""TE
I was wrong on the date of the nervous breakdown, it was 1932. The winner of the Bermuda Am was Devereux Jr, he was very fine player who won the Bermuda tournament in 1930 as well."

Tom MacW:

That's an interesting find! Are you saying C&W is wrong when they reported Dev Emmet won the Bahamas Amateur at 66 in 1926 or 1927? Is it a typo on your part or mine but you said the Bermuda Amateur and C&W and I said the Bahamas Amateur and did they get confused that it might have been his son or did you?

 

So, you're saying that C&W was wrong and that it was Dev Emmet's son that won the Bahamas Amateur in 1926 0r 1927 and not Dev himself at age 66? I have no idea--I'm just reporting what Cornish and Whitten said in Dev Emmet's bio.

Tom Mac

Is that the same Father - Son MGA event that your buddy Pat Mucci won with his dad in
1962 at Pelham CC (a nice quirky Dev Emmet course by the way)
1968 at Hampshire
1971 at Woodway?

TE
I have no idea precisely what Emmet did at NGLA...I don't know what Whigham did either. I do know they were both involved at NGLA. I presented articles that stated they were both involved at the beginning and also at the end. I'm as curious as the next guy exactly what they did. George Bahto said Emmet was involved in the construction...I have no idea what he did other than helping with measurements overseas...but obviously he did something....and George's comments seem perfectly plausible to me.

I made the statement that Emmet was involved at NGLA (as an aside to my discovery on North Shore), in particular he helped in surveying famous holes....and Pat says "how do you know that Emmet was involved in the design and construction of every hole". Come again?

You try to share what you know and you get an idiotic response like that. You then ask a question, you ask others to share what they think and you get attacked because you haven't presented one speck of info. Funny.

Tom MacW:

I guess this is why it gets sort of frustrating sometimes to try to understand what some did on some courses 90 and more years ago. There just doesn't seem to be anything left to explains the details, if there ever was anything that explained the details.

As I said, they apparently were all just amateur friends out in the field from time to time and they probably kept no records, there were no contracts etc. I think it's safe to say though, that NGLA (not unlike Crump and PVGC) was wholly Macdonald's project and like Crump it's pretty obvious to me (of course without much of any supporting documentation) that he was the total editor of the golf course and golf club.

But in a general sense of who did what at NGLA it's lucky to have Macdonald's own general description of who did what that can be found in his book "Scotland's Gift Golf" written in 1928.

Pat
Do  you think it is reasonable to conclude Emmet was involved based on what is written in these two articles:

From Golf Illustrated-UK (1907): "The idea animating the architects, who are Mssrs. CB Macdonald, Walter Travis, Devereux Emmet, and HJ Whigham, has been to reproduce, as far as possible, the characteristics and features from the 'best holes' in the world."

From Harpers right after the course opened: "Mr. Macdonald sought the advice of many well-known golfers, both at home and abroad; and in the actual work, he enjoyed the personal cooperation of Messrs. HJ Whigham and Devereux Emmet, both of them capable players and close students of the game. Following upon their united efforts a course has been evolved that certainly stands head and shoulders above any links on this side of the Atlantic."

If not....why not?
 

What is the big deal here with Dev Emmet and NGLA?

If you were a researcher and you wanted to know what Emmet did why wouldn't you just take the word of the man who really did design and construct the golf course, C.B. Macdonald?

Unfortunately what he said about Dev Emmet's contribution to NGLA is very general----"with the kindly interest of......"

How about Knapp, Sabin and Stillman, and others who Macdonald also mentioned for their "kindly interest" in the same sentence he mentioned Emmet?

Unless one thinks Macdonald is lying for some reason about who did what at NGLA it seems to me the chapter in his book completely about the creation of NGLA says plenty about who did what there. In that chapter when Macdonald says "we" it certainly looks to me like he's talking about Whigham, who in the previous chapter he called his only "associate" (after he dropped Travis).

He says he and Whigham spent 2-3 days riding the property on horses. That certainly sounds to me as if those two were beginning to route the golf course at that time, and that's supported by what Macdonald mentions they "found" during that 2-3 days of riding the property. With his 30-40 drawings from European holes he said "we found an Alps.....an ideal Redan, we discovered a perfect place where we could put the Eden hole....then we found a wonderful water hole, now the Cape." And in the rest of the chapter he mentions how “I” or “we’ came to create a number of other holes generally. Macdonald also mentions how much over the years he changed the course unitl, apparently around 1927 he feels it’s almost “ideal” (although we do know he continued to improve it almost until the day he died in 1939).

No mention of Emmet being along for the ride---just Whigham, his "associate".

