Charles Blair Macdonald

One of the most fascinating golfers in the history of the game was perhaps one of the most polarizing in his day, Charles Blair Macdonald. Macdonald was brilliant but he was also a bully. He was beloved by his friends and despised by his enemies (of which he had plenty). It has even been said that he was kicked out of the very club he designed and brought to world-wide fame.

I was planning on writing a short piece on Macdonald for this issue, but determined that I could never eclipse the words of the great Bernard Darwin. Here are the words of Darwin written 100 years ago last month in the December 1923 issue of Vanity Fair.

Excerpts from: “Charles Blair Macdonald: An Estimate of the Career and Influence of the Father and Good Genius of Golf in America” - By Bernard Darwin

“There is, as far as I know, only one golfer who’s statue has been erected in his lifetime, upon the scene of his labors. This is Mr. Charles Blair Macdonald, whose spirited effigy greets us in one of the rooms in the clubhouse at his own beloved "National" at Southampton, Long Island. And it is most appropriate that Mr. Macdonald should have this unique distinction, because he is a unique figure. No other living golfer has had so pronounced an influence on the game over so wide an area.

If any one man can be called the Father of American golf, Mr. Macdonald has a first claim to the paternity of that lusty infant that is still growing out of its clothes at so amazing a rate.”

CB MacDonald the Golfer (in Darwin’s words)

“I never saw Mr. Macdonald play when quite at his best, but I have played with and against him when he has been respectively an admirable partner and a dangerous foe.

One thing always strikes me about his golf, namely his manner of tackling a putt. It seems to me characteristic of the man. He walks up to the ball as if he would say to his adversary, “I know you have a right to make me hole this, but I assure you it is a matter of form"; and then in goes the ball, not hesitatingly, as it were with its very last gasp, but bang against the back of the tin. I forget what kind of putter he uses on the green; I do not clearly recall his attitude. The picture that is in my mind is of his just knocking the ball into the hole, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

The other stroke of his that sticks in my mind is his pitch with a mashie niblick. Once he is within range of the green with that club, one must look out for squalls; and as in the case of his putts, he plays the stroke with an almost insolent confidence. Well do I remember watching with him with two unfortunate creatures going to the nineteenth hole in last summer's tournament at the National. One of them appeared to have the best of it. Could he have pitched a mashie niblick shot on to that devilish little green of deceitful terraces, he would have won the match. He pitched much too strongly, and lost it. I shall never forget the scorn with which Mr. Macdonald exclaimed, "The man's a chump". I ventured tremulously to say that it was a difficult shot and the circumstances were somewhat un-nerving, but he brushed me and my pleading aside.

“It was a chump's shot", that was all about it; and whenever I play a particularly bad pitch, the formidable image of Mr. Macdonald comes before my eyes and I know that he would unsparingly condemn me as a chump.

He is in truth a severe critic; it is impossible to think of him having a half-and-half opinion about anything or anybody.”

CB Macdonald as a Golf Course Architect

We come to Mr. Macdonald as a maker of golf courses; and as such he will surely be remembered while men play golf on Long Island.

"Si monumentum requiris circumspice", should be written beneath his statue in the clubhouse. One can say at once that he is a very skilful architect; but when one tries to say how and why, one comes quite unexpectedly to a full stop. It is only after a little while that one realizes that this very diffculty of analyzing his skill is the best possible proof of how skilful he is. It means that as an architect he has no mannerisms; that he takes the ground and makes the best possible use of it, without obtruding his own personality.

Nearly all other architects have tricks that betray them. An experienced observer can often say with some certainty, "This is one of A's courses or B's." But I do not believe anyone could say that any particular type of hole or course was characteristic of Mr. Macdonald.

His art is wonderfully varied and wonderfully self-effacing.

In this respect he has, of course, had opportunities which others have lacked. He has and done his work for love- never for money-and he has done it at his own pace. Other architects often pay but a short visit to a site and have to do the best they can in a few days. Can it be wondered at that their minds tend to work in the way that comes quickest and most natural to them, and so their designs grow occasionally stereotyped? Mr. Macdonald has never worked like that. He has sat and brooded and watched, added a little something here, taken something away there, until at last he has been satisfied.

Granted, however, the opportunities, how few there are with the patience and observation and ingenuity to take advantage of them as he has done! A good many of us who have played golf on many courses may think we know a good hole when we see one, but I never met anyone like Mr. Macdonald for thinking out lucidly and exactly what were the qualities that made it a good hole.

His two chief monuments are the National and the Lido. I have not seen Bermuda. Mr. Macdonald will not have it that the Lido is the greater masterpiece of the two. He says that one would tire of the Lido long before one did of the National, and there I can well believe he is right. At least, I can hardly imagine getting tired of the National. But since I am safely out of his reach, I will dare to say that in one respect the Lido is his magnum opus. It is not because it provides the most tremendous test in the world of golf, but because the mere notion of building a course in such a spot, of causing the sea to give up its sand at man's bidding, of overlaying a flat marsh with mountains and dells and gorges, was a supreme piece of imagination.

Having dared so much, let me now pay an unrestrained tribute to the National. For beauty and scenery, goodness of golf, and pleasantness of company combined, it has to my mind no rival. I fell in love with it ten years ago when I first saw the sun setting over the links, and have remained its slave ever since.It is a noble course, and its splendor depends in no slightest degree upon its length. In fact, it is not long, as courses go nowadays, and yet the very longest drivers, while they derive from their power all the advantage that is their just due, can never begin to make a fool of it. To have contrived such a thing in these days of prodigious hitting is an achievement of true golfing genius.”

