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Adam Clayman

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #25 on: November 18, 2007, 12:22:36 PM »
Did Tom just call Matt Ward the modern day Crane?
« Last Edit: November 18, 2007, 12:22:59 PM by Adam Clayman »
"It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing your whole life." - Mickey Mantle

BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #26 on: November 18, 2007, 12:29:25 PM »
Adam -

If Matt thinks course ratings can be objective, then he ought to be proud of the comparison. But I don't know if that is something Matt actually believes.

Bob

Adam Clayman

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #27 on: November 18, 2007, 12:35:09 PM »
You're right Bob, he's all for subejctive.

My bad.

It was that dern word Championship that threw me.
"It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing your whole life." - Mickey Mantle

TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #28 on: November 18, 2007, 12:37:06 PM »
Bob:

"Cateris paribus"??

"Sui generis"??

Are you, by any chance, and in the premises, a lawyer??

TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #29 on: November 18, 2007, 12:44:27 PM »
"The debates between Crane, Behr and Mackenzie were the most vicious in the history of gca."

No they weren't. They weren't even half as vicious as WayneM and JayF's debate on here today or even my own debates (and Wayne's) with Moriartless and MacWoodenhead.  ;)

BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #30 on: November 18, 2007, 12:51:10 PM »
Tom -

What a ridiculous assumption. Why just this morning I said to Betsy, "Mutatis mutandi, scrambling eggs at home for breakfast would as fun as going out."

She responded, "Well, ok, but such views are subject to the reductio ad absurdum that we never go out for breakfast again."

I said that my views about breakfast this morning were pure dicta with no precendential significance.

Relieved, she started cooking the eggs. So you see, that's just how we talk here at home.

Bob



 

TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #31 on: November 18, 2007, 01:03:44 PM »
Bob:

You two are way too smart for me.

By the way I think you made a technical error above--eg that comma does not seem to belong.

What do mutatis mutandi scrambled eggs taste like?

BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #32 on: November 18, 2007, 01:17:20 PM »
They have a distinctly Latin flavor.

Rich Goodale

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #33 on: November 18, 2007, 01:24:31 PM »
Bob:

"Cateris paribus"??

"Sui generis"??

Are you, by any chance, and in the premises, a lawyer??

I think he's a farmer.  Sui generis refers to pigs and "cateris" paribus to felines.
« Last Edit: November 18, 2007, 01:25:38 PM by Richard Farnsworth Goodale »

BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #34 on: November 18, 2007, 01:32:35 PM »
"The debates between Crane, Behr and Mackenzie were the most vicious in the history of gca."

No they weren't. They weren't even half as vicious as WayneM and JayF's debate on here today or even my own debates (and Wayne's) with Moriartless and MacWoodenhead.  ;)

Agreed. Man, that's ugly.

Bob

TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #35 on: November 18, 2007, 02:17:55 PM »
Not as ugly as that original Alps green on the other side of Ardmore Ave on #10 Merion that Charles Blair Macdonald contributed.

JMorgan

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #36 on: November 19, 2007, 08:18:20 AM »
Crane's Ideal Course:

1.  #1 Pine Valley without trees and with improved contour in front of and on green.
2.  #10 National "with slight improvements"
3.  #3 Kittansett lengthened a bit
4.  #16 Pine Valley with green and fairway visible, new diagonal bunker in front
5.  #14 Myopia drive with #10 Essex second shot
6.  #4 Essex without trees and new sand hazards
7.  #12 Merion with natural sand dunes instead of trees
8.  #12 Pine Valley
9.  #4 Brae Burn without OOB, trees, and with enlarged bunkers
10.#13 Country Club
11.#17 National
12.#1 Essex
13.#3 Pine Valley
14.#16 Pinehurst 2
15.#9 Kernwood
16.#4 Lido
17.#17 Pine Valley
18.#5 Myopia
= 6604 yards


TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #37 on: November 19, 2007, 08:43:03 AM »
JMorgan:

Thanks for posting that hole list of Crane's ideal course. I have seen it before and considered the holes pretty carefully.

