Charles Blair Macdonald

Charles Blair Macdonald, 1895.

Charles Blair Macdonald (born November 14, 1855 in Niagara Falls , Canada , † April 21, 1939 in Southampton , Long Island ) was a golf architect who was a major representative of the golden age of golf architecture and one of the most important pioneers of American golf. In addition to a successful career as an amateur player, he was also one of the founders of the USGA and, according to his own statements, coined the term “golf architect” in 1901. However, an earlier use of the term has now been proven. Charles Blair Macdonald was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2007.

Apprenticeship in Scotland

Charles Blair Macdonald, who grew up in Chicago , was the son of a Scotsman and a Canadian. He studied from 1872 at St Andrews University , where Old Tom Morris introduced him to golf. At that time, Young Tom Morris was at the height of his career and the talented Macdonald was soon invited to take part in competitions with him and the other protagonists of the time. At the end of his studies, he knew some of the best links in Great Britain and continental Europe. After returning to the United States, he had to take a 17-year golf break because there were simply no courses or players. During this time he worked as a stockbroker, which earned him the financial independence that would later allow him to volunteer for golf. Some Scottish emigrants had brought this to New York in 1888 and founded the St Andrews Golf Club there.

Beginnings in Chicago

In 1892 Macdonald finally convinced 30 colleagues, each to contribute $ 10, to found the Chicago Golf Club as the first golf club west of the Allegheny Mountains . He built the first 9 holes himself and one year later expanded the course to become the first 18-hole course in the USA. In 1895 the club moved to Wheaton , where Macdonald built a new square that has survived to this day. In the same year he helped found the USGA and won the first US amateur championship. With his wife Frances and two daughters Janet and Frances, he moved to New York in 1900 to work on Wall Street .

National Golf Links of America

Macdonald's first holes in 1892 were between 75 and 160 meters long and of a rather rudimentary character, which soon no longer sufficed for him. He developed a kind of obsession to build the first really outstanding square in the USA. He traveled to Europe again in 1902 to study to get a clear idea of ​​the design principles his own project was to follow. On Long Island near Southampton , he discovered a suitable site in 1906 and two years later recruited 70 investors who should each contribute $ 1000. The construction of the square was pushed ahead with enormous effort, among other things a complete green irrigation was installed - at that time a revolutionary idea. Eventually the National Golf Links of America (often abbreviated as NGLA) opened in 1910.

From the beginning, NGLA was considered the only American course that could compete with the British models. This was to a not insignificant extent due to the fact that Macdonald consciously adapted the strategic principles of some famous golf holes for his purposes and thus invented the principle of the “template hole”. In the course of his career he often used the Redan (originally # 15 in North Berwick), but also the Eden and the Road Hole (# 13 and # 17 Old Course ), the Alps (# 7 Prestwick), the Sahara (# 3 Royal St George's) and the Biarritz (# 3 Biarritz). Another pattern hole, the Cape Hole, comes from Macdonald himself (# 14 NGLA).

Since then, many major tournaments have been played on NGLA, including the first Walker Cup in 1922.

Other Projects

Construction of hole 17 of the Lido Golf Course, 1915. The pegs indicate the height of the later ground level.

After his first major success, Macdonald started an even more ambitious project in 1914, the Lido Golf Club. A swampy area along a stretch of beach on Long Island had to be drained, filled up and transformed into a natural-looking golf area. This previously most complex golf course project in the world was completed in 1918 and offered, among other things, an artificial island fairway (hole 4) and Alister MacKenzie's winning design from the country life competition (# 18). However , the space was lost during World War II when the US Navy took over large parts of Long Island.

Other important courses followed with the Mid Ocean Club (Bermuda, 1921) and the Yale University Golf Club (1926), but Charles Blair Macdonald only has 15 golf course designs to book. He never took money for his work himself, but increasingly left the details of the construction to his assistants Seth Raynor and Charles Banks, who also acted as golf architects under their own responsibility.

Design principles

In his book Scotland's Gift: Golf , published in 1928, Charles Blair Macdonald described the characteristics of a good golf course. The first priority was the terrain, ideally a slightly hilly sandy soil. The holes themselves should, if possible, be modeled on large models and not be restricted by trees or overly steep hills. He attached particular importance to variability, and rejected artificial elements. Like Alister MacKenzie , he considered it a special quality feature of an obstacle when it was the subject of heated discussions for years.

From Charles Blair Macdonald the quote has been passed down that there are only four or five good golf holes and the local scenery has to provide for the variety. Although he seemed to give little room for creativity, his designs are not considered mere copies, but rather interpretations. He never copied the appearance, only the strategic principles of the originals, which he often changed.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Geoffrey S. Cornish , Ronald E. Whitten: The Architects of Golf . HarperCollins, New York 1993. ISBN 0062700820
2. ↑ Baily's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, Vol. LXV, p. 76. Baily Bros., 1896.

literature

• Charles Blair Macdonald: Scotland's Gift: Golf . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York and London 1928.
• George Bahto: The Evangelist of Golf . John Wiley & Sons Inc, Hoboken, 2002. ISBN 1886947201