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DMoriarty

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #400 on: July 10, 2010, 10:35:59 PM »
Tom and David,

I see you guys are both still very hard at work trying to come up with a better public golf course than Cobb's Creek prior to 1930.  That's nice...good luck.

Carry on.

Mike, you said almost the exact same thing on the first page of this thread, when you pretended it was our burden to provide you with "a better, more highly regarded public course . . .."   You are still pretending. My answer is the same then as now, as are my questions to you . . .

Quote
You are confused Mike.  I am not the one who made the outrageously ignorant proclamation about the vast superiority of Cobb's Creek to every other public course in the nation!!    I can't exactly place Cobb's Creek among the hundreds (thousands?) of public courses in existence at the time, because I haven't done a comprehensive study of all the public courses in existence prior to 1936.

Mike Cirba, have you done a comprehensive study of all the public courses opened in the United States before 1936?
  -  If so, why don't you educate us with your comparative analysis of these and Cobbs?
  -  If not, then why do you continue to make such asinine pronouncements about matters so far beyond your narrow knowledge base?  

Those three questions still apply.  Moreso now since you have been given plenty of information to get you started, yet you still haven't made your case.  I recall you dismissing some courses as rudimentary (wasn't Cobbs in some ways?) but surely that doesn't apply to many of the courses designed after Cobb's by some of the best designers of the time, does it?

Was Cobbs really better and harder than Thomas' Wilson and Harding Courses?  Better and harder than Bell's first Brookside Course, which is still known for its difficulty.  Better than both of Bell's NLE Sunset Hills courses?  Better than Harding Park in SF??  Better than Egan's Eastmoreland?  Better than Haggin Oaks?  Better than Bayside? Better than every course on the list?  Surely you haven't even begun making your case, have you?   

And Mike, don't take my refusal to put forth a best as any sort of concession.   It is your claim, not mine.

As for the dates in question I again refer you to Mike Cirba, post 91.  He set out the dates in question. And unless that Mike Cirba has the Brooklyn Eagle's time machine, he couldn't possibly have been responding to post 92, where Tom MacWood mentioned the Black, Red, and Harding Park.   
Golf history can be quite interesting if you just let your favorite legends go and allow the truth to take you where it will.
--Tom MacWood (1958-2012)

Mike Cirba

Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #401 on: July 10, 2010, 10:59:49 PM »
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« Last Edit: July 13, 2010, 04:45:14 PM by MCirba »

Tom MacWood

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Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #402 on: July 10, 2010, 11:19:03 PM »
Tom and David,

I see you guys are both still very hard at work trying to come up with a better public golf course than Cobb's Creek prior to 1930.  That's nice...good luck.

Carry on.

The question is not was there a better public golf course than Cobbs Creek, but how many public courses were better. Of course it is all subjective, but I'd guess we are up to 20 to 30 or more that were better. At this point it is farcical to believe CC was the best.

Tom MacWood

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Hugh Wilson's "other" Muni?
« Reply #403 on: July 10, 2010, 11:22:52 PM »
I've added Gulf Hills in Mississippi, Ridgewood in Ohio and Cleveland Heights in Florida. I'm still considering some other additions and subtractions.

