Dick Wilson, Ron Whitten and Royal Melbourne

[Neil_Crafter]

I am researching Dick Wilson's 1959 visit to Australia, which was primarily to redesign Metropolitan GC as land had been lost for a school and new land obtained for replacement holes. He arrived in January 1959 and not unlike Mackenzie with Royal Melbourne, Metropolitan arranged for some other clubs to use his services as a way of offsetting his fees. It is recorded that he consulted to Yarra Yarra, Sorrento, Kooringal and Huntingdale in Victoria, The Lakes in Sydney and The National Development Commission for Royal Canberra in the ACT.

However, Cornish and Whitten in the Architects of Golf do not mention any of the above courses, but list that Wilson 'redesigned' both the East and West courses at Royal Melbourne during his trip. I had never heard of this claim before and so I contacted Dr John Green at RM and he did some investigation through green committee minutes etc and could find no evidence at all.

So I was wondering whether any one else had heard of this work by Wilson, and guess my only course to resolve this is to get in touch with Ron Whitten - but I don't have any contact details for him. Is anyone able to give me a contact email for him so I can put the question to him of where he got this information from? Appreciate it. Anyone else with any specific information about Wilson's time in Australia (or other material about his life and career) I'd love to hear from them.

I think this is  an interesting and unresearched topic, as Wilson was the next well known overseas architect to visit these shores to undertake design work since Mackenzie in 1926. I'm not counting CH Alison's 'dialled in' plan for Huntingdale ca1940.
cheers Neil

[TEPaul]

Neil:

That certainly is interesting.

If one thinks about it logically, and tries to imagine how in God's name Cornish and Whitten could've possibly compiled a book of architectural attribution for most every golf club and architect in the world, it would seem to me they must have depended mostly on the club's to tell them about the architectural attributions of their courses. What other reliable source would there be other than a few periodicals perhaps or just the lists of their career inventories from the architects?

I've only had one conversation with Mr Cormish---it was about the work he did at TCC at Brookline but he certainly was an extremely nice man to talk to.

In the course of that conversation he said something quite interesting to me and that was that the idea of doing a book like that was first put to him by Philaselphia architect William Gordon, who coincidentally was Toomey and Flynn's primary foreman for a couple of decades and the man who Dick Wilson generally worked under in all his many years with Toomey and Flynn until going out on his own after WW2 and after Flynn died.

[T_MacWood]

Neil
I wish I could help but I've never found any Wilson - Royal Melbourne connection. I suspect Melbourne had more impact on Wilson than Wilson had on Melbourne. You can see a distinct change in his work after his vist to Australia. His before-Melbourne is more Flynn like; his after-Melbourne work features large bunkers with capes and bays - very Sandbeltesque - the style he is usually associated with: Pine Tree, Doral, Bay Hill, Cog Hill, Coldstream, LaCosta, etc.

[Mike_Duffy]

Neil,

I have somewhere back in Oz the notes of an interview I did with John Alanson, who was the manager at Huntingdale (and late The Australian), during the time of Dick Wilson's visit to Melbourne. He related in some detail the day he walked the Huntingdale course with Wilson and the Captain of the club, and Wilson's suggestions for the betterment of Huntingdale.

I also have tucked away somewhere an almost completed article on Sam Berriman that you mentioned to me before I left Australia.

[Neil_Crafter]

Thanks to those of you who emailed me with Ron Whitten's email address - I have now emailed Ron and look forward to hearing from him.

Tom P - my question certainly was in no way a criticism of C&W's marvellous research in putting together a book of the scope of The Architects of Golf. There were no doubt many different sources they would have used in assembling the information and from the clubs themselves would have been one such source. In the case of Royal Melbourne though I would suggest it is extremely unlikely that this information came from the club - we shall see if Ron can recall the source. Interesting the Gordon connection to Flynn and Wilson.

Tom Mac - Thanks for that and it is worth exploring further the effect Melbourne had on Wilson and suspect that it may indeed have been greater than the impact he had on Melbourne's courses. I will explore this with you in more detail in the coming months if that's OK.

Mike - Great to hear from you! Really appreciate the information about the Alenson interview and primary source material like this would add considerably to the article. Please email me and we can keep up our correspondence on this. Yes, I am looking to have a Berriman profile in the next issue so would be keen to explore this with you as well.

cheers Neil

[T_MacWood]

Neil
I'll be glad to help.

[Neil_Crafter]

Ron Whitten has replied to my email and he states that his source was Dick Wilson's daughter, however there seemed to be no written back up to this as most of Wilson's records and papers were trashed after his death. Ron has since come across further information that would seem to corroborate the view that John Green had that Wilson only looked over the courses for their suitability for the Canada Cup and that he made no changes to either of the courses. So this would seem to wrap this one up.

If anyone has any further information on Dick Wilson I'd love to hear from them.

Thanks again to all who assisted.

cheers Neil

[BCrosby]

Ron Whitten has replied to my email and he states that his source was Dick Wilson's daughter, however there seemed to be no written back up to this as most of Wilson's records and papers were trashed after his death.

Another example of why we need a golf architecture archive. For all sorts of reasons it would have been interesting to see those papers.

Bob