"As Merion's minutes said, (his committee) would lay it out according the the plan that CBM and HJW chose and approved. I suppose the only question left is how much or how little creative input Wilson contributed to this plan."
Well, since the committee report said that following the meeting at NGLA (early March) they (the committee) rearranged the course into five different plans (Wilson mentioned to Oakley in his March 12, 1911 letter when he mentions going to NGLA that Macdonald and Whigam were expected to return to Ardmore in a few weeks) one could logically conclude that Macdonald and Whigam were not at Ardmore working with the Wilson Committeed during those weeks so logically Wilson and his committee were the ones rearranging the course into five different plans.
And the report to the April 19, 1910 board meeting does say that of those plans if the one Macdonald and Whigam said they would approve was used it would contain that best last seven holes of any inland course in the world.
The report to the board (given by Lesley) also said that PLAN was 'submitted herewith' so one might logically conclude that PLAN was a PLAN on paper being submitted to the Board of Governors at the MCC clubhouse in Haverford where they were holding their monthly board meeting and not just a bunch of stakes that had been arranged on the ground previously at Ardmore.
And since Francis was an engineer and surveyor and he told us in his 1950 article that he was 'added to the committee' because he could read drawings and make them and that he could run a transit, a level and a tape and that he spent many hours over a drawing board and just plain talking, one could probably logically conclude that he was the one on the committee who actually drew the five different plans, including the one that was "herewith submitted" to the April 19, 1910 Board meeting.