GolfClubAtlas.com > Golf Course Architecture
The Origins of Golf in the Shinnecock Hills, A Confused History
TEPaul:
"Is my version correct? Who knows, but it is the best I could come up with based upon what I could find."
I'll have to look through my files that include a lot of research (basically on Wayne's part) of the entire architectural evolution of golf and golf courses at Shinnecock, but off the top of my head I recall that Shinnecock apparently had the Davis/Dunn story pretty mixed up and backwards. It seems one of the other of them really wasn't accurate in what he said about his involvement with Shinnecock. I recall the historically inaccurate representation got rewritten and rewritten in articles and such for years and then finally someone at the USGA relatively recently figured the whole mystery out and pretty much precisely both why and when it first happened.
If I can find that revelatory article by that person at the USGA I will refer to it here. Maybe tomorrow.
Shinnecock has had problems with architectural attribution for years. For a number of decades they actually thought Dick Wilson did their present course because he came up there and told them that himself in the late 1950s or early 1960s.
On a more minor Shinnecock evolutionary architectural note, the other day GeorgeB referred to the 7th hole at Shinnecock as an original Raynor redan. The green is in the same place as it was on the Macdonald/Raynor Shinnecock course but we believe Flynn entirely redesigned and rebuilt the entire green placement into what it is today when he created the present Shinnecock course. Do we have any "verifiable evidence" ;) of that? Well, we think so, even though it may need some more investigation and checking. One source is the itemized cost Flynn charged to do it which was completely consistent with his redesign and rebuild charge and the other and probably more interesting source is he actually used a topo contour map of the existing course. Therefore all one would need to do is check that green and its site contour lines today against what the contour lines on his preconstruction topo were to see if they are different and how different they are from the over-all contour lines on that green's over-all placement site.
DMoriarty:
TEPaul,
If you read the posts you might have noticed that my focus is entirely on Shinnecock's earliest origins and it has absolutely nothing to do with CBM, Raynor, or Flynn, or any hole current golf hole. If you want yet another conversation about those things then please start your own thread. Thanks.
TEPaul:
"TEPaul,
If you read the posts you might have noticed that my focus is entirely on Shinnecock's earliest origins and it has absolutely nothing to do with CBM, Raynor, or Flynn, or any hole current golf hole."
David:
I did indeed realize that even having just sort of cursorially read your posts. I will definitely reread them very carefully, though. I also just sent you an IM and email about this. I think we have a pretty good track and file on the entire architectural evolution from the beginning of Shinnecock and all their architectural iterations, and I think Shinnecock feels we do too, and not just on the Flynn course. The whole thing with Shinnecock is in the book (I guess that's one of the reasons the book turned into 2,178 pages and counting ;)).
If you want our help with any of this you can have it, at this time, and I sure don't want to see this course and this subject devolve into another Merion or Myopia situation on here. So, I am putting you on notice on this post and on an IM and email just sent that if you want our help on this subject at this time, you've got it.
COLLABORATION!! It really can be a beautiful thing with this stuff we all do and talk about on here!
Tiger_Bernhardt:
David, Nice research and very interesting readng about one of my favorite courses.
Tom MacWood:
Very interesting. I knew there has been confusion about Willie Dunn and Willie Davis but I had no insight on the facts.
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