"Tom,
Did it all boil down to the fact that Joshua Crane was a very analytic sort of guy that needed to compute everything and these other fruitcakes liked everything very touchy-feely?
Actually a serious question in there, so please, I'm curious if you think I am oversimplifying this whole issue."
Sully:
As you probably can tell by now Joshua Crane was undeniably a very analytic guy and he apparently relied on mathematics and the so-called "Scientific Method" (a method of research in which a problem is identified, relevent data gathered, a hypothesis formulated, and the hypothesis empirically tested) in many of the things he thought about. The guy went to both Harvard and MIT and I guess most people who ever went to MIT are pretty much deep into things like mathematics, science and scientific analysis.
I very much doubt Crane ever thought of the likes of Behr, Mackenzie and particularly Jones or even Charles Ambrose as fruit-cakes so I'd assume it must have virtually stunned him when they all basically FAILED TO ACCEPT his entire premise that the quality of golf architecture could be or should be subjected to mathematical formulae and some scientific analysis relying on mathematics.
He may've been ready for them to question the criterion of his mathematical formulae but they, or Behr at least, didn't even do that. Behr basically responded that mathematics just doesn't and frankly can't work with such a thing as how one perceives golf architecture because it is essentially based on feelings and emotions and that one cannot mathematically analyze feelings nor mathematically quantify feelings.
I dont' really feel one can mathematically analyze and mathematically quantify feelings and emotions. Do you think one can Sully?
You said:
"As we all know, opinions can be (wink) very personal...this site is as good an incubator as any to illustrate what can happen when two different opinions on the same subject are stated and defended...I think a big key in all of this (that might be THE THING I am missing) is whether or not any of this goes beyond OPINION."
That's an excellent analogy and point. Does any of this go beyond opinion? Should any of this ever go beyond opinion?
Well, I suppose if you take a look at what is absolutely necessary about the game of golf in relation to its playing fields, it's architecture, what we know is you must have a series of starting points, the tees, and you generally have 18 holes that have a hole in the ground at the end of each on a places we generally call greens.
Other than those few standardizations necessary for a golf course what else do we have but a whole holy host of OPINIONS, personal opinions of all kinds about the way the rest of it should be?
Apparently Crane wanted to direct golf and golf architecture towards more standardizations----eg to find ways to eliminate luck to make the game fairer, to rid golf courses of blindness to create greater visibility, to define areas more clearly and exactly where one should hit the ball and to arrange the areas more appropriately where one would be more consistently penalized for failing to hit the ball where he was supposed to.
Behr, Mackenzie and Jones et al apparently didn't like that or didn't want to see golf go in that direction.
It may even be true to say, Sully, that the opinions of the likes of Behr, Mackenzie, Ambrose and Jones et al are the opinions of the true "naturalist". Obviously not everyone or perhaps not even most agree with them. Perhaps many or even most may not have even agreed with them back then when this debate took place and most golfers may never agree with them.
All I know is my opinion, and I agree with them as I understand them and as I understand what they were after.
But one thing I believe I can tell you with almost total assurance and that was Behr was not trying to advocate that golf and golf architecture should return to the way it once was in perhaps the 18th century and most of the 19th century. I say that because he said that.
What he really wanted to see was that somehow golf and its playing fields could be done in such a way that many more golfers could somehow have the FEELING that those golfers back in those days had for golf and the places they played it on.
This was the very same thing that C.B. Macdonald said and felt so strongly about, except he tended to call it "The Spirit of St Andrews".