"What is the difference between correcting the historic record and revisionism?"
Tom MacWood:
Correcting the historic record and revisionism is just about the opposite, I'm sure you know that.
"Should we sit on the fact that Colt was involved in the design of PVGC and Crump took his own life...for fear we are revisionists?"
It just really makes me laugh that you still think that anyone has ever sat on the fact that Harry Colt was involved at PVGC. The reason you probably still cling to that notion is you simply do not understand PVGC or what that club has thought for years about Colt's participation. You seem to draw your conclusions from a few magazine articles from the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. This is the problem with the way you often analyze architecture, in my opinion---eg you form your conclusions completely from magazine articles only. What you should do more of is rely on others who really do know the golf clubs, the members and what they think and have thought. But that fact doesn't seem to fit into some of your scenarios, which in the opinion of some who really do know the golf club is revisionism of the club’s history. The reason you’re concluding Colt’s part in PVGC was minimized by the club is you’ve read a few magazine articles that apparently simply didn’t mention Colt enough for your liking!
Harry Colt was not minimized by PVGC. We've told you from personal experience that the club always felt Harry Colt routed that entire golf club. Is there some reason you're not willing to accept that fact? I'd say there is and that reason is the facts of how the club felt about Colt just DOES NOT fit into your scenario that the club has always tried to minimize Colt by glorifying Crump's part in the architecture. Also, you seem to be trying to float this story that since Crump committed suicide a glorification process began which is completely illogical, anyway. Tom, that notion, as Wayne mentions is simply a stretch---it just isn't the case no matter how much you're going to continue to cling to it! What you're suggesting is just not true and we're going to keep denying these things you say because it's historic revisionism. Perhaps, another reason you cling to your illogical idea of the glorification of Crump’s part in the architecture of the course because he committed suicide is because the last thing you ever seem to want to do is believe a single thing I might tell you about the course.
Why did the club and many others assume for so long that Colt routed that entire course when no one thought a Colt routing map existed (until the last few years!)? Simply because so many knew of that hole by hole drawing booklet which has always been in the archives! But very few ever saw that booklet although so many knew it was there.
Perhaps, you don’t realize this but most people don’t make the same distinctions we do on here between a topo routing map of the entire course and a hole by hole booklet of the course. There’s little question that Warner Shelly’s history book minimized Colt’s contribution. Shelly believed there was no whole course routing map by Colt of PVGC. The routing map that’s hung on the wall for so long was believed to be just Crump’s. Why was that believed? Because it says on it “Property of George A. Crump, March 1913”!! Shelly assumed that meant just Crump and so, unfortunately did Finegan! Shelly and Finegan may have been the only two who really analyzed that hole by hole booklet (Doak apparently looked at it too) to compare it to what the course was and both of them came to the conclusion that the hole by hole drawings had more differences to the course than similarities. Given that observation what do you suppose their conclusions would be? Simply that most of the rest (other than the well known Tillinghast contributions) were George Crump’s since everyone knows Crump worked on the architecture of that course daily for five years. For some really odd reason you, Tom MacWood, seem to have little understanding or appreciation for what that means regarding Crump’s part in the architecture of the course. If you don’t care to listen to me on that why don’t you just do as I suggested and call up an architectural analyst, Geog Shackelford, who knows more about PVGC history than you do and ask him about that fact?
The real irony here, though, is despite the fact that so many always felt that Colt had routed that entire course, we have now virtually proven (through the analysis of those two routing maps and the red and blue lines on one, as well as the analysis of the holes that Tillinghast described that were routed and partially built before Colt ever arrived. Those holes are the way the course still is! So that virtually proves they were Crump’s conceptions and not Colt's because Colt had never been to PVGC at that point!).
So, the irony is that we (probably mostly Paul Turner and me) have basically proven something that alters what so many have thought for years---and that is that Colt routed the entire golf course---we have now virtually proven that he probably routed less than half of it! So if there’s been some minimizing of Colt’s part in the architecture of the course it’s come in the last few years and it’s looks like it finally is the truth!
As to who designed the specific features of those routed holes (whether Crump's or Colt's) which includes bunker placements and shapes, fairways, green designs etc, the hole by hole booklet by Colt will show who did what by comparing again the similarities and differences of what’s in that booklet to how the course was actually built.
Geoff Shackelford made an excellent point to me on the phone yesterday about this discussion on here between some of us and you and Paul Turner. That point is why are you not as interested in Hugh Alison's part in the creation of the final phase of PVGC after Crump died as you are in the initial phase by Colt when Crump was alive? The obvious reason to me is that you two are simply Colt advocates and that seems to be about all you're concerned with here. Others of us are concerned with everything that went on down there in those 10-15 years.
That final phase, just before and just after 1921, involving both Flynn (Thomas) and Merion and Alison and the so-called "remembrances" of Carr and Smith (remembrances of what Crump wanted to do had he lived) and how it all merged into the so-called 1921 Advisory Committee which both completed construction, finished the details and polished off the remaining things to be done architecturally on the course is an important part of the architecture of PVGC, not to mention Perry Maxwell's part a few years later. But you two seem to be only interested in Colt. There was a lot more that went on down there over those almost ten and more years from beginning to final completion than just Harry Colt's part.