Some of you that say you've read all 'the tome' (as Mike and I refer to it), I really wonder if you did. It is about 350 pages in length and the presentation can be tiring on the eyes with many of the articles from old newspapers off microfilm, so I would not blame you if you just scanned it.
Joe Bausch, I certainly haven't read every page, but I am willing to bet I've read more of it than most here who are standing behind it.
Mike calls it a book, but it seems more like a scrapbook to me --a collection of articles and photos about Cobb's Creek and various other topics, some directly related and some tenuously related at best. It is a good resource but not really the kind of thing one sits down and reads from end to end. Did anyone edit it before you posted it? Did anyone outside those directly responsible go through it with what might be considered a critical eye.
I believe I offered to read through an early version for Mike years ago, and he told me he would send it to me but then balked, supposedly because "others" involved didn't want me to see it. I assume you are one of those others, and that you guys didn't want it exposed to possible criticism. If so, too bad because in my opinion it could have really used a critical comb to get rid of some of the tangles. When is the last time you read it all the way through? I ask because there is quite a lot of information in there that jumped out at me as questionable and/or not entirely accurate, and other information that is supposed to be in there that I just couldn't find and/or is apparently either in the wrong place or missing.
For example, to pick something hopefully not controversial, you guys claim that more rounds were played at the Cobb's Creek course in 1940 than at any other course in the country. This caught my attention because it would seem odd that a course without year round good weather would have the most rounds, but when I tried to find the source of the claim for 1940, I couldn't find it at the page where it is supposed to appear. I looked around at other pages but couldn't find it there either. Probably my incompetence, or perhaps it is just hard to find with the quality of the copies and all, but could you please point me toward the source of that claim? Thanks.
Also, on a similar note, I suspect that there is something very wrong with the numbers of rounds supposedly played at Cobb's. I suspect that in 1929+ the second course numbers were being added. For example, in the article you guys use to support your claim of rounds played for 1929, it was mentioned that there were reportedly
933 rounds played in one day. That would be
233 foursomes in a single day! If a foursome teed of every four minutes (an impossibility) that would be over 15 1/2 hours of tee times, with 60 golfers teeing off
every hour, say from 6 a.m. to after 9:30 p.m.. No way. And if the daily numbers are off then the yearly numbers are most likely off as well.
Now maybe with a little digging I'd found out that I am wrong about these things, but IMO that is the sort of digging that needed to be done prior to putting these things out there as if they were fact. That takes more than just accepting what we read and running with it to make a point.
It requires reading with a critical eye and carefully considering the context.
I will likely be attacked once again for these comments, but you did ask about the "tome" and I put my impressions out there for the sake of productive discussion about not only the history of golf course architecture, but also about the methodology of studying, analyzing, and presenting such information.