Joshua Crane gets Mad…

[Peter Pallotta]

…and explains why great holes aren’t copied more often.

Here’s a selection from a July 1926 article in which Crane reacts to his detractors, i.e. those who've questioned his scientific method for judging/ranking golf holes and golf courses. He specifically names/mocks Dr. Mackenzie: watch for the term ‘senile dementia’.  

“….It  was to be expected when a method of analyzing and comparing golf courses was first presented to the golfing public, that the devotees of those courses which had unjustified reputations for excellence would rush to their defense. It was hoped, however, that their criticism might show something constructive, and that the leading golf architects and intelligent players who were really interested in the betterment of the game might add their valuable ideas to this necessarily imperfect system, so that the result might be of great value in showing the golfing world what constituted a good golf course and why it was good.
 
Yet what was the apparent reaction? As was surmised, a rush to the defense of indefensible architecture, the more indefensible the more violent and illogical the defense. Not a word of careful criticism, not a line devoted to showing where the detailed analysis of any hole which rates low was weak, but a violent protest against the result, in articles which are full of generalities, quotations from golf writers and poets, truisms and axioms. Most of these articles, by the substitution of a few words could be used as a criticism of almost any view of any sport. They are strangely reminiscent of the average political speech where with a few careful substitutions the patriotic effort could be used just as well for the Republican campaign as for the Democratic.

The latest attempt is that of the British golf collaborating architect, Dr. Mackenzie, who has followed the lead of other so-called defenders of St. Andrews. Again not a constructive word which would give helpful criticism. Look at some of the generalities and personal attacks he puts before us:

"Any architect in Great Britain or U. S. says St. Andrews is better than Muirfield." Rather sweeping!

"St. Andrews needs years of play to appreciate it." Perhaps senile dementia is a necessary concomitant of full appreciation.

"Old champion still formidable at St. Andrews." Rather a backhanded compliment.

"It is not difficult to create holes on any inland course of similar character." Why then if these holes are outstanding and easy to copy, do not the modern architects slavishly imitate them? The modern architect knows that he would be laughed at if he did so.

"Penal and strategic school," -- "result of bad shot postponed by bad strategic position." Does any thinking man deny that this may make a good hole?

"Strategic school responsible for many excellent golf courses in Great Britain or U. S." This is a direct literary piracy on Max Behr's classification of golf architects, where the goats are put in the "Penal School," and the sheep in the "Strategic School." A pretty way of attributing false sentiments to an opponent, and then proceeding to condemn him therefore…”

Neat, huh? I guess that's the way it was, 81 years ago.

Peter
 

[Mike_Cirba]

Peter,

Crane would have been great on GCA.

I suspect he would also vote consistently with the Goodale/Kavanaugh Contrarian Party ticket.  

[Peter Pallotta]

Mike
Yes...indeed.

The Fazio thread brought this Crane article (and the debates) back to mind. It just struck me that Tom Fazio's position (as best as I can know/understand it) doesn't come out of the blue, i.e. it has as much historical precedents as the oppossing point of view.

Im not sure what that means or has to do with anything, but it seems true.

Peter  

[Paul_Turner]

Mike

Crane would have been great and like the contrarians he would have contradicted himself many times,  just to wind us up.

[Phil_the_Author]

Where is Macwood when he's needed!  

[Rich Goodale]

Thanks, Peter.

Of course I love whatever I read of Crane, just because he is so adept (even after 81 years) of winding up the "Emperor's New Clothes Deniers" such as  Cirba, Turner and Young.

In the snippet you quote, he catches out Mackenzie as resorting far too often to the answer, "Just because!" when questioned about simple but interesting points of discussion such as "How does Colt's Muirfield compare to the Old Course."

The answers in that snippet also seem far too close to "The science is settled!" responses by true believers to sceptics of various "Global Warming" theories.

The little bit I get to read on this site about what Crane wrote, the more I want to read him, if only because he does have a different point of view and manages to ruffle the carefully groomed feathers of the grandees of the Golden Age.

