ew people have tried so hard to dominate the game of
golf as did Charles Blair Macdonald. To the extent that he succeeded, it
was due to his voluble personality, his financial connections, and to credibility
derived from being the first U.S. National Amateur champion in 1895.
| Vital Stats
1856-1939
born: Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
residence: Southampton, NY |
He was a key figure in the founding of the USGA, a keen defender of thegame's
amateur (i.e. elite) status, and the central figure in the evolution of golf
course design in the United States - from an idiosyncratic expedition in
the field to a science with its own aesthetic. His 1928 memoir, "Scotland's
Gift-Golf" - which would have more accurately been titled "Golf's Gift: Me"
- deals extensively with the art of properly routing and shaping a memorable
set of golf holes.
Macdonald fell in love with the game while a student at St. Andrews in 1872,
then returned to the United States to spread its gospel. He built the first
18-hole course in America west of Chicago, and then engaged in a series of
design projects of Gothic proportions. His National Golf Links (1911) on
the far eastern edge of southern Long Island became a showpiece of adapted
"best" British golf holes. Lido Golf Club (1915) was a monumental dredging
and filling operation along a marshy stretch of Long Island beachfront. And
at Yale University, he was handed the keys to a 500-acre park and given $475,000
to build 36 holes. Unfortunately, he ran out of dynamite on the 18th tee.
The resulting course was characterized by his trademark 10,000 sq.ft. greens,
as well as by 30-foot deep bunkers, platform tees, and massive fairway swales.
Macdonald only built some two dozen courses, most of them with the help of
a former Southampton surveyor named Seth Raynor. Virtually all of Macdonald's
courses included a Redan par-3, a Cape-style par-4, versions of the two par-3s
at St. Andrews, the 8th ("Short) and the 11th ("Eden"), and a "Biarritz"
style par-3 (Yale's 9th, Creek Club's 11th) with a massive green divided
across the middle by a huge 4-5ft.deep swale. His courses tended to be very
wide and designed for links-style play, with enormous plateau fairways, a
proliferation of diagonal bunkering, and vast, complexly contoured putting
surfaces.
| Locate Additional C.B. Macdonald Courses
|
C. B. Macdonald's best:
Chicago
Golf, Wheaton, IL (1895)
National
Golf Links, Southampton, NY (1911)
Piping
Rock, Locust Valley, NY (1913)
Lido, Long Beach, New York (1917) - RIP
Mid-Ocean, Bermuda (1924)
Creek
Club, Locust Valley, NY (1925)
Yale,
New Haven, CT (1926)
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