Harding Park (1925) - W.Watson & S.Whiting
Haggins Oak (1932) - A.Mackenzie
Sharp Park (1931) - A.Mackenzie
Griffith Park-Harding (1923) - G.Thomas
Lake Chabot (1923) - W.Locke
Brookside Muni (1928) - B.Bell
Sunset Fields-South (1927) - B.Bell
Sunset Fields-North (1928) - B.Bell
Patty Jewett (1898/1917) - W.Campbell & W.Watson
Cleveland Heights (1925) - W.Flynn
Jacksonville Muni (1923) - D.Ross
Mount Plymouth (1925) - W.Clark
Opa Locka (1927) - W.Flynn
Pasadena (1925) - W.Stiles, J.VanKleek & W.Hagen
Savannah Muni (1926) - D.Ross
Big Run (1930) - H.Smead
Deerpath (1927) - A.Pirie
Glencoe (1921) - G.O'Neil
Palos (1919) - T.Bendelow
St. Andrews (1926) - E.Dearie
Sandy Hollow (1930) - C.Wagstaff
Duck Creek (1920) - W.Langford
Waveland (1901) - W.Dickinson
Beechwood (1931) - W.Diddell
Coffin (1920) - W.Diddell
Erskine Park (1925) - G.O'Neil
Armour Park (1925) - W.Clark
Keller (1929) - P.Coates
Meadowbrook (1926) - J.Foulis
Seneca (1935) - A.McKay
Riverside Muni (1931) - W.Stiles
Mount Pleasant (1933) - G.Hook
Belvedere (1925) - W.Watson
Rackham (1924) - D.Ross
Gulf Hills (1927) - J.Daray
Swope Park (1915/1934) - J.Dagleish & A.Tillinghast
Forest Park (1912) - R.Foulis
Bayside (1930) - A. Mackernzie
Salisbury Links (1908) - D.Emmet
La Tourette (1929/1934) - D.Rees & J.VanKleek
Split Rock (1935) - J.VanKleek
Durand-Eastman (1934) - RT.Jones
Hyde Park, NY (1927) - W.Harries
Bethpage-Red (1935) - A.Tillinghast
Bethpage-Blue (1935) - A.Tillinghast
Asheville Muni (1927) - D.Ross
Starmount Forest (1930) - W.Stiles & J.VanKleek
Community (1912) - W.Hoare
Mill Creek (1928) - D.Ross
Highland Park-New (1928) - S.Alves
Metropolitan Parks (1926) - S.Thompson
Ridgewood (1924) - S.Alves
Tam O'Shanter-Dales (1928) - L.Macomber
Eastmoreland (1918) - H.Egan
Hershey Park (1931) - M.McCarthy
North Park (1933) - E.Loeffler & J.McGlynn
Tam O'Shanter, Pa (1929) - E.Loeffler
Beaver Tail (1925) - A.Tillinghast
Stevens Park (1924)
Tenison Park (1924) - S.Cooper & J.Burke
Brackenridge Park (1916) - A.Tillinghast
Memorial Park (1935) - J.Bredemus
Brown Deer (1929) - G.Hansen
Triggs Memorial (1933) - D.Ross
Indian Canyon (1935) - H.Egan
Jackson Park (1930) - W.Tucker & F.James
Janesville Muni (1924) - RB.Harris
« Last Edit: July 10, 2010, 11:35:05 PM by Tom MacWood »

Mike Cirba

Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #404 on: July 10, 2010, 11:23:17 PM »
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« Last Edit: July 13, 2010, 04:45:33 PM by MCirba »

Tom MacWood

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #405 on: July 10, 2010, 11:43:23 PM »
For anyone interested there is a very good article (in American Golfer 8/8/1925) on HA Stahl the man developed both Ridgewood in Ohio and Cleveland Hts. in Florida.

Peter Pallotta

Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #406 on: July 10, 2010, 11:56:08 PM »
Mike - I hope you know how highly I think of you, and of your efforts to restore Cobbs Creek; but I wish you hadn't started this thread.  I believe, with you, that there are many and very fine reasons to restore Cobbs Creek - historical, architectural, and practical reasons.  There are so many reasons, in fact, that I don't think you need to JUSTIFY such a restoration with the claim that CC was the best municpal course in the country before 1930.  You don't need to justify CC at all in fact, especially not to anyone here - its lineage, its reasons for being, its championship history are justification enough. You don't need to PROVE that it was the best of its kind; and honestly, I don't think you HAVE proven it.  I don't think you've done enough -- or CAN do enough, given the decades that have passed -- to prove that CC was the best of its kind. But NEITHER do I think that Tom Macwood, unless he is sitting on a wealth of relevant contemporary reports about each of the courses on the long list he's compiled, has provided much if any evidence to suggest that ANY OTHER municipal course was considered the finest in the land. (My brief internet search on some of them yielded surprisingly little; I guess no one who was very important in the golf world in the 20s and 30s cared ALL THAT MUCH one way or another about municpal courses back then....aside from the usual blather and meaningless compliments golfers tend to toss off, then and now.)  So what we have left is an unpleasant re-packaging of old batttles between you guys, yet another version of the same old mean-spirited attempts to diminish each-other in the eyes of the reading public. And it gets tiring to read - I mean, you are all bright men, and yet you come off like idiots the way you constantly misunderstand and misintepret eachother's posts.  (Worse, since I know you're not idiots, I have to assume you're all being a--holes) Anyway, Mike, I hope very much that you don't mind this post -- again, you deserve support for the good cause you're fighting for CC's restoration; but I think you really need to understand that you WON'T GET that support HERE...and that you won't get it even if you had a more defensible/provable claim than the one that started this thread. And again - I don't know if you're WRONG in that claim; only that your trying to prove it seems as much of a mug's game as Tom M trying to disprove it.

