In 1908, Peter Dawson of Towiemore-Glenlivet Distillery, Glascow, Scotland, offered a trophy in Memorial to the Grand Old Man of Golf, Old Tom Morris, to be played for in a team competition by member clubs of the Western Golf Association on Tom’s birthday (June 16, 1821).
The Peter Dawson Tom Morris Memorial Trophy “Presented to the Western Golf Association of America by Peter Dawson, Glasgow, in tribute to the memory of Old Tom Morris. A Golfer and a man.”
“Each team plays against the Par of its course, with all local rules suspended and no caddies.”
The teams were made up of eight of the best players at each club playing to scratch (without handicap), with the winning club scoring the lowest total of the eight scores against the Par of the course. There was also an individual medal given to the player with the lowest individual score against their club’s par. Any team winning three times kept the trophy.
The format of the competition forced many clubs to properly rate their individual golf holes and arrive at a total Par score for the course.
The great benefit of the competition was comparing scores against 75 other clubs of the association in a competition of their best golfers, held on the same day, which was truly brilliant, and certainly helped standardize golf course Par in America!
As it was, the Los Angeles team at Pico & Western were disqualified in 1909 for “not understanding the rules.” In 1910 they won it, but were disqualified for using a substitute that was not on their entry list.
In 1911, LACC moved to Beverly, and playing on a young course they finished 8th. In 1912 they finally won it, and repeated in 1913! Norman Macbeth won the individual medal both years.
In 1915, against 75 other teams, the LACC team, without Macbeth, scored 25 down to par and won the competition for the third time!
The Los Angeles Country Club team were: Scotty Armstrong, Jack Niven, Bob Cash, Jack Jevne, George Schneider, Judge Frederickson, Everett Seaver and Frank Edwards (sub). Captain John Wilson chose not to play and manage the team.
The winning 1915 Los Angeles Country Club Tom Morris Memorial Champion Team
George Von Elm arrived in L.A. in 1922, joining Rancho Golf Club and teaming up with 1921 British Amateur champ Willie Hunter, & Howard Hughes. George beat Bobby Jones for the 1926 US Amateur. LACC made George an Honorary Life Member in 1927.@usopengolfhttps://t.co/dU0nbNKV2o
— Golf Historical Society (@GolfHistorical) June 4, 2023
It is a wonderful honour for me to have my short story of legendary English golf professional Willie Lock published in the British Golf Collectors Society‘s June edition of Through The Green! And for those who are still patently unaware, his name was LOCK.
While researching English golf course architect William Herbert Fowler’s work in California in the 1920’s for Derek Markham’s A Matter of Course, Willie’s name kept coming up, forcing me to investigate a lost legend in English, Canadian, and Californian golf history. Willie had caddied for Fowler at Royal Devon before starting work as an apprentice under club making legend Charles Gibson.
From Royal Devon to Ganton, to Rosedale in Toronto, Riverside (CA), Los Angeles and San Francisco, Willie Lock was instrumental in raising the art of golf professional to a new level. Lock was a master club maker, having made Ted Ray’s famous driver when he was at Ganton. One of Willie’s most famous golf courses – San Francisco Golf & Country Club – is credited to Albert Tillinghast. According to his peers and golf writers of the day, Tillinghast blessed Lock’s plans when he visited the site when the course was already two years into construction.
Willie Lock was also credited with initiating the shift of golf tournaments to Red Cross benefits during World War I, as well as serving as President of the Northern California Professional Golfers Association.
A Matter of Course is a new book written by Derek Markham and published by Markham & Truett.
The story of legendary golf course architect William Herbert Fowler. The book is a proper biography of a most interesting life, mostly well lived.
I contributed research to the chapter, “American Adventures,” written about Fowler’s work in California, which included Los Angeles Country Club, Pebble Beach and the Del Monte Hotel courses, the Presidio, Burlingame Country Club, the no longer existing Ambassador/Rancho Golf Club, Olympic Club, Lincoln Park, Sequoyah, Del Paso, Crystal Springs, Menlo C.C., and others!
