In an earlier thread about Willie Park, Jr.'s impact on the game, I noted that Walter Travis was rarely mentioned here, although one could argue his impact on the game was very significant as the game was in its infancy in America. Here's a copy of a brief piece I wrote for the Pinehurst MEMBERabilia, the Country Club's newsletter, in advance of last year's playing of the North-South championship here. Is Travis not accorded his due respect on this website? Can others reinforce our knowledge of the magnitude of his achievements? Or can any of us suggest reasons why Travis is rightly ignored here?
Here's the article.
The North & South Amateur Champion 100 Years Ago
--by Frank Giordano
When he arrived in Pinehurst to compete in the 1912 North & South Amateur, the 50 year old Walter J. Travis had already established himself as one of America's greatest golfing figures of all time. The most successful amateur golfer in the country during the early 1900s, Travis had already won three US Amateur titles and, in 1904, became the first non-British golfer to win their national amateur championship. Living in the New York City area, where golf early established a foothold in this country, Travis had already won the Metropolitan Golf Association (MGA) championship three times. His successful campaign here one hundred years ago garnered for him a third North & South title. Yet Travis wasn't finished with major amateur titles, as he captured a fourth MGA cup at the age of 53.
Walter Travis was far more than a great amateur champion, though. His many-faceted talents as an author-publisher, equipment innovator, and golf course designer earned him a unique place among America's golfing elite. Only Jack Nicklaus has achieved so vast an influence upon the game as Travis, although Jack's contributions as architect, equipment designer, and author have all benefitted from the labors of a large supporting staff of professionals.
Walter Travis was a prolific writer on a variety of golf topics, and his first book, Practical Golf (1901), treated such topics as golfing techniques, golf equipment, construction of golf courses, the design and placement of hazards, the rules of golf, and handicapping in the conduct of golf competitions. The American Golfer magazine, which Travis founded and published in 1908, was the most influential golf magazine of its time.
A fearless innovator, Travis tried whatever new approaches and equipment that offered him an edge in competition. The first player to win a major event — the 1901 U.S. Amateur — using the Haskell rubber-cored golf ball, Travis virtually changed the nature of golf overnight. The gutty ball was dead, inserts were needed in the face of wooden clubs to prevent splitting, and golf courses had to be lengthened because of the longer shots made possible by the Haskell.
Travis achieved his British Amateur victory using the aluminum Schenectady center-shafted putter, which the Royal and Ancient would eventually ban along with all mallet-headed putters. He experimented with varying lengths of driver shafts, up to 50 inches, to gain greater length off the tee. At his home course in New York, Travis employed smaller cups on the practice green, to sharpen the accuracy of his putting.
A giant of a man, with a gigantic ego, Travis may belong among the game's very greatest course architects. It is not fanciful to call him the first "U.S. Open Doctor," given his remodeling of the Country Club of Buffalo and Columbia Country Club courses just prior to their hosting the Opens in 1912 and 1921. The credit he once claimed for the design of Pinehurst No. 2, however, is another story, which will perhaps be told another time.