Jim Nugent,
About Ward's score, yesterday I only posted the first page of an 8 page article, simply in the interest of time. The story continues on Page 2;
by 3 up and 2 to play. The seventeenth
and eighteenth were halved in
4 and 5 respectively, although both
were on the home green on their seconds,
each taking 3 putts.
Mr. Ward's score:
Out—6 5 5 4 4 5 4 4 5—42
In —2 2 4 2 5 3 5 4 5—32—74
This record will probably hold for
some time. Without doubt the 32 in
will stand for a long time to come and
the chances are that never will there
be a duplication of the sequence of 2's
on the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth
holes. It may not be out of place to
here mention that on these holes in
the qualifying round Mr. Ward registered
7, 5 and 4, and the 7 was made
without getting into any "trouble" at
all—and there's lots of it lying around.
The course opened informally with this Invitational Tournament in 1910, and opened formally in 1911. I think Macdonald made a minor typo in his book, which is the only one I've found.
Jim Kennedy,
Perhaps I simply have a vivid imagination. The word "Stentorian" was fully intended.
Your post came to me yesterday abruptly which caused me to imagine you as an instructor in the front of the room singling out and yelling loudly at the only kid in the class who is still trying to discuss actual evidence, even if he can be a smart-ass sometimes. while the rest of the class behind me is engaged in full-out fisticuffs and yelling insults. It just seemd a little one-sided.
You didn't even acknowledge that this thread was generated from a number of posts from David on both the Myopia and Shinnecock threads accusing me of wholly misrepresenting the history of NGLA, as such;
Mike Cirba,
You've come up with all sorts of crazy theories about NGLA which would rewrite portions of their history. You've claimed various individuals should be added to the credits, claimed it was part of a real estate scheme, claimed the course was 110 acres, credited Hutchinson, Travis, and Emmet with the design, disputed the date it was ready for play, disputed the opening date of the club, etc . . . So tell us about how you reached out to NGLA and examined their internal records? Tell us about you went to them first as a show of respect?
Mike Cirba
I accurately and gently portrayed some of the absurd positions you have taken regarding NGLA. Should I start a thread pulling some of them up so you can explain why you didn't go to NGLA? I asked David not to bother, I would do so.
In that regard, I thought the best way to go about it was simply to chronologically document the history of the project as it was detailed in contemporaneous news articles. I believed that they made very clear how this progressed, what Macdonald's thinking was at various points in time, and how both his thinking and the project evolved over the course of it from inception to completion.
I also believed that timeilining it in this manner would clear up any disputes around dates, acres, participants, etc., which they clearly do.
For years we've been told that Macdonald first routed the course on horseback in 2-3 days with Whigham, and then bought exactly the property they needed for their golf course. That is clearly untrue, and George's book makes that very clear as well.
During those days, we were also told that any reference to Macdonald's estimate of 110 acres for the golf course, or any reference to having building lots for the Founders all related to a much earlier 1904 letter and was irrelevant a the time Macdonald actually secured the land for his course in late 1906. This is simply untrue.
We can see from these articles that since inception, the magic number had been slightly over 200 acres, although Macdonald himself believed that only about 110 of these acres would be needed for golf, with the rest going to building lots.
This June 20th, 1906 article, after Macdonald's return from his visit abroad that year, and just months before he found the Sebonac property shows clearly that he's still looking for the exact same slightly more than 200 acres he was looking for in the original 1904 Founders letter.
More interestingly, sometime during these next few months, a Brooklyn Company took hold of the 2000 acres of Shinnecock land at a bargain-basement $50 an acre. Macdonald tells us that he tried to jump on this oppotunity and offered to purchase 120 acres for $200 an acre near the canal between Peconic and Shinnecock bays, which was rejected.
Possibly CBM saw this site as particularly advantageous for his golf course, and was willing to scrap his building lots plan to get it at very low prices? We're not sure, because neither his account nor George's tell us much about why he made this offer but I think one can safely assume it was for his golf course.
So, this idea that he routed the course in 2 days on horseback after finding all his holes on it is poppycock!
Instead, I think the evidence indicates that during that ride, they found some great landforms they could use for an Alps and redan, the body of water for the Cape and Eden, and enough possibilities to be enthused. They offered to buy 205 acres of the 450 tract, as yet unspecified in terms of boundaries in December 1906.
Seth Raynor was hired, the land was cleared, and over the next few months the routing and decison-making of which holes go where took place, followed by construction and seeding, which took place in the fall of 1907. George's book tells us that Macdonald was forever tinkering with the routing. CBM himself tells us in December 1906 that the exact holes to be reproduced, as well as the yardages of the holes would be decided in coming month.
Over time, probably due to the amount of swampland on the property, as well as the width necessitated by the strategic options Macdonald was trying to create, he quickly forsook the idea that the course would be 110 acres, and even though as he notes in his Founders letter there was still significant land from the original purchase left over, he and the members thankfully never used it for housing.
So, I'm really not sure which "crazy theories" about NGLA I've been supposedly propagating for months here, or which ones aren't fully supported by the contemporaneous records, news accounts, CBM's book, George Bahto's book, or any reasonable account or reading of the history?
Jim...I think I still have the right here to defend myself against these type of wild, unfounded allegations, and if I saw a way to make the thread also educational and useful to others here, all the better.
Macdonald was never the type of guy who would do a paper job in a day visit, farmland or not. In fact, his whole career was a rejection of that approach as he clearly loved and respected the game too much. In fact, by 1910 his thinking had evolved to the point that when a club approached him about 100-120 acres they were looking at for a course, his first concern was if they had enough land for a first-rate course.
Also, his recommendations that they acquire a few more acres near the farmhouse near the railroad they propsed using as their clubhouse takes on a different meaning once one realizes that Macdonald estimated needing 5 acres for clubhouse and surrounding amenities for his project.
Have a good day, and if you are going to scold, don't play favorites.