Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture => Topic started by: Peter Pallotta on November 17, 2007, 04:40:57 PM
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…and explains why great holes aren’t copied more often.
Here’s a selection from a July 1926 article in which Crane reacts to his detractors, i.e. those who've questioned his scientific method for judging/ranking golf holes and golf courses. He specifically names/mocks Dr. Mackenzie: watch for the term ‘senile dementia’.
“….It was to be expected when a method of analyzing and comparing golf courses was first presented to the golfing public, that the devotees of those courses which had unjustified reputations for excellence would rush to their defense. It was hoped, however, that their criticism might show something constructive, and that the leading golf architects and intelligent players who were really interested in the betterment of the game might add their valuable ideas to this necessarily imperfect system, so that the result might be of great value in showing the golfing world what constituted a good golf course and why it was good.
Yet what was the apparent reaction? As was surmised, a rush to the defense of indefensible architecture, the more indefensible the more violent and illogical the defense. Not a word of careful criticism, not a line devoted to showing where the detailed analysis of any hole which rates low was weak, but a violent protest against the result, in articles which are full of generalities, quotations from golf writers and poets, truisms and axioms. Most of these articles, by the substitution of a few words could be used as a criticism of almost any view of any sport. They are strangely reminiscent of the average political speech where with a few careful substitutions the patriotic effort could be used just as well for the Republican campaign as for the Democratic.
The latest attempt is that of the British golf collaborating architect, Dr. Mackenzie, who has followed the lead of other so-called defenders of St. Andrews. Again not a constructive word which would give helpful criticism. Look at some of the generalities and personal attacks he puts before us:
"Any architect in Great Britain or U. S. says St. Andrews is better than Muirfield." Rather sweeping!
"St. Andrews needs years of play to appreciate it." Perhaps senile dementia is a necessary concomitant of full appreciation.
"Old champion still formidable at St. Andrews." Rather a backhanded compliment.
"It is not difficult to create holes on any inland course of similar character." Why then if these holes are outstanding and easy to copy, do not the modern architects slavishly imitate them? The modern architect knows that he would be laughed at if he did so.
"Penal and strategic school," -- "result of bad shot postponed by bad strategic position." Does any thinking man deny that this may make a good hole?
"Strategic school responsible for many excellent golf courses in Great Britain or U. S." This is a direct literary piracy on 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, and then proceeding to condemn him therefore…”
Neat, huh? I guess that's the way it was, 81 years ago.
Peter
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Peter,
Crane would have been great on GCA.
I suspect he would also vote consistently with the Goodale/Kavanaugh Contrarian Party ticket. ;)
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Mike
Yes...indeed. :)
The Fazio thread brought this Crane article (and the debates) back to mind. It just struck me that Tom Fazio's position (as best as I can know/understand it) doesn't come out of the blue, i.e. it has as much historical precedents as the oppossing point of view.
Im not sure what that means or has to do with anything, but it seems true.
Peter
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Mike
Crane would have been great and like the contrarians he would have contradicted himself many times, just to wind us up.
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Where is Macwood when he's needed! ;D
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Thanks, Peter.
Of course I love whatever I read of Crane, just because he is so adept (even after 81 years) of winding up the "Emperor's New Clothes Deniers" such as Cirba, Turner and Young.
In the snippet you quote, he catches out Mackenzie as resorting far too often to the answer, "Just because!" when questioned about simple but interesting points of discussion such as "How does Colt's Muirfield compare to the Old Course."
The answers in that snippet also seem far too close to "The science is settled!" responses by true believers to sceptics of various "Global Warming" theories.
The little bit I get to read on this site about what Crane wrote, the more I want to read him, if only because he does have a different point of view and manages to ruffle the carefully groomed feathers of the grandees of the Golden Age.
Also, who can't help but like a guy who played in the 1929 Amateur at Sandwich with a 15" putter which he used one-handed?
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Richard Farnsworth Goodale VI said:
“The answers in that snippet also seem far too close to "The science is settled!" responses by true believers to sceptics of various "Global Warming" theories.”
Rich:
That, I believe, is about half or more of the problem the likes of Behr, Mackenzie et al had with Crane’s mathematical application for testing the quality of golf architecture.
Essentially Crane simply proposed his own mathematical formulae for testing the quality of architecture but he also seemed to assume that mathematically testing the quality of architecture was a given and not subject to debate or even question.
It appears what he was hoping to promote was the discussion and debate of the details of his mathematical or scientific method or criteria, if you will. He seemed to want people to discuss his mathematical theory and improve upon it to create an even better mathematical test of the quality of architecture. Clearly Crane wanted to do all this to help improve golf architecture in the future.
But the likes of Mackenzie and certainly Behr didn’t do that at all---they did not want to get into using a mathematical or scientific test to analyze golf architecture. They merely responded that one just can’t use a mathematical or scientific test to analyze the quality of architecture. They simply informed him that it is virtually an impossibility because people like architecture for emotional reasons (feelings) and it does no good at all to subject the quality of emotions and feelings to some mathematical or scientific test.
So in a sense Crane may’ve felt Mackenzie and Behr et al were attacking the messenger----attacking him----which they probably were in a sense because the message Crane was delivering was uniquely his own and they didn’t believe it applied at all.
You said about Mackenzie:
“In the snippet you quote, he catches out Mackenzie as resorting far too often to the answer, "Just because!" when questioned about simple but interesting points of discussion such as "How does Colt's Muirfield compare to the Old Course."
Mackenzie was probably right to use a “just because” answer with Crane. The more comprehensive version of Mackenzie’s response would be “You can’t compare Muirfield to the Old Course via some mathematical or scientific test JUST BECAUSE you can’t really analyze emotions and feeling via some mathematical or scientific test.”
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"Penal and strategic school," -- "result of bad shot postponed by bad strategic position." Does any thinking man deny that this may make a good hole?"
In my opinion, statements like this sort of prove that some of Crane's ideas about good architecture (strategic architecture) was probably not that different from Behr's and Mackenzie's. If one looks at what Crane said in that remark it's pretty hard to deny it's basically the same thing as Behr's idea and term known as "indirect tax" which also is strategic architecture.
Matter of fact, Crane's drawing of an improved 1st hole at TOC is quite strategic, and I doubt even Mackenzie or Behr would've denied that.
Their point was that TOC did not need improvement or alteration because it had already proven itself to be an emotional winner with golfers.
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In whatever the debate was with Crane on the one side and Behr and Mackenzie on the other side, it seems to me that Behr just made his point about the quality of architecture being dependent on golfer emotion so well. Not only that but he used something Crane said about 'his own preferences' in the exchanges and virtually nailed Crane's entire argument with it.
This is how Behr did it:
"That which Mr. Crane has essayed to do, although innocently undertaken, is in reality an attack upon golf. He belongs to that great host which believe that all things can be subjected to mathematical analysis. When misapplied it does a great deal of harm, for those whom it affects conquer by their numbers. And, once and equation has been established, the danger lies in the resulting standardizations.
It would not be so bad if Mr Crane's preferences coincided with his figures. At least he would have a personal opinion, and that is always interesting. But he has remarked: "In fact, I am often myself disappointed in finding that certain courses or holes of which I am particularly fond do not rate as well as others which are not as attractive to me."
What a remarkable statement! in the first place, whence did his figures come if not from his feelings? They were but a mathematical assessment of his fondness for things. Which was wrong, his figures or his feelings, in the event thereafter that his figures failed to establish that which was attractive to him over that which was not? Perhaps in the world beyond there is some omniscient common denominator permitting a mathematics of emotions. But in this world we are all so differently constituted that such a scheme as Mr Crane's is just as chimerical as if someone were to set out to determine the greatest painting in the world by such a means."
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It should probably be admitted that this Joshua Crane vs Mackenzie/Behr et al debate never really was about the details of golf architecture or actual architectural concepts or architectural arrangements of any kind or even about penal and strategic architecture.
The debate seemed to be over how one determines what they like, what they think is of quality. The question seemed to be---can that be done via mathematics, a scientific analysis, or must it be done through emotions and feelings that inherently can never be mathematical and scientific?
For those on here who subscribe to the latter it probably renders much of what is discussed on this website virtually useless. ;)
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“In the snippet you quote, he catches out Mackenzie as resorting far too often to the answer, "Just because!" when questioned about simple but interesting points of discussion such as "How does Colt's Muirfield compare to the Old Course."
Mackenzie was probably right to use a “just because” answer with Crane. The more comprehensive version of Mackenzie’s response would be “You can’t compare Muirfield to the Old Course via some mathematical or scientific test JUST BECAUSE you can’t really analyze emotions and feeling via some mathematical or scientific test.”
Tom
You are speculating on this bit. What Mackenzie actually said, according to Peter's quoting of Crane, is:
"Any architect in Great Britain or U. S. says St. Andrews is better than Muirfield."
Mackenzie says nothing about mathematics or formulae, just that no architect says that St. Andrews is not better than Muirfield. I'm inclined to agree with Crane in this instance in his comment:
"Rather sweeping!"
It also is non-prescient, as today architects and other experts tend to see that each course in its own way has relatively equal merit, and if anything will "rank" Muirfield slightly higher than the Old Course.
Rich
PS--isn't it ironic that these days those of us who are interested in rankings tend to prefer the "scientific" surveys of the golf magazines (who rate things down to 2 decimal places on a scale of 0-100) to the more subjective ones that Mackenzie seemed to prefer?
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This is just the most interesting subject/debate. How can it not be when the combatants write lines like:
"Perhaps in the world beyond there is some omniscient common denominator permitting a mathematics of emotions" (thanks for that quote, TE), or "This is a direct literary piracy on Max Behr's classification of golf architects, where the goats are put in the Penal School, and the sheep in the Strategic School." The 'religious' overtones are striking.
Two very bright and principled men, but as dfferent from eachother as night and day. Both want to raise the level of the game across the board by raising the level of the fields of play, across the board. One believes that there are rules and standards through which a measure of comformity can and should be achieved; the other doesn't deny those standards, but believes that they need and must be at the service of uniqueness and individuality. It's basically the question/approach that's been around forever, i.e. the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law.
Or -- to put it in a bit more of a gca context -- the hand of man in golf course architecture vs the hand of nature; the enforcing of the letter of the law despite/upon nature's randomness and uniqueness versus accepting the spirit of those laws as they occur and appear to us (each a little differently) via nature itself.
Is it too simplistic to say that herein lies the roots of the Fazio-Coore approaches/differences?
Peter
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The debates between Crane, Behr and Mackenzie were the most vicious in the history of gca. They were also the most public. It was, by any standard, very nasty. Peter's quote shows just a small part of the nastiness.
Crane saw himself as a progressive reformer. He thought golf courses were holding golf back from being a sport on the level of other sports. He wanted to see courses "modernized" so that the payoffs for bad and good shots were more predictable. As in other sports.
Thus he thought that links courses with their wild "rawnesses" (Crane's term) were the wrong model for golf designs. His rankings reflect this. The rebuilt Muirfield and Gleneagles held the top two spots primarily because they were the least links-like of the courses rated. True links courses held the bottom spots - TOC, N Berwick and Prestwick.
Crane's goal was to free golf from its traditions and "shibboleths" (again, Crane's term), to make it more of a test of pure athletic skill (again, as in other sports).
He posed some very tough questions to professional architects, who pretty much to a man advocated strategic, naturalistic architecture. In a sense Crane shifted the burden of proof against them.
Crane asked, if golf pretends to be a sport, why shouldn't courses be concerned with the same issues that competitive venues in other sports are concerned with? Specifically, why aren't golf courses concerned with promoting a tight correlation between the quality of a shot and the quality of outcomes? Crane term for this was "controls." Each shot need to be adequately controlled or the relevant architectural features were defective.
Those are tough questions that don't have obvious answers. They make an appeal to rough justice that any school boy will understand.
I think Behr and MacK understood the power of Crane's views. Crane received a lot more attention and was much better known during the GA than is usually recognized. Clearly Behr and MacK thought it worth their while to develop counterarguments, because that is exactly what they did. Arguably, they spent the last five years of the GA writing about or around the issues raised by Crane. (I would speculate that other architects did too. Though they didn't name names, were also addressing the issues raised by Crane over those years.)
Another reason why Behr and Mack thought it worth the candle to rebut Crane was because of what his views implied about the role of the architect. If the major design issues involved in building a golf course were - cateris paribus - reducible to those applicable to all sporting venues, then the role of the architect will have been effectively marginalized.
But for me the most interesting thing about all this is how the Crane/Behr/MacK debates anticipate, almost verbatim, debates today about championship set-ups, changes at Augusta, etc. Those old debates are remarkably relevant today.
More than that, they cover key issues in gca, the goals of the game and the role of architecture more thoroughly and more articulately (once they stopped yelling at each other) than anything since.
Bob
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8) Does this all not argue for men of "Arts & Science" background to extend the discourse, rather than polarize it?
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"PS--isn't it ironic that these days those of us who are interested in rankings tend to prefer the "scientific" surveys of the golf magazines (who rate things down to 2 decimal places on a scale of 0-100) to the more subjective ones that Mackenzie seemed to prefer?"
Rich:
Ironic??
Yes, I guess it probably is somewhat ironic. It is also perhaps the worst fears come true of the likes of Mackenzie and Behr and all those who did not believe that true quality of architecture could or should be subjected to some mathematical or scientific analysis because it would lead to various forms of standardizations. I think the ensuing eighty years have shown that happened too.
That's one of the primary reasons I feel it's worthwhile to reconsider what the likes of Behr said to Crane back in the 1920s.
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Bob or Tom or Peter or whoever
Is there any link we can visit to see some of these Behr/Mackenzie/Crane dialogues ourselves? I assume they will be fascinating, but without having seen them except in selected snippets, it's hard to understand or comment on what was really going on.
Thanks in advance
Rich
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Just a note, but the "scientific" rankings today are not scientific in the least. The decimal points reflect merely the averaging of a whole bunch of purely subjective ratings.
Crane, to the contrary, claimed his rankings were objective in a scientific, philosophical sense. That is, that they actually described things as they existed.
Of course, Crane didn't mention often the front loading of his own preferences into his "scientific" measurements.
Bob
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Bob
If you believe that the Social Sciences are science, do not the Golf Week rankings purport to be gathered and tabulated scientifically?
What sort of "science" could Crane have been using that is not being used today by rankers and/or course raters?
Rich
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Rich -
The full record of the debates is spread across a number of golf periodicals from the 1920's. Some are accessible, some are not, some may be lost entirely.
No one thought at the time it was worth collecting and preserving many of the sporting periodicals of the era. So digging them out has been a problem. Even the Library of Congress, The British Library and other places that are supposed to collect everything, didn't collect them.
Nonetheless, there are little leads here and there that I am exploring.
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Did I say something that suggests I believe the social sciences are a science? To be clear, they are not. And modern day rankings are most certainly not. They are just surveys of subjective opinions.
Crane's pretensions to "science" are, of course, risible. But his idea was that you measured widths, heights, depths, etc. of a multitude of features on a golf course and then looked to see how effectively they "controlled" each shot. The measure of a course was an aggregation of the effectiveness of these separate shot controls.
That is a crude summary, but roughly the deal.
Bob
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Bob, Thanx for that.
"Crane's goal was to free golf from its traditions and "shibboleths" (again, Crane's term), to make it more of a test of pure athletic skill (again, as in other sports).
He posed some very tough questions to professional architects, who pretty much to a man advocated strategic, naturalistic architecture. In a sense Crane shifted the burden of proof against them.
Crane asked, if golf pretends to be a sport, why shouldn't courses be concerned with the same issues that competitive venues in other sports are concerned with? Specifically, why aren't golf courses concerned with promoting a tight correlation between the quality of a shot and the quality of outcomes? "
Correlating golf to other sports, which are games, is the key flaw in the non-traditionalists attitude towards golf.
