SL,
Nah, man, it was not me who took offense. You are the one who responded badly to my suggestion that sometimes (e.g. on mandatory caddies) committees act based more on narrow personal preference as opposed to the broad interests of the membership. Though I have considerable training in social psychology, organizational behavior, and management, I have never been a member of an equity club. Thus I have not been on a green committee. To the extent that people are completely different interacting within this organizational structure, your original assertion (that I know nothing) has some validity.
There is, however, a slight consistency problem in my positions on the two threads. On mandatory caddies I asked whether it was the will of the membership or the preference of key members of the green committee. With Ian's thread, I offered the possibility that the green chair may have been reflecting the wishes of the membership and not his own.
While I do have sympathy for what Ian and other architects have to endure, any number of us would trade places gladly and with eyes wide open. That the chair was the sort that we would find distasteful is not in question. I doubt that his being a rater had much to do with his behavior.
Mike Sweeney,
Me a "wildcard"? If I knew you, perhaps I might take this personally. And how dare you group me in a sentence so close to my east coast lefty nemisis, the not-quite-so-evil Doctor Childs! It will take me some time to get over this one. Perhaps a day at the National might do the trick.
Seriously, Ian's experience that led to this thread is worthy of a case study. Golf architects often work on projects for a decade or more, and at any point in time they can be second guessed, maligned, and dismissed based on personnel changes or a shift in the power center. Unlike most in the corporate world, their name remains attached to the work, either as the original designers or for renovation and changes. Unfortunately, no one remembers the green committee members who directed the placement and/or style of certain bunkers or added X number of trees.
I can just see some rater playing the course in question, and not liking the lack of thematic consitency of the bunkering, asking one of the assistant pros the name of the architect responsible for the restoration work. The pro who probably was not there when the work was done, but remembering a name of an architect previously involved with the course, identifies Ian as the person responsible. The rater talks to his colleagues, gets on an influential gca website and bemoans the work. Next thing you know, the archie who had nothing to do with the bad bunker work, in fact, lost his commission because he wanted nothing to do with it, becomes the new anti-Christ. Farfetched? Maybe so. On second thought, maybe being a gca is not such a cool, desirable thing.