Sit back and get ready to take off with Dynamic Golf.
Fellow podcast listeners, I'm your co-host Tim McElvanagh and with me is my fellow partner
Sean Klotz.
Sean, who do we have today?
Tim Mc, we've got a very special gentleman, he's the club historian for the golf course,
his name is Dan Mee.
Dan, how long have you been a member at Oakley?
31 years.
31 years, great.
That's unbelievable.
And the club historian, is that like a position that changes throughout?
Do different people have it or is that technically the name of the title too, I guess would be
the way to say it?
Or have you just taken on yourself to start recording stuff?
Certainly, a lot of self-appointed historians.
Many clubs have a club historian.
It's not uncommon at all and in fact the Ross clubs in particular have a tendency to have
a designated historian.
The Donald Ross Society does a very good job of knitting us all together and we have a
special webpage on their webpage for the historians so we can communicate with each other.
Oakley has had a great deal of interest in its history over the years.
There was a fellow named Witcher back in the 30s who researched the original clubhouse
and determined that it was in fact designed by Charles Bulfinch and it was rare for Bulfinch
to do a suburban commission.
The plans for that clubhouse were actually in the Library of Congress along with the
Marcacello and Mount Vernon.
It was a very important building.
After him there was a fellow named Reynolds that wrote the history in 1948 for the 50th
anniversary and there were other people that stepped in and did some work.
When I joined the club there was a fellow named Dr. Dan Schaig and he was the club historian
then and he did most of the research that resulted in the book we delivered in 1998
for the anniversary of the club moving here to Strawberry Hill.
I'm medicine to say that it's the centennial of our founding because what we established
in the most recent history book is that we were in fact founded in 1895.
It's the Cambridge Golf Club.
Then moved across the street, basically moved across Montauk street to this property and
initially called ourselves the Cambridge Golf and Country Club and then changed that to
Oakley I think as part of the whole celebration of the new course and the new clubhouse.
The Oakley was actually in a state of one of the previous landowners essentially, like
the Harrison Gray Otis.
That's the house that was designed by Bulfinch who was a buddy of Otis.
Otis was a big real estate developer in downtown Boston, basically built most of Beacon Hill
and he has a grand house.
It's still there on Cambridge Street.
It's a museum now.
So Otis was an owner and he sold his house to the Pratt family in 1825 or 30 and the
club bought the property from the Pratt family.
There's a direct line there.
It's interesting for anybody who plays Oakley today, you know we're a 6,000 yard course
and by today's standards pretty modest.
But Oakley is the first 18 hole course ever built in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
It's the second 18 hole course in New England after Newport and it was so important because
our first course was a 9 hole course down on Auburn Street.
As I said we moved across and we laid out 18 and the fellow that designed that first
course was Willie Campbell who was a very impressive fellow.
Surprised no more is written about Willie.
He's really an interesting character but he expanded the country club from 6 to 9.
He laid out 9s at Essex in Myopia, in Wallaston, in Franklin Park which is the second public
course in the country.
Willie was prolific in Scotland before he came out.
He expanded the country from 6 to 9 and then he was the pro there for a bit and then he
was the pro up at Myopia for a bit.
Tim, for our listeners, every golf course Dan just mentioned is top 100 in America
and probably top 10 in the state.
I would say Myopia, Essex, and the country club in Oakley and the list goes on.
Winchester and we'll get to some of the more than one.
Definitely a who's who's list right there going on for sure.
We're not talking about the local munis in Florida or anywhere.
He did municipal golf courses as a record too which we can get to some of the public
ones.
Yeah, there could be a whole story of Willie Campbell and his wife.
His wife was the first golf professional in the United States, a female golf professional.
So he got sick right?
Yeah, basically.
Good Sean, you're actually right.
That's what many people that are interested in Ross always kind of reach out to us and
say well how did this happen?
I mean because he was certainly and if you go back and look what he did in Scotland,
he was a pretty young guy.
He was a great golfer.
His dad was a stonemason and Ross didn't want to do that.
He started as a joiner which I guess is a type of carpenter and didn't like that.
But he loved golf and he got close with the people at Dornick and they wanted to hire
him but he didn't have any training so he went off to St. Andrews and trained under
old Tom and then he went to Carnistia and trained under another great guy and then he
learned club making from one of the finest club makers of the time down at Carnistia.
Then he came back to Dornick and he was their first professional.
They didn't have a professional before him.