If Crane is being cast as some "penal" architecture proponent that ideal hole list of his sort of skews that notion or seriously calls it into question.

A few of his recommendations are a bit odd to me and at least one or two I couldn't disagree with more (making the fairway and green on PV's #16 visible and reworking the front approach and the green contour on PV's #1) but the entire list of holes apparently indicates his architectural preferences---eg less trees on some holes, a greater application of bunkering, particularly of the dune variety, and apparently a fairly decent amount of fairway width on various holes. He also seems to prefer the idea of an aerial requirement into some greens but certainly not all. It's interesting that the forced aerial requirement at both Pine Valley and Merion exists on about half the holes and Crane's ideal course doesn't seem far from that.

This makes me wonder if the actual architectural preferences of Crane, on the one hand, and the likes of Behr, Mackenzie et al aren't a whole lot closer than we've been assuming.

It may just be that the debate issue was about the mathematical analysis vs an emotional analysis and the fact that one just did not recommend altering TOC or even questioning its relevence in top championship play.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2007, 08:43:32 AM by TEPaul »

TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #38 on: November 19, 2007, 08:47:37 AM »
JMorgan:

The hole I really don't quite understand is Myopia's 5th as the ideal course's 18th.

That particular hole was sort of an everlasting problem in the mind of Myopia's Herbert Leeds and it seems that in the opinion of most everyone the hole on that course that really shines is the 4th, particularly its green and surrounds.

The present fairway bunkering on the 5th however (and combined with the green bunkering) is very good and very strategic and certainly would've been a whole lot more so back when Crane made that list.

BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #39 on: November 19, 2007, 09:10:17 AM »
"This makes me wonder if the actual architectural preferences of Crane, on the one hand, and the likes of Behr, Mackenzie et al aren't a whole lot closer than we've been assuming."

Crane started with a group of courses that pretty much everyone acknowledged as being the best. So there was bound to be some overlap.

Crane's reasons for picking the holes he did, however, were not the reasons Behr or MacK would have given.

Take the 16th at PV. Consistent with his larger views, Crane wanted any blindness eliminated by shaving the ridgeline. He disliked trees, so they needed to go. Finally, he thought the approach shot lacked adequate controls, thus he wanted a new diangonal bunker across the front of the green.

Those are huge changes. My guess is that those are not changes that Behr and MacK would have approved. I'm certain Crump, Colt or Alison wouldn't have either.

With almost all of Crane's ideal US holes, he suggested changes to them that would bring them closer to his ideal, which in his system meant 100%. It was part of his project to overcome traditional thinking about golf courses.

It's interesting that the ranking he gave to his cherry-picked US ideal holes was not a lot higher than his ranking for Muirfield and Gleneagles.

His hole selections also demonstrate that Crane was not the clownish "penologist" that Behr and Mack wanted to depict him as. Crane's views were much more sophisticated than that. My sense is that Behr understood Crane's whole program better than MacKenzie did.

Bob

P.S. The thing to remember about Crane is that he was an activist. His ideal holes were not holes as he found them. They were holes as changed according to his preferences. He had a program. The ideal holes he picked - subject to his changes - demonstrated, Crane believed, the pay-off of his program to free golf design from its old baggage and bring it into the modern age.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2007, 09:45:33 AM by BCrosby »

Peter Pallotta

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #40 on: November 19, 2007, 09:39:55 AM »
JM, TE, Bob
thanks for that. When he brings together his 'ideal course' Crane seems to be about one thing; when he formulates a system by which to rank ALL courses, about another. Unfortunately, I couldn't find again the long article where he describes his point system (but if I remember, he scores just about every element you can imagine). Here's something related, and self explanatory:

Joshua Crane is one of America's keenest students of golf as a game—from the technique of playing to the rating of golf courses by a point system which he developed and first outlined in GOLF ILLUSTRATED. Mr. Crane recently completed a tour of Scotch courses—with which he is thoroughly familiar—solely for the purpose of rating. The first complete rating—Sunningdale—appeared in the previous issue. In The Field of London recently, Mr. Crane summarized the ratings of fourteen courses abroad as follows:

