{"id":705,"date":"2012-06-07T19:45:25","date_gmt":"2012-06-07T19:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anthonypioppi.com\/?p=705"},"modified":"2012-06-08T13:20:04","modified_gmt":"2012-06-08T13:20:04","slug":"an-effort-to-determine-who-really-deserves-to-be-considered-the-first-golf-course-architect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/anthonypioppi\/golf\/705\/an-effort-to-determine-who-really-deserves-to-be-considered-the-first-golf-course-architect","title":{"rendered":"Who Was First Called a Golf Course Architect?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Common wisdom in the golf design world is that Charles Blair Macdonald was the first golf course architect; he said so himself in his book,<\/em> \u201cScotland\u2019s Gift-Golf,\u201d published in 1928.<\/p>\n

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Charles Blair Macdonald, 1895.<\/p><\/div>\n

Writing about his desire to create, with the National Golf Links of America, a golf course based on the best golf holes in the world, he penned, \u201cI believe this was the first effort at establishing golf architecture\u2014at least there is no record I can find preceding it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve long been suspicious of that claim. It wasn\u2019t as if Macdonald was the first to design a golf course. In 1765, as golf historian Bob Crosby pointed out to me, a group of men shortened The Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland from 22 to 18 holes that included combining existing holes into ones that are still played. Alan Robertson, of St. Andrews, Scotland, was paid to layout out golf courses in the mid 1800s. Another St. Andrean, greenkeeper of the Old Course in St. Andrews, Old Tom Morris, followed him in the field. At that time the term \u201cgolf course architect\u201d had not been created but there were those, it seems, practicing that very craft as defined in modern terminology.<\/p>\n

I did some online searching, looking through digitized issues of the magazines Golf<\/em> (1898-1915), The Golfer<\/em> (1895-99, 1902-1903), The American Golfer<\/em> (1908-1915, 1918-1919) and Golf Illustrated<\/em> (1914-1918, 1921-1934) to see when the word \u201carchitect\u201d was used in relation to golf design, and who was first bestowed the title, golf course architect. (It should be noted that searching digital archives is a less than perfect endeavor and it is possible that instances of the words \u201carchitect\u201d and \u201carchitecture\u201d were missed.)<\/p>\n

The first reference I found of \u201carchitect\u201d came in the September, 1900 issue of Golf <\/em>in a story on the modifications to Deal, officially Royal Cinque Ports Golf Club. The line reads: \u201cSome of the cop-bunkers are wonderful creations of the golf architect\u2019s fancy\u2014two and even three lines of intrenchment, pepper-and-salted with pretty little grassy islands and horrid pits of particularly soft sand. And they have scalloped tops too, and their grassy sides are kept carefully clipped. True aesthetic are these Deal cop-bunkers.\u201d<\/p>\n\"\"<\/a>\n

David L. Dobby, the club\u2019s historian and archivist, wrote that Harry Hunter, Deal\u2019s first head professional and greenkeeper, was most likely responsible for the expansion of the club from nine to 18 holes in 1899.<\/p>\n

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According to Dobby, the first nine was built in 1892, probably by Hunter, but designed by either Tom Dunn or Ramsay Hunter.<\/p>\n

The first use of the word \u201carchitecture\u201d in reference to a golf course that I found came in the April 1900 edition of Golf<\/em> in an article titled, \u201cThe Revised Rules of Golf,\u201d by Lawrence Curtis. The sentence reads: \u201cIt will involve the need of local rulings as to lifting a ball stuck in the face of a bunker or a cope to save the architecture of the cop.\u201d<\/p>\n

In reference to the work of a specific American golf course, \u201carchitecture\u201d was used in the April 1901 edition of Golf <\/em>in an article about the Glenview Club, in Golf, Ill.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not often that one sees such a felicitous combination of wood, field, and water, and the upkeep is perfect\u2014the effect is exactly that of a private park, and yet the landscape-gardener has not been permitted to exploit himself at the expense of the golf architect.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the club\u2019s website, Richard Leslie, the first golf professional at Glen View, in all likelihood, designed the layout, probably with assistance from club member Herbert J. Tweedie, who himself laid out a number of courses.<\/p>\n

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Thomas Bendelow, circa. 1908.<\/p><\/div>\n

The word, \u201carchitect,\u201d however, was still not of common usage in the magazines. I found no record of it 1906 and 1907.<\/p>\n

In the February 1908 issue of Golf<\/em>, the word \u201carchitect\u201d was used in reference to a specific person, the first time I could find such an example, and who received that title was a surprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cTom Bendelow, the well known links architect and tournament manager, received word by cable recently on the death in Aberdeen of his father. Apoplexy was the cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would be a while before anyone else was bestowed the title in the pages of that publication.<\/p>\n

It appears as if \u201carchitect\u201d in reference to a course design debuted in The American Golfer<\/em> in the December 1908 issue. The phrase was regularly used throughout 1909, including in a story about the alterations at Oakley Country Club in Massachusetts that appeared in the Aug. 2 edition. (A photo from the article appears above.)<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald J. Ross is the architect of some of the bunkers,\u201d it reads.<\/p>\n

In the Sept. 15 issue, Ross was lauded in an article authored by \u201cBunker Hill,\u201d who covered golf in New England for the magazine. In detailing an upcoming 36-hole four-ball match between the team of Ross and his brother Alex versus the pair of Thomas McNamara and M.J. Brady, \u201cBunker Hill\u201d wrote: \u201cDonald J. Ross is distinguished as a player with a delightful style, as one of the most successful and sought after professionals in the country, and as a course architect of first-rate experience and ability as shown by his work at Pinehurst.\u201d<\/p>\n

