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BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #75 on: November 22, 2007, 10:28:37 AM »
Sean -

I think you are off track. No one is talking about causation. That's a dicey concept even in the easy cases like physics or chemistry. It is certainly not a concept that helps much in the history of gca.

How it would work if someone thought that Josh Crane "caused" RTJ to do something? Over coffee one morning did RTJ have an epiphany while reading Crane? Which then dictated the kinds of designs he produced thereafter? Sort of like getting pricked by a magic thorn?

I'm not even sure I understand the concept of "influence" in this context. People a lot smarter than we have dealt with that and similar ideas about "cultural transmission" and have whiffed for the most part. See Hegel.

What I am trying to do is unpack some ideas. I'm trying to develop an analytic framework. If it is a good framework, it will do the work of untangling notions that were heretofore tangled. If it isn't doing that work, it's a waste of time.

Another test of the utility of the framework would be to see if it applies outside its first test case. Thus, even if it helps sort out the debates Crane, MacK and Behr were having, does it help make sense of what architects were doing in other eras?

Put another way, does it help tease out assumptions that have not been generally acknowledged? Does it help, for example, help articulate some to the assumptions that the USGA brings to setting up a golf course? And once these assumptions are out from the shadows, are they still prepared to insist on their views?

That is the sort of thing I hope will go on. This ain't simple syllogisms. Nor is it about causal notions along the lines of "if A, then B".    

Bob

P.S. One of the best ways to get at historical causation is to play with counter-factuals. What if the British didn't declare war on the Nazis in 1939, for example? And so forth.

Just as a thought experiment, what if Josh Crane had never gotten interested in golf? How would gca over the next eight decades been different?

My guess is that it wouldn't be much different at all. Crane is of interest not because he caused anything. He is of interest because he represents a certain view of gca that has been around since the beginning of the game and is still very much with us.

The thing about Crane is that he was uniquely articulate, thorough and honest about those views. That's why I  think he is worth revisiting. Plus he caused one hell of a brouhaha. And everyone likes a good fight.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2007, 11:08:20 AM by BCrosby »

TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #76 on: November 22, 2007, 09:37:44 PM »
Bob:

That's a good post with a lot of food for thought.

Would things have been much different in golf architecture and its future if Crane had never been around?

That's a good question, but my sense is probably not very much different at all.

I really do believe in the power and preference of what Behr called the "game mind of man". I think it's just so inherent in what people tend to want to do and do. Not to say I endorse it but I think I believe it's almost inevitable.

It could be true to say, as Tom MacWood implied, that the spark that caused Behr and company to write and speak as they did about architecture wasn't just Crane and his mathematical formula for testing the quality of golf architecture but the fact that his theory dissed TOC.

To those guys and many others at that time one just didn't do that!


BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #77 on: November 22, 2007, 10:22:19 PM »

It could be true to say, as Tom MacWood implied, that the spark that caused Behr and company to write and speak as they did about architecture wasn't just Crane and his mathematical formula for testing the quality of golf architecture but the fact that his theory dissed TOC.

To those guys and many others at that time one just didn't do that!


No, I don't think that is right. If you read Crane, Behr and MacK, TOC does not come up a lot. Some, but not a lot. Crane's low ranking of TOC comes up even less. To be sure, they didn't agree with Crane's low ranking, but their fight was over other, foundational issues. After the initial brouhaha over rankings, they moved on to those foundational issues and never really looked back. Their fight was over basic design philosophies.

Bob

Rich Goodale

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #78 on: November 23, 2007, 03:59:52 AM »
As I think I've mentioned before, Crane was a great fan of Carnoustie, particularly its seminal role in populating the USA with golf professionals in the early 20th century.  He played in the inaugural Craws Nest Tassie, Carnoustie's annual Open amateur tournament played over 6 days of stroke and then match play, and later dedicated several cups to the Carnoustie Club for their local competitions.

