Joshua Crane proposed a revision of 1st at TOC

[JESII]

The notion of shot-testing in the sense that quality golf should be viewed in the context of one individual shot seems flawed...is a hunter judged by how well he can hit the bulls-eye or by how successful he is in actually putting food on the table?

[Peter Pallotta]

JES
I think that's a really interesting post. Why? Because it's the viewpoint of an excellent amateur player, and so I'd imagine that it might be very similar to the viewpoint held by two other excellent amatuer players, 80 years ago, namely Behr and Crane.  But if so, it'd have been - like for you, it seems -- such a 'given' that it might never have found a place in the debates themselves, but instead served as a kind of underpinning for those debates.

All guess work, of course.

Peter

 

[JESII]

Peter,


Your guess work is usually pretty intuitive, so lets see if we can peel back a layer or two...

These guys, at that time, were dealing in the very early "developmental" stages of the game. I know the game had been around for ages but my understanding is that the numbers of people participating was expanding exponentially. I know the number of golf courses here in the States rose dramatically.

Could their debates have been attempts at setting a course for the direction of golf through architecture? Even if they agreed on most of the components of golf and golf course architecture, maybe it was the slight differences that became worth discussing.



Curious about two things through here...

1) What did these guys mean when discussing "control" and "freedom"? And how did they differ on the use of "rough"?

2) What was "par on The Old Course in 1927?

[Peter Pallotta]

JES - really good questions, and I appreciate them.

Yes, I think so. I think Behr and Crane were in fact looking to set a course for the direction of golf through golf course architecture. I think it's easy to forget that, and I think we have to be careful not to project backwards our current situation (golf and golf course architecture-wise) onto that time period, and then to assume that Behr and Crane were having the same debate we're having today, with the same stakes involved.      
 
(By the way, that's why I think Richard's not quite right in his "tautology" argument. To me he seems to be ASSUMING the very question that the Behr-Crane debate was ASKING.  What I mean is, I don't think you can say "all golf courses are penal" or "all golf is strategic" are tautologies unless you're making assumptions about what truly characterizes "penal" or "strategic" architecture; and/or unless you're talking about very specific and existing golf courses. Because the notion that some "platonic ideal" of a golf course existing somewhere in the ether or in Max Behr's head is NECESSARILY "strategic" or "penal" makes no sense, or at the very least it begs the question.)

I think, as you suggest, that Behr and Crane may have been looking at the very same thing but in different ways, i.e. "the glass half empty or half full" metaphor that Tom P used. That is, Behr and Crane were not arguing about specific elements in design or the many strategic and penal ways in which those elements could be used (which subjects they both understood very well, and could "agree" on); but instead about how those elements affected -- and were INTERPRETED BY -- the golfer.  

And on this, it seems to me, they did not agree; nor did they agree on what the "ideal" affect-intepretation was, with Behr wishing to create "freedom" (i.e. liberty, but not licence) and Crane wishing to create "control" (i.e. penalties for actions, but not the loss of choice).  

Now, those two "ideals" were actually, as you point out, quite close together, but yet I think in other ways they were worlds apart.  I think they were worlds apart in that the very existence of Crane's mathematical approach/formulas seemed to Behr to go againt the very "spirit of the game" that TOC represented, and would lead to (or promote) a kind of architecture that tried to negate/minimize, what word can I use, the "natural randomness" of the sport and of nature itself, with its ever-changing winds and chance and the ground and its bad bounces.

And I think Behr got so especially worked up about this because the spirit of the game that he thought Crane was misunderstanding was also, for Behr, the true spirit of the GOLFER himself: the free, thinking, choosing, golfer/sportsman who was playing not so much against an opponent as he was with and against and in the golf course itself (hopefully a natural-looking one), but all while still trying to play the BEST GOLF he was capable of.  

Maybe this last bit is really leaping into guess-work, but I say it because I think that the differences between Behr and Crane were not mostly about "facts" or "details" but were about differing IDEALS, and personal VALUES and PSYCHOLOGIES. If that's true, maybe that's part of the reason this kind of discussion is so difficult, i.e. Behr and Crane were debating these questions (which we THINK we're familiar with) but debating them in a 'philosophical' context that the subsequent 80 years of gca has perhaps made us blind to.

