From today's Kansas City Star:
Tillinghast was restless, prolific
By Mechelle Voepel
3/7/2005
URL:
http://www.golfcoursenews.com/news/news.asp?ID=1375/Source: Kansas City Star
Maybe the first thing to know about A.W. Tillinghast, the designer of Swope Memorial Golf Course, is that he's often described as being a "restless eccentric." Thanks to his father's business, he was also rich - until being hit hard by the Depression - so for many years he had plenty of time to immerse himself in every possible aspect of golf.
Tillinghast actually lived a life that author F. Scott Fitzgerald might have created in the roaring '20s. Tillinghast's biography reads like that of a fictional character, but he was very much the real thing. He had a temper, he could be demanding and difficult at times. But his influence on the sport is legendary.
Albert Warren Tillinghast, known as "Tillie," was born in Philadelphia in 1874. He truly fell in love with golf when he visited St. Andrews in Scotland, where he befriended Old Tom Morris.
But his legacy is defined by the part of the game that can last far beyond the end of a person's life. And that's course design.
Tillie was the original designer on around 80 courses, including three in the KC area: Swope Memorial, Indian Hills and Kansas City Country Club. He also did a reconstruction at St. Joseph County Club.
What brought him to this area? Well, the fact is that Tillie went everywhere. Even in a time when travel wasn't so simple, he traversed the United States doing original designs - as are the case with the three KC courses - reconstructions, additions and examinations.
From Bethpage State Park in New York to Tulsa Country Club in Oklahoma to San Francisco Golf Club, Tillinghast's designs spanned the nation.
"Oh, yeah, 'Terrible Tillie' - he was prolific," said Tom Watson, who also designs courses. "His greens are what we call 'push-up greens' - you take the earth and push it up and build hollows on either side. The grade sticks up higher than the lay of the land. At Winged Foot, for example, the slopes off the green are very severe."
That course, in New York, is just one of many Tillinghast designs that have been host to United States Golf Association and PGA of America tournaments. This year, the PGA Championship will be held at Baltusrol in Springfield, N.J., which is a course Tillinghast designed in 1922.
Tillinghast didn't need a great deal to work with because he had such imagination. With a hilly, pretty patch of land such as at Swope, he had more than enough to suit his creativity.
"Swope and Kansas City Country Club are wonderful courses," Watson said. "You had tiny push-up greens, and that was all that was necessary. He made them surface-drain well.
"One of the things about designing back then was that usually you had the flexibility of getting a piece of land that drained well on its own. Now, courses are development-driven. The owner wants the good pieces of land to put the (houses) on. They usually want you to put the course on the place where it floods."
No doubt, though, Tillinghast would have found solutions for just about any problem he encountered with design. Unfortunately, he didn't have as much success in - or interest in - financial affairs. He was an artist, not a businessman. And like so many Americans, he was nearly wiped out by the Depression.
After that, he still toured courses around the country, suggesting improvements for them. He also continued to design new courses. But there wasn't a lot of money in either venture in the 1930s, and eventually he moved to Beverly Hills, Calif., and ran an antique store. That eventually failed, too, and in 1942 - in ill health and with little resources - Tillinghast died.
Yet today, you really can't think about golf in the United States without including his wide-ranging influence.
Indian Hills was host to the U.S. Girls' Junior in 2001, and Swope will be the site of the U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links championship this July. In both cases, the fact that the courses were Tillinghast designs was a big part of why the USGA wanted to have events there.
"Sometimes, you don't really realize the quality of golf courses that he designed, you take it for granted," said Dick Nogoset, manager of golf services for Kansas City Parks and Recreation. "We're lucky to have a course like we've got here at Swope."
Tillie's top courses:
Baltusrol Golf Club, Springfield, N.J., 1922
Bethpage State Park Black, Farmingdale, N.Y., 1935
Cedar Crest Park Golf Course, Dallas, 1919
San Francisco Golf Club, San Francisco, 1915
Winged Foot Golf Club, Mamaroneck, N.Y.,1923
Indian Hills Country Club, 1925
Kansas City Country Club, 1925
Swope Memorial, 1934