Tom MacWood,
As I mentioned before, I don't believe the ambitious plans for Willie Campbell designed courses at Belmont cited in that article Joe Bausch found were ever realized. That may have been due to their relationship with the Cricket Club, or perhaps due to money issues.
At the time of that 1896 article, they were already playing on the course (referred to as the "Temporary Course") that survived and seemingly lengthened as per your yardage descriptions. By 1903, with the formation of Aronimink, the club was still playing that original course laid out by members.
As regards Palmetto, don't you think it's simply a case of Hitchcock having a private estate course of 4 holes played by a couple of northern friends that got expanded by Leeds before 1895, at which time the club became formalized, and then expanded by Leeds and Mackrell to 18 holes at that time?
As regards what i learned in the past 24 hours...
I learned that Campbell had no documented influence on Herbert Leeds either architecturally or as a golfer.
I learned that contrary to your contention and that erroneous news article, Leeds did not just start playing in the spring of 1894, but in fact was playing at The Country Club since its inception the year before, and almost certainly began playing on the estate courses of Hunnewell and Appleton and others sometime prior to that. He did not just become by far the best amateur golfer in Boston due to some Campbell inspired two month miracle, but instead was there from the very beginning of the game in the city.
I also learned knew, but overstated, the exact timing of Leeds laying out Kebo Valley and Palmetto, but your larger contention that he was influenced at that time by Campbell's architecture is really not accurate in any way that I can see. Almost all of his golf at that time had been played on courses designed by amateur members.
I would also make my response much less personal to you, as I mentioned yesterday. However, when you make erroneous, sweeping suppositional statements disguised as historical fact such as Leeds learned the game from Campbell after only starting to play himself in spring of 1894 and was directly influenced by Campbell architecturally rest assured that they will be challenged with facts.
Joe Bausch,
Awesome article!!
Interesting how it proves that Leeds designed the diagonal 4th hole and also mentions that he eschewed the old horizontal "Cop" bunkers for something more scientific and sound, and proves in fact that it was the first really good architecture in this country as we've contended all along.