promoter of the game than someone in the design business per se.
Bob
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Bob
I hadn't realized that the "social" aspect of the game-course-club was that important that early one, especially for the hundreds of quaint little course built by local, amateur enthusiasts. If that's the case, there seems to have been a 4-way split in those days:
1) The noteworthy amateurs like the ones TE mentions off the top, who -- if the time they spent on designing and refining their courses is any indication -- cared deeply about the quality of their course (and the game to be played on it), even if there was some social aspect involved in their pursuit;
2) The less noteworthy amateurs, who built hundreds of now-forgotten courses (either quickly or slowly, but I'm guessing fairly quickly) primarily driven by the social aspect of the game;
3) The less-noteworthy amateurs, perhaps numbering very few, who shared the love and commitment of the noteworthy ones, and also tried to design quality and lasting golf courses -- but failed; and
4) The earliest professionals, who might've built their courses quickly or slowly, with care or without, with a focus on either the social or design aspect of the game (or a little of both) and in the pursuit money or honour (or a little of both).
I don't know where that gets us, but if it's a good description it means that answers to TE's initial questions seem a very complex affair. Here's a simplistic answer:
The amateur designers of GCGC, Myopia, Oakmont, NGLA, Merion, PVGC, Riviera etc had three qualities that set them apart all others: vision, dedication, and talent - in that order.
Peter
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By 1904, there were 31 USGA associated clubs and 257 affiliated clubs, not to mention the ones under the radar. By then, who was considered an amateur architect and who was the professional?
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Bob, although Tilly probably would have wanted to do design courses, it wasn't until 1909 that his good friend, C.C. Worthington, gave him the opportunity to create his first course at Shawnee which opened in the spring of 1911.
For what it's worth, he was 34 years old at the time.
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The Foulis' were busy in the midwest starting in the mid 1890's.
Alex Smith was here designing courses in thee late 1890's.
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Didn't Robert White get here in the mid-1890's and start working on some east coast courses?
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Sorry, those guys were Scottish.
There was a family in landscaping in Chicago that did some early Golf courses.
I believe it is Simmons, but have seen some different spellings of the name in early articles.
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Athens GA is an interesting case study in the missing dark matter in the history of gca.
In 1930, Athens had a population of less than 10,000. It had four courses. Two organized by old line Confederate families, a new course organized by a nouveau riche type and designed by Ross in ('25-Athens CC) and a club with a primarily Jewish membership. (There seems to have been a fifth, but nobody could tell me what the deal was there.)
All but the Ross course were designed by locals between 1900 and 1910.
By 1950, only one course remained, Athens CC.
I suspect Athens was pretty typical. There were a huge number of courses designed and built by amateurs in the US. Few joined the USGA. I doubt they were of any architectural distinction. But they were there and people played lots of golf on them.
For this and other reasons I sometimes think that the face of American golf courses pre-1930 would be something of a shock to us today.
The courses we talk about here that were designed by the famous Golden Age designers are the thin top layer of a very big cake.
Bob
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Bob,
Tom Bendelow wasn't American by birth but came to America for a newspaper job, not a 'golf professional' job, at a young age. He stayed in America for his entire golfing career.
He was very active in early 1900s and was manager of Van Cortlandt Park.
Bendelow designed many courses in the mid west and would have been considered a 'professional'.
John
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John -
Agreed about Bendelow.
My question is simply who were the people working as professional architects in the US (without regard to their country of birth) during the first 20 years of golf in the US. Say, 1890 to 1910.
It seems that there were very few of 'em. Which suggests that almost all the early American courses were local amateur jobs. Because there were a lot of new courses built during those years.
My guess is that that had a big impact in the direction of US gca and helps explain why it diverged early on from UK gca.
But at this point I'm too tired from work to try on an answer my own questions.
Bob
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"Tom -
Yes, that is the question.
First, what professional architects worked in the US between 1900 and 1910? Even Ross didn't view himself at that time as a professional archie. That came a couple of years later. Was Tillie working that early? I'm having trouble visualizing the pool of available "professional" talent circa 1905. Or if there even was a pool."
Bob:
That's an excellent question and obviously a good place to start. It hadn't exactly occurred to me but this most certainly is a very important question if we are going to attempt to track the history and evolution of American golf course architecture. Perhaps we should begin to construct our lists that reflect as best as can be known who it was exactly who worked professionally over here in the 1890s, 1900s, and even into the teens. Maybe the best method would be to just go through C&W alphabetically and see who comes up from that. I think we will find all the "usual suspects" of immigrant Scottish, English or even Australian player/pro/greenkeeper/club-maker/teacher/architects.
