Vardon, Braid and Taylor designed almost one hundred courses between them.

Old Tom designed a large number.

Henry Cotton designed a large number.

Dave Thomas, Peter Thomson and other pros in the 50's designed a large number.

Note that none of the player/designers above lived or worked in the US. (I'm probably forgetting some others.)

At the same time these great players were shuttling back and forth across the UK building courses in numbers beyond counting, the great pros in the US during the same eras were designing exactly -0- courses.

Hagen, Sarazen, Snead, Hogan, Nelson, Craig Wood, Middlekoff (sp?), Boros, Demaret did no courses. Zip, as far as I can tell. Not until Palmer and Nicklaus in the late '70's got into the business did American pros start designing courses.

I don't understand. Lord knows Hagan, Hogan and all were plenty famous. They also could have used the money. And it wasn't as if they weren't building courses in the US. Thousands were being built in those decades. Many more than in the UK.

I don't get it. What am I missing?

Bob
 

 

It is a good question and I have no clue.  Perhaps the money in tournament golf was always much better in the US.  The ubiquitous Donald Ross and Trent Jones dominating the market?

Another early top professional who was a GCA from the UK is Willie Park Jr.

What you say is true about American professionals from the early half of the century but guys like CB MacDonald, Tillinghast were very strong amateurs of their day.  So was a certain Mr. Bobby Jones who did a bit of design.

In Canada one of the top GCAs in the first quarter of the 20th century was George Cumming who designed numerous courses in the Toronto area - he was also the pro at Toronto GC which brought over H.S. Colt to design their course.

I don't think this is necessarily a fair assessment. One must look to the definitions of professional in the UK and in the US. I've always understood the definition of professional in the UK during the time to include an expertise in all aspects of golf, including agronomy and architecture (see: Donald Ross).

How much true "touring" happened with professionals in the UK?

Also, remember, many US club pros were called upon to design courses, such as John Reid in the early 20th century. Perhaps the attitude of specialization in the US fostered a lack of high level professionals designing golf courses.

As a counter: How many designers in the UK didn't play professionally during that time?

Would the tyranny of distance have anything to do with it. Suppose for a moment that those US pros would have felt obliged to have a hands on approach to any courses they designed, perhaps the vast distances between sites in the US compared to the UK meant that it wasn’t considered feasible, at least until rapid travel (the jet age) was possible. Of course this doesn’t explain why they didn’t design numerous courses in ‘course dense’ locations like Long Island.

Bob:

Really interesting question and one I've never thought about either.

Perhaps it just has to do with the fact that the PGA of America's tournament players early on may've had a lot more to play in than their counterpart PGA tournament players in Europe etc.

The actual PGA TOUR (American) as we know it today did not evolve out of the PGA of America until the late 1960s or early 1970s (actually one of my old better ball partners may've been partly responsible for the evolving of the PGA TOUR).

Before that time we should notice that the tournament players of that earlier time played for clubs and not just for themselves as they do today.

A good example was George Fazio. Most think he was the golf professional of Pine Valley for years when in fact he wasn't really that---he was a tournament golfer who represented Pine Valley.

Maybe it just didn't work that way in the rest of the world in that earlier day giving those non-American tournament professionals more time to design golf courses.

"My guess is that if Snead didn't have Greenbrier as his own private ATM machine, he would have designed and built it."

Did you know that a very young Sam Snead apparently worked on the construction crew of Flynn's Cascades? Or was it Tillinghast's Cascades?  

I'm not convinced by the money thing. No doubt Hagen, Hogan, etc. made more money than their UK counterparts.

Some, like Snead, may have done very well (I don't know). But not many of the others. Hogan didn't start bringing down big money until his club company took off in the late 50's. Hagen had chronic money problems his whole life. Nelson never cashed in. Craig Wood (who was a major player in his day) retired to be a club pro in Miami, never to be heard from again.

