Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture => Topic started by: Sean_A on April 23, 2010, 04:08:22 AM
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I came across this quote today while re-reading a book I haven't opened in 10 years.
"The educated taste admires simplicity of design and sound workmanship for their own sake rather than over-decoration and the crowding of artificial hazards. The strategic school above all aims at escaping formality by limiting the use of the artificial bunker, the excessive employment of which can easily crowd a course to the ruin of everything that contributes to spaciousness of design."
How do folks think this quote squares with many of the strategic designs of the classic era and this most recent renaissance?
Do folks think Dr Mac embraced this version of strategic design late in his career?
Do folks think archies have improved on strategic design or simply taken it in a different direction these past 20 years?
Ciao
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Hi Sean, in my quickly (and probably ill thought out) opinion:
The architect that most talked about spareness in bunkering in writing was Tom Simpson... That doesn't look like his writing style however so I'd be ineterested to hear who it is...
The key word though is "excessive"
I'm all for reducing the bunkering right down and using naturally occurring hazards if the site allows it... But, if the site is not a good one, you either have to create strategy by bunkering or by large amounts of earth moving...
You mentioned on a previous post reducing bunkers from about 75 down to 30... Great!... If the site allows it...
...However, I would agree that even on the least interesting of sites, you can create good strategy with no more than 50 bunkers and minimal earth movement (aside from greens and surrounds)... That is a huge generalisation of course and doesn't take in to account any drainage issues, never mind the size and shape of the bunkers...
In addition, it all comes down to what fits the site... Sometimes that is large sandy areas...
EDIT - in rereading your post, I also realise I've answered none of your questions... Ah well...
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Thats a great statement to use when dealing with courses built on great sites, sandy sites. However, once you move inland, or in the case of places like Sand Hills or Ballyneal, away from the dunes, you lose some of the ability to stay with this. When given a site that is mostly loam or clay based soil, you can't have a 'natural' looking bunker, unless you are willing to have it be some color other than white. I think so much of the proliferation of manufactured courses here in the US in recent years has happened because so often courses were forced into locations that were not the most ideal but somehow expected to be world class. Tom Doak, et al, have been exceptionally blessed with great sites to work with, for the most part, and therefore, their work looks less manufactured than does the work of some others.
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I have heard much about what can't be achieved on a site which isn't particularly attractive without spending bookoo dollars. Yet, I look at pix of a course like Wolf Point and wonder why not? IMO, there is something deeper at play in design these past several decades which either has little to do with creating strategic courses and/or is overly driven by visual interest (perhaps severe contrast of elements??).
The part in the quote which interests me most is "escaping formality". This seems to imply the heavy use of bunkers have inadvertently introduced a park-like effect on our courses which in essence limits the playing field.
Ally
Yes, the quote is certainly very much up Simpson's alley, but I think Wethered actually wrote it. See page 81 of The Architectural Side of Golf.
Ciao
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Sean-I wasn't trying to imply that you needed huge sums of money to make a good course on less than stellar land. I do think, however, that it is nearly impossible to have natural looking bunkers on land that is not sandy. I have nothing against obviously manufactured bunkers, so long as they are placed correctly and strategically.
At Tom Doak's Riverfront, there are maybe 5 bunkers on the entire course that could be confused with being natural, and those are the ones bordering the marsh areas. All the others were manufactured during shaping. But they fit fine and aren't horrible. So I don't mind them.
Its just a fact that on inland courses, the bunkers must be manufactured in place and be mostly unnatural. This doesn't mean they must be intrusive of expensive.
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Back then each architect had his individual take on strategic golf architecture, and Simpson was definitely a minimalist when it came to bunkering.
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Sean-I wasn't trying to imply that you needed huge sums of money to make a good course on less than stellar land. I do think, however, that it is nearly impossible to have natural looking bunkers on land that is not sandy. I have nothing against obviously manufactured bunkers, so long as they are placed correctly and strategically.
At Tom Doak's Riverfront, there are maybe 5 bunkers on the entire course that could be confused with being natural, and those are the ones bordering the marsh areas. All the others were manufactured during shaping. But they fit fine and aren't horrible. So I don't mind them.
Its just a fact that on inland courses, the bunkers must be manufactured in place and be mostly unnatural. This doesn't mean they must be intrusive of expensive.
John
You are missing the point. To what degree do bunkers need to be built? You seem to have followed recent archie thinking hook, line and sinker with "bunkers are the answer".
Tommy Mac
Yes, for sure Simpson was a naturalist which in true form questions the use of bunkers when not on a sandy site. I know he believed that very well designed holes don't need any fairway bunkers, but I don't know when he started to believe this sort of minimalist bunker approach. I was curious how different Simpson was, if at all, from other designers of his period - not on sandy land. I know Simpson used centre-line hazards much more than the others, probably not much different from Park Jr at Huntercombe. For some reason Park Jr stopped being so prolific with centre-line hazards. It is uncertain if Dr Mac embraced this philosophy late in his career due to economics or a true shift in thinking or a combination of both. I was curious about the others such as Fowler & Colt. I don't think Simpson came into his own until the late 20s, probably sometime around the creation of Berkshire, the break up of Fowler-Simpson (did this have to do with creative differences?) and the onset of the Great Depression.
Ciao
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Sean:
I think the shift in Dr. MacKenzie's thinking about bunkers was a completely practical one. In 1928-29 he was still building bunkers galore; by 1931 he was suddenly much more spare and strategic in his bunkering [Augusta, Bayside, The Jockey Club]. Those dates can't just be a coincidence. He understood that his clients were now of a different mind-set, and he adapted.
It is highly likely you will see the same shift in architecture again now, and all for the same reason. Whereas just a couple of years back it was easy to be excessive in bunkering, because everybody embraced excess: clients, retail golfers, golf magazines, and architects alike.
It may be harder for some architects to make this switch, because there are some who truly believe that every added bunker increases the "strategy" of a hole by making players consider it. I co-designed a course once with an architect who thought like that. At the same time, I will say that it will be hard to make a course as challenging for good players with 30-40 bunkers instead of 80 ... especially if the architect listens to the good players' whinges about convex surfaces being unfair.
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Sean-I wasn't trying to imply that you needed huge sums of money to make a good course on less than stellar land. I do think, however, that it is nearly impossible to have natural looking bunkers on land that is not sandy. I have nothing against obviously manufactured bunkers, so long as they are placed correctly and strategically.
At Tom Doak's Riverfront, there are maybe 5 bunkers on the entire course that could be confused with being natural, and those are the ones bordering the marsh areas. All the others were manufactured during shaping. But they fit fine and aren't horrible. So I don't mind them.
Its just a fact that on inland courses, the bunkers must be manufactured in place and be mostly unnatural. This doesn't mean they must be intrusive of expensive.
John
You are missing the point. To what degree do bunkers need to be built? You seem to have followed recent archie thinking hook, line and sinker with "bunkers are the answer".
Ciao
No, I don't believe that. But how many bunkers do the top level courses in England and Scotland have? The Old Course has 100+, no? However, I have yet to play a course with 0 bunkers. I have played a course with less than 10, but it had water hazards on 13 or 14 holes. Bunkers may not be the answer, but they certainly add strategic interest to the golf course. Without sandy soils where you can leave in vast waste areas, such as seen at Tobacco Road, et al, if you desire to have bunkers, they must be maunfactured in place and therefore unnatural. That is what I am trying to say.
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It may be harder for some architects to make this switch, because there are some who truly believe that every added bunker increases the "strategy" of a hole by making players consider it. I co-designed a course once with an architect who thought like that. At the same time, I will say that it will be hard to make a course as challenging for good players with 30-40 bunkers instead of 80 ... especially if the architect listens to the good players' whinges about convex surfaces being unfair.
Tom,
do you think that bunkers are often used as an easy way to spice up a course? If a client doesn't have the budget for many bunkers could this not cause the GCA to look for different design elements to create strategy and would this not make a courses challenge therefor more diverse rather than the monotone use of sand?
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The bottom line for me is:
Less bunkers is better if you can provide equal interest and thought provoking choices by using the ground.....
I'm certainly hoping we will see another trend towards less sand (on non-sandy sites anyway) and more thought and daring about interesting green complexes and surrounds...
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"Do folks think archies have improved on strategic design or simply taken it in a different direction these past 20 years?"
I think some architects have improved on strategic design and taken it in a different direction these past 20 years.
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Sean-I wasn't trying to imply that you needed huge sums of money to make a good course on less than stellar land. I do think, however, that it is nearly impossible to have natural looking bunkers on land that is not sandy. I have nothing against obviously manufactured bunkers, so long as they are placed correctly and strategically.
At Tom Doak's Riverfront, there are maybe 5 bunkers on the entire course that could be confused with being natural, and those are the ones bordering the marsh areas. All the others were manufactured during shaping. But they fit fine and aren't horrible. So I don't mind them.
Its just a fact that on inland courses, the bunkers must be manufactured in place and be mostly unnatural. This doesn't mean they must be intrusive of expensive.
John
You are missing the point. To what degree do bunkers need to be built? You seem to have followed recent archie thinking hook, line and sinker with "bunkers are the answer".
Ciao
No, I don't believe that. But how many bunkers do the top level courses in England and Scotland have? The Old Course has 100+, no? However, I have yet to play a course with 0 bunkers. I have played a course with less than 10, but it had water hazards on 13 or 14 holes. Bunkers may not be the answer, but they certainly add strategic interest to the golf course. Without sandy soils where you can leave in vast waste areas, such as seen at Tobacco Road, et al, if you desire to have bunkers, they must be maunfactured in place and therefore unnatural. That is what I am trying to say.
In the UK Berkhampsted, Royal Ashdown Forest, Kington and Chorleywood all have no bunkers. I suspect there are more. Of those RAF and Berkhampsted are good tracks, Kington has been well recorded here and is excellent and Chorleywood is a very pleasant 9 holer.
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I came across this quote today while re-reading a book I haven't opened in 10 years.
"The educated taste admires simplicity of design and sound workmanship for their own sake rather than over-decoration and the crowding of artificial hazards. The strategic school above all aims at escaping formality by limiting the use of the artificial bunker, the excessive employment of which can easily crowd a course to the ruin of everything that contributes to spaciousness of design."
Ciao
OVER-DECORATION - in the quest for the best Marketing Picture to get your course in a Magazine. The cost-benefit analysis pendulum seems to be swing away from this (unless your name is Trump and are defined by Over-decoration).
ARTIFICIAL BUNKER - This lies in what one defines an 'Artificial Bunker' to be. I don't believe a man-made bunker that fits seamlessly into the topography is 'Artificial', irregardless of what the underlying soil consists of but rather 'Artifical' to me is when a landform is created that doesn't conform to adjacent landforms solely to install a bunker.
SPACIOUSNESS OF DESIGN - A see a trend, albeit a small one, of retreating from the ribbon fairway with flanking bunkers and trees, that act as visual blinders. The more we can meander the fairways amoungst features (bunkers included but not solely), the wider our vistas of the holes will become.
Interesting that Simpon and his use of centerline bunkering is noted here. I see this use as forcing our vision to the outside of the hole rather than down the middle. And, by populating the in interior of the hole , rather than the perimeter, he was able to get double duty out of a singular bunker.
While I don't tender that Bunkers are the "easy answer", I do feel that they are a solution. They should be employed on an as-needed basis to establish interst and strategy but in moderation and propostion to other features to achieve some rational balance.
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Tim:
Your last point is a good one, worth expanding on.
In Simpson's day there was no pressure to make EVERY hole on the course a noteworthy one. In fact, in the very same book from which this quote we're discussing was lifted, when laying out the composition of an ideal 18 holes, Simpson noted [paraphrasing here] that a course like that would really be far too exhausting to be considered great, and that every course needed some balance between stunning holes and breathers.
The expectation over the last 20 years is far different. We know that before our courses are even open, Matthew Mollica is going to post multiple pictures of every single hole on the Internet. [I'm kidding, Matthew ... partly.] The client wants EVERY hole to be a really good hole. And it just so happens that the same holes that years ago, we would have left alone, are the ones likely to require the greatest number of artificial bunkers in order to make them something that looks interesting. I think that's where the proliferation of bunkers has really come from.
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Not to mention the slope and rating system which perpetuates an attitude that more bunkers are needed to get the higher slopes and ratings. Placating another lowest common denominator, the uneducated taste.
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Sean - I usually like what I read from W&S. This quote, though, not so much. I think it manifests what it decries. It's fussy and overdecorated, and crams willy-nilly several ideas into one (supposedly cohesive) whole. But the reference to 'educated tastes' is interesting; I wonder what the equivalent of our 'average golfer' was in Wethered's day. I would guess that, at least one sub-set of that category would've been those who wanted their courses to be severe 'tests of golf'.
Peter
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Tom / Tim,
It sounds like you're asked to put some eye candy in the way of bunkering onto holes that don't need any.
Do you think that might be less of a priority for owners in the future due to maintenance costs, and what can you offer them as alternatives to bunkering, or is that too site specific to get into here?
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Sean - also: I think Tom D focused on the most important aspect of this question, i.e. the abomination that is the '18 great holes' kind of golf course. That aspect/approach, I think, is the real dividing line between differing gca philosophies, and between good and not so good architecture/design. I'm usually not a blasé or sophisticated type, but I have to admit I've grown tired of the strategic vs penal debate (especially after Bob Crosby's excellent essay on it). I think the very way in which that question is usually framed pretty much ensures that most of the ensuing debate will be meaningless, especially when discussing modern-day courses and design.
Peter
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I remember back in the early 90's a prominant Land Planner coined the term "Hot Spot". A hotspot was a feature element that was the terminal view, looking from outside the course, inward). His theory was the way to maximize lot values, evry lot should have a Hotspot. If one wasn't there, just plop in a bunker. Glad we never had to work with him.
Most astute developers leave the intracracies of the golf design to the professionals they hire. Granted, sometimes they make suggestions but usually leave the final determination up to the architect. Although, I'm sure there are some frustrated wannabe's out there who make life miserable for their archie. Usually, these are the Project Managers, or Management Consultants.
PP, to "the abomination that is '18 great holes kind of golf course", I submit CBM and NGLA. I think TD was thinking more along the lines of 18 visually spectacular holes. Whereas a Great hole doesn't have to be Visually Spectacular but a VS hole can be a poor golf hole. As we've stated on numerous occasions, a great course has to have a good flow and pace. Trying to make every hole spectacular can overpower the senses and thus feel incongruent to the natual surroundings. Or put another way, if you have 18 gorgious women line up - do they all start to look similar and hence average?
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"Interesting that Simpon and his use of centerline bunkering is noted here. I see this use as forcing our vision to the outside of the hole rather than down the middle. And, by populating the in interior of the hole , rather than the perimeter, he was able to get double duty out of a singular bunker."
Tim Nugent:
With that remark of yours it seems like you are beginning to touch on an aspect of golf course architecture that I've been fixated on for years. And that would be what GCA does to a golfer's vision or his eye in how he picks up on and perceives strategic possibilities!!
It seems like it has long been something of a staple or perhaps something of an "artistic" requirement in GCA to focus the golfer's eye via golf architectural arrangements. If that is true where did such an idea come from? I don't think there's much question that it came from the virtual cojoining of Landscape Architecture and its "Art" Principles with the field of golf architecture and golf itself as a result.
C&W offer a decent list of those "art prinicples" as applied to golf architecture, and also offer a decent explanation of what each of them are or what they mean. They are:
Harmony
Proportion
Balance
Rhythym
Emphasis
I have never had a problem with any of them as applied to GCA with the exception of the last one----Emphasis, BUT only if and when it is always used in GCA in pretty much the same way or for the same purpose. The definition offered for Emphasis by C&W is:
"Emphasis: The eye is carried first to the most important part of the arrangement and then to the other details."
The question becomes what is the most important part of any arrangement that the eye is first carried to? If it is always where a golfer is supposed to hit the ball or must hit the ball I am not for it at all other than to a limited extent on the holes of a golf course. To me the most interesting, challenging and probably the best architecture is when the golfer arrives on the tee or at other locations on the holes and looks at the entire setting and arrangement and tends to say or think to himself-----"What really is going on out there (strategically)?"
And I like that to also mean whether he thinks he can see everything or whether he feels perhaps he can't!
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Tim:
I remember that when I first visited Pine Valley in 1980, in the days before engraved bag tags and $200 logoed windshirts, the best souvenir you could buy in the pro shop was a packet of 18 postcards -- one of each hole on the course. It was a not-entirely-subtle way of reminding the visitor that not many other courses had a course where every hole could hold its own on a postcard.
When I worked for Pete Dye the next year, I heard him on two different occasions decry a client who wanted "18 postcards".
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Tom P: I like your question about Emphasis. I think that is the same point I was trying to make a couple of weeks ago, regarding the difference between Obvious and Subtle.
I do think it's important for the golfer to have something to capture his attention on the tee. There is nothing worse than a half-blind drive over a gentle hill which offers nothing in particular to aim at on the horizon, and no definition to the sides; you've got to have SOMETHING to start from. But it only has to be a clue ... not the solution.
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Tim N - thanks. I should've been clearer. MY dislike for the '18 great golf holes' goes beyond the visual aspect. I don't think architects should be striving for - and I don't ever want to expect and demand - 18 great golf holes. It isn't natural. It isn't in keeping with the natural order of things. Ane, especially given a good site and a philosphy of minimal earthmoving, it isn't 'natural' or to my eyes aesthetically pleasing or desirable. As I've mentioned here before, I was really struck by reading that the old Navajos would purposely weave a mistake into their beautifully woven blankets 'in order to let the devil out'. I think it showed a very wise and graceful awareness of the dangers of expecting perfection on this our plane of existence.
Peter
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I came across this quote today while re-reading a book I haven't opened in 10 years.
"The educated taste admires simplicity of design and sound workmanship for their own sake rather than over-decoration and the crowding of artificial hazards. The strategic school above all aims at escaping formality by limiting the use of the artificial bunker, the excessive employment of which can easily crowd a course to the ruin of everything that contributes to spaciousness of design."
Ciao
OVER-DECORATION - in the quest for the best Marketing Picture to get your course in a Magazine. The cost-benefit analysis pendulum seems to be swing away from this (unless your name is Trump and are defined by Over-decoration).
ARTIFICIAL BUNKER - This lies in what one defines an 'Artificial Bunker' to be. I don't believe a man-made bunker that fits seamlessly into the topography is 'Artificial', irregardless of what the underlying soil consists of but rather 'Artifical' to me is when a landform is created that doesn't conform to adjacent landforms solely to install a bunker.
SPACIOUSNESS OF DESIGN - A see a trend, albeit a small one, of retreating from the ribbon fairway with flanking bunkers and trees, that act as visual blinders. The more we can meander the fairways amoungst features (bunkers included but not solely), the wider our vistas of the holes will become.
Interesting that Simpon and his use of centerline bunkering is noted here. I see this use as forcing our vision to the outside of the hole rather than down the middle. And, by populating the in interior of the hole , rather than the perimeter, he was able to get double duty out of a singular bunker.
While I don't tender that Bunkers are the "easy answer", I do feel that they are a solution. They should be employed on an as-needed basis to establish interst and strategy but in moderation and propostion to other features to achieve some rational balance.
Tim
OVER-DECORATION in the context of Simpson's time may have had more to do with road map architecture (framing) guiding the player rather guarding the ideal lines of play.
ARTIFICIAL BUNKER is just that. Simpson went to great lengths to create attractive bunkers and I think he likely largely agreed with you. Though for me, this is less and less a critical question because I am starting to believe that if archies want to think outside the box to some degree they have to get a bit wild and accept that golf isn't really about nature even though nature is part of the puzzle. Strantz's Bulls Bay is a perfect example with the huge 80 foot hill in the Low Country. Does it look out of place? YES. Does it work? YES. In truth, I think it was a brilliant idea that effectively allowed Strantz to get away with all the comparatively small fry shaping stuff.
SPACIOUSNESS OF DESIGN is what is gained by fewer and centre-line bunkers and what I believe is the core of strategic design.
I am still most interested in the "escaping formality" comment. I don't honestly know what W-S were driving at here.
Peter P
I don't think this quote is strictly about strategic architecture. I think W-S are trying to tie a lot of concepts together as inter-dependent.
Tom D
I think most archies would agree that attention off the tee is a must, though I wonder if that is this is true given some of the classic blind holes around. True, in some of these cases the thing to hit over is the centre of attention, but that is a sort of a negative of the concept. The problem with offering emphasis is it can lead to the point were are at now - road map architecture.
Ciao
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Just a thought. Peter (and Tom) decry the idea of 18 great holes on a course. Is it possible for a "breather" hole to be a great hole? Is it impossible for a course to have 18 great holes but not beat the golfer down by the challenge of those holes?
This isn't a question about perfection, because I don't think the word perfection has any meaning in GCA (which is why there can be 10s (and indeed 0s)). It's more a question about whether a great hole needs to be one which exhausts the golfer, to the extent that 18 of them is too many. Personally, I don't have any problem with the idea that a great hole can be (relatively) easy and fun to play.
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Gentlemen, one of the better threads of late.
Emphasis - The eye/brain is designed to quickly seek out that which is different from it's surroundings while nature tries to give animals the ability to mimick their surroundings in order to NOT be noticed. It can be the difference between survival or not. Therefore, when applying this to, say a golf course, objects that don't blend but rather "pop" from the tapestry will be noticed first, hence Emphasized. Now the question becomes should that emphasis be placed to help you survive, or caution you where not to go?
Escaping Formality - perhaps referring to a more random, less formulated landscape. The influences by Landscape Architects with Formal training on golf course design is probably a big reason for the apparent standardization of design principles. I remember my dad, a LA - who only hired LA's gave me a book on LA. As I began to read it, the only thing that went through my mind was "what the hell does this have to do with designing golf courses???" Needless to say I never got very far into that book before i put down and never picked it up again.
PP, I'm going to have to use that Navajo story the next time someone questions or criticizes me. Can what to see their brain try and digest that! ;D
Mark P. Indeed I think you can. I think if golf holes incessently challenge every aspect of ones game hole after hole, it just grinds you down. A perpetual beat-down is not my definition of great - just laborious. A breather can be not just a single hole but rathe a series of holes where each hole emphasizes a different aspect of the game and taken as a group, all aspects were empahsized but at a different pace than elsewhere on the course.
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Tim Nugent:
Now that LA has been introduced into this thread and discussion of GCA which is about the Strategic School of Architecture, with the risk of beginning to seemingly complicate things I am going to go to the next step of taking a look at the five aspects of LA as presented and explained by C&W---eg Harmony, Proportion, Balance, Rhythm and Emphasis, and talk about them and how I see them applying to GCA and particularly strategic considerations of GCA.
To me the aspects of Harmony and Balance are generally mostly in the realm of aesthetics and would have the least effect on any strategic message to me. The aspect of Rhythm would have a bit more of an effect on strategic messages to me, Proportion a bit more so, and lastly Emphasis which I feel is pretty much all about strategic messages, whether easily visible and/or identifiable or not.
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Tim N - thanks again. The way you phrased the question regarding emphasis brought this to mind: I don't much like what I call 'signifiers' on a golf course. If I'm being honest, though, I have to admit that I appreciate them -- they help me see/know which way to go. But the trouble for me is that, when those signifiers are too obvious (to me and everyone else), I lose all sense of pleasure/pride in being smart enough and perceptive enough to 'read the signs' correctly as it were; and all sense of gambling is gone.
"I'm going to have to use that Navajo story the next time someone questions or criticizes me. Can't what to see their brain try and digest that". Ha, ha - yes, Tim, I grant you that. It is the kind of story that is perfect for a discussion board. I myself limit it to such :)
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"As I've mentioned here before, I was really struck by reading that the old Navajos would purposely weave a mistake into their beautifully woven blankets 'in order to let the devil out'. I think it showed a very wise and graceful awareness of the dangers of expecting perfection on this our plane of existence."
PeterP:
I'm certainly no expert on the history of the North American Indians of which there may've been a couple of thousand tribes, but it has been my understanding that generally most all North American Indians essentially looked at the land and Nature as almost part of them and as themselves as part of it. They did not believe in or perhaps never even contemplated such things as owning land as the Western European did and I suppose that also included the whole idea of attempting to change the arrangement of land and its natural atmosphere as of course Western Europeans did with the far more formal (civilized?) community which obviously included various forms and styles of landscape architecture.
In that context the idea of the Navajo weaving imperfections into beautiful blankets seems a logical extension of their over-all mentality towards the land and earth and the sort of "wilderness" aspect of it and is actually someone diametrically opposite or opposed to even the best classical Landscape Architecture approach which was to either remove or hide what were considered to be the unattractive aspects or defects of Nature. The latter is clearly an "idealized" version of and approach to Nature and it probably isn't just coincidental then that golf course architecture cojoined with Landscape Architecture of the man-created variety.
The latter was something the North American Indian probably ever even contemplated.
PS:
Here's something of a trick question----What came first, the Wilderness or Civilization?
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By the way, I would say it is a provable fact in the history of golf course architecture that the originator and definitely the primary promoter of the idea of 18 great holes as the ideal or goal in golf course architecture was C.B. Macdonald!
He definitely stated and wrote before NGLA that there were a few great courses over here and certainly abroad but not a single one of them had 18 really good holes.
