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After the initial St. Andrews controversy no one took Crane's grading system seriously, which is probably why he abandoned it in 1927."
Tom:
Honest to God, the grading system is just not what all this was about. I don't believe any of us should continue to discuss any of this with you if you just keep saying the same old myopic thing time after time. If you are interested in this, then let's get into it but if you aren't or can't understand it or appreciate it then let's not. Our interest in this subject and its significance, particularly for the future, is definitely not just to educate you, that's for sure.
Furthermore, do not for a minute think that we are UNAWARE that the likes of Behr, Mackenzie, Jones et al may have been looking at a future for golf and architecture that most golfers may not understand or pick up on well. Our interest and fascination in some of the things they were proposing and Crane was countering is simply that if golfers were or areable to understand something that was never properly shown to them it just may be a revelation and a mighty powerful prescription for the future of golf architecture AND golf.
What you pretty much need to do if you want to understand or appreciate this stuff at all is just step out of your little world of dates and names and lists and historical facts and open your mind to some different philosophies for the future. We think that is precisely what they were into and looking at and proposing. The tragedy is it got truncated and basically missed for a whole series of historical reasons, some of which may not have had to do that directly with golf.
Those guys were philosophers and they were adventurous. They were freethinkers. It's certainly possible that golfers generally may not want or may not accept some of the things they were proposing. We just think golfers generally were never really given the opportunity to understand what they were saying and proposing. That's why we want to rerun what both sides were saying again, particularly the Behr/Mackenzie/Jones side.
There is no question it was a crossroads. In my opinion, we need to go back to that crossroads again, at least intellectually, and look at the alternative directions it offered back then and could today or in the future.