Tom MacWood regarding the mystery of the routing of Merion East;
“….there appears to be other facts he chose not to cover in his report for whatever reason: The routing process is not discussed (as far as I can tell),”
Luckily, I’ve just found this chronicle in the back of a frame in Merion’s archives. It’s Hugh Wilson’s chronicle of the day he and his Merion Committee with Fred Pickering, William Flynn and Howard Toomey in tow routed the world famous Merion East golf course.
The Laying out of the routing of Merion East
By
Hugh Irvine Wilson
Feb, 3, 1911
On a rather warm early February Saturday morning 1911 my committee and I along with William Flynn, Fred Pickering and Howard Toomey collected in front of the clubhouse to route the golf course. The committee consisted of Rodman Griscom, Henry Toulmin, Richard Francis and Horatio Gates.
The winter turf was somewhat soft and spongy and I thanked my lucky stars I’d bought those wonderful Abercrombie & Fitch rubber slip-ons to place over my Peal walking shoes. As we prepared to set out I notice Pickering smelled like a gin mill. I set the stage for this historic moment by announcing “Alright, boys, what do we do now?” Roddy Griscom said; “How the Hell do we know Hugh, years from now some pawky researcher from Ohio might call us rank novices which we probably are and that’s why we sent you to Europe for seven months to study this subject, my boy. Don’t you know what we’re supposed to do now?” Henry Toulmin chimed in; “Hugh, I’m scared, do you think we should go to your office and try that new machine and ask Charlie Macdonald what we should do now?”
Young Bill Flynn said; “ I don’t think that will be necessary Mr Wilson, I think we should start with a tee right here in front of the clubhouse and take a hole over to the corner of Ardmore Ave and the road over there the driveway comes in from.” I told the little mick from Massachussets that despite the fact that he says he’d designed a golf course in Vermont that was a pretty dodgy idea since we were standing right in the middle of the parking circle of the club’s driveway. But young Bill said: “Mr Wilson, why don’t we bring the driveway in from Ardmore avenue and make a parking lot behind the barn behind us because this will make a most cozy and dramatic starting tee just next to the clubhouse?” I told this over-reaching William that we were not in the business of road-planning, we were here to lay out the routing of a golf course. He did have a good point that a hole over to the elbow of Ardmore Ave and the clubhouse road did look like a reasonable place for a hole, so we walked around to the side of the clubhouse and looked at that angle for a tee from there and it looked just jake to me. And so we proceeded with the first. For some reason Dick Francis had broken away from us and was heading down to the far end at the top of L of the property on the clubhouse side of the road and to allow him to catch up to us again we all walked slightly to the right. I notice young William was sketching our progress and consequently the first hole became a dogleg left.
With Pickering leading the way we proceeded across Ardmore Ave. Pickering stumbled and was nearly killed by a passing car but luckily Hor Gates caught the poor stinking wretch. From the other side of Ardmore Ave we observed the land before us down Ardmore Ave from the promontory above the creek and proceeded that way to a point I thought made a demanding par 5. Bill Flynn said it would make a finer par 5 if we went a bit farther to the end. I told the young man that would make a hole of nearly 575 yards and if we kept that kind of stretching up our course would be criticized for the rest of time as being and overly long slog with far too much total yardage on the card! Bill said we should consider the deleterious effects in the future of this new “Bounding Billie” golf ball and that someday Merion may need to be 8,000 yards because of it. We continued along with the property line on the right to the end to what seemed a long par 4. We turned back from there as there was no more to go in that direction and followed the property line on the right again to a rise that appeared to make a fine high green for a short hole.
At that point Pickering said he felt he was going to be ill so I told him to step across the boundary fence to the right which he did and as we waited for him Roddy said he was sorry but he had to go #2. I told Roddy that if we were going to be architects and spend long periods of time on the land we should all act like architects and remember to do our business at home in the morning. Roddy trotted into the valley and up the hillside on the other side behind a tree and did his business. Pickering returned with a little more color in his checks and Roddy yelled to us to report that from his vantage squatting behind a tree on the hillside on the other side of the valley that it looked like a fine route ahead of him for another long hole and so the wonderfully long second par 5 with a green just over the creek nearly 600 yards away came into being.
(Unfortunately I found only two pages of what appears to have been about a 15 page report of the routing of Merion East but I will continue to look for the rest).