This was essentially his point and purpose of using "time-tested" template holes and "time-tested architectural features from abroad.
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Sean-I wasn't trying to imply that you needed huge sums of money to make a good course on less than stellar land. I do think, however, that it is nearly impossible to have natural looking bunkers on land that is not sandy. I have nothing against obviously manufactured bunkers, so long as they are placed correctly and strategically.
At Tom Doak's Riverfront, there are maybe 5 bunkers on the entire course that could be confused with being natural, and those are the ones bordering the marsh areas. All the others were manufactured during shaping. But they fit fine and aren't horrible. So I don't mind them.
Its just a fact that on inland courses, the bunkers must be manufactured in place and be mostly unnatural. This doesn't mean they must be intrusive of expensive.
John,
Can you define "placed correctly and strategically" ?
How many bunkers, even on noninland courses are actually natural? I'd argue percentagewise-very few (and I've played over one hundred noninland courses.
I use the term noninland because many courses by the sea are not links or all their holes are not links.
and even pure links couses have a majority of "manufactured" bunkers.
Are round pot bunkers or stacked sod bunkers natural?
Additionally, some of the so called "natural" looking bunkers aren't natural at all and require quite a bit of construction/transplanting/building/maintenance to keep an ironically unkempt look.
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TE - on your P.S. question: I guess one school of thought might be that Civilization came first, in that the human consciousness that expressed and manifested itself (among other ways) in the structures and systems of Civilization was a pre-requisite for the identifying/naming/conceptualizing of the Wilderness as Wilderness -- though of course the wilderness existed in and of itself long before we gave it a name. And maybe in a kind of weird (and maybe useless) analogy, it is the consciousness of golfers on a site they identify as a golf course that is necessary for Naturalism as an aesthetic and architectural concept to come into being -- such that it isn't nature itself that we are judging but our golf-dependent concept of what appears and satisfies us as the Natural.
On CBM and NGLA, and as Tim N pointed out too: I recognize that the no weak holes/18 great holes concept was his, and that at NGLA the proof of the concept's validity/viability was in the pudding. But, just a guess, I have a feeling that CBM's concept and execution of that ideal didn't survive him, and that instead it was only brought back to life by RTJ 40 years later or so, and brought back to life in a significantly altered and 'devolved' form, conceptually and execution-wise, and that it is this latter version of the concept that until very recently has shaped/dominated the thinking around and expressions of golf course architecture. ANd it is this manifestation of the concept that I'm decrying. But even then, I'm not sure even the original idea could be consistently expressed by some of the other great architects (Colt and MacKenzie etc etc), or that those old greats would even want to.
Peter
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"TE - on your P.S. question: I guess one school of thought might be that Civilization came first, in that the human consciousness that expressed and manifested itself (among other ways) in the structures and systems of Civilization was a pre-requisite for the identifying/naming/conceptualizing of the Wilderness as Wilderness -- though of course the wilderness existed in and of itself long before we gave it a name. And maybe in a kind of weird (and maybe useless) analogy, it is the consciousness of golfers on a site they identify as a golf course that is necessary for Naturalism as an aesthetic and architectural concept to come into being -- such that it isn't nature itself that we are judging but our golf-dependent concept of what appears and satisfies us as the Natural."
PeterP:
I feel that those are wonderful answers. I agree and support it all and I feel Max would too! ;)
The thing I love the best about Max Behr's fascinating musings on the entire history of golf and architecture is when he mentioned that when golf (and architecture) first emigrated out of its original home in the Scottish linksland perhaps about a 160 years ago to lands and places wholly unsuited to receive it and then and thereby people began to pull all its pieces and parts apart to analyze them into some logical and understandable form, that was the time that both golf and Golf course architecture lost what he called its "Age of Innocence."
I think the same could historically be said about when the North American Indians first confronted what some call the "White Man" originally from Western Europe.
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How do George Thomas and Stanley Thompson's ideas on strategic golf architecture compare with Simpson's and Mackenzie's later?
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Tom MacWood:
Is that a bona fide question on your part because you feel you don't know? If not, why don't you try answering the question yourself for a change?
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It was unfair question, and I retract it.
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Was it "unfair question" or was it "AN unfair question?" Did the difference have anything to do with why you retracted it? ;)
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Peter,
Does the 'Ideal' necessarily mean too demanding, or can it just mean that the architect was striving for no poorly designed holes, ones that didn't waste the space they occupied ?
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Jim - Mark P and Tim N also posted on that question, and I didn't have anything to add to their points. But when you asked it again, I realized that I'm thinking of the term differently than you gents, i.e. it never occured to me to wonder if the Ideal would be too demanding/challenging or not; that doesn't seem all that important. I just think that, if you try to route a course (even on a good site) in the most natural and golf-friendly way you can, it seems nearly impossible to create a golf course with an easy (and walkable) flow and a (pleasing) character and a (genuine) uniqueness if you have in the back/front of your mind some ideal that there can be "no weak holes", or that you have to produce "18 postcards." I think the attempt to avoid at all costs any golf holes that may be deemed transition holes or breather holes or weak holes has been the cause of all sorts of consequences (some intended, some unintended) that have not been good for golf or golf course architecture in general.
TE -- Yes, very nice. The Age of Innocence for gca is a concept that has a lot to recommend it (as least for discussion purposes :)).
Peter
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"TE -- Yes, very nice. The Age of Innocence for gca is a concept that has a lot to recommend it (as least for discussion purposes )."
Peter:
You may recall that even Max Behr said that "Age of Innocence" of golf and golf architecture that he referred to before golf and golf architecture first began to emigrate out of the linksland to places and sites that were not appropriate to receive it was something that golf and golf architecture may never be able to return to, at least not without at least 4-5 important exceptions!
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"Jim - Mark P and Tim N also posted on that question, and I didn't have anything to add to their points. But when you asked it again, I realized that I'm thinking of the term differently than you gents, i.e. it never occured to me to wonder if the Ideal would be too demanding/challenging or not; that doesn't seem all that important. I just think that, if you try to route a course (even on a good site) in the most natural and golf-friendly way you can, it seems nearly impossible to create a golf course with an easy (and walkable) flow and a (pleasing) character and a (genuine) uniqueness if you have in the back/front of your mind some ideal that there can be "no weak holes", or that you have to produce "18 postcards." I think the attempt to avoid at all costs any golf holes that may be deemed transition holes or breather holes or weak holes has been the cause of all sorts of consequences (some intended, some unintended) that have not been good for golf or golf course architecture in general."
PeterP:
Maybe you are thinking of the term differently than some of us but have you or are you considereing NGLA? Have you ever seen it or considered it, and in the context of some of what has been and is being discussed on this thread?
Have you seen NGLA Jim Kennedy and considered it in the context of what has been and is being discussed on this thread?
If either of you have seen it and carefully considered it let's talk about how it plays out in the context of some of what's been and is being discussed on this thread.
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How did William Flynn view the strategic school of golf architecture?
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"How did William Flynn view the strategic school of golf architecture?"
Tom MacWood:
I wish I could ask him but it seems it's too late. But perhaps we could do the next best thing and just get you to tell us how William Flynn viewed the strategic school of golf architecture. There must be some newspaper and magazine article out there somewhere that explains it. Maybe the USGA Green Section Bulletin is a good place to look. I'm only capable of considering Cornish and Whitten so why don't you do the heavy in-depth research for us and tell us how William Flynn viewed the strategic school of golf architecture?
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Guys
Strategic School Of Architecture seems to have mislaid Penal after being a fundamental part of the game of golf. No hazards equates to minimal challenges dulling the golfers experience and ultimately their enjoyment yet making the whole round easier. I suppose we are encouraging more people but I thought it was golfers that we want on our golf courses.
That said, I suppose it depends on the players commitment to playing a Game called Golf. But has anything actually been learnt at Strategic School Of Architecture about GCA?
Strategic School Of Architecture has nothing to teach unless it incorporates Penal. Bring back the Stocks for Golfers, to test their resolve.
(http://i346.photobucket.com/albums/p421/Melvyn_Hunter/marsden_stocks_465x309.jpg)
But will that make a difference to my fellow debaters on GCA.com. I fear not as you seem very comfortable with the current state of play. Why bother walking or thinking when machines can do it for you, penal is just too strenuous and soon strategic will only exist in a CAD program as by then we will have become to lazy to think or care. But Hey Guys enjoy your game (while you can remember what game it is you play).
Thinking seems no longer a key factor in the modern game of golf or have we not quite got to that point yet. It’s soon going to be a question of use your little grey cell or lose them.
Sorry, just having a penal moment guys to go with my senior red flushes (wife just caught me with those mags, you know the type, full of girls selling eeeeerrrrrrr golfing cloths, well when they wear them)
Melvyn
PS The word Penal has gone underground, its nearly a forbidden word, Strategic School Of Architecture only whispers it these days for fear of being associated with it, nevertheless it is an integral part of strategic and we need to remember its certainly as much as the writings of all the old designers. Penal, Penal, Penal, see its not a dirty word, far from it, it is short uncomplicated and precise unlike the word strategic which by its own nature is multi-complicated but rather easy without penal. Strategic School Of Architecture needs to review its Curriculum and soon IMHO
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The penal school of architecture was invented by golf architects to label other golf architects they didn't care for or agree with. No one ever claimed to be associated with the penal school of golf architecture. There are no purely strategic or penal designs, all golf courses are blends of strategic and penal aspects, usually leaning one direction or the other. As a general rule, American golf architecture after 1913 leaned more to the penal than did the British.
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Tom
Penal but with shallow bunkers - who is kidding who, fairways surrounded on both sides by bunkers is not penal just a waste of money and generates high maintenance costs
But as I said many months ago ‘Penal’ and ‘Strategic’ are they really two separate and different concepts of design or are they, as I believe, part and parcel for the strategic design package.
I'll leave you to your own definition of penal and for that matter strategic.
Melvyn
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Tom MacWood said:
“The penal school of architecture was invented by golf architects to label other golf architects they didn't care for or agree with. No one ever claimed to be associated with the penal school of golf architecture.”
That remark seems to have been taken from or borrowed from Bob Crosby’s excellent essay on here entitled Joshua Crane, that is essentially an examination in much greater detail of the so-called Joshua Crane/Behr and Mackenzie Debate that was cast back then as the Strategic School vs the Penal School of architecture, although as Bob Crosby outlines below, it really wasn’t that or just that-----it was a good deal more and more complex set of issues:
“Joshua Crane In The Golden Age, Part IV
by Bob Crosby
A Postscript:
Why the Penal v Strategic Architecture Distinction is the Wrong One; A Modest Proposal for a Better One; Or Why Joshua Crane Helps to Make Sense of It All
There are a number of reasons why revisiting the Crane debates is worth the candle. Among them is that the debates help untangle a number of thorny issues in the long-lived contrast between “penal” versus “strategic” architecture. What follows explores how the Crane debates help to sort out some of those issues and how they suggest a better way to distinguish fundamental differences in architecture philosophies.
As will be recalled, Crane deeply resented the “penologist” tag that Behr and MacKenzie gave him. It’s a safe bet that it was one the things they argued about when they got together in St Andrews in the summer of 1929. Crane thought the tag had been concocted solely to belittle him and his ideas. Objecting to MacKenzie’s use of the term, Crane wrote, “This is a direct literary piracy of Max Behr’s classification of golf architects where the goats are put in the ‘Penal School,’ and the sheep in the “Strategic School.” A pretty way of attributing false sentiments to an opponent then proceeding to condemn him therefor.”
In the last years of the Golden Age it was taken as an article of faith that the two schools were locked in combat. All of the era’s best books had set piece confrontations between good guy strategic architects and bad guy penal architects.[1] These books were not neutral, expository guides to golf architecture. Little attempt was made to give a balanced overview of different design philosophies. To the contrary, when the authors turned to philosophies of golf design, these books read like position papers in a heated argument and they all took the same side of the argument. Three decades or so later Robert Trent Jones revived many of the same themes, endowing the penal v. strategic distinction with the canonical status it currently enjoys. The distinction is today a core concept in golf architecture.
But the distinction’s long life ought to be seen as surprising. First, it’s never been clear who exactly the advocates for penal architecture were. If you’ve gotten through the earlier parts of this essay you know that Crane wasn’t one – at least not the one depicted by his opponents. But it’s not just about Crane. Architects boasting of their penal designs have always been scarce on the ground. As Tom Simpson noted in 1929, “..every golf architect, if he were asked the question to which school he belonged, would profess to be strategical.” Penal architecture is not a banner which many people have flown. MacKenzie and Behr notwithstanding, the penal school is a school without alumni.
But it isn’t just that penal architecture is an idea without a following. The concept itself is a muddle, one that obscures more than it clarifies. Given the origins of the term, that’s not surprising. Most of what we know about penal architecture we’ve learned from its opponents, architects like Behr, MacKenzie, Simpson and others. Their depictions tended to be less than even-handed – even cartoonish – for all the obvious rhetorical reasons.[2] Their strawman caricatures, however, ended up shaping modern understandings of the term. What people think they know today about penal architecture tends to be what MacKenzie and others told us it was. In short, the strategic/penal divide is not only one in which the identity of the antagonists is unclear, the meaning typically ascribed to one of its key terms is something about which we ought to be very skeptical.
The Crane debates help to clarify not only what’s wrong with the distinction, they also suggest a better way to parse fundamental differences in architectural philosophies. The debates tell us that seeing fundamental differences in design philosophies as turning on a distinction between strategy and penalty is misleading, both conceptually and as a matter of history. What has really been afoot over the years is a different sort of disagreement. A better antonym of strategic architecture is not penal architecture but rather something akin to Crane’s actual views – something like Crane’s CP&P principles. A better framework for seeing historic debates over basic design philosophies is to see them as debates between, on the one hand, strategic architecture and what might be called “equitable architecture” on the other.
* * *
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Tom MacWood said:
“The penal school of architecture was invented by golf architects to label other golf architects they didn't care for or agree with. No one ever claimed to be associated with the penal school of golf architecture.”
That remark seems to have been taken from or borrowed from Bob Crosby’s excellent essay on here entitled Joshua Crane, that is essentially an examination in much greater detail of the so-called Joshua Crane/Behr and Mackenzie Debate that was cast back then as the Strategic School vs the Penal School of architecture, although as Bob Crosby outlines below, it really wasn’t that or just that-----it was a good deal more and more complex set of issues:
After reading yout post it seems that Bob Crosby has taken or borrowed the idea from Max Behr.
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I think what Bob Crosby did in his essay and more than anyone else before him is take a much more detailed look at what that so-called debate was really about as well as what it wasn't about.
In that vein, I think it is very important and edifying how he mentioned that nobody really claimed to be a member of some "Penal School" of architecture and in a real way that was just something that Behr hit Crane with as basically a debating point of ploy.
I also think Bob Crosby's creation of the term "C, P & P" and his detailed explanation of what it means is just brilliant and really gets to the essence of what that debate was all about from Crane's perspective which clearly concerned the likes of Behr and Mackenzie, at least as a philosophy or an attitude towards golf and architecture.
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TEP,
As you pointed out, Behr made that same point to Crane, and it's not a given that the idea itself was wholly (or is that Holy ;) ) Max's.
I'm sure that you've come across old articles where one architect used 'penal' as a slur towards another.
It was an original idea at some point, probably around a century ago.
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"TEP,
As you pointed out, Behr made that same point to Crane, and it's not a given that the idea itself was wholly (or is that Holy ) Max's.
I'm sure that you've come across old articles where one architect used 'penal' as a slur towards another."
Jim:
It might be better for you to make that point to Bob Crosby rather than me. He wrote the essay and he did a lot of research on it even going to England to do research. The two of us have certainly discussed the subject (Penal vs Strategic) for years as we have the subjects of Crane and Behr and that debate, but nevertheless Bob wrote that essay, not me.
So it will be interesting to see what he says about who he thinks first used the term "penal" to describe someone's golf or architectural philosophy versus a term and philosophy such as "strategic."
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TEP
I've taken Bob's essay and added my own thoughts (and documentation) on what I believe was truly going on in golf architecture before, during and after the so-called Crane debates. The Crane debate was a minor blip in the greater scheme of things.
My version was a little too controversial for Ran to run, which is ironic considering mine is a counterpoint to Bob's essay about a public debate. But if anyone is interested in reading it I will be glad to email it.
Send me an email at thomas.macwood@sbcglobal.net
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TEP,
I didn't see where Bob Crosby was on here saying that someone else had 'taken' his idea from him, did you? ;)
I've read articles from the 'golden age' in which one architect was using 'penal' as a way of taking a shot at another, yet I cannot remember one in which an architect chose to say that he was from that 'school'. I'd think that your extensive perusals of old literature and articles would have revealed the same thing.
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"TEP,
I didn't see where Bob Crosby was on here saying that someone else had 'taken' his idea from him, did you? ;D"
Jim:
No I didn't either, but what is that supposed to mean? Do you think Bob Crosby is the only one on this website who should question something someone else says about his essay or part of the theme of his essay? ;)
Tom MacWood has for a long time maintained that there really wasn't much of anything to that so-called "Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie" debate in the 1920s because all architecture is some combination of penal and strategic design. He further maintained on here that the whole thing wasn't much more than Behr, Mackenzie et al's dissatisfaction that Crane's mathematical architecture rating formulae rated TOC so low.
I think as Bob Crosby explained so well in his essay there was a whole lot more to that debate than just the way MacWood views it.
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"My version was a little too controversial for Ran to run, which is ironic considering mine is a counterpoint to Bob's essay about a public debate. But if anyone is interested in reading it I will be glad to email it.
Send me an email at thomas.macwood@sbcglobal.net"
Tom MacWood:
When you mention anyone do you actually mean that or are you going to make some exceptions and not email it to some such as myself? I think by this time you have my email address since we certainly have had plenty of email in the past. If you don't have it you can find it at the bottom of any of my posts. Please email it to me; I would love to see your 'counterpoint' to Bob's essay even if Ran Morrissett didn't use it because it was too controversial. ;)
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TEP
I've taken Bob's essay and added my own thoughts (and documentation) on what I believe was truly going on in golf architecture before, during and after the so-called Crane debates. The Crane debate was a minor blip in the greater scheme of things.
My version was a little too controversial for Ran to run, which is ironic considering mine is a counterpoint to Bob's essay about a public debate. But if anyone is interested in reading it I will be glad to email it.
Send me an email at thomas.macwood@sbcglobal.net
Tommy Mac
I am not sure what "too controversial" means, but I think it a bloody shame that your piece wasn't posted. Without exception your pieces are thoughtfully written and uncover interesting aspects or angles of course design and those people and events that influenced course design.
Ciao
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TEP,
I don't remember TMac saying the debate was meaningless, only that it wasn't a seminal moment in the history of GCA, but that's my take.
TMac entire post said:
The penal school of architecture was invented by golf architects to label other golf architects they didn't care for or agree with.
Let me reiterate, I've seen this same thing written in articles form the era.
No one ever claimed to be associated with the penal school of golf architecture.
I can't say that I've ever seen anyone say they were, have you?
There are no purely strategic or penal designs, all golf courses are blends of strategic and penal aspects, usually leaning one direction or the other.
I would say that everyone on this site would agree to the above, architects included.
As a general rule, American golf architecture after 1913 leaned more to the penal than did the British.
Question this one all you want, but I don't think ratings and slopes have softened over the ensuing decades.
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8) One could say the most penal things get in some places is a little drainage ditch, some bunkers, and gorse.. or some guy in metal ready to slash you with a sword and gallop off..
(http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/47700000/jpg/_47700242_000238224-1.jpg)
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TEP,
I don't remember TMac saying the debate was meaningless, only that it wasn't a seminal moment in the history of GCA, but that's my take."
Jim:
I don't remember Tom MacWod saying the debate was meaningless either. Where did you get that idea? Do you think someone said Tom MacWood inferred that debate was meaningless?
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TEP,
Please.
Your words:
Tom MacWood has for a long time maintained that there really wasn't much of anything to that so-called "Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie" debate in the 1920s
Mine:
I don't remember TMac saying the debate was meaningless,
Merriam's words (or was it Webster's):
Meaningless: 1. Lacking any significance
Play semantic games with yourself, thank you. ;)
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“TEP,
Please.
Your words:
Tom MacWood has for a long time maintained that there really wasn't much of anything to that so-called "Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie" debate in the 1920s
Mine:
I don't remember TMac saying the debate was meaningless,
Merriam's words (or was it Webster's):
Meaningless: 1. Lacking any significance
Play semantic games with yourself, thank you. ;D”
Jim Kennedy:
As you quoted above, here are my words on what I feel Tom MacWood said about the importance or significance of the Crane/Behr debate;
“Tom MacWood has for a long time maintained that there really wasn't much of anything to that so-called "Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie" debate in the 1920s”
And here are Tom MacWood’s own words from this morning on this thread about what he feels was the importance or significance of the Crane/Behr debate:
“The Crane debate was a minor blip in the greater scheme of things.”
Do you really see any difference at all between what he says he feels about the importance and significance of the Crane/Behr debate and what I said I believe he feels about it? Or should we look in the Dictionary for the definition of the word “BLIP?” I think we will all find it means something that really isn’t of much importance or significance which is not exactly the same thing as something with no meaning at all-----eg meaningless----without meaning, no meaning etc, etc.
Again, Tom MacWood has maintained on here for a long time that the debate was unimportant in the broad scheme of things (a blip) because he maintains all architecture has some degree of the penal and the strategic in it and he also maintained that he feels the debate was mostly over the fact that Crane's mathematical forumlae for rating golf architecture rated TOC so low.
Bob, on the other hand, saw a great deal of importance and significance in that debate as he believes apparently a number of others did at that time as well, and certainly including the likes of Behr, Ambrose, Mackenzie and perhaps Bob Jones.
I very much agree with Bob Crosby's essay and I do not agree with the view of Tom MacWood on it in which he apparently maintains it was unimportant and a blip in the broad scheme of things.
And THAT is what I think we ought to be concentrating on with this subject and thread and not some hair-splitting discussion of the exact meaning of blip and meaningless and which one means something of greater or lesser importance or significance.
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Jim Kennedy:
And THAT is what I think we ought to be concentrating on with this subject and thread and not some hair-splitting discussion of the exact meaning of blip and meaningless and which one means something of greater or lesser importance or significance.
Then you ought to stop playing games, as it was you who came up with the hair splitting, not me.
Jim:
I don't remember Tom MacWod(sic) saying the debate was meaningless either. Where did you get that idea?
From you, but speaking of hairs, you couldn't squeeze one between any reasonable persons interpretation of 'meaningless' and 'there really wasn't much of anything' when used in the same context to describe the same thing.
If you'd like to get back to the subject then please do, and lay off the meaningless semantics.
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"Jim Kennedy:
It seems without fail on some of these select issues and subjects you tend to come on these threads just pretty much to argue.
I should point out to you that pretty much each item you put in bolds in your Post #57 were points Bob Crosby made himself in his excellent three part article on here entitled Joshua Crane (which was all about that so-called "Penal vs Strategic" debate or the so-called "Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie debate).
That is why I mentioned that it appears Tom MacWood borrowed one of them. It now seems (as reiterated in bolds in your Reply #57) he pretty much borrowed all of them from Bob Crosby's essay, and is now seemingly saying this is the way he feels about that debate.
And that most certainly does make one wonder what it is that MacWood is disagreeing with in Bob Crosby's essay and particularly why Tom MacWood felt the need to write a counterpoint essay to Bob's essay which MacWood claimed Ran apparently thought was too controversial to put on here. ::) ??? ;)
The question then becomes what is it about Bob Crosby's essay that Tom MacWood disagrees with? Or perhaps as of today Tom MacWood even disagrees with his own "counterpoint" essay that Ran thought too controversial to put on here. Perhaps now MacWood agrees with Bob Crosby's essay as I do and always have. ;)
I guess some of us will find out soon if we can take him at his word that he is willing to email his "Counterpoint" essay to Bob's essay to anyone who wants it.
I told him on a post today that I wanted it and I hope he emails it to me.
Do you want Tom MacWood's "counterpoint" essay Jim Kennedy? Have you even read Bob Crosby's essay and carefully considered it? If so, when was that?
If the answer is yes perhaps after a while a good discussion can be had by comparing and contrasting what both essays have to say about that so-called Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie debate that took place through the latter half of the 1920s and what the degree of the importance of it was either back then or perhaps to us today or into the future.
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TEP,
Now you're getting ridiculous. You made a superfluous and semantical argument and now you're accusing me of being inflammatory?
But be that as it may, now your calling TMac a plagiarist, or does your remark that "...he (TMac) pretty much borrowed all of them from Bob Crosby's essay" or are you going to argue that because you didn't actually use the word you weren't calling him one?
Squirrel your semantic tail out of that one. ;)
p.s. I've read Bob's essay, and I just got TMac's counterpoints.
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Jim Kennedy:
If Tom MacWood borrowed an idea or a number of them from Bob Crosby's really fine essay and put them on this particular thread I would say that should be considered as Tom MacWood beginning to get a good education on this subject and definitely not plagarism! To me that would indicate he agrees with Crosby's essay, and not that he's trying to plagarize it on here. After all this is a Discussion Group on which we often agree and disagree with the things others say.
