Through the kindness of David Gordon and Mike Hurdzon, Tom Paul and I have been able to study the William Flynn collection of drawings that was in the Gordons' barn for nearly 70 years at great length. Tom and I have spent a lot of time and money to digitize the Gordon collection and additional drawings that we have located (CC Yorktown, Philadelphia Country Club, Mill Road Farm, US Naval Academy, among others). Mike Hurdzan agrees with us that the digital copies on CD should be made available to various organizations that sponsor research and can act as a repository. We intend to make copies available to the USGA, the Golf Association of Philadelphia, the Amateur Athletic Foundation, The Golf Association of Pennsylvania, and other suitable centers. Individual clubs have helped out a bit in the process and they, of course, have the materials related to their clubs. In this way the material is available to scholars and clubs. I think the USGA recently posted on the Open website a Flynn drawing of Shinnecock Hills. We made the image a low resolution one so that the materials cannot be copied but are suitable for screen viewing. The more the information is readily available to clubs, the increased chance that they will utilize the reference material if they hire a sympathetic architect. No longer will restoration architects fool memberships into thinking they'll do it in accordance with the initial design, they'll be some reference material to be held to as a standard. Likewise, historians should be allowed in the process in some way. Several Flynn clubs have sought information from Tom Paul and I (especially Tommy) and we enjoy being part of the process. We present fact as such with supporting evidence and when we speak of suppositions, we present them as such. We find a sharing of information terrific common ground to establish relationships on.
As regards Flynn's design drawings, both Tommy and I feel the evidence supports the conclusion that Flynn's plans were drawn to scale and meant to represent exactly the way the course was to be built. Flynn's output was rather small and he is generally known to have spent a great deal of time on site and afterwards at many of the projects he worked on. Flynn's method of work was such that he continually drew design iterations. Up to a point he elicited input from the membership, but reached a point in the process where he took complete control of the design. Flynn notated the design iteration with a number on the bottom right of his grid paper drawings. The highest number we've seen is his seventh iteration although that is the only set we've seen. Shinnecock Hills has a number of design iterations that we have, some of which were not implemented due to land acquisiton selections. However, for the most part, the finished design on paper with intricate construction instructions was how the courses were meant to be constructed and how they were. There are a few surviving examples of Flynn's green drawings, the Old Course at the Homestead for instance, where the green drawings are very specific and contours indicated to the inch. There is no reason to believe this level of detail was not meant to be followed.
Of course some changes were inevitable. Large boulders under the surface for instance caused Flynn to change the green contours on the 15th at Rolling Green which resulted in a fabulous two-tiered green that was not indicated in any drawing. We know Flynn came back to a number of courses over the years (Merion for at least 22 and the Cascades for more than 13 years) and made changes to bunkers and other features so the drawings we have do not necessarily indicate what's currently on the ground. So Mike, I think it pretty safe to say that although there are exceptions, Flynn systematically drew what was built. This may be very different from the methods used by most architects of his day, but he was very methodical in his process. Perhaps having an engineer as his business and construction partner helped this come about.
To date a number of people have seen the Flynn collection. GCAers such as Bob Crosby, Mike Cirba, Dave Miller, Mike Malone and golf architects such as Mike Young, Ian Andrew, Ben Crenshaw, Ron Forse, Ron Prichard, Gil Hanse, Paul Cowley, Mark Love, and others have marveled at the works--they are both accurate and artistic. We are looking forward to the time when there is wide spread availability to study and refer to the drawings. One method that would facilitate this is if/when we ever get the Flynn Society up and running is to have an associated website that has the drawings on file although high resolution images may only be made available through limited access.
All the materials we have obtained through a great deal of research is made available to the clubs. The really well organized Merion archives has been the beneficiary of a considerable addition of information that Tommy and I have discovered or accumulated. We have digitized Flynn drawings of Merion from 1916, 1924, 1930, and 1934 and donated them to the Merion archives as well as copies of hundreds of Hugh and Alan Wilson letters, Piper and Oakley letters related to Merion, photographs, newspaper accounts, and other important papers.
Tom and I believe that the expansion of knowledge is only beneficial when it is disseminated. Hopefully an organized collection of copies of his drawings and writings, along with our book (which we intend to finish by the end of the year)will be the definitive study of Flynn's work in golf.