Seemingly OT--but not at all

[TEPaul]

Bob:

It's probably too big and complex a subject to ask this way but how do you look at history and what do you think dealing with it accurately and well can do for us today and into the future with golf and architecture?

In the back of my mind in this country in the middle of the last century is the remarkable popularity of that GE advertizing buzz-phrase as delivered on early TV for GE THEATER by a popular actor of the time who would become President, Ronald Regan.

He closed that hugely popular show each week with the phrase;

"Progress is our most important product"

....and it seems like that phrase almost became THE American adage of the time.

Back then I doubt anyone wanted to look back, just ahead, because looking back had to be so painful.

But I think a whole lot of people want to look back now for a whole lot of reasons, and I think it shows.

I guess the real question is how long will it last before we start racing ahead again not wanting to see what we've just done or been through?

I think the thing I've learned perhaps more than anything else as I've gotten older is the remarkable cycles America can and does go through in their culture and ethos and what it all really means in all our timeframes----past, present and future.

[Kyle Harris]

Tom/Bob:

One thing about history is that the "sense of place" can be overwhelming. I can't tell you how many times I've found myself paralyzed on the Gettysburg battlefield just overwhelming by imagining what it must have been like for Hancock to ride on horseback during the cannonade on Cemetery Ridge, or the anticipation of General Buford standing on McPherson Ridge watching Archer's brigade form over Herr Ridge.

Golf architecture offers this same sense of place. We stand in a fairway and can imagine the shots hit by people before.

That was certainly a part of my night at the NLE, just imagining the flow of the course on the land and finding those little reminders.

[TEPaul]

Kyle:

Well, if you feel that strongly about it and all that've passed there before, if we ever play Merion it sounds like I might have to carry you all the way from the first tee to your approach shot.

That reminds me of a good Merion 1st tee story.

In 1981 US Open as is traditonal Hal Sutton the reigning US Amateur Champ was teeing off #1 in the first round with Jack Nicklaus, the defending Open Champ.

Apparently Sutton was so scared he could hardly stand up but he just busted one way down the middle and Nicklaus did too.

Walking off the tee he said:
"Mr Nicklaus, I've never been that scared and that nervous in my life.

Nicklaus said to him:
"I was nervous too, Hal, it's just that I've done this a thousand times."

[paul cowley]

"TomP
Just remember, Pine Valley doesn't have proprietary rights to the legacy of Crump.  The nature of information is to be uncovered and shared.  The fact remains that Tommy Mac did uncover the truth about Crump and he should be congratulated rather than scorned.  It doesn't make any difference if somebody else could have done it - they didn't."


Sean Arble:

In my opinion, you are totally free to feel however you want about that, that's your prerogative. It appears I may feel quite differently about it and I may always feel that way and that's my prerogative. I believe it makes a whole lot of difference if others could've done it and chose never to do it. And I don't see that I'm exactly scorning Tom MacWood. I certainly did tell him after the fact that he wrote a good article about Crump's suicide and his life. You can find my mention of that on here in the back pages. I don't call that scorn, do you? What I didn't like and said so then and said so in this thread is the way he went about it and I still don't. I believe that if somebody, particularly somone who has never been there and does not know a club, is going to write something about a place, certainly something like that, they should at least talk to the club about it first. I just think that's the decent thing to do, but apparently there are plenty of people who believe that in the mad search to produce facts and truth, and to perhaps make a name for themselves in the doing of it, that decency isn't important. Well, it's important to me! Of course if someone like MacWood did talk to the club first and they asked him not to do it, that's another matter altogether and obviously he must have been aware of that. At that point, he or anyone else would have a pretty interesting decision to make. Again, I don't scorn Tom MacWood for trying to do it or for his article, just the way he went about it. That most certainly was a huge issue between us at that time and I'm never going to pretend I agree with the way he went about it or that I like the guy because I don't and he doesn't like me and that will probably never change. That's just the way things go sometimes but I sure don't mind that you have an entirely different opinion from mine on the entire thing. That's your prerogative, just as it was his prerogative.

TP....this post is very interesting to me because you seemed to have lapsed into a sentence structure and punctuation style that was more typical of one of your earlier periods....circa 1999 and 2000.

I notice and study these things.