Friday, January 19, 2007

PLAQUE AT INDIANA
COURSE PAYS
TRIBUTE TO
DESIGNER
TOM FROM
ABERDEEN

By COLIN FARQUHARSON
Stuart Bendelow, the American
born and bred grandson of Tom
Bendlelow, continues his uphill
struggle to gain greater recognition
of his grandfather's part in the
spread of golf in North America
through the first 30-odd years
of the 20th Century.
Aberdonian Tom, who was a compositor with the Aberdeen Free Press, boarded the boat from Greenock or Glasgow to New York in the 1890s. Tom, a low-handicap amateur golfer, went on to design between 600 and maybe 1,000 courses - we will never know the precise figure - the length and breadth of North America.
JOHNNY APPLESEED OF AMERICAN GOLF
But Bendelow's work had largely been forgotten or, even worse, "rubbished" by some ill-informed writers of the modern era until Stuart took it upon himself to research Tom's life and write his biography: "Thomas 'Tom' Bendelow: The Johnny Appleseed of American Golf." If you want to obtain a copy of the book, E-mail me at colin@scottishgolfview.com
Stuart Bendelow will never give up being his late grandfather's publicist. Now he has come across an golf course in Indiana by the quaint name of French Lick - and, even better news, at the course is a plaque (pictured above) in memory of Tom Bendelow.
It's a sad state of affairs that back in Tom's home city of Aberdeen, the Bendelow Pie Shop - run by his father and mother next to Causewayend School, was more famous than Tom's golf pioneering work in the States.

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