Willie Campbell & Myopia

[MCirba]

Not to belabor the point but because I'm slightly obsessive compulsive (good thing for a researcher and writer) I will anyway...

The Opening tournament at Myopia took place on June 18th, 1894, and as evidence that all of these men had been playing the game actively for at least a few years at this point, they already had handicaps.

Herbert Leeds, who was already the best golfer at The Country Club was scratch, and of those who were credited with the original layout Appleton was a 6, Merrill a 10, and Gardner an 18.   


These men were not novice babes in the woods, especially relative to the early state of the game in America, but would best be described as converts and enthusiasts who went against the grain and prevailing opinions of their club-mates to introduce the game at Myopia against heavy resistance.

[MCirba]

A friend of mine who's a "visual learner" sent me a note offline and asked to see the progression of Myopia between 1894 and the full 18 hole course that opened in 1899, as played in the US Open in 1908.

This first speculative layout drawn atop an aerial of the course is based on the little we know about the original 9 hole course.   From articles we know the hole names, we know that some of the course was on the as yet un-purchased Dr. Hopkins land (seen on the subsequent drawing), and we know that John P. May later wrote that the course was "only 2,050 yards".   Again, this drawing is mostly speculative and I'm hopeful that something more definitive may surface in time.

This is my speculative attempt at the course staked out by members R.W Appleton, A.P. Gardner, and T. Watson "Squire" Merrill in the spring of 1894 (according to Edward Weeks and John P. May), and then "laid out" by Willie Campbell (according to contemporaneous newspapers) that opened in June 1894.

Again, this is only a guess based on the available information at hand.  The second and third drawings are taken from Edward Weeks Myopia Hunt Club history book.




Following is what Edward Weeks referred to as the "Long Nine", devised by Herbert Leeds (according to Weeks) that abandoned (for the time being) whatever holes were on the lowlands of the Hopkins property and replaced those three holes with holes on the high ground (7, 8, 9).   It seems likely that Leeds also extended other holes as his course was reported to be about 2,900 yards overall, and likely opened in 1896.




After purchases of land belonging to Dr. Hopkins, as as well as S. Dacre Bush, a full 18 hole course was created in 1899 and Herbert Leeds continued to refine and modify (and toughen) the course over the next decade and more.   However, the basic routing remained intact, and continues to this day.




I hope this helps show the progression in a way that is consistent with the various written records, all of which I believe to be accurate.

[Sven Nilsen]

Mike:

The first full 18 hole course opened in October of 1898.

Oct. 7, 1898 Boston Globe -



This was a scant 2 1/2 months after the US Open was played on the 9 hole course that existed at that time (what you call the "Long Nine").  Discussions regarding expanding to 18 holes started as early as Dec. 1897, with work being reported as beginning in April of 1898.

It might make sense to look at this as two courses:

1.  The early 1894 9 hole course, and
2.  The full 18 hole course (with the "Long Nine" being part of that course).

Sven

[Sven Nilsen]

To avoid any confusion, I am fully aware that the Long Nine was subsequently altered, as can be deciphered from the following two articles.

May 16, 1898 Brooklyn Daily Eagle -



May 2, 1899 The Sun -

[Jeff_Brauer]

Had to look it up....

felicitating themselves didn't mean what I thought it might....will study the visuals when I have time later......

[MCirba]

Sven,

Thanks for weighing in and for that additional information.   I keep trying to picture today's 16th (9th of the "Long Nine") at 250, and then 275 yards and I'm thinking it was a pretty cool short four.   I'm also trying to envision #11 as a par three but I'm guessing that there was probably a much foreshortened green originally on #10.

By the way, the term "Long Nine" doesn't come from me, but instead comes from Edward Weeks club history book, and he relies on a number of sources that include the club's "Run Books" (assuming those are minutes, or periodic accounts of activity), the Herbert Leeds scrapbook (which has sadly gone missing), and other member and independent accounts.   

