It didn't look anything like NGLA in the earliest iterations.
First, Mike, you confuse mere style and aesthetics, on the one hand, with substantive principles underlying good golf holes, on the other hand. Macdonald was interested in spreading the basic principles of good golf, not with spreading any particular style.
Second, as for the supposed lack of naturalness of Macdonald’s courses, you again confuse Macdonald's work at NGLA in the early 1910s with Raynor's style. The pictures I have seen from around this time (1910-1912) look little or nothing like what you apparently think was always Macdonald's style.
Third, while you name a few holes mentioned in the articles (redan, alps, valley of sin, Eden green) this is by no means a comprehensive list of possible design principles Wilson may have learned from M&W, especially if these principles were incorporated into Merion’s natural conditions, as Hugh Wilson says they were.
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David,
I'm not confusing anything. CB Macdonald and his disciples had a very identifiable "fingerprint" on their designs, irrespective of "naturalness", or lack thereof of the features.
On every one of their courses, they sought to create identifiable template holes, copied after their favorites overseas, as you well know. Short, Eden, Biarritz, Redan, Alps, Double Plateau, Long, Cape, Leven, Punchbowl, Sahara, Hog-back, etc, etc.
Not every course included all the template holes, but most courses features a vast predominance of them.
Ironically, none of them included Valley of Sin features. Do you think this was suggested by Macdonald for WIlson to use at Merion on 16 and 17? I very much doubt that.
Even more ironically, their Eden greens were very tame in terms of slope back to front and all appeared on par threes. Why would the green on 15 at Merion have very sharp pitch back to front, similar to the original at St. Andrews, but very different than the one at NGLA? If it's an Eden green at all, as Travis evidently thought, then why does it appear on a par four when every other Eden green built by Raynor/Macdonald appear on par threes?
Despite your efforts to view the original 10th at Merion as an "Alps" and the present 3rd as a redan (despite the fact it bears almost none of the primary characteristics of every single other redan M&W and Raynor ever built), there is no way that Merion follows the templated design mode of EVERY other Macdonald/Raynor course.
No, instead the Committee at Merion took the "principles" of great strategic design and created wholly original golf holes, and with it, took American architecture to the next logical great leap forward from what Macdonald had done and would continue to do himself and with his disciples for the next 20 years.
If the templates don't fit, you must aquit.