He was only 27 when he came here so everything Dan just mentioned happened before he was
27 years old.
It's amazing right?
It's amazing and comes to a new country at the age of 27.
You know that's pretty stock stuff.
He got recruited by one of the boy numbers.
It didn't happen by accident.
But before we talk about that, I think it's important to understand that Ross had a great
life.
I mean he had this just awesome job, his dream job.
In those days the pro wore a lot of hats so he was given lessons but he was taking care
of the grounds and he had learned about grounds keeping from old Tom.
But it was a big job in that town and he was the guy and he just got engaged.
So there's a lot of things holding him there including his parents who he was very close
to.
But anyway in the summer of 1898 one of our board members Robert Wheeler Wilson, two L's
on Wilson.
He was a Harvard professor.
He was.
He worked in two disciplines, astronomy and physics.
Unbelievable.
And we actually have Wilson's picture on the wall of this board room here.
So Wilson was there with his wife and they took lessons from Ross and he was so impressed.
First of all he asked him what do you make and Ross told him and he goes, you can make
three times that in America.
And so Ross kind of was shocked.
It was the first time he heard there was that kind of money involved.
And then Wilson went off.
But Wilson never forgot that conversation or Ross.
And when he got back to Boston he told the board about it and the growing club here at
Oakley needed people to teach.
And so we had another member, Alfred Ripley, who was head of the golf committee.
He wrote Ross and made an offer of employment.
And Ross came.
And he came in March of 1899 and if you read his story, Golf Never Failed Me, he goes into
it in some detail.
The poor guy spent everything he had to get here and he had precious few pennies in his
pocket and he walked from South State because he went to New York instead of Boston.
I don't know if he got a deal or got on the wrong boat.
In New York.
Had to take a train to Boston.
And then he gets to South Station and he seems almost broke and calls up Wilson.
And it might strike you funny that Wilson had a phone in 1899, but there were a lot
of connections to Bell Telephone at Oakley, including our president at the time, Charles
Eustace Hubbard, who was a founder and a longtime board member of Bell Telephone, whose nephew
was Alexander Graham Bell.
So I've read so many things about this period and people just say there's no way he had
a phone.
And I'm like, whatever.
But there's a lot of reasons why Wilson and probably everybody else had a phone.
So he got to Wilson's house and he stayed with Wilson because he had no place to stay.
Now that first struck me kind of funny.
This Wilson was a really high society guy and poor Ross, I mean on the manifest of the
majestic ship he took out, I think he listed his occupation as servant.
And golf is downstairs in the Ross Library.
I read that.
It's perfect.
But it's so humble, right?
Yeah, he didn't.
And he didn't, I mean, but here is this real society guy and I'm saying he stayed with
him.
Then you realize in those days most middle and upper class people had servants and they
had a servant's quarters.
So it was nothing for him to have lost, stay there for a couple of days until he got squared
away and then he ended up getting a boarding house that's virtually all Oakley staff that
in the census of 1900 all listed their occupation as a servant.
So Ross comes out and again, Oakley is, there's a Campbell course there, 18 holes.
I've read that there was only 12 holes there.
I mean, a lot of golf writers read something but don't confirm it.
And so it gets repeated and repeated.
But we have confirmed that there were 18 holes there all designed by Willie Campbell.
It's a short course, 5200 yards.
But it was 18.
And you've got to remember in 1898.
Well, it doesn't go as far.
Well, there was part of that.
Yeah, club's still cool.
Yeah, absolutely.
No heightening drivers and graphite shafts.
1898 was the last US Open played on nine holes.
And it was the first US Open that had I think 72 players.
And so it was played up at Myopia and it was not fun.
I mean, guys coming off the rhythm and all of a sudden they're going to wait.
They just got the one course.
And it just emphasized why the nine hole courses were inadequate.
And Oakley recognized that and we were the first to do it.
So a year or two later that the country took it.
But it's interesting if you look at 1900 and you look at the courses in Massachusetts,
85% of them are nine.
There's a smattering of sixes, which is fascinating.
You go around three times.
That's interesting.
And then there are a handful of 18s by 1900.
So he came over as basically like you said, servant kind of like golf instructor was his
title essentially, right?
And clever Perry did.
But then didn't the board members or they essentially he was tending to the green side
of it like he started because Campbell got sick.
So he started kind of Campbell was never the groundskeeper.
Okay, he just designed it and he was the groundskeeper at Franklin Park with his wife.
