I'll hate myself in the morning, but in Re-reading David’s essay again, (just to be sure I am not the imbecile he portrays me as……) I noticed another snippet from the Merion records in his essay that begs to be interpreted:
From the letter recommending purchase of the property, Merion’s Site Committee said this about their two renowned amateur golfers and golf course designers, C.B. Macdonald and H.G Whigham:
“These gentlemen, besides being famous golfers, have given the matter of Golf Course construction much study, and are perfectly familiar with the qualities of grasses, soils, etc. It was Mr. Macdonald, assisted by Mr. Whigham, who conceived and constructed the National Course at Southampton.”
Note that while CBM was clearly a designer, they credited him with conceiving and construction of NGLA, but not specifically mentioning design of the course.
Later, in Wilson’s contribution to Piper and Oakley’s book, he writes:
“May I suggest to any committee about to build a new course, or to alter their old one, that they spend as much time as possible on courses such as NGLA and Pine Valley, where they may see the finest types of holes and, while they cannot hope to reproduce them in entirety, they can learn the correct principles and adapt them to their own courses.”
Do we really think he is recommending a visit to PV or NGLA to learn “construction principles?” Is he recommending committees visit those courses for design ideas they can adopt to their own courses?
And, is he recommending it because that is the way Merion learned the correct design principles. In both quotes, it is clear that they think in terms of getting it built more than designing the course.
And yet, David parses the fine distinction of the “Construction Committee” using modern terms. I believe that the Construction Committee was charged with both design and construction of the golf course, even though they favored the term construction.
When did CBM even coin the phrase “Golf Architect?” Is it possible that it just hadn’t entered their thinking yet?
Just TePaul’s $0.02 worth!