A superintendent with the FBI in his blood is now on a crusade to unearth historical data that can accurately direct restoration projects.
When the golf course at my club was renovated, I frequently found myself wishing for more and better data about its history, to help guide us through some critical decisions while remaining as true as possible to the designer’s original intent. Many fellow superintendents have told me they’ve had the same feelings during their own renovations.
That’s why it was such a thrill to make the acquaintance, at a recent Golf Industry Show, of Sean Tully, a young Assistant Superintendent at the Meadow Club, the prestigious private club in Fairfax, Calif. that has the distinction of being the first golf course designed by Alister MacKenzie in the United States.
You only have to spend a few minutes with Sean to get swept up by his amazing passion for research and history—which, as he relates in this interview, has now extended far beyond his own course to include many others not only in the San Francisco Bay Area, but throughout the world.
With the need for keeping up with the game’s advancing technology often colliding with a desire to stay true to golf’s roots, good historical design information will only become more valuable, to help work out acceptable solutions. The tips that Sean provides about how to get your arms around all of the information that’s still out there—as long as you’re willing and determined enough to look for it—should be studied carefully by all superintendents, so we can all be as effective as possible in the critical roles we will continue to play in course restoration and improvement projects.
Q Sean, how did the background of your club get you interested in researching its history?
A I have been the Assistant Superintendent at Meadow Club for the last eight years. We recently finished a restoration of our course, trying to get the greens and bunkers back as close as we could to the original design, because over the years, and particularly during the Depression and World War II, the course lost the original size of its greens and bunkers.
We had a lot of fun with our restoration, working with Architect Mike DeVries, as we tried to bring back some of the MacKenzie features that had been lost. What was hard was trying to find historical photos and plans of the original course. Dave Sexton, the Superintendent at Meadow Club, had found a number of things, including an article from a golf magazine that showed some photos of the club in 1927. I felt there was more information out there, and started my own search. I found some correspondence between an original member of Meadow Club and Robert Hunter, Alister MacKenzie’s partner in the United States. With these documents we were able to see what transpired not only between the club and the architects, but also with the early partnership of MacKenzie and Hunter. The more information I found, the more questions I had, and a “vicious cycle” was started.
Q How did this expand into also researching other clubs in the Bay Area, and beyond?
A In talking about this with other superintendents in the area, I found that they also said their own club histories were very short on information; it was very similar to what I found—or didn’t find—at Meadow Club. I was interested in finding the pieces to the bigger puzzle and seeing how it all fit together. My research now goes beyond the Bay Area, as I’m also interested in the courses that were built prior to World War II, the early golf professionals, and architects. Golf in the early part of the last century was concentrated into a small but very close-knit group of people that spanned the United States and across the Atlantic.
Q What do you want to do with your findings?
A The main point of my research is to figure out what happened and who was involved at a given golf club. It is a lot of work digging through a number of different sources of information to form an understanding of the changes at a given course. One interesting thing that I found was that a number of courses were originally built by top amateur golfers, or members of a given club, only to have a named architect come in a year or two later to make changes. This in fact happened at two of California’s more renowned courses: Pebble Beach and San Francisco Golf Club. In the case of Pebble Beach, the golf course wasn’t a year old before they called in Herbert Fowler to make changes. Through my research I managed to find the plans drawn up by Fowler for Pebble Beach in March of 1920, and in those plans he called for the elimination of the 7th hole! Obviously, not all of his plans were followed, and we are better off for it.
Q What can you share about the process of investigating the history of courses?
A This is easier said then done! I think the investigating part runs in my blood, as my mother is my family’s genealogist, and my father was a Special Agent in the FBI.
The easiest thing to first do is contact your club’s historian, to see what the club already has on hand. This can be hit or miss, but will give you a basic understanding of the information that currently exists.
I also focus on the founding members of the club and determine where they went to school. I then use that information to look into those schools’ special collections, as well as special collections at other local universities or larger libraries. These collections are where you can find personal papers from business correspondence and other things related to members’ club affiliations. Of the 40 early members at Meadow Club, I found three who had papers in a special collection, and each provided new and interesting information.
Your local and state historical societies will have old photos, maps, newspapers and magazines, and can put you in contact with other researchers who’ve been digging for the same information. Also, try to find an older photography business that has been in your area for years, meet with the people who run it, and share the names of the early photographers you are interested in. Try to track down aerial photographers, too; in the Bay Area, there were a couple of people doing aerial photography as early as 1922.
Regional and national golf magazines can also be a great resource. The United States Golf Association has a vast collection of a number of the national golf magazines online, and if you contact them, they are very helpful. Some local universities may also have some good collections of regional magazines. There is also the LA84 Foundation (www.la84foundation.org), which maintains North America’s largest sports library.
Newspapers are also a great source and can be found online and at your local libraries on microfilm (but I have spent a lot of time with microfilm, and it can be very hard on the eyes!). Be sure to ask for any kind of index that may have been created for a given paper or magazine, as it will really help to speed things up.
QWhat are you planning to eventually do with all of your findings?
A My scope is pretty large, as I am looking at golf in the Bay Area from 1890-1930. To date, I have only covered a seven-year period, so I still have a lot of research left. My goal is to put together a book that looks at the early history of golf and provides new and interesting information.
Already, I’ve shared some of what I’ve found with architects and clubs. It’s been rewarding to see that it’s been mostly new information for them, and that it has brought about renewed interest in their clubs’ histories. It is a lot of fun to get other people interested in the histories of their courses. I hope that more clubs make it a point to “go back” as they move forward.
Q What other research are you involved with?
A I am currently working with Neil Crafter, an architect in Australia, Nick Leefe, who is a member at Alwoodley in England, and another historian, Mark Bourgeois, on a chronology for the life of Alister MacKenzie (http://www.alistermackenzie.co.uk/Timeline.pdf).
We are constantly finding new information and it has changed the way we have looked at MacKenzie. The idea that he and Robert Hunter, a Socialist, had little in common has gone by the wayside. They were both intrigued by the effect of economic issues on society and took time to write about it in books and magazine articles. MacKenzie has not been given enough credit in this regard and we can now show that, through his own written words on the subject.
We have added a lot of new information that allows us to connect some dots and put MacKenzie in places where we did not have him before. We are hoping that more people will become aware of this and see there is still information out there to be found, and that with this new information we will add to our understanding of MacKenzie’s whereabouts and his body of work.
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