David, did MCC officially choose anyone to design Merion East?
I don't know. I am not privy to the MCC Board of Governor's minutes. But if anyone was chosen it couldn't have been Hugh Wilson. Wayne and Tom wouldn't be hiding that.
We do know that Lesley was chair of the Golf Committee, and in the two meetings I know something about Lesley was the one who was doing the reporting to the board concerning the new course. In the first meeting Lesley, on behalf of his committee, recomended purchase and MCC purchased the land
based largely on CBM's recommendation. The board approved of the purchase.
The second meeting, April 1911, is a bit more hazy because Wayne and TEPaul are still hiding the minutes and have only let out what they thought would help their case. But even from this we know that, Lesley reported that Macdonald and Whigham had determined the final layout plan, and the board approved that routing.
So again, without the minutes we don't know who MCC officially chose to design the course. But I think it is same to conclude that, between Lesley's committee and the Board, they were concerned with what Macdonald and Whigham thought. Who knows if Wilson was ever even mentioned?
Was he?
_________________________
David - in a quick look I could not find a list of all the members of the construction committee. I know that you believe that the construction committee was working on a design/routing that pre-existed the committee's existence, but let's say for the sake of this thread that the construction committee designed the course. Who was on that Construction committee, and what were their backgrounds in golf?
Kirk,
Maybe I am mistaken but you seem to think that if there was no earlier planning then the construction committee must have been entirely responsible. I don't think this was the case.
As for the committee, I haven't reviewed my notes or documents, but here is a brief and loose synopsis. Wilson was in the insurance business, played golf at Princeton, and was on the green committee at the time princeton laid out their course sometime around the turn of the century. Lloyd was a very wealthy Wall Street (Market Street?) heavyweight who was on the Site Committee and was very involved on all sides in the transaction between MCC and HDC. Francis worked for a New York construction company, supervising large projects, buildings and such. Dr. Toulmin had apparently been on the green committee at Belmont many years before when they redid their course, but I don't remember exactly. RE Griscom was the son of a shipping line magnate, and a very good golfer. According the MCC's board, they turned to Griscom to bring in Macdonald and Whigham at the beginning.
Impressive men in their own fields, but hardly stellar resumes when it came to the new field of golf course design, at least when we compare them to the men from NGLA.
Is there anything in their resumes that convinces you that they must have been appointed to design the course? I don't see much.
_________________________________
Phillip,
I may be wrong, but I think you wrote somewhere that Wilson's committee had the contour map created. I don't believe there is any direct evidence indicating that Wilson's committee had the topo created. It could just as easily have been the site committee, or even HDC. In fact, CBM told them they needed a topo in June 1910, so it seems strange they would have waited until January to have one drawn up. Reportedly the Dallas Estate was secured in August 1910, so there was little reason for them to wait to create a topo was there?
I think that the only prior committee actions indicated in the February 1, 1910 letter were that they spoke to CBM, realized the value of his advice, and immediately wrote to Piper.