However, if Tom MacWood is going to claim the ideas in Bob's essay are his original ideas and not Bob's then I will begin to consider that MacWood is getting into plagarism unless and until he can show someone both WHEN and WHERE he came up with and then WROTE the same ideas (essentially using many of the same words) that are in Bob's essay before Bob Crosby came up with them and wrote them in his essay on here.
But again, I look forward to reading MacWood's "counterpoint" essay because at this point I'm wondering what Tom MacWood thinks it is in his essay that COUNTERpoints Bob Crosby's essay.
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By the way, Jim Kennedy, even though I asked for it on this thread I have not gotten Tom MacWood's "counterpoint" essay to Bob Crosby's essay from Tom MacWood.
Since you just mentioned above that you just got his "Counterpoints" would it be too much to ask you to please email them to me (my email can be found at the bottom of all my posts) or do you think that might be some kind of violation of some kind of trust or some kind of agreement I'm not aware of? ;)
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I don't think there's going to be any state secrets revealed so I'd guess he'll send them to whoever asks for them, and there wasn't any disclaimer in the email I received warning that the points weren't to be distributed.
I don't think he'd want to exclude you if there is to be any future discussion of the points he's making in his 'rebuttal' (I'm not going to look up the dozens of other words that convey the same meaning as 'rebuttal'), if it can be called that.
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Since you just mentioned above that you just got his "Counterpoints" would it be too much to ask you to please email them to me (my email can be found at the bottom of all my posts) or do you think that might be some kind of violation of some kind of trust or some kind of agreement I'm not aware of? ;)
TEP,
Eventually they will get you, and then you can stop being paranoid. ;D
I have no secret agreements with anyone on this site, and Three-Finger Brown has enough digits to count all the messages between TMac and myself in the 8 or 9 years that I've been on this site.
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"I don't think he'd want to exclude you if there is to be any future discussion of the points he's making in his 'rebuttal' (I'm not going to look up the dozens of other words that convey the same meaning as 'rebuttal'), if it can be called that."
Jim Kennedy:
Is there any particular reason why you called it a rebuttal rather than a counterpoint as MacWood seems to call it? If not then why is your word rebuttal in single quotes above? Who said it? ;)
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Well, I did get via email what Tom MacWood referred to on his Reply #52 as his 'counterpoint' of Bob Crosby's essay on here entitled "Joshua Crane."
Thank you for emailing it to me Tom MacWood, I appreciate that.
In the hope of not violating some trust or unspoken agreement I am going to include what Tom MacWood said to me about his so-called 'counterpoint' essay in that email. Here it is:
"TEP
Let me warn you the format is unusual. The meat of the essay is all
Bob's; the footnotes and images are mine. Its sort of an essay within
as essay.
TM"
(there are a number of ‘sics” I should have included in MacWood’s email to me but I’ll spare you all because he is a really poor grammarian with his writing on here)
I would even be glad to put on here what I said to him in response to his email message before I even began to read his so-called 'counterpoint' essay to Bob Crosby's essay entitled "Joshua Crane," if anyone else is interested! ;)
When Tom MacWood says the format is unusual I think I'd agree with him completely.
It seems he counterpoints Crosby's essay only when Crosby puts in a footnote, and the numbers of Tom MacWood's "counterpoints" which are in the format of numerical notes throughout Crosby's essay seem to correspond numerically identically to Crosby's own footnotes in his essay. I cannot yet quite figure out exactly why that is! ;) Could it be that the only items and points Crosby presents in his essay that he footnoted are the only items and points in Crosby's essay that Tom MacWood disagrees with? If that were the case it most certainly would be a most remarkably COINCIDENTAL "counterpoint" essay! ;)
In Tom MacWood's post on here mentioning his ‘counterpoint’ essay he says Ran Morrissett did not put his "counterpoint" essay on here because he (Ran) felt it was too controversial, and MacWood goes on to say;
“My version was a little too controversial for Ran to run, which is ironic considering mine is a counterpoint to Bob's essay about a public debate.”
I wonder if Ran Morrissett felt this so-called ‘counterpoint’ essay of Tom MacWood’s was too controversial to put on here or perhaps just not very good or worthwhile enough for any of us to read and consider. I suppose only Ran Morrissett can answer that and I doubt he’d be interested in doing that. For my part, even though I certainly will read the entire Tom MacWood ‘counterpoint’ essay which he kindly sent me, I must say I have gotten through just ten of Crosby’s footnote numbers and MacWood’s commensurate counterpoints in footnote format and my opinion of MacWood as a GCA or historical analyst is less now than it was before and it was frighteningly low before I read this so-called ‘counterpoint’ essay to Bob Crosby’s extremely good essay on here entitled “Joshua Crane.”
However, I don’t see anything remotely controversial about this “counterpoint” essay of MacWood’s and I see no reason not to post it on a thread rather than on the “In My Opinion” section of this website. I’m quite sure that would not bother Ran Morrissett.
If no one is interested in seeing it, that’s fine by me but if anyone is interested in seeing it and considering it just say the word and I’ll start at the beginning of it and slowly post it.
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(there are a number of ‘sics” I should have included in MacWood’s email to me but I’ll spare you all because he is a really poor grammarian with his writing on here)
Poor grammarian? You must not have read the above as you were typing it. ;) This, from the same man who writes 100 word sentences, and thinks 'extant' is a noun? ;D
An attack like the one in the quote is not criticism, and I really don't know how you can be critical of TMac's essay as you said that you have only "....gotten through just ten of Crosby’s footnote numbers and MacWood’s commensurate counterpoints".
On second thought, you might as well start chopping it apart now, you've removed any surprise about the outcome.
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Well, I did get via email what Tom MacWood referred to on his Reply #52 as his 'counterpoint' of Bob Crosby's essay on here entitled "Joshua Crane."
Thank you for emailing it to me Tom MacWood, I appreciate that.
In the hope of not violating some trust or unspoken agreement I am going to include what Tom MacWood said to me about his so-called 'counterpoint' essay in that email. Here it is:
"TEP
Let me warn you the format is unusual. The meat of the essay is all
Bob's; the footnotes and images are mine. Its sort of an essay within
as essay.
TM"
(there are a number of ‘sics” I should have included in MacWood’s email to me but I’ll spare you all because he is a really poor grammarian with his writing on here)
I would even be glad to put on here what I said to him in response to his email message before I even began to read his so-called 'counterpoint' essay to Bob Crosby's essay entitled "Joshua Crane," if anyone else is interested! ;)
When Tom MacWood says the format is unusual I think I'd agree with him completely.
It seems he counterpoints Crosby's essay only when Crosby puts in a footnote, and the numbers of Tom MacWood's "counterpoints" which are in the format of numerical notes throughout Crosby's essay seem to correspond numerically identically to Crosby's own footnotes in his essay. I cannot yet quite figure out exactly why that is! ;) Could it be that the only items and points Crosby presents in his essay that he footnoted are the only items and points in Crosby's essay that Tom MacWood disagrees with? If that were the case it most certainly would be a most remarkably COINCIDENTAL "counterpoint" essay! ;)
I'm sure a few of my footnotes do correspond in placement to Bob's, but for the most part I don't believe that is the case. I have 112 footnotes compared to 47 in Bob's original essay. Obviously you haven't read it yet...maybe you should wait and read it before commenting.
In Tom MacWood's post on here mentioning his ‘counterpoint’ essay he says Ran Morrissett did not put his "counterpoint" essay on here because he (Ran) felt it was too controversial, and MacWood goes on to say;
“My version was a little too controversial for Ran to run, which is ironic considering mine is a counterpoint to Bob's essay about a public debate.”
I wonder if Ran Morrissett felt this so-called ‘counterpoint’ essay of Tom MacWood’s was too controversial to put on here or perhaps just not very good or worthwhile enough for any of us to read and consider. I suppose only Ran Morrissett can answer that and I doubt he’d be interested in doing that. For my part, even though I certainly will read the entire Tom MacWood ‘counterpoint’ essay which he kindly sent me, I must say I have gotten through just ten of Crosby’s footnote numbers and MacWood’s commensurate counterpoints in footnote format and my opinion of MacWood as a GCA or historical analyst is less now than it was before and it was frighteningly low before I read this so-called ‘counterpoint’ essay to Bob Crosby’s extremely good essay on here entitled “Joshua Crane.”
You maybe right perhaps he didn't feel it was good enough or up to the standard of GCA, all I know is what he told me, but you should probably read it yourself first before making any judgements. IMO it does paint alternative view of the Crane-Behr debate, and what was really happening in golf architecture at the time.
However, I don’t see anything remotely controversial about this “counterpoint” essay of MacWood’s and I see no reason not to post it on a thread rather than on the “In My Opinion” section of this website. I’m quite sure that would not bother Ran Morrissett.
If no one is interested in seeing it, that’s fine by me but if anyone is interested in seeing it and considering it just say the word and I’ll start at the beginning of it and slowly post it.
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"I'm sure a few of my footnotes do correspond in placement to Bob's, but for the most part I don't believe that is the case. I have 112 footnotes compared to 47 in Bob's original essay. Obviously you haven't read it yet...maybe you should wait and read it before commenting."
That's true; I've only gotten through about the first twenty of your footnotes, and you're right, I should read the whole thing before commenting.
Did Ran Morrissett mention to you WHY he thinks this "counterpoint" essay of yours is too controversial?
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I received Tom Mac's counterpoint piece a while back. I am honored he took the time to read my essay.
I've been thinking for a while about the best way to respond. First, most of Tom Mac's points were discussed in threads here. We all have more interesting hills to climb than to rehash those threads. As with most of the threads I've seen in which Mac participates, counter argurmement to his points don't seem to make much difference. Unlike in good discussions, they don't build to something better. Rather they tend to go round and round forever. I have no interest in engaging in those sorts of discussions. At some point, nobody is learning very much. People are just yelling at each other.
But my real hesitation in respsonding in any detail has to do with the idea at the center of his comments. Tom Mac thinks that the Crane debate was a minor one and that Crane was not taken seriously. Here on planet normal, that is not something about which reasonable men can disagree. Compounding that craziness are debates that Tom Mac cites as the really important ones in the Golden Age. One is the debate over the ball, which was huge, but as much a rules debate as an architectural debate and one that could have been ended with the stroke of a legislator's pen. The other is the debate over whether American courses are better than UK courses. I'm not impressed.
There were some factual errors in my piece. Tom points out a couple; there are several others that I will fix on the next go ground. None have a bearing on my main arguments.
There are what I consider a number of cheap debating tricks, misunderstandings or simple misrreadings. That's how it goes, I guess. But special mention should be made of Tom Mac's strange voyage into hypothetical land in which A.C.M. Croome and Charles Ambrose become blithering idiots who were fooled by the crafty Crane into publishing his pieces for more than three years in the most prestigous sporting magazine in Britain. (The doubly weird thing is that even if we assume that Crane was a complete fraud and had never seen a golf course, even if we assume that Croome and Ambrose were slobbering fools, it doesn't matter. This is not an attribution debate where what happened was unclear. We know exactly what happened. We know who wrote what, when and where. The historical record is perfectly clear. The published texts are what is important about the Crane debate. Those texts were what raised the fascinating issues that people debated. Magnificently, I might add.)
I've gone on too long. I'm sorry Tom Mac didn't like my piece. I got lots of comments from lots of people on and off line. I greatly enjoyed almost all of those discussions. But all shared the basic premise that the Crane debates were interesting and important and worth revisiting. People who can't get past that threshold are people I don't have much desire to engage with.
Bob
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Bob,
I just started to read your piece and am fascinated! I will have more time tonight, but it is amazing how Crane came up with what looks like a GD or GW rating system all those years ago. I would love to see TMac's counterpoint and am sure he makes a mix of points that some would agree or disagree with. For one, seeing how much pub this got, I am sure the magazine editors ate it up just for circulation reasons rather than being douped. I hope they got better sales figures for gca articles than the current golf magazines do......
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Jeff -
Thanks for taking the time to read my piece. But what is most interesting about the debates triggered by Crane was not his ratings. Other than initial outrage over TOC's low rating, no one debated that this course or that should be rated here or there. The ratings details fell to the wayside pretty early on.
The more enduring subject of their debates (see referenced discussions by Croome, Ambrose, MacK, and Behr, interviews with Colt, Abercromy, etc.) and what my piece is really about is Crane's analysis of golf architecture. That, and not the ratings, is why the debates took off and got so heated. And why they were/are important.
Bob
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Bob:
Thanks for your Reply #74!
As you know since we've talked about this subject for so many years that I feel even if the so-called Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie debate was a hugely important and fundamental one to both golf architecture and golf itself, for a number of reasons I don’t think it was particularly well joined at the time by the participants. Frankly, I view that as a great tragedy. I wish it had been and it should've been but there were too many circumstances involving personal attacks and deflections, debating ploys using inadequate terms that prevented it but the real shame of it to me was that the real fundamental baseline issues of golf and golf architecture they were debating just couldn't quite be well enough explained back then, particularly by Behr who I think did a Yeoman's job of it nevertheless.
This may be the main reason that debate seems to some today to have been something of a blip in the broader scheme of things. If that is true, however, I still believe it is hugely important and fundamental to both golf architecture and golf itself.
And that is why I think your reprising of it in your essay "Joshua Crane" was so important too. Particularly important in your essay was your recasting of the terms and concepts in that debate from the commonly used "Penal vs Strategic" to the far more appropriate and understandable terms of Control, Predictability and Proportionality (C,P & P) as well as your term "Equitable Architecture."
As you know I always thought you should have hit a lot harder with perhaps the fundamental aspect of all about golf that makes it so different and frankly unique compared to most all other ball or stick and ball games with human competitors or opponents----eg THE BALL IS NOT VIED FOR IN GOLF!! (I realize you mentioned it in footnote #5 in Part III and inferred it elsewhere yourself or from a quote or so from Behr).
As time goes by, I realize more and more that alone and what ALL it really means for golf and golf architecture and the way it should be compared to the road it should never really go down, but has, is at the very heart of all of this.
Max Behr saw that and he articulated it well enough, in my opinion, but with a mind and a writing style like he had ironically his messages were probably doomed to not be very well understood. It's hard to tell whether Crane understood this or not or just neglected to admit it or acknowledge it for obvious reasons.
Frankly, Behr's articles on the comparison of golf to other stick and ball games between human opponents vying for a common ball and how the latter of necessity must maximize control and predictability with defined limitations of space simply to make those games utilize both SPACE and TIME efficiently between human opponents vying for a common ball is pretty special, as well as why by contrast, since golf has no vying for a common ball it needs none of this and therefore can and should maintain its natural random outcomes of luck.
Unfortunately, it seems unless that fundamental message (the ball is not vied for in golf) is constantly hammered home most golfers will continue to intuit, as Joshua Crane did, that golf like those other games should always strive for greater fairness and equity and it seems given the last eighty years after that debate most have agreed with.
One additional sidebar on the concept of “equity” as used in the Rules of Golf is that so few seem to understand how unique that concept is as it is used in Golf’s Rules, at least by that party who might be termed the old “Conservative” (purist) party.
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Bob
I liked your essay, but I thought it was misleading on occasion and didn't address what I believe was a much bigger story.
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Tom MacWood
Sr. Member
Re: Strategic School Of Architecture
« Reply #78 on: Yesterday at 09:02:27 PM »
"Bob
I liked your essay, but I thought it was misleading on occasion and didn't address what I believe was a much bigger story."
The STORY probably doesn't get much bigger than this (the following):
The ideas that underlay what I have described as “equitable architecture” have dominated popular views of golf design since before the Golden Age.[6] That domination is now so pervasive and has lasted so long that it is widely believed today such views are timeless and beyond questioning. But the Crane debates are a reminder that such views represent only one perspective – and a controversial one at that – of what the fundamental organizing principles of good architecture ought to be. Those debates recall to us that equitable architecture has a history, that its prominence today was not preordained and, most importantly, that as a design philosophy it is fraught with worrisome issues.[7] Perhaps by giving those views a more fitting name, we will be better able to assess its strengths and weaknesses.
The claim here is not that Crane is somehow responsible for the most widely held modern views about golf architecture. He’s not. Golfers aren’t thinking of Crane when they say that “fairness” and resistance to scoring are the sine qua non of good golf design. Nor is the claim here that the USGA, the PGA or Augusta National all have Crane in mind when preparing their venues for golf competitions, even if the ideas on which their preparations are based are remarkably similar to Crane’s. By the time golf architecture awakened from its long sleep during the Great Depression and World War II, Joshua Crane was a forgotten figure of a bygone era.
The claim being made here about Crane is not a causal one. The claim is rather that, first, Crane and other the proponents of equitable architecture all draw on similar intuitions about “fair play”. Second, that Crane helps to see why importing such ideas from other sports into golf architecture seems so natural and how central they are to the most widely held views about golf design. And finally, that the responses of Behr, MacKenzie, Croome and others to Crane’s project give us the clearest, most thorough articulation we have of why taking equitable concerns appropriate to other sports and importing them into the design of golf courses is a problematical enterprise. Which is to say, if you want to understand the real points of friction in disagreements over foundational issues in golf architecture since the Golden Age, you would do well to use Joshua Crane and the fuss he stirred up in the 1920’s as your starting point.
[6] MacKenzie, Behr and other Golden Age designers had no doubt that such views dominated during the Golden Age. Rightly or wrongly, these architects often depicted themselves as a misunderstood minority swimming against the tide of popular opinion.
[7] Why it is misguided to transpose equitable principles from other sports into golf goes to the very heart of the theory of strategic architecture. Strategic golf design entails (in a strong sense) a view of golf as being agnostic to the kinds of competitive equities that play a central role in other sports. The case for that entailment is, in essence, the flip side of the narrative above. That, however, is a topic beyond the scope of this essay.
•
The End
Robert Crosby, All rights reserved
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Tom MacWood:
Thanks again for emailing me your so-called 'counterpoint essay' of Bob Crosby's essay, "Joshua Crane." I've now read it carefully.
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The claim being made here about Crane is not a causal one. The claim is rather that, first, Crane and other the proponents of equitable architecture all draw on similar intuitions about “fair play”.
Who are/were the other proponents of equitable architecture?
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“Who are/were the other proponents of equitable architecture?
The recent historical record affirms the continuing popularity of “equitable architecture”. Nothing captures the essence of the “equitable school” better than Sandy Tatum’s 1974 response to player and press complaints about the overly “penal” nature of the US Open at Winged Foot that year. Tatum quipped that, “We are not trying to embarrass the best players in the world. We are trying to identify them.” The oft-repeated mantra that the central mission of a golf course is to “separate the wheat from the chaff” also captures the idea. Other nostrums such as, “This course is tough but fair” or “I like this course because it is all in front of you” or “there is nothing tricky about this course, you get what you deserve” or “I can’t complain, the punishments fit the crime” are other examples. Such locutions have become clichés. And they all, at root, assume that a golf course’s central mission is to function as a venue for equitable golfing competitions.
Trent Jones and other post-World War II architects broke with their Golden Age forebears in a number of different ways, but one of the most significant was the added emphasis they put on shot “controls” and sporting equities in their designs. The concept of a “Monster” course, an idea that first became popular in the early 1950’s, is in many respects the application the Crane’s CP&P principles in extremis. Trent Jones, summing up the design philosophy that informed his changes to Baltusrol for the 1967 US Open, wrote:
…[W]e have come to two definite conclusions: first, that modern players are hitting the ball farther and second, that they are hitting the center of the fairway more often. Therefore it is my contention that values should be tightened to meet the high standards which the great improvements in clubs and balls have made possible. In doing this, traps must be moved out to where they will have the same meaning they had in the Jones era, and fairways must be narrowed to develop a comparable latitude for error as when they were played by wooden-shafted clubs.
In tightening these values we have one sole objective – to test the play of modern golfers, so that the best man wins, and the golfer who has made the least shots and played the most brilliant golf is declared the champion. The tightening of any values must be done fairly. There should be no tricks, nor any trickiness on any part of the course.
Writing about his work at Oakland Hills in 1953, the original “Monster” course, Trent Jones noted:
…We have tried to eliminate anything that might be considered tricky. Al Watrous, the club’s popular pro, has hit hundreds of balls to prove the values were testing but just.
In a nutshell, Oakland Hills has been redesigned with target areas to be hit from the tee and by second shots on long holes and pin areas to be aimed for at the green. The truly great and accurate shots will earn their just rewards. The slightest miss or badly executed shot will be punished. A great champion should emerge.
Trent Jones’s set-up philosophy for US Open venues has been, in effect, institutionalized by all of the major sanctioning bodies in the US. But they are views that might have been lifted from a passage written by Crane eighty years earlier. Narrowing of landing areas with rough or bunkering is about “shot controls”; using stimp meters to assure consistent green speeds; using “thumper” machines to assure consistent turf firmness and carefully conditioning turf are all about “predictability”; and the emphasis in recent years on graduated rough and penalties are all about “proportionality”. All of which means that there is not much light between modern tournament set-up philosophies and Crane’s CP&P principles.
It’s also not coincidental that Crane and Trent Jones had similar responses to improvements in balls and clubs. While Behr, MacKenzie, Bobby Jones, Simpson and others wanted improvements to equipment rolled back rather than tamper with classic golf courses, Crane’s response to such improvements was to “modernize” those very same golf courses. Trent Jones would have concurred with Crane. In their respective eras both embraced advances in technology and believed those advances demanded a range of “improvements” to older, classic golf courses. Such sentiments have only gained momentum in recent decades as further leaps in technology have heightened the pressure to “fix” Golden Age courses.
* * *
The claim here is not that Crane is somehow responsible for the most widely held modern views about golf architecture. He’s not. Golfers aren’t thinking of Crane when they say that “fairness” and resistance to scoring are the sine qua non of good golf design. Nor is the claim here that the USGA, the PGA or Augusta National all have Crane in mind when preparing their venues for golf competitions, even if the ideas on which their preparations are based are remarkably similar to Crane’s. By the time golf architecture awakened from its long sleep during the Great Depression and World War II, Joshua Crane was a forgotten figure of a bygone era.
The claim being made here about Crane is not a causal one. The claim is rather that, first, Crane and other the proponents of equitable architecture all draw on similar intuitions about “fair play”. Second, that Crane helps to see why importing such ideas from other sports into golf architecture seems so natural and how central they are to the most widely held views about golf design. And finally, that the responses of Behr, MacKenzie, Croome and others to Crane’s project give us the clearest, most thorough articulation we have of why taking equitable concerns appropriate to other sports and importing them into the design of golf courses is a problematical enterprise. Which is to say, if you want to understand the real points of friction in disagreements over foundational issues in golf architecture since the Golden Age, you would do well to use Joshua Crane and the fuss he stirred up in the 1920’s as your starting point.
THE END
Robert Crosby, All rights reserved
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Who were the proponents of equitable architecture in Crane's day?
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“Who were the proponents of equitable architecture in Crane's day?”
I would say Joshua Crane and anyone else of Joshua Crane’s day who subscribed to the following:
After making the required measurements and applying his weighting formulae, Crane believed he had “furnished an accurate and graphic method of exposing the weak point of any particular course.” In other words, after a “scientific” assessment, the specific things that needed improving (that is, things that would make certain features more “ideal” under his system) would jump off his spreadsheets, ready to be “recorded” by the architect and then installed by the green committee. It was just a matter of collecting the data.[1]
Crane used his ratings in exactly that way. Specific proposals for improving a hole were derived from the deficiencies uncovered by his rating of that hole. His rating of a hole was, in effect, a short hand description of changes required to bring the hole closer to Crane’s “ideal”. For example, his rating of the 16th at Pine Valley proposed lowering the mid-body ridge to make the green visible from the tee, removing trees, and installing a diagonal bunker across the front of the green to provide more “control” for the approach shot, all for the purpose of making it a hole that would come closer to a 100% rating. For the 5th at Myopia Hunt Crane’s proposed improvements included:
"…adding twenty yards to the second shot to encourage carry of the bunker to the left, shortening the bunker slightly giving nearly two thirds of the fairway to the right, and enlarging the further (sic) bunker on the right so that the right hand end is a little nearer the tee and the left hand projects half way across the fairway to control the long driver a bit more. Then the fair but severe rough on the left substituted for the present bushes, and mounds and swamp on the right by sand dunes and bunkers, a … hole will be ensured …which will force both control and length if par is to be secured."
These proposed “improvements” were, in essence, the application of Crane’s larger reformist program to specific features of a given hole. His rankings were the business end of the big stick with which Crane wanted to push golf design into a new and better era. Much as modern discoveries in chemistry had overthrown antiquated beliefs in alchemy, so a “calm scientific investigation” of specific courses would overthrow older “superstitions” that had plagued golf architecture and propped up the reputations of many older links courses. Crane saw himself as bringing the sweet light of reason to a hidebound golf establishment:
"The popularity of golf and consequently the real charm is due to the improvement of its clubs, longer balls, better tees, better fairways fairer rough, better control, better greens. Who would want to go back to balls which could only be driven one hundred yards? The thrill would be gone. Who would want to play on courses as they were fifty years ago? Is the beauty of a property laid out on a hole, with green turf and white sand, a detriment to our enjoyment of the open spaces and lovely surroundings? Do we want to play a wide open expanse of lawn-like country, with no punishments for wild shots?
No. The standard of play is improving because the punishment for poor play is becoming universally fairer. Why do good billiard players insist on a perfect table and balls and even constant temperature?
Why do tennis players insist on tight rackets, uniform balls and level courts?