And so the course was designed, the trees were cut, it was here, but it needed a lot
of work.
I mean, they take a long time to grow.
The grass was still growing.
Although they were playing on it pretty regularly by the fall of 1898.
So anyway, Ross was given the job to try to repair this thing.
And as I mentioned, it was a short course.
It was a 5200.
And the club always envisioned a much bigger course.
And we own most of that land and we leased some of it.
And then we were able to buy another 17 acres in 1899.
Which is the Strawberry Hill part of it?
Well, we're on Strawberry Hill now.
And this was part of the Payson estate next door.
And we're on the other side of the wall.
Hey, Mac, I've tried to show you guys pictures.
We'll do more on YouTube.
But we're at the highest point in Watertown.
So when you're in 1900 Boston, there's no skyscrapers.
You're just basically seeing the ocean.
The view is out to the Atlantic.
Yeah, that's what I was reading is that you just had a beautiful uphill view up there
looking down at everything.
So it's got to be a gorgeous view.
I'm sure before some of the high rises came in, but I'm sure it was a gorgeous view prior
to that.
You know, Tim, that's exactly right.
And I've read that some of the old residents would just sit on the veranda and watch the
tall ships come into the hub.
Because there's just nothing blocking your view.
We can no longer see the Atlantic.
It's not too hard to understand that they could.
Oh my gosh, that's amazing.
Tall ships in a different podcast.
That's amazing.
That's part of the Boston history.
We won't go into tea party stuff, but it's kind of in the same realm.
That's amazing.
That's a rich history right there in itself.
So there is the extra land and it was clear you just didn't.
You had to rework the whole of course, because Campbell's course had a lot of very short
holes.
And for example, our current fifth hole, there were two holes in that one corridor.
So it did the job.
You had 18 holes, but it wasn't optimal and they always knew they were going to expand
it.
And there were a lot of candidates.
There were the Stearns Estate south of us in the Payson Estate west of that initial
property.
You know, their ownership was either already dead or really old.
So the membership thought we're going to get one of those properties.
So they got the first chunk of the Payson Estate and there's no record of it.
Our guess is they would have contacted Campbell because he was the premier designer.
But Willie was very sick and as you guys mentioned earlier, and wasn't up to it.
He never played another match in 1899.
And then he was in 1900.
So it kind of turned to rocks.
They did.
And so Dr. Healy, who was the lead author on our book, he and I would wrestle with this
topic.
Why rocks?
Because there were a lot of really good designers in Boston.
And we've come to the conclusion that Ross just must have impressed people at such a
level with his knowledge, with his work ethic.
And he was in the perfect position, right?
So he's out there working.
The course is starting to look nice.
But then he's given these people lessons.
And he's given the board members lessons.
I mean, he's just wired in.
Oh, he got Wilson out, right?
The Wilson connection.
And Wilson's his man.
This fellow, Dana, he's on the wall.
He was his man.
In that era when you really had a master servant relationship with Scott, he transcended that.
The members of Oakley especially really looked at him.
It may sound crazy, but I believe they looked at him as a peer.
And they really developed long friendships that lasted his life.
There's a letter in our Ross library that speaks to that.
He really enjoyed his time here.
Anyway, so yeah, they turned to the new kid.
And I jokingly said to Dr. Healy, well, if you look at photographs of Campbell and Ross
in that era, they both had mustaches.
They didn't look dissimilar.
You know they sounded the same, right?
They're both just scotchling.
He's the guy.
Well, we'll let him do it.
And that was it.
That's how he got the start.
And he laid out a new 18.
He actually did two different designs.
And they went to board pick one of them and then they built it.
And so that was his first commission.
He was paid a couple of thousand dollars.
He sent most of that home to his mother.
And she added a floor to the family cottage on St. Gilbert Street and renamed it the Oakley
cottage.
That's a cool part of it.
That's beautiful.
Well, we started researching this.
And I'm saying, you know, so many people belong to a country government.
It's just functional.
All right.
I just want the course to play well.
But there's this whole other side to this place that's fascinating.
And it's not, it doesn't interest everybody, but it interests enough of us that it's important
to preserve it.
You know, many people, there are probably more than a handful of members that still
just think we're another Ross course.
You know, it's just, it's really not that important.
The fact that our, our super pat lane keeps it playing so well, that's, that's the really
important thing for them.
But this, for a little golf course, it really punches above its weight when you talk about
golf history.
Right.
Yeah.
Because when Ross was here, he was such an innovate.
