Rich;
I really truly felt that last post would finally deliver you to the Promised Land of golf architectural understanding.
But apparently not! So I'll just have to accept once and for all that you're a benighted soul relegated to live his life and play his "game" of golf in some dim little limited world of Kindergarten existentialism.
"How would you describe the "strategy" of the oval at Bridgehampton? How do you think Fireball Roberts would have described its "line of charm?""
First of all, as usual, you're wrong. The Bridgehampton race track was not an oval, it was a "road" track. Fireball's strategy on oval tracks was better than anyone's, though. Extremely sophisticated and I know that for a fact because when I was ten I asked him at Castleberry (a oval dirt track) what his strategy was and how sophisticated it was. You have to understand first that Castleberry was a very short oval that was basically round.
So Fireball told me his strategy was to put the pedal to the metal, keep it there all day long and turn left!! Now you must understand I was almost overwhelmed by something that clever. Then about five minutes later Fireball said to me;
"Young Tom, my strategy is even more sophiii...,sophiiisss...,sophiiisstic...ahh shit whatever that big word you just used was, than that and the reason I just lapped that entire field twice to win by about a mile (and he did Rich, on that I'm not joking at all) is because all those other guys were trying to keep their cars under control on that dirt while I just broke my rear end loose on about a 15-20% angle, kept it there all day and drove right around everybody."
Well, you can imagine how overwhelmed I was by the sophistication of that "strategy". I figured Fireball had even felt the exact "firmness and fastness" of that dirt surface right there in the seat of his pants about as well as any man could.
But I never did ask him what his strategy was on that "road" track at Bridgehampton and that was the last time I ever saw Fireball.
And I never asked him what his strategy was that time he drove Le Mans and was leading the race by a good bit after 23 1/2 hours of the 24 hours of LeMans until his car just stopped running. But if I were to guess he probably would've said his strategy was to get to the finish line first. How can you get more sophisticated than that?
But you have to remember at Le Man's road track Fireball was driving a Ferrari and Bridgehampton's road track he was driving his big purple Ford (an incongruous sight if I ever saw one).
So again, I never got to ask him what his strategy was at Bridgehampton but it didn't look too good to me since he lost control of that big purple Ford stocker going past the pits down the hill and did about ten 360s ending up out in the dirt about where the present landing area on the 18th hole at "The Bridge" G.C is now. But as I said once before about that incident---throughout all those ten 360s Fireball never did take his left hand off the top of the door! It was magnificent to watch!!
And I'm not sure what Fireball would have said if I asked him about "line of charm".
Again, if I had to guess though I'd say Fireball would've told me;
"Young Tom, ya auta neva put two words liiike thaaat togetha--they don't make no cents put togetha".
Of course, I never did ask Fireball what he thought about golf. I wish now I had, though--that could've been pretty interesting! But it would've been far more interesting to talk to Fireball about golf architecture. If you gave me a couple of days to explain to him what the word architecture meant I'm sure he would've come up with all kinds of fascinating analogies between playing a really great "redan" shot into the wind and how he took that 26 degree slope on the north turn at the Talledega International Speedway.