Here they are out of C&W:
Herbert Barker
Tom Bendelow,
Harry Collis,
George Cumming,
James Dagleish,
Seymour Dunn,
John Duncan Dunn,
Willie Dunn Jr,
Willie Davis,
Devereux Emmet,
Arthur Fenn,
Alex Findlay,
James Foulis,
Robert Foulis,
Walter Fovargue,
Robert Johnstone,
George Low Sr,
Norman MacBeth,
Charles Maud,
George O’Neil,
John Park,
Willie Park Jr,
Robert Pryde,
Donald Ross,
Herbert Strong,
A.W. Tillinghast,
Walter Travis,
William Tucker,
H.J. Tweedie,
Willie Watson,
Bert Way,
Robert White,
George Wright.
All the foregoing apparently did architecture professionally in the teens or before in America.
“Second, and the real question, is what influenced the good amateur designers? What distinguished them from other local enthusiasts who built the other 1,000 courses of the era that have since sunk into oblivion?
Good question. Hard question. Big question.”
They certainly are good questions, Bob.
It seems to me one of the primary things that influenced those great early “amateurs” who produced the great courses mentioned above is just about all of them took the time early on to go over and study the linksland and particularly the early heathland architecture before launching into their projects which were notably very limited in number.
And I think the thing that distinguished most of the foregoing early “amateurs” mentioned above who produced such great courses from the early professionals mentioned above was simply that almost none of those professionals spent anywhere near the amount of time on their projects that all those early “amateurs” mentioned above did.
We are generally probably talking a few days or weeks at most with the early professionals compared to literal years or even decades for those early "amateurs" mentioned above.
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Bob:
Now I guess the thing to do is to pick a year---say 1915 or 1919 and look at the courses in America at that time that were considered to be the best and look at who (amateur or professional) it was who designed and built them and how.
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I think the biggest factor in much of this is "staying power"....
It wasn't necessarily that the best architect's work survived and grew as much as it was the financial condition of the clubs that could survive. Of course there are always the few exceptions but it is amazing to me how good an architect can become to most people when he has a good supt with a proper budget and the patina and maturity that comes to a course with years of such behind it.....JMO
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MikeY:
I thought you were going to say that any "amateur" architect was and is inherently a turd and should not even put himself in the same zip code as a professional---at which point I was going to come down there and beat the tar out of you. It would've been convenient since, as you know, I'm coming down there anyway next week.
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MikeY:
I thought you were going to say that any "amateur" architect was and is inherently a turd and should not even put himself in the same zip code as a professional---at which point I was going to come down there and beat the tar out of you. It would've been convenient since I'm coming down there anyway next week.
Tom Paul,
A few things you should know b4 coming here
1. yes, you are a turd when you cross the city limit sign
2. We burned Atlanta ourselves
3. Deliverance and the sexual experience it portrayed was not a lie but a fact of life for turds down here
I think you will enjoy your stay...
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tom,
I think what you will enjoy most of your trip to the Masters is the NO SMOKING policy they have while on the property.....just another reason it is one of the best tournaments around.....
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No smoking at the Masters?
Bullshit.
I'm a recon Marine, MikeY. I know how to smoke and field-strip and eat the filter so they enemy never knows it happened.
What about pissing at the Masters?
If you can't piss on a golf course it definitely deserves to plummet right off the top 100. That type of criteria is in the Top 100 ranking, isn't it?
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No smoking at the Masters?
Bullshit.
I'm a recon Marine, MikeY. I know how to smoke and field-strip and eat the filter so they enemy never knows it happened.
What about pissing at the Masters?
If you can't piss on a golf course it definitely deserves to plummet right off the top 100. That type of criteria is in the Top 100 ranking, isn't it?
A true Recon Marine would not risk smoking in the first place if in a situation....
you will find the restrooms quite accomodating
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"A true Recon Marine would not risk smoking in the first place if in a situation...."
Yeah, you're probably right about that, and that's why the recons aren't what they were back in the 1960s.
"you will find the restrooms quite accomodating"
Restrooms on golf courses are both unecessary and unnatural!