We, he did like a water, like he brought water.
Greens were irrigated in 1900.
Nobody's green irrigated.
And today we're still finding some of the old metal pipes out there.
The Corotas, I gotta probably have one cut out and put it out on a pretty funny shelf.
But he, he also had gave indoor lessons back then.
Did read that.
No track man, T Mac, no track man, but he's doing indoor lessons in 1900.
He was the track man.
Yeah, so he's here from 99 to 1910 as the head pro Tim.
And he's designing golf courses, you know, did he design courses during that time?
He played a lot.
He was a really good player.
I didn't realize he was.
Very few.
There's only a handful.
After the 1910.
But he, he, and this is where I think a lot of people get confused.
So he came here in 99 and he stayed.
That was the only winter he spent in New England.
And then that's probably when he put the, the nets in the squash courts and gave lessons.
So, so funny during 1900, he finished laying out this course and was given lessons.
And we had a member that was James Tufts attorney and Tufts, obviously he had already started
Pinehurst.
There wasn't a lot of golf.
I think he had one nine hole course there.
Fine.
There's one.
And his attorney said, no, you, you've got to talk to this guy.
So he set up a dinner over Medford and they hit it off.
And so from the winter of 1900 in December, Ross went down to North Carolina and that
started the relationship.
And so he was the winter pro in North Carolina and he was the summer pro at Oakley and hit
some of the matches that he played from there on in.
It actually indicate those two positions.
What's frustrating for us is that so many people will read that history and just say,
oh, he was at Oakley for a year and then went to Pinehurst when he was a full-time employee
for 11 years.
And Tim, they took July and August off, which I thought was interesting too, right?
Cause good life.
Life was different back then for sure.
Yeah.
Cause the, cause they, they basically went to their summer homes.
We'll call it.
That's what happened.
Or, you know, there's no air conditioning.
So they're going to go by the beaches or by the name tuck it, whatever it is.
Yeah.
Um, so just an interesting side note that as the summer pro, he's not working.
He works May through June and then kind of comes back September through November type
of thing or something.
It was always a big fourth of July.
Okay.
Um, uh, event.
Okay.
So kind of shut down right after the fourth of July and then would kick back in mid September.
Yeah.
Cool.
And this, uh, this led to a lot of his commissions because members would scatter and then say,
you know, you can, you know, come up here to Mount Washington and design this, uh, this
course on the, on the hill.
Unbelievable.
Wow.
Great place.
So he did Pinehurst number one, number two and number three from the information we got.
Um, and I mean, Tim, some of the, I would really encourage our listeners to just, cause
we can't do it justice here, but to go research a little bit of what, what Ross did over the
next cause he died in 48.
Does that sound right?
Yeah.
Something like that.
So from like kind of the 1910 to 1948 and, uh, what he did in America, I'll say in Canada
for the record or the no look, of course he made it in Cuba.
He did Cuba too.
Yeah.
Oh wow.
I mean, um, Florida where you're at TMAC, um, Bel Air country club and, and all that
and all those.
Yeah.
I mean, there's yeah.
Yeah.
Pommicea.
That's a staple in the Tampa area.
That's the, that would be almost like an Oakley kind of feel in Tampa, meaning kind of like
a little bit of working class, a little bit of old school money, you know, definitely
the course to play.
Cause it's in the center of town.
We'll call it small, you know, Pommicea is kind of a short shorter golf course.
A decade long waiting list to get in there.
Yeah.
There you go.
Right.
Always in good shape type of stuff.
It's like going to, you know, it's a beautiful course for sure.
Yeah.
And you were telling me Dan about you played Seminole, which is one of his designs, right?
Such a trace to get on that track.
Many consider it, uh, as good as a Pinus number two in terms of the whole, yeah, the Ross
courses.
Did you ever play Dunedin Tim?
No, I've never had the chance of playing Dunedin Dunedin country club, amazing golf course
and just, you know, basically north of Clearwater, um, Delray beach.
It sounds like Delray beach golf course.
I played that as like a municipal golf course that I didn't realize was built by Jones,
but it's such a fun layout.
I probably played it 20 years ago.
Um, you know, Lake Wales country club is an old school golf course in Florida, uh, Pelican,
which they just redesigned obviously, but Bellevue built more and Sarah Bay is the one
I've always talked about with people down here.
So that's just the Florida golf courses.
And I didn't list the other 30 that you did in Florida, by the way, I just listed the
ones that I know of that I've played.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, he was prolific.