I'm not sure if he ever subjected Carnoustie to his ranking system (which locals refer to in their histories as "abstruse"--Crane himself must settle for being called "eccentric.").  Anybody know the Crane Rating for Carnoustie?

TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #79 on: November 23, 2007, 08:00:27 AM »
Bob:

I wouldn't say the debate between Crane and Behr et al was over TOC---it was certainly over more fundamental things about architecture than that ultimately. But it seems that may've been the spark that set off the debate. There is an article, I suppose by Behr, that speaks pretty much exclusively about Jones's opinion of championship American courses compared to TOC, and if that article was early on in their debate then it just might indicate that TOC sparked it. Following and as a result of Jones's Open victory and record score there various people seemed to believe that indicated TOC was weak. That would've added credence to Crane's low ranking of TOC too.

BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #80 on: November 23, 2007, 09:53:22 AM »
Rich -

In some ways the courses Crane chose not to rank is as interesting as the content of his rankings themselves. I don't know why he excluded the courses he did. I can only think that as of 1923  Carnoustie, Dornoch, Western Gailes, Birkdale, Ganton, Cruden and other courses weren't well enough known by the broader golfing public at the time. But I don't know.

Crane always had an affection for Carnoustie. Witness the "Crane Cup" there. Why he didn't include it in his rankings is a good question.

Tom -

The controversy over Crane's rankings was the match that started the conflagration. But the bonfire that resulted was about bigger issues than whether TOC ought to be ranked 14th or 8th or 1st. That was not something any of the participants spent much time fussing about.

What they did fuss about was the criteria that Crane thought important in measuring the value of a design vs. the criteria MacK, Behr, Darwin, Simpson and others thought important. That's why they thought it worth the effort to write articles back and forth. Crane couldn't be simply written off as a nutcase course rater. They saw him - correctly I think - as raising some pretty big issues that transcended how one or another course was rated.


Bob

TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #81 on: November 23, 2007, 10:11:15 AM »
Bob:

This is why I think TOC (and Jones's opinion of it along with the others he agreed with and agreed with him) was pretty seminal in this debate. Many of the specific issues of the overall debate are included in the following article by Behr.


Bobby Jones And St Andrews
(Experience of Star is argument against golf course standardization)

