Ouimet, Vardon, Mackenzie, Gaston and Muirfield

[George Pazin]

It bothers me that such shoddy research is going to be rewarded. The few items I mentioned could have been fixed with no more than a few minutes of research. It wasn't done, and now they are selling this book to Hollywood. It bothers me that lazy research is being rewarded. But then I'm a whiner.

I agree with your sentiments; I think it's kind of sadly symptomatic of our times.

However, if Hollywood follows its usual pattern for golf movies, this one'll probably be lucky if it goes straight to video. Hope Mr. Frost took up front money & not the points.

[Hollywood Producer]

You're worried about this author making money in Hollywood? Yeah, sorry to say, that's whining.  

But you have made a wise decision to put the book down without finishing it. Your gaskets will thank you for it.

[Bob_Huntley]

Hollywood Producer:

When it comes to creative accounting Enron, Tyco and Global Crossing were as babes in the woods compared to Hollywood. I'll always remember  James Garner being told that "The Rockford Files" had no net profits after some nine or ten years of production. The studio settled on the court-house steps.

I doubt any golf film, apart from Caddyshack, has made money.

[ForkaB]

Bob

I thought that the reason Doug Kenney committed suicide was because he thought that Caddyshack had been a flop, at least in his eyes.  Am I wrong?

[BCrosby]

Rich -

No. He had other problems. I knew him a little. Caddyshack was a wild success at the time of his death. Word is that they found an uncashed royalty check for $400,000 in a book in his library that he had been using as a bookmark. He was very different and still missed.

Bob

[A_Clay_Man]

Caddyshack was loosly based on the real deal at Indian Hill CC in Winnetka Il. Maybe that's what this author was after but I think he shoulda told you straight off that it was speculation.
In "The dead Sea Scroll Deception" the authors state up front that the first half of the book is all facts and that the second half is conjecture using common sense and knowledge of the periods attitudes.

I still think a documentary on "golf" either in America or the whole magilla, by Ken Burns, would be a money maker.

[BCrosby]

A_Clay_Man:

I don't understand your post.

Caddyshack never pretended to be anything other than a funny movie. Did you think it was trying for some sort of historical verisimilitude?

Bob

  

[Dan Kelly]

Everyone should read the A NOTE ON THE WRITING on page 479. Frost freely admits to using "a dramatist's license" in an attempt to get at the spirit of the proceedings. That tells you right there that it is a historical novel. Enough cynical condemnation. Geez. Can't we just enjoy golf on this website for once?!!!!!

By the way, all of written history ("factual" or otherwise) is biased and slanted and we must take it with a grain of salt.

Now enjoy the game!!! Please. For your own sakes, enjoy the game.

Dear Eddie (not THE Eddie, are you? I thought you'd be dead by now!) --

Good point, well taken, about the note on Page 479.

Here's my good addendum to your good point: That note should have been on Page IX, not on Page 479. People tend to read books from beginning to end, and it seems to me that if you're going to be fabricating material for a TRUE story, you owe it to your audience to let them know that ahead of time. Even in Hollywood, which has cornered the market on cynicism, the "BASED ON A TRUE STORY" line precedes the movie.

As for your point that  "all of written history ('factual' or otherwise) is biased and slanted and we must take it with a grain of salt": Bunk!

Henry Ford reportedly said (I wasn't there) that "History is bunk" -- possibly a demonstration (reminiscent of the one we saw recently here, involving the wretched prose of Frank Lloyd Wright) of our good fortune that Ford went into the car-building business rather than into Academe.

Because history isn't bunk -- or at least it needn't be!

Things do happen. Good historians faithfully document them.

People do say things. Good historians accurately quote them.

Did Lincoln go to Gettysburg and give a little speech beginning "Fourscore and seven years ago..."? He did. Historians didn't invent his visit; they didn't fabricate his speech. And no "dramatist's license" would excuse the rewriting of that speech!

Now, as to exactly what Lincoln's motivations might have been: That's the sort of question where historians, unfortunately being human beings, are, as you put it, "biased" and "slanted," and their interpretations should be taken with a grain of salt.

But that, of course, is NOT the sort of question that these are: Did Vardon lose 1 match out of 88 -- or 13 out of 88? Did Francis Ouimet find a Vardon Flyer in the long grass at Brookline when he was a boy?

Mr. Frost may be able to justify (citing his self-issued dramatist's license) guessing what Eddie and Francis said to each other when there was no one within earshot to document it (it's pretty obviously all hokum, anyway) -- but, in my view, and you're of course free not to share it, he has no possible justification for misreporting the actual, known facts of the story.

When the facts are known, a "dramatist's license" is bunk!

