It's sort of funny, actually...after all of the debate and dissension and blood loss here over the years related to Merion and CBM's role, I'm really not sure that what actually happened at Merion was either unique or even particularly noteworthy in the least.
Certainly Rodman Griscom (whose sister Frances was an early American golf champion) knew CBM for a long time and the two were friends. The fact is, during June of 1910 Macdonald and Whigham (as well as Barker) were already IN Philadelphia for the US Open at Philadelphia Cricket Club. So it certainly wouldn't be somehow unusual or distinctive for Griscom to invite his friends over to view land under consideration by the club.
As early as September 1905 CBM had already made a practice of advising clubs, evidently. This snippet from an article talking about his plans for an ideal course makes it clear that CBM was often consulted by clubs building or considering new golf courses.
After his one day visit to Ardmore in June, 1910, there is no evidence or record of him doing anything further in 1910 beyond sending a letter on July 2nd with some very general, almost innocuous advice and a somewhat guarded recommendation that they move forward with the property.
It wasn't until NINE MONTHS later, at the end of the first week of March 1910, just over a month before the start of course construction that Hugh Wilson and his Committee went out to NGLA to stay for the night, during which time in multiple accounts they describe looking at Macdonalds drawings of the great holes abroad and discussing their principles during the evening (probably well into the evening!), and then walking around and seeing NGLA the next day.
Was this somehow unique, unusual, or particularly noteworthy?
HJ Whigham, in his eulogy for Macdonald in Country Life Magazine in 1939 tell us that even as early as September 1907;
"The very next year on the first Saturday of September I counted over fifty players at Shinnecock, many young people among them.
The fame of the National had spread so far beyond Long Island that golfers from everywhere came to look over the project, and Shinnecock, instead of being hurt by proximity to the National, had taken on a new lease of life."
In retrospect, and in proper historical context, perhaps the only remarkable thing about the Merion Committee visiting Macdonald at NGLA in the spring of 1910 was that it took them so long to do it!!
They were, of course, gratified at the help that CBM and Whigham provided to them, and even moreso, apparently invited those two gentlemen to visit their club in coming weeks, which they did in early April. That was their first visit back to the property since they saw it the first time ten months prior.
At that point, we know that CBM helped the Committee by picking the best of the five different plans they had created for the golf course, telling them that if they built that one it would include the best seven finishing holes of any inland course Macdonald had seen.
There is no record of CBM and Whigham ever returning to the property again, during construction, post-construction, or otherwise.
There is no record of any further involvement of CBM or Whigham at Merion in any respect, even though the club hosted the 1916 and 1924 US Amateurs, the 1934 US Open, and other major regional and national events during Macdonald and Whigham's lifetimes.
What was it Shakespeare said about "much ado about nothing"?