Anyway, JES, that's all I got -- my feelings/guesses about how to keep discussing this. It goes without saying that if none of it works for you, just drop all of it. Hopefully others will pick up the thread.  

Peter

[JESII]

I wonder, as a slight tangent to this thread, is the problem with the ball (then and now) how straight the long hitters hit the ball, or how long the straight hitters hit the ball?

[JESII]

Peter,

I wonder if Behr was thinking of a golfer "still trying to play the BEST GOLF he was capable of".[/i]

The analogy TEP often tells of Max Behr and his approach to a true sportsman seems to take competitive golf out of the equation and simply let golf be an individual endeavor of the man versus the course in as raw a form as can be...

[JESII]

Quoted from Jon Wigget on Pat Mucci's thread about the 1st at TOC

I agree with Chris, it would be substantially worse. It would turn the hole from one where the golfer has the option to chose the angle of attack for his game from the tee shot followed by a heroic carry over the burn (so close as you dare) into a one dimensional narrow angle of attack and punishment of all that is not perfect. Said another way a Strategic/heroic hole would become a penal one.

This hits a couple of my issues with the strategic/penal debate...


Strategic/heroic???

Is there a route for the guy that doesn't feel too heroic?

Penal = punishment for less than perfect execution?

Did these guys ever hear of a "good miss"?

[Peter Pallotta]

JES
Yes, I've come to think so. When I first read Behr, I assumed that a "golfer playing/scoring the best he could" wasn't very  important to him, or much related to his ideas about the sport/sportsman. But when I learned that Behr had been a champion golfer himself, I couldn't accept that he would've suddenly started ignoring/negating all those elements of top-level golf that he must've loved, i.e. the competition, the demonstration of skills, the pressure, the need to make the shot when it counted etc. So I started assuming that, whatever he said about the golfer participating in nature, Behr was still all for (and very much understood) a golfer striving to play the best game he could.

Also, here's a quote from him that I like, and that I think is very telling.

"In golf, no stroke of the opponent can imperil a man's skill. He is his own master. And because he stands so very alone, so absolutely dependent upon himself that we are given an insight into what manner of man he is. That is why golf has been compared to life. A man rises and falls in the world at those critical points of his career where he alone can make a decision. He then plunges into the whirl of the world until again he finds himself upon a desert island of doubt and must decide. But a golf match is always a desert isle for him. Every shot is only a peg to an uncertain future. Luck, good and bad, he knows awaits him. What sudden inexorable task his opponent may set by a brilliant stroke lies hidden in the mists ahead. All he can do is to stride bravely forward and manfully accept the situations that confront him one hole after
another. It is possible in this way to look upon golf as a
game of character and the skill necessary to play it as the means to its revealment. And the revelation leads to humbleness, the only state of mind in which true values may be arrived at. Weakness is no longer scorned and laughed at. It is seen to be inherent in all. It is only the man who makes excuses who puts himself out of court. The strong man admits his failings on the spot and is happy to know just how and where he may school himself for the future."

Peter

[TEPaul]

"The analogy TEP often tells of Max Behr and his approach to a true sportsman seems to take competitive golf out of the equation and simply let golf be an individual endeavor of the man versus the course in as raw a form as can be..."

Sully:

It's hard to say at this point but having read what's available from both Crane and Behr, I get the feeling that Crane came at the subject of golf and golf architecture more from a good player or even championship level player's perspective than Behr did. Behr seemed to relate things in his over-all writing on golf and architecture more towards the average golfer and his general interests.

Both Crane and Behr were good players but Behr was probably better in the competitive world. Behr won the New Jersey state amateur and I believe he was runner-up in the US Amater twice. The guy who was his constant bugaboo in competitive golf seemed to be Jerome Travers. Behr just couldn't seem to get by him when they ran into each other in bigtime tournaments.

And interestingly both Behr and particularly his brother were really good tennis players.

Both Behr and Crane were what might be labeled "renaissance men", in other words they both had a whole lot of pretty diverse interests all of which they were very good at.