This is a small print of 650 books that can be ordered by emailing Philip Truett: philip@truett.co.uk
Mrs. Gourlay Dunn-Webb, who bears the unique distinction of being the only woman golf instructor in the country.
From an article published in 1919:
Pasadena has long been noted as being the home of many “best“ and various “onlys,“ but a new distinction has been added in the latter class by the presence here of the only woman golf professional in the country.
She is Mrs. Gourlay Dunn-Webb, is the niece of famous Willy Dunn, and is conducting a series of demonstrations at the Hotel Maryland.
Mrs. Webb comes from a family of noted golfers. Her grandfather and great grandfather on both sides were players and teachers, and her father, the late Thomas Dunn, was acknowledged the greatest teacher of his time. Mrs. Webb‘s mother was the first woman teacher in England, having taught golf in 1875 at the Royal Wimbledon Golf club.
Mrs. Webb was the next women instructor and taught the game at Prince’s Golf club, near London, one of the principal women’s golf clubs in England. Mrs. Webb can drive a ball 250 yards. The average woman’s drive is about 100 yards less.
She has worked out everything to her own satisfaction, dress as well as the method of procedure, playing the game to get the best results.
“It is simply wonderful,“ said Mrs. Webb, when I asked to give her opinion of the value of the game as an exercise and amusement. “It exercises every muscle in the body, even the toes, the head, the hands. It is the unique exercise. Golf is all a question of balance and poise, it creates a control of the body that no other game can give, and I’d say it is particularly beneficial for women.“
Mrs. Webb herself in action, with rare poise and control, is sufficient proof of the statement.
January 1919, Pacific Golf & Motor advertisement.
Aside from golf-instruction, this week Mrs. Webb is conducting the hiking expeditions from the Hotel Maryland.
Filling in the barranca at the “the island green” sixteenth, in early 1919 on Del Monte No. 2. (P.B.)
“The new course, which has just been opened for play at Pebble Beach, to be known as the Del Monte Second Championship Course, has as complete a watering system as was ever devised. It is already in working order, and with like comparison the other features of the course are having their development in the most scientific and intelligent manner.”
“The watering system on this course is capable of distributing two million gallons per week, which, with the annual rainfall, aggregates seventy inches a year on the watered area. These facts illustrate that California is prepared to take care of all the golfers in the country and give them excellent courses under ideal conditions.” – from The Golfer’s Happy Hunting Grounds by Jack Neville. Pacific Golf and Motor, March, 1918.
When he arrived in New York from England in 1920, W. Herbert Fowler was already a long time Royal and Ancient amateur golfer, who had won the Jubilee Vase in 1902, and the Bombay Medal in 1903, at St Andrews, and had played on the English golf team of 1903-1905, against Scotland. In his early days he was a crack cricketer, playing for Somerset County. As the dean of the British Experts in golf course architecture, he came to America in January 1920, and headed to California.
Now that the ball-makers have successfully ruined most of our leading courses, it remains for the golf architects to so design the greens that they shall be both difficult of access and that the putting shall demand care and skill in judging slopes and undulations. – W. Herbert Fowler
Mr. Fowler belonged to the following clubs in 1920: Royal and Ancient, Royal North Devon, The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, Royal St. George’s, Cooden Beach, Burnham, Somerset, and Walton Heath, where he was also manager. Fowler was also a long time director of the Royal and Ancient.
William Herbert Fowler’s home club, and course design masterpiece, was Walton Heath Golf Club, which, when it opened in 1904, was the longest golf course in England, just as the Haskel Ball was changing the game, and making the old golf courses obsolete. The legendary James Braid was Walton Heath’s head professional.