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Restrooms on golf courses are both unecessary and unnatural!
Tom,
You are correct again...so just go where ever you please while at the tournament.....it will be an "overlooked" and "small" event I am sure
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John -
Agreed about Bendelow.
My question is simply who were the people working as professional architects in the US (without regard to their country of birth) during the first 20 years of golf in the US. Say, 1890 to 1910.
It seems that there were very few of 'em. Which suggests that almost all the early American courses were local amateur jobs. Because there were a lot of new courses built during those years.
Bob
Bob,
TP's lists looks very complete and I did not find any others in C&W book.
Is there an estimate on the number of courses that existed year by year ?
C&W states 80 courses in 1896 and then 982 by 1900 in the US. Doing a monster of a SWAG, it would seem about 3/4 would have been done by amateurs.
But after this initial boom, I would guess that most courses would have been done by 'professionals' as the game grew out of mowing the pasture, putting in some chocolate drops architecture, and cutting 9 or 18 holes.
Look at Bendelow's list again. It looks like his goal was to prevent any amateurs from getting a chance to do any work. He designed many, many courses in 1900-1910. Just look at the volume, depth, and areal extent of his work. And most were 9 hole courses. He was also re-modeling during that period. He went to over 30 states in early 1900s and designed over 250 courses.
Maybe the amateurs did the courses if your town didn't have a railroad for a Bendelow visit.
With TP's list, which includes Bendelow, I'm not sure how much would have been done by any amateurs after 1900.
My guess is much, much less work by amateurs after the very early period 1896-1900.
Certainly by 1910, the amateurs were 'out' in the major metropolitian areas. And while CBM was an 'amateur' I don't consider him an amateur as an architect.
John
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Add to Mr. Paul's list (design/build pre-1910):
Alex Smith
Jack Daray
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John -
Agreed about Bendelow.
My question is simply who were the people working as professional architects in the US (without regard to their country of birth) during the first 20 years of golf in the US. Say, 1890 to 1910.
It seems that there were very few of 'em. Which suggests that almost all the early American courses were local amateur jobs. Because there were a lot of new courses built during those years.
Bob
Bob,
TP's lists looks very complete and I did not find any others in C&W book.
Is there an estimate on the number of courses that existed year by year ?
C&W states 80 courses in 1896 and then 982 by 1900 in the US. Doing a monster of a SWAG, it would seem about 3/4 would have been done by amateurs.
But after this initial boom, I would guess that most courses would have been done by 'professionals' as the game grew out of mowing the pasture, putting in some chocolate drops architecture, and cutting 9 or 18 holes.
Look at Bendelow's list again. It looks like his goal was to prevent any amateurs from getting a chance to do any work. He designed many, many courses in 1900-1910. Just look at the volume, depth, and areal extent of his work. And most were 9 hole courses. He was also re-modeling during that period. He went to over 30 states in early 1900s and designed over 250 courses.
Maybe the amateurs did the courses if your town didn't have a railroad for a Bendelow visit.
With TP's list, which includes Bendelow, I'm not sure how much would have been done by any amateurs after 1900.
My guess is much, much less work by amateurs after the very early period 1896-1900.
Certainly by 1910, the amateurs were 'out' in the major metropolitian areas. And while CBM was an 'amateur' I don't consider him an amateur as an architect.
John
I assume by "amateur" you mean golf professionals.
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Ralph,
What is an amateur ? In my context, I was thinking of the fellow who didn't make his living, and was not heavily involved, in course design. It would be someone who did a limited number of courses and was done. The course could be world famous or one that was abandoned in a few years.
The 'architect' could be the local golf professional or local amateur champion who was 'done' after working on a few courses.
From TPs initial list, I would think that Leeds, Fownes, Wilson, Crump would be 'amateurs.' These are amateurs in the sense that I thought Bob was approaching the subject.
In the overall context of the thousand of courses created in the early 1900s, very few were done by amateurs of the status of Leeds, Fownes, Wilson, and Crump. But, maybe many were done by the local pro or local amateur who we may never know.
If the number of courses, 86 in 1895 and then 982 in 1900, is correct in C&W, then about 900 courses were built in the early boom.
The list of architectural credits from C&W seems pretty comprehensive even in the early days. This book seems to fall very short of 900 architectural credits in the US from 1895 to 1900.
