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Jeff_Mingay

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For whatever it's worth, a fascinating quote.
« on: October 08, 2012, 08:25:20 PM »
Thanks to DMoriarty, I just caught this fascinating quote (from someone most of us know and respect):

"Golf history can be quite interesting if you just let your favorite legends go and allow the truth to take you where it will."--Tom MacWood (1958-2012)

I think this is a very, very poignant comment relative to the history of golf course architecture.
jeffmingay.com

Patrick_Mucci

Re: For whatever it's worth, a fascinating quote.
« Reply #1 on: October 08, 2012, 09:51:11 PM »
Jeff,

Agreed.

But, sometimes even the truth finds it difficult to dislodge the status quo.

Ian Andrew

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Re: For whatever it's worth, a fascinating quote.
« Reply #2 on: October 08, 2012, 10:45:24 PM »
Jeff,

Like all the Stanley Thompson stories?
It's amazing how many turned out to be myth rather than fact .... but I still love the stories anyway!
With every golf development bubble, the end was unexpected and brutal....

DMoriarty

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Re: For whatever it's worth, a fascinating quote.
« Reply #3 on: October 10, 2012, 02:19:47 PM »
Jeff,

Judging from the creepy email I received from a certain former poster, the seemingly innocuous quote apparently touches a nerve with some.


Ian, 

Another of Tom's favorite aphorisms was that truth is usually more interesting than the legend.  I don't know the Stanley Thompson stories, but perhaps they are the exception. 

I'd love to hear the stories either way.
Golf history can be quite interesting if you just let your favorite legends go and allow the truth to take you where it will.
--Tom MacWood (1958-2012)

Jeff_Mingay

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Re: For whatever it's worth, a fascinating quote.
« Reply #4 on: October 10, 2012, 07:52:56 PM »
The quote strikes me simply because there are people - many who have great and genuine intentions, mind you - who have romantic, some times immovable, views of, and ideas about, legendary golf architects that distort history and truths about original golf course designs, philosophies and styles that affect restoration work. I'm currently dealing with this.  

Based on my experience, I agree that the truth is more interesting than the legend in many cases; and that, golf history can be quite interesting if you just let your favorite legends go and allow the truth to take you where it will.

I think these are very intelligent comments if in fact you're after real history.
jeffmingay.com

Mike_Young

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Re: For whatever it's worth, a fascinating quote.
« Reply #5 on: October 10, 2012, 10:24:50 PM »
Great quote.  But I think many on this site will always believe the legend rather than the facts.  The biggest danger I see with this is when much of the legend becomes history based on inaccurate writings.  My best lesson in this was when an "expert historian" from this site was showing me ODG bunkers yet they were actually where tree stumps had been dynamited.   ;)
"just standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona"

Bryan Izatt

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Re: For whatever it's worth, a fascinating quote.
« Reply #6 on: October 10, 2012, 11:37:09 PM »


Other interesting (to me) quotes on history and truth.


"To know the truth of history is to realize its ultimate myth and its inevitable ambiguity."

Roy P. Basler


"The certainty of history seems to be in direct inverse ratio to what we know about it."

Anonymous


"Writing intellectual history is like trying to nail jelly to the wall."

William Hesseltine


"The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for if he cares for his truths, he is certain to falsify his facts."

Henry Adams



Peter Pallotta

Re: For whatever it's worth, a fascinating quote.
« Reply #7 on: October 12, 2012, 09:40:47 AM »
It's a fine quote and it speaks to something important that Tom M honoured. But the subject has always been a complex one for me (as Bryan's quotes suggest). I think of Tom's Arts and Crafts essay that was the first thing I ever read on gca.com and that brought me here. It is certainly based on facts/truths, but it works -- for the reader -- because Tom weaved those facts into a compelling and cohesive "narrative". And to me, as soon as something becomes a narrative it becomes somehow "other" -- not that it still can't be "history", it can; but it becomes history "plus" something else, the something else being, in my view, "meaning". I think truths, one way or another, always "lead to" meaning...and therein lies the complexity. Because as soon as we are in the realm of meaning, we are entering, I think, the realm of personal "myth" (which I'm using as a synonym for a world view, i.e. the way we makes sense of the world and our experience, or some part of it). And sometimes a personal myth that gets shared and repeated often enough starts, over time, to take on the qualities of "legend". 

Peter

Adam Clayman

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Re: For whatever it's worth, a fascinating quote.
« Reply #8 on: October 12, 2012, 10:31:38 AM »
The irony is that truth has somehow became subjective. How counter intuitive?

Nobody wants to hear the truth. Especially at the moment it's true.

Apparently, History is mostly myth, likely made up by petty old men, that outlived. anyone who could call bullshit.  
"It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing your whole life." - Mickey Mantle

Craig Van Egmond

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Re: For whatever it's worth, a fascinating quote.
« Reply #9 on: October 12, 2012, 10:57:32 AM »

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it” - Winston Churchill

"History is the polemics of the victors." - Wm. F Buckley, Jr.

"Memory says, 'I did that.' Pride replies, 'I could not have done that.' Eventually, memory yields." - Nietzsche

"The history of a nation is, unfortunately, too easily written as the history of its dominant class." - Kwame Nkrumah

Niall C

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Re: For whatever it's worth, a fascinating quote.
« Reply #10 on: October 13, 2012, 07:17:33 AM »
It is an interesting quote, but my sense of Tommy Mac was that he was just as prone as anyone else in hanging onto theories and ideas that subsequently didn't bear much scrutiny. Like everyone else he had his own version of history. I'm just sorry I never got to meet him.

Niall

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