Peter
Thanks for the thoughts and the thread.
As you may understand, I tend to be deliberately hyperbolic when commenting on Tom Paul's periodic fawnings over the memory of Max Behr. He has promised to send me yet more of the great man's writings to see if he can win me over. When and if I receive them, I will reconsider my position, even if only briefly.
As for the "sport vs. game" issue, it really is a non-issue, at least to me. Splitting hairs and angels dancing on the head of a pin are just two of the cliches which pop to mind. Vis a vis your hypotehtical, I think you (and many others on this site) misunderestimate the strategies that can be played on the tree-lined hole and misoverestimate the range of strategies available to any player on the wide open hole. Just taking two ex-scratch or better players that we know and love well, I suspect that Tom Paul and Pat Mucci in their prime would play the first hole very diferently, given their differences in length, ball flight and mentality. Likewise, I suspect that they would play the latter hole more similarly than you might expect.
One of the most deceptive of the iconic images that influence the mindset of many of us is the Mackenzie drawing of the 14th hole at the Old Course. He shows 3-4 different ways of playing the hole, but these ways are not, IMHO, different ways that players of the same ability would play the hole, but rather ways that players of different abilities might play the hole. If this is true, you could make a similar diagram of the narrow tree-lined hole you postulate. The hacker can and should play the hole very differently than the scratch player, and vice versa. This is true but trivial. This is so because all golf holes and golf courses are equally "strategic," with the equality being the null set. Golfers are "strategic." Golf courses are not.
Behr's argument as to golf as a sport is not definitional but aspirational. He would like to see it as an activity which has a sense of adventure more like (say) fox hunting than (say) baseball. The fact that golf is conducted on a relatively heterogenous field of play supports this aspiration, as does the fact (well documented and argued by Tom Paul) that early courses were influenced by steeplechasing and other equine activities. However, there is one fact so significant that it trumps all others regarding the difference between golf and fox hunting or shooting or fishing....
....the golf hole!
The hole is fixed. It is also situated on a prepared surface which both makes it easy to find but also easier to "capture" (i.e. hole the putt) once you get near it. Foxes, deer, fish and all the other critters that men chase in their "sports" (by Behr's definition) have the annoying characteristic of locomotion. In fact, if they could not or did not move, these sports would be pretty formulaic and, dare I say, golf-like. I'll agree that golf is a sport in the Behrian sense, if and only if the holes are completely hidden and moved every day by the greenkeeper.
Now there's a great idea for the other thread on alternaitve uses for golf courses!
Hopefully constructively
Rich