So, the only answer is still the same..Just Because.
The mysteries and tests have been fine tuned to an extent which has removed the former and dimished the latter to a relentlessly repetitive onslaught of predictability.
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Bob
Note the word "if" in my first sentence. I'd never accuse you of being so ignorant as to think that social "sciences" are anything of the kind.
However, your second paragraph sounds a lot like the USGA course rating manual, and since that tome was designed by the rocket scientist and self-proclaimed Pope of Slope, Dean Knuth, well who iare we to argue, scientifically or spiritually?
Rich
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Bob:
That's a super fine post you just made there, particularly the way you cast some of the issues. In some ways Crane does not exactly come off as the bogie man some on here might automatically categorize him. In a sense it may've just been his method rather than his intent.
I think your mention of the so-called "championship" course and all that might mean is a most interesting one. That just may be an item that the likes of Behr and Mackenzie did not take on directly (even with TOC) because that could be something they realized they could not win or cast well in this debate given the others issues they were trying to promote.
It may be that they were looking more at this in the context of recreational golf and architecture and not so much looking at it in just the championship vein---which Crane essentially may've been.
Perhaps in a way the championship course or championship architectural mentality skewed their other arguments and they knew that could happen going in.
A lot to ponder indeed.
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"Bob or Tom or Peter or whoever
Is there any link we can visit to see some of these Behr/Mackenzie/Crane dialogues ourselves? I assume they will be fascinating, but without having seen them except in selected snippets, it's hard to understand or comment on what was really going on."
Rich:
Good question. As you know i would like to send you what I have on Behr particularly but it seems like that is something of a sticky wicket with some for sort of proprietary reasons which I'm not sure I've ever fully understood.
Perusing the articles in American Golfer and Golf Illustrated from about 1924 up to and into the early 1930s should give you enough though.
But in my own opinion, it's never enough to just read what Crane wrote. To fully understand the depth and breadth of this debate one pretty much needs to read all of Behr's responses. If one can't or doesn't do that I doubt one could ever really understand this debate.
Ironically, Mackenzie's responses never seemed to be much to go on but some of Bobby Jones' were if one knows how to read between the lines. In a real way Jones probably felt between a real rock and a hard place because it's not hard to tell where he was coming from on this debate philosophically but he also realized it was definitely him and his golf that was responsible for completely fanning the flames, particularly over the championship timber of TOC.
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Adam -
Almost bingo. One of the reasons Behr thought it important to distinguish games from sports was precisely to defeat Crane on that point. That is, golf was not like other "games" (per Behr); it was sui generis.
Rich -
Bingo. Crane's rating methodology reads almost verbatim like the USGA course rating manual.
Talk about continuing relevance... And that is only a minor part of Crane's continuing relevance.
Bob
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Did Tom just call Matt Ward the modern day Crane?
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Adam -
If Matt thinks course ratings can be objective, then he ought to be proud of the comparison. But I don't know if that is something Matt actually believes.
Bob
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You're right Bob, he's all for subejctive.
My bad.
It was that dern word Championship that threw me.
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Bob:
"Cateris paribus"??
"Sui generis"??
Are you, by any chance, and in the premises, a lawyer??
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"The debates between Crane, Behr and Mackenzie were the most vicious in the history of gca."
No they weren't. They weren't even half as vicious as WayneM and JayF's debate on here today or even my own debates (and Wayne's) with Moriartless and MacWoodenhead. ;)
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Tom -
What a ridiculous assumption. Why just this morning I said to Betsy, "Mutatis mutandi, scrambling eggs at home for breakfast would as fun as going out."
She responded, "Well, ok, but such views are subject to the reductio ad absurdum that we never go out for breakfast again."
I said that my views about breakfast this morning were pure dicta with no precendential significance.
Relieved, she started cooking the eggs. So you see, that's just how we talk here at home.
Bob
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Bob:
You two are way too smart for me.
By the way I think you made a technical error above--eg that comma does not seem to belong.
What do mutatis mutandi scrambled eggs taste like?
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They have a distinctly Latin flavor.
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Bob:
"Cateris paribus"??
"Sui generis"??
Are you, by any chance, and in the premises, a lawyer??
I think he's a farmer. Sui generis refers to pigs and "cateris" paribus to felines.
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"The debates between Crane, Behr and Mackenzie were the most vicious in the history of gca."
No they weren't. They weren't even half as vicious as WayneM and JayF's debate on here today or even my own debates (and Wayne's) with Moriartless and MacWoodenhead. ;)
Agreed. Man, that's ugly.
Bob
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Not as ugly as that original Alps green on the other side of Ardmore Ave on #10 Merion that Charles Blair Macdonald contributed.
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Crane's Ideal Course:
1. #1 Pine Valley without trees and with improved contour in front of and on green.
2. #10 National "with slight improvements"
3. #3 Kittansett lengthened a bit
4. #16 Pine Valley with green and fairway visible, new diagonal bunker in front
5. #14 Myopia drive with #10 Essex second shot
6. #4 Essex without trees and new sand hazards
7. #12 Merion with natural sand dunes instead of trees
8. #12 Pine Valley
9. #4 Brae Burn without OOB, trees, and with enlarged bunkers
10.#13 Country Club
11.#17 National
12.#1 Essex
13.#3 Pine Valley
14.#16 Pinehurst 2
15.#9 Kernwood
16.#4 Lido
17.#17 Pine Valley
18.#5 Myopia
= 6604 yards
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JMorgan:
Thanks for posting that hole list of Crane's ideal course. I have seen it before and considered the holes pretty carefully.
If Crane is being cast as some "penal" architecture proponent that ideal hole list of his sort of skews that notion or seriously calls it into question.
A few of his recommendations are a bit odd to me and at least one or two I couldn't disagree with more (making the fairway and green on PV's #16 visible and reworking the front approach and the green contour on PV's #1) but the entire list of holes apparently indicates his architectural preferences---eg less trees on some holes, a greater application of bunkering, particularly of the dune variety, and apparently a fairly decent amount of fairway width on various holes. He also seems to prefer the idea of an aerial requirement into some greens but certainly not all. It's interesting that the forced aerial requirement at both Pine Valley and Merion exists on about half the holes and Crane's ideal course doesn't seem far from that.
This makes me wonder if the actual architectural preferences of Crane, on the one hand, and the likes of Behr, Mackenzie et al aren't a whole lot closer than we've been assuming.
It may just be that the debate issue was about the mathematical analysis vs an emotional analysis and the fact that one just did not recommend altering TOC or even questioning its relevence in top championship play.
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JMorgan:
The hole I really don't quite understand is Myopia's 5th as the ideal course's 18th.
That particular hole was sort of an everlasting problem in the mind of Myopia's Herbert Leeds and it seems that in the opinion of most everyone the hole on that course that really shines is the 4th, particularly its green and surrounds.
The present fairway bunkering on the 5th however (and combined with the green bunkering) is very good and very strategic and certainly would've been a whole lot more so back when Crane made that list.
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"This makes me wonder if the actual architectural preferences of Crane, on the one hand, and the likes of Behr, Mackenzie et al aren't a whole lot closer than we've been assuming."
Crane started with a group of courses that pretty much everyone acknowledged as being the best. So there was bound to be some overlap.
Crane's reasons for picking the holes he did, however, were not the reasons Behr or MacK would have given.
Take the 16th at PV. Consistent with his larger views, Crane wanted any blindness eliminated by shaving the ridgeline. He disliked trees, so they needed to go. Finally, he thought the approach shot lacked adequate controls, thus he wanted a new diangonal bunker across the front of the green.
Those are huge changes. My guess is that those are not changes that Behr and MacK would have approved. I'm certain Crump, Colt or Alison wouldn't have either.
With almost all of Crane's ideal US holes, he suggested changes to them that would bring them closer to his ideal, which in his system meant 100%. It was part of his project to overcome traditional thinking about golf courses.
It's interesting that the ranking he gave to his cherry-picked US ideal holes was not a lot higher than his ranking for Muirfield and Gleneagles.
His hole selections also demonstrate that Crane was not the clownish "penologist" that Behr and Mack wanted to depict him as. Crane's views were much more sophisticated than that. My sense is that Behr understood Crane's whole program better than MacKenzie did.
Bob
P.S. The thing to remember about Crane is that he was an activist. His ideal holes were not holes as he found them. They were holes as changed according to his preferences. He had a program. The ideal holes he picked - subject to his changes - demonstrated, Crane believed, the pay-off of his program to free golf design from its old baggage and bring it into the modern age.
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JM, TE, Bob
thanks for that. When he brings together his 'ideal course' Crane seems to be about one thing; when he formulates a system by which to rank ALL courses, about another. Unfortunately, I couldn't find again the long article where he describes his point system (but if I remember, he scores just about every element you can imagine). Here's something related, and self explanatory:
Joshua Crane is one of America's keenest students of golf as a game—from the technique of playing to the rating of golf courses by a point system which he developed and first outlined in GOLF ILLUSTRATED. Mr. Crane recently completed a tour of Scotch courses—with which he is thoroughly familiar—solely for the purpose of rating. The first complete rating—Sunningdale—appeared in the previous issue. In The Field of London recently, Mr. Crane summarized the ratings of fourteen courses abroad as follows:
Muirfield – 86.5
Gleneagles - 84.6
Prince's – 83.8
Troon - 83
St. George's – 82.1
Hoylake – 81.5
Walton Heath -80.5
Sunningdale – 80.1
Turnberry – 79.9
Royal Cinque Ports - 79.1
Prestwick – 78.7
Westward Ho! – 75.3
North Berwick – 72.6
St. Andrews – 71.8
When Mr. Charles Ambrose, of London, discovered St. Andrews at the tail-end of the list be took exception, and told Mr. Crane what he thought of him in a letter to London Golf Illustrated. Mr. Crane saw the Ambrose letter and replied; then Harold Hilton wrote an editorial and Mr. Ambrose an article, and some more letters followed. St. Andrews, of course, has a sentimental halo that the golf world deeply respects and reveres. Somehow—to the sentimentalist at any rate—the footrule seems out of place there. The point involved, however, is that Mr. Crane is solely interested in working out a system by which all golf courses can be rated. This he is conscientiously doing. He is seeking facts for the information of those interested. Instead of publishing Mr. Crane's detailed rating of St. Andrews, as was planned for this issue, we have secured his views of the reception accorded his ratings and other data of interest.—Editor.
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Hmm, This is golf. Lowest scores the winner. ;D
Sorry to bring this heady conversation down, but, could someone familiar tell me how the terms "Freedom" and "Shot dictation" play a role in Cranes list and his "system"?
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Peter,
Quickly, here's the break down:
Two divisions:
1. Design & Layout 1000 points
Tee 40
Rough 80
Fairway 250
Traps 140
Greens 250
Parallel holes 20
Visibility 200
Distance 20
2. Condition & Upkeep 1000 points
Tee 80
Rough 130
Fairway 300
Traps 100
Greens 300
Parallel holes 10
Caddies 50
Surroundings 30
Got to run, but I'll add my commentary/responses later ... wanted to get this in for your discussion. ;)
If I remember correctly, Crane also specified the sand used at Myopia for all bunkers.
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I don't know how Muirfield got any points on Condition and Upkeep of the Caddies. The guy I got first time I was there had no more than 7 fingers and fewer teeth....
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Summer teeth?
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These are Crane's final composite rankings:
Ideal US course 95.9
Muirfield 86.5
Gleneagles 84.6
Princes 83.8
Troon 83.0
The National 83.0
Merion 82.6
St. George's 82.1
Hoylake 81.5
Pine Valley 80.9
Lido 80.7
Walton Heath 80.4
Sunningdale 80.1
Turnberry 79.9
Kittansett 79.4
Deal 79.1
Prestwick 78.1
Myopia 77.7
Essex 75.6
Westward Ho! 75.3
Essex 73.5
North Berwick 72.6
St. Andrews 71.8
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Rich - I think I went out once with your caddy's niece.
Bob
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I've tried to post Crane's rating charts, but they appear to be too big to download here.
If you've ever rated a course for the USGA, the similarities will be hard to miss.
Bob
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Bob
Was she an ex-coal miner too?
Rich
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No, but she asked several times if I had any interst in getting into the field. She said she had connections.
Bob
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The USGA system is likely flawed in the same way as Crane's approach. That is not a slam on the USGA, other than the hubris of relying on a system 'just because' it's the only one available. Throw in a reluctance to adjusting the system, after flaws (mathematical and theoretical) have been brought to their attention, and, you have the wrong road travelled, cubed.
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My father used to be a USGA rater (actually it was for the GSGA using the USGA manual). As I recall from his rater book, the similarity is that both Crane and the USGA measure a course as a series of separate, individual shots, each one treated as a distinct, compartmentalized test of golf skills.
Bob
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Bob Crosby said:
"Crane started with a group of courses that pretty much everyone acknowledged as being the best. So there was bound to be some overlap.
Crane's reasons for picking the holes he did, however, were not the reasons Behr or MacK would have given.
Take the 16th at PV. Consistent with his larger views, Crane wanted any blindness eliminated by shaving the ridgeline. He disliked trees, so they needed to go. Finally, he thought the approach shot lacked adequate controls, thus he wanted a new diangonal bunker across the front of the green.
Those are huge changes. My guess is that those are not changes that Behr and MacK would have approved. I'm certain Crump, Colt or Alison wouldn't have either."
Bob:
I'm certainly not saying there were no differences of opinions about some of those golf holes on Crane's list between him and the likes of say Behr and Mackenzie. I'm just saying that Crane is using holes that are pretty ideal in the minds of most and probably including Behr and Mackenzie and he certainly didn't make any suggested changes on all of them, just on some of them.
I agree that Crane's seeming fixation against blindness must have been a real differnce of opinion between them though. Behr did write an article in 1926 defending blindness in golf architecture.
Crane's suggestion to make PV's #16 fairway and green visible from the tee is preposterous in my opinion, but his suggestion to cut a diagonal bunker in at the front of the green is actually the very same thing Crump was apparently going to do and Hugh Alison actually recommended to the 1921 Committee.
Interestingly, the committee approved that bunker but I can't see it was ever done for some reason. The same thing was true on #4---it was recommended by Allison and approved by the committee but apparently never done or not done as it was recommended.
Frankly, had George Crump lived #16 may've ended up being a par 5 with the green much farther along. He was still considering that when he died, particularly since he was stuggling with what to do about #15 and perhaps even #14. The latter hole PV pro George Govan said was the idea of his father, Jim Govan, who was Crump's pro and foreman and constant companion on course.
Joshua Crane's use of the term "control" is an interesting one that seems somewhat amorphous in definition, particularly since Crane did not seem to have a problem with some pretty significant fairway width considering some of the holes he picked as ideal.
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Adam Clayman:
To me there's a huge difference between constructing and using a mathematical rating system for handicap purposes compared to using a mathematically rating system to specifically assess the quality of golf course architecture!! ;)
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One of the best threads ever on GCA.com, with some real all-stars discussing. Unfortunately, I have never played any of the courses within the discussion. But, on the matter of the expanations of the methods of evaluating courses between Crane and Behr/Mac, the matter rings current enough. I am quite sure that TEPaul's balanced understanding of the goals of the two camps has fairly brought out the merits of each camp's efforts.
Yet, from this outsider looking into a great discussion and what has been said so far, I feel quite certain that I associate with the Behr/Mac side of setting aside the mathematical formula or numerical evaluation that Crane sought, and I would rather know/read someone's prose describing a hole or a course and why it inspires and excites or challenges, than know it was an 86.8.