Seemingly then, many were designed by folks who didn't go on to design many more courses, did not establish even a regional name, and did not develop as an architect as we know that profession today.
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It seems that part of the amateur architects job was to inform the client of what they wanted, whereas the professional architect was hired to provide the client what he wanted. Although that may be too broad a generalization.
I just get the sense that the amateur architect had more freedom and autonomy. For one thing he was working for free, and in many cases he was a good golfer too. In either case, the expectations of golfers in those pioneer years were not developed, and this allowed all of the early architects, amateur and professional alike, to work without as much interferance; they were the experts, and in those days when you wanted something done well you secured the services of an expert and you trusted his judgement.
It just seems that the amateur, was given the most generous measure of trust in those times.
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John -
Bendelow "did" a lot of courses during the era, but I'm not sure what "did" means.
His primary mission was to promote golf on behalf of his boss The Spalding Sporting Goods Company. His secondary mission was to design as many golf courses as possible.
So I'm not sure where he fits. He gets a bit of a bad rap. He did some good courses and, I understand, actually oversaw the construction of some and, in some cases, hung around long enough to worry about design quality.
But his main mission was quantity. He was not paid by the clubs but by Spalding. He was there less to share his design expertise than to show a club where their holes ought to go.
My guess is that even as late as 1910, most new courses were still handmade jobs. And there were a ton of courses built during that decade.
But I'm winging it. I'll dig through C&W tonight.
It is an understudied era with some unique forces at play. You had a booming US economy, clubs with money to burn, a wildly popular sport and very few experts to show them how to build golf courses. So most of them just made something up as best they could.
Bob
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Bob,
Bendelow did as much 'field work' as any architect in those days, including Findlay, White & Ross, as C&W briefly discusses. 'Did' in the early American days would mean staking out the greens (routing), tees, hazards and leaving construction to others.
If you look thorugh SEGL, you find quite a few references which are somewhat tedious to sort through. Found his name quite a bit but really no description of the work to any extent, or for any architect for the numerous and less glamerous courses.
While much or all was done for Spalding, another prolofic designer Alex Findlay also worked for Spalding, Wanamaker, and a Florida railroad company. JD Dunn also did work for the railroads. However it was done, the work was done.
Bendelow later taught at U of Illinois so he learned something. Plus he never drank, observed the Sabbath, and maybe remembered to 'stake out' 9 holes rather than 8 ;).
Much of the work was primitive in those days (1895-1910) by comparison to the process used later, like in the 1920s.
A new 9 hole course was often laid in a day or two. C&W reports that the Country Club budgeted $50 to build its first 6 holes, whatever 'builds' means.
Maybe the rich amateur architects, such as Leeds at Myopia, Macdonald at NGLA, set the stage for the period of the 1920s when American architecture became more formalized. In the 1895-1910 period, the work was certainly less involved then the model developed in the 1920s.
Maybe as you alluded, when the economic boom spread, the methods of the 1895-1910 were much less used more money became available.
Maybe everyone believed Macdonald and others when he ranked his course as the best and others decided to make more of the whole 'design' effort.
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"Certainly by 1910, the amateurs were 'out' in the major metropolitian areas. And while CBM was an 'amateur' I don't consider him an amateur as an architect."
John:
To use the term "amateur architect" correctly in this thread I think we need to attempt to use it as best we can in as much of the context of the way they used the term back then.
So what did it mean to them back then?
First of all, obviously an "amateur" in those days was one that did not benefit financially IN ANY WAY from golf and that included playing, teaching, architecture and even writing---the latter perhaps more theoretical than actual.
But back in those days the Americans and the USGA were really stringent on what the term and concept of "amateurism" meant and what the term and concept of "professionalism" meant in golf generally. The USGA appeared to be much more stringent on amateurism than the other side.
It was not until around 1920 that the USGA Amateur Status code made an exception for professional golf architects. Essentially that let off the hook the likes of Tillinghast, Travis and perhaps Emmet. Quimet too, although they questioned his amateur status for his relationship with a sporting goods store, not for architecture.
But the others such as Macdonald, Crump, Wilson, Fownes, Thomas, Behr, maybe Hunter etc never took a dime for anything they did in golf course architecture.
