“IMO there is no reason to contact clubs directly when seeking info, and in my experience 95% they are quite helpful. Unfortunately I don't believe that is what TEP is referring to. He believes DM should sought permission from Merion before writing his essay or I should have sought permission from PV or Ohio State or Myopia before writing anything on GCA.”
Tom:
Unfortunately for you that is not what I’m referring to at all; Permission to put something about a club’s history on Golfclubatlas.com’s “In My Opinion” section is something I doubt any of these clubs would even comment on, although certainly some from Merion commented on the essay “The Missing Faces of Merion” after it was put on this website. To say they were unimpressed with it would be quite an understatement. Most just thought it was a complete stretch of logic and not comprehensively researched in that it did not contain necessary information that was found later at one of the clubs here.
What I believe with establishing a good working research relationship with subject clubs is precisely what Phil Young said below, particularly his last sentence:
“It isn't that the "DM's of the GCA world," and in this I consider myself among that group, NEED a close relationship, but it is FAR better that they have one. It opens doors, literally, to the rooms where board minutes and blueprints are kept. There are many examples of where newspaper and magazine articles provide information that not only disagrees with what a course has seen fit to record in "official histories" but that are the correct versions. There are many, many examples of newspaper and magazine reports where the exact opposite has occurred. Far more often than not, the history that a club has kept is correct.
Does a researcher HAVE to do this? No, but he is definitely at a big disadvantage if he doesn't...”
Lastly, Jim Kennedy said the following the other day. I agree with that too.
“This is only amateur forensic history that harms no one, but if there should be some incredibly important new information that comes to light it should be presented to these clubs so they can do with it what they will.”
If some “In My Opinion” piece or some discussion on some thread on here produces some incredibly important new information it should be presented to these clubs if they have never been aware of it before and I would expect they would consider it in the context of their histories unless there is some good reason from their own contemporaneous records not to. With Myopia there seems to be a good reason not to consider that Willie Campbell routed their original nine hole course----eg because the club’s executive committee recorded when they did it that three members did that themselves and very likely before Campbell got off the boat from Scotland.
It is probably possible and even very likely that both accounts are true-----Myopia’s executive committee administrative records and some of those newspaper articles.
Consider, for instance, that in this case David Moriarty’s interpretation of the definition of “laid out” in those newspaper articles meant just building or constructing and not planning!
It’s possible and perhaps very likely that Appleton, Merrill and Gardner and Myopia got the fresh-off-the-boat Willie Campbell (particularly since he seems to have had an important sponsor in Thomas) to build something on the tees and greens they had staked out (a plan or routing) the club executive committee reported those three members had staked out themselves as soon as the snow melted in the spring of 1894 (March).
It’s not that surprising, at least not to me, if that were the case, that the club did not record in their executive committee records some of the manual labor that Willie Campbell may've done as soon as he got off the boat and that went into the plan for the course those members had staked out. At Merion, the executive committee did record the plans the Wilson Committee created in the winter and spring of 1911 before building and construction began even though the executive committee never said much or anything about the manual labor of the building and construction with that plan of say the Johnson Contractors or Pickering or even young William Flynn at that time.
Does that surprise some on Golfclubatlas.com today? Perhaps it does but it doesn’t surprise me and I don’t think it surprises Merion or Myopia either. But if a few on here expect Myopia to believe or consider that their club and those three Myopia members (Appleton, Merrill and Gardner) had been waiting patiently for Willie Campbell, the wonder of all golf architectural wonders, to step off the boat in his first time in America to show them all how to stake out tees and greens and a nine hole routing, then I would expect Myopia probably wouldn't take that very seriously at all. Particularly since R.M. Appleton, the Master of the Myopia Fox Hounds (a position that is akin in a hunt club to the president of a golf course) already had a six hole golf course of his own on his own massive farm----Appleton Farm, which appears to be the oldest farm held by a single family in America.