For the well versed gents above who have pointed to the methodology of course rating in the USGA manual of evaluaton; do any of you feel that selection or presentation of the U.S. Open, PGA, or Masters, vs the presentation and selection of the Open harkens back to this fundamental difference in Crane's numerical vs Behr/Mac's artistic-natural-randomness as a high value, and what seems like Crane's need to quantify a contest and field of play as a numbers 'sport' vs Behr/Mac's possible acceptance of the ebb and flow of the fates of the 'game' as the higher inspiration and entertainment of the player?
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TEP -
Fair point. USGA course and slope ratings are not the same thing as rating a course a la Crane.
What they do have in common, however, is that both define out of their systems the strategic virtues many of us think are the most important aspects of a great course. That is, neither system gives any weight to shot options, choices, etc. Or at least Crane's doesn't. (I haven't looked at the USGA manual in a decade, so maybe I'm forgetting something.)
RJ -
I'm not sure I follow your question, but it does seem to me that in many respects Crane wrote the book - some 40 years before the fact - for USGA type setups. Which makes sense. His view of the highest value of golf was testing golfing skills. A lot of Crane's vocabulary is repeated verbatim when the USGA explains its setup philosophy every summer. Shot testing, proportionate roughs, "fairness" (whatever that means) all could have been written by Crane.
MacK and Behr, of course, had a different view. They thought golf courses ought to be designed to give pleasure to the widest range of golfers possible. In line with that was the notion that designing courses to test "tigers" (meant in the Golden Age sense of any expert golfer) made the courses no fun for the everyday golfer.
Fundamentally different views about the ultimate values of the game. Which had direct consequences for the kind of achitecture the two camps preferred.
Bob
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RJ
I thought that was a very good post. For all the complexity I'm probably missing in The Debate, I too tend to "associate with the Behr/Mac side setting aside the mathematical formula or numerical evaluation that Crane sought"....and I too would rather get the prose/poetry than the mathematics.
This is way too simplistic, but my gut reaction is "If you have to describe it like math you probably have to play it like math", while, "If can describe it like poetry it probably plays quite poetically". The first seems to describe/fit the professional game; the current US Open. The second, well, I don't know what that is...a dream maybe...or someplace in Nebraska
Peter
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Bob,
Isn't that still the greatest challenge an architect faces...creating a course that challenges the top player and appeals to the rest?
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That may not have been worded properly...how about...creating a course that appeals to the emotions of all players while presenting a challenge that is commensurate with the individuals ability level.
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JES -
Something like that. Those sorts of things slide so quickly into marketing babble that I resist going down that road.
BTW, you and I and MacK and Behr might agree to something like that, but I don't think Crane would. I don't think a Fownes would either. So they are not universal principles to which everyone would subscribe.
A propos of this, Geoff Shackelford has the following quote up today:
"Enough perhaps has been said to show that the links should not be regarded exclusively, as they so frequently are, from the point of view of what the superlative players can do on them. The danger is to judge the game by them and by them alone, and so ignore other equally important considerations. Perhaps the blame for this generally accepted but one-sided view that courses should be made entirely for championship players is that so much stress is laid on the more theatrical events of competitive golf."
TOM SIMPSON and H.N. WETHERED
People have told me that I am losing my mind, but I read in that quote a criticism of the approach Crane took to gca. In fact it's not clear to me who else they might be objecting to. (Maybe J.H. Taylor?) We'll probably never know for sure. But Crane was the point man for such views throughout the GA.
I thought the passage was interesting in light of this thread. (You think Geoff was peeking in?)
Bob
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I'm glad to see this particular thread on Joshua Crane because in it the issue of championship golf and championship golf architecture has been mentioned.
Also in this thread the idea has been implied that Crane may've been speaking about and also essentially basing his ideas about the quality of golf architecture on so-called championship golf and championship golf design.
Crane may not have initially intended to do this but it appears what he wrote and proposed played out that way.
The likes of Behr and Mackenzie et al apparently may've been concentrating more on another form of golf---eg recreational golf or golf simply for enjoyment and not necessarily strictly for competition. Consequently, that may've led them to look somewhat differently upon golf course architecture.
One of Behr's lesser known articles makes this both abundantly and specifically clear.
And most amazing of all he pretty much bases what he says in that article in this vein on the quotes and sentiments of none other than Bobby Jones and on his revelations about TOC and how different it is in these respects from the pevalently designed far more "scientific" (somewhat synonymous to championship design) American golf courses.
In this article Behr even gets into things like the differences in blindness and fairway width and rough and such between these two apparently different types of designs, represented on one end of the spectrum by TOC and on the other end of the spectrum by the so-called "scientific" American championship golf course that both Jones and Behr explain are very predictable day after day.
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As far as I know it was Bob Crosby who first began to gravitate towards this illusive but seemingly seminal debate between Crane and the likes of Behr, Mackenzie, Jones et al with the feeling that there might be so much more there than most anyone today realizes.
I guess I heard him mention it 4-5 years ago. Part of his problem was just finding old articles that dealt with it.
He thinks this debate or at least the basic subject of it just may be one of the most seminal in the history of golf and perhaps architecture. He thinks it was something of a major crossroads even if mostly missed as such at the time.
The real irony is even if those immediately involved in that debate at that time or its fundamental issues, perhaps even including those who were somewhat on the sidelines of this debate but nevertheless very interested bystanders may've wanted it to be clear cut but it appears to have turned out anything but that.
And to complicate things further those involved in golf and architecture at the time were not and apparently can not be classified in all the components of this debate and issue to be specifically on one side or the other.
A good example of one who may've been on both sides, somewhat depending on the naunces of the specific issues was probably Tillinghast or maybe even Flynn or Ross.
We may even find when we have finally hashed this entire issue out that what it was really over was something of a crossroads and perhaps a rift between the oncoming "championship" style golf and golf architecture definitely spawned in and led by America and American architects and the old world recreational amateur golf abroad and the courses over there that type of golf was played on---most all of which preceded American golf and architecture by quite a bit of time.
It just may be that 80 or so years later as much as things change they've really stayed the same. ;)
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WHAT???
The last sentence rings true...the rest of those two posts make my eyes go round and round in total confusion...
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JES
I liked how you phrased it in post #57, i.e. "Isn't that still the greatest challenge an architect faces...creating a course that challenges the top player and appeals to the rest?"
I'm thinking that IS the greatest challenge, and pulling it off maybe the highest expression of the architect's art and craft.
TE writes: "We may even find when we have finally hashed this entire issue out that what it was really over was something of a crossroads and perhaps a rift between the oncoming "championship" style golf and golf architecture definitely spawned in and led by America and American architects and the old world recreational amateur golf abroad and the courses over there that type of golf was played on---most all of which preceded American golf and architecture by quite a bit of time."
And I wonder, has the rift been bridged yet, even 80 years later? Has the schism been healed? Can it EVER be? Why do I care? Because it just strikes me as magical the thought that I can play on/participate in the highest expression of an artist's art.
Peter
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Bob Crosby, It's definitely very cool of you to do all of this research on a subject that clearly has had such a significant impact, not only on the fields but on the definition of what constitutes a great player.
It's this layman's opinion, it's the maintenance regime that has become expected on Championship courses does not hold up as well to the whims of nature, being completely reliant on the hand of man, to make those championship tests acceptable to everyone. (player, viewer etc) One need not look further than Shinney's 04' open to see the dichotomy in the arguments for whether that was a fitting Championship. (Thank You Mark Michaud)
As eluded to earlier, mysteries are another difference.
We'll see if any of that makes sense before giving the Tartan boys more laughs.
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And I wonder, has the rift been bridged yet, even 80 years later? Has the schism been healed? Can it EVER be? Why do I care? Because it just strikes me as magical the thought that I can play on/participate in the highest expression of an artist's art.
Peter
I don't think so...look at the venom aimed at Augusta National. The root of it all is a disagreement in how to "modify" a course for Championship play.
The powers that be will never settle for a newly manufactured Championship course designed for the express purpose of hosting major championships because they need you and I to relate to the course and to want to go play the course, or join the club...that's the rub with golf...unlike all of the other professional sports, we can touch and feel exactly what it's all about.
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Peter P said:
"JES
I liked how you phrased it in post #57, i.e. "Isn't that still the greatest challenge an architect faces...creating a course that challenges the top player and appeals to the rest?"
I'm thinking that IS the greatest challenge, and pulling it off maybe the highest expression of the architect's art and craft.
TE writes: "We may even find when we have finally hashed this entire issue out that what it was really over was something of a crossroads and perhaps a rift between the oncoming "championship" style golf and golf architecture definitely spawned in and led by America and American architects and the old world recreational amateur golf abroad and the courses over there that type of golf was played on---most all of which preceded American golf and architecture by quite a bit of time."
And I wonder, has the rift been bridged yet, even 80 years later? Has the schism been healed? Can it EVER be? Why do I care? Because it just strikes me as magical the thought that I can play on/participate in the highest expression of an artist's art."
Peter:
I'm thinking of posting what both Behr and Bobby Jones said on that score that seems to indicate what they felt was happening in the late 1920s and had already happened with American architecture and American golf compared to say TOC and we can all decide where we think golf and architecture went from there. In other words, if there really was a rift and a crossroads at that time in their opinions. And using that we can discuss where and in which direction things went in the ensuing 80 years from where they may've felt things should have gone.
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Peter Pallotta said:
"JES
I liked how you phrased it in post #57, i.e. "Isn't that still the greatest challenge an architect faces...creating a course that challenges the top player and appeals to the rest?"
I'm thinking that IS the greatest challenge, and pulling it off maybe the highest expression of the architect's art and craft."
Peter and Sully:
That may be the greatest challenge an architect faces and it may be the highest expression of the architect's art and craft.
Donald Ross alluded to that fact. He said as much. Bobby Jones seemed to say as much too, and he certainly said that as he conceived of and created ANGC. His words are there for us to see.
Again, Bob Crosby has been delving into the details of this debate between Crane and the others but I know Bob and I know he's always known ANGC extremely well, particularly the original course and apparently in the back of his mind is the fact that the original intent of ANGC may've been wholly misunderstood in what-all its design was attempting to accomplish which just may've been to deal with that 'greatest' architectural challenge you mentioned---eg to challenge the best and accomodate the enjoyment of the rest, somewhat the way he believed TOC did.
What we need to completely understand is all the design techniques he was trying to use in Georgia to do that.
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TE - thanks.
Re Augusta, I don't know about the design techniques, but just to your point about the relationship to TOC, this is from a long article (the only one I have) by Mackenzie describing the ideal golf course he and Bob Jones were building.
"In setting about the task of creating the Augusta National Golf Club course, Mr. Robert T. Jones, Jr. and I have shot at the mark of trying to create the ideal inland course. To accomplish such an aim, one must obviously be equipped with a thorough knowledge of the art of golf course design and be supplied with material with which there is at least a reasonable possibility of attaining that lofty goal....
(Then, after praising Bob Jones' contributions and outlining in general what he'd like Augusta to be, he continues:)
"..Now to get back to our golf course. Doubt may be expressed as to the possibility of making a course pleasurable to everyone, but it may be pointed out that the "Old Course"
at St. Andrews, Scotland, which Bob likes best of all, very nearly approaches this ideal."
Then a little later, here's an interesting tidbit, and it mentions Max Behr too!:
"...It is usually the best holes that are condemned most vehemently by those who fail to solve their strategy. Bob Jones realizes this so strongly that when asked his opinion about the design of Augusta National, he said that the course would differ so markedly from others, that many of the members at first would have unpleasant things to say about the architects. A few years ago I would have agreed with Bob, but today, owing to his own teaching, the work and writings of C. B. Macdonald, Max Behr, Robert Hunter, and others, Americans appreciate real strategic golf to a greater extent than even in Scotland, the Home of Golf...."
One last neat thing: each hole at Augusta that Mackenzie describes lists two yardages:the "Regular Distance" and the "Championship"...for example, on the then first hole, those were 395 and 420.
Peter
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In hindsight, it is the Championship road travelled that has significantly raised all the costs associated with playing/building the modern game. From conditioning, land acquistions to the time involved to partcipate. The warnings intertwined in the Behr school, were prophetic.
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Adam,
I would agree with the position that using Championship Golf as the model for all of this has been a mistake, but if you are blaming anything other than those of us that have used Championship Golf as the model for the current state of conditioning, land acquisition costs and time our paths diverge...
Why should a club that will never host a tournament of that nature strive for comparable specifications? 100 years later it's a bigger issue now than ever...
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Sully, The Champ course implies to me a need for a softer canvas. Certainly at green end. Would you agree with that?
Pristine conditioning expectations, as we all know, is set at the foot of the Augusta syndrome, color television and a mindset which has evolved from the wrong road travelled.
Another major factor in all of this has to do with score. Recent accounts of members wanting their course to 'hold up to the pros', speaks to the egos of those who aren't even playing in the competition.
How about sub air systems? More costs. The list goes on and on and it doesn't take Carnak to realize that if the word of the Behr school had been heeded, the Golf industry would have a completely different landscape today. Probably better sportsmen, too.
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Apologies on the front end for the Mucci treatment, but you make a few points that I would like to address individually...
Sully, The Champ course implies to me a need for a softer canvas. Certainly at green end. Would you agree with that?
No...look at the courses major championships are played on...not until very very recently has the notion of flattening greens entered the equation and my opinion is that #5 and 12 and 15 at Merion would not need to be flattened if they would choose firmness over greenness...[/color]
Pristine conditioning expectations, as we all know, is set at the foot of the Augusta syndrome, color television and a mindset which has evolved from the wrong road travelled.
Another major factor in all of this has to do with score. Recent accounts of members wanting their course to 'hold up to the pros', speaks to the egos of those who aren't even playing in the competition.
Agree 100%...that is who I blame in most of the issues you will have with losing track of Behr's ideas...[/color]
How about sub air systems? More costs. The list goes on and on and it doesn't take Carnak to realize that if the word of the Behr school had been heeded, the Golf industry would have a completely different landscape today. Probably better sportsmen, too.
I disagree with the notion of giving one person full reign in setting a course of action...I also refuse to let anyone predict IN HINDSIGHT what the best course would have been.[/color]
We agree almost universally...almost...
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This is an interesting debate. However, I am very skeptical if these writings actually influenced (or failed to influence) the architecture of post WWII. Do folks really think RTJ and D Wilson read these articles and made conscious decisions to do something else? It could be true, but my guess is that in hindsight, things seem to fall into place quite neatly for the sake of historians. Like Tommy Mac's theory of Arts & Crafts, what is missing are any crucial pieces of evidence which actually link The Great Debate to future design. As such, I am not convinced that this debate clearly had a significant impact on design. This doesn't mean the discussion isn't interesting though.
I believe the changes we have seen are as much due to maintenance practices and raised expectations as much if not more than architecture. Look at how much time this board talks about fairway widths which in turn brings in the ideas of centreline bunkers and rough. To me, these are areas where maintenance practices is the culprit. I think in much later years, the 70 & 80s probably, it became more common to actually narrow fairway corridors (not just the fairways) because there was no need to clear land that was out of play - afterall, the fairways were only going to be 30-35 yards wide. IMO, this is when the trouble in River City started because its a real shift in architecture theory and one not easily solved once a course is up and running. Go up to places like Treetops and you will get the drift. We are today starting to realize and ironically its due to agronomic reasons (which the ODG were very aware of btw), why large groupings of trees should not be too close to the playing areas of a golf course. Could it be that many people reducing fairway corridors thought that there was an agronomic solution to this potential problem. Meaning, somebody will come up with a way to grow grass in these situations. I don't know if this was the case, but its certainly an American mentality to think that technological/scientific advances will solve the problems of today.
That these tree removal programs are able to be sold to memberships brings us back to players these days having higher maintenance expectations. All this talk of opening angles etc is not an issue for nearly every player I encounter - they don't care, but they do care about smooth greens and lush fairways. If you can show a golfer that trees are interfering with these goals then they will agree to bringing out the chainsaw.
