Willie Campbell & Myopia

[Tom MacWood]

This is from the Boston Daily Advertiser June 19, 1894.

[Mike_Cirba]

Tom,

Thanks for posting that. 
 

[Jim_Kennedy]

This seems to be totally at odds to what's been said about Myopia, i.e. that it's 1894 course was laid out by members because Campbell wasn't even in the US at the time.

[Mike_Cirba]

This seems to be totally at odds to what's been said about Myopia, i.e. that it's 1894 course was laid out by members because Campbell wasn't even in the US at the time.

Jim,

No, I believe I produced it here before but I have Willie Campbell's ship manifest with him arriving in the states in March 1894.

[Mike_Cirba]

I'll repost the manifest later...I'm not at a computer where I can do that right now.

[Joe Bausch]

I'm assuming this is the same Willie Campbell.  It appears he won the tournament that perhaps was the progenitor of the US Open.  This from the September 11, 1894 edition of the Boston Daily Journal.

[David Stamm]

I have a very stupid question. Was Brookline at one time known as the Country Club of Boston?

[Joe Bausch]

More on Willie Campbell, this from the August 7, 1894 edition of, believe it or not, the Idaho Daily Statesman:

[Joe Bausch]

I have a very stupid question. Was Brookline at one time known as the Country Club of Boston?

I think so David.  I saw an article calling it Brookline Country Club of Boston.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mike,
I'll take your word on the passenger list, that date sounds familiar.

To the first half of my question: I think that there was some disbelief that WC had anything to do with building MHC. This article at least seems to challenge that belief.
 
It really seems to me that in this time period (and possibly at times in ours) the builders of golf courses and clubhouses all had a mentor, or mentors, at the club. Perhaps it was some sort of validation of the plan, i.e. if a member was linked with the 'designer' then all was well, and everyone could believe that the best interests of the club were being served.

In this case it's not far-fetched to think that WC built the course and his mentors were the members who have been mentioned in other threads. 

[DMoriarty]

Mike,
I'll take your word on the passenger list, that date sounds familiar.

To the first half of my question: I think that there was some disbelief that WC had anything to do with building MHC. This article at least seems to challenge that belief.
 
It really seems to me that in this time period (and possibly at times in ours) the builders of golf courses and clubhouses all had a mentor, or mentors, at the club. Perhaps it was some sort of validation of the plan, i.e. if a member was linked with the 'designer' then all was well, and everyone could believe that the best interests of the club were being served

In this case it's not far-fetched to think that WC built the course and his mentors were the members who have been mentioned in other threads. 

Given that WC was one of the top golfers in the world and familiar with the courses in scotland while they were novices in comparison don't you think it would be the other way around?

Or do you mean that it was important for the club to have a club representative or figurehead even if they had little or nothing to contribute to the substance of the project?

[Mike_Cirba]

David,

I'm pretty familiar with the courses of Scotland and have also seen many of the best courses in this country and some of the worst as well.

Would you hire me to lay out your course? 

[Jim_Kennedy]

DM,
Yes, I think the club member was there mainly to lay rest to any fears that the membership might have. That doesn't mean they didn't get involved, like McGovern at Aronimink or Banks at Hotchkiss.

[Jim_Kennedy]

David,

I'm pretty familiar with the courses of Scotland and have also seen many of the best courses in this country and some of the worst as well.

Would you hire me to lay out your course? 

I don't know about David, but I wouldn't hire you. In this day and age we have golf course architects vs. then, when the only guys who knew much of anything were the Campbells of the world.
 Their reign may have been short-lived, but at least they reigned.

[Mike_Cirba]

Jim,

I'm not disputing that at all.

I'm simply stating how thin of a qualification that is/was and although Willie Campbell was one of the better ones, it's no wonder really that so many of the early golf courses done by his counterparts made the very soul of golf shreik, in Macdonald's immortal words.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mike,
How could that be taken as a 'thin qualification' back then when there wasn't any way to quantify it as such? For the most part no one knew any better.

[Mike_Cirba]

Jim,

Agreed,,,I think we're saying the same thing from two different ends.

[Mike_Cirba]

Sorry for the large size, but it's pretty cool nonetheless...

His occupation is listed as "Golf Club maker"

[DMoriarty]

David,

I'm pretty familiar with the courses of Scotland and have also seen many of the best courses in this country and some of the worst as well.

Would you hire me to lay out your course?  

Jim,

I'm not disputing that at all.

I'm simply stating how thin of a qualification that is/was and although Willie Campbell was one of the better ones, it's no wonder really that so many of the early golf courses done by his counterparts made the very soul of golf shreik, in Macdonald's immortal words.

Mike,  I wish you were joking with these posts, but I am sure that you are not.   This was 1894, and there was nothing "thin" about Willie Campbell's qualifications, especially in comparison to the club members in Boston who had just picked up golf clubs for the first time (literally, according the article.)  

1.  He was one of the top golfers in the World, and by "top golfers" I don't mean 6 to 8 handicap American Amateurs, I mean contesting for the Open Championship "top golfers."  In fact he may be best known for having the 1887 Open all but rapped up when he drew a bad lie on the edge of a bunker ("Willie Campbell's Grave") refused to play out backward, and took a 9 on the 16th at Prestwick.  

2.  Prior to coming to the United States he had already designed two quality golf courses, both of which are still in existence: The Machrie Hotel Course on Islay; and Seascale Golf Club in England (with George Lowe.)

