Known as "Tillie," A.W.Tillinghast stood proudly, and often boastfully, on equal terms with the best of his contemporaries of the first half of the 20th century, such as Donald Ross, Alister Mackenzie, Charles Blair Macdonald and Walter J. Travis.
Born in 1874 to wealthy Philadelphia parents, Tillie was the only one of these five outstanding golf architects who was born in the USA. Two years older than Tillinghast, Ross was born in Dornoch, Scotland; Mackenzie in Yorkshire, England, in 1870; Travis in Maldon, Australia, in 1862, and Macdonald in 1856 in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.
Tillinghast, Travis, Ross and MacDonald did most of their work in the Eastern United States while Mackenzie built courses all over the world -- the UK, Ireland, Australia, United States, Uruguay, New Zealand and Argentina. Tillinghast and Travis concentrated on the Northeast where United States golf really began and grew rapidly between 1890 and the Great Depression.
A group of New York Athletic Club members turned to Tillinghast when they created a new golf club in Mamaroneck, N.Y., "Just 45 Minutes from Broadway."
Although this golf club never had a contractual affiliation with the NYAC or is legally associated in any way with the NYAC at 59th Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, this new golf club took the name Winged Foot. The golf club's logo is Mercury's winged foot, similar to the NYAC symbol.
These folks asked Tillinghast to build not one but two good courses. Tillie fulfilled their wildest expectations as he came up with his second set of excellent twin courses for a club in the New York Metropolitan suburbs during the Roarin' Twenties. He finished a complete redesign and reconstruction of the Upper and Lower courses of the Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J., just west of the Hudson River in 1922. Fifteen months later, he finished the East and West courses of Winged Foot, which is near Long Island Sound in Westchester County.
The 106th United States Open Golf Championship will begin on Winged Foot West in just 11 days. This is the fifth time the United States Golf Association has staged its premier event on Winged Foot West.
The USGA has conducted the Women's Open twice on Winged Foot East.
The U.S. Open has been held on Tillinghast's Lower Course at Baltusrol five times with Jack Nicklaus winning there twice (1967 and 1980) while the Women's Open was held on the Lower Course in 1961 and the Baltusrol Upper Course in 1985.
The first Open to be held at Winged Foot was in 1929, and it was scheduled for the East Course.
But a blight hit grasses in the Northeast that summer. This disease ravaged the fairways and greens of the East Course. The West Course was not hit as severely so the USGA switched the venue to the West. And forevermore Winged Foot West has been known as that club's real championship course, and the difficult par-3 10th hole of the West Course has earned a reputation as one of the most trying par-3 tests in championship golf.
Bobby Jones won the 1929 Open, trouncing Al Espinosa by 23 shots in a 36-hole playoff after the two finished deadlocked through the regulation 72 holes.
Jackie Pung made one of golf's most celebrated gaffs at the end of the 1957 Women's Open on Winged Foot East when she shot the lowest score in the field.
However, she signed a fourth-round scorecard with a 5 on the fourth hole instead of the 6 she actually shot there.
She was disqualified and Betsy Rawls became the Women's Open champion. Pung thus forfeited the first prize of $1,800.
But the Winged Foot members passed the hat and collected more than $1,800 for Jackie, who at least went home to Hawaii with the cash if not the title.
Tillinghast, who wrote extensively on golf for various publications as did Walter J. Travis, had a lifelong opponent he could not beat -- John Barleycorn.
There are old stories of people looking for Tillie on the job at new course construction sites only to find him sleeping in mid-afternoon at the base of some far-off excavation for a deep bunker.
One of Tillinghast's last and most famous constructions came in the middle of the Great Depression when he designed the Black Course at Bethpage State Park on Long Island. This was a public course on public land.
So the Black Course was carved out and constructed in 1935-36 by men of the Works Project Administration (WPA).
The WPA was one of numerous FDR programs established in the depths of the Great Depression to put men and women back to work.
Tiger Woods won the 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black, which will host the Open again in 2009.
Late in the 1930s, Tillinghast gave up golf architecture and moved to Los Angeles where he opened an antique shop. He died in poverty shortly after that in 1942 at his daughter's home in Toledo.
But Tillinghast left riches galore for golfers in the form of his many magnificent courses, most of which have stood the test of time and equipment changes.
Tillinghast has seven courses listed among the top 50 in the Golf Digest rankings for 2005-06, while Donald Ross has five.
More Ross courses have been used for USGA championship events than any other designer's courses.
Tillinghast courses are second on that list.
Gordon White served 43 years as a sports reporter for The New York Times. His e-mail is sport@thepilot.com.