Architecture certainly changed in the RTJ era, but only to the extent of presenting more extreme shot situations on a golf course. These sorts of shots always existed, but RTJ decided to place more emphasis on heroic type shots and actually go out of his way to build holes which made the player make definite decisions rather than offering hole after hole of oblique options.. I don't see this debate as black (Crane the villain) and white (Behr the hero) difference, merely emphasis placed differently. They are both talking about shades of the same thing and both sides should be accepted as essential concepts to make the game better and funner (I like this non-word).
Ciao
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"This is an interesting debate. However, I am very skeptical if these writings actually influenced (or failed to influence) the architecture of post WWII. Do folks really think RTJ and D Wilson read these articles and made conscious decisions to do something else? It could be true, but my guess is that in hindsight, things seem to fall into place quite neatly for the sake of historians. Like Tommy Mac's theory of Arts & Crafts, what is missing are any crucial pieces of evidence which actually link The Great Debate to future design. As such, I am not convinced that this debate clearly had a significant impact on design. This doesn't mean the discussion isn't interesting though."
Sean:
When you look at this debate we on here are calling the "Crane vs Behr/Mackenzie et al" debate or even the "Penal vs Strategic" debate, I think you need to put the entire gist of it into historical perspective, both back then and in the "Modern Age".
One also needs to recognize that it was Behr who did the vast majority of the writing for one side and that Crane probably did the vast majority of writing for the other side but neither one were the exclusive writers on either side.
Certainly Bobby Jones did some of the best articulating for the Behr side, but others such as Tillinghast may've actually written for the Crane side and apparently previous to Crane's articulated theories and mathematical formulae for testing the quality of architecture. Tillinghast, for instance, may've promoted Crane's side and even previous to Crane with his architectural ideas that were referred to as "modern" architecture which was largely synonymous with what would also be referred to as "scientific" architecture.
But we should recognize that even in Behr and Jones's mind Crane did not invent the style of architecture that Behr, Mackenzie and Jones et al were writing against.
That style had been happening, particularly in America, and quite a while before Crane came along and started to write about his theories.
Behr referred to the entire mentality as "the game mind of man". Crane simply began to articulate, and later, that mentailty and to expand on it via the use of his own mathematical forumlae for testing the quality of architecture. Behr did not call it "The game mind of Crane", and for good reason.
What did Behr mean by "the game mind of man"?
He explained what he meant by that in some detail. He meant the increased use of standardizations through increased rough, greater definition including fairways, scientific bunker placement, the desire to minimize luck and randomness etc. Behr also wrote against the tendency of the Rules of Golf to create these kinds of severe definitions and standardizations.
This was not something that was occuring in America just because of the proposals of Crane. These were things that were happening because of what Behr mentioned were the inherent "game mind of man" to accomplish all of the foregoing and more. And these things were happening before Crane came along as can be seen by some of what Jones said.
The idea promoted by Behr's theory of "the game mind of man" (similar to Crane's philosophy) was to minimize all things that did not have to do with the physical skill of human opponents and competitors. Behr thought, and worried that the direction was towards the ultimate standardizations of something like tennis or a tennis court which he said was OK in tennis and games like that where the entire structure of the contest was with a single ball vied for by human opponents.
But the same is just not so in golf and it never can be. And that's why he felt golf and its architecture needed to maintain its natural randomness, luck, and almost complete lack of any kind of architectural standardization.
I doubt even Behr would've said, had he seen golf in the modern age era, that it simply followed Crane's suggestions. I think he would've said it followed the inherent "game mind of man"---the very thing he and the likes of Mackenzie, Jones et al were warning about and concerned about, and even previous to Crane.
Crane to the likes and Behr et al just became the one who articulated that "game mind of man" philosophy and probably articulated it best and that very much concerned them.
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Sean -
I think you are off track. No one is talking about causation. That's a dicey concept even in the easy cases like physics or chemistry. It is certainly not a concept that helps much in the history of gca.
How it would work if someone thought that Josh Crane "caused" RTJ to do something? Over coffee one morning did RTJ have an epiphany while reading Crane? Which then dictated the kinds of designs he produced thereafter? Sort of like getting pricked by a magic thorn?
I'm not even sure I understand the concept of "influence" in this context. People a lot smarter than we have dealt with that and similar ideas about "cultural transmission" and have whiffed for the most part. See Hegel.
What I am trying to do is unpack some ideas. I'm trying to develop an analytic framework. If it is a good framework, it will do the work of untangling notions that were heretofore tangled. If it isn't doing that work, it's a waste of time.
Another test of the utility of the framework would be to see if it applies outside its first test case. Thus, even if it helps sort out the debates Crane, MacK and Behr were having, does it help make sense of what architects were doing in other eras?
Put another way, does it help tease out assumptions that have not been generally acknowledged? Does it help, for example, help articulate some to the assumptions that the USGA brings to setting up a golf course? And once these assumptions are out from the shadows, are they still prepared to insist on their views?
That is the sort of thing I hope will go on. This ain't simple syllogisms. Nor is it about causal notions along the lines of "if A, then B".
Bob
P.S. One of the best ways to get at historical causation is to play with counter-factuals. What if the British didn't declare war on the Nazis in 1939, for example? And so forth.
Just as a thought experiment, what if Josh Crane had never gotten interested in golf? How would gca over the next eight decades been different?
My guess is that it wouldn't be much different at all. Crane is of interest not because he caused anything. He is of interest because he represents a certain view of gca that has been around since the beginning of the game and is still very much with us.
The thing about Crane is that he was uniquely articulate, thorough and honest about those views. That's why I think he is worth revisiting. Plus he caused one hell of a brouhaha. And everyone likes a good fight.
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Bob:
That's a good post with a lot of food for thought.
Would things have been much different in golf architecture and its future if Crane had never been around?
That's a good question, but my sense is probably not very much different at all.
I really do believe in the power and preference of what Behr called the "game mind of man". I think it's just so inherent in what people tend to want to do and do. Not to say I endorse it but I think I believe it's almost inevitable.
It could be true to say, as Tom MacWood implied, that the spark that caused Behr and company to write and speak as they did about architecture wasn't just Crane and his mathematical formula for testing the quality of golf architecture but the fact that his theory dissed TOC.
To those guys and many others at that time one just didn't do that!
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It could be true to say, as Tom MacWood implied, that the spark that caused Behr and company to write and speak as they did about architecture wasn't just Crane and his mathematical formula for testing the quality of golf architecture but the fact that his theory dissed TOC.
To those guys and many others at that time one just didn't do that!
No, I don't think that is right. If you read Crane, Behr and MacK, TOC does not come up a lot. Some, but not a lot. Crane's low ranking of TOC comes up even less. To be sure, they didn't agree with Crane's low ranking, but their fight was over other, foundational issues. After the initial brouhaha over rankings, they moved on to those foundational issues and never really looked back. Their fight was over basic design philosophies.
Bob
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As I think I've mentioned before, Crane was a great fan of Carnoustie, particularly its seminal role in populating the USA with golf professionals in the early 20th century. He played in the inaugural Craws Nest Tassie, Carnoustie's annual Open amateur tournament played over 6 days of stroke and then match play, and later dedicated several cups to the Carnoustie Club for their local competitions.
I'm not sure if he ever subjected Carnoustie to his ranking system (which locals refer to in their histories as "abstruse"--Crane himself must settle for being called "eccentric."). Anybody know the Crane Rating for Carnoustie?
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Bob:
I wouldn't say the debate between Crane and Behr et al was over TOC---it was certainly over more fundamental things about architecture than that ultimately. But it seems that may've been the spark that set off the debate. There is an article, I suppose by Behr, that speaks pretty much exclusively about Jones's opinion of championship American courses compared to TOC, and if that article was early on in their debate then it just might indicate that TOC sparked it. Following and as a result of Jones's Open victory and record score there various people seemed to believe that indicated TOC was weak. That would've added credence to Crane's low ranking of TOC too.
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Rich -
In some ways the courses Crane chose not to rank is as interesting as the content of his rankings themselves. I don't know why he excluded the courses he did. I can only think that as of 1923 Carnoustie, Dornoch, Western Gailes, Birkdale, Ganton, Cruden and other courses weren't well enough known by the broader golfing public at the time. But I don't know.
Crane always had an affection for Carnoustie. Witness the "Crane Cup" there. Why he didn't include it in his rankings is a good question.
Tom -
The controversy over Crane's rankings was the match that started the conflagration. But the bonfire that resulted was about bigger issues than whether TOC ought to be ranked 14th or 8th or 1st. That was not something any of the participants spent much time fussing about.
What they did fuss about was the criteria that Crane thought important in measuring the value of a design vs. the criteria MacK, Behr, Darwin, Simpson and others thought important. That's why they thought it worth the effort to write articles back and forth. Crane couldn't be simply written off as a nutcase course rater. They saw him - correctly I think - as raising some pretty big issues that transcended how one or another course was rated.
Bob
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Bob:
This is why I think TOC (and Jones's opinion of it along with the others he agreed with and agreed with him) was pretty seminal in this debate. Many of the specific issues of the overall debate are included in the following article by Behr.
Bobby Jones And St Andrews
(Experience of Star is argument against golf course standardization)
Mr. O.B. Keeler, the Boswell of Bobby Jones, in writing what he saw of British Links in the September issue of American Golfer, quotes the Great Champions’s opinion of the Old Course at St. Andrews. Mr. Jones is evidently a man of few words. But whenever he has condescended (sic ?) to express an opinion about some phase of golf, we have always found that his thought deserves respect in its own right, and not merely because he is the great player that he is. And his thought in this particular case is of extreme value.
He is an amateur who plays for the joy of playing. He cannot be suspected of prejudice as might be a great professional, part of whose vocation in life it is to make low scores. Anything that might hinder the professional from achieving this end is likely to be criticized. And that is only natural. Golf to him is a business. The goods he sells are composed of his skill. As a good business man he likes to sell those as easily as possible and on parity with his competitors. Consequently golf must be reduced to a species of trap-shooting. If he can shoot straighter than his brother, he should be rewarded. Therefore it is only right and proper that there should be a marketplace for his wares. This is a definite area, the fairway, which will reward him if he can keep his ball upon it, and punish him if he does not succeed. Thus true golf, a sport similar to wild shooting over a good dog, has degenerated in the degree that this demand has come to be satisfied.
I think it may be justly observed that the moment competition enters into the affairs of life, individuality ceases to exist, and standardization results. Singularity is crushed in the interest of uniformity. And thus, owing to the stress today placed upon competition in golf, golf architecture has come to be rationalized. The old road which seemed to wander with no intent or purpose, and from which wandered off byroads to fool the traveler, has now become a well-posted concrete highway. Every inducement is offered to step upon the accelerator as long as one can keep the car of skill from slipping into the rough.
But it may be said that we only get out of a thing what we bring to it. If we have an axe to grind we cannot possibly remain disinterested. In our practical activities the things we deal with tend to shrink to the dimensions set by our practical requirements. In other words our practical activities go on in an impoverished and denuded world. In them we see no more than we wish to get out of them.
But to Bobby Jones golf is a diversion, a pleasant way of spending his time. Consequently in the playing of golf he is cognizant of many factors, and can take joy in them, which, if golf were a practical activity to him, might well prove to be a nuisance. Then, with an open mind, he brought and applied to St. Andrews the greatest golfing skill in the world today. And the reaction of his skill against the character of the Old Course precipitated an opinion that might well revolutionize the prevailing ideas as to what a golf course should be.
“Employing a comparison with our own best golf courses in America,” said he, “I have found that most of our courses, especially inland, may be played correctly the same way round after round. The holes really are laid out scientifically; visibility is stressed; you can see what you have to do virtually all the time, and once you learn how to do it, you can just go right ahead, next day and the next day and the day after that.
“Not at St. Andrews. The course is broad and open, and the rough is distant, and the fairways confront you in every direction. The greens are huge. And with all that, and with almost all the visible universe to shoot into, you may plume yourself on any round of 72 or 75 that falls to your fortune there. From tee after tee, you are offered almost all the real estate you can cover with your drive. But you would better place that drive with some thought and exactness, or your second shot will be a terror. The fourteenth hole, for example—I think it perhaps the finest on the course---may be played four different ways, all correct and widely at variance, according to the wind. And the wind is a worthy foe. It is just as likely to oppose you all the way out, and turn as you turn, and battle you all the way back. Or it may follow you around the entire horseshoe. You must use something besides shots and clubs, playing St. Andrews. I can learn more golf in a week on that course than in a year on many a sterling championship test in America.
The comparison of St. Andrews with our so-called championship courses is certainly not flattering in the general trend of golf architecture in this country. Mr. Jones used the right word when he said our holes are laid out “scientifically.” Science comprehends a desire to arrive at measurable knowledge. Hence with us, “visibility is stressed.” We consider it wrong that a golfer should be left in doubt as to the distance of a stroke. Thus he quickly learns the distance values of a course and knows how to play it and “he can go right ahead next day, and the next day, and the day after that.”
But this cannot be said about the Old Course. As to visibility, Mr A.C.M. Croome gave the British view when he remarked in the London Field that “St. Andrews suffers no loss because the approach shot to a round dozen of the putting greens is in greater or less degree blind.” But this does not mean that they are in greater or less degree blind from all angles. It simply means that, according to the British view, blindness is on occasions a legitimate and delightful hazard, and especially so when it forces the player to make a placement shot to attain visibility.
But blindness in an undulating, tumbling terrain such as linksland presents is quite different from that we are subject to in this country. The greens are not separate creations apart from the whole. They are as the Creator made them. They belong. The eye can pick up distance as it wanders from one hillock to the next till it arrives at the pin. It does not meet with a sudden blockage such as artificially created green and contours of which are separate and apart from its surroundings. Such is the character of the blindness at St. Andrews.
It is peculiar that golf architecture has drifted so far from this great example. The trend has been to make golf courses merely difficult to score upon. But to accomplish this requires no imagination or vision. The trick is easily turned. One has only to narrow fairways, make the rough damnable and restrict the size of the greens. And that is what we have been doing.
But the very opposite is true of St. Andrews. The greens are enormous. Some slope away from play. Seemingly one can drive in any direction. There is, of course, the hazard of the wind. That is not to be belittled. Nevertheless, “you may plume yourself on any round of 72 or 75 that falls to your fortune there.” Golf at St. Andrews is all strategy. The taint of penalty is absent. The steamroller of logical thought has not been allowed to destroy it.
St. Andrews violates every conception of what we think a golf course should be. It is now up to our authorities to prove the beneficence of the terrors they spread in the golfer’s way. But this they can never prove. The final appeal which a golf course makes is to the feelings. As I said at the beginning, we get out of a thing only what we bring to it. Mr. Jones brought the greatest golfing skill in the world to St. Andrews, and after he had been tested by it, it was sufficient proof for him to pronounce the Old Course the greatest in the world.
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Tom -
Good stuff isn't it?. Yes, TOC was discussed. The design issues they were arguing about included TOC, but the issues were also much broader than TOC.
The debate was not primarily about this or that aspect of TOC. Note that in Behr's eight or nine follow-on articles, Behr turns to those larger issues and TOC doesn't play a central role in his discussions.
Bob
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"Tom -
Good stuff isn't it?. Yes, TOC was discussed. The design issues they were arguing about included TOC, but the issues were also much broader than TOC.
The debate was not primarily about this or that aspect of TOC. Note that in Behr's eight or nine follow-on articles, Behr turns to those larger issues and TOC doesn't play a central role in his discussions."
Bob:
Of course the debate was not over TOC. TOC was simply their example of what apparently far more architecture should be and be like.
And if for whatever reasons golf architecture could not emulate TOC, their point was that somehow it should still be able to create in golfers and evoke from them that "feeling" Behr and Jones and the others felt TOC did evoke.