Peter      
« Last Edit: July 11, 2010, 12:56:27 AM by PPallotta »

Mike Cirba

Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #407 on: July 11, 2010, 12:10:49 AM »
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« Last Edit: July 13, 2010, 04:45:51 PM by MCirba »

Tom MacWood

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #408 on: July 11, 2010, 12:11:16 AM »
Here is the article on Mr.Stahl.

Peter Pallotta

Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #409 on: July 11, 2010, 12:23:29 AM »
Mike - yes, I CAN see that. And I know you are busy with other things.  That's why I posted - to try to say to everyone involved that it was best, IMO, to let the thread drop. (Tom M can start another one of municipal courses in America before 1936).  The debate -- as has been waged for many pages now -- is proving frutiless and futile.  You deserve better than that.

Peter

Mike Cirba

Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #410 on: July 11, 2010, 12:26:51 AM »
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« Last Edit: July 13, 2010, 04:46:12 PM by MCirba »

Tom MacWood

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #411 on: July 11, 2010, 12:27:40 AM »
Peter
Which course would you rather see restored, Sharp Park or Cobbs Creek?


Peter Pallotta

Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #412 on: July 11, 2010, 12:34:07 AM »
I can't answer that, Tom - despite the very impressive names attached to Sharp Park, I have no idea if architecturally and historically it was/is more worthy of a faithful restoration than was/is Cobbs Creek.  And I think these kinds of 'more worthy' debates always ends in tears. 

Peter

Mike Cirba

Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #413 on: July 11, 2010, 12:37:01 AM »
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« Last Edit: July 13, 2010, 04:46:30 PM by MCirba »

DMoriarty

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #414 on: July 11, 2010, 02:04:47 AM »
Peter,   I understand your comments; it is the same old discussion.  But there is more to it from my perspective other than pettiness.   For some strange reason, I care about the history of golf course design, and I am tired of seeing it misrepresented and mischaracterized by people with very obvious agendas and hometown biases.    Mike's statement wasn't just about Cobbs, it was about every public course in the country before Bethpage, and without much reasonable basis at all.   Wishing something was true doesn't make it true.  But Mike doesn't seem to understand that, and he isn't the only one.   If he or anyone else has a case to make the should make it.  He hasn't.  

And yes, it is just a matter of opinion, but there are informed opinions backed up by facts and reasonable analysis, and then there is what we have here.   A homer newspaper article doesn't mean much and a self-proclimation as an old public course expert doesn't cut it with me.   I am tired of people around here pretending to be experts and then coming up with nothing to back it up.  

And when Mike does bother with facts, he picks and chooses facts here and there and twists them however he pleases.  A homer puff piece in a Philadelphia paper is proof positive that Cobbs was the best; but similar statements in papers about courses elsewhere are ignored.   Cobbs hosted a Public Links, therefore it must be a prerequisite that a course host a public links to even be considered the best.    Never mind that the Griffith courses were hosting the well respected Los Angeles Open along with courses like Wilshire, Riviera, and LACC, and never mind the American Golfer article quoted above where some of CA's publics (including Griffith Park) were said to rival the best privates in CA.   Never mind that the LA Municipal Championship didn't just attract public course players but rather the top players from every club in town.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying Griffith was the best in the nation.  As far as I know, it might not have been the best in LA County.  But to dismiss it because it didn't host a Publinks?    Too much.  
-- While hosting is Cobbs sign of greatness, Mike dismisses many of the early Publinks host courses as primitive and rudimentary.  Then he has the gall to suggest that because Griffith didn't host a publinks it can't be one of the best?  Which is it?  Typical Cirba hypocracy. Twist the evidence to fit whatever point you happen to be trying to make at the moment, never mind consistency.  
-- Mike apparently missed the fact that of the first 10 publinks championships (through 1932) not a single one was on the West Coast.  
-- And despite the shut out by the USGA when it came to host cities, there must have been some decent courses on the West Coast in the 1920s, because, if the Publinks Championships are any indication, the West Coast publinks were doing something right.   Beginning in 1931 the West Coast teams thoroughly dominated the Publinks team competition, winning 8 of 10 through 1940 and 11 of 15 through 1950.  The city of Los Angeles won four championships in the 1930s (1933, 1934, 1938, 1939), another in 1950, and six more since.  Long Beach won once and Pasadena twice, so LA County has won 13 Publinks Team Championships.   While Pittsburg has 3 Championships, Philadelphia has never won.
-- Never mind that Daniel Wexler wrote that Griffith Park was once one of the finest municipal golf facilities in the World, it didn't host a Publinks, so Mike knows it was not all that good. 