Why do polo players insist on a new ball every few minutes and on having the field as well rolled and smooth as possible?
Because the better player usually wins, no matter what the conditions and implements (a very common argument of those insisting that a large amount of luck is necessary for pleasure in golf), the real pleasure lies in the manipulation of these implements in a skillful and thoughtful way, and under conditions where victory or defeat is due to superior or inferior handling, not to good or bad luck beyond either player’s control.
No! Golf course development is on the right track, and those who take the other attitude are already finding themselves side-tracked by their own ignorance and lack of comprehension of the demands of human nature for fair play."
Crane’s aim was not merely to make courses more difficult. He was not the clownish “penologist” sometimes depicted by his critics. Rather Crane was a crusader for “fair play.” Though hazards should be robust, the punishments they inflict should be “proportional,” by which he meant punishments ought to be commensurate with the degree of the missed shot. Crane objected, for example, to the wall along the right side of the 16th at the Old Course. Its proximity to the fairway centerline meant that even minor misses to that side would suffer draconian consequences. Crane had similar reservations about water hazards. Trees were likewise a disfavored type of “control” for Crane. They might block one player but leave others with clear approaches to the green, thus failing to punish similarly shots that were similarly missed. Trees also caused uneven turf conditions, creating inconsistent playing conditions and thereby giving luck too big a role in competitive outcomes. Particularly problematical were blind shots. A well designed hole should unambiguously signal the consequences of a good or bad play and blind shots, by definition, failed to provide such signals.
For Crane there were consequences for courses that didn’t live up to his edicts. When luck or fluke interfered with competitive results, the problem wasn’t just “unfairness.” The problem was that golf’s claim to being a sport was put at risk. The issue was exemplified for Crane by an incident during the final match of the 1911 U.S. Amateur.
"It is impossible not to wonder if Herreshoff and his friends felt that [luck was an acceptable part of things] when Hilton on the thirty-seventh hole in the finals at Apawamis, having sliced his approach thirty or forty yards off the green, strikes a rock and bounds onto the green, thereby winning the U.S. championship. The true sportsman deplores such happenings, and happily the modern architect is striving to eliminate these rawnesses (sic)."
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Who were the proponents of equitable architecture in Crane's day?
Tommy Mac
I think JH Taylor and to some degree J Braid were proponents of equitable architecture in Crane's day. To some degree they won out on championship courses, but thankfully, these chaps had the good sense to know when to apply these equitable principles and when not to.
Honestly though, I believe the concept of equitable control was taken much further in the States with designers like Tillie and Flynn with the culmination of acceptance of this sort of design theory being the '51 Open at Oakland Hills. After that Open a pattern was set which wasn't seriously questioned until fairly recently. One could also argue that the Crump and Fownes were perhaps the extreme of this idea.
Gosh, taking the idea to its extreme with matters such as eliminating blind shots, Colt, Dr Mac and CBM could be accused of being influenced by equitable design
I don't think the idea is either/or because design is on a continuum between penal and strategic with the concept of fairness falling anywhere one likes on that continuum.
Ciao
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Who were the proponents of equitable architecture in Crane's day?
Tommy Mac
I think JH Taylor and to some degree J Braid were proponents of equitable architecture in Crane's day. To some degree they won out on championship courses, but thankfully, these chaps had the good sense to know when to apply these equitable principles and when not to.
Honestly though, I believe the concept of equitable control was taken much further in the States with designers like Tillie and Flynn with the culmination of acceptance of this sort of design theory being the '51 Open at Oakland Hills. After that Open a pattern was set which wasn't seriously questioned until fairly recently. One could also argue that the Crump and Fownes were perhaps the extreme of this idea.
Gosh, taking the idea to its extreme with matters such as eliminating blind shots, Colt, Dr Mac and CBM could be accused of being influenced by equitable design
I don't think the idea is either/or because design is on a continuum between penal and strategic with the concept of fairness falling anywhere one likes on that continuum.
Ciao
Sean
What attributes of Taylor and Braid's architecture make them equitable...and what time period are you referring to, both men had very long design careers?
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Tom Mac -
Taylor, 1902:
"[D]ue care should be exercised in seeing that each hole is placed well clear of obstacles, and that hazards should only be calculated to catch and punish a player who after playing a bad or faulty stroke deserves to meet such fate."
There are a number of other passages along the same lines. As far as I can tell Taylor consistently advocated the placement of hazards so as to catch bad shots that "deserved" their fate. The worse the shot, the more severe the hazards should be. Ergo, his adocacy of cross bunkers, meant to most severely penalize the most severe miss - the top. it was all about building courses where the severity of the hazard matched up with the severity of the miss.
All in all, pretty classic "equitable" approach to gca. In the same vein, Taylor thought it "unfair" if almost good shots are punished more severely than worse shots. See my Taylor quote in the Crane piece about Tayor's dislike of c/l bunkers. His dislike of the Road Hole had a similar rationale. Which is also what "proportionality" means in the context of gca. A concept inseparable from equity.
It's possible Taylor changed his mind about this later in life. I don't know. But certainly those were his views up to WWI when he was most active as an architect. During those years he was the poster child for equitable architecture. Which, btw, is one of the reasons he drew the ire of John Low and Tom Simpson.
You have noted in the past Taylor's objections to courses with "too many bunkers". Those objections, however, are entirely consistent with - in fact they reaffirm - his being an "equitable" architect.
Bob
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"After a while the pots even made their appearance in the fairway, but generally placed in such a position that the worst of bad shots was quite safe, while the good drive or second shot invariably came to rest comfortably tucked up right under the bank. The worst of this type of hazard was that they were rarely seen from the tee, and not until your caddie exclaimed with a grin, ‘Your in, sir,’ did you know that the depression with its velvet-like piece of turf at which you had so carefully aimed was lurking-place of that monster the ‘Spittoon’ as one professional unkindly called it.
This type of bunker is the one that is so much in vogue today, but quite recently there has sprang up a system that bids fair to oust it from public favor. This style of bunker which I claim conceit was of my own initiating, takes the form of irregular hills and hollows, the idea being able to copy Nature as closely as the hand of man admits. This new type was first laid down on the links of the Mid-Surrey Club, to whom I have the honour of being the resident professional. Naturally there was a certain amount of skepticism when the scheme was first mooted, but I prevailed upon the committee to allow me to try the effect on one hole.
The value of this system of bunkering lies in it’s powers of graduating the punishment meted out to those golfers who at times wander from the narrow, straight path. The hills and hollows can be constructed that the further the player gets off the course the worse the punishment. The punishment can be made to fit the crime, as it were, and there are few to be found who will not agree that this is as it should be. It is obviously unfair that the ball just finds its way off the course should be treated with the same severity as the ball that is half-way towards the next county."
The Evolution of the Bunker by J. H. Taylor (an excerpt from his book The Art of Golf)
Sounds to me like the man was into the same kind of "equitable architecture" and "fairness" philosophy Joshua Crane was!
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The state of golf architecture was quite different in 1902 and 1911 than it was in the 20s. Should Taylor's comments in 1902 or 1911 be judged against the accepted norms of golf architecture in 1926 or 1927 when Crane was debating Behr? It is not a historically appropriate comparison IMO. Didn't Taylor's ideas evolve over time?
Crane was not breaking any new ground with most of his ideas on golf architecture, they were the conventional thoughts at that time, especially in America.
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While I understand trying to pin down words, I think it probably better to look at the courses. Often times the writings of a chap don't match what he put in the ground. Sometimes, the writings are an ideal for the writer and most ideals are nearly impossible to achieve. This is why I think JH's bite was much worse than his bark - same with Braid. Plus, we have to consider that perhaps Hawtree tempered JH to some degree. Anyway, I am not going in search of examples from each period in JH's life as I am satisfied I understand what JH's feeling on the matter were - as best as we can understand from this vantage point looking back.
To me, the far more important question is the American architects because I believe there was a serious break in design theory by the time teh Golden Age came round. It has always been my impression that some of the guys of the Golden Age were seriously into creating fair and difficult courses. Indeed, many of these courses today remain difficult despite their yardage not increasing all that much relatively speaking.
Ciao
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It was such a fluid time, it seems to me. (What happened, for example, to the discussion in GB&I after 1913 and Ouimet's U.S. Open win -- suddenly, you had people saying that British courses weren't 'testing' enough...the same complaint that some had -- or once had, and would have again -- about American courses.) And then there was that article I read a while back, from 1906, about what they called "Thinking Golf" and how it was all the rage in America. It mentioned Walton Heath as a wonderful example of Thinking Golf -- the idea being that hazards should be placed/arranged so that players could think and play their way around them instead of being forced to go over them. And the article noted that the great amateurs of the day were more enamoured of the Thinking Golf idea than the professionals were, one of whom (I think it was Taylor, or it may have been Braid) thought it 'unfair' that a worse player was not necessarily penalized for being unable to get over a hazard that the better player could.
Peter
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The state of golf architecture was quite different in 1902 and 1911 than it was in the 20s. Should Taylor's comments in 1902 or 1911 be judged against the accepted norms of golf architecture in 1926 or 1927 when Crane was debating Behr? It is not a historically appropriate comparison IMO. Didn't Taylor's ideas evolve over time?
Crane was not breaking any new ground with most of his ideas on golf architecture, they were the conventional thoughts at that time, especially in America.
I agree with both points. Remember, however, that one of the reasons Crane wrote what he wrote was because in the 1920's he saw the "equitable" architecture he preferred as losing ground to strategic architecture as promoted by MacK, Colt, Darwin, Behr, etc.
Crane, with a different twist or two, wanted to reinstate many of the same ideas that Taylor had advocated earlier. Their views were not identical but they were certainly kissin' cousins.
I would add about their similarities that both Taylor and Crane reflect the architectural assumptions of the everyday golfer much better than a MacK, a Darwin or a Behr do. It is no less true today. Crane's argument was really with the professional golf architects of the Golden Age, not with street views of what good architecture should be. In a rough and ready way, you can see Crane as someone who was articulating and elaborating design ideas based on the street view. I think the same is also roughly true of Taylor's views.
Bob
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The state of golf architecture was quite different in 1902 and 1911 than it was in the 20s. Should Taylor's comments in 1902 or 1911 be judged against the accepted norms of golf architecture in 1926 or 1927 when Crane was debating Behr? It is not a historically appropriate comparison IMO. Didn't Taylor's ideas evolve over time?
Crane was not breaking any new ground with most of his ideas on golf architecture, they were the conventional thoughts at that time, especially in America.
I agree with both points. Remember, however, that one of the reasons Crane wrote what he wrote was because in the 1920's he saw the "equitable" architecture he preferred as losing ground to strategic architecture as promoted by MacK, Colt, Darwin, Behr, etc.
Crane, with a different twist or two, wanted to reinstate many of the same ideas that Taylor had advocated earlier. Their views were not identical but they were certainly kissin' cousins.
I would add about their similarities that both Taylor and Crane reflect the architectural assumptions of the everyday golfer much better than a MacK, a Darwin or a Behr do. It is no less true today. Crane's argument was really with the professional golf architects of the Golden Age, not with street views of what good architecture should be. In a rough and ready way, you can see Crane as someone who was articulating and elaborating design ideas based on the street view. I think the same is also roughly true of Taylor's views.
Bob
Bob
The thing is, I can't think of a single non-championship course in the UK which matched this idea of equitable control. And if I were to push it, I think guys like Colt would pop up more than either JH or Braid. So, assuming there were very few examples of equitable architecture I would have thought guys like JH were fighting upstream - BUT I ahaen't seen a JH course I would say is heavily leaning toward EA. In fact, the ones I have seen were soundly designed and adhered to more strategic principles even if they weren't terribly exciting courses. IMO, the debate rests solidly on American designed courses because I just don't see where JH's views gained any traction in the UK. Mind you, we could be mis-interpreting JH and indeed the nuances of the entire debate.
Ciao
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It was such a fluid time, it seems to me. (What happened, for example, to the discussion in GB&I after 1913 and Ouimet's U.S. Open win -- suddenly, you had people saying that British courses weren't 'testing' enough...the same complaint that some had -- or once had, and would have again -- about American courses.) And then there was that article I read a while back, from 1906, about what they called "Thinking Golf" and how it was all the rage in America. It mentioned Walton Heath as a wonderful example of Thinking Golf -- the idea being that hazards should be placed/arranged so that players could think and play their way around them instead of being forced to go over them. And the article noted that the great amateurs of the day were more enamoured of the Thinking Golf idea than the professionals were, one of whom (I think it was Taylor, or it may have been Braid) thought it 'unfair' that a worse player was not necessarily penalized for being unable to get over a hazard that the better player could.
Peter
Peter -
"Thinking golf" was first associated with John Laing Low circa 1902, a vastly under-appreciated figure in the history of gca. But I've never been clear about the export of the idea from Britain to the US. I remember reading Travis as saying that the idea came to US gca in 1906 and that that year marked a turning point in US gca.
But what exactly happened in 1906? Did Travis go to Woking, throw down a couple of beers with Low and Paton, and come back a changed man?
Bob
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And the article noted that the great amateurs of the day were more enamoured of the Thinking Golf idea than the professionals were, one of whom (I think it was Taylor, or it may have been Braid) thought it 'unfair' that a worse player was not necessarily penalized for being unable to get over a hazard that the better player could.
Sounds like your typical GCA post today! :-\
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"I remember reading Travis as saying that the idea came to US gca in 1906 and that that year marked a turning point in US gca.
But what exactly happened in 1906? Did Travis go to Woking, throw down a couple of beers with Low and Paton, and come back a changed man?"
Bob:
Obviously Travis was abroad playing golf a number of times. According to both himself and C.B. Macdonald he fell in love with the type of golf and courses he played over there.
Macdonald also mentioned that Travis and incoming USGA president R.H Robertson took a golf tour to GB in the summer of 1901. Macdonald said both he and some of the USGA board members felt that should imbue both Travis and Robertson with the "spirit" of the game over there but for some reason they were disappointed that it didn't rub off as they'd hoped. I think Macdonald was talking more about the Rules and administrative stuff here.
Nevertheless, when Travis mentioned "thinking golf" came to the US in 1906 he may've been referring to what he did at GCGC with its architecture. I think it had to do primarily with more bunkering and more interesting greens that he felt the good courses over there had then but most all the American courses, apparently including GCGC early on, did not.
Also, I think it is pretty safe to say that in the first half of the first decade of the 20th century Walter Travis was considered by Americans to be the most prominent person in America not just as a golfer but in most all things to do with golf.
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TEP -
I suspected that the 1906 date Travis referred to had something to do with the timing of his redo of GCGC. But I don't know much about the GCGC history.
Bob
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Bob:
It seems Travis was not exactly the most modest of men. I think it was also 1906 when he wrote he taught Donald Ross about modern architecture at Pinehurst. ;)
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The state of golf architecture was quite different in 1902 and 1911 than it was in the 20s. Should Taylor's comments in 1902 or 1911 be judged against the accepted norms of golf architecture in 1926 or 1927 when Crane was debating Behr? It is not a historically appropriate comparison IMO. Didn't Taylor's ideas evolve over time?
Crane was not breaking any new ground with most of his ideas on golf architecture, they were the conventional thoughts at that time, especially in America.
I agree with both points. Remember, however, that one of the reasons Crane wrote what he wrote was because in the 1920's he saw the "equitable" architecture he preferred as losing ground to strategic architecture as promoted by MacK, Colt, Darwin, Behr, etc.
Crane, with a different twist or two, wanted to reinstate many of the same ideas that Taylor had advocated earlier. Their views were not identical but they were certainly kissin' cousins.
I would add about their similarities that both Taylor and Crane reflect the architectural assumptions of the everyday golfer much better than a MacK, a Darwin or a Behr do. It is no less true today. Crane's argument was really with the professional golf architects of the Golden Age, not with street views of what good architecture should be. In a rough and ready way, you can see Crane as someone who was articulating and elaborating design ideas based on the street view. I think the same is also roughly true of Taylor's views.
Bob
Bob
Crane developed his rating system because he felt it was a better/more scientific way of evaluating championship venues. Golf architecture had been in the process of eliminating 'unfair' aspects for years. He wasn't pushing a new equitable architectural system, he was a product of the mainstream American architectural ideas at the time, which included some aspects of equity, but was much more than that. There was definitely a penal aspect to modern American golf architecture that is lost in your term equitable. Back then they referred to it as scientifically designed golf courses, and that is much better term IMO. Taylor had nothing to do with this American style of architecture, in fact he warned against it.
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It was such a fluid time, it seems to me. (What happened, for example, to the discussion in GB&I after 1913 and Ouimet's U.S. Open win -- suddenly, you had people saying that British courses weren't 'testing' enough...the same complaint that some had -- or once had, and would have again -- about American courses.) And then there was that article I read a while back, from 1906, about what they called "Thinking Golf" and how it was all the rage in America. It mentioned Walton Heath as a wonderful example of Thinking Golf -- the idea being that hazards should be placed/arranged so that players could think and play their way around them instead of being forced to go over them. And the article noted that the great amateurs of the day were more enamoured of the Thinking Golf idea than the professionals were, one of whom (I think it was Taylor, or it may have been Braid) thought it 'unfair' that a worse player was not necessarily penalized for being unable to get over a hazard that the better player could.
Peter
Peter
What happened in 1906? I don't believe that was a measurable turning point. 1913 is another story, that was when Darwin and Vardon were quite critical of the state of American architecture, and golf architecture in America took a major turn at that point. The Crane-Croome debate in the 20's was a continuation of an American-British golf debate that had been going for many years, and continued on for several years afterward. The Crane-Croome and Crane-Berh debates were interesting, but they did not have major impact on golf architecture
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For what it is worth, I think this thread is excellent...BUT I think it has been kicked up a notch with Tom Macwood's post #89.
I've said this before and I will say it again; Tom Macwood when you post in a more verbose and detailed way it adds a tremendous amount in terms of background and gives much needed insight into your points and intended direction. In this instance, I think it kicked up the learning process for all readers/posters a great deal. In fact, Bob Crosby alluded to this type of thing in one of his prior posts. He said something like, without the added detail the threads result in circular neverending arguments.
Anyway, this thread has some excellent stuff and has great education value!
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Mac:
I agree with you that this thread has some real potential. However, I suppose the first question to ask, at this point, is whether this particular thread is the one to be discussing in real detail the issue of the Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie debate (or Bob Crosby's "Joshua Crane" essay and Tom MacWood's so-called "counterpoint" essay to it) and the importance of it? This thread began as a discussion of a quotation of Mackenzie's about strategic architecture. I could look back to determine it but I'm not even sure if a date was given on this thread for that Mackenzie quote on strategic architecture that appears in Sean Arble's initial post on this thread.
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Mac,
It is a very good thread, even as it has evolved.
I read Bob's essay when he posted it and I'd say TMac has done a good amount of work in rebutting, countering, and generally adding relevant information. There aren't many people on here who would muster the interest and take the time to do what they have done.
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The thing I find so fascinating about this whole area of GCA discussion is how all the moving parts fit together and this is precisely why I think that discussing Crane/Behr, American vs. British courses, Bob's essay and Macwood's additions is very appropriate.
It appears to me that once you begin to not only know the relevant facts (Crane's articles, TOC history, NGLA, etc), but seeing how they fit together and why and how things evolved and occurred is when the magic really starts to happen. And this is why I like when Tom Macwood provides more "meat" to his posts and questions.
I for one think Bob Crosby's article(s) is/are great. I find reading Macwoods addittions to it fascinating. If for no other reason then they add to the context to some of Bob's points. Is Tom Macwood right and/or wrong on his additions? I am sure the answer is "yes", but it varies depending on what section you are talking about. It seems to me that any great discovery is a process. And the process needs to be joined together by competent groups of people who have passion for the subject at hand.
In this instance, Bob put forth a great piece of work. Tom was added to it. We should continue to polish it up, add questions, make comments, research points of dispute, and work on it until the research mosaic in complete. Perhaps this is something a group of people can do, perhaps it is an individual task that each and everyone of us who has an interest should do on their own.
If I have my facts straight, Tom Macwood doesn't think that the Crane/Behr debates were vitally important to the evolution of golf course architecture. One of his points is that these types of discussions had been occurring many years prior to the Crane/Behr debates. I am sure he is right. But isn't that a sign that the topic Crane/Behr were discussing was very important. GCA enthusiasts discussed these types of issues prior to Crane/Behr, and to this very day we are still discussing these issues.
If we continue to work on it, think about it, polish it up, debate it, perhaps we can add the next step in the research/discovery process.
At least that is my take on it and why I find this thread and these topics so interesting and important.
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"The thing I find so fascinating about this whole area of GCA discussion is how all the moving parts fit together and this is precisely why I think that discussing Crane/Behr, American vs. British courses, Bob's essay and Macwood's additions is very appropriate."
Mac:
The entire area or era (perhaps the late 19th century up to perhaps the 1930s or even to date) is fascinating with all its moving parts and evolution. But again, Bob Crosby wrote an essay on the so-called "Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie" debate which took place from about the mid-1920s into the early 1930s. Bob did not really intend to cover a far larger or longer era or event----he chose to cover that specific debate which MacWood has implied was not very important in the broad scheme of things. I for one disagree and I know Bob Crosby does too because the broad scheme of things very well might include the fact that that debate back then was not that well joined or understood but the issues that were aired in it, particularly by Behr, are incredibly important to reprise and revisit and not as some discussion of some historical event in time but for the future of golf and architecture!!
"It appears to me that once you begin to not only know the relevant facts (Crane's articles, TOC history, NGLA, etc), but seeing how they fit together and why and how things evolved and occurred is when the magic really starts to happen. And this is why I like when Tom Macwood provides more "meat" to his posts and questions."
Tom MacWood seems to have suggested that Crane did not start the interest or proposition of more "equity," "equitableness," more fairness and less luck in golf and architecture and that is somehow important to know because it somehow might minimize the importance of the issues aired in that Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie debate. I don't agree with that at all, and either does Crosby. Crosby said in his article that Crane did not invent the idea. Inventing the idea is not the point at all, at least not of Crosby's article. What is the point of it is the articulation of the issues involved in that debate, particularly by Behr! Did anyone before him delve into the depths he did about why golf and architecture should maintain its inherent luck factor and steer clear of a fixation with "fairness" equity, control, predictability, proportionality (C,P &P) the way Behr did as a result of that particular debate with Crane? If anyone did to that extent, I'm sure not aware of it or who did it. That's a large part of the point of Crosby's essay! MacWood seems to have missed that point entirely!
"I for one think Bob Crosby's article(s) is/are great. I find reading Macwoods addittions to it fascinating. If for no other reason then they add to the context to some of Bob's points. Is Tom Macwood right and/or wrong on his additions? I am sure the answer is "yes", but it varies depending on what section you are talking about. It seems to me that any great discovery is a process. And the process needs to be joined together by competent groups of people who have passion for the subject at hand."
Is MacWood right and/or wrong on his additons? Good quesiton. I happen to think he is wrong to counterpoint Crosby's essay with an eye towards suggesting the issues within the Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie debate were not particularly important. But he might be right with his additons or counterpoints or whatever one wants to call them, if he just wanted to do his own article on the entire 30 or 40 or 50 or even 110 year history of the entire evolution of the ideas and philosophies of greater equity and fairness in golf and architecture-----OR even less equity and fairness in golf and architecture. Let MacWood write his own essay then addressing a far longer timeframe if he thinks that adds something. Trying to minmize the importance of the issues within that Crane/Behr debate is not the way to do that, however; at least not in my opinion.
"In this instance, Bob put forth a great piece of work. Tom was added to it. We should continue to polish it up, add questions, make comments, research points of dispute, and work on it until the research mosaic in complete. Perhaps this is something a group of people can do, perhaps it is an individual task that each and everyone of us who has an interest should do on their own."
Bob Crosby most certainly did put forth a great piece of work. And I don't think MacWood added to Crosby's work at all or even intelligently counterpointed it----it actually seems he tried to minimize it and suggest the theme and the issues Bob explored in the Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie debate was not particularly important!
"If I have my facts straight, Tom Macwood doesn't think that the Crane/Behr debates were vitally important to the evolution of golf course architecture. One of his points is that these types of discussions had been occurring many years prior to the Crane/Behr debates. I am sure he is right. But isn't that a sign that the topic Crane/Behr were discussing was very important. GCA enthusiasts discussed these types of issues prior to Crane/Behr, and to this very day we are still discussing these issues."
That's right MacWood apparently doesn't seem to think the Crane/Behr debates were vitally important because I think he's missing Crosbys' entire point here. Crosby never denied that the issue may've been going on for some years and he may even admit that the debate itself was not particularly well understood at the time. I think Crosby's point is, or should be, that that is not important if the issues delved into and discussed during those debates really are of fundamental importance to golf and architecture, and not just to back then but particularly now and into the future. If they weren't that well understood back then that to me is the very reason WHY Crosby chose to reprise and re-present those fundamental issues of that debate and why he even included a few new terms of his own which arguably explain better what was at issue here (Crosby mentioned many times that the term "penal" was not a particularly good one to use on Crane or perhaps anyone else, and he explained why that was so).
"If we continue to work on it, think about it, polish it up, debate it, perhaps we can add the next step in the research/discovery process."
I think that is precisely what Crosby was trying to do with that essay and the point he was trying to make; a point, I might add, that MacWood seems to have missed almost entirely.
