Golf Course Architecture - Issue 42 - October 2015

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09
MAIL BOX
Jones at Capilano
Dear Editor
It is my pleasure to reply to the concerns
raised by Ian Andrew about my article, “Who
routed the course at Capilano: Thompson or
Jones?” published in the October 2014 issue
of Golf Course Architecture.
First, my article provides evidence that
Robert Trent Jones Sr, following a visit to the
property in the summer of 1932, may, in fact,
have routed Capilano. My article does not
argue that Jones deserves attribution as the
course designer, as Andrew charges. Andrew,
himself a golf architect, knows that routing is
only an opening element in a long process of
creativity, imagination, and hard work. In no
place do I state that Jones should be considered
Capilano’s designer; my closing paragraph
makes it very clear that Stanley Thompson
absolutely remains the course designer.
Second, because Thompson visited the
Capilano property in February 1932,
and Jones visited it some five months
later, Andrew seems to be asserting that
Thompson surely had done, at minimum,
a rough routing of the course before Jones
arrived there. Andrews writes: “From this
information it’s rational to conclude that he
[Thompson] walked the site in February and
then produced a routing on a topography
map in his hotel room.” But where is the
absolute, unadulterated historical evidence
that Thompson provided these preliminary
drawings? Could those drawings not be from
the hand of Jones, given to Thompson in
Toronto? Without the drawings, there is no
way to be sure who drew them. Based on
the evidence given above, there is no way to
know for sure who routed Capilano.
Third, Andrew rejects Jones’s claim,
made in his autobiographical book Golf’s
Magnificent Challenge, “I routed the holes for
Thompson at Capilano.” In the same breath
Andrew discards the direct statement made
by Thompson’s biographer James Barclay,
in his biography of Thompson, The Toronto
Terror (2000) that “Jones did the course
routing for Stanley Thompson’s classic layout
at Capilano.” Andrews discards this crediting
on the basis that Barclay was simply parroting
the assertion that Jones had made in Golf’s
Magnificent Challenge. But why would James
Barclay, Canada’s most devoted golf historian
(who died in 2012), accept Jones’s word at
face value? If I had been in Barclay’s shoes,
writing the life story of Canada’s greatest golf
architect, as a Canadian, I would have very
seriously questioned Jones’s assertion and
gone as deeply into the records of Capilano
and into the archives of Stanley Thompson’s
business operations as possible. And Andrew
is wrong when he writes in his letter (in
bold face) “The problem is they both cite
the same exact single source.” Unfortunately,
Barclay did not cite sources for any of his
information; his book has a bibliography,
which includes Jones’s Golf’s Magnificent
Challenge, but there are no footnotes or
precise reference notes to show us where
he found anything. It is possible, is it not,
that Barclay might have known this nugget
of information in some other way? I just
don’t see a Canadian golf historian giving
away credit for the routing of one of Stanley
Thompson’s classic layouts to an American
architect, without thoroughly reviewing all of
the facts involved – and definitely not just on
the basis of Jones saying so.
Fourth and finally, Andrew falls prey to a
fundamental misunderstanding about the
relationship between Stanley Thompson
and Robert Trent Jones, Sr. The fault is that
Andrew sees Jones as merely another one of
Thompson’s “juniors” and as a “subordinate”
and not as an “associate” and “business
partner,” which is what Jones was from the
time the two men established “Thompson and
Jones, Inc.” in 1930 until the formal dissolution
of their partnership in 1941. As a reading of
my book A Difficult Par: Robert Trent Jones
and the Making of Golf makes clear, Jones
was not ever one of Stanley’s employees, and
Stanley never treated him like one. From the
very beginning of their partnership, which
started in 1930 with the design of Midvale
Golf & Country Club, Thompson pretty much
gave Jones authority to design the courses
he was working on. Jones never worked for
Thompson. By the mid-1930s, as several letters
between Jones and Thompson (preserved in
the Cornell University Archives) show, it was
Thompson, not Jones, who was beseeching
Jones to continue their planning for mutual
golf course projects. Stanley and Trent were
partners, and Stanley was fully capable of
assimilating a Jones routing for Capilano into
his overall design.
As someone deeply interested in the history
of golf course architecture (I teach a course
on the subject at Auburn University), I
enjoy exchanging ideas and debating issues
like this one, always in a friendly, positive
manner. So, I thank Ian Andrew for his letter.
I was hoping to meet and talk through this
issue with him at the annual meeting of the
Stanley Thompson Society at the Oshawa
Golf & Curling Club outside of Toronto.
Unfortunately, I did not see him there, but
I look forward to the day when we can sit
down together and exchange our ideas.
Yours sincerely
James R. Hansen, Ph.D.
Auburn, Alabama
This is a slightly abridged version of James
Hansen’s response to Ian Andrew’s original
mail, both of which are available in full via
.
We are delighted to receive letters from readers,
and the best in each issue will be rewarded with
a GCA golf shirt. Send letters by post to
6 Friar Lane, Leicester, LE1 5RA, UK, or e-mail
us at:
Last time’s Gopher Watch proved a difficult one – we had answers including St Andrews and
Prestwick, but there were quite a few who correctly spotted the excellent par three twelfth hole
at Portmarnock in Dublin. The brilliant Irish links is missed out by many golf travellers to the
Emerald Isle, as they head west in search of big dunes, but more fool them – with maybe the best
turf anywhere and a pile of great holes, it’s a course everyone should see. First out of the hat was
the entry of a good friend of GCA, German architect Christian Althaus. Congratulations, and the
golf shirt is headed for Dusseldorf.
Only a relatively short journey for the roving rodent this time. No clues, it’s a pretty easy one. If
you think you know where he is, answers as usual to
GOPHER WATCH