Also, who can't help but like a guy who played in the 1929 Amateur at Sandwich with a 15" putter which he used one-handed?

[TEPaul]

Richard Farnsworth Goodale VI said:

“The answers in that snippet also seem far too close to "The science is settled!" responses by true believers to sceptics of various "Global Warming" theories.”

Rich:

That, I believe, is about half or more of the problem the likes of Behr, Mackenzie et al had with Crane’s mathematical application for testing the quality of golf architecture.

Essentially Crane simply proposed his own mathematical formulae for testing the quality of architecture but he also seemed to assume that mathematically testing the quality of architecture was a given and not subject to debate or even question.

It appears what he was hoping to promote was the discussion and debate of the details of his mathematical or scientific method or criteria, if you will. He seemed to want people to discuss his mathematical theory and improve upon it to create an even better mathematical test of the quality of architecture. Clearly Crane wanted to do all this to help improve golf architecture in the future.

But the likes of Mackenzie and certainly Behr didn’t do that at all---they did not want to get into using a mathematical or scientific test to analyze golf architecture. They merely responded that one just can’t use a mathematical or scientific test to analyze the quality of architecture. They simply informed him that it is virtually an impossibility because people like architecture for emotional reasons (feelings) and it does no good at all to subject the quality of emotions and feelings to some mathematical or scientific test.

So in a sense Crane may’ve felt Mackenzie and Behr et al were attacking the messenger----attacking him----which they probably were in a sense because the message Crane was delivering was uniquely his own and they didn’t believe it applied at all.

You said about Mackenzie:

“In the snippet you quote, he catches out Mackenzie as resorting far too often to the answer, "Just because!" when questioned about simple but interesting points of discussion such as "How does Colt's Muirfield compare to the Old Course."

Mackenzie was probably right to use a “just because” answer with Crane. The more comprehensive version of Mackenzie’s response would be “You can’t compare Muirfield to the Old Course via some mathematical or scientific test JUST BECAUSE you can’t really analyze emotions and feeling via some mathematical or scientific test.”

[TEPaul]

"Penal and strategic school," -- "result of bad shot postponed by bad strategic position." Does any thinking man deny that this may make a good hole?"

In my opinion, statements like this sort of prove that some of Crane's ideas about good architecture (strategic architecture) was probably not that different from Behr's and Mackenzie's. If one looks at what Crane said in that remark it's pretty hard to deny it's basically the same thing as Behr's idea and term known as "indirect tax" which also is strategic architecture.

Matter of fact, Crane's drawing of an improved 1st hole at TOC is quite strategic, and I doubt even Mackenzie or Behr would've denied that.

Their point was that TOC did not need improvement or alteration because it had already proven itself to be an emotional winner with golfers.

 

[TEPaul]

In whatever the debate was with Crane on the one side and Behr and Mackenzie on the other side, it seems to me that Behr just made his point about the quality of architecture being dependent on golfer emotion so well. Not only that but he used something Crane said about 'his own preferences' in the exchanges and virtually nailed Crane's entire argument with it.

This is how Behr did it:

"That which Mr. Crane has essayed to do, although innocently undertaken, is in reality an attack upon golf. He belongs to that great host which believe that all things can be subjected to mathematical analysis. When misapplied it does a great deal of harm, for those whom it affects conquer by their numbers. And, once and equation has been established, the danger lies in the resulting standardizations.

It would not be so bad if Mr Crane's preferences coincided with his figures. At least he would have a personal opinion, and that is always interesting. But he has remarked: "In fact, I am often myself disappointed in finding that certain courses or holes of which I am particularly fond do not rate as well as others which are not as attractive to me."

