Aberdonians In Outrage Over Bendelow Hall Snub

Colin Farquharson reports that Aberdonians are on the verge of congregating in the town square and calling for the ouster of a certain hair-dyed, refusing-to-retire autocrat to protest Frank Chirkinian's emergency World Golf Hall of Fame induction over the unsung master of staking 18 holes in a day, Tom Bendelow.

It helps, of course, to be American. I have never heard of Frank Chirkinian and I doubt if many people on this side of the Atlantic have either.

So where does that leave the case for Aberdeen-born Tom Bendelow, pictured above, who emigrated to the United States in 1892, aged 24, and became the most prolific designer of courses in the boom time of golf across North America.

Before he died in 1936, Tom is credited with laying out well over 600 courses across the States and Canada. The true figure may well be nearer 1,000.

It has become fashionable within the ranks of the US media to ridicule the work of Bendelow, pouring scorn on his modus operandi of being able to lay out a course in an afternoon or a day at the most with a supply of posts to mark where the tees, fairways and greens would be.

Oops, guilty!

Now if Tom had been American and perhaps with strong links to the media, it might have been different.

Don't give up, Stuart! You'll wear them down sooner or later.

Maybe we should enlist the aid of the R and A, whose chief executive, Peter Dawson, has something in common with Tom Bendelow - he also is an Aberdonian.

Good luck with that! He'll be too busy brushing up his Hall resume!