The Beginning of the USGA Green Section

[TEPaul]

The events leading up to the creation of the USGA Green Section are very interesting. So are the people involved and what concerned them about American golf, particularly its agronomy and to some extent its architecture.

Most of it was about lack of reliable information---particularly information on agronomy. There was nowhere to turn other than to other clubs that came before. There was initially no centralized research being done and the people who became so concerned felt that all in all this was costing American golf millions of dollars as one  club after another made the same mistakes.

They also felt the numerous commercial seed merchants were nigh on fraudulent and their products wholly unreliable as to what grass they were selling.

There is even a brief glimmer of what some of them, in this case, Alan Wilson, thought of professional architects of the time, as well as some greenskeepers and agronomist going commercial.

And so, beginning around the end of 1920 the precusor to the USGA Green Section, The USGA Green Committee, was set up in conjunction with a few botanists from the US Dept of Agriculture.

The idea for the USGA Green Section may've come from Columbia GC's (Washington) Walter Harban, and the USGA website seems to say that it was E.J. Marshall who broached the subject but it sure looks to me like the one who really got it going was Merion's Hugh I. Wilson even though he certainly was working eventually in concert with Harban and Marshall. And as soon as it was approved and set up he got sick and resigned both from the USGA Board and from the new Green Section Committee, essentially putting his brother Alan in his place.

There is some interesting information in all this years-long correspondence leading up to the establishment of the USGA Green Section and afterwards even including some pretty interesting information and/or implications about C.B. Macdonald as well as what may've been ailing him around those times.

I think one needs to read all of this in its entirety to understand what was really going on back then and why in the minds of some pretty important people in golf.

It's quite a story and a fascinating history. Things back then were certainly nothing like they are now and we need to appreciate the extent of it, I think.

[Phil McDade]

Tom:

Interesting you should post this - I'm in the middle of "The Evangelist of Golf," and George has an entire page devoted to Macdonald's failure (after spending so much time on hole design and research, and actual construction) to think about turf issues on greens. Macdonald set up two nurseries, one apparently on-site at NGLA, and went about researching what specific grass seeds, and more importantly seed mixtures, would work in the soil of LI.

Given Macdonald's stature in the game, and importantly the stature of NGLA, it wouldn't surprise me if the early superintendents (or whatever role was assigned to maintenance by early golf courses) visited NGLA and Macdonald's nurseries to learn about his pioneering work.

[Joe Bausch]

Tom,

    I've been waiting for a thread where I thought this post might sort of fit in!  This from the March 14, 1924 edition of the Public Ledger:

[JESII]

Tom,

That E.J. Marshall reference...do they mention a club affiliation anywhere?

[Dick Kirkpatrick]

C.E. (Robbie) Robinson was involved with the agronomy section of the USGA and almost singularly responsible for the same section with the RCGA (Canada)

He would visit golf clubs (courses) and offer advice (usually free of charge) to the greenkeepers, and nearly always be a speaker at the newly formed annual meetings of the greenkeepers conventions.

The early conventions (late 1950's to early 1960's) were held at the University of Guelph, where both Robbie and Robert Moote were graduates.

I would add that Geoff Cornish and Howard Watson were also involved, especially in the RCGA greens section development.

When I was building a golf course in Brampton, Ontario in 1960, Robbie handed me a copy of the latest (maybe the first) USGA specifications for rootzone (greenmix) material and underdrainage (not perched)

I have seen these specifications changed many times...............................

[TEPaul]

"Tom,
That E.J. Marshall reference...do they mention a club affiliation anywhere?"

Sully:

E.J. Marshall was from Inverness CC, Toledo, Ohio.

I bet you're wondering if it was Ed Marshall from HVGC weren't you?   


DickK:

At first USGA Green Committee member clubs included Canadian Clubs and the USGA/Dept of Agriculture guys were hoping to include Canada but Canada decided to create their own Green Section.

[JESII]

Sure...he was the guy that gave (or sold, don't know) the land HVCC is built on today...

[Bradley Anderson]

Tom,

I have been spending a lot   of time in the USGA Green Section archives and I find it all so incredibly fascinating. And now I have found out how to access the Michigan State Turfgrass Information File.

Anyways I'm getting to the point where I feel I am ready to find answers to  questions that anyone may have about the original old agronomy practices.

[TEPaul]

"Anyways I'm getting to the point where I feel I am ready to find answers to  questions that anyone may have about the original old agronomy practices."


Bradley:

It's sure impossible to miss, isn't it, that both grubs and brown spot seemed to be a massive ongoing summertime problem practically everywhere? And one can't deny those guys who set up the USGA Green Section sure didn't have any trust in those early seed merchants. It's pretty clear to see those guys were definitely hoping to save American golf a lot of potentially wasteful expense.

[John Gosselin]

Just a side note to the article Joe B. posted from March 1924.