   Mr. O.B. Keeler, the Boswell of Bobby Jones, in writing what he saw of British Links in the September issue of American Golfer, quotes the Great Champions’s opinion of the Old Course at St. Andrews. Mr. Jones is evidently a man of few words. But whenever he has condescended (sic ?) to express an opinion about some phase of golf, we have always found that his thought deserves respect in its own right, and not merely because he is the great player that he is. And his thought in this particular case is of extreme value.
   He is an amateur who plays for the joy of playing. He cannot be suspected of prejudice as might be a great professional, part of whose vocation in life it is to make low scores. Anything that might hinder the professional from achieving this end is likely to be criticized. And that is only natural. Golf to him is a business. The goods he sells are composed of his skill. As a good business man he likes to sell those as easily as possible and on parity with his competitors. Consequently golf must be reduced to a species of trap-shooting. If he can shoot straighter than his brother, he should be rewarded. Therefore it is only right and proper that there should be a marketplace for his wares. This is a definite area, the fairway, which will reward him if he can keep his ball upon it, and punish him if he does not succeed. Thus true golf, a sport similar to wild shooting over a good dog, has degenerated in the degree that this demand has come to be satisfied.
   I think it may be justly observed that the moment competition enters into the affairs of life, individuality ceases to exist, and standardization results. Singularity is crushed in the interest of uniformity. And thus, owing to the stress today placed upon competition in golf, golf architecture has come to be rationalized. The old road which seemed to wander with no intent or purpose, and from which wandered off byroads to fool the traveler, has now become a well-posted concrete highway. Every inducement is offered to step upon the accelerator as long as one can keep the car of skill from slipping into the rough.
   But it may be said that we only get out of a thing what we bring to it. If we have an axe to grind we cannot possibly remain disinterested. In our practical activities the things we deal with tend to shrink to the dimensions set by our practical requirements. In other words our practical activities go on in an impoverished and denuded world. In them we see no more than we wish to get out of them.
    But to Bobby Jones golf is a diversion, a pleasant way of spending his time. Consequently in the playing of golf he is cognizant of many factors, and can take joy in them, which, if golf were a practical activity to him, might well prove to be a nuisance. Then, with an open mind, he brought and applied to St. Andrews the greatest golfing skill in the world today. And the reaction of his skill against the character of the Old Course precipitated an opinion that might well revolutionize the prevailing ideas as to what a golf course should be.
   “Employing a comparison with our own best golf courses in America,” said he, “I have found that most of our courses, especially inland, may be played correctly the same way round after round. The holes really are laid out scientifically; visibility is stressed; you can see what you have to do virtually all the time, and once you learn how to do it, you can just go right ahead, next day and the next day and the day after that.
   “Not at St. Andrews. The course is broad and open, and the rough is distant, and the fairways confront you in every direction. The greens are huge. And with all that, and with almost all the visible universe to shoot into, you may plume yourself on any round of 72 or 75 that falls to your fortune there. From tee after tee, you are offered almost all the real estate you can cover with your drive. But you would better place that drive with some thought and exactness, or your second shot will be a terror. The fourteenth hole, for example—I think it perhaps the finest on the course---may be played four different ways, all correct and widely at variance, according to the wind. And the wind is a worthy foe. It is just as likely to oppose you all the way out, and turn as you turn, and battle you all the way back. Or it may follow you around the entire horseshoe. You must use something besides shots and clubs, playing St. Andrews. I can learn more golf in a week on that course than in a year on many a sterling championship test in America.
   The comparison of St. Andrews with our so-called championship courses is certainly not flattering in the general trend of golf architecture in this country. Mr. Jones used the right word when he said our holes are laid out “scientifically.” Science comprehends a desire to arrive at measurable knowledge. Hence with us, “visibility is stressed.” We consider it wrong that a golfer should be left in doubt as to the distance of a stroke. Thus he quickly learns the distance values of a course and knows how to play it and “he can go right ahead next day, and the next day, and the day after that.”
   But this cannot be said about the Old Course. As to visibility, Mr A.C.M. Croome gave the British view when he remarked in the London Field that “St. Andrews suffers no loss because the approach shot to a round dozen of the putting greens is in greater or less degree blind.” But this does not mean that they are in greater or less degree blind from all angles. It simply means that, according to the British view, blindness is on occasions a legitimate and delightful hazard, and especially so when it forces the player to make a placement shot to attain visibility.
   But blindness in an undulating, tumbling terrain such as linksland presents is quite different from that we are subject to in this country. The greens are not separate creations apart from the whole. They are as the Creator made them. They belong. The eye can pick up distance as it wanders from one hillock to the next till it arrives at the pin. It does not meet with a sudden blockage such as artificially created green and contours of which are separate and apart from its surroundings. Such is the character of the blindness at St. Andrews.
   It is peculiar that golf architecture has drifted so far from this great example. The trend has been to make golf courses merely difficult to score upon. But to accomplish this requires no imagination or vision. The trick is easily turned. One has only to narrow fairways, make the rough damnable and restrict the size of the greens. And that is what we have been doing.
   But the very opposite is true of St. Andrews. The greens are enormous. Some slope away from play. Seemingly one can drive in any direction. There is, of course, the hazard of the wind. That is not to be belittled. Nevertheless, “you may plume yourself on any round of 72 or 75 that falls to your fortune there.” Golf at St. Andrews is all strategy. The taint of penalty is absent. The steamroller of logical thought has not been allowed to destroy it.
   St. Andrews violates every conception of what we think a golf course should be. It is now up to our authorities to prove the beneficence of the terrors they spread in the golfer’s way. But this they can never prove. The final appeal which a golf course makes is to the feelings. As I said at the beginning, we get out of a thing only what we bring to it. Mr. Jones brought the greatest golfing skill in the world to St. Andrews, and after he had been tested by it, it was sufficient proof for him to pronounce the Old Course the greatest in the world.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2007, 10:16:18 AM by TEPaul »

BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #82 on: November 23, 2007, 10:36:59 AM »
Tom -

Good stuff isn't it?. Yes, TOC was discussed. The design issues they were arguing about included TOC, but the issues were also much broader than TOC.