Combine that with the low hanging fruit available in the design business - the picking of which had been amply demonstrated in the UK - I'm still at a loss as to why none (that's as in zero) of these American pros took advantage of their reputations to do design work.

Bob

Bob, Bob, Bob....

History shows us that most designers prior to WWII died either broke or nearly broke.  What financial incentive was there for a Hogan or Snead or Nelson to go into GCA in the 1950's?  It is pretty obvious that none of them had any creative incentive to go into the business.  That Bobby Jones, who had absolutley no need for income, happened to design a fine golf course for his freinds, is pretty much irrelevant.  What is relevant is that his peers, such as Sarazen and Hagen, didn't design any golf courses either.

When I was growing up my family used to dine from time to time at Tony Manero's steakhouse in Greenwich, CT.  Tony was the US Open champion in 1936.  Do you think he would have been flipping T-Bones in his 50's if he could have made an easy living designing golf courses?  I don't.

Rich

How much money could Snead, Hogan, et. al. have made, if they designed courses?

Could they have "designed" courses then the way so many pro's do today -- just lending their names but little else?

Did anyone ever approach them about designing or "designing" any courses?  i.e. did they have any opportunities, which they turned down?  

How much time would it have taken them to design courses -- and what would they have had to give up to do that?  e.g. would their schedules in those mostly pre-flying days allow them to play the tour, practice, engage in their grey market activities, and still act as GCA's?  Could Arnie and Jack have done that (minus the g.m stuff) without airplanes?

Did any of them ever express interest in golf course design?  I don't recall hearing any of those guys say anything about architecture in their books.  The first I recall was Nicklaus, who talked about strategy of well-designed golf holes.  

Bob:

Looking through Cornish and Whitten one explanation could be that the UK great golfers/productive architects you mentioned (Braid, Taylor, Vardon) were all at least a generation or more older than the likes of Hogan, Sarazen, Craig Woods, Middlecoff etc.

Hagen was at least a half generation older than those American players and about a half generation younger than the likes of Taylor, Vardon and Braid, and actually Hagen did do some courses in the 1920s with Stiles and Van Kleek and a few on his own in the 1930s. Hogan got involved in a course too.

The only great UK player/productive architect of the same age as those American players that I can see that really was productive in golf architecture was Henry Cotton.

Peter Thomson is the same age as Palmer and Dave Thomas is not much older than Nicklaus and all of them seem to have gotten into golf course design around the same era.

Byron Nelson also got into course architecture not a lot but not all that little either.

So maybe it really isn't all that comparable given particularly the fact that those early productive UK great players/productive architects were at least a generation older than the Americans, not to mention there weren't many great American players that early.

In that void we probably shouldn't forget the likes of Walter Travis and Devereaux Emmett and the early good amateur players/amateur architects who did such amazing work even if on decades long projects---eg Macdonald, Crump, Hugh Wilson and W.C. Fownes. Not to mention Tillinghast (a good player).

There's another thing to consider and that is the strictures on professional architects maintaining amateur status was no where near as intense in the UK as it was in the USA. If it had not been that way some of those so-called "amateur" architects of the early era may very well have done a whole lot more architectural work.  

OK

I'll try one more time.....

THERE WAS NO MONEY IN THE GCA BUSINESS WHEN THOSE OLD GUYS WERE PLAYING!

The guys who designed the courses were the guys who didn't need the money (or at least thought they didn't..... ).

Oh yes, and let's not forget that the "pro's" were not allowed in the clubhouses of the posh US clubs in the 1920's, whereas in the UK they were active and accepted members.  In tghe US, it was so much easier to think of hiring a Tillinghast to design your new course than a Saraceni, whereas in the UK, a Braid was just as acceptable as a Tom Simpson........

Matthew:

That's not quite right.  Colt had been a very good player in his day -- at least as good as Abercromby or Fowler, and certainly better than Simpson or MacKenzie.