I mean, Connecticut, Shenna Casa, you ever play that one?
I did not.
That's a great track.
It's right on the water.
It's in, uh, Groton great golf course, Rhode Island.
I mean, oh, it's, it's a long list.
Yeah.
He lived in Rhode Island.
Um, okay.
Later.
Okay.
Um, he moved around a bit.
Now, again, this was summers.
Yeah.
After he left Oakley, uh, his, in, in the end of 1910, and he just came back from, uh,
playing in the British open where he finished a tie for eight, but he was only one stroke
off of being, there was a bunch of people tied at it.
He would have been four.
Okay.
One stroke.
Yep.
So the guy could play, but he never paid, played competitively after that, uh, in terms
of a major.
I mean, he always played in the north south, but he never played in the U S open or any
of the top 10, three times in the U S open from like 19 to 1910.
Right.
Yeah.
During that child period.
I was here and he didn't play after that.
He left here and he went to Essex, uh, for three years.
Cause he got a house there.
He lived on the property.
Wow.
Um, and then, um, I mean, I think it was pretty clear in 1910 that he, he really didn't want
to be a club pro.
Right.
He really liked designing courses.
Yeah.
And Oakley needed a full time pro.
Okay.
So it seemed that it was very amicable.
His, his move to Essex, a lot of Oakley members belonged to Essex.
And so he went up there for three years and they were ecstatic with what he did.
Yeah.
Um, and then he had this kind of bumper year where he was living in Newton and trying to
build this, uh, this business.
And he, I think he did 13 clubs designed in 1914, but Oakley gave him playing privileges.
Okay.
Uh, here.
And, and again, I talk about this guy transcended the, you know, the servant, um, uh, master
of attitude in those days.
That's almost unimaginable that you would give a former pro playing privileges at a
private club.
Yeah.
I mean, it's kind of a snooty, but that's just the reality.
That's so great.
When you dial that into your thinking about him, this is a special guy.
Yeah.
He was just by the membership of the different person, basically not just, yeah.
No, it's that's amazing.
I mean, it just seems like from, from even from the beginning of the story that I've
heard so far is that the, the, the gentleman, Robert Wilson definitely had to have seen
something in him to have him come across, you know, try to, try to bring him in there.
He had to be a very, uh, you know, care charismatic character, um, for all these people to follow
him.
And I think it's just a great testament of his character and who he was.
I'm sure he was a very fine character to have a chat with.
Tim, we talked about that a lot, like in the PGA world, right?
We've talked about that as far as like us going through our PGA schooling and getting
our class a card.
And that first time that, that I went to my PGA level one, and I talked about this even
last week on my podcast, but, um, you know, when you walk into level one and the instructor
has the sign up there as you walk into the room of the responsibilities and duties of
the club pro and it's 35 deep, 35 positions deep, you know, greenskeeper, golf cart fleet
management, retailer, business guy.
Hey, can you play a little bit?
Can you teach?
Are you able to, you know, read a P and L sheet?
And you do this like, it's amazing.
It just shows you the origin for us now and where we are.
And then throw on course designer on it too.
Go ahead and do that on the side.
Just go ahead and design world renowned designs.
Right.
And the other part I want to bring up too with Dan here is, and, and Dan, like I said,
I didn't know he was here for 31 years so far.
Um, amazing is when you, you know, the whole reason I came to Massachusetts, me and Dan
really haven't talked.
Um, I've been in Tampa for 35 years, one of the main reasons I came was cause of Scott
Johnson.
Yeah.
Right.
And Scott Johnson has been here for 24 years.
And if you look at the list of pros professionals that you see on the wall, there's some long
standing Paul Donahue was, was he here?
There's some guys who've been here for, you know, they're not just kind of to and out
with my point, Tim, right?
These guys, they, they become kind of that, I'll use the term cause Dan uses sort of the
master servant sort of role, but that the membership views Scott as definitely kind
of more of a, you know, a person on the same level we'll call it.
Yeah.
So what I find fascinating that even today, so many Scots, men that were born in training
golf in Scotland still outnumber the Americans that have been out broked.
I think our last Scott was Fred Lowe.
Yeah.
And he was here for 23 or 18 years.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, Tim, again, usual in this business, right?
Cause you're bound to piss somebody.
Exactly.
That's what I'm saying.
If I just read this, Tim, if I just read this from 1920 to 2024, okay, we've got one,
two, three, four, five, six professionals in 104 years.