"At least that is my take on it and why I find this thread and these topics so interesting and important."
I think your take is pretty good, Mac, particularly if you fully understand what Crosby was trying to do with that essay, "Joshua Crane" and what he was not trying to do with it. And that includes what MacWood was apparently trying to do by "counterpointing" ;) Crosby's essay as he did, rather than just writing his own essay covering a far broader time and perhaps a number of other issues that Crosby chose not to get into and for what seems like good reasons.
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Mac,
That's really what it's all about, adding to the base, and TMac has made a substantial addition w/the points he has added to Bob's essay.
It's always reasonable to question how someone reached their conclusions and I thought the format used was a good way to do it. Instead of a ridiculous tit-for-tat, one could easily refer to Bob's text while reading TMac's take on it.
There is a nagging question for me and it is this: the debate happened at a time when GCA was entering a dark age that was worse than the one we're crawling out of right now, no one was building courses. So many courses closed at the time of these debates that it took 30 years, until 1960, before the number of golf courses once again equaled the number in 1930.
This one fact alone is why I don't believe the debates had much influence on GCA. I think their importance is mainly historical and helpful for understanding certain values, but there are many good tomes that do the same and the debates don't stand out in that crowd.
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"This one fact alone is why I don't believe the debates had much influence on GCA. I think their importance is mainly historical and helpful for understanding certain values, but there are many good tomes that do the same and the debates don't stand out in that crowd."
Jim Kennedy:
What values are you referring to? And you mention that there are many good tomes that do the same. The same as what? The same as the Crane/Behr debates? What tomes are those?
I think the primary problem with appreciating the importance of that Crane/Behr(Mackenzie) debate TODAY is most people have never seen or ever read the remarkable series of articles that essentially made up Max Behr's response to the problems he saw Crane and his philosophy creating. The fact is Max Behr never actually wrote a book or a tome; he basically just wrote numerous articles in various periodicals on this specific subject and today it is just really hard for most to put it all together and read and appreciate.
That is also perhaps the only real problem that I can see with most people today really appreciating the significance of Bob Crosby's essay entitled "Joshua Crane"-----eg Bob was not able to supplement his essay with the entirety of what Max Behr wrote on the subjects he (Bob) treated in his essay on here, "Joshua Crane."
The historical irony about the so-called "Crane/Behr" debate, at least to me, is that it really wasn't very well joined back then and consequently it was not well understood back then either. But even if it had been well joined and well understood back then, one really does wonder if Max Behr's remarkable points about golf and architecture really could've made much difference.
And I think that is part of Bob Crosby's purpose for reprising it today, even if Bob does believe that because of that "Crane/Behr" debate others were inspired to write some of the best books on golf architecture and what they felt strategic architecture really was. That would certainly include the impressive mid to late 1920s books on architecture, Thomas's "Golf Architecture in America," and Hunter's "The Links."
And this is why I think Bob Crosby's point and purpose for his essay on Crane and that debate is a fascinating monograph not necessarily intended as just some historical time-piece presentation but very much a really important monograph about golf and golf architecture for both now and our future with golf and architecture. The issues that were central in the Crane/Behr debate are even more central to and for golf and golf architecture today! At least that's my opinion, and I believe Bob Crosby shares it.
I think Bob recognizes, and I think I do too, that Joshua Crane essentially won the debate and/or he won the issue and the day too because what he was proposing is the way golf and golf architecture went after both him and Behr and Mackenzie and into the future and right up to us today.
Somehow, Tom MacWood seems to miss pretty much all of this and that's too bad, in my opinion, if there is anyone out there who takes him and his historical analyses on golf and golf architecture seriously.
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Perhaps I've been reading and studying too much as a lot of the things I've read are blending together and I can't always accurately recall where I obtained specific pieces of knowledge. So, if we want to go over Bob's essay and Tom's additions point by point...I will have to re-read them again. (which actually would be a worthwhile thing to do).
Nevertheless, reading Bob's essay was a real eye-opener for me. And the things that were discussed in that article are still being played out today...on this site, in the golf course architectural profession, and on the PGA Tour. Hence, my thoughts that the debates were vitally important and Bob's essay being excellent.
I call Tom's "stuff" additions and not "counter-points", because I saw him dispute a few points here or there but nothing he said really made me change my opinion of the importance of the debates. BUT I did gather a lot of new information and data to help put the mosaic together. Hence, my term "addition" rather than counter-points.
Tom P...I think you might be right with your general thought about the importance of discussing the Crane/Behr debates on this thread. Tom M says the debates themselves weren't all that important as the topics were discussed prior to the Crane/Behr articles by others. Ok...that is fine with me and I think I can be convinced that the actual Crane/Behr debates weren't important in and of themselves. BUT the topics they debated were wildly important. In my mind, the entire topic of "fair", "equitable", "sporting" architecture is symbolized by the Crane/Behr debates. I think everyone would agree that these topics are important. What you choose to call them is not important to me, as we all know what we are talking about.
But it might be interesting to have Tom Macwood detail some of the previous instances of "fair" "equitable" "strategic" "penal" architectual discussions like Bob did in his essay. This could add to the building blocks of knowledge. If he has already done this and I just have missed it, please point me in the right direction...I would love to read it. If he hasn't, Tom M. please do. It would be a great read.
EDIT...Tom Paul posted while I was typing and I haven't had a chance to read it yet.
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I think Bob recognizes, and I think I do too, that Joshua Crane essentially won the debate and/or he won the issue and the day too because what he was proposing is the way golf and golf architecture went after both him and Behr and Mackenzie and into the future and right up to us today.
Crane did not win the debate...he was smoked by Behr (and Croome). The reason he got smoked, he knew very little about golf course architecture, which is understandable since he was new to the game. That is one of the primary reasons no one took him seriously.
And he wasn't proposing anything new, they weren't his ideas, he was advocating the status quo, the mainstream American ideals. And Behr did not develop his ideas on golf architecture to take on Crane (as Bob suggested), he came to the debate with them.
If anyone won the day American golf architecture did, and ironically Behr and Mackenzie were at times advocates themselves. Your post is the primary reason wrote a counterpoint...so many misconceptions.
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But it might be interesting to have Tom Macwood detail some of the previous instances of "fair" "equitable" "strategic" "penal" architectual discussions like Bob did in his essay. This could add to the building blocks of knowledge. If he has already done this and I just have missed it, please point me in the right direction...I would love to read it. If he hasn't, Tom M. please do. It would be a great read.
I don't understand your request. What previous instances/examples did Bob detail?
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My request (more like a suggestion) would be to get some instances from you that would highlight some examples of penal/strategic (or whatever term you would choose to use) discussions that took place prior to Crane/Behr. I think this would be great study material.
Perhaps my last post wasn't clear. I didn't mean that Bob pointed things like this out in his essay. What I meant to say was that if you did an essay like Bob did with this new material in it, it would be a very interesting read.
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"Crane did not win the debate...he was smoked by Behr (and Croome). The reason he got smoked, he knew very little about golf course architecture, which is understandable since he was new to the game. That is one of the primary reasons no one took him seriously."
Tom MacWood:
So, if Crane did not win the debate, and if Crane and his proposals for greater fairness and equitableness in golf and architecture did not win the future (the ensuing 80-90 years) who did; Behr and Mackenzie?
Did golf and architecture proceed into the future more along the lines of what Crane was proposing at that time or what Behr and Mackenzie were proposing at that time which was clearly fairly dynamically and diametrically opposed to Crane's philosophy of the constant philosophical minimization of luck in golf and architecture and the constant promotion of fairness and equitableness in golf and its architecture as it was in other sports with which for their own structural necessity required fairness and equity because the ball is vied for between human opponents, completely unlike golf?
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Tom P:
Perhaps Crane lost the battle, yet he won the war.
Most golfers would have paid little attention to debates between the experts, just as most golfers today pay little attention to Golf Club Atlas. So it's quite possible that Crane would have been judged the loser in those debates by those who actually paid attention, yet American golf continued to move toward fairness.
Hell, the Slope System looks like it was invented from Crane's notes.
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"I don't understand your request. What previous instances/examples did Bob detail?"
Tom MacWood:
He didn't, and for very good reasons, that for some reason seem to have escaped you. It seems that is why Mac Plumart is asking you to do it.
Bob Crosby explained very clearly in his essay that Crane did not invent some penal concept in golf and architecture and Crane didn't invent the call or proposal for greater fairness and equitableness in golf and architecture ("Equitable Architecture"). What he did do is inspire the likes of Behr and Mackenzie et al to really articulate why golf and architecture shouldn't be that way.
But the next question is which way did golf and golf architecture go into the future after that debate? And the question after that is even if that debate was not well joined or even well understood, should the positions in that debate be reprised, revisited and rediscussed today and into the future----and WHY?
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"......yet American golf continued to move toward fairness."
TomD:
I think it would be pretty hard for any historical GCA analyst of any intelligence and competency to deny that, even Tom MacWood, even though as time goes on and as he continues to participate on here he shows he is not of those categories of that intelligence or competency.
This is precisely why I think Crosby reprised this historic debate and the fundamenatal articulated points and issues that made up that debate, particularly Behr's, because they were far more voluminous and far more comprehensively developed than Mackenzie's or anyone else's!
PS:
I think the future from the 1920s and 1930s to pretty much to date show that Crane's ideas (as he articulated them and not necessarily invented them) did win the war. I don't know that Crane even lost much of a significant battle in that war in the greater mentality of golf and golfers except perhaps with some golf and architecture purists and traditionalists back then or with some of us on this website today and hopefully in and with the future of golf architecture and GOLF ITSELF.
I think this is why Crosby wrote that beautiful essay of his reprising and redescribing the issues that were part and parcel of that Crane/Behr debate back then.
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My request (more like a suggestion) would be to get some instances from you that would highlight some examples of penal/strategic (or whatever term you would choose to use) discussions that took place prior to Crane/Behr. I think this would be great study material.
Perhaps my last post wasn't clear. I didn't mean that Bob pointed things like this out in his essay. What I meant to say was that if you did an essay like Bob did with this new material in it, it would be a very interesting read.
I don't recall Bob doing that, what courses did he associate with different architectural styles?
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"Crane did not win the debate...he was smoked by Behr (and Croome). The reason he got smoked, he knew very little about golf course architecture, which is understandable since he was new to the game. That is one of the primary reasons no one took him seriously."
Tom MacWood:
So, if Crane did not win the debate, and if Crane and his proposals for greater fairness and equitableness in golf and architecture did not win the future (the ensuing 80-90 years) who did; Behr and Mackenzie?
Did golf and architecture proceed into the future more along the lines of what Crane was proposing at that time or what Behr and Mackenzie were proposing at that time which was clearly fairly dynamically and diametrically opposed to Crane's philosophy of the constant philosophical minimization of luck in golf and architecture and the constant promotion of fairness and equitableness in golf and its architecture as it was in other sports with which for their own structural necessity required fairness and equity because the ball is vied for between human opponents, completely unlike golf?
TD is correct. You can win the battle without winning the war, and Behr won the battle. But Crane did not win the war, because his ideas were not his own, he was advocating the popular American ideas at the time. Popular American architectural ideas won the war, and had been winning the war prior to Crane. As I pointed out in my essay CV Piper was advocating an almost identical set of principles at the time, and they weren't his ideas either.
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"I don't recall Bob doing that, what courses did he associate with different architectural styles?"
God help us that we have to continue to deal with responses like that one! ::)
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"You can win the battle without winning the war, and Behr won the battle."
Tom MacWood:
What battle do you think Max Behr won?
Do you think his battle victory was represented by his original Lakeside? Do you think the Behr/Mackenzie battle victory was represented somehow by the original concept of ANGC?
And what did the future hold for that concept and those two courses?
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"I don't recall Bob doing that, what courses did he associate with different architectural styles?"
God help us that we have to continue to deal with responses like that one! ::)
I'm sorry, I guess I misunderstood the request.
British style golf architecture: St. Andrews, Hoylake, Woking, Liphook, Morfontaine, West Sussex, New Zealand, Lakeside, and Rye.
American style golf architecture: Prince's, NGLA, Lido, PVGC, Oakmont, Brook Hollow, Hollywood, Cypress Point, Aronimink, and Muirfield.
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Still a good thread. Too tired tonight to do any more than read the last few pages, and I can't contribute meaningfully. But what I see in the history of gca -- and what Bob's essay helped me to see -- is a kind of Nietzchean 'eternal recurrence' of the fundamental issues and questions related to golf architecture's ideal forms and functions. The people debating the questions -- in words and/or in deeds -- changed over time (Croome and Crane and Behr and Travis and Crump and Fownes and MacKenzie and Jones and Taylor and Braid and RTJ and Tom D and Fazio and the editor in charge at Golf Digest) but the questions remain the same. (It's like that old joke by Fran Lebowitz: "Original thought is like Original Sin: both happened a long time ago to people you couldn't possibly have met"). And sometimes the people involved were only half-conscious of what they were actually debating, because the language involved had itself changed, sometimes without one side informing the other. I believe Bob was clear in his point that the Behr-Crane debates reflected this eternal recurrence, not that they created it; that they were one facet, one lense, into this complex question. As I say, I thought Bob made that clear; but others may disagree with me. But to me, even just unpacking this eternal conundrum and bringing out of the mists of time this one facet -- and identifying it as one facet -- was a remarkable achievement on Bob's part. I would also like to read Tom M's thoughts on this.
Peter
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I guess if Crane won the war, then I can be classed as an insurgent. Which I kind of like. Actually, I'm sort of amazed that none of my fans nor my detractors has called me that yet ... at least in print.
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"You can win the battle without winning the war, and Behr won the battle."
Tom MacWood:
What battle do you think Max Behr won?
Do you think his battle victory was represented by his original Lakeside? Do you think the Behr/Mackenzie battle victory was represented somehow by the original concept of ANGC?
And what did the future hold for that concept and those two courses?
Behr won the debate with Crane IMO. No I don't think his winning the debate had anything to do with Lakeside. Lakeside predated the debate, and was the greatest representation of his thoughts on golf architecture. Crane lost the debate because he was new to the game (and golf architecture) and he was going against someone who was neither. Even Bob did not suggest ANGC had anything to do with Crane-Behr debate. Before the Crane-Behr debate Mackenzie designed Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath, and after the debate he designed Cypress Point and Pasatiempo, Crane would have loved those golf courses.
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"I guess if Crane won the war, then I can be classed as an insurgent. Which I kind of like. Actually, I'm sort of amazed that none of my fans nor my detractors has called me that yet ... at least in print."
TomD, you are an INSURGENT!!
How's that for "in print?"
Frankly, that puts you in a very good place of both golf, GCA and political and moral suasion as Josh Crane was not only an outright advocate for the mass murder of Mother Luck and all her little natural Lucklings in golf and architecture but he was also about 27 degrees of separation to the right of Rush Limbaugh and at least 4 1/2 degrees to the right of Atilla the Hun. He was, in fact, a card carrying member of the Anglo-American Malthusian Moneycrat Oligarghy who actually stood shoulder to shoulder with Adolf Hitler as an outright Nazi sympathizer. It's just amazing that the USA and strategic golf advocates all over this country let him back into the good 'ol US of A. after the war without frying his and his little sawed off putter's ass for treason!
Tom MacWood:
Crane lost the debate in your opinion because he was new to the game and Behr wasn't??
That's an interesting construct on your part. Where did you come up with that one? I seem to recall in one of Mackenzie's responses to Crane in that debate mentioning that Joshua's opinions were strange for such a good golfer! ??? ;)
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But it might be interesting to have Tom Macwood detail some of the previous instances of "fair" "equitable" "strategic" "penal" architectual discussions like Bob did in his essay. This could add to the building blocks of knowledge. If he has already done this and I just have missed it, please point me in the right direction...I would love to read it. If he hasn't, Tom M. please do. It would be a great read.
By the way Equitable is a misnomer IMO. Does one think of fair or equitable when they think of golf courses of the American movement, courses like Pine Valley, Lido and Oakmont? IMO the term used back then - Scientific - is more illustrative. There are no purely strategic or penal golf courses, just courses that are blends of both and lean one direction or the other, and the scientifically trapped American courses of Crane's era tended to lean toward the penal.
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Tom Mac
Just read your last post. The term scientific was used in the UK quite frequently too and applied to the likes of Braid as well. What elements of "scientific" were purely American ? I guess what I'm asking is what are the differences between the two ? And yes I have read through this thread but not being familiar with many of the designers mentioned, either in their writing or their designs, its hard for me to pinpoint the differences between the two schools so it would be useful to have a summary of the differences.
Thanks
Niall
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Niall
Here is a link to a thread discussing the term. You're right it was used in Britain, in fact I believe it originated in Britain. In the late teens and twenties the term took on a slightly different meaning, and during that period American golf architects really embraced the idea of scientifically trapping their golf courses. American golf courses generally speaking were more heavily bunkered in the 1920s than British courses, with the possible exception of Colt.
http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,923.0/
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"By the way Equitable is a misnomer IMO. Does one think of fair or equitable when they think of golf courses of the American movement, courses like Pine Valley, Lido and Oakmont? IMO the term used back then - Scientific - is more illustrative. There are no purely strategic or penal golf courses, just courses that are blends of both and lean one direction or the other, and the scientifically trapped American courses of Crane's era tended to lean toward the penal."
Tom MacWood:
"Equitable Architecture" as Bob Crosby used it would be a misnomoer if someone used it to describe something akin to "scientific" architecture as it was generally used in the beginning of the 20th century.
Some such as Tillinghast referred to what some called "scientific" architecture as "modern" architecture. Most felt it was a modern and better form of architecturally addressing all levels of players by both challenging and accommodating their distinct shot values and shot requirements which some felt was more strategic. On the other hand "scientific" architecture generally penalized misses, particularly bad misses more, and was consequently ultimately more penal to some.
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Tom MacWood:
"Equitable Architecture" as Bob Crosby used it would be a misnomoer if someone used it to describe something akin to "scientific" architecture as it was generally used in the beginning of the 20th century.
Some such as Tillinghast referred to what some called "scientific" architecture as "modern" architecture. Most felt it was a modern and better form of architecturally addressing all levels of players by both challenging and accommodating their distinct shot values and shot requirements which some felt was more strategic. On the other hand "scientific" architecture generally penalized misses, particularly bad misses more, and was consequently ultimately more penal to some.
Who are the most who felt it was modern? Can you cite any examples or evidence?
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"Who are the most who felt it was modern? Can you cite any examples or evidence?"
Tom MacWood:
Who are the most?? What does that question mean?
I mentioned that Tillinghast called it modern architecture. Go on the Tillinghast website for starters and read some of his articles on architecture from that time. His columns got a fairly large readership in those days I'm quite sure, don't you think? ;)
You said above in your opinion "Equitable Architecture" is a misnomer and "scientific architecture" is more illustrative. More illustrative of what? While there are probably some similarities between "scientific architecture" and what Bob Crosby described and defined at "Equitable Architecture" (C,P & P) they are definitely not synonymous or the same thing; so why would you think they are?
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You said above in your opinion "Equitable Architecture" is a misnomer and "scientific architecture" is more illustrative. More illustrative of what? While there are probably some similarities between "scientific architecture" and what Bob Crosby described and defined at "Equitable Architecture" (C,P & P) they are definitely not synonymous or the same thing; so why would you think they are?
TEP
More illustrative of the type of architecture Crane was influenced by - the American movement, exemplified by courses like PVGC, Oakmont, Lido, NGLA, Brae Burn, Brook Hollow, and Hollywood. And when I think of those courses equitable does not immediately come to mind. How about you, do you think of equitable when these courses are mentioned?
You need to go to Webster's web site. These were well educated men and they knew what the term scientific meant, and it was not modern.
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Over the years I think the meaning of the term may have changed slightly, but I think it was always related to scientific stroke making or precise stroke making (the use of that term predates scientific course-making). A scientifically designed course requires precise stroke making - good shots are rewarded and poor shots are punished. There is also an element intelligent thought that is required. Golf architecture was being looked upon or studied for the first time, where proper design ideas and elements are promoted and archaic ideas are discarded...that is where the idea of fairness come in. For example the cop bunker placed at formulaic intervals from the tee is not an example of a scientifically bunkered golf course - it does not challenge the expert while overly punishing the average golfer. Also blind shots are something to be avoided on a scientifically designed golf course; OB is another unscientific element.
By the late teens and twenties modern American golf architecture (the American Movement) really promoted the idea of scientifically bunkered or laid out golf courses, this in contract to the British model, which was less penal leaning. The epitome of American scientific architecture were heavily bunkered courses like Pine Valley, Oakmont, Inwood, Lido and Hollywood. And as Americans began to dominate competition a theory developed that the American scientifically designed golf course produced a superior golfer. This domination eventually resulted in pressure within Britain to adopt a similar American architectural model in order to compete. Here are some examples of the terms use over the years, and clearly saying it was synonymous with modern is a gross over-simplification.
Henry Leach (1911): "Now during the last two or three years there has been given an enormous stimulus to the study of links' architecture in this country. It has been made the most exact science, and is studied as such. There are, as one might say, professors and students. All the old theories and practices have been overhauled, and in most cases condemned. New courses are being made on entirely new principles of length and bunkering. It no longer does to put a short hole in just where it seems convenient, as they did in the old days at St. Andrews and Prestwick. It must come at the right place, and be bunkered according to the right theories. And so forth. Whether the new courses that are being made, and to the points of which all these new theories and results of study are being applied, are any better or more interesting to play upon is a question which we need not discuss. It is after all largely a matter of temperament. Certain it is that some of these new courses are really very perfect from the scientific point of view. Good shots get their reward, bad ones are punished, and the golfer is tested at every point of the game and made to learn all the different ways of doing the same thing."
H. Mallaby-Deeley (1914): “No course, however difficult, can be a good one if it is unfair and I notice that the latest tendency is to make things difficult by making them unreasonable in respect to hazards and the position of the hole to the green. This may produce high scoring, which seems to be the object of many golf architects, but it is not scientific course construction.”
Max Behr (1915): "Very different is the first short hole at Princes', the new and scientific course next to Sandwich. There the green is heavily bunkered in front and on the sides and is not more than thirty feet wide at any point although it is at least sixty feet long. Also the green is plainly visible from the tee, which is the most essential feature of the mashie pitch hole. It is plain that if the player succeeds in placing his ball anywhere on the level part of such a green he has a good chance of getting his two. He does in fact play for a two. And if he makes the stroke correctly he ought to have a perfectly sure three; but if he makes an indifferent stroke which still leaves him on the green more than six or seven yards from the hole he ought to have a very difficult long putt, and a good chance therefore of taking a four."
Arthur Croome used the term here in 1925 to explain why the casual visitor (especially if he be an American) would not appreciate the subtleties of the quirky Dowie at Hoylake, "especially if he be on American accustomed to scientifically constructed courses of his native country."
Walter Travis (1920): "Moreover, the fairways are then not of that adamantine character met with in July, August and September, when the ball "runs a mile" and spoils the legitimate playing qualities of the holes, converting three-shotters into two-shotters and ordinarily long two-shotters into a drive and a mashie, and so on, to say nothing of almost completely setting at naught the proper values of hazards, no matter how scientifically arranged."
Glenna Collett (1925): "On the whole, I consider the American courses more difficult, although they offer very different playing conditions. Being for the most part by the sea the British links are flatter and very rugged and have more natural hazards. The fairways are narrower, and the ground is very rolling—especially at Sandwich, where it is almost bumpy, and your ball is apt to glance off in any direction. But in layout our courses seem more scientifically designed to prevent low scoring. There are longer and more difficult par four holes. All my scores while I was there were better than what I can do at home."
Here is a quote from 1925 regarding Oakmont: "From every tee. and for every second shot the player looks out upon a disfigured surface, upon up-thrown earth works, exposed deposits of grey sand, and other yawning chasms which invite disaster to the timid, but in between these artificial hazards, carved in irregular formations are acres of absolutely perfectly groomed fairways upon which no poor or indifferent lie is ever found. Herein lies one of the greatest charms on this scientifically built, and very exacting course."
AW Tillinghast (1927): “What a contrast our up-to-date American courses afford! Our golf architects etch pits right into the fringe of the green. They are set close in on either side to catch a slight error. The greens are scientifically contoured to hold a bold approach. Such tightly bunkered greens make for meticulous accuracy in approaching. Slipshod, hit or miss methods won’t serve. A fraction of a foot off line may mean the difference between a ball on the green and a lie in the bunker. Under the circumstance, American players have just got to develop perfect direction. Our intelligently bunkered courses are a stern, uncompromising school, but they graduate golfers able to weather the stiffest examination.”
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I've been out and about. Interesting thread. A couple of thoughts:
I think everyday golfers thought Crane won the battle in the '20's (that's a reason why he was asked to write so much for the major golf magazines in the late '20's; he and his ideas were popular). GA professional architects thought differently about him. We here are biased and tend line up with the architects. Which I think misses the historical moment. It's also pretty clear Crane won the larger war.
But what's interesting about that is what it says about the ideas behind strategic gca. We regulars here tend to forget how non-intuitive those ideas are/were. One of the popular appeals of Crane's approach to gca was that he rode on the back on the most basic instincts of the everyday golfer's ideas about what a good course should be about. Those instincts are ones formed by playing other sports. Venues should minimize fluke and luck. They should be places that test physical skills of execution. A venue that allows fluke to determine outcomes gets in the way of that; it even puts golf's status as a true sport in jeopardy.
