"TE
Yours and Charles Lighthall's GMGC booklet is excellent, and obviously it got the job done, which is the bottom line. However your ability or desire to look for information since--I'm not sure which--outside C&W, is not too evident. That's where the frustration comes in...and that is when you resort to stiffling descending voices and/or new data (at least trying to), unless of course that person was intimately involved in the project...fat chance.
Any logical mind understood that Aronomink was built with multiple bunkers from the start based on the aerial and the ground photo, but you continued to argue for an early redesign (during the Depression) or a maverick McGovern or a poor architect McGovern or the other 16 holes could have been built without multiple bunkers....two years of arguement later (including the old retort...have you seen Aronimink...were you involved in the project or any project), you acknowledges the course was in fact built with multiple bunkers. You've been involved in similar arguments about GCGC, Engineers and Bethpage...independent research of your own be damned.
The most illustrative example was the before and after photo at Minikahda. The comparison of the historic photo and the newly 'restored' photo (by Ron Prichard) prompted you to ask who did that work Micheal Hurdzan. Insulting two architects with one comment."
Tom MacWood:
That entire couple of paragraphs is nothing more than a pack of self-serving lies and distortions on your part.
The problem with you is you are so intransigent in the points and opinions you try to float on here I doubt you even bother to read what anyone else says to you. You certainly do avoid answering questions or answering them properly unless they fit into some agenda you have.
We've been over this so many times on here before but apparently you just don't get it.
Maybe 3-4 years ago Prichard and Aronimink DID THINK the course's bunkers were originally built with those sets of 2s and 3s despite the fact they always had Ross's plans. What they could not explain is why Ross would change or agree to have changed such detailed bunkering plans that he'd drawn almost simultaneous to the bunkers going into construction.
And then that tournament program which you've never seen from July 1931 turned up depicting the bunkers in hole by hole detail precisely like Ross's drawin plans. What the hell would you make of that if you were Prichard and the club? It's pretty obvious really---you'd begin to suspect the bunkers were changed at some point following that tournament in July 1931 to what the course looked like in the 1939 aerial.
There is nothing illogical about that assumption. No one, including you or anyone else could've proven then the way the bunkers were initially built. That was never to become known conclusively until we found that 1929 aerial at the Hagley about two weeks ago.
But still, the quesiton remains----why would Ross change his plans from such detailed ones he'd done practically simultaneous to the course going into construction? I don't care how many times you mention this "any logical mind would've understood" crap, you cannot answer that question and frankly no matter how many times I've asked it of you, you refuse to even address it. And it's no wonder at all you refuse to address it.
A logical mind could every bit as easily assume that foreman McGovern who was probably on site daily changed those bunkers rather than Ross, particularly seeing as McGovern had done bunkers like that previously at Jeffersonville, a project most believe Ross never saw.
The point is Aronimink knowing the above did not wish to take any chance at all of creating bunkers that may not have been Ross's when they had such good plans from Ross himself drawn nearly simultaneous to the course being constructed.
The point here, Tom MacWood, is this 'any logical mind would've understood' crap of yours is not proof those multi-sets were Ross, no matter how much you seem to want to make it sound like they were. The point you've been making about Ross possibly changing them on site was discussed a good deal back then before the final decison was made. I heard it discussed--I was there. I discussed it too the same way you have been for the last year or so. But the point is they couldn't prove that, and neither can you today and the plans they had were positively Ross's in his own hand and that's prescisely why they used them.
Your constant self congratulations of the type of research you do compared to most anyone else including about every archtiect in the world has become a real joke on here, in my opinion. I think there's a host of people on this website, including a number of architects who could use about one quarter of the research material you might and come to far more accurate and historically correct conclusions than you frequently do.
The point I've been making about you for years is despite the quantity and quality of some of the research material you tend to come up with you are not good at analyzing it correctly. I doubt you ever will be---certainly not until you get out of that Ivory Tower of yours and out into the field more often like some of the rest of us and start to learn what the field and being on actual restoration sites can teach you.
Face it, despite the fact that you obviously think you know what you're talking about and despite the fact that some on here who've probably never really been in the field either or part of a restoration project think you know what you're talking about, those on here who have been in the field a lot or on these projects and have been intimately involved in them just don't buy some of what you say on here and some of what you criticize. And it's no wonder---they simply understand some of the things you need to learn.