A putting lesson missed>>>A putting lesson rescheduled>>>A breakthrough>>>An ascent>>>An association>>>A golf club>>>The Masters
You can be forgiven if you did not know that Ethan Fang won the 2025 British Amateur at Royal St. George's. It is understandable if you were unaware that his victory was the 20th by an American in the 140-year history of the British Amateur. To be a true, card-carrying member of the Walter J. Travis Society, you must be able to recite who won the first as an American in 1904: none other than Walter J. Travis. The Australian-born American was the first of 18 Americans to raise the championship trophy. He was also the first non-Brit to capture the championship.
Walter Travis’ 1904 British Amateur win, also at Royal St. George’s, came after he had won three of the previous four US Amateur Championship. Travis missed out in 1902, yet he he had a consolation prize: he was the qualifying medalist that year at the Glen View Club in Illinois.
1904 at Sandwich was the end of a glorious run for The Old Man. Although Walter Travis did not win another US or British Amateur title, he earned three consecutive qualifying medals at the US Amateur, from 1906 to 1908.
In 1916 a 14-year old Robert Tyre “Bobby” Jones made his first appearance at the national amateur, held that year at Merion in Philadelphia. Eight years later, Jones returned to Merion and captured his first national amateur, having finished runner-up one year prior.
Given all the physical and mental growth that takes place between the ages of 14 and 21, something else clicked for the Georgia native between 1916 and 1923. Jones went on a 7-year run like no other amateur golfer. Something took place in the month between the 1923 US Amateur runner-up finish at Flossmoor Country Club, and the 1923 US Open at Inwood Country Club, where Jones captured a national championship for the first time.
A putting lesson is what happened. An 11-mile drive in a Ford Model T from Garden City Golf Club to Inwood Country Club was precisely what elevated Bobby Jones from budding greatness to near-dominance among his peers. Whether he travelled to Garden City Golf Club or his teacher went to Inwood, or both, is left to the mists of history. The putting lesson did happen and it changed the trajectory of golf over the next decade and set in motion a series of coincidences that cannot be denied. It undoubtedly shaped golf history as we know it today.
The four Majors at the time (Pre Masters) were the American Open and Amateur Championships and the corresponding British Open and Amateur championships. Over seven years, 28 major championship tournaments were contested. Bobby Jones won 13 of those 28, but his win percentage was even higher, as he registered for just 21 of those events. Jones amassed a 62% winning percentage. No one has come close since and likely may never again.
Thanks to that record, his unequalled standing among golfers in world, and his collection of acquaintances, Jones was able to fulfill a dream of creating a national club, with a tribute course to St. Andrews’ Old Course. What would golf look like today if Bobby Jones had never teamed with Alister MacKenzie to build the Augusta National Golf Club? It all flows back to that glorious putting lesson in 1923.
A major turning point in his career occurred when he mastered putting. Jones would put himself in position many times to win a major title, from 1916 to 1923, but his work with the flat stick was never the equal of his long game. At the 1916 US Amateur at Merion Golf Club (then called Merion Cricket Club) Walter J. Travis covered the event for the American Golfer.
The father of a young qualifier asked Travis (author of the Art of Putting, 1904) to help his son with putting. With an extraordinary talent for striking the ball, the number of opportunities missed to win holes, matches or tournaments with a flawed putting stroke was driving the father a little batty. The father, a respected lawyer in Atlanta, was referred to professionally and by his friends as “Colonel” was no other than Robert Permedus Jones, the father of 14-year old Bobby Jones. Travis agreed to meet the boy for a lesson, but Jones failed to appear at the appointed hour. When he did arrive, Travis had already left for another engagement.
What could have happened if that lesson had taken place in 1916, on the practice green at the Merion Cricket Club? We will never know but it may have worked out for the good of the game and the golf world order as we know it today. That skipped lesson by a petulant teenager may have been the most fortuitous ghosting to set in motion a lot of coincidences that run through 1929.
The winner of the 1916 US Amateur Championship at Merion Cricket Club was no other than Charles E. “Chick” Evans. It was a great year for Chick Evans; he won the US Amateur and US Open that year, and claimed another US amateur in 1920. Evans would go represent the USA in the Walker Cup on three occasions, and would compete in an astonishing, 50 consecutive US amateurs.
Beyond those achievements, Evans would found the Evans Scholars Foundation, in partnership with the Western Golf Association. Through 2025 there are 12,575 Alumni Scholars and 1,260 students enrolled in 27 universities across the United States. If Bobby Jones had received that putting lesson and won the US Open of US Amateur at the age of 14, would anyone remember Chick Evans?