Do I think Wilson at Griffth was the best in the United States?  I have no idea, but I doubt it.  It may not have been the best at Griffith Park.    But this does give some idea, I hope, how strong the competition was, at least out west, and how thin of a case he has made for Cobbs.   I think he forgets that I have played Cobbs, and the Southern California comparables I would probably have come up with aren't even on Tom's list!  

By the way, Los Angeles has hosted a Publinks (Rancho Park,) as has Pasadena (Brookside.)   From what I can tell, at one point Rancho Park was really something special, but because it was originally a hotel course, it does not make Tom's list.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2010, 02:33:17 AM by DMoriarty »
Golf history can be quite interesting if you just let your favorite legends go and allow the truth to take you where it will.
--Tom MacWood (1958-2012)

Mike Cirba

Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #415 on: July 11, 2010, 07:04:19 AM »
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« Last Edit: July 13, 2010, 04:46:48 PM by MCirba »

Dan Herrmann

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #416 on: July 11, 2010, 08:48:52 AM »
Mike,
Well said.

Peter,
Thanks for your wisdom

Tom MacWood

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #417 on: July 11, 2010, 09:03:51 AM »
Tom,

I would love to see Sharp Park restored, but it was built in 1931 and outside the scope of my original point.

The larger issue with SP however, is that most of it fell to the sea shortly after it was built, and even its staunchest advocates today are very uncertain whether the original design was environmentally sustainable, much less economically feasible, and doing a restoration to the original design is deemed impossible by virtually everyone at this point due to the construction of the sea wall.  

1930? Was Sharp Park built by the WPA or some other public works program? No. 1930 is a bogus date and you know it and everyone else knows it. If it wasn't obvious to everyone before it certainly is obvious now CC was no where close to being the best, most difficult public course in America. That is why you continually change the paramaters. First it was 1936, then it was prior to the WPA, now it is 1930, before we are done it will prior to US involvement in WWI, East of the Mississippi, North of the Mason-Dixon and on an inland site.

Sharp Park did not fall into the sea, you are thinking of Olympic Club's Ocean Course. The sea washed over SP damaging the golf course, not unlike the numerous floods that washed away Cobbs Creek. SP is a low lying site; the Ocean course was up on a cliff.

Tom MacWood

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #418 on: July 11, 2010, 09:08:42 AM »
I can't answer that, Tom - despite the very impressive names attached to Sharp Park, I have no idea if architecturally and historically it was/is more worthy of a faithful restoration than was/is Cobbs Creek.  And I think these kinds of 'more worthy' debates always ends in tears. 

Peter

Who cares about the names. You can not look at that schematic and compare it to similar maps of CC and judge which was a more interesting, bolder, better designed golf course?

TEPaul

Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #419 on: July 11, 2010, 09:24:14 AM »
"If it wasn't obvious to everyone before it certainly is obvious now CC was no where close to being the best, most difficult public course in America."



Tom MacWood:

No, that is not obvious now to everyone. That you would suggest such a thing only reinforces how shallow, uninformed and uninformative your posts and arguments on this thread have been, including your evolving and ever increasing "list" which says just about nothing of any comparative value regarding any of these golf courses including Cobbs Creek.

Peter Pallotta is an intelligent and excellent observer on this website and I believe all three primary protagonists on this thread should carefully consider his advice and suggestions in his Post #406. It seems he offered it with the best of intentions.

Tom MacWood

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #420 on: July 11, 2010, 09:41:49 AM »
"If it wasn't obvious to everyone before it certainly is obvious now CC was no where close to being the best, most difficult public course in America."



