For decades now, I’ve loved researching the architectural histories of golf courses great and small. One of the things that brought me back to this site was some of the activity going on in that regard by some new and old faces here and it’s generally a terrific thing to be among others who share my passion. I do have to say however, that no matter how enthusiastic and committed I am to this hobby, my efforts pale in comparison to my good friend “Indiana Joe(nes)” Bausch, whose ongoing efforts to unearth architectural history are incredibly tireless and wonderfully valuable.
Witness his most recent thread here where he uncovers and posts over 400 articles by Philadelphia’s “Evening Public Ledger” golf writer Ted Hoyt from the mid-20s, which contain just terrific nuggets of information for clubs and course researching their histories, architectural and otherwise. Or his thread where George O’Neill in Chicago asked various architect and other golf luminaries to name their favorite holes.
One thing I’ve certainly learned over time, sometimes painfully so, is that when one is doing golf course research, more is simply better. By that I mean that I think both Joe and I have seen times where a single news article is flat out wrong, or contains only a partial truth, but more often what we see I think is a single point in time of an evolving story, all of which can lead to mistaken conclusions by someone trying to retrospectively uncover the story of a course’s architectural origins. I know I’ve been personally guilty of making this error in the past. Overall, I think the best approach at getting to an accurate understanding of a course one is truly interested in is to use not only contemporaneous news articles, but also later articles along a course’s lifetime that can not only illustrate the evolution but also at times contain gems not originally reported, sometimes even in obituaries. Other great sources can include club minutes, course histories, memories of older members, club lore, USGA library holdings, local historical societies and archives, all of which may present some inconsistencies and even contradictions, but which generally together yield a greater truth leading to deeper understanding.
Case in point is an article among Joe’s recent findings concerning the new course being built by the Philadelphia Country Club in the mid-20s. Imagine finding this single article from April 8th, 1925 without context or without understanding of subsequent events, which I’ll add in future posts on this thread.
