THE COURSE ARCHITECTS OF PARK RIDGE

The Story of the men who shaped the Park Ridge Country Club PREFACE

When the game of golf and its golf courses had their beginnings in the in the late 1800s, there was no such thing as a golf course architect per se. Virtually all of those who “laid out” the rudimentary courses on which the game was played were players of the game, some professional and some amateur, and they continued in the dual role of player-designer. It wasn’t until the second decade of the 20th century that golf course design began to separate itself as a singular career, a career that blossomed into the glorious title of golf course architect in the “Golden Age” of the 1920s.

The primary designers (architects) of the Park Ridge Country Club golf course followed the early pattern. H.J. Tweedie was both an active player and course designer until his untimely death in 1906. was the first to emphasize course design over playing as he traversed the country laying out courses. In 1918, William Langford became the first Park Ridge architect to form his own course design firm. David Esler was formally educated in landscape architecture. He interrupted an early career as a golf course architect to take a stab at professional golf, but quickly returned to form a course design company.

The objective of this document is to provide additional information about the careers of the course architects who formed today’s Park Ridge golf course. For the most part, it does not cover their work at the club, one reason for which is the absence of club records for the period from the club’s 1906 founding through 1920. It was during this period that the basic design and features of today’s course were established. The club’s centennial history book describes the evolution of the course as best can be determined and includes “best guess” diagrams of course layouts during the early years.

The Park Ridge Course Architects

Original Designs / Major Renovation H.J. Tweedie 1906 Tom Bendelow 1911 William Langford 1915 David Esler 2000

Other Architects David Gill 1953, 1958 Robert Harris 1959 Ken Killian 1960s, 1980s Dick Nugent 1960s, 1980s H. J. TWEEDIE

Herbert James Tweedie, Jr. grew up in the game of golf and made the game his life’s work as a player, sporting goods store manager and golf course architect. H.J. was born in 1864 in Bombay, India to English parents of Scottish ancestry. He spent his youth in , , where his father was a member of the Royal Liverpool . He learned the game at the club along with future famous English amateurs and . Tweedie’s skill as a young player is evidenced by his two defeats of Ball to win Hoylake Junior Championships.

H.J. emigrated to the U.S. in 1886, moved to in 1887, and became the manager of the A.G. Spalding sporting goods store in the city. He and his brother L.P. became friends with C.B. Macdonald and were members of Macdonald’s original in Belmont, . When the club moved to Wheaton, Tweedie and others organized the Belmont Golf Club at the old site and built a new course there in 1898.

Legend has it that Tweedie and Macdonald played the first game of golf ever played in the Chicago area. Both are credited with having a major influence in establishing the game in the area. Tweedie designed 13 courses in Illinois between 1898 and 1906, notable among which are and LaGrange Country Club, both of which have hosted national championships. He was also a consultant to architect Richard Leslie in the design of the , and participated with , Robert Foulis and H.J. Whigham in a remodeling of .

Because of lost club records, little is known about Tweedie’s design of the original 9-hole course at Park Ridge Country Club. A diagram in the club’s centennial history book suggests a possible routing. Interestingly, his Park Ridge design may have been his last. He died suddenly in July, 1906, two weeks before his 42nd birthday. He is buried in Chicago’s Oak Woods cemetery.

Tweedie left behind, with no means of support, his wife Mary Ellen and eight children. A committee led by Western Golf Association President Phelps B. Hoyt sent out an appeal for funds for Tweedie’s estate. In a twist, it was Hoyt who defeated Tweedie in the 1902 U.S. Amateur Championship.

H.J. Tweedie’s important place in the history of Chicago golf is reflected well in his obituary. He was called “The Father of Golf in the West.” He was affectionately known as “Pop” because he was “sort of a father confessor for the professionals who all knew him and told him their troubles.” TOM BENDELOW

H.J. Tweedie was called “The Father of Golf in the West” based partly on designing 13 golf courses in Illinois and a few more in Indiana and Wisconsin. What might we call a man who designed more than 600 courses (some estimates say up to 1,000) across 30 U.S. states and five Canadian provinces, including more than 60 courses in Illinois? That man is Tom Bendelow and he is known as “The Johnny Appleseed of American Golf.”

Tom Bendelow was born in Aberdeen, in 1864. His parents owned a popular pie shop in the city; Tom was trained as a typesetter. He learned the game of golf from his father and was a proficient player who traveled to play competitively in Scotland and England. News of a typesetting position with the New York Herald brought Bendelow to the United States in 1892. His entry into the world of golf course design was triggered by an 1895 classified ad from the Pratt family, whose patriarch was a co- founder of the Standard Oil Company. The job was for teaching the game of golf to the family, but it evolved into designing a 6-hole course on the family’s estate. Between 1895 and 1899, Bendelow laid out numerous courses in New York and New Jersey. In 1899 he was hired to manage the Van Cortlandt Park Golf Course in New York City, where he remodeled an existing 9-hole course and expanded it into the first 18-hole municipal course in the U.S. Success at Van Cortlandt Park established the worth of public golf.