Later in the chapter Macdonald goes into descrbing how many of the other holes at National came to be using the word "I" or "we", presumably again meaning Jim Whigham.

But lest anyone on this site is implying that Macdonald is short-changing Emmet's contributions, or anyone else's to NGLA, one should read what Macdonald said Horace Hutchinson's contributions were! Hutchinson spent a solid 3-4 days on the site in 1910  with Macdonald (following spending a solid week with him in Roslyn) going over everything that'd been done to that date and making obviously comprehensive suggestions;

"Together we made a study of the National, and I received much valuable advice. I listened attentively to everything he suggested----where bunkers should be placed, where undulations should be placed on the putting greens etc, etc. I know he impressed on me that the human mind could not devise undulations superior to those of nature, saying that if we wished to make undulations on the greens to take a number of pebbles in my hand and drop them on a miniature space representing a putting green on a small scale, releasing them, and as they dropped on the diagram, place the undulations according to their fall. This I did for some of the National greens where I had no copies of the original undulations which nature had made on the great greens of the world.”

I think I can say that advice like that although  general in character is the very thing that great architectural collaboration is made of and it’s no wonder to me that Macdonald mentioned it as prominently in his book as he did. And that to me is a far cry from just mentioning 4-5 people in a single sentence, including Dev Emmet, for their “kindly interest” in the creation of NGLA!

Well, Tom, in light of what Macdonald said himself about others, certainly Whigham and Horace Hutchinson I don't really put that much stock in the extent of Emmet's contribution to NGLA or even to the drawings Macdonald said a number of times were his own drawings---not Emmet's or his and Emmet's. If Emmet had truly been responsible for the meat of the drawings or assisting with them, seeing as how generous Macdonald seemed to be in giving credit to a few others, I'd really expect him to have given more credit to Emmet, but he didn't really do that, did he? And he certainly had nothing against Emmet that I can see, as he may have with Travis, since in other parts of his book to do with other things that came much later he does mention Emmet as his very good friend.

Apparently, you are just asking a question and now I think you've gotten a number of pretty good answers about Emmet's contribution to NGLA, of which one answer is that none of us will probably ever know in detail. And those two references in the two magazines don't help much at all, in my opinion, as they're just very general. Macdonald's own rather detailed words on the creation of NGLA and who other than himself was responsible says far more, in my opinion.

Tom MacW:

What an amazing post!

Did I say a single thing that all things to do with Macdonald and NGLA must come from C.B Macdonald's book? This subject and thread is about what Emmet might have done at NGLA. You've said a number of times that you're asking the question on here about his contribution to NGLA. You said you have no idea what that was. So what are you implying George Bahto or Geoff Shackelford has on this subject which neither you nor any of us has? Something or nothing?

"TE
It appears your conclusion is at odds with George Bahto and Geoff Shackelford."

Does it Tom? Then why don't you tell me what their conclusions are about Emmet and NGLA that differs from what Macdonald said they were?

"The book (Scotlands Gift) is a tremendous resource, however if we relied solely on that book for Macdonald related info we would not know:"

Did I ever say anything like that? I have a ton of info on Macdonald from all over the place--The Creek, The Links, about 2000 letters between the Wilsons and Piper and Oakley, material from PVGC and numerous other sources from all over the place that wasn't mentioned that prominently in "Scotland's Gift Golf", so what's your point here?

"* Macdonald & Whigham aided Merion."

Did they? We knew they came down here a time or two but what have you or George got that says a thing about that in detail? Wayne Morrison asked you that the other day and I don't believe you answered. George Bahto is a good friend of mine, a great researcher and wrote a helluva book but we sure don't always agree on everything. Probably the most obvious was when George said he thought Raynor designed Merion West.  When I asked him why he'd say that he said because in a eulogy to Raynor it looked to him like Whigham said so. That sounds interesting if you just look at that eulogy but we have detailed evidence of exactly who designed and built Merion West and it most definitely was not Seth Raynor!

"* Macdonald met with Fowler to discuss NGLA."

How interesting! What did they talk about?

"* Macdonald assisted Emmet & Hollins at Women's National."

Really? I'm stunned seeing as Macdonald probably lived in Roslyn and the Women's National became a combined club for a time with the Creek of which Macdonald was one of the few original and founding members I can't imagine what a coincidence that was!

"* Crump & Wilson sought CB's advice before traveling to UK."

