If Paul Lawrie needs any inspiration competing in this month’s Ryder Cup then he’ll have an abundance on a golf course designed by a fellow Aberdonian Tom Bendelow.
Bendelow is credited with having designed some 600 courses in a 35-year span.
However Bendelow’s lasting gems are the Atlanta Athletic Club, venue of Keegan Bradley’s 2011 PGA triumph, East Lake Golf Club also in Atlanta, and where the great Bobby Jones honed his game, and Medinah Country Club’s Course No. 3 where the Ryder Cup will be staged.Bendelow was born in Aberdeen on 2nd September, 1868 and one of nine children.
His family owned a popular pie shop in the city, and it was his father that taught young Tom how to play golf.Bendelow was married in 1892 to local girl Mary Ann Nicol and later that year immigrated to the U.S.
Scottish-born Tom Bendelow deserving of a place in the World Golf Hall of Fame for his contribution to golf.
His first job actually was working on the New York Herald newspaper and in his spare time he taught golf to the Pratt family of Standard Oil fame, who then commissioned Bendelow to design a six-hole course at their Long Island estate.
Bendelow’s career then took a big leap forward when he was introduced to A.G. Spalding, the sporting goods manufacturer. Spalding hired him to exclusively promote the game of golf in the New York and New Jersey regions.
“They were not seeking to design and build championship courses or courses to test the honed skills of the best players, but rather courses that new players could enjoy, courses that would improve player proficiency, courses that would promote participation, and courses that could be maintained at a reasonable expense,” according to the American Society of Golf Course Architects.
In 1898, Bendelow was hired by the New York City Park District to redesign and manage the Van Corlandt Park Golf Course, the country’s first 18-hole municipal gofl course.
Bendelow went to work introducing many new innovations to American golfers including the practice of reserving tee times, the use of course marshals, public golf instruction and also programs to train caddies.
Bendelow became so well known he was nick named the ‘Johnny Appleseed’ of golf after Jonathon ‘Appleseed’ Chapman who introduced apple trees to many parts of the eastern States.
In 1901, Bendelow accepted an offer from Spalding to become the Director of Golf Course Development that meant moving his young family to Chicago.
Then for the next 16 years, Bendelow travelled extensively taking advantage in the upsurge in golf in the States and Canada. He would provide advice on golf course construction, encourage further participation, lecture on the game, and generally just help the growth of golf.
In 1917, he accepted the position of Golf Department Manager with Thos. E Wilson sporting goods.
He remained in that position for three years, but not before designing his own range of clubs for Wilson, before joining Myron West’s American Park Builders Company based in Chicago, as Chief Golf Course Designer, and designing such courses as Temple Terrace Golf and Country Club in Florida (1921), River Crest Country Club in Fort Worth Texas (1911), Dallas Country Club (1908) and Mission Hills Country Club, Kansas (1915).
Bendelow’s early courses before World War 1 are described as fairly basic but after the War his designs became more strategic, intricate, and particularly were all work for private clubs.
Working for private clubs gave Bendelow the scope to refine techniques in design and construction, including the use of topographic maps, soil surveys, irrigation plans, and even plaster of paris greens models.
Bendelow also found time to play golf with some of the legends of the game at the time including fellow Scot Harry Vardon.
However Bendelow is now remembered most for his work at Medinah where he designed all three courses and while Course No. 3 has undergone extensive changes it has served the test of time as evident in hosting several Majors including the U.S. Open in 1949, 1975, and 1990, as well as the PGA Championship in 1999 and 2006.
Bendelow died at his home in River Forest, Illinois on March 24th, 1936 at the age of 67.
Sadly, it was not to 1981 with the launch of the book The Golf Course, by Geoffrey Cornish and Ronald Whitten, that the full extent of Bendelow’s contribution to the game of golf was realised.
It seems prior to 1981, Bendelow’s contribution had been all but forgotten with the suggestion also that much of his golf course design work was ’18 Stakes on a Sunday Afternoon’.
In 2005, Bendelow was finally inducted into the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame, and thanks to the many years of tiresome work of Bendelow’s grandson who sought to restore his name into the annals of American golfing history.
Because Bendelow is recognized as being one of the most prolific public golf course designers and promoter of the game of golf, it is believed that ‘more people learned the game of golf on a Tom Bendelow designed course than that of any other golf course architect’.
And www.golfbytourmiss.com supports continuing calls for Bendelow’s work in golf to be recognised by inclusion into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
