Tom MacWood,
When I was about 15 years old, a bunch of us kids brought our clubs up in the woods, and through clearings, etc., and in a big grassy field I laid out a makeshift 6 hole golf course that we used to go around 3 times. It even had a water hazard with a retaining pond that was built for a nearby development.
Would you consider me to be inexperienced and untested? I sure would.
Yet on the basis of contentions you've made here repeatedly, you would say I had golf course design experience developing a real estate course!
I find it funny how you insist on giving design "experience" to people like Worthington who basically did the same thing I did on their own plots of land, and your most recent reference to Tilly's "Tomato Can Links" at Frankford in 1899 as reason to think he had design experience when he was hired at Shawnee a decade later.
Tom Paul,
Who's arguing?
Honestly, I'm finding this one of the most enlightening, illuminating, and educational threads ever on GCA.
If we do it right, it's about the point in architecture where things moved from the rote, formulaic, boring, cross-bunkered courses done by hacks to thoughtful, strategic and "scientific" design.
It's also about who the primary movers were in that revolution...the pros or the amateurs.
I think there's a lot to explore, frankly.