Bryan,
Like Sean, you seem to take these templates and supposed copies much more literal than I do. Much more importantly, I think you both take these templates much more literal than CBM did. He was dealing with incorporating fundamental concepts and principles into the existing landscape, not the creation of exact replicas of identical physical features. As he and Whigham wrote about the Redan in 1914,
"The principle can be use with an infinite number of variations on any course." The logic applies equally to the Alps.
Why would you guys expect exact proportions of physical features when they tell us, explicitly,
The principle can be use with an infinite number of variations on any course,"and give us examples -
including the example of Merion's Redan - which would never qualify by your standards?
The abrupt "Alps" mound in front of the green obviously did not exist on the site at Merion and was obviously not created to the same degree of magnitude as the one at Prestwick or NGLA, but many of the core principles, including
the blindness of the green and large bunker, the green in a hollow, and the "high bank behind" were present. As for the magnitude of the mounding, we don't know for sure why they didn't build it bigger, but we do know the combination of the sunken green and whatever mounding they did build created the requisite blindness. Given that the vast majority of the members of MCC were novices, it doesn't surprise me they didn't go for an exact replica of Prestwick's fronting Alps. Or as you suggest they did the best they could have with what they had to work.
While Sean and Brauer can opine that the mound should have been put in front, those who have read CBM and HJW's descriptions of the playing characteristics know that CBM felt the large mound behind the hole was also an integral part of how the hole should play. According to CBM, the green should be in a hollow (as was Merion's) so that a long approach shot just barely carrying the fronting bunker could hit the downslope and run through the green, leaving an awkward and difficult shot from the rough on the high sloping bank behind.
Read the NYTimes description and tell me that the description does not sound like that of an Alps hole. The description of the impact of the blindness has marked similarities to the description of Prestwick's Alps by CBM in 1914, in that CBM also described the anticipation of scaling the trouble, noting
"the player is frequently pleasantly or unpleasantly dis-appointed when he comes to the top of the hill and surveys the result beneath him."As for your hypotheticals asking what Wilson would think, aren't they little more than a convenient tool to fill in what you think? Well I don't see the hole as you do, and I don't believe Wilson saw it as you do either. I've never been to Prestwick, but I see many conceptual similarities between NGLA's Alps and Merion's. As I have said, the dominant fronting mound is not there to the same magnitude, but the blindness is there nonetheless. And the fairway and tee shot Merion were much further away from the "ideal" than the green.
To me, if the hole had a
conceptual problem as an Alps hole, I suspect that it was possibly that it just wasn't long enough to require the type of shot an Alps hole was supposed to require. I am not sure we can blame that one on CBM though. As I have explained before, Merion had a strange way of measuring their golf holes, and as a result many of their measures were way off. In this case I have trouble imagining how that would not have impacted the very concept of the hole. This was supposed to be a 380+ yard hole, yet it looks to have been about 30-40 short of this, or more. The hole makes a lot more sense as an alps with the approach is from well down on the bank of the upslope, instead of there being a flat, 120-140 yards shot to the the green.
Perhaps the historical analysis reveals nothing more than that Wilson et al felt that the aerial approach over a fronting bunker was all that was required.
Well, reportedly there was also the blindness and the large bunker, and the green in a hollow surrounded by trouble, and the resulting anticipation, and the tall bank behind. There is definitely more than just the shot over a bunker.
Maybe Findlay thought there should be more. Maybe Wilson, afterward, thought there should be more, but couldn't do it on that piece of ground.
Then why did Findlay praise the hole at the opening and compare it favorably to Prestwick? Why did Wilson write that CBM's descriptions and suggestions had all been affirmed by what he saw in Europe? And did Wilson not notice the giant hill right in front of NGLA's green?
This sort of speculation seems yet another rhetorical tool to fill in your opinions for theirs. If Wilson didn't like the green he had ample time and opportunity to change it before he did. There is little justification for you to you to substitute what you think for what he might have thought, because we know what he did.
If they thought they built an Alps originally, then retrospectively I think it is OK for us to analyze that and call into question what their definition of templates was. At least at NGLA CBM came much closer to matching the principles of the original. But, perhaps he had the land forms to do so.
He did have the landforms to do so, at NGLA at least. I think it is okay for you to analyze and criticize and call into question their understanding as well, But IN A DIFFERENT CONTEXT. Not when the goal is to figure out what they were thinking and why, and not to inform what you think they thought, as in "I don't think it a good hole, therefor they couldn't have thought it a good hole. That is what Brauer pulls and what Sean seems to be doing at least some of the time.
Why do you suppose that they wanted to label the holes at Merion when they missed by so much in mirroring the principles of the originals?
Because, according to what they wrote, they did not think they "missed" at all. They got the holes they wanted, as suggested as understood and planned by CBM. They believed they had an Alps and a Redan, no matter what we might think today. I think with these two particular holes, they felt the resemblance was so close that the could not avoid using the names, even though admitting to such holes fell out of fashion. I think that is how differently they say it than we do today. To them these were obvious and successful recreations of the concepts famously associated with the originals. Yet you guys can't even see the similarities.
Based on his body of work with Alps holes, do you think that CBM would have designed the 10th and called it an Alps? Are any of his other Alps similarly far from the principles of the original?
I am no expert on his body of Alps holes, but from what I understand about the holes, there are a number which are no closer to your ideals of the Alps hole than Merion's (except perhaps the distance element, discussed above.) I don't even think all the supposed Mac/Raynor Alps holes are blind, are they? Whereas Merion was at least reportedly blind.