The outstanding features of the seventeenth hole at Walton Heath are more grandiose, their creator – Herbert Fowler – being of Anakim. No doubt he was assisted by recollections of the seventh hole at St. Andrew’s in the good old days before the short cut to it on the right of the hills was opened up. Then it was necessary to pick up a long second with a brassie or cleek, steering the ball home to the left of Strath, and not too much to the left lest it be caught in the sand by the Eden. It is hardly too much to say that the measure of glory which has departed from St. Andrew’s is preserved at Walton Heath. – The Professional Golfers of America, August 1920
Between 1920 and 1923, Herbert Fowler traveled between San Francisco and Los Angeles, remodeling and designing many of the great golf courses of California, including; the Burlingame Country Club, the Presidio of San Francisco, Menlo Country Club, Sacramento Country Club, Lincoln Park Municipal, Olympic Club, Crystal Springs Country Club, Sequoyah Country Club, Victoria Club, Los Angeles Country Club – North and South, Rancho Golf Club, Del Monte No.1, and Del Monte No.2 at Pebble Beach.
Fowler remodeled the historic, William Robertson designed, Del Monte No.1 golf links, nine holes at a time, starting early in 1920. By April he had also made a plan for lengthening the troubled Del Monte No.2, at Pebble Beach, which was considered too short for the big hitters, with only holes; 2, 6, and 14, up to the challenge. Surprisingly, this was deemed necessary, despite the many alterations made to both courses from 1918 through 1919 by the Del Monte Country Club Green Committee, led by Francis McComas, Douglas Grant and Charles E. Maud. Less than a month before Fowler arrived to remodel Del Monte No. 1 and 2, the Green Committee announced that both golf courses had never been in better shape!
It was Douglas Grant of Burlingame, the son of a wealthy merchant in San Francisco, a Yale graduate, who had married the daughter of Sir William Rutherford, the Mayor of Liverpool, who helped bring W. Herbert Fowler to California. Grant lived in England from 1910 to 1915, mainly for his golf game. His home course was Herbert Fowler’s Walton Heath Golf Club, where James Braid was his teacher. He also played at Royal St. George’s, and at other clubs around London, and in the south of France. He entered many major amateur and Open events during those years, and was well known in the press. In 1912 he beat John Ball in the Irish championship.
Bernard Darwin, who called Fowler “perhaps the most daring and original of all golfing architects”, recalled meeting Grant, the smooth swinging Californian, at Woodcote Park, the sensational new golf course Fowler built for the Royal Automobile Club in 1915.
Douglas Grant is credited with co-designing Del Monte No. 2 at Pebble Beach with Jack Neville. He returned to California from England in January 1916. On his first visit to Del Monte in February, he was said to have said that the land at Pebble Beach was “some of the best he has ever seen for the construction of a course. It is very probable that the Del Monte management will start the construction of a new course at the seaside resort in the very near future.”
Grant, left San Francisco with his family, and headed back to live at Walton Heath, in October, 1919. One can imagine the conversation Grant and Fowler had back in England, concerning the latter’s upcoming trip to California in the new year, where he would be remodeling Grant’s home courses; the Burlingame Country Club, and Del Monte No.1 and No. 2 at Pebble Beach!
According to Hay Chapman, in the San Francisco Chronicle, W. Herbert Fowler’s 1920-1922 alterations to the Pebble Beach links included:
New back tees added to holes 2,6,9,10,11,13 & 18. New greens built for holes 1,7,9 & 12. New traps added to holes 1 & 17. Hole 5 was also straightened.
In the summer of 1922, Fowler’s most radical alteration was the building of a new raised green in front of the Lodge. With a raised tee, calling for an accurate shot with the ocean as a hazard, it makes a 535 yard hole. The fairway has been widened and it will be a big improvement over the eighteenth of last year, creating what many say is one of the finest finishing holes in golf.
The final W. Herbert Fowler updates at Pebble Beach were completed for the 1923 Del Monte summer season:
New tee at 2, lengthening the hole from a par 4 to a par 5 New tee and green at 3. New larger tee at 4. New tees at 5 and 6, ten yards added. New tee at 10, moved to the right to tempt the long hitters New tee at 13. New tee and green at 14, lengthening it from a par 4 (430) to a par 5 (580), the longest hole in the state New larger tee at 15. New green at 16, hogback removed.
W. Herbert Fowler at Del Monte No.2, Pebble Beach by J.I.B. Jones