We surely know all the details of Wilson seeking his advice about traveling to the UK but I've never seen anything to indicate Crump sought his advice before going to the UK. I know that Macdonald came down to PVGC early on and said it was an awesome potential situation if anyone could ever get the grass to grow. No one would've known better about that than C.B who had a total agronomic blow-out at NGLA previously basically trying to grow grass in straight sand! It might have been Macdonald who coined the term "Crump's Folly" for PVGC, probably thinking about what he's been through agronomically a few years previous. Ironically, the same basic problem happened at NGLA---they were trying to grow grass on straight sand. Piper and Oakley were advising PVGC on that problem too and when they asked Hugh Wilson why Macdonald wasn't responding to them, Wilson basically joked that he was so curmudgeonly and aloof and that he'd just call him up. Hugh and Alan Wilson track in those letters a lot of what went on at PVGC and I can tell you there wasn't much of a relationship with Macdonald!

"* the agronimic problems at NGLA (the extent of Piper and Beale's assistance)."

I know that--its all part of the 2000 letters between Piper, Oakley and the Wilsons of Merion and PVGC.

"* Nothing about Charles Banks."

That's not very hard to explain as far as I'm concerned. Banks might've done some work on Mid-Ocean with Macdonald and Raynor but that was around 1924 and he'd been an English teacher at Hotchkiss just 2-3 years before that. Banks was probably not much more than an apprecntice with Raynor and Macdonald at that time. Why would anybody think Macdonald would feature him in his book?

Also around that time, it's pretty clear to me that Macdonald had basically had it with doing architecture other than his input at Yale and then I feel he basically withdrew back into NGLA for the remainder of his life. He was practically an impossible man to approach at that point. The Piper/Oakley/Wilson letters are rife with mention of that---they even joke about it! Look at what Macdonald said to Maxwell when he approached him for advice! He said he wouldn't walk around the block to look at the site Maxwell asked him to! Macdonald was tired of it all and he seemed to me like a somewhat beaten and depressed man, and, in my opinion, the reasons why are probably fascinating to know both as to what he really had been to so many things about golf in America and where it was going! I think George should research and write another book about that---as it might say a ton about the evolution of many things to do with golf that're good to know today--and for today.

"Who knows, maybe Emmets involvement was a negative one and CB chose not include it in the book. There is information supporting his involvement that should not be ignored. Multiple sources is the best way to go IMO."

Maybe it was a negative one. Maybe it was a positive one---maybe it could have been anything. Some of what he said otherwise about Emmet doesn't seem there was anything negative about his contribution to NGLA other than that it probably wasn't very much.

WHAT IS this information supporting his involvement that shouldn't be ignored you keep referring to? You keep saying you don’t know anything about Emmet’s involvement and then you keep alluding to this information that shouldn’t be ignored---information from George and Geoff? What is that info Tom? If you know what it is let’s see it---we’d all like to know. If it’s just those two articles you mentioned earlier--that’s not much of anything--certainly no more than Macdonald said himself. Multiple sources are great, but only if they have something meaningful to say! Let’s see this information supporting Emmet’s involvement at NGLA or let’s stop talking about it.

Tom MacWood,

I have yet to see what archival materials George Bahto or others used to make the determination of Emmet's involvement in the development of NGLA.  I am anxious to know more.  At this point, I reserve any judgement on Emmet's role at NGLA because I feel none can be made with such scant information presented -- at least that I am aware of.  I am especially guarded not to perpetuate oral histories or assumptions taken as fact.  There has to be a higher standard of proof and I believe there is so much that is lacking and so little presented that it is best not to make grand inferences.

I think you are missing Tom Paul's point regarding the prevalence of collaboration back then.  Many amateur architects and interested persons came to visit sites that sparked interest.  This was true of NGLA and certainly true at Pine Valley and Merion as well.  But you seem to categorize this informal associations and sharing of ideas as something more when you claim "Macdonald and Whigham aided Merion"  or were "brought in to assist at Merion."  When you state things in these ways you imply substantial input.  How can you possibly say what Macdonald and Whigham did at Merion based on the info you present?  It is just as preposterous to speculate on what Emmet contributed at NGLA.  

We don't know what Macdonald and Whigham did in relation to the work at Merion.  To say that they aided Merion and were brought in to assist is a stretch.  Brought in by whom?  You imply that they were asked to advise and assist.  What work did they do?  Unless you or George know of information that is not generally known, I'd say you are making too great a leap and you are falling into an abyss.  

Many scenarios are equally likely at this point.  One might be that all Macdonald did was to speak with Wilson when he visited the National for two days generally about principals of design and told him what courses to see in the UK.  All you can conclude is he assisted in Wilson's education in golf design principals; not an insignificant thing.  What if all he did when he came down to Merion was to see what was going on and make general comments?  He might have expressed satisfaction with the work and no more.  Can you then say they were brought in to assist or that they aided Merion?  Who knows?  Nobody, so it is foolhardy to guess and pretend it is fact.

