John,
There so much to learn at the AFF's Ralph Collection, I think it would take days now to really go through it all. That would be OK though. You just have to take a break every couple of hours otherwise you get a little closed-in! This actually happened to me yesterday, and I had forgotten, it used to happen to me when the Ralph was at Industry Hills. You are taking in so much information you need to actually stop and walk around a bit!
Tom, You will be interested to know, and I'll try to find it later because I didn't get a chance to copy it down, but someone named C.B. MacDonald wrote a letter to the editor of Golf Illustrated (Behr) complaining about the USGA. In previous issues, it appears that Francis Ouimet, who happened to be an amateur, had his status taken away from him. Why, I have yet to find out, but in the previous issues Max Behr, as well as many others actively complained about this situation and that the USGA had much better things to do like monitor equimpment (No fooling) C.B.'s letter was just as interesting. Here was one of the founding father's of the USGA actually lambasting the shortsightedness of the committee for taking away Ouimet's amateur status. He mentions that Mr. Havemeyer would be turning in his grave. Apparently, it had something to do with either Ouimet writing somethign and then getting paid for it, which at the time, if one actively wrote about the sport of Golf, and recieved compensation, he was consdiered a Golf Professional. Further, they said thet if you worked in a facotry manufacturing golf balls, the USGA in fact did consdier you to be a person who recieved compensation, hence a professional.
It was some pretty interesting stuff.