Other hole yardages changed considerably between the two courses, with today's 2nd hole being extended about 50 yards and the famous 9th par three going from 100 to 141 yards.

And while it may be easier for us to just consider the two courses we know the most about, as you suggest, the facts indicate that there was a nine hole course prior to the Long Nine, which is reported by Weeks and also by John P. May who wrote that the original nine (he also stated that it was laid out by Appleton, Merrill, and Gardner) was "only 2,050 yards", and ended at today's 13th green.   It was also reported that some of that course was on the low land not yet purchased owned by Dr. Hopkins and today's holes 14, 15, and 16 (holes 7, 8, and 9 of the "Long Nine") were not part of the land used for the original course.   

That fact is proven by the 1895 Scribner's article I posted yesterday that stated the finishing hole was the Pond Hole (a shortened version of today's 13th with a green well left of today's ladies tees in a wooded area that used to have a pond, since overgrown, that needed to be carried or averted to the right on the tee shot).

While it's fascinating to compare the Long Nine and the first (and subsequent) eighteen hole iterations, I'd still love to find more about the original course, no matter who designed it.   I'm wondering if there isn't a map in the Essex County newspaper archives.

[MCirba]

More specific, detailed hole information about the "Long Nine" from Club Secretary S. Dacre Bush, as reprinted in Edward Weeks club history book.

[MCirba]

I also believe the suggestion that Herbert Leeds began work/designed the "Long Nine" even before becoming a member sometime in 1896 is correct.   This March 1896 article from the New York Sun indicates as much.   

***EDIT***  Leeds had actually been a long-standing member of the Myopia Hunt Club for a number of years prior for hunting, baseball, tennis, etc., but when golf came to The Country Club he played out of there as his club affiliation until the spring of 1896 when he changed to Myopia.

[MCirba]

To paint the fullest picture, by January 1894, some months before Willie Campbell arrived in America, all of the men purported to have laid out the original Myopia nine-hole course (Appleton, Gardner, Merrill, as well as Herbert Leeds) were deemed to be local "experts" at the game, based on their play at The Country Club (and private estate golf) to date.

That does not mean I don't believe Campbell was involved in getting the course to fruition after his arrival.  I do believe these men would have looked to his advice and practical knowledge.   But there is nothing that would have precluded them from staking out a golf course prior to his arrival, per the club's information, as they certainly had considerable knowledge of the game.

[MCirba]

This 1910 map of Myopia Hunt Club has a number of differences from today's course, with some of the most obvious being the 16th playing as a par four, and the 9th not yet having a pond dug.   

I'm going to try to find a better hosting service for this photo (which is about 4.3 Mb) and pretty good quality which is not very translatable to Flickr, unfortunately.   Any suggestions?

More to come on the original nine holes when I get a chance after touring the property again yesterday.

[MCirba]

A couple of additional artifacts to add to this thread;

First, it's of interest to note that as early as March of 1896, less than two years after the first nine hole course was laid out at Myopia, Herbert Leeds was identified as the man who laid out Myopia (due to the creation of the new nine-hole "Long Course" by that time).   Whatever the first course was at Myopia, whether 2,050 yards or not, it was significantly different enough before the 1896 season that Leeds was credited.

One thing that still exists out there (there are a number of things) as a archeological remnant is the original 9th (today's 13th) green, which was very close to today's first green, with just the original 1st tee (today's 2nd tee) between the two greens.   Here it is from behind, and from the side looking towards the first green in two photos.  The side photo shows the flag of today's first green in background so you can see proximity.

This green fell into disuse sometime between 1913 and 1923 according to original maps I have copied.

[MCirba]

By the end of 1909, the golf links at Myopia were deemed to be "finished", under the belief that any further changes risked mucking things up as much as improving them as this November Boston Globe article explains.   It was an interesting perspective and certainly noteworthy today as we continually change our championship courses trying to keep up with the technology wars.


Spoiler alert - More changes were made to the course after 1909. 