The debate was over how far particularly American architecture was departing from those many elements of TOC and the feeling it evoked in golfers that both Jones and Behr and Mackenzie and others explained in quite a bit of detail.
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Wonderful stuff, gentlemen. Thanks very much.
Every bit of the Behr essay that TE quoted sets me to thinking; there is just so much there.
I think Behr's goal was more a realistic/modest one than I've been making it. He seemed to believe that the 'game mind of man' was a permament part of our make-up, and so was hoping for a style of architecture to prevail that would at least mitigate it instead of encouraging it.
That essay also convinces me that the difficulty we find in Behr's writing is mostly our problem, not his. Look at this quote (below): to me, what Behr is saying is even more true today than it was in his day; we just don't recognize that truth anymore... to our detriment, I think:
"I think it may be justly observed that the moment competition enters into the affairs of life, individuality ceases to exist, and standardization results. Singularity is crushed in the interest of uniformity. And thus, owing to the stress today placed upon competition in golf, golf architecture has come to be rationalized. The old road which seemed to wander with no intent or purpose, and from which wandered off byroads to fool the traveler, has now become a well-posted concrete highway."
The old meandering roads (and ways) of life are almost all gone now; or at least have never been as de-valued as they are today...or so it seems to me.
Peter
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Thanks for the quote, Tom. However, either Jones, or Keeler or Behr is full of it. To say that Jones is somehow a different sort of animal than, say, Hagen, or Sarazen is just being econimcal with the truth. From what I know, Bob was just as ruthless as any of his competitors and may even have had a less sanguine disposition than the ones mentioned above. His temper tantrums in the early parts of his career are well doumented, are they not? Does anybody really think that Jones wasn't grinding out there with the best of them (in fact he was the best of them), not only in stroke play but also in match play where his dictum of "play the course, not the opponent" is legendary and correct.
As usual, Behr fills up blank sheets of paper with meaningless, semi-literate and even inaccurate drivel. I've asked for some good writing from you and others from Behr, but so far I've seen nothing that would get more than a C in my freshman English class. But then again, Behr was a gentleman, so a gentleman's "C" was probably good enough for him, as it was for W and Kerry and other wayward toffs before and after them.
Sic transit gloria GCA.
Rich
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But Rich, don't you agree that:
- generally speaking, the desire to 'test' leads to standardization and unformity?
- generally speaking, when you have standardization and uniformity, conformity can't be far behind?
- generally speaking, that in an age obessed with productivity and profitability, there is less love than ever for the meandering and (possibly) purposeless road?
- generally speaking, the modern world offers every inducement to (and perhaps even demands) stepping on the accelerator has hard and as long as one can?
And don't you agree that these generalities have parallels in the context of golf course architecture, particularly in terms of Crane's 'scientific' method?
And don't you think Behr was describing pretty well the 'golf course as championship test' mentality of the day, and in fact very clearly predicting the championship 'set-ups' of modern times?
Peter
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Richard:
Post #85 only shows that you really are both deaf, dumb and blind and full of shit in a significant number of ways.
Seriously!!
Furthermore, Richard, I think any of us would probably prefer to take Bobby Jones' own words for and about how he felt on these subjects than your words for how he felt. ;)
Peter:
Don't even bother to ask him constructive questions as all his answers are what are really meaningless anyway.
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Peter:
Having considered Behr as much and as long as I have, I feel that even if his basic message was full of promise and hope---eg that golf and golf architecture should appeal primarily to a person's "feeling", that both he and his message for golf architecture may've missed the boat for two essential reasons:
1. Man is probably inherently a more compeititive animal than Behr may've assumed and perhaps hoped----therefore leading to Man's inherent instinct for greater definition, greater standardizations, greater uniformity and a minimalization of luck, leading to greater perceived fairness.
2. That Man, the golfer, does not really object to that which he observes to be man-made or artificial, at least not anywhere near as much as Behr assumed he might.
I don't think Behr and his fellow proponents of the type of architecture that he articulated and proposed and longed for exactly lost some debate against the likes of Crane, I just think they were basically up against the inevitable----what Behr referred to as "The Game Mind of Man".
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But Rich, don't you agree that:
- generally speaking, the desire to 'test' leads to standardization and unformity?
- generally speaking, when you have standardization and uniformity, conformity can't be far behind?
- generally speaking, that in an age obessed with productivity and profitability, there is less love than ever for the meandering and (possibly) purposeless road?
- generally speaking, the modern world offers every inducement to (and perhaps even demands) stepping on the accelerator has hard and as long as one can?
And don't you agree that these generalities have parallels in the context of golf course architecture, particularly in terms of Crane's 'scientific' method?
And don't you think Behr was describing pretty well the 'golf course as championship test' mentality of the day, and in fact very clearly predicting the championship 'set-ups' of modern times?
Peter
Thanks, Peter
Per your questions, in order:
--depends on what you "test." In any endeavour, the higher up the "skill" rating, the less uniformity is required. Think of musicians or poets or Army generals.
--I would argue that in this day and age people seek out and relish non-conformity in their avocations, because of the conformity of their lives. The range of non-work activiteis available to and practised by people these days is massively broader an deeper than it was in the "golden age."
--Tom Paul and I belie that accelerator metaphor. Neither of us gets out of 2nd gear more than once or twice a semester.
--As I don't agree with the generalities, I don't see parallels, and in fact even if I did agree with them I think drawing parallels from generalties is a dangerous and fruitless endeavour.
--golf courses are always "championship" tests, whether or not the championship is a National Open or just a friendly Nassau. There are winners and losers every time you play, even if you are only playing with yourself.
Slainte
Rich
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But Rich, don't you agree that:
- generally speaking, the desire to 'test' leads to standardization and unformity?
- generally speaking, when you have standardization and uniformity, conformity can't be far behind?
- generally speaking, that in an age obessed with productivity and profitability, there is less love than ever for the meandering and (possibly) purposeless road?
- generally speaking, the modern world offers every inducement to (and perhaps even demands) stepping on the accelerator has hard and as long as one can?
And don't you agree that these generalities have parallels in the context of golf course architecture, particularly in terms of Crane's 'scientific' method?
And don't you think Behr was describing pretty well the 'golf course as championship test' mentality of the day, and in fact very clearly predicting the championship 'set-ups' of modern times?
Peter
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"“--golf courses are always "championship" tests, whether or not the championship is a National Open or just a friendly Nassau. There are winners and losers every time you play, even if you are only playing with yourself.”
Bobby Jones said:
“You must use something besides shots and clubs, playing St. Andrews. I can learn more golf in a week on that course than in a year on many a sterling championship test in America.”
Richard:
That may be Jones’ paramount point re what the likes of Behr and the others mentioned about how and why golf architecture can appeal to a golfer’s “feeling." Unfortunately, those things seem to be ideas and concepts you are incapable of understanding. And even if you may understand them on some level you seem incapable of accepting them for some reason.
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"He is an amateur who plays for the joy of playing. He cannot be suspected of prejudice as might be a great professional, part of whose vocation in life it is to make low scores. Anything that might hinder the professional from achieving this end is likely to be criticized. And that is only natural. Golf to him is a business. The goods he sells are composed of his skill. As a good business man he likes to sell those as easily as possible and on parity with his competitors. Consequently golf must be reduced to a species of trap-shooting. If he can shoot straighter than his brother, he should be rewarded. Therefore it is only right and proper that there should be a marketplace for his wares. This is a definite area, the fairway, which will reward him if he can keep his ball upon it, and punish him if he does not succeed. Thus true golf, a sport similar to wild shooting over a good dog, has degenerated in the degree that this demand has come to be satisfied.
I think it may be justly observed that the moment competition enters into the affairs of life, individuality ceases to exist, and standardization results. Singularity is crushed in the interest of uniformity. And thus, owing to the stress today placed upon competition in golf, golf architecture has come to be rationalized. The old road which seemed to wander with no intent or purpose, and from which wandered off byroads to fool the traveler, has now become a well-posted concrete highway. Every inducement is offered to step upon the accelerator as long as one can keep the car of skill from slipping into the rough."
I'm not sure who exactly is responsible for each line in that post, Tom, apparently some of it is quotes from Jones, but I cannot make them out other than the one you identified...the above lines I quoted are the first real clear explanation I have read or heard on how a professional differs from an amateur in their love of the game and analysis of its courses...and it's bull!
"...great professional, part of whose vocation in life it is to make low scores. Anything that might hinder the professional from achieving this end is likely to be criticized..."[/i]
Does this speaker not realize that even in professional golf, low scores are relative and that a difficult feature is going to be difficult for everybody?
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JES -
Maybe this is so obvious that everyone keeps missing it (and my apologies in advance if you haven't, and I've just misunderstood you instead):
The main 'characters' in the essay TE quoted are Max Behr (a champion amateur golfer) and Bobby Jones (the greatest amateur of them all). They had decades worth of tournament experience between them. Don't you think it's a GIVEN that they understood the nature of competition, and of shooting low scores, and of various kinds of difficulties/challenges on a golf course? Doesn't everything they write and say come from/out of that perspective?
I think the kind of architecture that Behr and Jones were promoting (let's call it "The Old Course") was valued by them not because it TOOK SOMETHING AWAY from golf at the highest level, but because it ADDED SOMETHING to golf at the highest level.
And I'd guess that both Behr and Jones realized that it was ONLY the fact that they were champion golfers that allowed them to talk about 'feelings' and 'randomness' and 'uniqueness' and still be taken seriously by the golfing elite. After all, who would've had the nerve to suggest that Jones was afraid of flat-out competitive golf?
To me, what I see everywhere in Behr's writings is a sense of possibility and wonder; a sense of the heights that the great (and competitive) game of golf -- and golf course architecture -- could reach in America. If it was ONLY about competition, it was clear enough to Behr (and probably everyone else) what that would mean for golf course architecture, ie:
"The trend has been to make golf courses merely difficult to score upon. But to accomplish this requires no imagination or vision. The trick is easily turned. One has only to narrow fairways, make the rough damnable and restrict the size of the greens. And that is what we have been doing."
But if was about something MORE, then it was also pretty clear what that could mean for golf course architecture. I think this sentence really does say it all (with my emphasis added):
"Mr. Jones brought THE GREATEST GOLFING SKILL in the world to St. Andrews, and AFTER HE HAD BEEN TESTED BY IT, it was sufficient proof for him to pronounce the Old Course the greatest in the world."
And what had moved the greatest competitive golfer of his generation to this conclusion? According to the essay, it had to do with TOC being "all about strategy", and being unique ("violating every conception of what we think a golf course should be"), and, in the end, being about "feelings"....and all of this while still TESTING a golfer's skills.
I think Behr was talking about a kind of architecture that encouraged the participation of the total PERSON in the playing of the game, i.e. his shot-making skills, yes of course, but also his love of nature and of nature's randomness and uniqueness.
Anyway, that's how I tend to read Behr, and have from the first time I read him.
Peter
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Sully:
These are Bobby Jones' words:
“Employing a comparison with our own best golf courses in America, I have found that most of our courses, especially inland, may be played correctly the same way round after round. The holes really are laid out scientifically; visibility is stressed; you can see what you have to do virtually all the time, and once you learn how to do it, you can just go right ahead, next day and the next day and the day after that.
“Not at St. Andrews. The course is broad and open, and the rough is distant, and the fairways confront you in every direction. The greens are huge. And with all that, and with almost all the visible universe to shoot into, you may plume yourself on any round of 72 or 75 that falls to your fortune there. From tee after tee, you are offered almost all the real estate you can cover with your drive. But you would better place that drive with some thought and exactness, or your second shot will be a terror. The fourteenth hole, for example—I think it perhaps the finest on the course---may be played four different ways, all correct and widely at variance, according to the wind. And the wind is a worthy foe. It is just as likely to oppose you all the way out, and turn as you turn, and battle you all the way back. Or it may follow you around the entire horseshoe. You must use something besides shots and clubs, playing St. Andrews. I can learn more golf in a week on that course than in a year on many a sterling championship test in America."
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Admittedly, I am jumping in without reading everything very carefully. But I have a question that may be at the heart of the professional/amateur differentiation. In the time Crane was writing his papers and debating Behr, Jones and MacKenzie, how much of amateur play was strictly match play and how much was professional golf stroke play? I recall that professionals first started playing stroke play because they didn't have the time away from their primary jobs as club pro/greenkeeper to play match play tournaments. This might account for the mention of professionals being more attuned to shooting low scores while amateurs were looking to win the most holes and looking at golf not in terms of stroke play but match play. Sorry if this is off topic or has been mentioned before.
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Wayne:
I think that's a very good question at this point. It may've some meaning with a guy like Jones and the way he looked at golf or even architecture and perhaps in some interesting ways that might even be sort of counter-intuitive to us.
Back then I think most all strictly amateur tournaments were at match play. I think that's the way the ruling bodies of golf (particularly the R&A and USGA) wanted it and match play was surely considered to be the fundamental format of the old game (certainly the very old game of foursome match play along with singles match play).
Stroke play was the preferred and apparently necessary format for professional golfers probably for the very reasons you gave.
But here we have Bobby Jones, an amateur, obviously playing most always match play golf in amateur tournaments but also playing stroke play tournaments so successfully against professionals.
And look at the approach he apparently developed to do both successfully. He called it playing against "Old Man Par". What does that mean really to a tournament player in either match or stroke play?
To me it means you are playing against the golf course and essentially trying to take both match play opponents and stroke play competitors somewhat out of your mental equation.
Apparently Jones felt if he could succeed in relationship to par he was pretty likely to beat most anyone in either match or stroke play and I guess his record basically bore that out.
Jones also apparently had a very difficult time in his early years dealing with his own adversity against a golf course and particularly St. Andrews (where he picked up his ball in the midst of a championship there precipitating what he claimed was his worse moment in golf).
Somehow that must have changed him and he must have come to realize fighting and criticizing a golf course was never going to do him any good anyway, and remarkably he later came to love and completely respect TOC and its vast differences from other courses, particularly American championship courses, as he explained above.
Did Jones somehow come to know something that most other golfers never come to know?
Perhaps he did and perhaps people who are more cynical about these kinds of things can fairly claim he may've come to be less critical of courses and such simply because he became so good that he won a remarkable amount of the time anyway and the truth of golf is winners very rarely feel the need to complain about anything---why would they if they won anyway ;)
Behr does try to make the point that perhaps because Bobby Jones never played golf for money that fact may've influenced him and his approach to courses differently. Maybe that's true but somehow I doubt that could've been paramount. In my opinion, whether one is a top-flight amateur or a professional tournament player there is a very similar desire amongst all golfers to win first---and if there's money in it for you that's essentially a nice byproduct only.
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Did Joshua Crane write anything about GCA before he received his engineering degree at MIT ?
His discussion of course ratings, dislike for blindness and luck even as to the condition of the rough, etc. is just so dry. His ratings simply scream engineering in his 'analysis into elements that will permit actual comparison in plain statistical figures.'
It would seem that his reduction of the art into 'sub-elements' and the like would have disturbed many of the golden age architects even thought he threw out the line that he thought the 'golf course development was on the right track' in that GCA golden age year of 1926.
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John, Didn't Behr begin warning of the worng road in '23?
The El Campeon(sp?) in Howey-in-the Hills Florida was built in 26' which has many of the elements that resemble the courses built in the dark ages of gca. WWII-1969
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To get back to the title of this thread---"Re: Joshua Crane Gets Mad", yes he certainly did get mad when this debate between himself and the likes of Behr, Mackenzie, Jones et al began to take shape in writing amongst some of the day's most popular golf periodicals.
But one can see from Crane's responses that he was particularly mad that those who opposed him did not choose to debate him using basically a mathematical or "scientific" construct or format for testing the quality of architecture that he was proposing. Crane wanted to promote a discussion that essentially would serve to improve his mathematical or "scientific" application. His goal was to improve the general quality of architecture in America
Instead, those opposing him basically said that no mathematical or scientific application could be used to test the quality of architecture and that the quality of architecture could only be tested by estimating the general "feeling" golfers had about a golf course or golf architecture.