In short, one of the things that the Crane stuff highlights is just how radical the ideas behind strategic golf architecture are. At least in the context of sports. Most golfers just don't get it. But they got Crane and his CP&P ideas. That, I think, is no less true today.
Second, I think Peter gets at why the Crane debates were important. They exemplify a deep fault-line that has run through golf architecture since its inception. Both in Britain and here. Crane brought about a moment when that fault-line was revealed with remarkable, unprecedented clarity. Crane forced issues that made that revelation happen. He forced MacK and Behr and Croome and others to think through a number of assumptions. It was in that sense a philosophical debate, in the best sense of the phrase. There were a group men trying to get clear about some very basic issues that were usually taken for granted in gca.
Finally, about the equitable - strategic distinction. I think it a vast improvement on the penal - strategic distinction, which I think is largely useless and misleading. My distinction, however, is not without its problems. Let me try to explain. At the heart of my notion of equitable architecture is that a golf course should provide predictable and equitable correspondences between the quality of a shot and its outcome. (Course that don't do that the everyday golfer tends to call "unfair".) The worse the shot, the worse the outcome. And vice versa and etc.
Sga has a different set of main concerns. It's most basic aim is to design courses that present interesting golfing wagers to the golfer. He may take them or not. But because he is picking his own poison, outcomes might well not correspond with the quality of the shot. For example, an almost great shot can be punished much more severely that a much worse shot. And that's o.k. for the strategic architect.
Where my distinction doesn't work ideally is that strategy can be an important feature in equitable designs. (Crane, until his proposed revisions to TOC in '34, saw strategy as one form if "control", something that could be achieved, however, in any number of different ways.) So it's not like there are no strategic features on equitable courses. Likewise, strategic courses may have many "equitable" aspects. So there is a continuum. Perhaps that's unavoidable and not necessarily a bad thing.
I'm not sure that an American course v. British course distinction works well, however. For example, I think that NGLA and the Lido have more in common with great British links courses than they do with, say, Oakmont or Merion or TCC.
Bob
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"TEP
More illustrative of the type of architecture Crane was influenced by - the American movement, exemplified by courses like PVGC, Oakmont, Lido, NGLA, Brae Burn, Brook Hollow, and Hollywood. And when I think of those courses equitable does not immediately come to mind. How about you, do you think of equitable when these courses are mentioned?"
Tom MacWood:
A ton of people in America and the world were influenced by those courses; Crane was just one of them or at least those were some of the ones he mentioned in his mathematical formula rating analyses. So what's your point? Or are you thinking that Joshua Crane had to be some radical departure from anything that came before his ideas to be interesting and important and to have prompted the likes of Behr and Mackenzie et al to debate with him as vociferously as they did? ;)
"You need to go to Webster's web site. These were well educated men and they knew what the term scientific meant, and it was not modern."
With the men were referring to here I think I may know a bit more about those men back, where they went to school, what they thought and how educated they were than you do, so I doubt referring to some Webster's web site would be any help in that. But if you think Webster's website helps you understand them and the similarities between the terms "modern" and "scientific" back then by all means go for Webster's web site to help with your education! ::) ;)
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Bob:
Your post #133 is a very good one----eg a good syllabus of your essay.
In that essay I think you did a great job of explaining why the use of the term "penal" or "penal architecture" back then was not a good one, and even introducing the new terms "equitable architecture" and "Control," Predictability," and "Proportionality" (C.P &P) to be a clearer explanation of what "penal" or "penal architecture" really was that some referred to back then (particularly Behr and Mackenzie in the latter half of the 1920s).
However, I think a more difficult task is to assign a clearer explanation to the distinctions and differences of what various people really were referring to and meant when they used terms such as "scientific architecture" or "modern architecture" or frankly even "strategic architecture."
I don't think there's much doubt but that to some back then those latter terms (scientifc, modern or even strategic) tended to be used somewhat interchangeably and synomymously. Obviously, in many respoects the likes of Behr, Mackenzie, Bob Jones et al did not agree at all.
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I've been out and about. Interesting thread. A couple of thoughts:
I think everyday golfers thought Crane won the battle in the '20's (that's a reason why he was asked to write so much for the major golf magazines in the late '20's; he and his ideas were popular). GA professional architects thought differently about him. We here are biased and tend line up with the architects. Which I think misses the historical moment. It's also pretty clear Crane won the larger war.
Crane was popular in the late 20s? How many articles did he publish after his Ideal Course article in November 1927? Other than Croome, Behr and Mackenzie what other golf architects even acknowledged Crane? American golf philosophy had already won the larger war prior to Crane. Crane didn't win anything.
But what's interesting about that is what it says about the ideas behind strategic gca. We regulars here tend to forget how non-intuitive those ideas are/were. One of the popular appeals of Crane's approach to gca was that he rode on the back on the most basic instincts of the everyday golfer's ideas about what a good course should be about. Those instincts are ones formed by playing other sports. Venues should minimize fluke and luck. They should be places that test physical skills of execution. A venue that allows fluke to determine outcomes gets in the way of that; it even puts golf's status as a true sport in jeopardy.
Crane's approach was America's approach. Here are CV Piper's ten principles of excellent golf design (American Golf Illustrated February 1926): 1) 18 holes, 6000 to 6500 yds 2) A minimum of 100 acres, preferably no less than 120 acres 3) Gently rolling topography is most desirable 4) Sandy loam soil is ideal 5) Construction should harmonize with the general topography 6) Holes running north and south are preferable; parallel holes should be avoided 7) Visibility is desirable, blind or half blind holes should be avoided, concealed bunkers are condemned 8] Any type of construction that increases the element of luck is open to serious criticism 9) Rough should be a character that compels the use of a mashie or niblick, but not penalized more heavily 10) OB is not desirable, especially if close to the fairway
In short, one of the things that the Crane stuff highlights is just how radical the ideas behind strategic golf architecture are. At least in the context of sports. Most golfers just don't get it. But they got Crane and his CP&P ideas. That, I think, is no less true today.
There is no such thing as a purely strategic golf course or pure strategic golf architecture. All golf courses, and forms of golf architecture, are blends of strategic choice and a requirement for control or precision, usually leaning one direction or the other (American golf architecture tended to lean toward control). Which is why the Crane debate - where one side tried to negatively characterize or pigeon hole the other side - didn't solve anything.
Second, I think Peter gets at why the Crane debates were important. They exemplify a deep fault-line that has run through golf architecture since its inception. Both in Britain and here. Crane brought about a moment when that fault-line was revealed with remarkable, unprecedented clarity. Crane forced issues that made that revelation happen. He forced MacK and Behr and Croome and others to think through a number of assumptions. It was in that sense a philosophical debate, in the best sense of the phrase. There were a group men trying to get clear about some very basic issues that were usually taken for granted in gca.
Crane had no intention of promoting a golf architectural philosophy or sparking a debate. His goal was to create a rating system that would identify the best venues for championships. Half of his rating system (upkeep and maintenance) had nothing to do with golf architecture, and in the half that dealt with golf architecture, Crane was simply following the status quo American ideas. The American-British was the great debate at the time, and that debate predated Crane and continued on well after him.
Finally, about the equitable - strategic distinction. I think it a vast improvement on the penal - strategic distinction, which I think is largely useless and misleading. My distinction, however, is not without its problems. Let me try to explain. At the heart of my notion of equitable architecture is that a golf course should provide predictable and equitable correspondences between the quality of a shot and its outcome. (Course that don't do that the everyday golfer tends to call "unfair".) The worse the shot, the worse the outcome. And vice versa and etc.
I don't think it is an improvement, American championship courses tended to lean more toward the penal end of the spectrum and equitable does not accurately reflect that tendency. The term that was often used to describe American golf architecture is scientific or scientifically - I think that is a much better term because it cover both the control and equitable aspect. The question is what would be a better term than strategic to describe British philosophy on golf architecture (exemplified by Croome, Simpson and Behr).
Sga has a different set of main concerns. It's most basic aim is to design courses that present interesting golfing wagers to the golfer. He may take them or not. But because he is picking his own poison, outcomes might well not correspond with the quality of the shot. For example, an almost great shot can be punished much more severely that a much worse shot. And that's o.k. for the strategic architect.
This is one of the main problems I have with Bob's essay. On one hand he accurately points out there really was no purely penal architect or architecture, but then claims the existence of a school of pure strategic golf architects and architecture. It is very misleading and historically inaccurate. A number of golf architects that we today consider to be strategic golf architects, were considered penal leaning by men of Simpson and Croome's ilk. A good example is Simpson's example of penal architecture - Ross's 2nd hole at Inverness. Again the greater debate was the British-American debate.
Where my distinction doesn't work ideally is that strategy can be an important feature in equitable designs. (Crane, until his proposed revisions to TOC in '34, saw strategy as one form if "control", something that could be achieved, however, in any number of different ways.) So it's not like there are no strategic features on equitable courses. Likewise, strategic courses may have many "equitable" aspects. So there is a continuum. Perhaps that's unavoidable and not necessarily a bad thing.
Exactly, which is why the British-American distinction is the more appropriate, they both promoted strategic concepts.
I'm not sure that an American course v. British course distinction works well, however. For example, I think that NGLA and the Lido have more in common with great British links courses than they do with, say, Oakmont or Merion or TCC.
The scientifically designed courses of NGLA, Lido and PVGC have more in common with the original super-links Prince's than they do with St. Andrews or Hoylake. As Darwin observed, "It must naturally be interesting to golfers here to know what golfers from elsewhere, who play under rather different conditions, think if our courses. Prince's, I fancy, was the British course which the Americans liked on the whole best. I remember Mr. Sweester, who was very enthusiastic about it, saying that it was more like the courses he was used to at home. This at first sounds curious, since Prince's is so essentially a seaside course, and America has practically only one seaside course, the wonderful Lido. What I think he meant was that at Prince's good play is regularly repaid and bad play so regularly punished. The American golfer likes a course on which, however severe it may be, he knows what he is in for. He is used to being trapped in the rough if ever he drives crooked; he is used to very closely guarded greens, and he not merely accepts this inevitability of punishment, he thinks it right and prefers it to chance of undeserved escape."
Does that sound familiar?
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By the way that quote by Darwin is from 1923...several years prior to the Crane-Croom/Crane-Behr debate.
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Tom MacWood:
You really are amazing. Your post #136 is just a total rehash completely reiterating every single point and aspect of Bob Crosby's essay you've missed all along since you began participating on any of these threads that discuss that essay----Joshua Crane.
I think it may not be impossible that someone and somehow at some point could figure out how to explain it to you and the importance of it and its points but by now I doubt anyone has the time or inclination to devote to try to do that for you. It's too bad you're so myopic for some reason.
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Tom Mac -
I don't know where to begin, so I won't. You pretty much missed my points entirely.
BTW, I beg to differ with Bernard Darwin. If he thought NGLA had more to do with Prince's than with TOC, then he was simply wrong. Happens in the best of families.
Bob
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Tom MacWood:
You really are amazing. Your post #136 is just a total rehash completely reiterating every single point and aspect of Bob Crosby's essay you've missed all along since you began participating on any of these threads that discuss that essay----Joshua Crane.
I think it may not be impossible that someone and somehow at some point could figure out how to explain it to you and the importance of it and its points but by now I doubt anyone has the time or inclination to devote to try to do that for you. It's too bad you're so myopic for some reason.
Did Bob acknowledge the American approach to golf architecture?
Did Bob acknowledge the differences between the British and American approach to golf architecture?
Did Bob acknowledge the American-British debate predated Crane (continued on afterward)?
Did Bob acknowledge Crane's thought on golf architecture were typical of the American movement?
I don't believe he did, and as result he missed the much more important story IMO.
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Tom Mac -
I don't know where to begin, so I won't. You pretty much missed my points entirely.
BTW, I beg to differ with Bernard Darwin. If he thought NGLA had more to do with Prince's than with TOC, then he was simply wrong. Happens in the best of families.
Bob
I think the point I'm trying to make is that your points are based on a lot of misinformation.
I do understand your reaction to the Prince's comparison because in your essay your Prince's commentary was very misleading...I think you missed the boat on that one.
I would agree with you of the three the American super courses the NGLA was the least like Prince's, but they still had a lot in common, and no doubt the course served as an inspiration for CBM.
This an excerpt from Darwin on the NGLA, "I have left myself very little space to write of the National which I love. Nine years ago the fairway was rather rough and the rough was the devil itself. Today the fairways are perfect, the rough is less fierce but quite fierce enough and the course has become rather shorter than of old because the ball flies further. All these things make in this instance for greater happiness. Compared with the other two courses [Lido & PVGC] I have described the National is not very severe and yet every stroke has got be played rightly. the punishment is not so uniform and, as it seems to me, more discriminating. At the National, if you make a bad shot, you will not get off scot free but your punishment will take various shapes. It may be a niblick shot played merely to get out and a whole stroke gone: it may be a lies which will yield to a forcing iron shot; it may be not a bad lie at all but such a position that the shot up to the green is intensely difficult. There may always be joy for the sinner who repents if he does so in a practical manner. In fact there is scope for all varieties of recovering shots and that surely ads intensely to the pleasure and interest of golf."
Regarding Darwin, IMO you'd be hard pressed to find a more knowledge critic of golf architecture.
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Tom -
Either your dislike for me makes it difficult for you to think clearly or you just just don't think clearly. I prefer to think it is the former. But I'm beginning to wonder.
Let me say this as plainly as I can for the umpteenth time. I make no claim that the Crane debate was the most important one in the GA. Even if I cared, I don't know what metric you would use to determine such things. My claim is that it was AN important debate. As in one of several important debates. If we can't even agree as to that, then I would suggest that your animus towards me has gotten the better of you.
Your American/British course thing might have been an important debate too. I don't recall hearing much about it, at least not in those terms. But perhaps there are articles and books I missed. I have an open mind.
Let me also repeat again that Crane was not the first to raise the issues that he did, so stop thinking you are scoring debating points by noting that others expressed similar ideas.
As to your point that there are no pure strategic or penal or equitable courses therefore the distinctions aren't worth much...
let me ask you a question. Do you think the concept of "red" is a meaningful one? Even though you have never seen anything that is purely red? Would you want to drop the concept because there is no pure example of red? Can we agree that "red" is a useful concpet when describing the color of objects? Need I go on to draw the obvious parallels?
Finally, Darwin was a brilliant man. Brilliant men too can be wrong. That's the danger you run in making arguments from authority. Sometimes your authority gets it wrong. Darwin got NGLA wrong.
Bob
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"Perhaps that is why they drilled down to the central issues in golf architecture more perceptively and more honestly than any public debate about golf architecture before or since."
Bob
This what you wrote about the Crane debate. That is a pretty strong statement. You've continually over blown Crane's importance...as seen in your previous post about Crane being popular and a regular contributor to golf publications in the late 1920s, and how professional architects perceived him, both of which you've failed to support.
I will acknowledge it was an interesting debate, but not an important one. It was a continuation of the ongoing American-British debate that had existed for several years. No new architectural ideas were introduced as a result of the Crane debate. Behr had developed his ideas on golf architecture prior to the debate and not as a result of it (as you suggested), and Crane was simply expressing the popular American approach, nothing new there. So why was it so important? What impact did it have on golf architecture?
I do think the concept of red is an important one, and good analogy for this particular situation. In your view penal architecture, as you rightly point out, is not a pure color but a variation, which is why you came up with your Equitable description. The problem is you didn't identify the architects of that era who were associated with Equitable. Now on the other hand you evidently believe there is a pure form strategic golf architecture, as promoted by Croome, Simpson, Behr, Mackenize, Low and a whole host of others. In your historical view on golf architecture there is a large well defined school of strategic golf architecture. But in actuality golf architecture comes in all different shades of red, and in the 1920s there were two primary schools, the penal leaning American brand being more orange than red and less penal British form being more purple the red, but they are both variations of red.
I'd put Colt, Ross, Flynn, and Tillinghast in the American or Scientific school. I'd put Behr, Croome, Low and Simpson in the British Strategic school (though Behr moved in and out). And speaking of moving in and out, I'd put Mackenzie and Macdonald in a more flexible category.
PS: There is no need to make this personal, please lets just stick with the facts.
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"Did Bob acknowledge the American approach to golf architecture?"
Yes
"Did Bob acknowledge the differences between the British and American approach to golf architecture?"
Yes
"Did Bob acknowledge the American-British debate predated Crane (continued on afterward)?"
Yes
"Did Bob acknowledge Crane's thought on golf architecture were typical of the American movement?"
Yes
"I don't believe he did, and as result he missed the much more important story IMO."
I think we realize you believe that which is quite strange. Perhaps you should read the essay again, particularly Part IV and its conclusion. In my opinion, Bob Crosby's essay is more about reprising the specific issues developed in that debate, particularly by Behr, for the present and the future, not the past. Again, apparently you've missed that and consequently don't undertstand it.
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Could you quote from the essay where he acknowledged those things?
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TEP
Part IV is one of the more historically inaccurate sections of the essay. In that part he tries to connect the USGA set up for championships to Crane via RTJ, not realizing the USGA's severe set up and redesigns dates back to the 1920s (and long before RTJ). And in that part of the essay he also tries to portrait H. Mallaby-Deeley and JH Taylor as penologists.
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"Could you quote from the essay where he acknowledged those things?"
Tom MacWood:
No I can not or better said I will not. The only thing I'm willing to do for you, at this point, is to cite the particular sections the answers to your questions are in. If after that you still can't figure it out then that's not my problem but yours, in my opinion, and apparently in the opinions of most on here who have been trying to follow these strange posts of yours. I think pretty near everyone on here has grown tired of playing with your stupid 20 questions games! It's too bad for you that Bob Crosby has, that's for sure!
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"TEP
Part IV is one of the more historically inaccurate sections of the essay. In that part he tries to connect the USGA set up for championships to Crane via RTJ, not realizing the USGA's severe set up and redesigns dates back to the 1920s (and long before RTJ). And in that part of the essay he also tries to portrait H. Mallaby-Deeley and JH Taylor as penologists."
Tom MacWood:
With the possible exception of a thing or two Bob Crosby said in his essay about H. Mallaby-Deeley your last statement is just wrong and/or misinformed.
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I have now completed Bob's excellent essay, and I learned a lot.
Whether or not the Crane debates were one of the great gca debates, I cannot say. This however, is pretty sure NOT to go down in history as a great gca debate, and I say that with nearly 100% confidence!
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"I have now completed Bob's excellent essay, and I learned a lot.
Whether or not the Crane debates were one of the great gca debates, I cannot say. This however, is pretty sure NOT to go down in history as a great gca debate, and I say that with nearly 100% confidence!"
Mr. Jeffrey:
I just sent you an IM about your remarks above. However, it just occured to me I may not have understood what you meant in the remark above by 'this' and so my IM to you may've been considerably off the mark! ;)
However, if you mean by 'this' the debate on here and on this thread about Bob Crosby's essay, then I agree it is not a debate that will go down in GCA history. That kind of thing happens on here these days with a certain regularity if Tom MacWood participates.
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"Could you quote from the essay where he acknowledged those things?"
Tom MacWood:
No I can not or better said I will not. The only thing I'm willing to do for you, at this point, is to cite the particular sections the answers to your questions are in. If after that you still can't figure it out then that's not my problem but yours, in my opinion, and apparently in the opinions of most on here who have been trying to follow these strange posts of yours. I think pretty near everyone on here has grown tired of playing with your stupid 20 questions games! It's too bad for you that Bob Crosby has, that's for sure!
The reason you won't is because you can't, he did not acknowledge those things and anyone who has read his essay knows that, which is why your post #138 was so idiotic.
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"TEP
Part IV is one of the more historically inaccurate sections of the essay. In that part he tries to connect the USGA set up for championships to Crane via RTJ, not realizing the USGA's severe set up and redesigns dates back to the 1920s (and long before RTJ). And in that part of the essay he also tries to portrait H. Mallaby-Deeley and JH Taylor as penologists."
Tom MacWood:
With the possible exception of a thing or two Bob Crosby said in his essay about H. Mallaby-Deeley your last statement is just wrong and/or misinformed.
At least we are making progress with Mallaby-Deeley. JH Taylor may not have been the paradigm of architectural thought but calling him a penologist was unfair and inaccurate. The Crane debate took place in the mid-20's, at that time Taylor was partnered with Hawtree. Were Hawtree & Taylor's courses penal? Trying to pin thoughts and ideas from the first decade of the 20th C. to a 1926-27 debate was historically inappropriate. JH Taylor was the man who argued in 1917 that American golf courses were becoming too difficult for the average golfer - hardly the sentiment of a penologist.
The idea that Crane is responsible for the USGA set up by way of RTJ is historically inaccurate. It completely ignores what was going in the 1920s and 1930s. If you recall I showed that in my counterpoint, citing numerous examples, quoting WD Richardson, Archie Compston, Ted Ray, AW Tillinghast, Grantland Rice and Johnny Farrell. In the 1950s RTJ was continuing a tradition that had started decades before him, and trying connect him to Crane is ridiculous. Again Bob exaggerates Crane's importance.
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"Perhaps that is why they drilled down to the central issues in golf architecture more perceptively and more honestly than any public debate about golf architecture before or since."
Bob
This what you wrote about the Crane debate. That is a pretty strong statement. You've continually over blown Crane's importance...as seen in your previous post about Crane being popular and a regular contributor to golf publications in the late 1920s, and how professional architects perceived him, both of which you've failed to support.
I will acknowledge it was an interesting debate, but not an important one. It was a continuation of the ongoing American-British debate that had existed for several years. No new architectural ideas were introduced as a result of the Crane debate. Behr had developed his ideas on golf architecture prior to the debate and not as a result of it (as you suggested), and Crane was simply expressing the popular American approach, nothing new there. So why was it so important? What impact did it have on golf architecture?"
Tom MacWood:
You've made your points there. You've made those points a number of times about this essay. Bob Crosby answered those points on Reply #142 but as usual you've completely ignored his answers to you as you seem to do on most all discussions on this website.
You're certainly welcome to your opinions and your points. Perhaps the best that can be done on a website like this one is to put one's points out there and just see how others react to them and discuss them. It doesn't look to me that many on here or elsewhere endorse your points, your opinions and your MO of discussion on here. So what does that ultimately say?
Sometimes some put forth a premise and of necessity most of the rest of what they assume and conclude rests on the accuracy of that premise. You said that Max Behr had developed his ideas on golf architecture prior to the Crane debate and not as a result of it. While that may be true to some extent with some of Behr's ideas on golf and architecture it doesn't seem to me we can be that aware of what some of those ideas of his were because before the Crane debate he hadn't written them. Matter of fact, some of what Behr said as a result of that debate with Crane were fairly different from ideas he had had or that he had expressed on architecture previous to that debate (as Crosby said, some issues because of that debate were drilled down to far deeper and Behr was the primary one to do that during that debate).
But again, you say that Behr did not write his ideas as a result of the Crane debate. THAT, I'm afraid, is simply a wholly mistaken notion and belief on your part; it is inaccurate as an opinion and as a fact, and since it is you have no business at all, in my opinion, presently it on here as a fact which you just did. If that is just your opinon then say that and qualify that remark of yours with the fact it is just your opinion.
Behr did write some of the articles and ideas he had as a direct result of the Crane debate because in a few of them he addressed Crane directly within those articles. Some of those articles he actually edited and republished later with the removal of some of the critcial things he had said directly in the previous articles about Crane and to Crane.
Apparently you're not aware of that and the reason must be you simply haven't read all of what Behr wrote during that Crane debate. There is nothing to be ashamed of in that vein, as one of the real ironies here is the extent of what Behr wrote, including what he wrote before, during and after that debate has never been collected in any single source record such as a book. Some of us have all of it (that's extant) but most don't. Apparently you fall squarely into the latter category and it certainly shows in how you are approaching and discussing this subject of the Crane/Behr debate and the importance of the issues discussed during that debate back then.
I'm pretty confident Bob Crosby had them all when he wrote the essay "Joshua Crane" and that is why he made the following remark which is accurate in the way he described the Crane/Behr debate:
"Perhaps that is why they drilled down to the central issues in golf architecture more perceptively and more honestly than any public debate about golf architecture before or since."
Again, that Tom MacWood does not seem to see the importance of those central issues in golf architecture that were discussed and debated in that Crane/Behr debate is probably of very small moment in the broad scheme of things. It was Bob's hope, and mine as well, that others would see the importance in the central issues in golf and in golf architecture that both inspired and was that debate not so much as some historical curiosity but for a discussion and understanding on golf and golf architecture for today and for the future. And that is why Bob Crosby reprised the issues discussed and debated back then between primarily Crane and Behr and MacKenzie et al and even used a few new and far more clear terms to describe and explain what those issues were really all about.
You seem to think if some debate or instance in the past was not of some great importance or moment back then it has no business being reprised and discussed today. In that sentiment, assumption and opinion you pretty much miss the larger issue here and the real importance of why Crosby chose to reprise this debate and write the excellent essay he did on the issues that were that debate.
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Did Bob acknowledge the American approach to golf architecture?
Did Bob acknowledge the differences between the British and American approach to golf architecture?
Did Bob acknowledge the American-British debate predated Crane (continued on afterward)?