What a remarkable statement! in the first place, whence did his figures come if not from his feelings? They were but a mathematical assessment of his fondness for things. Which was wrong, his figures or his feelings, in the event thereafter that his figures failed to establish that which was attractive to him over that which was not? Perhaps in the world beyond there is some omniscient common denominator permitting a mathematics of emotions. But in this world we are all so differently constituted that such a scheme as Mr Crane's is just as chimerical as if someone were to set out to determine the greatest painting in the world by such a means."

[TEPaul]

It should probably be admitted that this Joshua Crane vs Mackenzie/Behr et al debate never really was about the details of golf architecture or actual architectural concepts or architectural arrangements of any kind or even about penal and strategic architecture.

The debate seemed to be over how one determines what they like, what they think is of quality. The question seemed to be---can that be done via mathematics, a scientific analysis, or must it be done through emotions and feelings that inherently can never be mathematical and scientific?

For those on here who subscribe to the latter it probably renders much of what is discussed on this website virtually useless.  

[Rich Goodale]

“In the snippet you quote, he catches out Mackenzie as resorting far too often to the answer, "Just because!" when questioned about simple but interesting points of discussion such as "How does Colt's Muirfield compare to the Old Course."

Mackenzie was probably right to use a “just because” answer with Crane. The more comprehensive version of Mackenzie’s response would be “You can’t compare Muirfield to the Old Course via some mathematical or scientific test JUST BECAUSE you can’t really analyze emotions and feeling via some mathematical or scientific test.”

Tom

You are speculating on this bit.  What Mackenzie actually said, according to Peter's quoting of Crane, is:

"Any architect in Great Britain or U. S. says St. Andrews is better than Muirfield."

Mackenzie says nothing about mathematics or formulae, just that no architect says that St. Andrews is not better than Muirfield.  I'm inclined to agree with Crane in this instance in his comment:

"Rather sweeping!"

It also is non-prescient, as today architects and other experts tend to see that each course in its own way has relatively equal merit, and if anything will "rank" Muirfield slightly higher than the Old Course.

Rich

PS--isn't it ironic that these days those of us who are interested in rankings tend to prefer the "scientific" surveys of the golf magazines (who rate things down to 2 decimal places on a scale of 0-100) to the more subjective ones that Mackenzie seemed to prefer?

[Peter Pallotta]

This is just the most interesting subject/debate. How can it not be when the combatants write lines like:

"Perhaps in the world beyond there is some omniscient common denominator permitting a mathematics of emotions" (thanks for that quote, TE), or "This is a direct literary piracy on Max Behr's classification of golf architects, where the goats are put in the Penal School, and the sheep in the  Strategic School."  The 'religious' overtones are striking.

Two very bright and principled men, but as dfferent from eachother as night and day. Both want to raise the level of the game across the board by raising the level of the fields of play, across the board. One believes that there are rules and standards through which a measure of comformity can and should be achieved; the other doesn't deny those standards, but believes that they need and must be at the service of uniqueness and individuality. It's basically the question/approach that's been around forever, i.e. the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law.

Or -- to put it in a bit more of a gca context -- the hand of man in golf course architecture vs the hand of nature; the enforcing of the letter of the law despite/upon nature's randomness and uniqueness versus accepting the spirit of those laws as they occur and appear to us (each a little differently) via nature itself.

Is it too simplistic to say that herein lies the roots of the Fazio-Coore approaches/differences?

Peter  

 

[BCrosby]

The debates between Crane, Behr and Mackenzie were the most vicious in the history of gca. They were also the most public. It was, by any standard, very nasty. Peter's quote shows just a small part of the nastiness.

Crane saw himself as a progressive reformer. He thought golf courses were holding golf back from being a sport on the level of other sports. He wanted to see courses "modernized" so that the payoffs for bad and good shots were more predictable. As in other sports.

Thus he thought that links courses with their wild "rawnesses" (Crane's term) were the wrong model for golf designs. His rankings reflect this. The rebuilt Muirfield and Gleneagles held the top two spots primarily because they were the least links-like of the courses rated. True links courses held the bottom spots - TOC, N Berwick and Prestwick.