That shows you the loyalty, first of all, the membership at Oakley and kind of the importance
that the professional holds at the facility.
I think there's been more Popes.
Right.
There you go.
Exactly.
And yeah, we've got two Scottish guys, John Collin and Fred Lowe.
Paul Donahue was here for 31 years.
Like it's just, it's just amazing.
It's really a good testament to the golf course, the membership, to the board of directors,
the people who realize that, Hey, once you get somebody good, you want to keep them.
And then vice versa from the employee side, I'll say it from Scott's side.
Once you get to a club where you do feel appreciated, that'd be the term or, you know, like, you
know, that you want to stay and there's, that's a great way for both sides.
It keeps the continuity of the tournaments and the operation going.
The other thing I love about this, this facility is that, you know, just not the rich history
that you guys have with Donald Ross and his history.
I mean, you guys have a rich history with, with presidents beyond the property, Bobby
Jones beyond the property, women's amateur association and how big of a role that Oakley
has played in that.
I mean, it's, it's, it's huge.
I mean, it's just like Dan said, it's definitely hitting above its weight and it's a, it's
a huge history.
It's a rich history.
You guys have there.
It's amazing.
What I've been impressed with him is that the membership has taken such care of this
course.
If you look at the grounds professionals that they've allowed to come in and consult,
well, the people that have actually worked on this, this course, it's, it's a who's
who.
I mean, it's, it starts obviously with Willie Campbell and he hands off to Ross in, in the
thirties till he comes in here.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's a, that's a conversation.
We have to, that he, that he wrote on, on the course.
For our listeners, telling us, did, did Augusto master it right?
Like with Bobby Jones?
No, that was Mackenzie.
Mackenzie, sorry.
But he, it did all the courses around New York.
So Winkford and he was prolific.
Yeah.
Sorry.
And he and Ross were just real good buddies.
So then, you know, it's just even beyond that, we, when we've had Ron Forson here recently
to look at stuff and Andrew Green's been looking at stuff.
So even to this day, it's just best in class.
You got to take care of this thing where we're, we're just caretakers of a very historic place.
Let's not screw it up.
Right.
So we don't let members go out there and realign the, the layout.
So even that, when you redesigned number three last year, that was a, it's not just a, hey,
we're going to redesign number three.
There's a couple of years, if not more of like diligent work on, hey, we don't want,
we want to maintain the integrity of the golf course.
But maybe we've also realized that with the growing practices and kind of the cutting
practices that we can speed the greens up so fast that it maybe has become not what
Ross envisioned or whatever you want to call it.
I mean, he writes that putting should not be a game of chance.
Yeah.
And on a bunch of the greens that are out there today in Ross courses, that's exactly
what they are.
And it's Andrew Green calls it pillowing and it's, it's a hundred, 125 years of stuff
that you put on the green.
And that's when you get these turtleback greens that were never envisioned by, by Ross.
And I guess if they were rolling five, you could probably still play them.
Okay.
Impossible at today's speeds.
So many great Ross courses in the area have taken to this Charles river, Braeburn.
There's been a lot of time looking at it and adjusting these screens to try to get them
back to what Ross wanted, make them bigger.
I think people thought it was sexy to have smaller round greens, but that's not what
was designed and you end up with less pin placements and less interesting experience.
Right.
My brother's course.
So we've talked about this before is a Cohassie country club.
So that's in Southbridge and it's a nine-holer and that's a, it's a very unique 1918 Ross
design.
But same similar thing, like the greens.
I love, I love good short par threes.
Like they don't all have to be 225 yards, which is kind of what you see on tour now.
Those types of things where these guys are hitting five irons, T Mac mean you were hitting
five woods or three woods.
Yeah.
You know, like
Number seven at Silverado.
Yeah.
Like the 140, 145 yard, which I think is like number 15 here.
I think that's an amazing golf ball.
It's just arguably the signature hole for the course just because of the view and where
it's at and the Lake.
And it's, it's, it's 148 from the back tees, I think, depending on where the flag's at,
but it's just such a great hole where you can change pin positions, wind direction factors
in it's a downhill hole.
So like you've got a lot of factors coming in.
14 come back is 185 yard tough hole coming up the hill with an impossible green, arguably
when you get it at green speed.
So the fact that he went back to back with, and the reason I bring all that up is that
Mark's course, Cohassie country club in Southbridge number three is 185, 190 yard par three going
up a hill with a really difficult green and number four is 130 yard par three.
