Unplayable Lies: RIP Redux

Fortunately no more losses in the golf world, but some wonderful remembrances to make you aware of:

Frank Hannigan:

Geoff Shackelford has promised to post more materials on Frank, and is as good as his word. First with this David Eger remembrance, which includes this:

When I started work for the USGA in 1992, Frank's too infrequent visits to Golf House always

included his faithful black lab, Sparky & an invigorating conversation in my office (which was P. J. Boatwright's during Frank's tenure). He persuaded me to bring a putter and golf balls from home so he could practice putt while we solved golf's problems.

My first round of golf with Frank was where we both belonged--Somerset Hills. I complained that some of the tees were in poor condition. His response was that because I could tee up my ball and had a perfect lie, there was no reason to bitch.

When Frank was working for ABC Sports, I stopped in the broadcast booth early one Sunday morning. He was always interested in the European Tour and told me that Padraig Harrington had just won that week's event. I then reminded him that I'd beaten Padraig in the second day singles at the '91 Walker Cup Match at Portmarnock. Frank's response--"He's a much better player now!"

Love the image of them rolling putts on the USGA carpet.

Good video tributes by David Fay and John Feinstein can be found at those links, unfortunately unembeddable with my current state of technical prowess. Both Fay and Guy Yocum in this post in Shack's comments call Hannigan the H.L. Mencken of golf, praise indeed.

Shack also posts a link to Hannigan's 1974 Golf Journal essay on Tillinghast, which in Shack's comments Michael Bamberger calls:

...the gold standard for what golf writing and scholarship should be. He got inside the man's life and after reading it your appreciation of golf was enriched forever. He did that in his spare time. Frank was an inspiration and I will always be grateful to him.

It's a long piece that I've only scanned as of now, but I must say that the Redan hole from Somerset Hills looks tasty, though who knew that Tilley did Redans?

Jack Fleck:

A couple of videos you might enjoy. First, jack recounting the '55 Open:

And with Kay Cockerill on the 18th green:

George Bahto:

The A Position, a website of golf writers, republishes Tom Bedell's profile of George Bahto that originally appeared in New York Golf in 2002, shortly after Stonebridge Golf Club, a Seth Raynor tribute course on Long Island, opened for play. More significantly, it precedes the publication of Bahto's Macdonald biography, The Evangelist of Golf, which was originally intended to cover Raynor and Charles Banks as well. Bahto subsequently saw fit to split it into two volumes, but the second covering Raynor was never written.

No big excerpts here, as you need to read the whole thing, which is an efficient summary of the background of these three great talents. Here's just a taste of how it all started:

C.B. Macdonald

Bahto has since found out enough that he is largely considered the reigning Raynor expert. His original book idea was to write about Banks and Raynor. “But you can’t write about them without writing about Macdonald.”

Indeed. The lineage of this triumvirate of golf architecture royalty goes directly from Macdonald to Raynor to Banks, and Bahto is refreshingly without cant while summarizing the succession:

“In the 1870s Macdonald comes back to Chicago after studying in St. Andrews University–where he came under the sway of Old Tom Morris–and basically doesn’t play golf for 17 years. There was nowhere to play!

In 1895, then almost 40, he builds the Chicago Golf Club, which started to turn the world of golf around and set the 18-hole standard. The same year he wins the first national amateur championship, and helps found the USGA.

For those with short attention spans, the piece comes with some great photos, including this one of The Lido:

I always learn something new from these items. For instance, I knew that both Raynor and Banks had died relatively young, but never realized that Macdonald outlived them both:

In January, 1926, Raynor was on a job in Florida when he dropped dead at age 51. Banks, who had been with him barely a year, now had about 25 courses to complete all over the country. And he pretty much did, before he himself died at age 48 in 1931. Macdonald outlived them both, expiring in 1939 at the ripe old age of 83.