David,
I have no doubt you have a better understanding of your essay than I do. I just cannot keep up with all the changes you have made in it. The only real question is not who understands it best, but whether its worth understanding at all.
This is absolutely and completely bullshit, and you know it. Just your latest effort to undermine me and my essay without actually putting forth the time or effort to really undermine anything at all.
The "changes" in my essay are minimal if at all. As ought to be expected after the years of intensive scrutiny since my work has received since Ran first posted it, there are a few things I would change, but were I to rewrite my essay today it would state the case even stronger than originally. The vast majority of what I concluded has been confirmed, and the case is extremely strong for the few issues that have not been confirmed. Certainly none of the dozens of smoking guns your cronies have come up with over the years has touched my essay, despite their proclamations!
If anything I could change the focus. You forget that before my essay came out your cronies were held all sorts of ridiculous beliefs about what happened at Merion and were hotly disputing all sorts of issue which
have now been accepted as fact. Because of my essay. So I wouldn't need to focus so much of my IMO on refuting ridiculous aspects of the legend to which your cronies were clinging. (You guys are still clinging but have nonetheless been forced by my essay to let go most of your past pathetic rhetoric. Besides, I know much more than I did when I wrote the essay, essay, and could probably provide plenty more novel and interesting information and details.
To be honest, I know I have probably gotten as much concession out of you as I will ever be able to given your attachment to your own hard work. At one point, you said you didn't care when CBM routed it, in another post you admitted that evidence of CBM's involvement pre Nov. 1910 was probably the weakest part of your essay.
You've become so petty that you cannot help but twist even these points. I do care when CBM routed the course. You falsely claimed that the main point of IMO had to do with the timing, but is absolutely foolish. I explained to you that the main hypothesis of my project has always been to document CBM's extensive contribution to the original design of the course, and in this regard the exact "when" is much less important that the what.
In fact, if you ever actually bothered to try to understand the essay you'd have noticed that in the early period I don't credit CBM but rather some combination of Barker, CBM/HJW, and Lloyd/Francis. As the project progressed, CBM/HJW's extensive involvement's more evident --the NGLA meetings working on the plans, the return to Merion to reinspect the land and choose the final routing plan, that the plan was presented to the board was presented as CBM/HJW's plan and approved on that basis, the apparent COMPLETE ABSENCE of mention of Hugh Wilson as compared to the repeated mention of HJW/CBM in Merion's documents. And then there is the course, where most of the holes were reportedly based on holes abroad - holes which Wilson had not seen at the time he built the course; the attempts by Wilson at building at a Redan, an Alps, a Short, and Road, a Double Plateau, a Long, a green with a Biarritz swale, another hole with Biarritz characteristics, and many other features and design concepts commonly present on CBM's courses, and then of course there is the Findlay article, the Wilson chapter, the Alan Wilson letter, the Whigham article, etc.
As for your next bogus claim, I think what I said was that the timing of the routing is about the only issue that has yet to be unequivocally confirmed. That is a far cry from "admitting" the IMO was weak on this point! It was not. It is just not a completely closed issue. Many of the other points were were so well documented that they are today unquestionably considered fact or should be! (e.g., unravelling the Wilson trip, unravelling the HDC real estate development connection, unravelling the various real estate exchanges and the RR land, unraveling the timing of Wilson's involvement, unraveling the general timing and purpose of the NGLA meeting, unravelling who brought in CBM and why, unravelling Merion's reason for moving, unravelling Merion's reliance on CBM's recommendations regarding the purchase of the land, unravelling the supposed "circular" and bringing forward the Nov. 15th plan, exposing that the course was largely considered to have been based on holes abroad at the time of the opening, and much more.)
Only you guys would try to condemn one portion of my IMO by lording over me the overwhelming success of the rest of the essay!
Now Jeff, I really don't want anything to do with you, so please go join your pal and the both of you can leave me the hell alone.