In a sense, however, that's just a generality.
But what were the specifics of architecture that both sides apparently agreed upon and disagreed about?
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Have to agree with Rich and Sully here. Behr premises his whole essay with a bunch of unbelievable nonsense about the credibility of Jones, because Jones as an amateur plays only for the love of the game. I would suppose a writing professor would give a C at best for such a poorly reasoned lead in to the primary points of the essay which are much more "reasonable".
"But one can see from Crane's responses that he was particularly mad that those who opposed him did not choose to debate him using basically a mathematical or "scientific" construct or format for testing the quality of architecture that he was proposing."
I think you have this wrong Tom. It appeared to me that he was upset because his opponents appealed to emotion instead of reason in their arguments. Or, if they did attempt reason, it was such a poor attempt as seen by the likes of the intro in Behr's essay.
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Garland:
On your above post, I guess you and I will just have to agree to disagree. And if Rich and Sully feel exactly as you do, I suppose the same will have to go for them.
I should ask you if you've carefully read any or many of Crane's responses or are you just filtering what they were from what's been written on this thread?
As for Jones' opinions and sentiments about golf and architecture being some result of the fact he was an amateur and didn't play for money and Behr's lead in with that to his premise, perhaps you should simply look again at what Jones himself said about TOC vs American championship courses and architecture and not so much about what Behr said about Jones.
Perhaps what most of us should do anyway is try to determine what the similarities of opinion were between Behr and Mackenzie and Jones et al and to try to look at those similarities of opinion in as much detail as possible.
Having done that we should then look to see what differences of opinion they may've had about TOC and then look at those differences in as much detail as possible. ;)
And in the meantime it might be best to dispose of superficial remarks such as what kind of grade a writing professor would give Max Behr.
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"I think you have this wrong Tom. It appeared to me that he was upset because his opponents appealed to emotion instead of reason in their arguments. Or, if they did attempt reason, it was such a poor attempt as seen by the likes of the intro in Behr's essay."
Garland:
That is precisely what Behr was trying to do and trying to explain. Most all of his premise was that golf and golf architecture SHOULD appeal to a golfer's emotions, period. That's why he said it was mostly all about "FEELING".
And that's also why he said he didn't believe one could reduce emotions and feelings to some mathematical or scientific formulae---as Crane was attempting to do.
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Tom,
Did it all boil down to the fact that Joshua Crane was a very analytic sort of guy that needed to compute everything and these other fruitcakes liked everything very touchy-feely?
Actually a serious question in there, so please, I'm curious if you think I am oversimplifying this whole issue.
As we all know, opinions can be (wink) very personal...this site is as good an incubator as any to illustrate what can happen when two different opinions on the same subject are stated and defended...I think a big key in all of this (that might be THE THING I am missing) is whether or not any of this goes beyond OPINION.
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JES
I'd like to see TE's answer to your question too. In the meantime, something you said about TOC on the other thread struck me:
"It sounds like this course might LET a player like Jones experiment more..."
Yes; and it sounds to me like Crane's scientific criteria for ideal golf courses (TOC wasn't one of them) would remove/mitigate that very option
Peter
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I knew you'd nibble on that...and the follow up is...do you need Jones' ability TO EXPERIMENT at TOC? I think you'd agree that it would be a negative if the answer is an affirmative...
Is this just one man's (the best player in the game) opinion of a course that especially appeals to him? Does he have writing that indicates it is more than that?
At some point here we'll merge with his writings on what his goal was for Augusta and how that related to, or was born from, his feelings about TOC, but I want it to be more than the typical challenge the good and appeal to the no-so-good...
I want an architect to tell me they can design a course that engages the mind and ability of all levels of serious players to a high degree. I haven't seen that written yet.
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JES
I feel like Don Corleone when he chose a life of crime so he wouldn't have to dance like a puppet on the strings held by the pezzanovanta (the big shots)...you with your leading bits of insights dropped here and there to drive me crazy....
I should bow out of this - I've worried for most of this thread that I'm just mucking up the discussion with my ramblings and little-bit-of-knowledge-about-Behr-Crane..but I'll say this:
If anyone was seeking 'conformity' in great golf courses I don't think it was Jones/Behr/mackenzie...and if anyone was seeking to make courses less enjoyable for the average golfer it wasn't Jones/Behr/Mackenzie...and I think if anyone was interested in a course that could challenge the great player (above and beyond just calling for him to "make the shots") while being a unique and pleasurable test for everyone else, it was Jones...and I'm almost sure he makes explicit in his views about Augusta that this idea was based on TOC
So, yes, in the context of TOC, you DO need Jones ability to able to experiment like he could and might...but that doesn't in fact detract from what TOC offerred anyone else...and THAT was its glory
Peter
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By the way...when I say "serious players" I am in no way talking about skill...my only qualifier is that you be an avid, interested golfer...
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"Tom,
Did it all boil down to the fact that Joshua Crane was a very analytic sort of guy that needed to compute everything and these other fruitcakes liked everything very touchy-feely?
Actually a serious question in there, so please, I'm curious if you think I am oversimplifying this whole issue."
Sully:
As you probably can tell by now Joshua Crane was undeniably a very analytic guy and he apparently relied on mathematics and the so-called "Scientific Method" (a method of research in which a problem is identified, relevent data gathered, a hypothesis formulated, and the hypothesis empirically tested) in many of the things he thought about. The guy went to both Harvard and MIT and I guess most people who ever went to MIT are pretty much deep into things like mathematics, science and scientific analysis. ;)
I very much doubt Crane ever thought of the likes of Behr, Mackenzie and particularly Jones or even Charles Ambrose as fruit-cakes so I'd assume it must have virtually stunned him when they all basically FAILED TO ACCEPT his entire premise that the quality of golf architecture could be or should be subjected to mathematical formulae and some scientific analysis relying on mathematics.
He may've been ready for them to question the criterion of his mathematical formulae but they, or Behr at least, didn't even do that. Behr basically responded that mathematics just doesn't and frankly can't work with such a thing as how one perceives golf architecture because it is essentially based on feelings and emotions and that one cannot mathematically analyze feelings nor mathematically quantify feelings.
I dont' really feel one can mathematically analyze and mathematically quantify feelings and emotions. Do you think one can Sully?
You said:
"As we all know, opinions can be (wink) very personal...this site is as good an incubator as any to illustrate what can happen when two different opinions on the same subject are stated and defended...I think a big key in all of this (that might be THE THING I am missing) is whether or not any of this goes beyond OPINION."
That's an excellent analogy and point. Does any of this go beyond opinion? Should any of this ever go beyond opinion?
Well, I suppose if you take a look at what is absolutely necessary about the game of golf in relation to its playing fields, it's architecture, what we know is you must have a series of starting points, the tees, and you generally have 18 holes that have a hole in the ground at the end of each on a places we generally call greens.
Other than those few standardizations necessary for a golf course what else do we have but a whole holy host of OPINIONS, personal opinions of all kinds about the way the rest of it should be?
Apparently Crane wanted to direct golf and golf architecture towards more standardizations----eg to find ways to eliminate luck to make the game fairer, to rid golf courses of blindness to create greater visibility, to define areas more clearly and exactly where one should hit the ball and to arrange the areas more appropriately where one would be more consistently penalized for failing to hit the ball where he was supposed to.
Behr, Mackenzie and Jones et al apparently didn't like that or didn't want to see golf go in that direction.
It may even be true to say, Sully, that the opinions of the likes of Behr, Mackenzie, Ambrose and Jones et al are the opinions of the true "naturalist". Obviously not everyone or perhaps not even most agree with them. Perhaps many or even most may not have even agreed with them back then when this debate took place and most golfers may never agree with them.
All I know is my opinion, and I agree with them as I understand them and as I understand what they were after.
But one thing I believe I can tell you with almost total assurance and that was Behr was not trying to advocate that golf and golf architecture should return to the way it once was in perhaps the 18th century and most of the 19th century. I say that because he said that.
What he really wanted to see was that somehow golf and its playing fields could be done in such a way that many more golfers could somehow have the FEELING that those golfers back in those days had for golf and the places they played it on.
This was the very same thing that C.B. Macdonald said and felt so strongly about, except he tended to call it "The Spirit of St Andrews".
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Crane published his scientific method in 1924 ? I think it was 1924.
Two years later Crane's replies in 1926 GIs were not even replies. He didn't offer much in response in the GI articles except to repeat the explanation and needs of his methods.
Crane also placed much too much importance of maintenance and fairness of the rough and the like. Every mis-hit or wayward shot should be more or less penalized the same.
What was missing from his critique for a scientific method was how many holes favored the hook and how many the slice, either by hazards or favorable line of play. That should have been balanced and fair as well. I have not seen that mentioned.
Of course he wasn't really doing much except rating courses using his scientific method and in the meanwhile, cutting through the guts of the art involved.
Many of the GIs that published Crane's articles ran articles about the art of golf course design.
It went against the grain of everything else. The initial article may have been a quaint look at a totally different way of looking at courses but the responses must have goaded the editors to continue articles by Crane and sell a few more magazines.
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John:
I think you're right---eg it sure did look like GI was trying to fan the flames of some kind of dust-up. Did you notice the GI note in one of Crane's articles ("Log Rolling" I think it was) where the editor said GI decided to forgo publishing Crane's formulas for testing architecture in favor of publishing his response to Ambrose and the criticisms his system had already evoked?
I read those Crane articles again tonight and I forgot how much he complained about everyone attacking him personally and offered little other intelligent response to his critics. His "Woe is me" attitude that everyone was attacking him personally instead of what he said reminds me of a few on here over the years.
Crane's writing style is a whole lot more bizarre to me than Behr's. I guess those highly educated Ivy League guys back then were just into some pretty odd styles of writing. To me Crane is almost unreadable.
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Tom,
I'd be interested in reading some of these articles...I might have to make a visit to the farm some time soon.
I don't know much about the work of MacKenzie or Behr, tell me...Do their courses have as much blindness as St. Andrews?
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"I think you have this wrong Tom. It appeared to me that he was upset because his opponents appealed to emotion instead of reason in their arguments. Or, if they did attempt reason, it was such a poor attempt as seen by the likes of the intro in Behr's essay."
Garland:
That is precisely what Behr was trying to do and trying to explain. Most all of his premise was that golf and golf architecture SHOULD appeal to a golfer's emotions, period. That's why he said it was mostly all about "FEELING".
And that's also why he said he didn't believe one could reduce emotions and feelings to some mathematical or scientific formulae---as Crane was attempting to do.
Tom,
You don't understand my point. I will admit that I have not read the writings other than those replicated here. However, with these examples I can demonstrate what I mean.
"Any architect in Great Britain or U. S. says St. Andrews is better than Muirfield." This is not a reasonable argument. I suppose a lawyer might say something like "Objection! Facts not in evidence." Did they personally contact all architects in GB and US to determine this? I think not!
"St. Andrews needs years of play to appreciate it." What is this? An appeal to nostalgia? It says nothing about whether it is a better course or not.
"Old champion still formidable at St. Andrews." What is this? An appeal to kindly feelings towards old gentlemen? It says nothing about whether it is a better course or not.
"It is not difficult to create holes on any inland course of similar character." Anyone capable of logic and reason would swear this is an argument that St. Andrews is rather run of the mill.
Unfortunately, the above quotes are taken out of context by Crane (perhaps purposely so) so a reader has no understanding why the authors of such quotes would make such meaningless statements. However, they do not show Crane arguing against emotion and feelings towards a golf course, but against lack of reason (using emotion and feelings) in trying to make an argument.
Peter,
Did the article that you took the quotes from provide anymore context, or reference a particular article by the other side?
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http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forums2/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=32246
Gives the Crane rating method.
To it I would say, golf courses are better when the provide different challenges on each hole. Crane's rating method and prescriptions for improvement would move all holes towards a uniformity that would devalue the golfing experience on a course composed of them.
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Garland,
Thanks for posting Crane's methodology...I am working through it and something occured to me that I wanted to put on here...
If it is the opinion of Jones, Behr, MacKenzie et al that a scientific formula for rating golf courses is unfounded because it is the "FEELINGS" and the "EMOTIONS" that matter...how can Jones and Behr presume to tell me what is "the greatest golf course in the world"?
What if TOC sucks for me personally? Am I wrong to dislike it? Do I have to like it because Bobby Jones said so? Even if they are in the minority, and even if I also think the same way they do about all of this, I have a real problem with someone telling me not to scientifically evaluate something when they themselves rank it in their own way.
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http://www.britannica.com/magazine/print?query=genteel&id=29&minGrade=&maxGrade=
In trying to find out a bit more about Crane, I came upon this. Ah, that we were a phsyical "Conversation Club" rather than a hit and run society of time stressed indivduals.....
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http://newenglandgreenkeeper.com/Documents/Crane%20wins%20at%2083.pdf
Here's another good one. Hard to reconcile this with the view painted of oor Josh as Satan's handmaiden....
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http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=713479&imageID=828191&parent_id=713467&word=&snum=&s=¬word=&d=&c=&f=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&total=14&num=0&imgs=12&pNum=&pos=3
Another one, with a photie. Oor Josh was US Amateur tennis champion for 4 straight years in the early 20th century.
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http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F0DE5DE1639E333A25756C0A9679C946997D6CF
Any chance it's the same guy?
Article from 1908!
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Jim
Pretty sure it's oor Josh. He only coached Harvard for one year (1907) and his team finished 7-3. Other searches have revealed that he was a top class polo player and devised a once widely used bidding system for bridge which was the first to allow points for distributional values. I do not think that he would have been awed by Bobby Jones at Augusta, nor at all intimidated by Behr or Mackenzie.
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I think so, JES.
Bob Crosby will know for sure; but I think Crane was a fine running back there, and then coached the football team (but for only one year, leaving for unexplained reasons).
Yes, a facinating guy, and well-rounded athlete, and no one -- I don't think - is demonizing him or taking him lightly (certainly no one did back then)....but he wasn't as good a golfer as Behr :o
Peter
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I'll be visiting Happydale Farms shortly...in the meantime, could anyone produce some of Max Behr's writings through this debate? I'm curious just how he positioned the views of Crane.
Thanks.
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http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9801E1DE1239E133A25750C0A9679C946395D6CF
Here's one on another issue that shows that Maxie can get mad too!
PS--I'm searching for video references to either Behr or Crane in the "Girls Gone Wild" archives, but no luck yet....
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I have located the MacKenzie article that Crane was responding to with the comments that begin this thread. It is in the April 1926 issue of Golf Illustrated. It reads like MacKenzie is dumb as a post in his criticisms. Clearly MacKenzie is not dumb as a post. However, what is obvious is that he has no idea what Crane's rating system is. Therefore, he fires criticisms that agree with many of the factors that Crane has taken into account. So Crane did not take his comments out of context. MacKenzie's comments were simply made in ignorance of the subject. Therefore, they had no real meaning when used to critique Crane. They were quite nonsensical as Crane aptly seems to point out.
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"Unfortunately, the above quotes are taken out of context by Crane (perhaps purposely so) so a reader has no understanding why the authors of such quotes would make such meaningless statements. However, they do not show Crane arguing against emotion and feelings towards a golf course, but against lack of reason (using emotion and feelings) in trying to make an argument."
Garland:
Maybe you think it shows a lack of reason to make an argument that emotion and feeling towards a golf course are perhaps of primary importance but I most assuredly do not, and obviously either did Mackenzie, Jones and particularly Max Behr. But if you feel that way, no problem, everybody has an opinion, although if that's yours I sure don't agree with it.
