"TE
You often have an extreme reaction, or over-reaction, to information that, for whatever reason, has been wiped from the historic record or for the most part ignored....especially if it has to do with a Philadelphia landmark.
I simply pointed out that Macdonald and Whigham advised the folks at Merion when the course was being laid out and constructed."
Tom MacWood:
I have no idea at all what you mean by me having an 'extreme reaction' or 'over-reaction' to any information. I have less idea what you mean by 'information wiped from the historic record'. What information?
If you think you pointed out to us here that Macdonald and Whigam came to Philadelpia and visited and perhaps advised either Hugh Wilson and the Merion committee or George Crump in the creation of PVGC I can assure you that you did not. That information has been part of the records around here since the beginnings of both courses. But there was not then and is not now anything specific that I've ever seen, or apparently anyone else has seen about what they did architecturally at Merion East. If you have something specific to add that they may have done to Merion East why don't you just produce it.
Frankly, your remarks as well on this website of PVGC's attempts at any time to wipe away the historical record of Colt's contribution to that course is a joke. The mistake Finegan made in his history book about that routing topo that hangs on the wall in the clubhouse is an innocent error. Frankly he was probably the first one to even consider that date on that topo.
I've been around PVGC for over two decades now and I can tell you that well before I ever even became interested in golf architecture the rumor from and around PVGC was always that Colt routed that golf course. It's ironic, isn't it, that we can see now that he most certainly did not route the whole golf course? So, in a sense that rumor that he did route the whole course has been somewhat diminished in the last few years since more detailed information has come out--and from right here on this website, of all places! If I were to bet I would say that the rumor that floated around PVGC for decades that Colt routed the golf course obviously came from the fact that Colt's hole by hole drawings have always been sitting right there in the PVGC archives. Probably just the fact that the club actually knew they were there created the rumor that he routed the whole golf course. Probably no one really looked carefully at those hole drawings until Warner Shelly, a member who lived there for over fifty years, began to analyze those Colt hole drawings carefully when he wrote his history book and then Finegan a few decades later analyzed them carefully when he wrote his history book.
So for you or Paul Turner to implt that PVGC has tried to minimize Colt's contribution to that golf course is simply not the case, basically you have no idea regarding what that club felt Colt's contribution was---which, again, was that he routed that golf course. You're both also calling into question the veracity of Tillinghast and everyone else who was around there at the time of Crump's involvement with that course and was around there at the time of Crump's death. And in my opinion, that kind of overwhelming evidence is certainly not a case of me over-reacting to anything. Once again, Tom, I feel when you either come up with some information on certain courses or are given that information you often just aren't very good at analyzing that information correctly.