The debate was not primarily about this or that aspect of TOC. Note that in Behr's eight or nine follow-on articles, Behr turns to those larger issues and TOC doesn't play a central role in his discussions.

Bob  

TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #83 on: November 23, 2007, 10:54:51 AM »
"Tom -
Good stuff isn't it?. Yes, TOC was discussed. The design issues they were arguing about included TOC, but the issues were also much broader than TOC.
The debate was not primarily about this or that aspect of TOC. Note that in Behr's eight or nine follow-on articles, Behr turns to those larger issues and TOC doesn't play a central role in his discussions."

Bob:

Of course the debate was not over TOC. TOC was simply their example of what apparently far more architecture should be and be like.

And if for whatever reasons golf architecture could not emulate TOC, their point was that somehow it should still be able to create in golfers and evoke from them that "feeling" Behr and Jones and the others felt TOC did evoke.

The debate was over how far particularly American architecture was departing from those many elements of TOC and the feeling it evoked in golfers that both Jones and Behr and Mackenzie and others explained in quite a bit of detail.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2007, 03:40:30 PM by TEPaul »

Peter Pallotta

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #84 on: November 23, 2007, 11:21:59 AM »
Wonderful stuff, gentlemen. Thanks very much.

Every bit of the Behr essay that TE quoted sets me to thinking; there is just so much there.

I think Behr's goal was more a realistic/modest one than I've been making it. He seemed to believe that the 'game mind of man' was a permament part of our make-up, and so was hoping for a style of architecture to prevail that would at least mitigate it instead of encouraging it.  

That essay also convinces me that the difficulty we find in Behr's writing is mostly our problem, not his. Look at this quote (below): to me, what Behr is saying is even more true today than it was in his day; we just don't recognize that truth anymore... to our detriment, I think:

"I think it may be justly observed that the moment competition enters into the affairs of life, individuality ceases to exist, and standardization results. Singularity is crushed in the interest of uniformity. And thus, owing to the stress today placed upon competition in golf, golf architecture has come to be rationalized. The old road which seemed to wander with no intent or purpose, and from which wandered off byroads to fool the traveler, has now become a well-posted concrete highway."

The old meandering roads (and ways) of life are almost all gone now; or at least have never been as de-valued as they are today...or so it seems to me.

Peter
« Last Edit: November 23, 2007, 03:23:49 PM by Peter Pallotta »

Rich Goodale

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #85 on: November 23, 2007, 01:21:17 PM »
Thanks for the quote, Tom.  However, either Jones, or Keeler or Behr is full of it.  To say that Jones is somehow a different sort of animal than, say, Hagen, or Sarazen is just being econimcal with the truth.  From what I know, Bob was just as ruthless as any of his competitors and may even have had a less sanguine disposition than the ones mentioned above.  His temper tantrums in the early parts of his career are well doumented, are they not?  Does anybody really think that Jones wasn't grinding out there with the best of them (in fact he was the best of them), not only in stroke play but also in match play where his dictum of "play the course, not the opponent" is legendary and correct.

As usual, Behr fills up blank sheets of paper with meaningless, semi-literate and even inaccurate drivel.  I've asked for some good writing from you and others from Behr, but so far I've seen nothing that would get more than a C in my freshman English class.  But then again, Behr was a gentleman, so a gentleman's "C" was probably good enough for him, as it was for W and Kerry and other wayward toffs before and after them.

Sic transit gloria GCA.

Rich

Peter Pallotta

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #86 on: November 23, 2007, 01:42:32 PM »
But Rich, don't you agree that:

- generally speaking, the desire to 'test' leads to standardization and unformity?