[JESII]

JES
Yes, I've come to think so. When I first read Behr, I assumed that a "golfer playing/scoring the best he could" wasn't very  important to him, or much related to his ideas about the sport/sportsman. But when I learned that Behr had been a champion golfer himself, I couldn't accept that he would've suddenly started ignoring/negating all those elements of top-level golf that he must've loved, i.e. the competition, the demonstration of skills, the pressure, the need to make the shot when it counted etc. So I started assuming that, whatever he said about the golfer participating in nature, Behr was still all for (and very much understood) a golfer striving to play the best game he could.

Peter

Interesting quote Peter, I didn't copy it because my thoughts are more to the initial paragraph...

Chronologically speaking, when was Behr's competitive career and when was he doing most of this writing and philosophizing? Was there overlap? Did his competitive career pre-date his writing years? If so, ws there a significant event that drew him out of competitive golf and into his other careers?

[JESII]

Sully:

It's hard to say at this point but having read what's available from both Crane and Behr, I get the feeling that Crane came at the subject of golf and golf architecture more from a good player or even championship level player's perspective than Behr did. Behr seemed to relate things in his over-all writing on golf and architecture more towards the average golfer and his general interests.

How do you mean "from the good, or even championship level, players" perspective? How is that different than "the average golfer" in terms of "sportsman" and "freedom" and "control"?

[Peter Pallotta]

JES,
the short answer is I don't know. The longer one is that the bulk of the articles by Behr that I've read are from the mid 1910s to about 1920....and he was still playing high level competitive golf during those years (though maybe his BEST years as a golfer were behind him). But I have just scratched the surface in terms of ALL that Behr wrote, and what I don't know is how how/where the articles I have read fit into the development of his thought/writing over the longer term, say by the late 1920s and around the time of Jones' big win at TOC.  I think Bob C mentioned that many of the most relevant articles in this area are very hard to find and may provide some of the missing links...

By the way, really neat questions, JES, the "right to the heart of the matter" kind.

Peter

[Ken Moum]

I wonder, as a slight tangent to this thread, is the problem with the ball (then and now) how straight the long hitters hit the ball, or how long the straight hitters hit the ball?

Personally I think it's the former today, and that might well have been the case in the past as well. Players like Jack were ALWAYS long, perhaps as long as most are today, but they couldn't keep the golf ball on the course if they used all their length.

What's interesting, is that not long after the Open we're discussing, the USGA did do something abou the ball.

They made it both lighter and larger. This apparently worked so well that they had to go back to the old weight after only one year. The larger size is still with us today.

this is why I think the real solution to the ball is to simply make it lighter, as it was for one year in 1931.

Ken

[TEPaul]

"How do you mean "from the good, or even championship level, players" perspective? How is that different than "the average golfer" in terms of "sportsman" and "freedom" and "control"?"


Well, I suppose one could say that when Crane offered his mathematical formula to test the quality of golf architecture his test and the results of it were to show evidence of some form of prescribed shot making demand for various shots or perhaps some particular prescribed strategy. This type of thing must have been part of what he meant by "control". Obviously the flipside of a golfer failing to adhere to that “control” was perhaps instant stroke loss penalty of one form or another.

It's hard to say what that kind of prescribed architecture would've actually looked like from Crane when Crane first offered this mathematical testing system around 1926 because I don't know that Crane offered any drawings or plans for it at that time. He only offered numerical ratings with some textual explanations for architectural improvements. What he did offer in the early 1930s, though, such as that drawing above for an improved 1st hole at TOC sure doesn’t look to me like what I think of as strictly penal architecture. It looks to me like improved strategic architecture compared to what that hole has always been.

Behr’s concept of “freedom” is really nuancy and immensely complex, in my opinion, and I’ll get into what I think that is later.

In the meantime I think Behr’s idea of “freedom” probably is actual architectural arrangements into a highly strategic mode (Behr did offer plenty of drawings at that time) in the vein of providing choices and varying options to all levels of golfers without the necessity of immediate stroke loss penalty with each and every shot of particular strategies (this is his “indirect tax" concept that Crane apparently didn’t necessarily subscribe to), but what Behr’s concept of “freedom” ALSO is ABOUT is just somehow providing a course where any golfer can “FEEL” that he can both find and also ply his own routes and strategies around a course without being constantly and immediately penalized by an architect and a course if he slightly errs along the way. Behr said that in this way: “It is not for the architect and the golf course to stamp their will on the golfer but to provide a course where the golfer will feel he can stamp his will on it.”