In 1901 Bendelow was hired by the A.G. Spalding Company as the manager of its golf department, a position which brought him to Chicago. For the next 16 years he crisscrossed the U.S. and Canada, laying out courses, providing construction advice, encouraging players’ associations, and promoting the growth of the game.

Most of Bendelow’s work was focused on spreading the game and “bringing golf to the majority of the populace.” His early designs were fairly basic, with focus on playability and ease of construction and maintenance. Later designs became more strategically intricate, particularly in his work for private clubs. His reputation after his death centered on the primitive staking method labeled “18 Stakes on a Sunday Afternoon” that was used by many early course architects.

The details of Bendelow’s work at Park Ridge, as with H.J. Tweedie’s, reside in lost club records. His most notable courses are the Athletic Club, Bob Jones’ home course at East Lake Country Club, and all three courses at Medinah. His work at Courses #1 and #3 at Medinah has been mostly lost in subsequent renovations, but Course #2 has been restored as a “true” Bendelow course. Tom Bendelow died in 1936 at age 67. His legacy is perhaps best expressed by a quote from his grandson Stuart: “More people have learned to play golf on a Tom Bendelow designed course than that of any other golf course architect.” WILLIAM LANGFORD

In 1915 the unexpected availability of a 20-acre parcel of land led to a decision by the club to undertake a significant modification of the 18-hole golf course designed by Tom Bendelow just four years earlier. The decision created the need for a golf course architect to design the revised course. It would seem that Bendelow was an obvious choice, but the club engaged a lightly experienced 28-year-old who was just a few years out of college. Why William Langford? One reason may have been a book published by Langford titled Golf Course Architecture in the Chicago District. Whatever the reasons, the club chose a man who would go on to become a widely recognized course architect throughout the midwest, and whose work at Park Ridge created the fundamental structure of today’s golf course.1

William Langford was born in 1887 in Austin, Illinois. He suffered from polio as a child and took up golf as part of a rehab program. He developed into a fine amateur player and was a member of three NCAA championship teams at Yale. He earned a masters degree in mining engineering at Columbia University but chose another career path. He became a golf course architect for the American Park Builders company.

Langford formed his own course design firm in 1918 in partnership with engineer Theodore Moreau. With Langford focused on design and Moreau on construction, the firm was active throughout the midwest from the 1920s to World War II. Late in his career, Langford estimated that he had designed some 250 courses and had at one time employed eighty men. The Langford and Moreau firm dissolved in the early 1940s, but after World War II Langford developed a golf course design business of his own.

William Langford’s reputation grew slowly over the years, but eventually he became recognized as an outstanding course architect. His work is reminiscent of “Golden Age” architects C.B. Macdonald, Seth Raynor and Charles Banks, but he was his own man and not a copycat of others’ golf holes. One reviewer and admirer of Langford’s work described his courses as fun to play, full of variety, strategically interesting, and with bold routing on an expansive scale. Notable Langford courses include The Links at Lawsonia, Green Lake, Wisconsin (site of the 2019 Wisconsin State Amateur Championship); Wakonda Club, Des Moines, Iowa (site of the PGA Champions Tour’s Principal Charity Classic); Harrison Hills Golf and Country Club, Attica, Indiana; , Glencoe, Illinois; Happy Hollow Club, Omaha, Nebraska.

William Langford retired to Florida in the late 1960s. He died in Sarasota in 1977, just a few weeks short of his 90th birthday.

1 Details of Langford’s Park Ridge design reside in lost club records. However, the club’s centennial history book contains an interesting narrative in the context of his book about Chicago area golf course architecture. DAVID ESLER

An entry from club records dated May 17, 2000 reads: “David Esler engaged to provide a hole-by-hole restoration and redesign of the golf course.” The selection of Esler was likely a surprise to some. In fact, a 2003 interview with club members and officials yields information that apparently Ken Killian was to be the selection. While noting that Killian was splitting his time between Chicago and , and that he was phasing out of the design business, Course Superintendent Mike Mumper suggested that it might be best that someone be selected who could be counted on for a long term relationship. This led to a review of the work of other architects and the selection of Esler.

Aside from the name of the golf course architect, it is noteworthy that it was a remarkable 85 years since major redesign work was to be undertaken on the course left by William Langford in 1915. Even more remarkable was Esler’s observation that “Langford was the best architect who ever worked on the course.” He identified the 1915 design as the operative shape, praised the routing that changed direction on almost every hole, and stated that his goal was to make the course more “Langfordesque.” The club’s centennial history book has some specifics of Esler’s work,

David Esler was born in 1963 in Wauconda, Illinois. He attended Ohio State University, where he was a member of four consecutive Big 10 championship golf teams. David graduated from OSU in 1985 with a degree in landscape architecture. After graduation he toured the courses of Great Britain as part of an OSU Landscape Architecture Fellowship, and then joined the firm of course architect Dick Nugent.