The man who made most all those remarks you listed above as unreasonable was Alister Mackenzie, by the way, not exactly someone whose opinions on architecture and certainly TOC should be considered chopped liver by anyone, including you.
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"However, they do not show Crane arguing against emotion and feelings towards a golf course, but against lack of reason (using emotion and feelings) in trying to make an argument."
Garland:
Joshua Crane made his own argument against the importance of emotion and feeling towards a golf course, although apparently completely unintentionally. And in my opinion, Max Behr caught him up on the lack of logic of doing that by using Crane's own stated personal preferences AND his own proposal to analyze architecture via a mathematical formula against him.
Behr said:
“It would not be so bad if Mr Crane's preferences coincided with his figures. At least he would have a personal opinion, and that is always interesting. But he has remarked: "In fact, I am often myself disappointed in finding that certain courses or holes of which I am particularly fond do not rate as well as others which are not as attractive to me."
"What a remarkable statement! in the first place, whence did his figures come if not from his feelings? They were but a mathematical assessment of his fondness for things. Which was wrong, his figures or his feelings, in the event thereafter that his figures failed to establish that which was attractive to him over that which was not? Perhaps in the world beyond there is some omniscient common denominator permitting a mathematics of emotions. But in this world we are all so differently constituted that such a scheme as Mr Crane's is just as chimerical as if someone were to set out to determine the greatest painting in the world by such a means" (a mathematical formula) (parenthesis mine)).
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"Here's another good one. Hard to reconcile this with the view painted of oor Josh as Satan's handmaiden...."
Rich:
I'm most certainly not trying to paint Crane as Satan's handmaiden, and I truly doubt either Behr, Mackenzie or Jones were either. Actually if you keep reading the accounts to the end of this so-called debate issue they get pretty humorous about him and even call him their friend.
It was Crane's early reactions to their responses to his mathematical proposal that made it look like they were painting him as Satan's handmaiden but Behr, Mackenzie or Jones et al never did that. They did go to town on his mathematical formula proposal though. At least Behr did.
The truth is Joshua Crane was a pretty danged remarkable man with a ton of truly impressive accomplishments in both sports and other very diverse areas of life. According to Bob C, though, the word on the street about him from some who had to deal with him was he could be a real overachingly opinionated pain-in-the-ass.
By the way, interesting link you posted above. Did you catch the second page of that link? It mentions the death of George Herbert Walker, past USGA president who happens to be this f...ing little shrub of a president of ours grandfather!! ;)
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"I'll be visiting Happydale Farms shortly...in the meantime, could anyone produce some of Max Behr's writings through this debate? I'm curious just how he positioned the views of Crane."
Sully:
Producing Behr's articles and related info about him is something of a tricky business these days. I'd rather not go into the reasons why on here. ;)
What do you mean how he positioned the views of Crane? If I knew what you meant by that I'll try to tell you.
By the way, that is our Joshua Crane that was the US Court Tennis Champion (a couple of times). Most people don't happen to know though, that one basically can get ranked in court tennis if one simply buys a court tennis racket. ;)
I may be mistaken but I think I recall that Crane was big into things like Naval ordnance and stuff.
I believe it may've been his son or nephew I ran across in my yute when hanging around Isleboro Maine (we called it Dark Harbor).
This guy Crane was some kind of crazy yachtsman with all kinds of weird personally designed boats including one that was a relatively large yacht but it was, in fact, a completely scaled down exact replica of a destroyer. It was about 75 feet long and it looked like it was about 7 feet wide. He would take it out and do all kinds of wild turns heeling that thing over to what looked like close to 30 degrees. ;)
I could be wrong but it just may be that the Cranes made a lot of money in toilets and things which only goes to prove you really do get out of things what you put into them, as Max Behr mentioned about Crane's mathematical golf architecture testing system.
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Tom
If only Crane lived in this day and age, he could have just added some sort of creative criterion like today's magazines do--"Tradition" and "Walk in the Park" come to mind.
A few pieces of extraneous information:
--GHW was not Shrub's grandfather but his great-granda. Time must fly when you are having fun.
--I'm not sure if Josh was related to the Toilet Crane's of Chicago. They bought property near Boston (Crane Beach), but not until 1910.
--The major toilet manufacturer selling in Scotland was called Shanks. One is always advised to go to the toilet in Scotland after your round and not before it.
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...
The man who made most all those remarks you listed above as unreasonable was Alister Mackenzie, by the way, not exactly someone whose opinions on architecture and certainly TOC should be considered chopped liver by anyone, including you.
Sorry Tom, but as my post above shows Alister's remarks are chopped liver in this case, because he didn't bother to investigate what he was critiquing and thereby wrote a bunch of nonsense about Crane's rating system that upset Crane.
Sure Alister had very valuable knowledge and opinions about TOC, but in this case he misapplied it by not knowing what he was using it to critique.
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What do you mean how he positioned the views of Crane? If I knew what you meant by that I'll try to tell you.
The flow of every conversation is dictated by how the sides understand each other. If Behr misinterpreted what Crane was writing about, his responses would be out of context. When I ask how Behr "positioned" Crane what I really want is to see if Behr read Crane differently than I did.
In that piece Garland posted with the article Crane wrote about the methodology behind his ranking system I saw a whole lot of talk about emotions and feelings and pleasure. I also saw alot of scarry stuff about uniformity and the elimination of luck but the keys I took out of that one piece is that his end goal is to make the game as pleasurable as possible for everyone...sounds familiar doesn't it?
I could be wrong but it just may be that the Cranes made a lot of money in toilets and things which only goes to prove you really do get out of things what you put into them, as Max Behr mentioned about Crane's mathematical golf architecture testing system.
This is priceless and probably worthy of being a tagline...
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"Sorry Tom, but as my post above shows Alister's remarks are chopped liver in this case, because he didn't bother to investigate what he was critiquing and thereby wrote a bunch of nonsense about Crane's rating system that upset Crane.
Sure Alister had very valuable knowledge and opinions about TOC, but in this case he misapplied it by not knowing what he was using it to critique."
Garland:
I don't think your post above shows anything of the kind. Mackenzie was using the opinions he was aware of and obviously Mackenzie was aware of the opinions of plenty of worthy people.
And furthermore the likes of Mackenzie and Behr were critiquing Crane's mathemtatical procedure for testing the quality of golf architecture. Their critique of Crane's mathematical procedure was that it should not be used to test the quality of golf course architecture.
I don't see any point in trying to make it any more complicated than that because it wasn't.
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"The flow of every conversation is dictated by how the sides understand each other. If Behr misinterpreted what Crane was writing about, his responses would be out of context. When I ask how Behr "positioned" Crane what I really want is to see if Behr read Crane differently than I did."
Sully:
It did not sound to me like Behr misinterpreted what Crane was writing about. Anyone can tell Crane was writing about his mathematical formulae to test the quality of golf courses and their architecture. Behr simply did not think one could or should do that as it wasn't relevent, only feelings and emotions were important to him regarding the quality of a course.
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Tom,
Let me put it another way. Had Alister MacKenzie submitted his April 1926, Golf Illustrated article to a peer reviewed scholarly journal, it would have been rejected, because of his obvious lack of knowledge of the subject matter he was critiquing. His peers would have known that material and would see that he didn't. Therefore, they would reject it with the suggestion that he familiarize himself with the material and revise accordingly before resubmission.
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"The flow of every conversation is dictated by how the sides understand each other. If Behr misinterpreted what Crane was writing about, his responses would be out of context. When I ask how Behr "positioned" Crane what I really want is to see if Behr read Crane differently than I did."
Sully:
It did not sound to me like Behr misinterpreted what Crane was writing about. Anyone can tell Crane was writing about his mathematical formulae to test the quality of golf courses and their architecture. Behr simply did not think one could or should do that as it wasn't relevent, only feelings and emotions were important to him regarding the quality of a course.
Tom,
What is interesting to me is that Crane "was writing about his mathematical formulae to test the quality of golf courses and their architecture..."[/i] with the goal being to show which courses should be the most pleasurable.
At least that was a frequently stated objective in the essay Garland posted on the other thread.
They just looked at pleasure differently, don't you think?
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Tom,
What is interesting to me is that Crane "was writing about his mathematical formulae to test the quality of golf courses and their architecture..." with the goal being to show which courses should be the most pleasurable.
At least that was a frequently stated objective in the essay Garland posted on the other thread.
They just looked at pleasure differently, don't you think?”
Sully:
No, frankly I don’t. And as it relates to Crane (and Behr) I think the following statement essentially proves it.
Behr said:
“It would not be so bad if Mr Crane's preferences coincided with his figures. At least he would have a personal opinion, and that is always interesting. But he has remarked: "In fact, I am often myself disappointed in finding that certain courses or holes of which I am particularly fond do not rate as well as others which are not as attractive to me."
"What a remarkable statement! in the first place, whence did his figures come if not from his feelings? They were but a mathematical assessment of his fondness for things. Which was wrong, his figures or his feelings, in the event thereafter that his figures failed to establish that which was attractive to him over that which was not? Perhaps in the world beyond there is some omniscient common denominator permitting a mathematics of emotions. But in this world we are all so differently constituted that such a scheme as Mr Crane's is just as chimerical as if someone were to set out to determine the greatest painting in the world by such a means" (a mathematical formula) (parenthesis mine)).
In my opinion, essentially after making a remark like that in the context of his own mathematical testing I just don’t believe Crane could possibly have it both ways and the somewhat humorous, and certainly revealing thing is he said so himself.
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Tom,
It is quite clear to me that when someone makes a statement like..."In fact, I am often myself disappointed in finding that certain courses or holes of which I am particularly fond do not rate as well as others which are not as attractive to me."[/i]...they have successfully separated their emotions from their analytical process. That's a good thing if someone is going to go through an analytical process.
The next generation of his formula is what I'd be interested in. He took a purely mathematical analysis to the first go 'round and realized he disagreed with the results...they did not support his personal opinions. This is where I think you and Behr are misreading him. You both criticize Crane for publishing a formula with the assumption that he created the formula with the sole intention of "backing into" his personal favorites at the expense of his least favorites.
Based on what I have read (only what's come on here), I think the fruitcakes dismissed him too soon. I think Crane could well come to learn that there really is value in uncertainty.
In a big world perspective just take his ideas about turning several small greenside bunkers into one large one for sake of predictability...there are several arguments for why the small ones are better in my mind, and only one or two against...I think he'd come to understand that...and would be open to it.
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Sully
That last paragraph is very interesting. What in fact seems to have happened (based on my limited exposure to Golden Age courses) is that the small numerous bunker idea (what existed and still exists in Old Europe) was somehow transmogrified to the "White Faces of Merion," or the "Endless Summer" Mackenzie styles. The ODG's seemed to have followed Crane in this particular instance.
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In this conversation I feel like I am walking down a strange hallway in the dark so I'm trying to do it carefully, but something else comes out of all this...how much blindness did MacKenzie design into his courses? Did he and/or Behr feel constrained to create courses withina tight range of total par figure (did they design par 67's or 75's?)? Even more to the point...would either of them criticize a course that consisted completely of holes that favored one particular style even if every hole was very good on its own?
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"He took a purely mathematical analysis to the first go 'round and realized he disagreed with the results...they did not support his personal opinions."
JES - that's where my trouble/question really sits. What does a purely mathematical analysis mean? How can you perform such an analysis on a golf course? How can you perform it, that is, without coming to it with some preconceived ideas and opinions and feelings about what a golf course should be or should ideally be, and how you will judge/score a green or a green complex or a hazard etc etc. For example, I think that Crane scored high a golf course that had 3 sets of tees (in the tee category at least). Okay, that's fine; maybe I'd agree that 3 tees are better than on. Maybe. But it's still a subjective opinion, isn't it? e.g. why not say that 5 sets of tees are better than 3 in that they help ensure that more people/levels of golfers can enjoy the course.
What I'm saying is that Crane's analysis just doesn't strike me as all that objective or scientific at all, except in name; at least Behr etc admitted the subjective nature (feelings emotions) of his approach.
Peter
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Jim
If you want to really know, they were groping about in the dark, just as we were, but without the burden of knoweldge and entrusted with far too much responsibility.
Rich
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There's nothing scientific about weighting each feature of a golf course with a number that has no quantifiable value to begin with.
Who decides that a tee is worth 10% in 100 percent, for instance -- all of the golf course characteristics being equal because I say so -- and uses the end percentage to determine ranking?
How is that "scientific" in the same sense that emission spectroscopy can tell you exactly how much of an element is present in a metallic or non-metallic substance, for example?
Reification. He was an interesting person. But he was also a knucklehead.
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Reification. He was an interesting person. But he was also a knucklehead.
This is the perception I am curious about...Tom Paul, Bob Crosby, Peter Pallotta...do you think this is about how those guys viewed Joshua Crane back then?
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There is alot to digest in this thread and some very interesting ideas.
Last night, I was reading The Links again and found it interesting that Hunter states in his book that TOC was one of the worst routed courses and then turns around waxes poetic about the virtues of the course.
"Such criticisms would be more than enough to destroy forever the reputation of any course in the universe exceppt SA. Upon her standing in the wrold of golf they seem to have no effect whatsoever. It is rather difficult to explain why SA shouldbe the one and only course which stands above and scorns all criticism. One can say evil things of Sandwich, Prestwick, Hoylake and any other course, and find some to agree; but if one assails the home of the R&A, one soon fins the atmosphere grows chilly."
Although Hunter clearly expresses is affection for the course in his book, I found his thoughts here interesting. What exactly was he saying? He doesn't expound on it (the criticism). Perhaps he was saying that TOC follows no "formula", that a "balance" compared to later courses doesn't exist and yet is non the worse for it. His mentor, AM, certainly took this idea to heart in his courses.
"The strategy required to play some of the holes is so varied and so interesting. Pine Valley is a course where we hit with all our power, and if the high soaring ball plumps down on a bit of turf, we are immensely pleased; but we never have a sufficient variety of shots of quite enough skill and accuracy to play SA as we should like to play it, or indeed as we feel that one day we shall play it. At PV we feel that we lack power only, and no one thinks of committing suicide because Dempsey can lick him; but at SA our brains fail us. There is something in the very terrain which outwits us. That is, I think, what gives the old course its enduring vitality. It is the most captivating and unfair, the most tantalizing and bewitching, of all courses."
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Sully -
Crane was a well known figure during the GA and later. He was taken quite seriously by MacK, Behr, Darwin, etc. They were right to do so. He raised some big issues. No one thought he was a knucklehead.
Bob
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Sully -
Crane was a well known figure during the GA and later. He was taken quite seriously by MacK, Behr, Darwin, etc. They were right to do so. He raised some big issues. No one thought he was a knucklehead.
Bob
Bob, which guy told you that he wasn't a knucklehead?
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There's nothing scientific about weighting each feature of a golf course with a number that has no quantifiable value to begin with.
Who decides that a tee is worth 10% in 100 percent, for instance -- all of the golf course characteristics being equal because I say so -- and uses the end percentage to determine ranking?
How is that "scientific" in the same sense that emission spectroscopy can tell you exactly how much of an element is present in a metallic or non-metallic substance, for example?
Reification. He was an interesting person. But he was also a knucklehead.
And your credential to judge science is?
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Thanks Bob, does it seem appropriate to you that his first run formula did not produce results that line up with his actual opinions of specific holes and courses?
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JMorgan -
You got me. I do not have a quote saying Crane was not a knucklehead. I also don't have a quote saying that he was not the king of France. ;) But I will keep looking.
Bob
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Reading through all of those past issues of Golf Illustrated, I come across articles that are inspirational, those that are informative and knowledgeable, and then the subset where I know there is something amiss and wonder what was going on in the insular world of golf back then. In the case of these latter articles, I wonder how the author was published in the magazine, save the editors' lack of knowledge in a particular area, perhaps, or maybe because the gentleman knew a friend of someone else or had society influence, etc.
