Was Charles Blair Macdonald really the father of Golf Architecture in America

[JC Urbina]

Or was someone else taking the lead in bringing golf to the U.S.

[Neil_Crafter]

Hi Jim
Surely that is two separate questions you have posed there? Bringing golf to the USA is a different kettle of fish in my eye than in being the father of golf architecture. If CBM wasn't the father, then who could it have been I wonder?
Neil

[paul cowley]

Jim....I wouldn't subscribe it to one, but a melting pot of individuals, and personally I don't care that much to debate it.

Maybe you could assign this to the team of forensic golf historians who are busy at work over on the "Cape Hole" thread!

[Mac Plumart]

Paul...

First off, funny post concerning the forensics going on in the Cape thread.  Frankly, I think that stuff is interesting...if the parties involved didn't seem to get so angry.

Secondly, for what it is worth Whitten and Cornish in "The Golf Course" state that the father of American Golf is John Reid.  A Scotsman who settled in Yonkers and built St. Andrews Golf Club there.

Also, they say that Willie Dunn was the first to state that the future of golf was in America.

It is a pretty cool book...of course they also discuss CB MacDonald, Ross, Benedlow, etc as having BIG impacts on the golf in America.

[Gary Slatter]

Paul...

First off, funny post concerning the forensics going on in the Cape thread.  Frankly, I think that stuff is interesting...if the parties involved didn't seem to get so angry.

Secondly, for what it is worth Whitten and Cornish in "The Golf Course" state that the father of American Golf is John Reid.  A Scotsman who settled in Yonkers and built St. Andrews Golf Club there.

Also, they say that Willie Dunn was the first to state that the future of golf was in America.

It is a pretty cool book...of course they also discuss CB MacDonald, Ross, Benedlow, etc as having BIG impacts on the golf in America.

Paul, who was first to say "the future of golf is in China"?

[Rich Goodale]

Paul...

First off, funny post concerning the forensics going on in the Cape thread.  Frankly, I think that stuff is interesting...if the parties involved didn't seem to get so angry.

Secondly, for what it is worth Whitten and Cornish in "The Golf Course" state that the father of American Golf is John Reid.  A Scotsman who settled in Yonkers and built St. Andrews Golf Club there.

Also, they say that Willie Dunn was the first to state that the future of golf was in America.

It is a pretty cool book...of course they also discuss CB MacDonald, Ross, Benedlow, etc as having BIG impacts on the golf in America.

Paul, who was first to say "the future of golf is in China"?

Gary

I doubt if I was the first, but I was near the head of the curve on this old (2004) thread:

http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,14519.35/

Jim

As for your question, one possible answer is "Yes, because CBM told us so, in 1902," but that would not be consistent with the facts, given that Charlie only had two golf courses (Chicago v. 1.0 and 2.0) in the ground at that time, and there were already more other examples of decent "GCA" by then.

To go a bit OT, I find it interesting that CBM's GCA career is puncutated by so many long absences, to wit:

--learns about golf in St. Andrews in 1874 or so (age ~17)
--builds 1st course at Downers Grove in 1892 (~age 34)
--builds no other courses until conceives of the masterpiece that is NGLA (age ~51)
--works frantically over the next 17 years and then retreats into senility (age ~68)

For those rusty on their 17X tables, does this not mirror the life of the Cicada.......?

I lived through the cicadas 17-year rebirth in Washington in 1970, and damn were they vociferous!  CBM would have been ~112.....

Rich

[Anthony Gray]

   Yes.

[Jim_Kennedy]

One thing you can be sure, the answer-we-all-should-accept will surely come from someone who doesn't think the occasional dive into the history of GCA has any value.   

[Tom MacWood]

Rich
Your timeline is a little misleading. CBM was involved in the design of the courses at Belmont in 1893, Wheaton in 1895 and Washington Park in 1895. He was also involved in the best golf holes debate in the UK around the turn of the century, wrote his article on the ideal golf course a couple of years later, and then spent the next five or so years planning and building the NGLA. Following the completion of the NGLA he was involved in a steady number of designs until he got out in the mid- to late-20s, at which time he published his book.

