Mike, you always exaggerate the construction phase when discussing NGLA. NGLA hosted an important and well publicized tournament in July 1910, but they had been golfing on the course for over a year prior to that. (They had no clubhouse and the Inn had burned, so it wasn't as if they were fully operational, but the course existed and they were golfing.) It took time and effort to grow adequate turf at NGLA, a CBM was always tweaking, but I think it is misleading when you imply that they were still in the throws of primary construction in 1910.
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J.C.
You asked about how "CBM famously routed Chicago GC to protect against his slice yet didn't seem to do the same at NGLA."
I don't have the answer but I have always wondered if, like other CBM legends, the famous story about him routing CGC to protect against his slice was more apocryphal than actual.
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As for the 10,000 truckloads of topsoil, I assume that by that point in time the roads must have been passable, and the clearing and shaping and "construction" basically finished.
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Bryan, I have trouble placing too much weight on the 1904 Atlas as an accurate source for the state of the parcel in 1906/1907. The date on that old atlas is 1904 and at that point the Shinnecock Hills parcel was undeveloped. But the developer purchased the property in 1905 and beginning in 1905-1907, the Shinnecock and Peconic Bay Company seems to have been investing substantial resources in developing the parcel, and by April 1907 they stated they had built four roads, with in the works. They also state that every building parcel had road frontage, so at least a few of these roads must have been the longer, east west roads. (Given that road building season is summer, It seems likely that these roads had been built the summer before.)
The Panic of 1907 might have put a damper on the progress of the development, but by that point it seems like quite a lot had been accomplished.
That said, we are probably still talking about fairly primitive roads, but passable roads nonetheless.
As for the state of the road out onto the neck, I don't think it matters. If CBM had needed a better road he could have built one.