- generally speaking, when you have standardization and uniformity, conformity can't be far behind?

- generally speaking, that in an age obessed with productivity and profitability, there is less love than ever for the meandering and (possibly) purposeless road?

- generally speaking, the modern world offers every inducement to (and perhaps even demands) stepping on the accelerator has hard and as long as one can?

And don't you agree that these generalities have parallels in the   context of golf course architecture, particularly in terms of Crane's 'scientific' method?

And don't you think Behr was describing pretty well the 'golf course as championship test' mentality of the day, and in fact very clearly predicting the championship 'set-ups' of modern times?

Peter


TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #87 on: November 23, 2007, 03:03:53 PM »
Richard:

Post #85 only shows that you really are both deaf, dumb and blind and full of shit in a significant number of ways.

Seriously!!

Furthermore, Richard, I think any of us would probably prefer to take Bobby Jones' own words for and about how he felt on these subjects than your words for how he felt.  ;)

Peter:

Don't even bother to ask him constructive questions as all his answers are what are really meaningless anyway.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2007, 03:43:00 PM by TEPaul »

TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #88 on: November 23, 2007, 03:16:13 PM »
Peter:

Having considered Behr as much and as long as I have, I feel that even if his basic message was full of promise and hope---eg that golf and golf architecture should appeal primarily to a person's "feeling", that both he and his message for golf architecture may've missed the boat for two essential reasons:

1. Man is probably inherently a more compeititive animal than Behr may've assumed and perhaps hoped----therefore leading to Man's inherent instinct for greater definition, greater standardizations, greater uniformity and a minimalization of luck, leading to greater perceived fairness.

2. That Man, the golfer, does not really object to that which he observes to be man-made or artificial, at least not anywhere near as much as Behr assumed he might.

I don't think Behr and his fellow proponents of the type of architecture that he articulated and proposed and longed for exactly lost some debate against the likes of Crane, I just think they were basically up against the inevitable----what Behr referred to as "The Game Mind of Man".
« Last Edit: November 23, 2007, 03:22:57 PM by TEPaul »

Rich Goodale

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #89 on: November 23, 2007, 03:42:52 PM »
But Rich, don't you agree that:

- generally speaking, the desire to 'test' leads to standardization and unformity?

- generally speaking, when you have standardization and uniformity, conformity can't be far behind?

- generally speaking, that in an age obessed with productivity and profitability, there is less love than ever for the meandering and (possibly) purposeless road?

- generally speaking, the modern world offers every inducement to (and perhaps even demands) stepping on the accelerator has hard and as long as one can?

And don't you agree that these generalities have parallels in the   context of golf course architecture, particularly in terms of Crane's 'scientific' method?

And don't you think Behr was describing pretty well the 'golf course as championship test' mentality of the day, and in fact very clearly predicting the championship 'set-ups' of modern times?

Peter



Thanks, Peter

Per your questions, in order:

--depends on what you "test."  In any endeavour, the higher up the "skill" rating, the less uniformity is required.  Think of musicians or poets or Army generals.
--I would argue that in this day and age people seek out and relish non-conformity in their avocations, because of the conformity of their lives.  The range of non-work activiteis available to and practised by people these days is massively broader an deeper than it was in the "golden age."
--Tom Paul and I belie that accelerator metaphor.  Neither of us gets out of 2nd gear more than once or twice a semester.
--As I don't agree with the generalities, I don't see parallels, and in fact even if I did agree with them I think drawing parallels from generalties is a dangerous and fruitless endeavour.
--golf courses are always "championship" tests, whether or not the championship is a National Open or just a friendly Nassau.  There are winners and losers every time you play, even if you are only playing with yourself.

Slainte

Rich

Rich Goodale

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #90 on: November 23, 2007, 03:48:45 PM »
But Rich, don't you agree that:

- generally speaking, the desire to 'test' leads to standardization and unformity?

