Walter Travis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Walter J. Travis (January 10, 1862, Maldon, Australia - July 31, 1927) was a successful amateur golfer during the early 1900s, a noted golf journalist and publisher, an innovator in all aspects of golf, and a respected golf course architect.
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[edit] Career
Travis arrived in the U.S. in 1884 and became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1890. He took up golf in October 1896 at the relatively old age of 34. Within a month of hitting his first golf ball, his first place finish in the Oakland Golf Club handicap competition earned him his first trophy. The following year, Travis won the Oakland Golf Club championship with a score of 82. In 1898, Travis lost to Findlay S. Douglas in the semi-final match of his first United States Amateur Championship. With a fierce dedication to the game, Travis was soon the country's top amateur golfer, winning the U.S. Amateur Championship in 1900, 1901, and 1903. In 1904, he became the first non-brit to win the British Amateur Championship, a feat that would not be duplicated for another 17 years. Because of his late start in the game, Travis was respectfully referred to as "The Old Man". He won his third North and South Amateur Championship in Pinehurst in 1912 and, in 1915, at age 53, he won his fourth Metropolitan Golf Association Championship with a victory over 28 year old Jerome Travers, the man who had eliminated him in a semi-final match of the 1914 U.S. Amateur Championship. With declining health affecting his game, Travis announced his retirement from competitive golf in 1916.
[edit] Contributions to golf
Walter Travis contributed heavily to the United States Golf Association Rules of Golf, and wrote extensively on various golf topics for the leading sports magazines of the time. His first book, "Practical Golf", published in 1901, received rave reviews from The New York Times. A second book, "The Art of Putting" was released in 1904. In 1908, Travis founded and published The American Golfer magazine. He stayed at the helm of "The American Golfer" as Editor until he turned it over to Grantland Rice in the Spring of 1920.
Travis often sought to improve his game by trying new equipment. He was the first to win a major event using the Haskell rubber-cored golf ball--the 1901 U.S. Amateur. As reported in the Travis biography, "The Old Man", by Bob Labbance, Travis had "dabbled with predecessors of the Haskell ball, but kept his involvement under wraps until shortly before the tournament" and he "had developed a feel for this type of ball with practice and was not afraid to debut it at the championship". As Labbance reports, "Travis's bold move had not only prompted a change in golf balls but a change in golf as well". His success with the Haskell sounded the death knell for the gutty ball.
Many other innovative steps were taken by Travis throughout his career. His use of the Schenectady center-shafted putter in his British Amateur victory attracted considerable comment and controversy. Some 6 years later, the Royal and Ancient would issue a ban on all mallet-headed putters, including the Schenectady. Travis conducted careful experiments with varying lengths of driver shafts, often using a driver with a shaft as long as 50 inches. At his home course, Garden City Golf Club, Travis had smaller sized cups installed on the practice green in order to sharpen his putting.
Though he was innovative with his equipment, and practiced incessantly, Travis disdained the notion of physical training after his first trial of abstaining from smoking and drinking during an 1897 tournament. He reported that he "putted like a baby", and would never again depart from his usual habits.
[edit] Golf course design
Walter Travis's first project as a golf course architect was his collaboration with John Duncan Dunn in the 1899 design of Ekwanok Country Club in Vermont. However, much of his acclaim and notoriety as a golf course designer accrued from his remodelling of the Garden City Golf Club's Devereux Emmet course from 1901 to 1908, and unveiled during the 1908 U.S. Amateur Championship. Nearly 50 golf courses bear his mark, either as an original design, or by remodelling. Through consultations, innumerable other courses felt his influence, such as Pine Valley, National Golf Links, and Pinehurst #2. Travis could lay claim to being the first "U.S. Open Doctor" with his remodelling of the CC of Buffalo and Columbia Country Club courses just prior to their hosting the U.S. Open in 1912 and 1920 respectively. Travis made his last visit to inspect the construction of one of his original courses at the Country Club of Troy just a month before his death on July 31, 1927.
[edit] Legacy
Honors that have been bestowed on Travis include his induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1979. In 1999, Golf World magazine ranked Travis second in its Top Ten List of Underrated Golf Course Architects. Four Travis-designed or remodelled courses are regularly included in Golfweek's rankings of America's top 100 "Classic" courses: Ekwanok Country Club, Westchester CC's West course, Hollywood Golf Club, and Garden City Golf Club.
