Who designed Saxon Woods?  Seems a simple question, but it doesn’t take much effort to get a variety of opinions. I quickly found four: Tom Winton (county’s choice), A.W. Tillinghast (tillinghast.net), Alister MacKenzie (our own club scorecard) and Joe Williams (worldgolf.com).

 I’d never heard of the last one, so started with him.  Googling “Joe Williams Saxon Woods” turns up 269,000 hits crediting him with our course – so someone thinks he's the guy. However a search for “Joe Williams Golf Architect” turns up zero. Well not zero, but only five courses and they opened in the 1960’s and 70’s. I looked everywhere and found nothing. So I’m going to write Joe off as a typo which has gone viral and is now widely misreported as fact on the net.  Anybody have information to the contrary?

 As for the club card choice, Alister MacKenzie, while he is widely respected as one of golf’s greatest architects and I would dearly love to be associated with the name – I don’t think it was him. The good Doctor was in N.A. frequently in the late 1920’s, but he was working in California (Pasatiempo) and on courses in Canada. Look as I might I could not find a single link to our course – not even in “The Life & Work of Dr. Alister MacKenzie” by Tom Doak (of Pacific Dunes) – which is supposed to be the definitive book on MacKenzie.  And at $299/copy I would hope it is.  In fact the only reference to Alister and Saxon Woods is on our card.  So, I wonder – How did that get there?  Anyone remember how/why some past printer got the wrong name?

That leaves Winton and Tillinghast. History reveres one, yet barely remembers the other. However, in their day they were not so different – as evidenced by this clipping from the May, 1919 Golf Illustrated. Tom Winton was from Montrose, Scotland – on the east coast between Edinburgh and Aberdeen – which to all but Mr. Price means very little other than cold, grey and not very golfy. Still his father was a well known club maker, so he had the heritage to be a course architect. He is said to have learned the trade from another Scotsman Willie Park Jr (two time Open Champion and architect of Olympia Fields).  After coming to the U.S. Winton was hired by

     the Westchester County Parks to upgrade courses in our area. He is credited with four of the county courses: SW, Maple Moor, Sprain Lake and Mohansic. Additionally Winton contributed to major renovations at famous local courses such as, Siwanoy (where he was also the greenskeeper), Apawamis, Sleepy Hollow and Mt. Kisco.  Perhaps his best known course today is the Congressional Blue Course in Washington D.C. He is definitely a credible candidate.

 A.W. Tillinghast was one of the most prolific architects in the history of golf; he worked on no fewer than 265 different courses (Wikipedia).  He is credited with most of the great courses in our area: Winged Foot, Quaker Ridge, Fenway, Bethpage, Ridgewood, Baltusrol, Somerset Hills, Knollwood, Sleepy Hollow… (wow). And he contributed to Pine Valley, Siwanoy, Century, Metropolis, Mt Kisco & Wykagill. You’ll note that at least three of those are also on Winton’s list.  So they must have worked together.  I’m not going to expand on Tillie here, but if you’re interested these links add some color to the many tales about him. (LInk 1) (LInk 2) 

Seems like Tillinghast was the one everybody wanted and Winton was the one Parks could get. So here’s my theory: I’m betting that AW did the layout and Winton did all the work. I say Saxon Woods is a Tillinghast course.

But that’s my opinion. Has anybody else ever come across literature or references to help settle this?  Let’s make it a Winter Project to find whose name goes on the next club card.  It certainly shouldn’t be MacKenzie again.  But do we ditch the working man in favor of the famous?  Winton vs Tillinghast.  Game On.