3.  Willie Campbell was so far superior to the novice golfers in Boston that the comparison is laughable.   For example, the winning score in the opening tournament was 112 by Leeds, and the second place finisher (who had apparently never handled a club before) shot a 114.   In Comparison, as of 1898 Campbell's reported low on the course was 77.   That is 35 strokes better than top "crack amateur player" Leeds. 

4.  Most of the amateurs in Boston had never seen a real golf course.  In contrast, Campbell not only was familiar with Scottish golf, he was the Professional at Prestwick and other notable courses.
  
So  given a choice between you and Willie Campbell,  I'd take Willie Campbell, even though he has been dead for 109 years.

There was nothing thin about his qualifications in 1894.  

[Mike_Cirba]

David,

Yeah, I'd probably take him over me too.  And yes, I was being tongue-in-cheek.

But part of what I'm saying here is simply the reality that these guys were left designing courses simply because they were "professional golfers", and it was thought that they had to have some skills in not only playing, but also clubmaking, teaching, greenskeeping, and architecture.    

While his resume was hardly "thin" for the times given that almost nobody in the US even knew what the game was in 1894, when one considers the skills required to artistically visuallize and then create a golf course, having good hand-eye coordination and top level playing experience along with clubmaking expertise is not exactly the same skill-set, and generally, it showed.

[DMoriarty]

Give us a break Mike.  In addition to his golfing expertise, the guy designed courses before he ever even came here.   He was infinitely more qualified than anyone else there, and not just at golf.

As for the rest, you've been arguing on other threads that, even 17 years later, any amateur with a mid-to-high single digit handicap qualified as an "expert" at designing courses, yet here you are claiming that one of the top golfers in the world was not really an expert?

You are all over the place, apparently just typing whatever comes to mind to support whatever point you happened to be trying to make at the time.  Why not set your heavy baggage aside and see if you can learn something about early golf in America from these articles?

[Mike_Cirba]

Give us a break Mike.  In addition to his golfing expertise, the guy designed courses before he ever even came here.   He was infinitely more qualified than anyone else there, and not just at golf.

As for the rest, you've been arguing on other threads that, even 17 years later, any amateur with a mid-to-high single digit handicap qualified as an "expert" at designing courses, yet here you are claiming that one of the top golfers in the world was not really an expert?

You are all over the place, apparently just typing whatever comes to mind to support whatever point you happened to be trying to make at the time.  Why not set your heavy baggage aside and see if you can learn something about early golf in America from these articles?

Dave,

I have no problem with Campbell being an expert golfer in 1894, or even designing the first nine holes at Myopia between his arrival in March 31, 1894 and the course's opening in mid-June.

What I'm not getting is your reactions to my posts?  What are you disagreeing with?

My only point is that the early professionals from Great Britain were given a very tough set of expectations, and all of them were expected to lay out golf courses whether they had any innate ability or interest in doing so or not.  

You certainly can't tell me that most of what they produced in these early years was any good?

That was hardly their fault..most were expected to get their job done in a day or two, for modest pay, and most weren't around to supervise any construction.

On the other hand, I also have a hard time understanding how guys who saw the great courses of Scotland designed holes with stilted geometric shapes, cross bunkers like steeple chase crossings, and such courses generally lacking strategy.   I don't know much about what Campbell produced so I can't comment there, but guys like the Dunn's and some of the others designed some very strange courses for being from Scotland.

I also think you have to admit that these early professionals were responsible, at least in part, for much of the generally awful golf architecture that existed in this country in the first 15 years, that Macdonald, Travis, and others began to rebel against.

As Max Behr said, you might as well expect a golf professional to build a cathedral.   Like today's touring professionals, an ability to strike a ball well with a club is hardly the same skillset as designing good golf holes.

[Patrick Kiser]

Cool stuff.  Keep it coming.

I could have sworn there was a course profile of Myopia previously.  Was that not the case?

Also, there was a thread some time back about how certain WASP clubs had to have a WASP seal of approval and credit of sorts.  Do we know if Myopia was one of those clubs and because WC was not really a WASP ... credit went elsewhere?

Just wondering...



 

[Peter Pallotta]

I had the same thought Jim had, i.e. that I somehow remembered that the dates wouldn't line up right. But even before Mike corrected that idea, I realized I was thinking of something else, a couple of things - one, the obituary that appeared soon after Willie Campbell's premature death (which I can't find again right now, but which I think -- I could be wrong -- did mention that he laid out several courses but didn't include Myopia on the list, only saying that he was the profesional there), and second, the Hutchinson article from 1914, that includes this snippet:

"Thence we went on by night, a sixteen hours' journey, to Boston, where Charlie Macdonald, the creator of the National Golf Links of America, met us. Immediately on arrival I started out for the Myopia Club, where Macdonald and I beat T. Stephenson and Herbert Leeds. The latter is the constructor of the Myopia course, and for its construction deserves no little credit. From what I have seen of American courses I put the National Golf Links first and this Myopia second, a very good second."  

Peter

[Mike_Cirba]

Peter,

Well, there is no question at all that H.C. Leeds took the original Myopia course very early on and added nine holes and modified, evolved, and shaped it over many years into the course that was truly America's first great course, which by the time of Hutchinson's quote it had certainly become.

I think what is being contested here is the Myopia history book, which has the original nine holes as being designed by 3 members back in 1894, one of whom memorably was also the "keeper of the hounds", which is a term I love.    

I don't know the course or the history well enough to know how much of those first nine holes remain, and in what form, but there is no doubt that Leeds was the first of the great "amateur sportsmen" architects in America, and what made each of them special was the time, study, care, and development they each put into their particular projects.