MikeY -
I actually met Ty Cobb. It's a long story, but my father's partner took his son and me to Cobb's home in Eatonton (as I recall). I must have been seven or eight years old. Cobb was ill and in bed. I had the bad taste to ask him if the stories were true about him sliding with his cleats high to cut people. He grumbled something about all that was bunk. I have two pictures he autographed for me. Cobb died about a month later.
Cobb was not a very nice guy. Bob Jones, for one, tried to avoid him. I've never seen it verified, but I've heard Cobb was booted from ANGC for bad behavior. He took his bad temper intact from the baseball diamond to the golf course. Even in an era when racism was openly expressed, his brand of it was especially virulent.
Tom Mac -
The Gopnik line would only apply to architects who`have done enough courses to have a batting average. Ross came immediately to mind. His batting average over 400 or so courses is probably not particularly high, but his seven or eight home runs are very good indeed. They are what make his reputation today.
Contrast Ross with others who have built lots of courses. Different eras and all, but Bendelow's (or maybe Stiles or Harris?) overall batting average might have not been much lower than Ross'. But whatever his b/a, Bendelow is not ranked very high today mainly because of his lack of home runs. In other words, if you are dead, merely being prolific, even if your courses were all pretty good, will not establish a reputation.
Following Gopnik's thought process further, we tend not to be so forgiving about bad courses done by living architects, even if they have designed some home runs. We will begin to overlook those less good courses only after the archtiect has trundled off this mortal coil.
I think that is a pretty accurate observation by Gopnik about how we judge an artist's work (though Gopnik didn't have golf architects in mind).
Bob