Muirfield – 86.5
Gleneagles  - 84.6
Prince's – 83.8
Troon - 83
St. George's – 82.1
Hoylake – 81.5
Walton Heath -80.5
Sunningdale – 80.1
Turnberry – 79.9
Royal Cinque Ports  - 79.1
Prestwick – 78.7
Westward Ho! – 75.3
North Berwick – 72.6
St. Andrews – 71.8

When Mr. Charles Ambrose, of London, discovered St. Andrews at the tail-end of the list be took exception, and told Mr. Crane what he thought of him in a letter to London Golf Illustrated. Mr. Crane saw the Ambrose letter and replied; then Harold Hilton wrote an editorial and Mr. Ambrose an article, and some more letters followed. St. Andrews, of course, has a sentimental halo that the golf world deeply respects and reveres. Somehow—to the sentimentalist at any rate—the footrule seems out of place there. The point involved, however, is that Mr. Crane is solely interested in working out a system by which all golf courses can be rated. This he is conscientiously doing. He is seeking facts for the information of those interested. Instead of publishing Mr. Crane's detailed rating of St. Andrews, as was planned for this issue, we have secured his views of the reception accorded his ratings and other data of interest.—Editor.

Adam Clayman

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #41 on: November 19, 2007, 10:11:53 AM »
Hmm, This is golf. Lowest scores the winner.  ;D

Sorry to bring this heady conversation down, but, could someone familiar tell me how the terms "Freedom" and "Shot dictation" play a role in Cranes list and his "system"?
"It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing your whole life." - Mickey Mantle

JMorgan

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #42 on: November 19, 2007, 10:18:00 AM »
Peter,

Quickly, here's the break down:

Two divisions:
1. Design & Layout 1000 points
Tee 40
Rough 80
Fairway 250
Traps 140
Greens 250
Parallel holes 20
Visibility 200
Distance 20

2. Condition & Upkeep 1000 points
Tee 80
Rough 130
Fairway 300
Traps 100
Greens 300
Parallel holes 10
Caddies 50
Surroundings 30

Got to run, but I'll add my commentary/responses later ... wanted to get this in for your discussion. ;)

If I remember correctly, Crane also specified the sand used at Myopia for all bunkers.  
« Last Edit: November 19, 2007, 11:17:54 AM by JMorgan »

Rich Goodale

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #43 on: November 19, 2007, 10:41:11 AM »
I don't know how Muirfield got any points on Condition and Upkeep of the Caddies.  The guy I got first time I was there had no more than 7 fingers and fewer teeth....

JESII

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #44 on: November 19, 2007, 10:47:35 AM »
Summer teeth?

BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #45 on: November 19, 2007, 10:48:31 AM »
These are Crane's final composite rankings:

Ideal US course   95.9
Muirfield                86.5
Gleneagles          84.6
Princes                83.8
Troon                  83.0
The National        83.0
Merion                 82.6
St. George's         82.1
Hoylake                81.5
Pine Valley         80.9
Lido                     80.7
Walton Heath      80.4
Sunningdale       80.1
Turnberry           79.9
Kittansett           79.4
Deal                   79.1
Prestwick          78.1
Myopia                77.7
Essex                75.6
Westward Ho!   75.3
Essex                73.5
North Berwick   72.6
St. Andrews     71.8
« Last Edit: November 19, 2007, 11:09:37 AM by BCrosby »

BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #46 on: November 19, 2007, 10:49:33 AM »
Rich - I think I went out once with your caddy's niece.

Bob

BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #47 on: November 19, 2007, 10:59:18 AM »
I've tried to post Crane's rating charts, but they appear to be too big to download here.

If you've ever rated a course for the USGA, the similarities will be hard to miss.   

Bob

Rich Goodale

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #48 on: November 19, 2007, 11:06:18 AM »
Bob

Was she an ex-coal miner too?

Rich

BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #49 on: November 19, 2007, 11:11:15 AM »
No, but she asked several times if I had any interst in getting into the field. She said she had connections.

Bob

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