“If your final point is that Crane wasn't taken seriously in his time, then I have no response other than to ask you to re-read my piece with more care.”
Bob:
Regarding your response there to Tom MacWood’s remark----viz "Its understandable since he was new to the game and didn't know what the hell he was doing, and that is why do few took him seriously" I might have to say that not only was Crane’s overall ideas taken seriously in his own time they were also taken very seriously in the future of golf and architecture even if some of those who took them seriously may not have realized from whence they emanated.
If we look carefully at what Crane was saying and what Behr et al were saying in counterpoint, I think we have to realize that even if Behr et al may’ve won some interesting points in a debate context back then it really was Crane’s ideas that won the day and perhaps the future of golf and architecture, at least in America.
I’m not so sure one can give Crane all that much credit for it other than to say what he was saying really does seem to be sort of human nature and pretty much the way golfers seem to automatically want to look at and think about both golf and architecture (somewhat like the “equitable competitiveness” of those other games Behr said were structurally not that much like golf).
It really is all pretty ironic, I think, and I guess I might have to say that is perhaps a large part of the reason you latched onto this subject in the first place----to hopefully show how things started heading in the wrong direction back then and into the future despite the alarm and concern of Behr, Mackenzie et al to do something about it or about stopping it!
I have always said, particularly to Shackelford, that I personally think Behr et al got it really right philosophically in their debate with Crane but that they got one thing wrong----and one really important thing----they just completely OVERestimated the general golfer's ability to understand and believe in what they were saying and the importance of it to the general golfer.
Ultimately, I just don't think the general golfer really cares probably because he just doesn't have the capacity or the inclination or interest to even think of those kinds of things. In the final analysis the general golfer will probably never be able to make the distinction between why golf and its architecture should be so different from the other sports they know.
Bob, I think if anyone were to ask any golfer if he thinks it is actually possible to play the game of golf alone and they say----"Of course not, you must have human opponts or fellow competitors to actually play the game of golf" you pretty much know right there that they will never understand or even want to understand some of the fundamental things about golf and architecture that the likes of Behr et al were saying back then.
Also, Bob, I would recommend to you with Tom MacWood's remarks on proportionality and what Crane said and meant about it to just let it go, unless you want to get into some six year discussional malaise with him as some of us unfortunately did on the subject of the history of Merion's original architecture, and now probably Myopia's too.