Really cool back to back.
Yeah.
So when we were analyzing the course to try to tell the story of a journey across Oakley,
it is amazing.
The thoughtfulness Ross put in, I mean, you hit every point on the compass with our grades.
I mean, he was just so out of it, he didn't want to see more parallel fairways, right?
And just, yeah.
And he did it on 85 acres.
It's absolutely mind blowing how we put this course together on a little tiny property.
Shoehorned it in there.
With 1900 technology, not with scopes and gradients and figuring out computer animations.
The other thing I'm amazed about over there, Dan, is that he did all this before the time
of the technology that we have today.
How many years did it take?
I mean, 11 total or did he just kind of tinker around with one hole or a couple holes?
There were three major renovations.
And he pressed the membership and the membership responded.
We bought a steam shovel for the 1907 renovation.
Oh wow.
And not many people did that.
They were still working with a team of horses in most courses.
So he wasn't bashful about asking for toys.
So the three major renovations, and so 1910 was the last one and we're landlocked.
And I think that was part of the move to Essex.
I mean, it was just going to be maintenance from there on.
He couldn't do anything.
He had done it.
His work is done.
And so, you know, no complaints.
He did us right.
So bring us Dan, bring us to 1998 because I think that's an unbelievable story about
his granddaughter showing up for the 100 year celebration.
Yeah.
Right.
Yes.
Mrs. Pippitt, she came.
Dr. Shea reached out to her.
She was living in Vermont and I have the correspondence and it's absolutely fair.
What a delightful woman.
I didn't get a chance to chat with her, but the fellows that did kept records.
And certainly this correspondence, she just was such a lady and still had a memory of
Oakley and spoke how her father will forever be grateful for the star that they gave him.
And she said he always maintained friendships to the end with many Oakley members.
So she comes down and God bless her.
She brings a check to pay for the evening.
And she's like, oh yes, right.
And I have a letter where she's, oh, Dr. Shea is sending the check back to her and it's
a copy of his letter to her and then her response, what are you doing?
I just have to pay my way.
So it's that old Scottish, you know, pay my way kind of philosophy.
But she spoke a great deal with a bunch of our members.
And the thing that might take away from so many of those conversations is that she said,
I never saw my dad when I was growing up, when we were in Pine Estuary, when we were
in a little Compton.
And the message I get from that is that he was always on the road.
And there's a bit of a controversy out there, you know, with 430 courses, how could he possibly
have ever seen them all?
And so there's actually some people have theorized that he saw and was active with a third of
them.
He might have visited a third of them once or twice and sent Hatch, who was his right
hand guy, to do some work.
But they speculate a full third of them are just tabletop designs.
And that last part, I just can't wrap my head around it.
They're spending so much time researching him.
And Dr. Healy is the same way.
We're like, you know what?
I don't see this guy putting his name on a lot of courses that he didn't have intimate
knowledge of.
And the fact that she said, you know, she never saw him, the fact that if you look at
where his courses are located, they're clustered.
And they're always near a railhead.
And that's how obviously travel happened in those days.
So it's certainly conceivable that he could have gotten to all these.
Probably the majority, far more than just 60 or 70 percent of them.
So makes sense because the Ohio courses he did, Kyoto, which is where Nicholas grew up,
I think.
I mean, he's got a bunch in Michigan.
He's got North Carolina, a ton in North Carolina.
So that's a good point.
New Hampshire, with a cluster.
We already talked about Rhode Island.
So yeah.
Yeah.
So that was our thinking.
And it was built up a little bit by her.
But it was such a treat for us to have her here.
And I think she she passed in 2000.
So it was very fortunate.
She was in great spirits.
She wasn't in firm at all.
Right.
That's great.
Wow.
I think we were pretty blessed to have this one, right?
Absolutely.
My only question to you, Dan, is that I know that he did two designs for Oakley.
What did he happen with the one that you guys did not, that Oakley didn't accept?
Did he ever do anything with it?
Did you guys hang it on a wall or did that just get kind of lost with time, maybe?
Well, I'll tell you, I didn't know it existed until Bradley Klein does his award winning
book on Donald Ross.
And he has the wrong design in his book.
And I'm looking at it and say, what is this guy doing?
That's not our court.
We need research.
And anyway, corrected it in his subsequent editions.
But that we were blessed.
Most of our history and artifacts were destroyed in the 1962 fire that just consumed the old
clubhouse.