Darwin remembers a poem recited about Macdonald

“Charles Macdonald Is the Sultan of them all

He commands us on the links

Orders everybody's drinks

Tells us why we hit and why we miss the ball…”

“I quote the lines because they seem to me to sum up rather well his knowledge and his enthusiasm, his unbounded hospitality, and his masterful kindness. I do not know if Mr. Macdonald will readwhat I have written. Like a wise man, he has, I fancy, a contempt for golfing literature. Even if he does, I am afraid he may think I have made but a "chump's shot"of it. But I shall not mind, if he believes that this halting and inadequate little tribute is, at any rate, sincere.”

Before CB Macdonald’s Design Revelation

By Connor T. Lewis

For all the rightful accolades attributed to Charles Blair Macdonald, perhaps his greatest gift to America was his gift of golf design. Prior to CB Macdonald, golf in America was a vast field of steeplechase hazards, stone walls, flat bunkers and a Victorian sensibility of fairness. What golf lacked was the strategic nature of design that is lauded today & what became the hallmark for the era we now call the Golden Age of Golf Design.

CB Macdonald in the early 1900s undertook the experiment that is now known as National Golf Links of America (est 1911)- a grand experiment that was mocked by many on both sides of the pond. His goal was to create the greatest golf links in America and possibly the world by identifying the world’s foremost “ideal holes” (what many golf course aficionados today call “templates”) and merge them into a course that would be the Grandest in the New World.

This article isn’t about Macdonald’s reinvention of American golf design (we will cover that in a future newsletter), but rather Macdonald’s first and second golf designs of the Chicago Golf Club; both of which were very much of the Victorian School of Golf Design.

There isn’t a ton known about Chicago Golf Club’s first golf course. We know where it was located, as the land is now the home of the Downers Grove Golf Course. We believe we know that the 1st hole of the course today is original and that maybe 3-4 holes reside in roughly the same location as they did back in 1892.

We know that the original Chicago Golf Club (CGC) was a Victorian Design and if we are to believe CB Macdonald’s book, Scotland’s Gift: Golf, he stated that CGC was the first 18 hole golf course in America. What is lesser known is when did it become an 18 hole course. It’s a valid question because the early newspaper reports seem to conclude that the course was 9 holes and then expanded to a 16 hole course (8 in and 8 back). There are also whispers of holes being lost when a land lease expired, thus prompting the CGC to seek land in Wheaton. I would very much like to dive into this esoteric history in a future newsletter, but for now from what I have gathered, I believe that CGC at Downers Grove (then called Belmont) had 18 holes, but likely not in 1892- perhaps sometime around 1894 or 1895. It’s also entirely possible that the first 18 hole course in America, much like St Andrews Links in Scotland had shared greens. However it’s equally intriguing that when the Chicago Golf Club abandoned this land now known as Downers Grove, the course was listed as a 9 hole course by the Illinois Golf Club and it continued as a 9 hole course when it became the Belmont Golf Club. More on that in a future newsletter.

Golf was growing in America and with that growth the need for more land became abundantly clear for Chicago Golf Club. On Jan 11, 1895, the President of the Chicago Golf Club, William Borden acquired 200 acres of farmland from Hiram Patrick. In a strange twist of fate, CB Macdonald did his best to hire the best golf professional in the country, Willie Dunn away from Shinnecock Hills and in that attempt he offered Dunn the chance to design the new layout in Wheaton (oh how that would have changed history)!

With that rejection, Macdonald laid out his second course for the Chicago Golf Club. This second course was Victorian, complete with Steeplechase Hazards which ran perpendicular of the line of play creating a very geometric design of right angles and forced carries.

The photo below shows the 16th green at Wheaton- a green which was completely surrounded by steeplechase mounds and sand pits.

Below the 7th and 11th shared a green and was fronted by a steeplechase hazard along with a fronting cop bunker.

Macdonald’s Victorian design of the Chicago Golf Club lived on for roughly 25 years and hosted four US Amateurs and three US Opens including Harry Vardon’s triumphant US Open victory in the 1900 championship. In 1918 two things occurred that changed the path of Chicago Golf Club. First, in 1918 the club had an issue with growing grass which opened the door for a renovation. The second brilliant stroke of luck was that golf course architecture had evolved thanks to the same man who designed the course, Charles Blair Macdonald, but by the 1920s he had retired.

Instead Macdonald recommended his protege, Seth Raynor, who picked up on Macdonald’s Ideal Hole design philosophy and carried on his legacy until Raynor’s untimely death in 1926. The course that resides today at Chicago Golf Club was designed by Seth Raynor, not CB Macdonald, but the spirit of Chicago Golf Club and its image are born from the design revolution that was kicked off by Macdonald.

CB Macdonald at the Auction House

Over the past couple of years the Golf Auction has been fortunate enough to auction off two historically significant antiquities directly connected to Charles Blair Macdonald.

The first item was a large oil painting commissioned by Macdonald of himself with National Golf Links of America in the background.

This item shown below sold for $82,973.66 after Buyer’s Premium.

The second item, one might argue is one of the most important artifacts in American Golf History - CB Macdonald’s very own second place medal from the 1894 pre-USGA US Amateur Championship at St Andrew’s Golf Club in NY.

As historical lore goes - CB protested the tournament’s “right” to host a national championship without an official ruling body and it was from that dispute that the United States Golf Association (USGA) was born.

This item sold for $97,597.89 after Buyer’s Premium.