Are you done here? I'm done here.
Mike, I was done before you yet again went on a fanciful journey covering the exact same ground you always cover. You started this nonsense on page four, when you conveniently began hijacking the thread before it got to the meat of the errors in Tolhurst. And it has just been the same old nonsense. So another waste of 30+ pages on your unproductive tangents.
Where are the lawn courts? The approximate road must have been fixed! The approximate road doesn't matter! Look at how NGLA was a 110 acre course in real estate development by Walter Travis and D. Emmet, who didn't route the course until after the land was purchased! It is silly to think a plan could exist before the course could be laid out.
The last point is particularly ironic since just a few days ago you described the Merion minutes as stating that according the the minutes, after CBM and HJW chose and approved the final plan, they stated that "if Merion would
lay it out according to the plan [which M&W had] approved then the 'last seven holes would be equal to any inland course in the world.'"[/i]
That has been my contention all along, and EXACTLY what I wrote in my IMO.
Merion, particularly Hugh Wilson and his Committee, "laid the course out on the ground and built it according to plan." They built it
according to the plan chosen by CBM and HJW, the plan that CBM, HJW, Wilson, and his Committee had been working on three weeks before at NGLA.
So I have no idea what you guys are still going on about.
To deny that CBM played a major role in planning the course is ludicrous.
As for Francis Swap, another 30+ pages and still you guys have come up with nothing which is consistent with what Francis told us, and so my THEORY is still is still the best explanation of what happened during this time period, and the only one that sticks to common sense.
1. In June 1910 HDC offered Merion around 100 acres to build a golf course, and they (HDC and/or Merion) had already brought in HH Barker to go over the land and draw up a preliminary layout plan.
2. The land offered consisted of the width of the Johnson Farm Property excluding the area out all by itself West of the main property, the land West of the Haverford College Property, and possibly the narrow rectangle of land between the Dallas Estate and Ardmore Avenue. (Depending upon whether the rectangle above the Dallas Estate is included this land measured somewhere around 101 and 108 acres.)
3. According to TEPaul, the Merion records indicate that beginning in June 1910, Merion and HDC began to clandestinely try to secure the Dallas Estate.
4. At the end of June 1910, Merion (through Rodman Griscom) brought in CBM and HJW to inspect the property, presumably accompanied by representatives of Merion. M&W sent a letter indicating, among other things, that a first class course may be possible on the land provided that Merion acquire the land behind the clubhouse. They also highlighted certain features of the property such as the quarry and the streams that would be particularly valuable in laying out the course, and they provided Merion with the distances of holes which they thought would fit on the property. All this was contingent upon them not having seen an actual contour map, which they would presumably need to tell if the course they had in mind would fit for sure.
5. Merion then went about trying to fit the course onto a map of the property. (This may or may not have been the contour map that CBM needed to know for sure if his ideas for the course would fit.) The first 13 holes fit using the land south of Ardmore and the bottom portion of land North of Ardmore, but Merion was having trouble fitting the last five holes.
6. Francis had an idea: Swap the land West of the present course (where the fancy houses now sit) for land not yet on the table -- the land in the rectangle up next to the College property (the approx. 130x190 yard site of the 16th tee and 15th green.)
7. Francis rode his bike to tell Lloyd (not Wilson) of his idea, and Lloyd agreed, and soon thereafter
quarrymen blasted a place for the 16th green.
9. Once the Dallas Deal was finally finished, Merion and HDC agree to the purchase/sale of what they believed to be 117 acres (turns out it was 120) and that land was approximated, for illustrative purposes only, on the Nov. 1910 map.
10. On the map below . . .
---The large backwards 'L" delineated by the thick red lines approximates the land originally offered by HDC. The small cross-hatched rectangle may or may not have been included in the offer (probably not since it would be hard to route a hole in and another out of it.) The rectangle next to the College property at the top (the red and purple cross-hatches) was not offered either, pursuant to the Francis statement.
---The
Green cross-hatches indicate the land Merion gave up in the swap. It is the land West of the course, where the fine homes were built.
---The
Purple cross hatches indicate the land Merion gained, thus allowing them to fit the holes on paper. This is the approx 130x190 yard area where the 15th green and 16th tee were eventually built.
Simple as that. A