Jes,
You asked, "Great post...this last thought grabbed me though...just because he did not design his first course for a dozen years does not exclude Tilly from writing with the thought that it may put his name in front of someone that might let him do just that... How would you compare and contrast Tilly's earliest writings with the Confidential Guide by Tom Doak?"
It's a good question and again illustrates what I meant when I said that most people have problems understanding the past historically as they tend to view it from current perspectives.
When Tom wrote the Confidential Guide, he had already gone to school with the express purpose of becoming a golf course architect. He visited and played numerous courses both for the joy of the game and as a learning experience to aid him toward his goal of designing. That he had a passion for writing was separate to his desire to design, yet he found an outlet for it in writing about what he was most interested in.
Tilly, on the other hand, was quite the opposite. When he began to write about golf in the late 1890's, the idea of being a golf course architect as a profession was unheard of and not something that he gave consideration to. Tilly visited Scotland in 1895, 1898 & 1901 with the express purpose of bettering himself as a player. He was convinced that he was a world-class player and his greatest desire was to win a USGA championship. He competed on very high levels, but the reality was that he was at best a second-tier talent.
In addition, those who desiged golf courses at the turn of the century in America, did a relatively uninspired job for the most part. That is one of the reasons why Macdonald's NGLA was greeted so sensationally. Here was a work of art as well as a challenging golf course.
Tilly & his friends, what we refer to as the Philadelphia School of Design, were nothing more than a bunch of friends who played a lot of golf together. They had a passion for the game and with a growing realization that golf courses could be designed and built to both challenge and please they would often discuss their different philosophies of how they would design if they could.
When Tilly got the commission to design Shawnee in 1909, it was given to him by his close friend C.C. Worthington with whom he spent many hours playing golf and speaking about the game. He was 34 years old and working for his father's rubber goods company part-time while he spent ,most of his time playing and practicing golf.
Tilly's writings then were not done to bring him dsign commissions, but rather were done as a natural byproduct of his passion for playing the game. This can be seen as the content of most of his writings in these early years dealt almost exclusively with tournament results, personal gossip and poetry. not the type of golf writing that would inspire someone to say, "Here's a person I want to design my course."
On the other hand, Tom's Confidential Guide established him early as a young man with a keen mind and eye to understanding golf course design.
Jeff, please appreciate that the "kicked your ass" phrase was not uttered by me.
Since the idea of advertising of design services back in the "Golden Age" has been beaten around, I think it is important to appreciate just how Tilly did advertise his availability to design professionally.
After Shawnee opened, and it did so to very fine reviews, within 3 years Tilly had gotten a number of commissions from Pennsylvania to San Antonio, Texas.
As a result he began to purchase advertising space in the golf journals of the day. As course design had now exploded nearly overnight, a number of early architects chose this path to market themselves.
His first advertisements were simple, yet within a short time he was advertising that he could provide full course designs on paper for those that desired something that simple, specifications, plans and models for greens as a separate product and even "Lilliputt Links", a product that he patented and trademarked as small courses on small properties.
As his work gained in respect and his fame as a designer grew, he began including sobriquets in his advertisements; thus he referred to himself not as the designer, but as the "Creator of Baltusrol." Next came listings of his designs and current work and even which courses were now being used to host national championships. There is no question that Tilly understood the importance of marketing his services.
At the same time his magazine writings drastically decreased as a result of a quite large design schedule. It would take the Depression and few design commissions to see Tilly once more writing a great deal as both the Editor of Golf Illustrated and later for the Pacific Coast Golfer.