With his first Major victory in 1923 at Inwood, the solidification of the unquestioned title “Best Amateur Golfer in the World” forms were laid to be filled with cement over the next 7 years. On September 27th, 1930, Jones won once more at Merion, claiming the US Amateur title. He had previously won the British Amateur, and the British and US Opens that year, and he could now lay claim to a new achievement. The phrase “Grand Slam,” taken from Bridge, became a golf reality as all four major titles were held by the same player in the same calendar year. No golfer since (female or male) has claimed a calendar-year, Grand Slam. Tiger Woods came closest, when he completed a Tiger Slam in April of 2001. Woods had won the US and British Opens, and the PGA Championship, in 2000. In 2001, he claimed the Masters, and held all four titles.
Sadly, Walter Travis did not live to see Jones’ Grand Slam. Travis had passed away three years earlier, in Denver, Colorado on July 31, 1927 at the age of 65.
Prior to his death, particularly his last three years leading up to 1927, Walter Travis was immersed in designing courses and writing to friends and magazines. He had founded the “American Golfer” magazine in 1908, and sold it in 1920, but not before it was established as the authority of golf in America. Travis knew all the best players, architects, golf products and the landscape of golf through his playing, designing and writing careers.
When Marion Hollins came from the west coast to play the 1921 US Women’s Amateur, she was already known to Travis and most of the best golfers in the Metropolitan area as she was a native of East Islip, NY on Long Island. She was also the 1913 Women’s US Amateur Runner-Up before finally capturing her lone USGA Major at Hollywood Golf Club in Deal, New Jersey, defeating the 1920 defending champion, Alexa Stirling.
The Hollywood Golf Club course was a thorough redesign of Issac Mackie’s original routing, completed by Walter J. Travis in 1917. Known for its sandy soil and extreme bunkering (196ish) in play on a course of under 175 acres and green complexes unlike any other course at the time, definitely piques the interest and accomplishment of Marion Hollins, the last player standing as champion. Having played the course in practice rounds and a series of matches, it made an indelible impression on the champion.
In January, less than a year after her 1921 US Amateur win, the NY Times reported in an article on January 26th that the name of the all-women’s club, originally named Glen Head Golf and Tennis, would be named the Women’s National Golf and Tennis Club. In addition to making the name change declaration, it was announced that close Travis friend and collaborator at Garden City Golf Club, Devereux Emmett, was to be hired as the architect of record. Devereux and Walter were very friendly through their association at Garden City Golf Club. Walter was a long-standing member and deeply involved in the course’s design evolution. The similarities of the topography at Hollywood and Garden City, but for one subtle ridgeline at the Jersey Shore are eerily similar. As happened often at the time, architects either collaborated with or were often replaced by their peers in short order. In November of the same year, the NY Times reported that Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor were noted as “providing assistance” in the routing of the Hollins project course.
We’re almost to the end. Marion Hollins was charged with finding an architect for a Monterey Peninsula golf club, and she appears to have settled on Seth Raynor. He was the protégé of Charles Blair MacDonald and provided much assistance on his first project with his mentor, the National Golf Links of America. Raynor also oversaw the construction of Lido Golf Club on Long Island between 1914 and 1917. MacDonald sponsored a competition to design a hole that would be used at The Lido Golf Club. Country Life Magazine published and promoted the Lido Prize and it was judged by columnists Bernard Darwin, Horace Hutchinson and Herbert Fowler. The winner was none other than Alister MacKenzie. His par-four hole jump-started a brief architectural run in the USA
Mackenzie had been prolific in his work in the UK through 1925 and would not have logically found the time to cross the Atlantic. His first recorded projects in North America were not evident before 1925. Not until late in 1926 did Mackenzie leave the UK for the United States to begin work on the Meadow Club and Redlands Country Club in California.
In 1926, Seth Raynor fell ill and died after completing the routing at Marion Hollins’ California golf course, known now as Cypress Point. Travis’ health was in decline, and he would not have been available to step in for Raynor. Hollins found herself in a pinch, pickle or whatever you want to call it. She needed of an architect to move the Cypress Point Club forward to completion and keep her primary backer Samuel Morse satisfied.
Marion Hollins settled on Alister MacKenzie, perhaps with a recommendation from Walter Travis, perhaps not. MacKenzie delivered one of the world’s most magnificent golf courses by 1929. A second undertaking, a passion project of both Hollins and MacKenzie was the simultaneous creation of Pasatiempo, in nearby Santa Cruz. Pasatiempo was intended to be a living community of golfers, both with members and public access.
In 1929, Jones traveled to Monterey to play the US Amateur at Pebble Beach. He was unceremoniously dismissed in the first round. With time on his hands, Jones and Hollins played both Cypress Point and the inaugural foursome at Pasatiempo. Jones was so impressed that he wanted to meet the architect of both courses. Marion Hollins brought Bobby Jones to Alister MacKenzie’s home along the 6th fairway at Pasatiempo, and the decision on who would build Augusta National Golf Club was sealed.
That’s how a delayed putting lesson turned into an essential putting lesson, which led to an architectural relationship, a worlds-best golf course, and a new professional major championship. This April, say a special Thank You to Water J. Travis.