Clearly in this latter concept of “freedom” Behr is talking about a “feeling” not just actual architectural arrangements and he is talking about a feeling that will inspire a golfer’s spirit and thereby create a sense of his own adventure and to also do nothing that will constantly or even regularly defeat that feeling or spirit.

Pretty deep and even subliminal stuff, I guess.  

[Mark Bourgeois]

Bump

[Doug Siebert]

If you want to make the 1st harder, which seems to have been the aim of this proposed change, instead of re-routing the burn why not grow a strip of rough or line of pot bunkers down the middle between 1st and 18th fairways to narrow the landing area? 

There are lots of ways that hole could be made harder, but it isn't supposed to be difficult.  A bunker at the rear would certainly hurt the typical amateur golfer as taking an extra club to be sure you avoid the burn would be rewarded with a bunker shot back in the direction of the burn.  The pros wouldn't even know it is there.

[BCrosby]

Speaking of making the 1st at TOC harder, has anyone posted here MacK's 'thought experiment' about changes to the 1st and 18th? It is now on the Mack timeline (see 1926). (I don't know how to transfer it to GCA.  Maybe someone with skills could do that?)


MacK's changes, he makes clear, were not recommended changes to TOC but rather just him thinking out loud about how he would improve similar holes on a hypothetical course. Interestingly, his changes would have, in effect, restored the old Halket's Bunker that seems to have disappeared sometime in the first half of the 19th century.   


MacK drew the sketch on the boat to Australia. Just before he embarked MacK had participated in a survey conducted by The Field Magazine. The magazine (Crumbo Croome was golf editor) had contacted a number or prominent architects about whether they thought TOC should be changed. If I remember correctly the group included Colt, Alison, Simpson, Hutchison, Fowler and MacK.


The survey was prompted by Joshua Crane's controversial rating system (published in The Field earlier) in which TOC finished last among 10 or so famous UK courses.


The results of the Field survey of architects, btw, were that no one believed TOC should be changed. 


Bob 



 

[Peter Pallotta]

It reminds me, by way of analogy, of the trend some 30 years ago, to colourize the great old black and white films of the 30s, 40s and 50s to make them (the proponents argued) more palatable and thus relevant to modern audiences. Martin Scorcese, a modern with a deep understanding of and appreciation for film history, led the unsuccessful fight against it. He had argued that by the 40s colour film was an option, and so if filmmakers chose black and white there was a very good reason for it. Not enough decision makers/money men/CEOs agreed. The result? Have you seen what a classic black and what film like the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol, all shadows and shades of grey and dark and light, looks like in bright greens and blues and reds? And do you think the change has made it any more relevant to modern audiences ?

[JMEvensky]

It reminds me, by way of analogy, of the trend some 30 years ago, to colourize the great old black and white films of the 30s, 40s and 50s to make them more palatable and thus relevant  (the proponents argued) to modern audiences. Martin Scorcese, a modern with a deep understanding of and appreciation for, film history led the unsuccessful fight against it. He had argued that by the 40s, colour film was an option, and so if filmmakers chose black and white there was a very good reason for it.  Not enough decision makers agreed. The result? Have you seen what a classic black and what film like the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol, all shadows and shades of grey and dark and light, looks like in bright greens and blues and reds? And do you think the change has made it any more relevant to modern audiences ?

Peter Dawson = Ted Turner?

[Peter Pallotta]

Hmm.


Peter Dawson = Ted Turner = Joshua Crane 


vs 


Dr. Mackenzie = Martin Scorcese = Renown Pictures Corporation (Nettlefold Studios, Walton-on-Thames)

[BCrosby]

Peter -


It hadn't occurred to me before, but Joshua Crane was the last person before Peter Dawson to propose substantial structural changes to TOC. Crane published his ideas for improving the first four holes in Golf Illustrated in '33. It was intended to be a series that covered all 18 holes, but the magazine went dark (Great Depression and all) before his ideas for the remaining 14 holes could be published. (See the last section of my piece on Crane in My Opinion for more details.)


Crane's notes for all 18 holes have never been found. I had hoped that his family might have them, but have had no luck to date.


Bob