In 1987, Esler’s background and skill as a player led him to try to compete on the American and Canadian PGA Tours as a golf professional. He had little success and in 1989 he returned to Chicago and established his own golf course design firm – Esler Golf Designs – in St. Charles, Illinois. The firm continues successfully today with new, restored and renewed course projects.

Although he has been involved in projects of nearly every style, Esler’s design philosophy tends to gravitate toward the simplicity and elegance of natural and traditional character. That was certainly the case with the beautiful prairie course with a parkland atmosphere that he produced at Park Ridge. His other work has included Black Sheep Golf Club in Sugar Grove, Illinois (56th in Golfweek Magazine’s 2002 Top 100 Modern Courses), Twin Orchard Country Club in Long Grove, Illinois, Glen View Club and Ravisloe Country Club in the Chicago area, and Lake Geneva Country Club in Wisconsin. OTHER COURSE ARCHITECTS

As well documented in the club’s centennial history book, the period between William Langford’s course redesign in 1915 and David Esler’s “restore, renovate and advance” work of 2000 was marked by “random modifications,” some initiated by course architects, some by members (those dangerous green chairmen), and most in response to problems. The following course architects, all based in the Chicago area, worked at Park Ridge during this period.

David Gill (1919-1991) David Gill received a degree in landscape architecture from the University of Illinois in 1942, served in the Pacific Theater during World War II, obtained a license as a civil engineer in Illinois, and then went to work for golf architect William Bruce Harris, where he assisted in the design and construction of several midwestern golf courses. He formed his own office in 1950 but was stricken with polio in 1953. After a lengthy rehabilitation he made a remarkable recovery and was able to resume his work on a full-time basis. Gill was one of the most learned students of old British architects and links courses and went to extraordinary lengths to train and assist young people interested in entering the golf architecture profession, including his son Garrett and Steve Halberg with whom he shared a partnership at the end of his life.

Robert Bruce Harris (1896-1976) Following service in the U.S. Navy during World War I, Robert Harris received a degree in landscape engineering from the University of Illinois. In 1919, he opened a landscape design business and planned a number of school grounds and parks. An avid golfer, he laid out his first golf course, Old Channel Trail Golf Club in Michigan, in 1926. Although his firm continued to specialize in landscape design, he designed and built courses during the 1930s. During the Depression he successfully renovated several abandoned courses and operated them as daily-fee facilities.

Following World War II, Harris devoted virtually full time to golf architecture and became a leader in the profession. He designed courses throughout the midwest and south and estimated that he planned or remodeled 150 during his career. He was also responsible for training a number of men who became successful course architects, including the three “other” architects – Gill, Killian and Nugent – who worked on the Park Ridge course.

Harris was the first to conceive a professional society for golf architects. Together with Stanley Thompson, he organized the American Society of Golf Course Architects and served as its first president. Robert Harris retired at of Florida, his personal favorite design. Ken Killian (1931-2009) Dick Nugent (1931-2018) Chicago area natives Ken Killian (left) and Dick Nugent (right) both received landscape architecture degrees from the University of Illinois and began their careers as assistants of architect Robert Harris. In 1964 they formed a course design partnership and worked together for nearly twenty years in designing and remodeling courses in 18 states throughout the country. Their prominent designs include Illinois courses Kemper Lakes, site of the 1989 PGA Championship, and Forest Preserve National (now George Dunne National), one of the country’s top public courses. An assistant in the Killian-Nugent firm viewed Ken as slightly more artistic, and Dick as slightly more practical. In 1983 the partnership was dissolved and both formed individual firms.

Killian often said that doing one green at a club for a modest price probably did more for golf than building a high-end tournament course. To him, there were no “bad,” “too small” or “underfunded” golf design projects. There were only opportunities to make golfers happier. Based in both the Chicago area and California, his firm handled projects in the southeast and southwest as well as the midwest.

Nugent was known for his willingness to take chances, to experiment with different styles and philosophies. His Golf Club of Illinois was one of the earliest attempts to shape farmland into something resembling a links-style golf course. The public 36-hole Harborside International course on Chicago’s south side is another faux-links built on a landfill. He also designed a tiny landlocked 9-hole course on the shores of Lake Michigan in New Buffalo, Michigan called The Dunes Club that has elements of both the Pine Valley and Garden City courses. The Dunes Club is owned by Mike Keiser, who has since developed the famous “destination courses” at Bandon Dunes in Oregon, Cabot Links in Nova Scotia, and Sand Valley in Wisconsin.