Paul, not that I consider myself an expert, but as I mentioned on a previous post above, they were the first to commit the elements of the profession of GCA to the written word. They themselves had very little in the way of written prescriptions about GCA to study, yet they wrote of how they sought out Old Tom and Braid and others among the very small numbers of top golfers and course greenskeepers, and 'layer outers' (if you will allow the terminology). But, Mac, C.B., Tillie, Ross, Bendelow, sure made a point to let us know in their own writings, what TOC meant to them in terms of a standard or model to incorporate into their burgeoning ideas on GCA.
Should the practice of GCA be predicated first upon tradition and understanding the seminal roots by reading what is handed down, or should we start from a basis of playing experience on a variety of courses that now exist and not concern ourselves with understanding what the ODGs left us?
If Einstein and Hawking were going to build a world class golf course, would they get a better result only from the understandings of the teachings they received from Galileo and Archimedes, or would they benefit more from the writings of MacKenzie, Ross and teachings of Old Tom?