Did Bob acknowledge Crane's thought on golf architecture were typical of the American movement?
I don't believe he did, and as result he missed the much more important story IMO.
Tom, my response to you on this point would be - Bob Crosby's essay wasn't about the American approach to architecture, about the differences between British and American approaches, about the historical timing of any American vs British debate, or about the degree to which Crane represented American ideas at that time. At least from my reading. Those ideas appear to be important to you, and I look forward to your essay on the subject. I can see from what you've written here that those ideas could be connected to the issues that Bob wrote about, but I can also see that his essay stands perfectly well on its own without touching on those ideas. Am I making sense?
I'd be interested in reading your footnotes to Bob Crosby's essay, if you're still sending them out.
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Kirk:
Good post and good point. Bob Crosby's essay was not specificaly about those things MacWood mentioned and asked about. However, he asked if Bob Crosby's essay acknowledged them and it did. I guess Tom MacWood must have missed them. Bob Crosby's essay had an awful lot in footnotes. Personally, I thought a lot what was in the footnotes should've been in the essay itself.
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Tom MacWood:
You've made your points there. You've made those points a number of times about this essay. Bob Crosby answered those points on Reply #142 but as usual you've completely ignored his answers to you as you seem to do on most all discussions on this website.
You're certainly welcome to your opinions and your points. Perhaps the best that can be done on a website like this one is to put one's points out there and just see how others react to them and discuss them. It doesn't look to me that many on here or elsewhere endorse your points, your opinions and your MO of discussion on here. So what does that ultimately say?
Sometimes some put forth a premise and of necessity most of the rest of what they assume and conclude rests on the accuracy of that premise. You said that Max Behr had developed his ideas on golf architecture prior to the Crane debate and not as a result of it. While that may be true to some extent with some of Behr's ideas on golf and architecture it doesn't seem to me we can be that aware of what some of those ideas of his were because before the Crane debate he hadn't written them. Matter of fact, some of what Behr said as a result of that debate with Crane were fairly different from ideas he had had or that he had expressed on architecture previous to that debate (as Crosby said, some issues because of that debate were drilled down to far deeper and Behr was the primary one to do that during that debate).
But again, you say that Behr did not write his ideas as a result of the Crane debate. THAT, I'm afraid, is simply a wholly mistaken notion and belief on your part; it is inaccurate as an opinion and as a fact, and since it is you have no business at all, in my opinion, presently it on here as a fact which you just did. If that is just your opinon then say that and qualify that remark of yours with the fact it is just your opinion.
Behr did write some of the articles and ideas he had as a direct result of the Crane debate because in a few of them he addressed Crane directly within those articles. Some of those articles he actually edited and republished later with the removal of some of the critcial things he had said directly in the previous articles about Crane and to Crane.
Apparently you're not aware of that and the reason must be you simply haven't read all of what Behr wrote during that Crane debate. There is nothing to be ashamed of in that vein, as one of the real ironies here is the extent of what Behr wrote, including what he wrote before, during and after that debate has never been collected in any single source record such as a book. Some of us have all of it (that's extant) but most don't. Apparently you fall squarely into the latter category and it certainly shows in how you are approaching and discussing this subject of the Crane/Behr debate and the importance of the issues discussed during that debate back then.
I'm pretty confident Bob Crosby had them all when he wrote the essay "Joshua Crane" and that is why he made the following remark which is accurate in the way he described the Crane/Behr debate:
"Perhaps that is why they drilled down to the central issues in golf architecture more perceptively and more honestly than any public debate about golf architecture before or since."
Again, that Tom MacWood does not seem to see the importance of those central issues in golf architecture that were discussed and debated in that Crane/Behr debate is probably of very small moment in the broad scheme of things. It was Bob's hope, and mine as well, that others would see the importance in the central issues in golf and in golf architecture that both inspired and was that debate not so much as some historical curiosity but for a discussion and understanding on golf and golf architecture for today and for the future. And that is why Bob Crosby reprised the issues discussed and debated back then between primarily Crane and Behr and MacKenzie et al and even used a few new and far more clear terms to describe and explain what those issues were really all about.
You seem to think if some debate or instance in the past was not of some great importance or moment back then it has no business being reprised and discussed today. In that sentiment, assumption and opinion you pretty much miss the larger issue here and the real importance of why Crosby chose to reprise this debate and write the excellent essay he did on the issues that were that debate.
TEP
I believe the reason very few have participated in this discussion is the same reason very few participated in the thread that originally introduced Bob's essay. There is little interest in the Crane debates, and lessening interest in golf architecture history on GCA in general.
Regarding Behr using the Crane debate as a vehicle to discuss his ideas, I would agree, but that is not what Bob's essay says, he claimed Behr developed his ideas because of Crane. And ultimately what were the results of these debates, I've asked the question numerous times and no one has been able or willing to answer my question. So I'll ask it again, what was the result of the Crane debates, what architectural developments came from it?
It was an excellent essay, but there were a number of historical inaccuracies and crucial omissions. I believe what happened in this case was the theory was hatched before conducting his research, instead of allowing his research to form the piece. Bob has been discussing this theory for a long time, and at one time it was even more elaborate.
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Did Bob acknowledge the American approach to golf architecture?
Did Bob acknowledge the differences between the British and American approach to golf architecture?
Did Bob acknowledge the American-British debate predated Crane (continued on afterward)?
Did Bob acknowledge Crane's thought on golf architecture were typical of the American movement?
I don't believe he did, and as result he missed the much more important story IMO.
Tom, my response to you on this point would be - Bob Crosby's essay wasn't about the American approach to architecture, about the differences between British and American approaches, about the historical timing of any American vs British debate, or about the degree to which Crane represented American ideas at that time. At least from my reading. Those ideas appear to be important to you, and I look forward to your essay on the subject. I can see from what you've written here that those ideas could be connected to the issues that Bob wrote about, but I can also see that his essay stands perfectly well on its own without touching on those ideas. Am I making sense?
I'd be interested in reading your footnotes to Bob Crosby's essay, if you're still sending them out.
I just sent it.
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Did Bob acknowledge the American approach to golf architecture?
Did Bob acknowledge the differences between the British and American approach to golf architecture?
Did Bob acknowledge the American-British debate predated Crane (continued on afterward)?
Did Bob acknowledge Crane's thought on golf architecture were typical of the American movement?
I don't believe he did, and as result he missed the much more important story IMO.
Tom, my response to you on this point would be - Bob Crosby's essay wasn't about the American approach to architecture, about the differences between British and American approaches, about the historical timing of any American vs British debate, or about the degree to which Crane represented American ideas at that time. At least from my reading. Those ideas appear to be important to you, and I look forward to your essay on the subject. I can see from what you've written here that those ideas could be connected to the issues that Bob wrote about, but I can also see that his essay stands perfectly well on its own without touching on those ideas. Am I making sense?
I'd be interested in reading your footnotes to Bob Crosby's essay, if you're still sending them out.
Kirk
I would agree that Bob was focused on the Crane debates, and not on those other ideas, which is fine. However IMO Bob's essay exaggerates Crane's importance, the impact of his rating system, and the length of time the rating system was actually in use. And bob does try to tie Crane to popular American architectural ideas, so I think my bring up the American-British debate is appropriate and would have been appropriate in his essay.
The reason I brought up the British-American debate in my response you quoted was a response to TEP idiotic post that I was simply mirroring what Bob wrote in his essay.
When Crane wrote his original piece in British Golf Illustrated he had only been playing golf for a few years. He was virtually unknown in golfing circles in the US, and totally unknown in Britain. Why did Croome give him a platform?
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Tom MacWood:
You've made your points there. You've made those points a number of times about this essay. Bob Crosby answered those points on Reply #142 but as usual you've completely ignored his answers to you as you seem to do on most all discussions on this website.
You're certainly welcome to your opinions and your points. Perhaps the best that can be done on a website like this one is to put one's points out there and just see how others react to them and discuss them. It doesn't look to me that many on here or elsewhere endorse your points, your opinions and your MO of discussion on here. So what does that ultimately say?
Sometimes some put forth a premise and of necessity most of the rest of what they assume and conclude rests on the accuracy of that premise. You said that Max Behr had developed his ideas on golf architecture prior to the Crane debate and not as a result of it. While that may be true to some extent with some of Behr's ideas on golf and architecture it doesn't seem to me we can be that aware of what some of those ideas of his were because before the Crane debate he hadn't written them. Matter of fact, some of what Behr said as a result of that debate with Crane were fairly different from ideas he had had or that he had expressed on architecture previous to that debate (as Crosby said, some issues because of that debate were drilled down to far deeper and Behr was the primary one to do that during that debate).
But again, you say that Behr did not write his ideas as a result of the Crane debate. THAT, I'm afraid, is simply a wholly mistaken notion and belief on your part; it is inaccurate as an opinion and as a fact, and since it is you have no business at all, in my opinion, presently it on here as a fact which you just did. If that is just your opinon then say that and qualify that remark of yours with the fact it is just your opinion.
Behr did write some of the articles and ideas he had as a direct result of the Crane debate because in a few of them he addressed Crane directly within those articles. Some of those articles he actually edited and republished later with the removal of some of the critcial things he had said directly in the previous articles about Crane and to Crane.
Apparently you're not aware of that and the reason must be you simply haven't read all of what Behr wrote during that Crane debate. There is nothing to be ashamed of in that vein, as one of the real ironies here is the extent of what Behr wrote, including what he wrote before, during and after that debate has never been collected in any single source record such as a book. Some of us have all of it (that's extant) but most don't. Apparently you fall squarely into the latter category and it certainly shows in how you are approaching and discussing this subject of the Crane/Behr debate and the importance of the issues discussed during that debate back then.
I'm pretty confident Bob Crosby had them all when he wrote the essay "Joshua Crane" and that is why he made the following remark which is accurate in the way he described the Crane/Behr debate:
"Perhaps that is why they drilled down to the central issues in golf architecture more perceptively and more honestly than any public debate about golf architecture before or since."
Again, that Tom MacWood does not seem to see the importance of those central issues in golf architecture that were discussed and debated in that Crane/Behr debate is probably of very small moment in the broad scheme of things. It was Bob's hope, and mine as well, that others would see the importance in the central issues in golf and in golf architecture that both inspired and was that debate not so much as some historical curiosity but for a discussion and understanding on golf and golf architecture for today and for the future. And that is why Bob Crosby reprised the issues discussed and debated back then between primarily Crane and Behr and MacKenzie et al and even used a few new and far more clear terms to describe and explain what those issues were really all about.
You seem to think if some debate or instance in the past was not of some great importance or moment back then it has no business being reprised and discussed today. In that sentiment, assumption and opinion you pretty much miss the larger issue here and the real importance of why Crosby chose to reprise this debate and write the excellent essay he did on the issues that were that debate.
TEP
I believe the reason very few have participated in this discussion is the same reason very few participated in the thread that originally introduced Bob's essay. There is little interest in the Crane debates, and lessening interest in golf architecture history on GCA in general.
Regarding Behr using the Crane debate as a vehicle to discuss his ideas, I would agree, but that is not what Bob's essay says, he claimed Behr developed his ideas because of Crane. And ultimately what were the results of these debates, I've asked the question numerous times and no one has been able or willing to answer my question. So I'll ask it again, what was the result of the Crane debates, what architectural developments came from it?
It was an excellent essay, but there were a number of historical inaccuracies and crucial omissions. I believe what happened in this case was the theory was hatched before conducting his research, instead of allowing his research to form the piece. Bob has been discussing this theory for a long time, and at one time it was even more elaborate.
Tommy Mac
There is little interest in gca or its history period. Nor are there any particular aspects of gca or its history terribly important. It has nothing to do with this particular debate. Most are probably like me, there isn't much point in getting too involved as the lines are drawn in the sand as is always the case with you and TomP (and for that matter myself on this subject). The outcome is all too predictable unless one wants to invest huge amounts of time to proving points raised by endless questioning (see your most recent post) which doesn't lead to any conclusions. It is especially off-putting when all the snippets in the world prove very little. Instead they offer the merest of glimpses at specific points in time into the minds of the ODGs. In other words, folks are presenting opinions with a scarity of info to back it up. That is the way it must be for the really interesting stuff.
Ciao
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Sean
I disagree, and I think most educated people would also disagree, history is very important. You've obviously not been following this particular thread, the disagreement is between Bob and myself. TEP's involvement has been mostly as a cheerleader, and a general fly in the ointment. He has added nothing of substance to the discussion.
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Sean
I disagree, and I think most educated people would also disagree, history is very important. You've obviously not been following this particular thread, the disagreement is between Bob and myself. TEP's involvement has been mostly as a cheerleader, and a general fly in the ointment. He has added nothing of substance to the discussion.
Tommy Mac
This is a typical response from you. Of course most educated people would agree history is important and of course most educated people would agree that gca history is not terribly important. What was the point of your reply other than to act a not so subtle put down? Its that sort of stuff that keeps people from participating in these sorts of threads, but then most educated people would agree on that.
Ciao
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"There is little interest in gca or its history period. Nor are there any particular aspects of gca or its history terribly important."
I was simply disagreeing with your comment about the importance of history, and I wasn't being subtle.
"It is especially off-putting when all the snippets in the world prove very little. Instead they offer the merest of glimpses at specific points in time into the minds of the ODGs. In other words, folks are presenting opinions with a scarity of info to back it up. That is the way it must be for the really interesting stuff."
And speaking of put downs...could you explain the purpose of this very broad statement? A random shot in the dark? Your contrarian instincts getting the best of you? I may not agree with the Bob's essay but I respect all the work that went into it, and I hope he does the same for my counter essay. I think we both presented more than a few snippets.
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"There is little interest in gca or its history period. Nor are there any particular aspects of gca or its history terribly important."
I was simply disagreeing with your comment about the importance of history.
"It is especially off-putting when all the snippets in the world prove very little. Instead they offer the merest of glimpses at specific points in time into the minds of the ODGs. In other words, folks are presenting opinions with a scarity of info to back it up. That is the way it must be for the really interesting stuff."
And speaking of put downs...could you explain the purpose of this very broad statement? A random shot in the dark? Your contratian instincts getting the best of you? I may not agree with the Bob's essay but I respect all the work that went into it, and I hope he does the same for my counter essay.
Tommy Mac
I am merely placing gca in context. I am in no way being disrespectful of you or Bob. I enjoyed Bob's piece and I enjoy all of your pieces. They all provoke thought and further my appreciation of gca.
Ciao
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TMac,
Regarding your question of "What influence did these debates have on the future of gca?", if you know, what years did Stanley Thompson use his progression chart for routing courses with a balance of hole and shot distances? What do you think his infulences were?
He started his career in 1922 and got it rolling with some of his best designs a few years later, when these debates were raging. They may or may not have been an influence on him developing these charts, and moving design to a more "scientific" level. Or, it might be a combination of influences.
In later years, I have seen similar charts printed in books by Cornish/Graves (with Cornish being a direct professional descendant of ST and Hurdzan. And I have privately seen an old chart by William Mitchell that prescribed "perfect" widths of fw, green openings, etc. There is no doubt that many gca got into mathmatical measurements in design, for balance if nothing else as a PART of the process to varying degrees.
Now, if you are arguing that there were other influences on subsequent gca's besides Crane, I agree, as I am sure he was not the only guy out there that had the idea of applying measurements and numeric scores to different aspects of golf design. But, he did get a platform and therefore had a big role in bringing those ideas forward for debate during the Golden Age, which may have influenced many then and after. Isit possible to be more specific? Probably not.
No doubt that the whole thought process of gca is a long continum, and its probably wrong to focus on one aspect too heavily as any particular "AHA" moment. I don't know that Bob really did that, and I believe had his essay wandered too far into other elements, it would have lost its strength, even if you believe he wandered into some hypebolic overdrive considering that one topic!
One last question - where might I find the best short read on the American/British gca debate you mention? Thanks in advanc for your interest in gca history and any answers you might give. I had never really thought about where those charts came from, since I had seen most of them from guys who started their careers in the 1950's and until Bob's Crane essay, shall I say, (Sargent Shultz voice....."I knew NOTHINK1") about earlier thinking on the subject.
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Apropos of nothing, the last few exchanges reminded me of my "Garbage Collector" theory (which applies to jobs/people like doctors and police officers and the Crane-Behr debates too). Okay, so a fellow goes around a picks up the garbage on Monday. Great. But next Monday, there's a whole new pile of garbage to pick it. It never ends. The fellow might eventually say to himself "What is the point of my job? I go around every week and yet there is no end, there is never an end, to all the gabage". Ahh, yes, but imagine if he didn't pick up the garbage one week? Or the next? The point being that the garbage collector isn't so much making things better as making sure they don't get much much worse. And the point being, can you imagine what might've happened to golf course architecture if Crane was allowed to formulate and popularize his 'system' without the Behrs and MacKenzies of the world arguing back? Maybe Behr didn't make things better; he just made sure they didn't get a lot lot worse.
Please carry on. My 2 cents have been spent!
Peter
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History is of course vitally important, but I don't see the debate between Crane and Behr/MacKenzie (or the points of few that they represent) as a museum piece. One of the most fascinating aspect of reading Bob's essay is, to me, that the debate is as alive today as it was then (even if a lot of the folks who espouse opinions on either side of the matter aren't really currently debating, just happily going about their business believing what they believe).
What is the approach we've seen the USGA take towards preparing some of the courses for the US Open recently other than an expression of some of Crane's points of view (even if Crane's name never crossed their minds)? Narrowed, one-option fairways with graduated rough to "proportionately punish" sounds a lot like Crane to me. And there are those on this board and elsewhere who decry that approach.
Crane felt like his system was "objective," and therefore in some way immune to criticism. In some ways I think that there are lots of folks who feel the same way about their own opinions, that they are so "apparently true" or factual that to disagree is some sort of idiocy or denial.
And so the debate continues, whether folks are aware of it or not.
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"History is of course vitally important, but I don't see the debate between Crane and Behr/MacKenzie (or the points of few that they represent) as a museum piece. One of the most fascinating aspect of reading Bob's essay is, to me, that the debate is as alive today as it was then (even if a lot of the folks who espouse opinions on either side of the matter aren't really currently debating, just happily going about their business believing what they believe).
What is the approach we've seen the USGA take towards preparing some of the courses for the US Open recently other than an expression of some of Crane's points of view (even if Crane's name never crossed their minds)? Narrowed, one-option fairways with graduated rough to "proportionately punish" sounds a lot like Crane to me. And there are those on this board and elsewhere who decry that approach.
Crane felt like his system was "objective," and therefore in some way immune to criticism. In some ways I think that there are lots of folks who feel the same way about their own opinions, that they are so "apparently true" or factual that to disagree is some sort of idiocy or denial."
Bravo Kirk Gill;
I think this was the point and purpose of Bob Crosby in repising that Crane/Behr debate. For some odd reason an analyst like MacWood thinks that debate and discussion cannot be important now and in the future if the subject and event wasn't historically important or significant back then. What could be more antithethical to intellectual and sophisticated thought, debate and discussion, and frankly education than that?
"And so the debate continues, whether folks are aware of it or not."
I think Bob Crosby's point is that, and that it should continue, not because it is some interesting historical curiosity from the past but that it is incredibly relevent now and in the future!
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History is of course vitally important, but I don't see the debate between Crane and Behr/MacKenzie (or the points of few that they represent) as a museum piece. One of the most fascinating aspect of reading Bob's essay is, to me, that the debate is as alive today as it was then (even if a lot of the folks who espouse opinions on either side of the matter aren't really currently debating, just happily going about their business believing what they believe).
What is the approach we've seen the USGA take towards preparing some of the courses for the US Open recently other than an expression of some of Crane's points of view (even if Crane's name never crossed their minds)? Narrowed, one-option fairways with graduated rough to "proportionately punish" sounds a lot like Crane to me. And there are those on this board and elsewhere who decry that approach.
Crane felt like his system was "objective," and therefore in some way immune to criticism. In some ways I think that there are lots of folks who feel the same way about their own opinions, that they are so "apparently true" or factual that to disagree is some sort of idiocy or denial.
And so the debate continues, whether folks are aware of it or not.
Kirk
Crane did not advocate a proportional punishment or graduated rough. He was opposed to the severity of water and OB as hazards, but that is a different story. There were number of folks who were opposed to OB and water as hazards because of no chance for recovery.
The USGA began growing the rough and pinching the fairways before Crane, and that is not something he would have favored anyway.
Was Crane opposed to options?
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Continuing my recent perusal of The Architectural Side of Golf, I came across this passage:
If at Gullane the architecture is on the whole agreeably natural, Muirfield supplies a significant contrast and demands some notice for two reasons; because, firstly, it is a modern course, constructed severely on the penal principle; and secondly, because it represents a conversion from a course of older strategic variety, thereby courting a comparison which may be odious but is none the less inevitable.
...Probably no other course has attracted quite the same discrepency of opinion. Mr Joshua Crane, an American critic, has placed it first in the list of our leading courses (with St Andrews, sad to relate, last).
...Popular opinion, it must in all fairness be said, inclines to favour the course as it stands...Be that as it may, it is not difficult to discover the reasons that account for a possibly misguided preference. The fairways are broad and generally straight, clearly defined by avenues of bunkers to indicate the route to the greens; the greens too are large and not too dangerously guarded except in extreme instances; the nature of the shot is clearly shown by this method, and needs little reflection beyond the manner of its execution; the position and number of the bunkers are not too terrifying on a calm day to the expert player. But when the ground is fast and a stiff wind is blowing and the course is stretched to its fullest capacity of seven thousand yards there can be no question of its being a test of both power and accuracy. These considerations alone may render it acceptable for an Open Championship; but for the finer shades of match play in the Amateur the older course had many things to commend it.
...But whether we applaud Muirfield as the culminating point of modern attainment or are tempted to criticise it for lack of imagination and the absence of that economy of means which is the secret of great art, we can unite in admiring...
This is a remarkable passage! At once Simpson seems to be stating that the best players are too good for his brand of strategic design which seems to revolve heavily around less is more especially with bunkering. Furthermore, Simpson seems to be saying that where bunkers are needed is near greens much more than near fairways. It is commonly thought that Simpson was the biggest promoter of strategic design back in the day, but what surprised me was how he categorized Colt's work at Muirfield as penal. Okay, I have long believed that the idea of "penal" architecture is a sliding scale and has in recent decades has come to mean something much more draconian than the design at Muirfield or anything Colt dreamed of. Of course, this means that the idea of strategic architecture has moved further toward the penal end and Simpson represents the extreme end of strategic. Finally, Simpson seems to be acknowledging that the Colt hybrid penal/strategic style of design was in ascendancy (something I very much believe as I think Colt is really the father of modern design). I think this is particularly interesting in light of the work Simpson did to Muirfield and Sunny New and how some of these changes were reversed at a later date.
In any case, above is a mention of Crane and the ideas he espoused becoming more popular. Conversely, I think we can see how the Simpson version of the Strategic School essentially died a death and has somehow been resurrected in recent years - likely to the same cries of anguish and joy that were heard in Simpson's time. In terms of architecture, there are likely not many more important lines of distinction and debate - especially if you take the view as I do that the American/British debate is really about penal/strategic architecture, but with more clearly defined sides to the debate.
Ciao
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As I point out in my essay I think a case could be made that Colt was the biggest influence on the American movement.
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"Was Crane opposed to options?"
No, of course not, but Crane was opposed to some of the kinds of options the likes of Behr and Mackenzie advocated during the Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie debate. Even types of options were mentioned during the Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie debate that Crane opposed but Behr/Mackenzie advocated.
Generally Crane advocated what he referred to as control on incremental shots and Crane opposed the idea of luck in golf by suggesting ways via architecture to minimize it. Behr and Mackenzie opposed any effort to minimize luck.
Crane advocated that a badly missed shot be directly penalized and rough was one of the architectural tools Crane advocated for in that goal. Behr and Mackenzie in many instances opposed that instead advocating what Behr referred to as the architectural or strategic "unity" of golf holes. Ultimately, Behr and MacKenzie advocated for architecture with no rough.
In my opinion, it is very difficult to understand the importance of the Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie debate without completely reading and fully appreciating particularly all that Max Behr wrote about architecture as a result of that debate.
As to who or what was the biggest influence on the American Movement in Architecture (which of course would need to be defined more specifically than just the "American Movement" ;) ), I've always felt that the INLAND architecture that began to emanate out of the English Heathlands and its notable group of architects around the turn of the century may've been the greatest influence on not just American architecture but all architecture to come all over the world and particularly on inland sites.
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Reducing the element of luck in golf, and making the game more fair, had been going on for a long time before Crane, partricularly in America. The advent of the Haskell and steel shafts, the elimination of the stymie, graduated tees, improved and more consistant turf conditions, elimination of blind hazards, blind greens, and the reduction of cross-hazards, etc. Crane was not advocating anything new, he was just incorporating popular theory into his rating system.
Control is an important aspect of strategic golf.
"Placing a premium on accuracy with due consideration for length should be the aim of all men who design golf courses, for accuracy in play signifies skill and skill is generally the master of brute force." ~~ William Flynn
Where did Crane suggest control on incremental shots?
Rough was a design element utilized by all golf architects.
The American movement as defined in my essay was a reaction to the ciriticism of American golf courses, and American golf in general, by Vardon (and Darwin) circa 1913-14.
