Melvyn's evidence of the architectural attribution of Muirfield omits a first-hand contemporaneous account that is reprinted in Reverend John Kerr's 1896 book, which I've copied below. The "Howes" refers to the land itself, which used to host horse racing, and the term "makkar", refers to something akin to a "poet", according to Rich Goodale.
The Howes of today and the making of the green there are what concern me. Old Tom is a veritable makkar - his is 'the vision and the faculty divine' for making golf-greens; how I felt that as I walked beside him, he glancing 'from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven', taking in the situation at every point! The holes were then put to shape, and soon the 'local habitation and the name' of the new links of the Honourable Company were flashed through all the golfing world. Another green to bear witness to the skill of the grand old greenkeeper! What a record he must have of the making of greens!
'It has been cunningly laid oot, Cor'nel, as Maister Arthur Balfour's brither ae day said to me; ay, cunningly laid oot' It was David Plenderleith who now addressed me. David is the man who was left to carry out old Tom's design and superintend the whole operation. 'A golfer and a gairdner', he described himself; and David must drag in the Chief Secretary some way, as all golfers do, before they have spoken much of the game. I have been as Jonathan to David all the time he was at work, and being in his confidence, the making of the green is as familiar to me as I have said it is. Under him were the twa Robbies - Ross and Brown, Fred Hamilton and Andrew Allan, a capital quartette; since December they have dumped away with their iron beaters, levelled mounds, filled up rabbit-scrapes, banked up bunkers, turfed, rolled, or swept, unceasingly; and such work has all been needed in the making of the green.
...What has pleased me most about Plenderleith's work has been the naturalness which has everywhere been observed, as if the maxim 'give the club its own lie,' had been a guide in the treatment of the ground The putting-greens, which were the first part of the work, were not levelled like a billiard table; the old rig-marks are still there; and lots of ups and downs on a small will elicit scientific putting. The teeing-grounds, again, were not made up in little sloping plateaus - they are natural, and their variety also will call forth good play. The distances between the holes are wonderfully near those which Mr. Horace Hutchinson has laid down as suitable for a proper course; and I have been instructed very much in the game by remarking this, and the various lines chosen by old Tom as he drew out the round, for they have all a bearing on the way in which the game is expected to be played. The nature of the turf has been greatly in favour of the work. It is a fine 'healing' turf, several inches thick, and intertwined with licorice roots, which act like cords in keeping it together. 'Without a doot,' says Plenderleith, 'it's the finest turf that was ever seen,' and I believe he is right. There certainly cannot be better for golf. A few of the committee have taken interest in the proceedings, and visited the work as it went on; but by their absence some of them have shown the confidence they had in my friend David, for, as he remarked one day, 'We've been dumpin'awa here, an' no a leevin' soul near us for three weeks.'
Their work, so interesting to me in a hundred other ways, which I must omit speaking of, has not been without its difficulties. Thye have had some fierce storms to face this past winter, and when sand and wind go togetehr, who can stand against them?
From a larger article, "The Coming of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers to Gullane", published in the "Edinburgh Evening Dispatch", May 1 and 2, 1891.