On September 14th 1925 at Whitemarsh Valley CC the Philadelphia Area Golf Course Superintendents Association officially meet for the first time as a group. I wonder what the connection is between the two groups or are they one and the same.

We are the oldest continually operating local superintendents association in the country.

I have a copy of the minutes to that first meeting somewhere. I will locate and see who was in attendance.

[JNagle]

Tom -

Another individual worth looking into is, Robert White.  Robert White the golf architect really was one of the first to wear many hats here in the US.  Coming here in the late 1890's he started as a pro/clubmaker then as a greenkeeper.  During his time (early 1900's) in Chicago, greenkeeper/pro at Ravisloe, he attended the "Farmer's School" meeting at the Univ. of Wisconsin (1902 - 1912).  Upon returning East to the Westchester area he was the first to employ crop agriculture techniques for golf maintenance, including turf establishment.  Aside from being the first President of the PGA and founding member of the ASGCA, he also was the first to "manage" the greenkeeping at multiple courses. 

Wonder if his name pops up in any of the early records in the USGA library.

[TEPaul]

JimN:

Robert White was an interesting guy and he certainly had an interesting and varied and perhaps important career in American golf.

It appears he was the pro/greenkeeper early on, perhaps from 1895-1897 at Myopia (despite former contributor Tom MacWood's previous and heretofore unsupported claims about Myopia). After that he went west as a greenkeeper and had a fairly impressive career in golf organization as well as golf architecture.

JohnG:

The organization referred to above in the early article Joe Bausch posted appears to be the Golf Association of Philadelphia (GAP) even if the reporter called it the Philadelphia Golf Association. That bureau that was referred to in the article was essentially an early local "green section" of GAP that was attempting to purchase agronomic and maintenance material in bulk to save the clubs in this section money.

This was actually the local manifestation and result of this effort to create a USGA Green Section (mentioned in another current thread) and in the case of Philadelphia it involved generally the same people. It was not the same thing as the beginning of the local Philadelphia Superintendents Association.

[Joe Bausch]

Here is another interesting article that describes a way proposed to raise money for this new USGA Green Section (this from the October 20, 1924 edition of the Philadelphia Public Ledger):

[TEPaul]

Joe:

Thanks for that Philadelphia article on the nation-wide tournament idea to raise money for their proposed USGA Green Section Endowment Fund. It seems like they were generating these kinds of articles to drum up interest and contributions at that time in all the major metropolitan areas of America. Essentially they were doing this to create a grassroots structure to locally support their national effort.

It's interesting to be reading all this old internal correspondence creating this Green Section and to then see the local newspaper results of it; in these internal files there are a few newspaper articles from various cities that the men creating this sent back and forth to one another.

It's interesting to see that MacCracken actually mentioned they wanted to raise $1 million dollars for the Endowment Fund as Alan Wilson and some of the others were recommending that perhaps a number that large should not be made public or published.

At one point they somehow managed to get some of the captains or Industry and finance down to the US Dept of Agriculture's Arlington Virginia experimental agronomy station to impress them as to the important research they were doing and in hopes of raising major funds from those bigwigs for the effort.

Guys like August Belmont and perhaps J.D. Rockefeller came down and ironically Piper said they were more interested in the place for better grass for improved lawns on their massive estates!

Piper even humorously referred to them to Alan Wilson as "The Captains of Usery."

Also ironically some of the Captains of Usery weren't very impressed with the idea of parking an entire $1 million dollars in an endowment fund to generate the income to operate the USGA Green Section. I suppose they felt it would be more appropriate to just generate enough contributions annually to cover their annual operating budgets.

And also it's quite interesting that Macdonald (who refused to get involved claiming he had pretty much completely dropped out of anything to do with golf) did not like the idea of a national fundraising tournament. The idea was floated of getting Macdonald to be the chairman of one of the USGA Green Committee meetings in New York. That didn't get pursued in the end and the reasons why which are reflected in the correspondence seems to be pretty telling.

[Clyde Johnston]

I have a copy of a magazine entitled "The National Greenkeeper" Volume 1, No. 1 published in January, 1927. It was the official magazine of the newly formed National Association of Greenkeepers of America, which was established in September, 1926.

The Association's first president, John Morley, is quoted as saying that the NAGA was not affliated with the USGA Green Section but expected that the two organizations would work in harmony...

Was this association the predecessor of the GCSAA?

In addition to the bylaws, articles in the magazine include:
The Care of Golf Course Equipment
The ABC of Turf Culture
My Experience with Bent Greens
Why I Use Charcoal
Month by Month With the Trees
What Golf Rules Affect the Greenkeepers

[TEPaul]

"Was this association the predecessor of the GCSAA?"


Clyde:

I don't know about that or how to find out at this point but perhaps I may find some mention of it at the end of this so-called "agronomy corresondence" that was essentially the creation of the USGA Green Section borne out of US Dept of Agriculture research in golf agronomy. If I do I'll sure let  you know.




"The Association's first president, John Morley, is quoted as saying that the NAGA was not affliated with the USGA Green Section but expected that the two organizations would work in harmony..."