Crane's goal was to free golf from its traditions and "shibboleths" (again, Crane's term), to make it more of a test of pure athletic skill (again, as in other sports).

He posed some very tough questions to professional architects, who pretty much to a man advocated strategic, naturalistic architecture. In a sense Crane shifted the burden of proof against them.

Crane asked, if golf pretends to be a sport, why shouldn't courses  be concerned with the same issues that competitive venues in other sports are concerned with? Specifically, why aren't golf courses concerned with promoting a tight correlation between the quality of a shot and the quality of outcomes? Crane term for this was "controls." Each shot need to be adequately controlled or the relevant architectural features were defective.

Those are tough questions that don't have obvious answers. They make an appeal to rough justice that any school boy will understand.

I think Behr and MacK understood the power of Crane's views. Crane received a lot more attention and was much better known during the GA than is usually recognized. Clearly Behr and MacK  thought it worth their while to develop counterarguments, because that is exactly what they did. Arguably, they spent the last five years of the GA writing about or around the issues raised by Crane. (I would speculate that other architects did too. Though they didn't name names, were also addressing the issues raised by Crane over those years.)

Another reason why Behr and Mack thought it worth the candle to rebut Crane was because of what his views implied about the role of the architect. If the major design issues involved in building a golf course were - cateris paribus - reducible to those applicable to all sporting venues, then the role of the architect will have been effectively marginalized.

But for me the most interesting thing about all this is how the Crane/Behr/MacK debates anticipate, almost verbatim, debates today about championship set-ups, changes at Augusta, etc. Those old debates are remarkably relevant today.

More than that, they cover key issues in gca, the goals of the game and the role of architecture more thoroughly and more articulately (once they stopped yelling at each other) than anything since.

Bob      

[Steve Lang]

  Does this all not argue for men of "Arts & Science" background to extend the discourse, rather than polarize it?

[TEPaul]

"PS--isn't it ironic that these days those of us who are interested in rankings tend to prefer the "scientific" surveys of the golf magazines (who rate things down to 2 decimal places on a scale of 0-100) to the more subjective ones that Mackenzie seemed to prefer?"

Rich:

Ironic??

Yes, I guess it probably is somewhat ironic. It is also perhaps the worst fears come true of the likes of Mackenzie and Behr and all those who did not believe that true quality of architecture could or should be subjected to some mathematical or scientific analysis because it would lead to various forms of standardizations. I think the ensuing eighty years have shown that happened too.

That's one of the primary reasons I feel it's worthwhile to reconsider what the likes of Behr said to Crane back in the 1920s.

[Rich Goodale]

Bob or Tom or Peter or whoever

Is there any link we can visit to see some of these Behr/Mackenzie/Crane dialogues ourselves?  I assume they will be fascinating, but without having seen them except in selected snippets, it's hard to understand or comment on what was really going on.

Thanks in advance

Rich

[BCrosby]

Just a note, but the "scientific" rankings today are not scientific in the least. The decimal points reflect merely the averaging of a whole bunch of purely subjective ratings.

Crane, to the contrary, claimed his rankings were objective in a scientific, philosophical sense. That is, that they actually described things as they existed.

Of course, Crane didn't mention often the front loading of his own preferences into his "scientific" measurements.

Bob

[Rich Goodale]

Bob

If you believe that the Social Sciences are science, do not the Golf Week rankings purport to be gathered and tabulated scientifically?

What sort of "science" could Crane have been using that is not being used today by rankers and/or course raters?

Rich

[BCrosby]

Rich -

The full record of the debates is spread across a number of golf periodicals from the 1920's. Some are accessible, some are not, some may be lost entirely.

No one thought at the time it was worth collecting and preserving many of the sporting periodicals of the era. So digging them out has been a problem. Even the Library of Congress, The British Library and other places that are supposed to collect everything, didn't collect them.

Nonetheless, there are little leads here and there that I am exploring.

