Wow, what rampant speculation.
Philip, how can we be SURE that the "Hugh Wilson" attending the USGA meeting in Philadelphia on January 13th, 1912 was THE Hugh Wilson from Merion? Isn't it obvious from David's accounts that he was in GB, or France (studying the great French courses) at this time before leaving on the Titanic...or, wait, no, the Philadelphia, just a few months later?
Would he have actually gone to France for only 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 months?? Why, that stretches the limits of plausibility, don't you think??
Even more intriguing is the fact that he went ALONE to France. After all, wasn't Wilson married?
Hmm...let me think...why did famous Philadephians like Ben Franklin go to France alone? Could it possibly be??
Why, that would imply that perhaps Wilson went to visit the ladies of Paris under the clever guise of going on a golfing trip, perhaps with friends? Who ever heard of such a thing?? I guess that's where guys went for that sort of entertainment prior to the establishment of Myrtle Beach on these shores.
But, it gets better. Alan probably had to cover for Hugh posthumously, so he intentionally confused the dates to make it seem that the iniquituous trip overseas actually had something to do with the layout of the golf course at Merion, when it's obvious to anyone with a brain that he had already learned enough in the TWO FULL DAYS days he had spent with guru CB Macdonald to design a world-class course, especially since CB promised to visit two times during the next two years. So, since Alan was probably in on the clever ruse, and to protect the chastity of the Wilson household, his accounts are more concealing than revealing.
And what exactly happened out at NGLA during those couple of nights and who exactly were in attendance? Was the entire Merion committee there?? Was it just CB, or is it possible that Whigham and perhaps Dev Emmett were also there, waiting to inititate the unsuspecting, uneducated Philadelphians into the joys of free-thinking, strategic golf?
The mind reels at the possibilities.
What's more, once he returned to Philadelphia, wasn't it clever of Wilson to fool everyone into thinking that his adventurous trip overseas with the Parisian paramours had actually entitled him to some level of architectural respect, such that the Committee then asked him to design the West course at Merion within the next couple of months, and then tycoon industrialist Clarence Geist had Wilson down to design his Seaview course the next year, and then the city of Philadelphia had so much misguided trust in him that they asked Wilson to design their first public course the following year. If they had only KNOWN the TRUTH!
And the, perhaps the most egregious fallacy; for the next 13 years the unsuspecting membership of Merion let Wilson make wholesale changes to CB Macdonald's original design, and let him work with that Bostonian Flynn, all without a single word of advisement from the great CB, and didn't for a moment realize the truth of their great mistake. They let him destroy the original ALPS 10th hole, and probably let him re-grade the REDAN so that instead of tilting front to back like every other redan in the world, it titled back to front! What an idiot!!
It's truly a wonder that the Merion course that stood when Wilson died in the 20s was, and is, the masterpiece that has stood the test of time to this day, given the lack of continuous input from the dynamic duo of Macdonald and Whigham.
But, is that the entire rest of the story, or will this saga continue to play out on these pages?
See tomorrow's issue of the National Enquirer, aka GCA, for the next chapter!