Tom MacWood:

No, that is not obvious now to everyone. That you would suggest such a thing only reinforces how shallow, uninformed and uninformative your posts and arguments on this thread have been, including your evolving and ever increasing "list" which says just about nothing of any comparative value regarding any of these golf courses including Cobbs Creek.

Peter Pallotta is an intelligent and excellent observer on this website and I believe all three primary protagonists on this thread should carefully consider his advice and suggestions in his Post #406. It seems he offered it with the best of intentions.

Let me rephrase my comment...obvious to anyone outside Philadelphia.....

TEPaul

Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #421 on: July 11, 2010, 09:46:00 AM »
"Who cares about the names. You can not look at that schematic and compare it to similar maps of CC and judge which was a more interesting, bolder, better designed golf course?"


Tom MacWood;

That right there is such a fundamentally misguided remark and thought it should be used as the subject of a thread on here; or perhaps even an IMO piece. It probably largely explains why your MO on here has always been what it has been about many of the courses you try to discuss and argue about on here.

Only looking at schematics and maps of golf courses and trying to compare their architectural worth or value does have some value but most certainly not much compared to actually going to those courses and their sites for that purpose. The reasons should be completely obvious to anyone with a passing understanding of golf course architecture! I remind all that is something you very rarely do with the clubs and courses you critique and that is essentially why your evaluations of them are so uninformed and ultimately misguided and argumentative.

I've told you this 10-20 times on here over the years but like everything else you can't answer, or refuse to, I suppose to avoid embarrassing yourself, you either ignore it or dismiss it----and seemingly every time without fail.

And you do it even with public or municpal courses which you certainly appear to have an interest in, and which most certainly do not present the complexities of access compared to private courses which you clearly have some inherent problem figuring how to access to establish working research relationships with.

This is ironic to me as I certainly don't have the interest in the histories of public or municipal courses you do or seem to, and yet I certainly know Cobbs Creek and its site spending the appropriate time on it studying it with people who know it well, and in the last month I spent (with Bob Crosby) about half a day studing Sharp Park right there on the course and with the people there who apparently know and understand the most about its history, architectural and otherwise.

It's too bad you don't do that (apparently only relying on schematics and plans, as you say, or an ever increasing laundry list of names and irrelevent articles) and it's even worse that you continue to avoid acknowledging it and the importance of it or just continue to rationalize it away, as I'm quite sure you will do again after reading this post or any others like it on here from other contributors.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2010, 09:54:37 AM by TEPaul »

TEPaul

Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #422 on: July 11, 2010, 10:01:01 AM »
"Let me rephrase my comment...obvious to anyone outside Philadelphia....."


Tom MacWood:

I appreciate your rephrasing of your comment, but it appears it most certainly is not obvious to others OUTSIDE PHILADELPHIA either as evidenced on this very thread from a contributor from Texas, another from Canada and another abroad who is an American. I'm quite sure there are others who've been on this thread who are from outside Philadelphia who feel the same.

Don't worry, I won't ask you to acknowledge this since you most certainly have proven over the years you are heretofore completely incapable of that.  

Again, I think all three of you should consider again Peter Pallotta's good post, #406, and heed his advice on it. He surely seems to have offered it with the best intentions for all on this website, including the three primary protagonists.
 
 
« Last Edit: July 11, 2010, 10:04:30 AM by TEPaul »

Tom MacWood

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #423 on: July 11, 2010, 10:23:41 AM »

But NEITHER do I think that Tom Macwood, unless he is sitting on a wealth of relevant contemporary reports about each of the courses on the long list he's compiled, has provided much if any evidence to suggest that ANY OTHER municipal course was considered the finest in the land.
 

Peter
I am sitting on a wealth of contemporaneous reports, photographs, maps, aerials, etc. That is how I came up with the list. The purpose of this exercise was not to identify the finest public golf course in America, the purpose of this exercise was to show the depth and breadth of very good public golf courses in America during the period in question, and to show how ridiculous Mike's claim was....which you have acknowledged.

Mike Cirba

Re: Tom MacWood's List of Public Golf Course thru Bethpage
« Reply #424 on: July 11, 2010, 10:46:15 AM »
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« Last Edit: July 13, 2010, 04:47:13 PM by MCirba »

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