Mike, you wrote:
"That's sort of a strange statement coming from Tillinghast, who for many years made annual pilgrimages to Scotland.
I think his statement is self-serving, and defensive, and probably rightly so. I think Tillinghast was comfortable and even proud with how architecture in America was evolving at that point, and even if there were some penal excesses, I think Taylor was way overly critical, probably based on nationalistic ideas of his own. To me, Taylor was simply saying these new American courses couldn't be all that because they weren't invented here (Great Britain)."
Tilly went to Scotland 3 times, 1895, 1898 & 1901. Each of these trips were in the company of and financed by his father B.C. In fact, it was his father who taught Tilly the game in the early 1890's and who decided to make the first trip.
Why though should these trips serve as any basis for making his numerous comments, for it wasn't limited to the single Response to Taylor article, become "self-serving and defensive," especially when you state that they were "rightly so" in their content?
Tilly took great exception to numerous British writers who had begun to criticize not just the design of golf courses, but the talent of the players and their abilities to compete against the "superiority" of the british players and their courses.
For example, he wrote, "“In most of the journals which are devoted to golf, we constantly find the most absurd references to the game and its play in this country. Our golf is altogether freakish and our players mad fanatics. When Mr. Henry Leach visited us last summer he returned
to England praising our courses, our golf and our men. His references to American golf in the British periodicals are as an oasis in the desert. We can only deplore the fact that other writers have not visited our country, that they might know whereof they speak…"
Sort of interesting how Tilly would chastise these writers for being critical of courses and players that they had never seen because they had never stepped foot in America.
He also chastised them rather pointedly in a somewhat mocking tone when he wrote, "Golf in America is a dignified, firmly established institution, and we are big enough to ignore many thoughtless, but nevertheless unkind, thrusts. No doubt they are intended to be humorous, and if they chance to amuse the British readers as much as they amuse us, although in different vein, they may be classed with such popular successes as ‘Wot Ho! She Bumps!’…
“Joking aside, gentlemen, it does get under the skin a bit when you devote your space to an almost reverent analysis of the game of Daudi Chwa, the black monarch of Uganda, and his course at Kampala, and on the same page flippantly refer to ‘Goat Golf ’ as the popular form of game in America. We are rather inclined to regard golf as a game for gentlemen throughout the world, and far too great a game to be restricted by the bounds of nations..."
Actually Tilly was the perfect person to make this defense. He had Captained the 1904 team of United States players in the international matches played in and against Canada. His personal game in those years was pretty good, having competed in many USGA events and being the 2nd lowest handicapped player in the very first Golf Association of Philadelphia player handicapping.
He HAD seen many of the great courses in Britain, unlike the writers he was criticizing, and played against and knew most of the great players from there. They would routinely visit him when they came to America and he wrote often of these visits.
No, his comments weren't "self-serving." They were spot-on correct and proper.
Was his ego involved, of course. Was what he wrote a product of ego? No.