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TMac,
This quote from Crane in Bob's article seemingly confirms that Crane was as much a recorder of trends rather than a setter of trends:
"No! Golf course development is on the right track, and those who take the other attitude are already finding themselves side-tracked by their own ignorance and lack of comprehension of the demands of human nature for fair play."
It has been pointed out that Mac and Behr certainly favored less rough, and old pix of their courses sometimes show all one height of cut out to the natives. Other photos may show rough, but its hard to know if they had any control over their designs once they were built.
In essence, one main point of this debate seems to be the same debate we have now over rough at Augusta. Or like the general debates we hear from Tour Pros today about "fitting the eye", proportional punishment, etc. It isn't a new debate now, and I agree with you, it probably wasn't a new debate then. I suspect the debate about fainess of golf courses started with the first lost competitive match back in the 1400's or so.
Still, that Crane was the one who formalized the debate with his ranking system, he gets some credit for perhap moving the long, slow debate ahead in a quantum leap.
What gets me about his (or mine, or anyone's) ranking system, is that no matter how hard anyone tries, its still subjective, not objective. He seems to easily move from his point system to design recommendations like "remove that hill for vision", and "make that carry more fearsome" and "bring those bunkers more into play" which are all still opinions.
I wonder if his relative lack of standing as a gca expert caused him to try to put his opinions forth as a "scientific" opinion to counter those opinons of those merely "in the biz". And vice versa, I wonder how much critique was really being peeved at an outsider scoring any points whatsoever in a gca debate.
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"These proposed 'improvements' were, in essence, the application of Crane’s larger reformist program to specific features of a given hole. His rankings were the business end of the big stick with which Crane wanted to push golf design into a new and better era."
I agree, your quote does confirm Crane was no trend setter. He was simply mirroring popular opinion. Not only was he not a reformist, as Bob suggested, his rating system really wasn't focused on golf architecture. The system was designed to identify and rate championship courses, to identify the best venues for championships. He was not trying to push a design movement. Hell half the formula was based on condition and upkeep (which included caddies) - not something designed - and that fact was completely ignored in Bob's essay.
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Tom MacWood:
AGAIN, you seem to think that Crane had to have been a trend-setter for the debate he had in the 1920s with Behr/MacKenzie to have been a most important one.
I've never understood why you think that if Crane did not originate some of the issues that were developed in that debate that that would make that debate unimportant. The fact is even if Crane did not originate some of the issues of that debate for some reason he did inspire the likes of particularly Behr to articulate some fundamental issues to do with golf and architecture that had never before been articulated in that way. That is what was important about that debate in the evolution and history of golf and architecture.
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Furthermore, a few times on recent posts you've mentioned a number of things you pointed out in 'my essay.' What essay would that be? If you're referring to what you wrote and sent to some of us-----eg the same thing you mentioned on here that Ran Morrissett did not put on this website because he felt, as you said, it was too controversial ;), I doubt anyone would call THAT an essay. It was more like some bizarre and petty attempt to counterpoint Bob Crosby's excellent essay entitled "Joshua Crane" by essentially trying to change the subject and theme of Crosby's essay and implying it was unimportant and the true story surrounding the Crane/Behr debate was in fact much larger, perhaps even including what you refer to as 'the American Movement' in golf architecture.
Perhaps you should consider writing your own essay on that subject because your "counterpoint" of Crosby's essay was neither that or particularly useful in any way or sense.
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TEP
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? I'm still waiting for someone tell me what resulted from this important debate. Did it make a sound? I don't think this debate compares in importance to the impact of Vardon's criticism, or Taylor's for that matter. What do you think?
I will admit it is unorthodox, but I would say mine is an essay within an essay. It was the only effective way I could deal with all the areas Bob addressed. I would never write an essay that dealt with the realities of the American movement, the Crane-Behr debate, Mallabey-Deeley & JH Taylor, RTJ and the USGA. They are mostly unrelated and the result would have been an incoherent mess, which is why I chose the footnote method. An essay on the American movement would be interesting I think.
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"TEP
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? I'm still waiting for someone tell me what resulted from this important debate. Did it make a sound? I don't think this debate compares in importance to the impact of Vardon's criticism, or Taylor's for that matter. What do you think?"
What do I think of those issues you mentioned and the question you asked above? Do you really want to know, Tom MacWood? ;)
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Yes, please answer it, and while you're at it answer the other question I asked that you missed. What were the concrete results from this important debate? Where did Crane suggest control on incremental shots?
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Yes, please answer it, and while you're at it answer the other question I asked that you missed. What were the concrete results from this important debate? Where did Crane suggest control on incremental shots?
Tommy Mac
What are the CONCRETE results of any philosophical debate conducted through magazines about gca? This is a question that needn't be answered to make this particular debate in important.
Ciao
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The one that immediately comes to mind is the controversey and ensuing debate caused by Harry Vardon's critique of American golf architecture in 1914, whcih sparked the American movement. The Best Hole Discussion, which is what inspired CB Macdonald. Horcace Hutchinon's criticism of Boston golf architecture, which was followed by a debate, some serious soul searching, and ultimated a redesign movement in that city. The amateur vs professional architecture debate in Britain, which settled that convtroversey once and for all in the UK, and opened the flood gates for amateur architects. The Haskel debate, which preceded the start of the so called golden age.
I wrote an essay on the history of criticism and debate for the magazine Golf Architecture. I can forward it to you if you'd like.
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The one that immediately comes to mind is the controversey and ensuing debate caused by Harry Vardon's critique of American golf architecture in 1914. The Best Hole Discussion, which is what inspired CB Macdonald. Horcace Hutchinon's criticism of Boston golf architecture, which was followed by a debate, some serious soul searching, and ultimated a redesign movement in that city. The amateur vs professional architecture debate in Britain. The Haskel debate. I wrote an essay on the subject for the magazine Golf Architecture.
Tommy Mac
I thought you were looking for concrete results of debates? As in direct, causal relationship - meaning you are placing way too emphasis on "the debate" and very little and on the men of action. Your suggestions are far from concrete results. We can extrapolate all day on the matter, but if concrete results is the measure of importance on a debate than we may as well outlaw debating.
So now Harry Vardon is responsible for the rise of good American architecture? What? Before Vardon nobody thought architecture could be better?
The best hole discussion was responsible for the work CB Mac did? What? CB Mac never had a a thought on this matter previously?
HH is responsible for redesign efforts in Boston? Huh?
What came of the Haskell debate? The debate occurred, but regardless, innovation marched forward. Was it ever in doubt?
Ciao
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"I will admit it is unorthodox, but I would say mine is an essay within an essay. It was the only effective way I could deal with all the areas Bob addressed. I would never write an essay that dealt with the realities of the American movement, the Crane-Behr debate, Mallabey-Deeley & JH Taylor, RTJ and the USGA. They are mostly unrelated and the result would have been an incoherent mess, which is why I chose the footnote method. An essay on the American movement would be interesting I think."
Tom MacWood:
After having carefully read your "counterpoint" to Bob Crosby's essay, the thing you call your essay or your essay within an essay (his essay), I would say yours is unorthodox and I would also say that it is what the inconherent mess is.
Your whole approach on this website and this thread to Bob Crosby's essay and the issues dealt with in it seem to be accurately reflected in your own remark above in which you say in one sentence you would never write an essay that dealt with the realities of the American movement and then in the last sentence of the same remark you say you think an essay on the American movement would be interesting! ;)
I suppose one should take that to mean you think an essay on the American movement that does not deal with the realities of the American movement is what would be interesting. ???
These kinds of incoherent and contradictory musings and ramblings on your part on these posts seem to be most representative of your approach and MO.
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Tmac,
Good answers....now, was that so hard? ;D
I gather the Lido contest would be in there somewhere as a big influencer. Other than that, I would surmise all those debates, articles, contests, had an influence on gca, as did the Crane debate and its just conjecture how much each was relatively. But, as I pointed out, starting with Thompson some gca's used charts to evaluate designs, so I would say Crane had some influence if his charts were the first widely known ones.
Can someone point me to a copy of the so called Boston debate?
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Sean
Yes, Vardon's criticism (and Darwin's) sparked the American movement. Have you read my counterpoint essay?
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"Yes, Vardon's criticism (and Darwin's) sparked the American movement."
Depending on what is meant by the American movement, that remark most certainly would be quite the analytical stretch! Perhaps you should do another essay comparing and contrasting which was the greater influence on early American architecture, Vardon and Darwin or the "Arts and Crafts" Movement. :o
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Whiile I don't disagree with TMac, its just hard to say what influenced who from 100 years distant.
That said, if then was like now, and a guy like Vardon spoke, I would guess it would carry more weight than a guy like Crane, just as a gca comment by Jack Nicklaus would now carry more wieght in public than any comment I might make, or a critic like Brad Klien, Geoff Shak, etc.
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The one that immediately comes to mind is the controversey and ensuing debate caused by Harry Vardon's critique of American golf architecture in 1914. The Best Hole Discussion, which is what inspired CB Macdonald. Horcace Hutchinon's criticism of Boston golf architecture, which was followed by a debate, some serious soul searching, and ultimated a redesign movement in that city. The amateur vs professional architecture debate in Britain. The Haskel debate. I wrote an essay on the subject for the magazine Golf Architecture.
Tommy Mac
I thought you were looking for concrete results of debates? As in direct, causal relationship - meaning you are placing way too emphasis on "the debate" and very little and on the men of action. Your suggestions are far from concrete results. We can extrapolate all day on the matter, but if concrete results is the measure of importance on a debate than we may as well outlaw debating.
So now Harry Vardon is responsible for the rise of good American architecture? What? Before Vardon nobody thought architecture could be better?
I take it you have not read my counterpoint essay.
The best hole discussion was responsible for the work CB Mac did? What? CB Mac never had a a thought on this matter previously?
I take it you have not read CBM's autobiography.
HH is responsible for redesign efforts in Boston? Huh?
I take it you are not familiar with HHG tour of the US in 1910.
What came of the Haskell debate? The debate occurred, but regardless, innovation marched forward. Was it ever in doubt?
Innovation and progress is inevitable but there is no way golf architecture would have developed as quickly had it not been for the Haskel. The popularity of the game exploded with its introduction, as did the redesign and design movement to keep up with popularity and to keep older courses viable. Cause and effect.
Ciao
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What resulted from the important Crane debate?
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"That said, if then was like now, and a guy like Vardon spoke, I would guess it would carry more weight than a guy like Crane, just as a gca comment by Jack Nicklaus would now carry more wieght in public than any comment I might make, or a critic like Brad Klien, Geoff Shak, etc."
Jeffrey:
Actually, back then was nothing like now; there is a ton of historical written material from that time that in many ways pretty much proves the very opposite of what you just said above and THAT is what is so historically interesting about that time in architecture and architectural philosophy and debate.
At least with that "amateur/sportsman" element that got so involved in writing as well as in the creation of various really significant courses and architecture. The "professional" element in architecture had gotten very little respect from them, at least before say the late teens and early 1920s when the professional architect element really got organized and began to devote themselves soley to golf course architecture.
I do not think it was just coincidental that it was at that point that those impressive creations of the early days such as Myopia, GCGC, Oakmont, NGLA, Merion, Pine Valley et al were never begun again after that time. At that point, those "amateur/sportsmen" architects and philosophers of the early days must have felt the professional element had finally gotten good enough and there was no reason in the future to do what they had done previously with creations such as those mentioned which still today are some of the most respected courses and architecture in the world.
My feeling on that interesting evolution of that early time is not just that the professional element (or some of them) did not have the talent to do really good architecture; it was more a matter of the fact that up until the teens and early 1920s they just never really had the opportunity to spend the time it took on various projects those famous "amateur/sportsmen" had spent on theirs that made their courses and them famous.
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Jeffrey:
In many ways that kind of thing paralleled the ongoing question (I guess debate) about who the best golfers were---eg the top amateurs or the professionals. That debate (obviously fueled by the career of the great Bob Jones) would carry on perhaps even into the mid 1950s and might arguably have finally been decided in that event that became the subject of the recent book called "The Match"----- amateurs Venturi and Ward against Hogan and Nelson in a massive bet match at CPC drummed up by Coleman and Lowery. It was one helluva match of incredible golf that came down to the very last putt on the last green, and Hogan sunk it!
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"What resulted from the important Crane debate?"
It has long been my opinion that the most important thing that resulted from the Crane debate was the extensive writing that Behr did on many of the underlying fundamentals and essences of both golf and golf architecture, and even on some of the fundamental and perhaps even subliminal emotions and sentimentalities of the golfer generally, particularly towards golf course architecture.
I don't think anything half that fundamentally searching and good and important was ever done before or since.
The historic irony is it may've been partially responsible for the likes of Behr and Mackenzie to come up with a new expression in architecture that was apparently never well understood and consequently never really took hold.
But can it now, if the issues that were developed in that debate are far better understood and appreciated? It has always been my understanding that THIS is the point Bob Crosby's essay makes and it is the reason he reprised that debate and wrote about it as well as he did.
Unfortunately, we have some with the outlook Tom MacWood seems to have which is if the debate was not important back then or if it did not have a large impact back then there is no reason to assume the issues developed in that debate should ever have any impact and it is therefore unimportant or just some blip in the broad scheme of things as he has characterized it.
In my opinion, that outlook and approach is either very limited or just muddled thinking and perhaps both.
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"I take it you have not read my counterpoint essay."
I have. I read it very carefully!
"I take it you have not read CBM's autobiography"
I have. I've read it about twenty times and constantly refer to it and cite it.
"I take it you are not familiar with HH tour of the US in 1910."
I'm very familiar with it. I've read all he wrote about that tour as well as much of what was written by others about that tour and what HH said about that tour. There is no question at all there were numerous and constant examples of real competitive zeal between both sides of the Atlantic that had to do with just about every facet of golf including its architecture. At one point even the President of the United States weighed in on one of those golf controversies between America and the other side.
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"What resulted from the important Crane debate?"
It has long been my opinion that the most important thing that resulted from the Crane debate was the extensive writing that Behr did on many of the underlying fundamentals and essences of both golf and golf architecture, and even on some of the fundamental and perhaps even subliminal emotions and sentimentalities of the golfer generally, particularly towards golf course architecture.
I don't think anything half that fundamentally searching and good and important was ever done before or since.
The historic irony is it may've been partially responsible for the likes of Behr and Mackenzie to come up with a new expression in architecture that was apparently never well understood and consequently never really took hold.
But can it now, if the issues that were developed in that debate are far better understood and appreciated? It has always been my understanding that THIS is the point Bob Crosby's essay makes and it is the reason he reprised that debate and wrote about it as well as he did.
Unfortunately, we have some with the outlook Tom MacWood seems to have which is if the debate was not important back then or if it did not have a large impact back then there is no reason to assume the issues developed in that debate should ever have any impact and it is therefore unimportant or just some blip in the broad scheme of things as he has characterized it.
In my opinion, that outlook and approach is either very limited or just muddled thinking and perhaps both.
TEP
Behr wrote extensively before the debate and wrote extensively after the debate. He developed his sport/game distinction before Crane, not because of Crane as Bob suggested in his essay. So is that it?
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"TEP
Behr wrote extensively before the debate and wrote extensively after the debate. He developed his sport/game distinction before Crane, not because of Crane as Bob suggested in his essay. So is that it?"
Tom MacWood:
Yes, Behr did write extensively on architecture before the debate, and during the debate as a result of the debate, and after the debate.
When I said the following above----“It has long been my opinion that the most important thing that resulted from the Crane debate was the extensive writing that Behr did on many of the underlying fundamentals and essences of both golf and golf architecture, and even on some of the fundamental and perhaps even subliminal emotions and sentimentalities of the golfer generally, particularly towards golf course architecture”----that is not to suggest that I’m saying all Behr’s ideas on architecture or even any of his ideas on architecture were as a result of or from his debate with Crane. I am only saying that he used those ideas in his debate with Crane!
Behr wrote his ideas on the distinction of a sport and a game (in the context of golf versus other games in which a ball is vied for between human opponents unlike golf) in May 1923. That article was “Principle in Golf Architecture” and it was essentially a treatise on the necessary “naturalness” in golf and particularly golf architecture (golf’s playing fields). It was also apparently his introduction of his opposition to the on-going application and philosophy of what he referred to as the “Penal School of golf architecture.”
Behr even went on to say in that essay (“Principles of Golf Architecture, May 1923) that out of that Penal School of golf architecture the Natural School of Golf architecture was born! He even enhanced and further explained that evolution of the Natural School of golf architecture emanating out of or as a reaction to the Penal School of golf architecture by mentioning the idea that the advocates of the Natural School of golf architecture were motivated by a love of nature and were actuated by an evaluation of golf as a pastime played under the stimulus of emotion!
It does not matter at all in consideration of the importance of the issues that were discussed in the Crane/Behr debate whether Behr came up with the ideas he used in that debate before or during that debate, only that he used them in that debate.
It does not matter either if Crane was not aware or even was aware of Behr’s ideas or philosophy of the game/sport distinction before or even when he developed and wrote about his ideas of less luck and greater fairness in golf and architecture.
All that matters is that those two varying and seemingly opposed philosophies and ideas, amongst others, were used in that Crane/Behr debate, and further, those issues were, and more importantly are, extremely important!
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TEP
In his essay Bob claimed the sport/game distinction was developed by Behr during the Crane debate.
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"TEP
In his essay Bob claimed the sport/game distinction was developed by Behr during the Crane debate."
Tom MacWood:
You don't read very well or else you don't comprehend what you read very well do you? But I guess I already knew that.
Bob Crosby did not claim in his essay that the sport/game distinction was first developed by Behr during the Crane debate. Go back and read Bob's essay "Joshua Crane" again or as many times as you need to for a full understanding of what the essay actually said in this vein. Bob mentioned that the sport/game distinction was made by Behr in the early 1920s perhaps during a Rules debate with John Low.
Behr used the sport/game distinction in his May 1923 article enititled "Principles of Golf Architecture." I am not sure if that was the first time he used that distinction or if that article is the one Bob Crosby was referring to about Behr and Low and a rules debate. That article does mention the Rules of Golf and the sport/game distinction.
So again, Bob did not say Behr developed that sport/game distinction during the Behr debate; all he said is that Behr used it as a way of countering Crane's insistence on, and call for greater fairness and equity in golf as is necessary in other games in which a ball is vied for between human opponents-----UNLIKE IN GOLF!
Furthermore, you have written what you claim is an essay counterpointing Bob Crosby's essay "Joshua Crane" or you claim you wrote an essay within an essay or whatever that even you mentioned was unorthodox. No kidding! You also mentioned that Ran Morrissett refused to post it on this website because he said he thought it was too controversial. I think we are all beginning to see why Ran Morrissett may've felt your "counterpoint" or your essay or your essay within an essay, or whatever you call it ;) was too controversial-----eg you were trying to counterpoint an essay (Bob Crosby's "Joshua Crane") you neither read very carefully or fully considered or comprehended, or all of the foregoing.
And you call yourself an expert golf architecture historian/researcher/analyst/writer??
Truly amazing!! ???
As I've mentioned on this website numerous times, you certainly are a very good raw researcher as you have proven your worth for a long time in that respect by coming up with all kinds of interesting historical material but you've also proven you are sorely lacking in the historian, writer, and particularly the analyst categories, and your remark that Bob Crosby's claimed in his essay that Behr developed his sport/game distinction during the Crane debate is just another good example of that .
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TEP
So thats it? The reason the Crane debate was so important it gave Behr an opportunity to reiterate his thoughts on golf architecture?
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Tom MacWood:
To me that is the most important part of that actual debate. Numerous people criticized Crane for his ideas including Croome, Simpson, Ambrose, Mackenzie et al, but no one came close to Max Behr in articulating the specific reasons why Crane's ideas were ultimately contrary to the way golf and architecture should be in his opinion.
I feel, and have felt for a number of years that Behr's specific and detailed articulations on those subjects were and are by far and away the best ever offered on golf and architecture and I think if reprised and presented again in a more understandable form with more relevent terms (such as Equitable Architecture and C,P &P rather than Penal Architecture) they could have a great deal of use and currency for golf and architecture today and into the future. I believe Bob Crosby does as well and I think that is why he reprised the subject of that debate and wrote that excellent article entitled "Joshua Crane."
By the way, are you going to acknowledge the fact that Bob Crosby did not claim Behr's "sport/game" distinction was developed during the Crane debate, as you have claimed on here, but was done earlier, or are you going to ignore that mistake on your part too?
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Yes, I will acknowledge Bob's footnote mentioned Behr came up with Sport/Game distinction prior to Crane, but what he wrote in the main part of the excellent essay on the subject was misleading and easily misinterpreted.
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"Yes, I will acknowledge Bob's footnote mentioned Behr came up with Sport/Game distinction prior to Crane, but what he wrote in the main part of the excellent essay on the subject was misleading and easily misinterpreted."
I certainly understand. I felt Bob should've put a good deal of what was in the footnotes into the main body of the essay.
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TEP
Was the footnote included in the original version of the essay or added subsequently? I don't recall seeing it when I was writing my counter essay.
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"TEP
Was the footnote included in the original version of the essay or added subsequently? I don't recall seeing it when I was writing my counter essay."
Tom MacWood:
The footnote has always been in the essay. It was in it from the beginning and before it was posted on the "In My Opinion" section of Golfclubatlas.com.
I could see the casual reader of the essay missing it but not someone who is actually going to take the time to try to counterpoint the essay with an essay within an essay, as you call it.
With some of your essays on here and many of your opinions on this DG many have said you tend to have a preconceived theme or conclusion on the subjects you deal with and you tend to just use material you think supports that theme or conclusion and overlook, discount or rationalize away the rest. One on here with an academic background labeled your approach that way as "positivism." It seems to be an accurate description.
Perhaps you just missed that footnote about Behr's "sport/game" idea and the fact that he developed it before the Crane debate, or perhaps you just didn't want to see it so you could try to prove Crosby's essay wrong in another way.
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I don't believe it was part of the original essay, and Bob should be able to confirm that.
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"I don't believe it was part of the original essay, and Bob should be able to confirm that."
Tom MacWood:
Of course you don't believe it because if you did you might then have to admit you missed it when you did your so-called "counter-point" essay or essay with an essay or whatever it's called. And if you have to admit that then one might think perhaps you are not the expert researcher you've always claimed to be.
And of course Bob Crosby could confirm if that footnote describing that Behr's "sport/game" distinction idea came before the Crane debate was part of the original essay since he wrote the essay "Joshua Crane." ;)
However, I have a "WORD" document draft of the original essay that was done a number of months before the essay was put in this website's "In My Opinon" section that has the footnote in it, so if the footnote was not in the original essay put on here that would have to mean Crosby originally put it in his essay, then removed it, and then put it back in again.
Somehow I doubt he did that. The more logical explanation would probably be you just missed it or ignored it because you did not want to see it or acknowledge it so you could claim he was wrong about something else historically. ::)
It seems your credibility on here is sinking and considering most of what you put on this website opinion-wise that is probably as it should be.
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My word document must be different than your word document.
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"My word document must be different than your word document."
Tom MacWood:
That is probably the most deceptive and bullshit answer from you to date on here and there sure have been a whole lot of them. I think you are totally incapable of providing a straight-forward, credible and honest answer to anyone's legitimate question on here.
Why is that?
What is the chance you will even answer my questions to you on the other thread about what you said on here yesterday about the paranoia of Merion and Myopia?
I would say with your record of deception, avoidance and stupido rationalizations on here it is next to zero! ???
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Believe it or not my word document is different than yours. And I don't believe I said anything about Merion and Myopia being paranoid yesterday, but I will say you are paranoid today.
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“Believe it or not my word document is different than yours. And I don't believe I said anything about Merion and Myopia being paranoid yesterday, but I will say you are paranoid today.”
Tom MacWood:
Your WORD document---my WORD document?? ;)
How are they different? Believe it or not indeed??? ??? ::) :o
Did you not type this yesterday on the thread on here entitled, “What architectural or attribution mystery of a significant course?” on Post #35 at 8:08:36pm?
“You should have added objective competent researcher/analyst. There is the rub. For whatever reason some of these clubs are so paranoid about who gets to see those administrative records (and what might result) that they only allow access to a few insiders, and they often come with a strong attachment to the legend. The result is people like Willie Campbell, HH Barker and CBM get buried in history, and transcribed versions of the records get doctored.”
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From Post #206
“My word document must be different than your word document.”
From Post #208:
“Believe it or not my word document is different than yours. And I don't believe I said anything about Merion and Myopia being paranoid yesterday, but I will say you are paranoid today.
Tom MacWood:
Is that the message you really want to send out to the intelligent viewers and contributors on GOLFCLUBATLAS.com all over the world?
Don’t you think it’s about time you fessed up to what you said about Merion and Myopia being paranoid with this statement?
“You should have added objective competent researcher/analyst. There is the rub. For whatever reason some of these clubs are so paranoid about who gets to see those administrative records (and what might result) that they only allow access to a few insiders, and they often come with a strong attachment to the legend. The result is people like Willie Campbell, HH Barker and CBM get buried in history, and transcribed versions of the records get doctored.”
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Tom MacWood:
Just like a number of other legitimate questions put to you on this website that you deflect and refuse to answer, you're not going to explain the real reason you missed Bob Crosby's mention in his essay about when Max Behr came up with his "sport/game" distinction, are you? ??? ;)