- generally speaking, when you have standardization and uniformity, conformity can't be far behind?

- generally speaking, that in an age obessed with productivity and profitability, there is less love than ever for the meandering and (possibly) purposeless road?

- generally speaking, the modern world offers every inducement to (and perhaps even demands) stepping on the accelerator has hard and as long as one can?

And don't you agree that these generalities have parallels in the   context of golf course architecture, particularly in terms of Crane's 'scientific' method?

And don't you think Behr was describing pretty well the 'golf course as championship test' mentality of the day, and in fact very clearly predicting the championship 'set-ups' of modern times?

Peter



TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #91 on: November 23, 2007, 04:00:36 PM »
"“--golf courses are always "championship" tests, whether or not the championship is a National Open or just a friendly Nassau.  There are winners and losers every time you play, even if you are only playing with yourself.”

Bobby Jones said:

“You must use something besides shots and clubs, playing St. Andrews. I can learn more golf in a week on that course than in a year on many a sterling championship test in America.”

Richard:

That may be Jones’ paramount point re what the likes of Behr and the others mentioned about how and why golf architecture can appeal to a golfer’s “feeling."  Unfortunately, those things seem to be ideas and concepts you are incapable of understanding. And even if you may understand them on some level you seem incapable of accepting them for some reason.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2007, 04:03:44 PM by TEPaul »

JESII

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #92 on: November 23, 2007, 04:59:58 PM »
"He is an amateur who plays for the joy of playing. He cannot be suspected of prejudice as might be a great professional, part of whose vocation in life it is to make low scores. Anything that might hinder the professional from achieving this end is likely to be criticized. And that is only natural. Golf to him is a business. The goods he sells are composed of his skill. As a good business man he likes to sell those as easily as possible and on parity with his competitors. Consequently golf must be reduced to a species of trap-shooting. If he can shoot straighter than his brother, he should be rewarded. Therefore it is only right and proper that there should be a marketplace for his wares. This is a definite area, the fairway, which will reward him if he can keep his ball upon it, and punish him if he does not succeed. Thus true golf, a sport similar to wild shooting over a good dog, has degenerated in the degree that this demand has come to be satisfied.
  I think it may be justly observed that the moment competition enters into the affairs of life, individuality ceases to exist, and standardization results. Singularity is crushed in the interest of uniformity. And thus, owing to the stress today placed upon competition in golf, golf architecture has come to be rationalized. The old road which seemed to wander with no intent or purpose, and from which wandered off byroads to fool the traveler, has now become a well-posted concrete highway. Every inducement is offered to step upon the accelerator as long as one can keep the car of skill from slipping into the rough."



I'm not sure who exactly is responsible for each line in that post, Tom, apparently some of it is quotes from Jones, but I cannot make them out other than the one you identified...the above lines I quoted are the first real clear explanation I have read or heard on how a professional differs from an amateur in their love of the game and analysis of its courses...and it's bull!


"...great professional, part of whose vocation in life it is to make low scores. Anything that might hinder the professional from achieving this end is likely to be criticized..."[/i]

Does this speaker not realize that even in professional golf, low scores are relative and that a difficult feature is going to be difficult for everybody?

Peter Pallotta

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #93 on: November 23, 2007, 06:23:06 PM »
JES -

Maybe this is so obvious that everyone keeps missing it (and my apologies in advance if you haven't, and I've just misunderstood you instead):

The main 'characters' in the essay TE quoted are Max Behr (a champion amateur golfer) and Bobby Jones (the greatest amateur of them all). They had decades worth of tournament experience between them. Don't you think it's a GIVEN that they understood the nature of competition, and of shooting low scores, and of various kinds of difficulties/challenges on a golf course? Doesn't everything they write and say come from/out of that perspective?

I think the kind of architecture that Behr and Jones were promoting (let's call it "The Old Course") was valued by them not because it TOOK SOMETHING AWAY from golf at the highest level, but because it ADDED SOMETHING to golf at the highest level.  