The American Golfer<\/em> was edited by Walter J. Travis, an accomplished player and architect. In the eyes of Travis, it appears, that it was Ross who first deserved to properly be called a golf course architect.<\/p>\n

Even though \u201carchitect\u201d was used in 1909, it would be a few more years before the word appeared regularly. By 1913 it was of common enough usage that the links architect was the butt of a cartoon that appeared in the April edition of Golf<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Harry Colt.<\/p><\/div>\n

When I finished my search, however, I had a nagging, gnawing feeling that my findings could not be correct. Surely, \u201carchitect\u201d and \u201carchitecture\u201d appeared elsewhere and earlier, in Great Britain, perhaps. To ease my worried mind, I accessed the golf course architecture research equivalent of the Bat Phone and sent out my query, along with my findings. As I suspected, there were earlier references, but not many. (This is how I garnered information from the aforementioned Mr. Crosby.)<\/p>\n

Architect Dr. Michael Hurdzan, came up with the most definitive answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am of the opinion that the first guy to call himself an \u2018architect\u2019 was H.S. Colt. I have a large poster size advertisement\u00a0for Colt where he actually credits himself as \u2018the First Golf Architect\u2019. Then, in Fred Hawtree\u2019s authoritative book \u201cColt and Company: Golf Course Architects,\u201d\u00a0he\u00a0quotes Sir Reginald Bloonfield as saying:\u00a0\u2018Our first Secretary was H.S. Colt, a fine golfer, who afterwards transferred his energies to the design of golf courses and I suppose would now be given the ridiculous name of \u201cgolf architect,\u201d a name pirated without the slightest foundation from an old and honourable calling.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Hurdzan contends that there is good reason for Colt to be given the title.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no definitive date of when all this took place but Colt was a man of such high character and integrity that I don\u2019t think that he would have misconstrued the fact, if he was not the first to use the term.\u00a0Colt\u2019s early work at Rye in 1894 or so, would not have prompted him to call himself such a lofty term, but by 1898 when he was applying for Secretary of R & A, he perhaps would have had done enough work to have the confidence to use the term.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Bourgeois wrote me that the earliest reference to \u201cgolf architect\u201d he could find \u201cwas 1896, in a British publication, Baily’s Magazine<\/em> of sports and pastimes, vol. 65, page 76: \u2018Trees and outhouses are unknown on the St. Andrews course, while too often elsewhere they are the only things the Golf architect has to work with, and he is not to be blamed for making the most of them. Perhaps he sets up a few artificial bunkers; but here again he cannot get a result consistent with the spirit of the rules, for his forced earth and precarious turf will not bear the smashing freely bestowed upon a natural sand bunker.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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This lambasting of golf course architects is from the March 1913 issue of Golf.<\/p><\/div>\n

Bourgeois also noted that the first reference to \u201claying out\u201d and \u201claid out\u201d he could find came in \u201cThe Golfers Handbook\u201d by Robert Forgan, Jr. that was published in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1881. Forgan wrote of the Luffness Golf Links, \u201cThe green was laid out by veteran player Old Tom Morris, and at first it consisted of 17 holes for the round, but after a few years it was thought expedient to make 18 holes, which was done by laying out a short hole for an iron shot.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, the sum and substance of the research by others and me is that it appears that Colt was the first person to be referred to as a \u201cgolf course architect\u201d and that the description appeared well before Charles Blair Macdonald began constructing the National Golf Links of America in 1907. So, why would Macdonald call himself the first? Another golf historian, Tom Paul, has a theory.<\/p>\n

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One of the first ads, if not the first, for a golf course architect was placed in the March 1911 issue of The American Golfer.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cMacdonald was saying NGLA was the first example of ‘golfing architecture’ he was aware of; therefore, it appears he felt he was doing something differently than anything that came before NGLA. Unfortunately, he did not say specifically what that difference might have been,\u201d Paul wrote me in an email. \u201cLogically it would seem it could’ve been he felt he was the first to comprehensively use\u00a0pre-construction topo survey maps or he felt he was the first\u00a0to\u00a0essentially\u00a0copy a number of famous holes and architectural principles from abroad (he called them \u2018classical\u2019)\u2014or perhaps both together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul has a salient point. Up until the construction of the National, those who designed golf courses walked the land, found suitable green sites and designed a layout to utilize the natural features; earth moving was minimal, if at all. Often time, hazards were what existed on the land, although by the time construction on the National began, artificial hazards were not uncommon.<\/p>\n

Paul also points out that beginning with NGLA, Macdonald always partnered with a surveyor, Seth Raynor, a practice no other architect boasted.<\/p>\n

In his book, Scotland\u2019s Gift, Macdonald wrote about the involved first few steps he took to finding the correct location for NGLA on the land he had purchased at the eastern end of Long Island.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026Jim Whigham and myself, with kindly interest taken by Joseph P. Knapp, James A. Stillman, Devereux Emmet, Charles A. Sabin and others, forged ahead with the construction from the surveyors\u2019 maps and the thirty or forty drawings which I had made myself abroad of different hole which I thought were worthwhile. These drawings were no necessarily copies of the particular hole from tee to the putting-green, but in some instances were of the outstanding features which I thought made the hole interesting and which might be adapted to a hole of different length. Two or three such features might be put in a hole which would make it more or less composite in its nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

The concept of a composite hole was most likely not in existence prior to the National and, it appears, no one else had moved so much earth to create holes the way Macdonald did. In that respect, Macdonald was the first. Whether or not that makes him the first \u201cgolf course architect\u201d ultimately depends on how one defines, \u201cgolf course architect.\u201d C.B. Macdonald, undoubtedly, would say he was the first. H.S. Colt would undoubtedly disagree.<\/p>\n

(I have a suspicion that the search had not ended and I welcome any additional information that will aid my quest ~ A.P.)<\/p>\n

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