That doesn't surprise me at all and it seems in tune with the thinking and ethos of the men who set up the USGA Green Section. Their concentration (more like fixation) was to steer clear of anything that had to do with commercialism and just do their own independent research although that did include encouraging the setting up of Green Sections connected to other local and regional amateur golf associations and such. They did have a few greenkeepers they relied on to some extent such as Flynn who'd been Merion's greenkeeper (and later Merion's Joe Valentine) and Inverness's greenkeeper, William Rockefeller. But that could've been because those two were at the clubs of the men primarily responsible for setting up the Green Section (the Wilson brothers of Merion and E.J. Marshall of Inverness, and very much including Columbia GC's Walter Harban in DC).

The avoidance of actual affiliation for this reason can also be seen in some correspondence around 1924-25 when the professional architects were apparently thinking of setting up their own association (apparently this was over twenty years earlier than they actually did it). The Green Section basically maintained that that would probably be a good idea for golf but they did not want to actually get involved in technically helping them do that and that they should come at it strictly on their own initiative.

[TEPaul]

ClydeJ:

When I say the concentration (or fixation) of the people who created the USGA Green Section was to steer completely clear of commercialism it seems pretty hard to exaggerate that fact if one reads this years long correspondence.

Why was that? It's very clear they felt particularly the seed merchants who had been (and would be) the ones who were supplying American courses with seed had been acting extremely fraudulently in their pricing and with the low quality of their products. Essentially the so-called "seedmen" commonly advertized a certain strain (generally a particular strain of bent) but would then simply mix in all kinds of other things. I don't think some of the seedmen even knew what it was they were selling or at least that's the way the US Dept of Agriculture and the men of the USGA working with them felt about it.

In the very beginning (perhaps as far back as Macdonald and NGLA (Macdonald may've been the first to approach the US Dept of Agriculture)) there was probably a fairly logical reason those early seed merchants mixed all kinds of strains into the bags they sold-----the idea was sort of Darwinian----eg if their was enough different stuff in there something was bound to grow. 

[TEPaul]

Clyde:

And then most ironically, the guys of the USGA and the US Dept of Agriculture hit on a massive amount of pure Rhode Island bent grass on an Island known as Prudence Island off Rhode Island. It seems to me they were at first intent on keeping the commercial seedmen away from this remarkable stock of pure bent which turned out not to be hard to do since the island belonged to one Howard Payne Whitney, an immensely wealthy New Yorker who was very much one of them thinking, with golf, and I believe with the USGA too. They simply asked him to deal with them and he immediately agreed.

But even within their own ranks there seemed to be some contention as Macdonald tried to prevail on Whitney (a friend of his) to get more than probably should've been alotted to him (Whitney denied Macdonald all that he asked for). This could be one of the reasons Macdonald began to run afoul of the USGA and refused to be a part of the Green Section.

[John Gosselin]

Clyde

http://www.gcsaa.org/GCM/2008/dec/feature2.asp

[Clyde Johnston]

Thanks TEPaul and John Gosselin for that great information.

So, NAGA was the predecessor of GCSAA. I should mention that the first officers of NAGA were:
John Morley, President, Youngstown CC
John McNamara, First VP, Pittsburgh Field Club
W.J. Rockefeller, Secretary, Inverness Club
Alex McPherson, Treasurer, Detroit GC
G.A. Farley, Asst. Sec. Treasury, no club listed

On the Executive Committee were:
John Pressler, Allegheny CC
Joseph Valentine, Merion Cricket Club
Charles Erickson, Minekahda GC
John MacGregor, Chicago Golf Club
Mack Burke, Scioto CC
H. Luke, Garden City Club
A.J. Allen, Druid Hills GC
James Muirden, Ridgewood GC
Fred Burkhardt, Westwood CC

[TEPaul]

Clyde:

There, you got your answer about NAGA being the precussor to the CGSAA. Good stuff; thanks JohnG.

As to some support or informal affiliation with USGA's Green Section, it would seem it must have been fairly strong and the names Joe Valentine (Merion) and William Rockefeller (Inverness) on the board of NAGA or CGSAA would seem to prove that fact. Obviously from the club side of things the Wilsons of Merion and E.J. Marshall of Inverness (and including Walter Harban (Columbia GC) DC) were the primary movers in the creation of the USGA Green Section.

[Clyde Johnston]

TEPaul,

Interesting that you bring up Mr. Harban. Found a reprint of a letter from Harban to Morley in that first magazine issue also.

[TEPaul]

Clyde:

Actually since Walter Harban was closest to Piper and Oakley (as they were both in the DC area) I think the first idea of creating a national Green Section may've been his. Early on I believe the thought was to get the US Government to do it. I believe I can find some correspondence that at least mentioned they went to the Secretary of Agriculture with this and perhaps even approached the President of the United States and it was seriously considered but in the end it was decided it should be the USGA to do it.