Jeff Brauer,
TEPaul's offer to provide you with a synopsis of the documents offline provides you with the answer to your question about whether or not there is any real reason these documents are being withheld. There is obviously no legitimate privacy concern with these documents. They can share them with whoever they want. That entire privacy nonsense was just an excuse not to share the documents, so they could cherry pick what they liked and ignore what they did not.
In fact, these two have been trying to advance a one-on-one P.R. campaign, showing a variety of people selected or sanitized portions or versions of the minutes, trying and convince them to agree with them before the information is completely vetted.
Remember when Wayne repeatedly cautioned us not to reach any conclusions until my essay had been completely vetted? Yet they are going coast to coast to selectively cajole people into accepting their story on a limited record that has not been vetted at all.
I provided my sources in their entirety. Until they do the same there story is nothing but propaganda.
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How many times are you going to bring this up?
We simply will not let you get away with your faulty conclusions and revisionist histories where there is clear evidence that contradicts you.
Except that you have presented no "clear evidence" that establishes that Merion ignored Barker's routing. You seem to think that if Merion did not pay him, then they must not have used his routing, but that just doesn't follow.
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In your messianic zeal to destroy the "legend" of Hugh Wilson, you aren't even recognizing your own total hypocrisy and inconsistencies.
Perhaps you should spend less time with the thesaurus, and more time dealing with the issues before you.
1. Seaview was criticized. (You indirectly acknowledge this by your strange Rustic Canyon comparison.) While the printed criticism was not harsh, it was more pronounced than the kind of treatment these courses usually received in the press of the time.
2. You cannot pin these criticisms on me, as I have not criticized the course at all. I've never played it. I am just trying to get the facts straight, and the facts are that the course was criticized and then quickly changed.
3. Multiple reports indicated that the bunkering was unfinished at Seaview. (You claimed that above that Wilson did the bunkering but you know that this isn't really the case.)
4. Ross and possibly another were brought to implement their own bunkering scheme within a few months after the opening.
As far as I know, all of the above is factual. No hypocrisies. No inconsistencies.
The same cannot be said of your denial of these facts. It seems you just made up the bit about Wilson being exhausted.
I've considered the articles you site, as well as others you don't site. None of them contradict any of the facts I listed above. Most of them contradict your representations about the course having been finished by Wilson (but then you contradict this as well.)
In the 10-18-14 article briefly describing the holes, I believe most of the bunkers described were greenside, with a few notable exceptions. Because Wilson was a disciple of Macdonald, it does not surprise me that he included many greenside bunkers initially. That was Macdonald's approach, as recommended by C.F. Whigham. Nor does it surprise me that he built a few of the bunkers from the beginning.
Another irony is Tom MacWood's account of Barker's work at Columbia above. While trying to hoist Barker undeservedly into the pantheon of great architects, you fault Wilson for being too busy to continue work at Seaview yet don't raise an eyebrow when Walter Travis is brought in to make wholesale changes, rebunkering, and redoing of greens at Columbia just a few years after opening.
You may not realize this, but like Macdonald and Raynor, Tom MacWood and I are two different people (of course I am Macdonald to his Raynor.) You are combining something I said and critiquing it with something he said, and misrepresenting both of us in the process.
1. I don't fault Wilson for being "too busy." You've offered little support for your "too busy" theory. What happened to your "exhausted?" theory. I don't buy it. After all it is not as if he would have been out there digging the bunkers himself!
2. Ross was brought in
within two months after Seaview opened.
3. I don't know what Travis did at Columbia. DO YOU? You still describe the changes at Columbia as "wholesale changes." When were the changes made? Within a few months after the course opened, or a decade later? What exactly was changed? Were the changes inline with Barker's original design (which Travis had seen and very much liked?) or a complete departure?
It's interesting to note the inconsistencies between the hole by hole descriptions in the Oct 1914 account and Tillinghast description of the tournament a few months later where he claims that "it is not bunkered as yet". The descriptions of the bunker on the holes are very much the same today, such as the diagonal hells half acre cross bunker on the sixteenth, or the deep fronting bunkers on the 5th, or the short par three encircled by bunkers. These all exist today.
Very interesting. But I doubt for the reasons you think.
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TEPaul,
Tom your story about what the MCC documents establish is very much a moving target. You keep changing what "facts" can be derived from these documents. This is indication that about everything you are calling "fact" is really just speculation, opinion, and/or wishful thinking on your part.
So we know what is not fact, but looking at how the story has changed, and how it differs from what Wayne and Mike have each claimed. So the only remaining question is what facts are in these documents. It must be pretty damning for your argument, otherwise we'd have seen it by now.
I know you guys think you are protecting Merion, but if I was at all involved with Merion I'd be pissed. You guys are painting them as your accomplices, and this will put them in a rather awkward position when the truth finally comes out in full.
I have a hard time believing that your propaganda campaign is in their best interests.