Crane's articles are intriguing but at the same time make me question what the staff was thinking in giving the ideas credence without any sort of serious refutation -- much like the examination on this discussion board.
Around the same time, for example, a F.L.O. Wadsworth wrote an article promoting his idea of the hexaplex plan. The premise: architects should adopt his routing method because it makes the best use of the least amount of acreage. It has merely been a "misapprehension" that after all these years, golf architects have gotten it all wrong. Charles Banks responded in turn with an article that while decisively conclusive in his counterpoint contains enough sardonic wit and a "leave it to the pros" wink to make you chuckle.
So I find it very hard to believe that someone as intelligent as MacKenzie or Behr wouldn't snicker a bit and roll their eyes after looking at Crane's suppositions (which are purely subjective and no more scientific than finger painting) -- like an upstart who somehow got invited to their party.
That's not to say he's not a very interesting character and deserves research attention in an important era in golf history. And knucklehead is not a scientific term. It is my opinion.
Garland, if you really want my scientific credentials, I will IM them to you.
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JMorgan -
You got me. I do not have a quote saying Crane was not a knucklehead. I also don't have a quote saying that he was not the king of France. ;) But I will keep looking.
Bob
I know, Bob. Just busting you-know-what.
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Thanks Bob, does it seem appropriate to you that his first run formula did not produce results that line up with his actual opinions of specific holes and courses?
And to follow up this very excellent question...is there any evidence of him modifying his formula at all? If so, how?
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JM
What makes you think that MacKenzie and Behr were so intelligent (particularly in relation to Crane)? As I understand it, MacK failed the final hurdle towards becoming a practising physician, and Behr can't demonstrably string together even one intelligible sentence at a time.
RG
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JM - good post there.
From my limited reading, it seems to me that both were true, i.e. Behr/MacK might've dismissed Crane's mathematical formulas and his scientific pretentions, but they could not and did not dismiss what he stood for architecturally-speaking and for the future of golf course architecture.
What else explains the passion/acrimony of the debate except for a sense shared by both sides that something fundamental was being debated, with mathematical formulas on the one hand and The Old Course on the other serving as flag-bearers/emblems of the schism.
I don't myself understand all of or exactly what Behr/MacK thought Crane represented, or vice-versa, but whenever I'm confused I assume that the principals themselves had a much better grasp of what was being fought over than I do today, almost 90 years later. In some ways, I think their debate went underground, so to speak; with Crane's side perhaps embedded into something as far-removed and innocuous as the ranking system Golf Digest uses.
But - Crane sure does seems to have been a driven and powerful advocate of/for the then "new school" of golf course architecture.
Peter
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But - Crane sure does seems to have been a driven and powerful advocate of/for the then "new school" of golf course architecture.
Peter
That may be another thing I have missed...do we have any examples of how Crane wanted his formula to dictate a direction for golf course architecture? What did he want the "new school" to be?
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JM
What makes you think that MacKenzie and Behr were so intelligent (particularly in relation to Crane)? As I understand it, MacK failed the final hurdle towards becoming a practising physician, and Behr can't demonstrably string together even one intelligible sentence at a time.
RG
Rich, good point... I guess we'll never know ... and that's all I'm saying on that. ;)
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JES
this won't help you much, but it's the only thing I can come up with right now:
I've found dotted throughout Crane's writing (and swimming around the topic of his formulas etc) the primary goal of making golf a fairer and sterner test (with the penalty not only fitting but ALWAYS fitting the crime), and the idea that this could be achieved by determining objectively, for example, the ideal length of a golf hole/course and the ideal distances of bunkers/hazards from tees etc.
That's what I mean when I say that I'm often confused about exactly what the two sides were really, really getting at; my shorthand to myself is standardization vs randomness, but I know that's too simplistic.
But I read Behr on other subjects (e.g. the mechanics of the golf swing, reports on championship tournaments, the dynamics of match play etc) and he seems to me so astute and clear that I can't believe that here he was just whistling dixie just because I myself am too dense (and far removed from the squabble) to get it.
Peter
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When you rule out Crane's system as not being scientific, you need to consider that at least some here (see quote from TEP below) believe he was attempting to use the scientific method of making a model, testing the results, and then refining the model.
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It appears what he was hoping to promote was the discussion and debate of the details of his mathematical or scientific method or criteria, if you will. He seemed to want people to discuss his mathematical theory and improve upon it to create an even better mathematical test of the quality of architecture. Clearly Crane wanted to do all this to help improve golf architecture in the future.
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Peter,
I thought the following was a rather astute observation. I don't think you can attribute any "new school" to Crane. I think Crane was simply engaged in an argument that has gone on from the beginnings of architectural evaluation and continues today.
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A good example of one who may've been on both sides, somewhat depending on the naunces of the specific issues was probably Tillinghast or maybe even Flynn or Ross.
We may even find when we have finally hashed this entire issue out that what it was really over was something of a crossroads and perhaps a rift between the oncoming "championship" style golf and golf architecture definitely spawned in and led by America and American architects and the old world recreational amateur golf abroad and the courses over there that type of golf was played on---most all of which preceded American golf and architecture by quite a bit of time.
It just may be that 80 or so years later as much as things change they've really stayed the same. ;)
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Does anyone know when Joshua Crane began playing golf?
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Garland
I don't know TE's exact views on the science behind Crane's scientific method, but as a rule of thumb I'd say that whenever TE's views on Crane/Behr are different than mine, stick with TE's. That's MY rule of thumb, anyway :)
On the other hand, the "championship" school that TE mentions might not be so different from the the way I described Crane's primary goal, i.e. of making golf a fairer and sterner test, with the penalty not only fitting but ALWAYS fitting the crime.
Peter
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Jes
I think he took up the game late in life, in his 40s or even later (which meant he started in the mid-to-late 1910s or early 1920s). But then he apparently dedicated himself to it completely, because by the late 1920s he was doing very well in senior championships.
Peter
edit: Why do you ask?
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It explains everything...Crane was a very young golfer in the mid-1920's when these debates were going on. When something is new and interesting it's only natural to dig in to see what makes it work.
The difference between this immature golfer and most other immature golfers was that he was at mid life and a very accomplished individual in athletic competition AND coaching (much greater analysis driven) and I believe was a graduate of Harvard and MIT. A little different than the "touchy - feely" analysis Bobby Jones might have made at the same golfing gestation. Jones would have been about 12!
This even further piques my interest into what may have been his next generation of the formula...and also where did he actually write that he was hoping to be the compass of golf and golf course architecture going forward with standardizations and the like?
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Maybe, JES.
But when Crane wrote his first rankings/methodology, he'd probably been golfing for about 10 years, which is about as long as I've been golfing. And like him, I too find it interesting to dig in to see what makes golf and golf course architecture work. I never went to Harvard or MIT, though, which maybe makes all the difference in the world.
Peter
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Peter,
Without any comparison to you, I would say that it does (Harvard and MIT...it takes a certain type)...I also think his athletic background (including coaching) had alot to do with it.
With comparison to you, I would say...to each his own...and I'm with you. I think he looked at GCA the wrong way, but from the little that I've read, I think I'd like to talk to him about it.
Coming from a guy that doesn't see any point in continuing conversations that start out in total agreement.
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On your last point, JES - that's part of what makes it fun and interesting to go back and forth with you, on this and everything else.
On your other point, you're probably right that Harvard et al DOES make a difference; I don't think Joshua and I have much in common. But I agree that he must've brought a lot to the table to get the reactions he did.
But mostly I was making a half-joking point that it would be just like a newbie to do some "serious thinking" for a few years and then come out swinging and strutting like as if he just might know better than all those old, so-called experts.
I fight that temptation everyday :)
Peter
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Does anybody know what were Joshua Crane's connections to the Crane plumbing family, if any?
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JMorgan -
I don't think Josh is connected with the plumbing Cranes from Chicago.
Bob
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“Tom,
It is quite clear to me that when someone makes a statement like..."In fact, I am often myself disappointed in finding that certain courses or holes of which I am particularly fond do not rate as well as others which are not as attractive to me."...they have successfully separated their emotions from their analytical process. That's a good thing if someone is going to go through an analytical process.”
Sully:
If enjoyment and pleasure are the things to be sought in golf architecture and pleasure and enjoyment are dependent on feelings and emotions why would one want to analyze golf architecture without considering one’s emotions and feelings? That was Behr’s point, and his point about Crane and his mathematical formula for rating architecture.
”The next generation of his formula is what I'd be interested in. He took a purely mathematical analysis to the first go 'round and realized he disagreed with the results...they did not support his personal opinions. This is where I think you and Behr are misreading him. You both criticize Crane for publishing a formula with the assumption that he created the formula with the sole intention of "backing into" his personal favorites at the expense of his least favorites.”
What do you mean? I’ve never assumed Crane published his mathematical formula with the intention of backing into his personal favorites at the expense of his least favorites. Behr didn’t either. So where did you get that idea? Crane said he was disappointed to find that his mathematical formula low rated some courses and holes that he was particularly fond of and high rated some holes and courses that were not attractive to him. Behr merely said he thought that was a remarkable statement and asked if that was the case then what did Crane think was right---his mathematical formula or his feelings?
Furthermore, I don't know that there was any next generation of Crane's mathematical formula for testing the quality of architecture. Crane may've hoped that by promoting his formula and thereby having others discuss and analyze it that would help to perfect his mathematical formula (and ultimately to help improve golf course architecture) but I'm not aware that happened. Clearly Behr's point was that trying to use a mathematical formula for testing the quality of architecture should not be done, that it is of no real value, and that basically emotions and feelings are what's of value in determining what one thinks of the quality of particular architecture.
”Based on what I have read (only what's come on here), I think the fruitcakes dismissed him too soon. I think Crane could well come to learn that there really is value in uncertainty.”
Value in uncertainty? What do you mean by that ? Do you mean there is value in trusting one’s emotions about golf architecture without understanding why? Or do you mean there is value in trusting a mathematical formula for testing the quality of architecture without understanding why? Or do you mean there is value in not understanding what you feel and what you think? ;)
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Thanks for that photo of Crane and his 15" putter, Rich. Sully has lately taken to calling me and Bob Crosby and Behr and Mackenzie and Jones et al fruitcakes for questioning the validity of Crane's proposal of a mathematical formula for testing the quality of golf archtitecture.
After considering Crane and his 15" putter I wonder who Sully thinks is a fruitcake now?
I wonder where Crane kept that putter when playing golf. Do you think he kept it in his pocket? Do you think a Harvard and MIT education was able to make Crane smart enough to figure out it may not take him all that long to develop a bad back putting like that?
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Let's get something very clear...I have never and would never call Bob Crosby a fruitcake!!
As to "value in uncertainty" means randomness is good on a golf course. He wrote about trying to eliminate that because he thought a round of golf would be more pleasurable if it did not have luck or fairness play as significant a role as they do.
p.s. I wasn't able to see the photo of Crane with his 15 incher so we'll just have to use his Court-Tennis resume as validation of his non-fruitcakedness...
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"As to "value in uncertainty" means randomness is good on a golf course. He wrote about trying to eliminate that because he thought a round of golf would be more pleasurable if it did not have luck or fairness play as significant a role as they do."
Sully:
If Crane was proposing that luck be minimized in golf via architecture and that greater fairness be achieved, and it appears he certainly was doing that---it was a large part of the theme of his mathematical or scientific framework---then what is it that makes you think he was interested in promoting the "value of uncertainty"---eg more randomness etc in golf and architecture?
What are you into these days, the theory of "Contrary Opinion"?
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Tom,
I hear our good friend Richard Goodale is making two visits to these shores in the next 9 months...that has me so excited I feel like arguing with you...
Has you opinion, or your views of golf and golf course architecture changed over the last 10 years? 20 years? Do you feel you have evolved, or where you spit out with the exact same opinions you have today?
Seriously.
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By the way Tom, in the "Ideal Course" list Crane published, with suggested changes...did you notice his recommendation for #1 at Pine Valley? Do you think we can gang up on Pat Mucci and his regular suggestion that they eliminate all of the trees on the property "like it was in XXXX..."? That would be fun...
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"Has you opinion, or your views of golf and golf course architecture changed over the last 10 years? 20 years? Do you feel you have evolved, or where you spit out with the exact same opinions you have today?"
Sully:
As Mrs. Grundy might say in her English class, would you mind cleaning up those sentences and representing them to me?
If so, I'll consider answering you. ;)
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"By the way Tom, in the "Ideal Course" list Crane published, with suggested changes...did you notice his recommendation for #1 at Pine Valley?"
Sully"
I certainly did and I don't agree with his suggestions at all. I do not feel that PV's #1 needs any architectural changes at all with the possible exception of some tree removal on the right and perhaps some consideration for the final inclusion of some of the things that Crump apparently wanted to do to the hole had he lived.
"Do you think we can gang up on Pat Mucci and his regular suggestion that they eliminate all of the trees on the property "like it was in XXXX..."? That would be fun..."
Pat Mucci's ideas for PV are not to be taken seriously, in my opinion.
One final thing about Crane and PV---I was most surprised to see him include PV's #12 in the list of his 18 ideal golf holes with no suggested architectural changes. To me, that very well might mean that Crane was not the one dimensional "penal" proponent that some paint him to be.
RTJ mentioned that PV's 12th was the real weak hole on the golf course. That's one of the reasons I don't put much stock in RTJ's opinions on golf architecture! ;)
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Can any of you techies out there find a way to tranform the URL in my post #169 to a real picture? Adam and Sully will thank you.
Thanks in advance, Garland, and please misspell "offending" to let me know that you've receieved this message ;)
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You can delete your offend ing post now Rich.
(http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/3223993.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=27D044C0A019FA6CA9CC80B0F36805B3A55A1E4F32AD3138)
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"Has you opinion, or your views of golf and golf course architecture changed over the last 10 years? 20 years? Do you feel you have evolved, or where you spit out with the exact same opinions you have today?"
Sully:
As Mrs. Grundy might say in her English class, would you mind cleaning up those sentences and representing them to me?
If so, I'll consider answering you. ;)
Tom,
I'm not worried about you or Mrs. Grundy answering that question...I know the answer, and it's the basis for why Joshua Crane's next generation of this formula is interesting to me.
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Crane's Ideal Course:
1. #1 Pine Valley without trees[/i] and with improved contour in front of and on green.
According to some (Pat Mucci), the course should be returned to its original state of no trees...in 1926 there were enough to warrant improving the hole by removing them, according to Crane...
I think that's interesting, in a non-contrarian sort of way...
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Sully:
In my opinion, the trees that need to be removed on PV's #1 are along the right side.
Crump worked hard on that bunkering along the right side on the tee shot (he added it about 2-3 years after beginning). It's a lot of rough ground (and bunkering) in there and I think the hole would be much better in play if one could get a real peak around the corner. I think that draws the golfer's attention and may even sort of tempt or con him into going right unintentionally.
Crump also had an improved scheme for the bunkering along the left side of the fairway. His friends said he considered those narrow litte "river" bunkers along there to be temporary. Unfortunately, he didn't get around to making those changes Carr and Smith said he wanted to make on that hole.
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Myopia's 5th green complex is a complete redesign. The work was done in the early 80's when I caddied there (but I don't know who did the work). The green was originally located closer to the cross hazard, and therefore, the hole played shorter back in the day.
This is a great tee shot hole that fits the terrain beautifully as designed by Leeds, and the length of the hole fits todays ball better. I personally think the green does not quite fit here. Unlike most of the other green designs (even the longer holes such as the 12th) the 5th is non-descript with subtle interior undulations.
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Michael:
The fifth hole is one that Leeds and others always thought of as quite a problem for a variety of reasons. Have you ever read Mr Weeks' history book of Myopia chronicling some of these things?