And I'd guess that both Behr and Jones realized that it was ONLY the fact that they were champion golfers that allowed them to talk about 'feelings' and 'randomness' and 'uniqueness' and still be taken seriously by the golfing elite. After all, who would've had the nerve to suggest that Jones was afraid of flat-out competitive golf?

To me, what I see everywhere in Behr's writings is a sense of possibility and wonder; a sense of the heights that the great (and competitive) game of golf -- and golf course architecture -- could reach in America. If it was ONLY about competition, it was clear enough to Behr (and probably everyone else) what that would mean for golf course architecture, ie:

"The trend has been to make golf courses merely difficult to score upon. But to accomplish this requires no imagination or vision. The trick is easily turned. One has only to narrow fairways, make the rough damnable and restrict the size of the greens. And that is what we have been doing."

But if was about something MORE, then it was also pretty clear what that could mean for golf course architecture. I think this sentence really does say it all (with my emphasis added):

"Mr. Jones brought THE GREATEST GOLFING SKILL in the world to St. Andrews, and AFTER HE HAD BEEN TESTED BY IT, it was sufficient proof for him to pronounce the Old Course the greatest in the world."

And what had moved the greatest competitive golfer of his generation to this conclusion? According to the essay, it had to do with TOC being "all about strategy", and being unique ("violating every conception of what we think a golf course should be"), and, in the end, being about "feelings"....and all of this while still TESTING a golfer's skills.

I think Behr was talking about a kind of architecture that encouraged the participation of the total PERSON in the playing of the game, i.e. his shot-making skills, yes of course, but also his love of nature and of nature's randomness and uniqueness.

Anyway, that's how I tend to read Behr, and have from the first time I read him.

Peter
« Last Edit: November 23, 2007, 10:30:47 PM by Peter Pallotta »

TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #94 on: November 24, 2007, 06:58:51 AM »
Sully:

These are Bobby Jones' words:

 “Employing a comparison with our own best golf courses in America, I have found that most of our courses, especially inland, may be played correctly the same way round after round. The holes really are laid out scientifically; visibility is stressed; you can see what you have to do virtually all the time, and once you learn how to do it, you can just go right ahead, next day and the next day and the day after that.
   “Not at St. Andrews. The course is broad and open, and the rough is distant, and the fairways confront you in every direction. The greens are huge. And with all that, and with almost all the visible universe to shoot into, you may plume yourself on any round of 72 or 75 that falls to your fortune there. From tee after tee, you are offered almost all the real estate you can cover with your drive. But you would better place that drive with some thought and exactness, or your second shot will be a terror. The fourteenth hole, for example—I think it perhaps the finest on the course---may be played four different ways, all correct and widely at variance, according to the wind. And the wind is a worthy foe. It is just as likely to oppose you all the way out, and turn as you turn, and battle you all the way back. Or it may follow you around the entire horseshoe. You must use something besides shots and clubs, playing St. Andrews. I can learn more golf in a week on that course than in a year on many a sterling championship test in America."
« Last Edit: November 24, 2007, 07:00:28 AM by TEPaul »

wsmorrison

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #95 on: November 24, 2007, 07:21:56 AM »
Admittedly, I am jumping in without reading everything very carefully.  But I have a question that may be at the heart of the professional/amateur differentiation.  In the time Crane was writing his papers and debating Behr, Jones and MacKenzie, how much of amateur play was strictly match play and how much was professional golf stroke play?  I recall that professionals first started playing stroke play because they didn't have the time away from their primary jobs as club pro/greenkeeper to play match play tournaments.  This might account for the mention of professionals being more attuned to shooting low scores while amateurs were looking to win the most holes and looking at golf not in terms of stroke play but match play.  Sorry if this is off topic or has been mentioned before.  

TEPaul

Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #96 on: November 24, 2007, 08:43:27 AM »
Wayne:

I think that's a very good question at this point. It may've some meaning with a guy like Jones and the way he looked at golf or even architecture and perhaps in some interesting ways that might even be sort of counter-intuitive to us.