[BCrosby]

Did I say something that suggests I believe the social sciences are a science? To be clear, they are not. And modern day rankings are most certainly not. They are just surveys of subjective opinions.

Crane's pretensions to "science" are, of course, risible. But his idea was that you measured widths, heights, depths, etc. of a multitude of features on a golf course and then looked to see how effectively they "controlled" each shot. The measure of a course was an aggregation of the effectiveness of these separate shot controls.

That is a crude summary, but roughly the deal.

Bob

[Adam Clayman]

Bob, Thanx for that.
"Crane's goal was to free golf from its traditions and "shibboleths" (again, Crane's term), to make it more of a test of pure athletic skill (again, as in other sports).

He posed some very tough questions to professional architects, who pretty much to a man advocated strategic, naturalistic architecture. In a sense Crane shifted the burden of proof against them.

Crane asked, if golf pretends to be a sport, why shouldn't courses  be concerned with the same issues that competitive venues in other sports are concerned with? Specifically, why aren't golf courses concerned with promoting a tight correlation between the quality of a shot and the quality of outcomes? "

 Correlating golf to other sports, which are games, is the key flaw in the non-traditionalists attitude towards golf.  

So, the only answer is still the same..Just Because.

The mysteries and tests have been fine tuned to an extent which has removed the former and dimished the latter to a relentlessly repetitive  onslaught of predictability.

[Rich Goodale]

Bob

Note the word "if" in my first sentence.  I'd never accuse you of being so ignorant as to think that social "sciences" are anything of the kind.

However, your second paragraph sounds a lot like the USGA course rating manual, and since that tome was designed by the rocket scientist and self-proclaimed Pope of Slope, Dean Knuth, well who iare we to argue, scientifically or spiritually?

Rich

[TEPaul]

Bob:

That's a super fine post you just made there, particularly the way you cast some of the issues.  In some ways Crane does not exactly come off as the bogie man some on here might automatically categorize him. In a sense it may've just been his method rather than his intent.

I think your mention of the so-called "championship" course and all that might mean is a most interesting one. That just may be an item that the likes of Behr and Mackenzie did not take on directly (even with TOC) because that could be something they realized they could not win or cast well in this debate given the others issues they were trying to promote.

It may be that they were looking more at this in the context of recreational golf and architecture and not so much looking at it in just the championship vein---which Crane essentially may've been.

Perhaps in a way the championship course or championship architectural mentality skewed their other arguments and they knew that could happen going in.

A lot to ponder indeed.

[TEPaul]

"Bob or Tom or Peter or whoever
Is there any link we can visit to see some of these Behr/Mackenzie/Crane dialogues ourselves?  I assume they will be fascinating, but without having seen them except in selected snippets, it's hard to understand or comment on what was really going on."

Rich:

Good question. As you know i would like to send you what I have on Behr particularly but it seems like that is something of a sticky wicket with some for sort of proprietary reasons which I'm not sure I've ever fully understood.

Perusing the articles in American Golfer and Golf Illustrated from about 1924 up to and into the early 1930s should give you enough though.

But in my own opinion, it's never enough to just read what Crane wrote. To fully understand the depth and breadth of this debate one pretty much needs to read all of Behr's responses. If one can't or doesn't do that I doubt one could ever really understand this debate.

Ironically, Mackenzie's responses never seemed to be much to go on but some of Bobby Jones' were if one knows how to read between the lines. In a real way Jones probably felt between a real rock and a hard place because it's not hard to tell where he was coming from on this debate philosophically but he also realized it was definitely him and his golf that was responsible for completely fanning the flames, particularly over the championship timber of TOC.

[BCrosby]

Adam -

Almost bingo. One of the reasons Behr thought it important to distinguish games from sports was precisely to defeat Crane on that point. That is, golf was not like other "games" (per Behr); it was sui generis.

Rich -

Bingo. Crane's rating methodology reads almost verbatim like the USGA course rating manual.

Talk about continuing relevance... And that is only a minor part of Crane's continuing relevance.

Bob