[MCirba]

To give you a sense of the level of relative golf architectural related sophistication that already existed by spring of 1894 in the Boston area, this snippet from the July 22, 1894 Philadelphia Inquirer shows that Herbert Leeds had already created the first iteration of his course at Kebo Valley (ME) earlier that year.   If you recall, Myopia Hunt opened in June of that year, and Herbert Leeds was already a member of Myopia Hunt for a number of years prior to the introduction of a golf course there.

[MCirba]

Came across this article today from January 1894 "Boston Post" that lists those who are avid about the game of golf in the Boston area at that time.   Seems Appleton, Gardner, and Merrill were among them.   

Just wanting to keep this all in one place for future researchers.

[Peter Pallotta]

Mike -
never thought of this before, but maybe it's not that Fowler et al knew/understood less about gca than Tom D et al, it's just that they wanted & appreciated a different *kind* of gca, top-shot bunkers and all -- and in part, it's because they wanted & appreciated a different kind of *game*, routine scores of 100+ and all. Maybe Melvin Morrow was right all along; the earliest OTM work, let alone that of the early American amateurs, wasnt 'primitive' at all. It was a choice. All they really and actually needed back then was help with growing the grass!
Maybe.
(Hey, that's something for future researchers to sink their teeth into, eh? Ha ha)

[MCirba]

Lots of time indoors at home these days, regrettably, and came across something in a newspaper search that brought to mind this old thread.

I'm not sure if this fact was obvious before in lo these many pages of back and forth but what struck me is that many of the early golfers in the Boston area all belonged to multiple clubs, i.e. Essex, The Country Club, and Myopia.   I'm not sure exactly how many were Essex members exactly, but it seems that all of the Myopia protagonists mentioned in these pages (i.e. Appleton, Gardner, Merrill, Leeds, Bush, Burnham, et.al.) were also members of The Country Club (Brookline) and learned their golf there in 1893 when the first home built course at that club opened in the spring of that year (if not earlier as some golf was played in the Boston area going back to 1890).   

As mentioned earlier, Appleton also had a golf course on his estate prior to the formal opening of the Myopia course in June of 1894 and Herbert Leeds was also a member of Myopia (and TCC) at the time it was built and felt sure enough about his architectural aptitude to design the first course at Kebo Valley that same month.

Chronologically, all from the "Boston Globe"...

December 3, 1893



January 21, 1894




April 8, 1894



April 15, 1894




May 6, 1894



May 13, 1894



June 10, 1894



June 17, 1894




June 17, 1894



June 19, 1894



June 24, 1894

[MCirba]

The original thread here had a lot of discussion related to the fairly rare Edward Weeks centennial history book on Myopia Hunt Club published in 1975.   The sources listed included some arcane terms like "run books", which were thought to be club minutes, as well as the contention that Herbert Leeds had a scrapbook that was used by Weeks as a primary source.   Some doubted their existence, to be frank, and it seems the Leeds scrapbook went missing at some point as well.

There was also some debate about the origin of the first nine hole course, as well as its location.   We've seen from prior documentation that the original nine hole course was replaced in part by the Herbert Leeds "Long Nine" about 1896, which replaced three of the original 1894 holes with the three "Hill Holes" and presumably lengthened others.   

Nevertheless, in an attempt to compile all of the historical evidence in one place, here are Edward Weeks "Acknowledgements" pages as well as his 2-page description of the first course at Myopia and its origins.   I apologize for the quality of the photos and please let me know if something is unreadable.

[Bob Montle]

This may be slightly off topic, but here is what Andra Kirkaldy wrote in 1921 about his visit to Myopia in 1906.   

"Never in my fifty years of golf have I seen greens to beat these.  They were like velvet."

"We had packed up to leave for Liverpool.  The manager of the Myopia club begged us to play before the members.
(Sandy) Herd did a 75 and I did a 78.  The captain lent us three clubs each, as our own were packed away.  They treated us like lords."

3 clubs each!

If you question his memory regarding what he scored, here is what he wrote about when he was in America:

"It was January 1906 or thereabouts - a year here or there makes no matter."