Back then I think most all strictly amateur tournaments were at match play. I think that's the way the ruling bodies of golf (particularly the R&A and USGA) wanted it and match play was surely considered to be the fundamental format of the old game (certainly the very old game of foursome match play along with singles match play).

Stroke play was the preferred and apparently necessary format for professional golfers probably for the very reasons you gave.

But here we have Bobby Jones, an amateur, obviously playing most always match play golf in amateur tournaments but also playing stroke play tournaments so successfully against professionals.

And look at the approach he apparently developed to do both successfully. He called it playing against "Old Man Par". What does that mean really to a tournament player in either match or stroke play?

To me it means you are playing against the golf course and essentially trying to take both match play opponents and stroke play competitors somewhat out of your mental equation.

Apparently Jones felt if he could succeed in relationship to par he was pretty likely to beat most anyone in either match or stroke play and I guess his record basically bore that out.

Jones also apparently had a very difficult time in his early years dealing with his own adversity against a golf course and particularly St. Andrews (where he picked up his ball in the midst of a championship there precipitating what he claimed was his worse moment in golf).

Somehow that must have changed him and he must have come to realize fighting and criticizing a golf course was never going to do him any good anyway, and remarkably he later came to love and completely respect TOC and its vast differences from other courses, particularly American championship courses, as he explained above.

Did Jones somehow come to know something that most other golfers never come to know?

Perhaps he did and perhaps people who are more cynical about these kinds of things can fairly claim he may've come to be less critical of courses and such simply because he became so good that he won a remarkable amount of the time anyway and the truth of golf is winners very rarely feel the need to complain about anything---why would they if they won anyway  ;)

Behr does try to make the point that perhaps because Bobby Jones never played golf for money that fact may've influenced him and his approach to courses differently. Maybe that's true but somehow I doubt that could've been paramount. In my opinion, whether one is a top-flight  amateur or a professional tournament player there is a very similar desire amongst all golfers to win first---and if there's money in it for you that's essentially a nice byproduct only.

« Last Edit: November 24, 2007, 08:51:25 AM by TEPaul »

john_stiles

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #97 on: November 24, 2007, 10:01:37 PM »
Did Joshua Crane write anything about GCA before he received his engineering degree at MIT ?

His discussion of course ratings, dislike for blindness and luck even as to the condition of the rough, etc. is just so dry.  His ratings simply scream engineering in his 'analysis into elements that will permit actual comparison in plain statistical figures.'

It would seem that his reduction of the art into 'sub-elements' and the like would have disturbed many of the golden age architects even thought he threw out the line that he thought the 'golf course development was on the right track' in that GCA golden age year of 1926.

Adam Clayman

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Joshua Crane gets Mad…
« Reply #98 on: November 25, 2007, 01:50:31 AM »
John, Didn't Behr begin warning of the worng road in '23?

The El Campeon(sp?) in Howey-in-the Hills Florida was built in 26' which has many of the elements that resemble the courses built in the dark ages of gca. WWII-1969
"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 #99 on: November 25, 2007, 07:08:30 AM »
To get back to the title of this thread---"Re: Joshua Crane Gets Mad", yes he certainly did get mad when this debate between himself and the likes of Behr, Mackenzie, Jones et al began to take shape in writing amongst some of the day's most popular golf periodicals.

But one can see from Crane's responses that he was particularly mad that those who opposed him did not choose to debate him using basically a mathematical or "scientific" construct or format for testing the quality of architecture that he was proposing. Crane wanted to promote a discussion that essentially would serve to improve his mathematical or "scientific" application. His goal was to improve the general quality of architecture in America

Instead, those opposing him basically said that no mathematical or scientific application could be used to test the quality of architecture and that the quality of architecture could only be tested by estimating the general "feeling" golfers had about a golf course or golf architecture.

In a sense, however, that's just a generality.

But what were the specifics of architecture that both sides apparently agreed upon and disagreed about?