[Bob_Huntley]

Dan Kelly:

Beautifully put.

If anyone has questions as they pertain to Ed Lowary's participation in the competition, e-mail me and I'll try to get his daughter to rummage out any information she has.

[Bob_Huntley]

Lowery.

[Rick Shefchik]

I was a TV critic for a number of years before finding more rewarding work in daily journalism. My primary gripe about the television/film industry was historical inaccuracies that were entirely unnecessary. I reviewed dozens of miniseries that purported to be about real events and real people, or were adaptations of famous literary works.

Because I wasn't playing as much golf back then as I did later, I usually found time to read the books on which the productions were based. The unnecessary, deliberate and (usually) counter-productive variances from the original were annoying at first, and ultimately infuriating. Simply put, the facts were available to these morons, but they just didn't care. It spoiled my enjoyment to watch these productions because I realized the creators didn't have any respect for the source material -- or, if you prefer, the truth.

Why should it matter? Most people who watch movies or TV productions haven't read the books and don't know what the facts really are, so who's being hurt, besides a few persnickety critics and obsessives?

But that's how truth gets lost. That's how societies forget the real lessons of history and apply the interpretations they find most convenient, instead. Fact evolves into legend, which is another word for a story. Anybody can tell a story, but not everyone can tell you the facts. (Now I'm getting close to a critique of the current state of the U.S. education system, but I'll save that for another non-golf thread.)

The 1913 U.S. Open is a great story, but I'd have a very hard time enjoying a re-telling of it if I believed the author was mis-reporting facts that were easy enough to get right. I didn't understand the rationale for working that way when I was a TV critic, and I don't understand it now.

[Eddie]

I hear ya Dan, I hear ya. I was mainly reacting to what a drag it is to get on this website all the time and to see so much negativity. Golf is the horse we are supposed to be riding, but we're standing around beating it instead, one way or another. But I do hear you. You are right about getting facts straight. But there is another bias you forgot to mention, and it happens every day in journalism. That is the bias that is involved when deciding which facts to print to begin with. And then how are the facts presented?

One way, "The unemployment rate fell today to 4.5%".

Another way, "The unemployment rate is still almost one point higher than the low of three years ago".

In a way that is neither here nor there, but I wanted to round out what I was getting at regarding bias and slant.

I don't know why the note is in the back instead of the front, since Frost is obviously being up front in including the note to begin with.

[Willie_Dow]

Wayne

Having just finished reading TGGEP and thoroughly enjoying the book, I think the sequence of holes are what were there in 1913.

You should contact "Master Newell" as he is a great guy, and can answer many of your questions.

Willie  

[wsmorrison]

Bill,

I did nend up checking my notes and also talked to Louis Newell.  Both corroborate your recollection.  The routing progression was different for the 1913 Open.  In fact, Louis Newell did help with some of the factual material for the book.  The routing progression was changed afterwards as well when Flynn added 9 holes that were intermingled with the existing 18 (to which he made numerous significant changes).  Only the first 9 holes were left in the same progression.  Offhand I'm not sure when the routing was reverted back, possibly when some holes were lost and combined when tennis courts were built.  It has been a pretty long time since I looked at the plans, but I will again shortly.

[TEPaul]

"(I just saw "The Patriot" and I'm now convinced he has something against us!  Perhaps he should do a film on aboriginal land rights in Australia/America to balance the books   )"

Paul:

Why do I get he feeling that you think a lot of the "colonies" have 'something against us'?

Look, Pal, it's nothing more than an occupational and evolutionary truth that if you screw up at home with certain people a couple of hundred years ago that the "Empire" might have to realize  a couple of hundred years hence that those reprobates might go out there and find something more special than what they left and really make something out of it.

But you're over here now--so just relax---we'll actually try to love you if you just get that chimera out of your head that we have something against what you call "us"!

What is "us" to you anyway---King Charles, Queen Victoria, Charles and Bernard Darwin, Hugh Alison and Harry Colt?  

[Sean_A]

I can understand making up conversation and the like, the book is not a Doctoral Thesis.  It has been written to make money.  However, I don't understand making basic mistakes as Dan K points out.  Much of Frost's audience will be fairly well versed in history.  If the readers can pick up on errors, so should Frost and the editing staff.  

How many Opens did Prestwick have before it was shared around?  I thought it was in the region of double digits, perhaps 11 or so.  I know it started in 1860 and first left in 1873, but I think the Open wasn't played for a year or two because Young Tom scampered off with the prize.

Ciao

Sean

[Willie_Dow]

Did anyone see Lou Newell on TV regarding this book about Ouimet ?