My take, given the evidence George presents in his book and from what I've read in Geoff Shackelford's works that Emmet was involved in some discussions regarding matters of construction and maybe design; that he helped find features of European golf holes that might be used at NGLA; and that he was on friendly terms with Macdonald (a not so easy thing to maintain from letters I've seen referring to Macdonald).  But anything beyond is mere speculation.  There is so little to hang theories on that it is a complete waste of time.  What isn't a waste of time is the search for answers.  Macdonald, Whigham, Emmet, Crump, Colt, Alison, Flynn, Thomas, Tillinghast, Wilson and others shared ideas with each other.  Macdonald made some characterization of the work at National in his Scotland-Gift of Golf book.  Until other information surfaces, that's all there is.  

Why doesn't George share his information regarding Emmet at National and you share yours regarding Macdonald at Merion?  We can then make our own conclusions.  I know it must be more compelling than the Merion West evidence as there was none.  

Tom:

I went to something called Archipalooza at Bandon Dunes with about 40 architects from around the world before Pacific Dunes officially opened and they all spent the weekend there going over the course carefully, playing it and pronouncing the land and many of the holes a great success as Macdonald and Whigham did at Merion. All those architects were friends and acquaintences of Tom Doak and he may have learned a thing or two from some of them at some point in his career but as far as we all know Tom Doak designed the golf course, just as Hugh Wilson and his committee designed Merion East.

Tom M.: "I agree it appears Whigham was Macdonald's right hand man at the time...it was around this time that Macdonald and Whigham were brought in to assist at Merion".

Wayne: "Tom, I've read the brief line or two that refers to Hugh Wilson visiting Macdonald for two days at NGLA before his trip to the UK and that this was a great help to Wilson's future efforts. I also read a brief reference that Macdonald and Whigham came down to Merion during its construction and pronounced their satisfaction with the work. But please tell me how you conclude and in which way that Macdonald and Whigham assisted at Merion. Am I reading too much into this mention of yours saying that Macdonald and Whigham were brought in to assist at Merion?"

Tom M.: "Wayne There were a number of articles at the time (American Golfer and Golf Illustrated) that describe the apparent arangement. There was a Merion committee responsible for the design & contruction of the golf course (headed by Hugh Wilson) and that committee was aided, advised or assisted (or whatever your term) by Macdonald and Whigham. I said they were brought into assist....do you disagree with statement? If nothing else the utilization of some prototype holes is evidence of a Macdonald influence."

"TE The book (Scotlands Gift) is a tremendous resource, however if we relied solely on that book for Macdonald related info we would not know: * Macdonald & Whigham aided Merion"

Tom P: ""* Macdonald & Whigham aided Merion."

Did they? We knew they came down here a time or two but what have you or George got that says a thing about that in detail? Wayne Morrison asked you that the other day and I don't believe you answered. George Bahto is a good friend of mine, a great researcher and wrote a helluva book but we sure don't always agree on everything. Probably the most obvious was when George said he thought Raynor designed Merion West. When I asked him why he'd say that he said because in a eulogy to Raynor it looked to him like Whigham said so. That sounds interesting if you just look at that eulogy but we have detailed evidence of exactly who designed and built Merion West and it most definitely was not Seth Raynor!"

Wayne: "But you seem to categorize this informal associations and sharing of ideas as something more when you claim "Macdonald and Whigham aided Merion" or were "brought in to assist at Merion." When you state things in these ways you imply substantial input. How can you possibly say what Macdonald and Whigham did at Merion based on the info you present? It is just as preposterous to speculate on what Emmet contributed at NGLA.

We don't know what Macdonald and Whigham did in relation to the work at Merion. To say that they aided Merion and were brought in to assist is a stretch. Brought in by whom? You imply that they were asked to advise and assist. What work did they do? Unless you or George know of information that is not generally known, I'd say you are making too great a leap and you are falling into an abyss....Why doesn't George share his information regarding Emmet at National and you share yours regarding Macdonald at Merion?  We can then make our own conclusions.  I know it must be more compelling than the Merion West evidence as there was none. "

All this a result of saying Macdonald and Whigham were brought in to assist at Merion...only Philadelphia do they try exponge the likes Macdonald and Colt.  

TE
If Geoff Shackelford doesn't think Macdonald and Whigham assisted at Merion (and I'm not certain he feels that way...I doubt it), then I disagree with him.

Why don't you start a seperate thread on Merion...old Dev Emmet is getting brushed aside.