[Rich Goodale]

Tom

You are nitpicking and missing the point which is that CBM's GCA resume had some very large gaps in it, each of roughly 17 years duration.  Put in such a time-line perspective, he seems more like a dilletante than an evangelical.

Rich

[Tom MacWood]

Rich
I don't think so. He had his hand in golf architectural issues throughout that time. An article or series of article or a book can be as impactful as a design IMO.

I think the case could be made that there were several fathers of American golf architecture. There were three major pockets where the game developed - Boston, NY and Chicago. In Boston the fathers were Willie Campbell & Herbert Leeds, in NY Van Tassel & Mungo Park and Chicago CBM & HJ Tweedie.

[Bill_McBride]

How many Scottish and English golf professionals (who also made clubs and laid out courses) moved from the UK to the US in the 1890's?  Surely they are collectively the "father of American golf architecture."

[Jeff Taylor]

The case is being made for Alexander Findlay. See the attached for more info.

http://alexanderfindlay.com/

[Rich Goodale]

Rich
I don't think so. He had his hand in golf architectural issues throughout that time. An article or series of article or a book can be as impactful as a design IMO.

I think the case could be made that there were several fathers of American golf architecture. There were three major pockets where the game developed - Boston, NY and Chicago. In Boston the fathers were Willie Campbell & Herbert Leeds, in NY Van Tassel & Mungo Park and Chicago CBM & HJ Tweedie.

Tom

I agree that there were several fathers, although I think your list is selectively myopic.  Van Tassel and not Bendelow?  GMAB!

Exactly which GCA books did CBM write in the 1875-1909 mostly fallow (GCA-wise) 34-year period of his life?  I agree that he may have written some articles and participated in some "rating" panels in that period, but so do/have many on this board over the past 10 years, including you and me.  Are you or I (or any of our unindicted co-conspirators (including GMBF himself....)) the "fathers" of self-agrandizing internet GCA "criticism?"

Rich

[David Stamm]

I think a critieria that all can agree on (fat chance, I know) first must be established. If "father" denotes first to lay out a course, is there not evidence of golf being played in the Carolina low country in the late 1700's? If so, we'll never know who designed that course (at least I've never read any evidence). David Fay has said he feels "John Reid must be viewed as the father of American golf" in the "The Story of Golf" that was written by George Peper, because of St Andrews in Yonkers, NY.


There has been alot of architecture in America that has not had anything to do w/ CBM. Colt, Alison, MacKenzie, Fowler, Ross and many others. They all have had a big influence on the direction of architecturein this country. CBM's role has been huge, but I feel he has played one (albeit very important) part, not THE part that set the tone for architecture in America.

[Jim_Kennedy]

David,
I don't think anyone would disagree with your last sentence.

[TEPaul]

Even though there were many working on developing American golf and architecture in the early years (between the mid-1890s and perhaps the mid-teens) if one wants to pick out one person who probably had the largest and the most important and significant impact on golf architectural thinking in that time span I think it would have to be Macdonald. And if one thinks for that it's appropriate to label him the "Father of American Golf Architecture" I would agree with it and I have for years.

But the thing that has interested me just as much about Macdonald is that I believe in that same time span (particularly the beginning of it) he was also the most significant man to American golf itself in various ways, particularly administratively, even if he never became the President of the United States Golf Association which I believe he certainly would have become had they actually asked him to do it.

I have always felt that the reasons he never did become that just might tell a fascinating story of the beginnings of golf in America and its eventual and future directions----directions that Macdonald, in a number or ways, may not have agreed with at all!

[Jim_Kennedy]

.....although Macdonald was  the first architect in America to build a golf course to an ideal, i.e. 18 of the most 'perfect' holes and not a slouch in the bunch.