They obviously never did because they didn't want to compromise their amateur playing status but they all also seemed to believe a so-called "amateur sportsman" just should not profit from the game in any way. The fact that most of those mentioned were independently wealthy might have had something to do with it too, although that was never mentioned. ;)
But it struck me as significant the extent Alan Wilson went to in his report on the creation of Merion in explaining that the club did not use an "architect"---that they only used "amateurs" (The Merion Construction Committee that included amateur members including Hugh Wilson) and "sportsmen" (referring to Macdonald and Whigam) to design and build their course.
It almost appeared from the tone of Wilson's report that the term "architect" denoted professionalism.
So it's interesting to reflect on exactly what they meant by the term "amateur" or "amateur sportsman" or even the term "architect" in those early days.
One thing they apparently did not mean by the term "amateur" in architecture was someone who necessarily did not have the knowledge or the talent of the professional architects of that time.
Thomas made that pretty clear when he described Hugh Wilson as one of the most talented in architecture in America whether amateur or professional.
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TE
I've been reading a little in the archives about the period and issues you describe here (mostly in the NY Times archives, which I know can't be considered a 'definitive' source). Three things strike me: 1) how rarely the term architect is even used, let alone the distinction made between the amateur and professional architect, 2) how the marked exception is CB Macdonald, who gets mentioned constantly, and in reference to anything even remotely golf-related, and 3) how prominently Emmet and Tillinghast figure in the USGA debate about amateurism, going back to about 1916-1917; yes, officially it was because they were also 'players', but there seems to be a sense that they were 'symbolic' (for the USGA) of the new/emerging concept of 'professionalism' in American golf...and that, whether this new professionalism manifested itself in terms of playing the game or designing the courses, the USGA wanted to nip it in the bud.
Peter
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Peter:
You should know that C.B. Macdonald I believe was still on the board of the USGA in the teens and appears to have been a staunch supporter of strict rules on the amateur status question. Macdonald also seemed to be one helluva parlimentarian offering all kinds of nuancy motions and amendments. He seemed to like that kind of organizational give and take although he did state that, in his opinion, the indicator of success of an organization like the USGA was how little it had to deal with. ;)
In my opinion, Macdonald was the man on the early USGA that was probably more imbued with the Scottish (or St Andrews) "spirit" of the game than any other.
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TE
thanks.
The "bifurcation" of golf course architecture in America seems to have started right from the start.
I can imagine Macdonald feeling that only an 'amateur' could afford to spend the vast amounts of time a quality design required. He had St. Andrews as his ideal model, and that took decades/centuries to "get right"... so what was a few years spent on a course here in America in comparison.
Meanwhile, "green committees" were laying out new courses by the hundreds, and quickly...but those were a different kind of amateur
Peter
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You're pushing me Peter.
Push me far enough and I'm just going to come right out and say it! ;)
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The "bifurcation" of golf course architecture in America seems to have started right from the start.
I can imagine Macdonald feeling that only an 'amateur' could afford to spend the vast amounts of time a quality design required. He had St. Andrews as his ideal model, and that took decades/centuries to "get right"... so what was a few years spent on a course here in America in comparison.
Meanwhile, "green committees" were laying out new courses by the hundreds, and quickly...but those were a different kind of amateur
Peter - I disagree a bit. Yes there was a sort of bifurcation.
Certainly there were regional differences. The NE had more money and a longer connection with the game. Thus people spent more time and money on the early courses there.
It was different in the SE, MW and W. The vast majority of courses built up to 1910 were homemade jobs. They never joined the USGA and they don't show up in C&W. And most were gone by WWII (or totally rebuilt).
But without regard to region, the thing that disinguishes early American golf architecture is that everyone - from C. B. MacD on Long Island to Otey the cotton farmer in Georgia - everyone thought that they were perfectly capable of building a golf course. Without the assistance of professionals. Even when they had the money - and MacD, Fownes, Wilson, Leeds, all of them had the money to hire the best professional designers in the world - they didn't do so.
I don't think the British had the same attitude.
All this points to one of the reasons why American golf courses have always been - from the very beginning - different from golf courses in the UK. Americans (for better or worse) figured they could build them themselves.
However you may bifurcate early American gca, the one attitude everyone shared, from MacD the aristocrat to Otey the redneck, was that they thought could (and they did) build 'em themselves. And that made a big difference in how gca evolved in the US and the UK, I suspect.
Bob
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Since the topic has tipped toward early courses, 1900 or so, I would like to add a tidbit here.
While Bendelow was derided by some for his 'simple methods' according to C&W, a review of his work at Van Cordlandt & in NYC might suggest otherwise.