And so we didn't have really many old records at all.
Then about 20 years ago, someone stops by and it was a descendant of one of the early
secretaries of the club that found all these board minutes in their attic.
They're all written in cursive.
This is gold.
20 years of board minutes.
Oh, historians.
It's a treasure trove.
I mean, just gold.
And I don't know if you've ever read it, cursive.
I mean, we're all trained to read it.
But it's hard to read.
But we have a historical committee here.
And we'll sit around this table and maybe there's some adult beverage in the room.
But anyway, you get to read them.
And we've read through them all.
And just some wonderful finds.
And one of the biggest ones was people, including some well-known authors who have written about
Ross, have said, you know, Oakley is not, this 1910 course has been altered.
It's not a Ross course.
And the big criticism is the transitions between Green to T-Box are all very consistent except
for seven and eight.
And we found in the minutes on May 15th, 1910, the board voted to order the grounds committee
to lay out two new holes, seven and eight, according to plans by Donald J. Ross.
In the minutes.
There you go.
Right.
And it was so awesome.
Oh, yeah.
That's validation, right?
Right.
That's validation.
So, you know, that helped us understand, fill in a lot of the pieces that we didn't understand
previously.
That's such a find, like you said.
Absolutely.
I don't want to keep him too long because he's already spent enough time with us.
But I really appreciate you coming over, Dan.
Yeah, Sean, Tim, you guys are great spreading the gospel about golf.
And you can probably tell from my comments, this is a topic I'm pretty excited to make
sure people get straight, you know, our role and the real importance of Ross to this club
and a lot of our membership.
Well, like you said to me a couple of weeks ago, like, you know, we've got a historical
society and we don't want to keep it under wraps.
Like, we want to spread the word and tell people about it.
So whether this becomes part of the Oakley, you know, history or whatever.
But I think it's a great way to expose because there are so many new members.
I mean, obviously, I've only been for three months, but there's so many new members.
It's kind of changing the membership.
You get some guys who've been here for a long time.
But there's a lot of people that don't know what they don't know.
They're on the bottom line, right?
They just don't.
They just think it's either the hats.
I don't know if you've seen them in the pro shop that we just got in.
I designed them.
I did use that Brandon Bills company, Tim, that I did down there.
So, OK, great company.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So on the on the front of the hat, I put the original Ross like that was what I made sure
that I put on the on the hat because I wanted to make sure people understood that it was
the original Ross design, you know, his golf course.
I think it's something to pay homage to.
My next round of hats, I'm going to put Strawberry Hill on part of them or just something to
kind of keep.
The name Oakley, by the way, is spelled L E I G H.
Yeah, I don't know if I get in trouble with maybe using that.
We'll see.
Maybe some copyright infringements there.
Yeah, sure.
OK, so step on.
OK, OK, yeah.
Well, that's great.
I got you.
You're tying the history into those things is is important.
I'm glad you're doing that.
Just don't lose it.
And just like you said, it's for the gospel.
We've had a lot of people from the Donald Ross Society reach out to us.
They know we wrote this book last year.
And it does fill in those 10 years better than anything that's out there.
And I don't know if any of your listeners, if they have an interest, I know they have
a few of these still here.
They could reach out to the club if they want to acquire one.
I don't know how they handle that.
But is that how they are?
Listeners could get more information on Donald Ross and designs and all that good stuff is
is there a society or what website should they go to, Dan?
Or should they go?
They should probably just go to the Oakley Country Club dot org and and get the phone
number and and and just call over and whatever answers could could guide them.
Yeah.
I think the pro shop has them too.
Yeah.
We'll get if we get people interested, we'll get them in their hands.
Let's put it that way.
Absolutely.
So now that's great stuff.
And I'm excited, Tim.
This was one I was really looking forward to doing.
I really, again, appreciate Dan.
Thank you coming in and talking about it and thank you for thank you for letting us do
this.
You guys are great.
Thanks for the opportunity.
Yeah.
Good stuff.
Yeah.
Thank you, Dan.
Thank you for the historical preservation that you're doing.
Great work.
Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
We certainly appreciate it.
And I'm really hoping we can get you on again, because I think there's a lot more history
we can dive into even more.
We just went to 1910.
We got to go from 1910 to 2024.
I know we got 100 years still to go.
I can't wait.
Part two coming up.
Yeah.
100 years.
Great stuff.
All right.
Thanks, Tim.
Thank you.
Thank you, Dan.