I could be wrong but I don't think anyone before him blended art, classic hole structures and surveying/engineering together in the way CBM did at National.  Others will always find their own way to create but frankly, his architecture set the bar at perfect. No one strives for less since CBM and that is why, for me, he earned his self-anointment.

[TEPaul]

I've never liked this word "ideal" on architecture at least not the way some try to use it on here. But was Macdonald actually the first to create great architecture in America? I don't think so and from what he said I don't believe he did either at the time. Before NGLA there was Myopia, GCGC and Chicago GC. Of course CGC was his and seeing it was his obviously he would say that about it. Unfortunately we don't have the opportunity today to see what it was like back then but we sure do with GCGC and Myopia.

But the deal is Macdonald was a whole lot more public about NGLA and what he was trying to do there than a guy like Leeds was at his Myopia.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Well, when this 'somebody' uses the word ideal on here it has nothing to with formulas of any kind, nor with length, par, number of bunkers, etc.,etc.,etc..

I don't think there was another 'ideal' course in America at the time of NGLA's opening. Some VG and a possible great one or two, but ideal? I've never heard anyone say that anyone else was striving to create what CBM did. 

[Bill Brightly]

C.B. was the father of REALLY GOOD gca in America. Macdonald changed the paradigm with National. My belief is that all other architects built courses with thoughts of NGLA in their heads.

I was saving post # 1000 for an appropriate topic!


 

[TEPaul]

"I was saving post # 1000 for an appropriate topic!"


Too bad BillB; you hit the 1000 mark with that one. Now proceed directly to GOLFCLUBATLAS.com's hat check girl-----she has your prize for hitting 1,000 posts. I think it's still a gross of bananas.

And frankly I don't think Charlie was the father of VERY GOOD architecture in America because Devie and Walter beat him to it and Herbie Leeds beat them all to it.

[JNC Lyon]

"I was saving post # 1000 for an appropriate topic!"


Too bad BillB; you hit the 1000 mark with that one. Now proceed directly to GOLFCLUBATLAS.com's hat check girl-----she has your prize for hitting 1,000 posts. I think it's still a gross of bananas.

And frankly I don't think Charlie was the father of VERY GOOD architecture in America because Devie and Walter beat him to it and Herbie Leeds beat them all to it.

What is the timeline on the construction of Garden City?  Emmet certainly did the original routing prior to the construction of NGLA, but my understanding is that Travis made the course what it is today through years of revision.

Leatherstocking is my favorite course that is credited solely to Emmet.  Here, however, the timeline is even more fuzzy.  Emmet constructed some of the golf course in the pre-NGLA period, but how much of that comprises today's great layout is very debatable.

How many of Emmet's contributions to American GCA were made before NGLA, and how many were made after?

All of that being said, Travis and Leeds did great work before NGLA.  They were the pioneers in REALLY GOOD American golf course architecture.  My final question is: how influential was their work?

[TEPaul]

"What is the timeline on the construction of Garden City?  Emmet certainly did the original routing prior to the construction of NGLA, but my understanding is that Travis made the course what it is today through years of revision."


JNC:

That's true but all those courses from those so-called "amateur/sportsmen" architects were worked on by them for many years and sometimes decades but the point is the very good courses of GCGC and Myopia very much preceded NGLA and Macdonald himself said so in his membership and principal proposal letter for NGLA which is included in his 1928 book "Scotland's Gift Golf"essentially his autobiography in golf.

[JNC Lyon]

Tom Paul,

Garden City and Myopia Hunt are definitely examples of very good courses that were built before National Golf Links.  However, I wonder how the pre-NGLA versions of GCGC and Myopia compare to the post-NGLA versions.  Is the construction of NGLA correlated with subsequent improvements to GCGC and Myopia Hunt by Travis and Leeds that made them into the layouts they are today?  In other words, did NGLA influence Travis and Leeds to make major changes to those two layouts?  Or were they already solidified as examples of great architecture?

This correlation is mere speculation on my part, but it is a possibility.  I only wonder because National Golf Links is so often accepted as the foundation of great American golf course architecture.