USGA bulletin provides a good read on Bendelow's work at Van Cortlandt. He did quite a bit of work in remodeling the course as it would called today. Moved tees, greens, strategically placed bunkers, etc. He was also on site for the work. Tom 'did' a lot at Van Cortlandt. The article was long, and clearly held up the work as some sort of model for the cities.
You can also note the inferences in the bulletin that other cities would soon be following the lead of NYC in using what I would call a 'professional.'
Another bulletin provides that Bendelow had the best plans for another NYC course 'Fox Hill.' It implied some sort of a review of plans or competition if you will. It is clear that those in charge thought Tom had the best plan. Bendelow also had the 'staying power' as he went on to design many, many more courses.
At least in the bulletins, you definitely get the feel of the 'professional' (yet to be called an architect) was the way to go, to have a proper course.
Most of the northeast and the midwest (Chicago) work may have been tipping toward mostly 'professional work' by very early 1900s.
Having said that, we still have courses in east Tennessee being designed today by amateurs in a midsize (400,000) metro area like Knoxville.
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You're pushing me Peter.
Push me far enough and I'm just going to come right out and say it! ;)
TE
only because you don't know me very well, the worst thing I could push you to say is "Peter P, you don't know the first damn thing about early golf course architecture." To which I'd reply "Whew, I'm glad someone said it - it takes the weight right off my shoulders." But I AM hoping it's about something else.... :)
Peter
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"But without regard to region, the thing that disinguishes early American golf architecture is that everyone - from C. B. MacD on Long Island to Otey the cotton farmer in Georgia - everyone thought that they were perfectly capable of building a golf course. Without the assistance of professionals."
Bob C
A couple of questions about that interesting comment:
1) It doesn't seem to have been "arrogance" exactly that had them thinking that....or was it? (I mean, Macdonald at least was singing the praises of the Scottish courses, if not exactly 'defering' to them)
2) Does the large number of quickly-forgotten or totally re-built courses you mentioned earlier mean that most early American architects were flat-out wrong, i.e. they COULDN'T build the courses themselves?
Thanks
Peter
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"TE
only because you don't know me very well, the worst thing I could push you to say is "Peter P, you don't know the first damn thing about early golf course architecture." To which I'd reply "Whew, I'm glad someone said it - it takes the weight right off my shoulders." But I AM hoping it's about something else.... :)
Peter:
Not at all.
Don't sell yourself short---you have asked more great questions and made more good points on here recently than almost anyone else on this website
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Tom,
Wasn't Neville a good amateur golfer, who had never before designed a course, when he was asked to design Pebble?
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Bob:
Yes he was. He won the California State Amateur a bunch of times. He sold real estate for the Pacific Improvement Company that was managed by Samuel Morse. Morse then bought about 3,500 acres that was what we know today as Seventeen Mile Drive, and Morse got Neville and Douglas Grant (another California State Amateur Champion) to build the Del Monte Golf and Country Club in 1918 that later became known as Pebble Beach.
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I had forgotten about Neville. Another good example.
Peter -
It's hard to think of CBM as humble. Everything about him was arrogant. In matters of gca, he wanted to take the best holes from Europe and make them better. It's uniquely American to think that way.
But my point about the early amateurs is simply that they had the self confidence to do it themselves. Even when they had the resources to hire tried and true professionals. Which was also uniquely American.
As it happened, some did their homework and things turned out well. Others didn't (or didn't know there was such a thing as homework) and things didn't turn out so well.
The larger point is that it has always been part of American gca that the layman had a hands on attitude. A Viennese would not suggest improvements to a Mozart concerto. A Parisian would not ask for fixes to a Matisse. But, heck, people started changing MacK courses before he had left the grounds. (I appreciate that the parallels aren't strictly apt here, but you get my drift.)
Bob
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I saw a guest looking at this thread in a feature of GOLFCLUBATLAS I didn't remember existed. I'm bringing this thread up to the front again for the reason I want to read through it again and I want it near the front while I try to learm better how to use the search engine on this website. You can't believe how I used to try to find threads on here----a real manual struggle just going back in time through the pages looking at every title.
There are some impressive posts on this thread, particularly from Bob Crosby! He has done a comprehensive and very impressive study of this subject and written on it extremely well. One of his articles published abroad was recently singled out and recognized and I think republished.