By the late 1880s, a group of Scottish immigrants had brought the game to the
New York City area, playing at the Saint Andrew's Golf Club. In 1892, Macdonald convinced several associates to begin playing. Shortly thereafter, he founded the
Chicago Golf Club. At first, Macdonald built nine rudimentary holes in
Downers Grove, Illinois; these nine holes comprised the first golf course west of the
Allegheny Mountains. In 1893, he expanded the course to 18 holes, creating the first full-length course in the United States. Shortly thereafter, in 1894, the Chicago Golf Club decided to move to a permanent home in nearby
Wheaton, Illinois. Macdonald built a new 18-hole course there, a layout that is still the club's home today and has hosted multiple U.S. Opens, continuing to rank as one of the top 50 golf courses in the world. (The original 1892 site is now the Belmont Golf Club). In 1895, he designed the first nine holes at Onwentsia Club of Lake Forest, Illinois, and also laid out (along with H.J.Whigham and Herbert Tweedie) the first nine holes at Exmoor Country Club of Highland Park, Illinois. In 1900, Macdonald left Chicago to live in New York, becoming a partner in the
Wall Street brokerage firm of
C.D. Barney (through mergers, now
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management). He dubbed the Southampton home at 119 Whites Lane "Ballyshear" and the house was designed by
F. Burrall Hoffman. The home was purchased by
Michael Bloomberg in 2011. In 1908, he organized a group of 70 founders to contribute $1,000 each, and the
National Golf Links of America opened for play in 1909. Many of the holes were his versions of famous holes from British courses, a pattern he would repeat on later courses. Macdonald would tweak the course for the rest of his life, altering every hole somewhat over the next 30 years. The course hosted the inaugural
Walker Cup in 1922, and is considered a landmark of golf architecture even today. In 2005,
Golf Digest ranked it the #9 course in the United States. With the National Golf Links course, Macdonald began collaborating with
Seth Raynor, who would later become a famous golf architect (a term coined by Macdonald in about 1910) in his own right. The pair would collaborate on a number of courses over the years. These included the Old White Course at
The Greenbrier (1914),
St. Louis Country Club (1914), the Shinnecock Hills Golf Course (1916), the
Yale University golf course (1926), and the
Mid Ocean Club in
Bermuda, a course conceived to escape the reach of
Prohibition (1921). One of the most famous was the
Lido Golf Club (1914), a course which took an enormous amount of effort to construct and had several unique holes, and was considered at least on par with the National Golf Links while it existed (a course by the same name exists near its location today, but it was built by
Robert Trent Jones in 1947). 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
Alister MacKenzie. In 1928, Macdonald published his book ''Scotland's Gift: Golf'', which covers the spread of golf (prominently featuring himself) in the United States from its beginnings in the early 1890s to 1927, when there were some 4,000 courses in the country. It devotes several chapters to four of his courses, and gives his design philosophy. He is often called the "Father of American Golf Architecture".
Macdonald's Template Hole Designs MacDonald identified 21 hole designs or templates from the greatest holes in the British Isles that would test a great player's game while allowing mediocre and poor players angles and options to score well. These template holes are typically pretty easy to identify after a little schooling. While these holes are similar from course to course, they are not duplicates. Each hole was designed specifically for the site to create a unique twist for players. Several of MacDonald's classic templates are: • Alps • Double Plateau • Road Hole • Eden • Biarritz • Cape Hole • Redan Hole • Short Hole == Courses ==