Phil -
looking at pictures of Old Tom and reading his words, he sometimes strikes me as someone who could've started a religion, a wise but other-worldly Prophet type.
It doesn't seem so important to me whether, as Joe's quote suggests, Old Tom was being literal and speaking the literal truth; the metaphorical meaning (and the weightiness of the pronoucement) is wonderful regardless.
Can you imagine another golf course architect even saying, let alone managing to pull off, a statement like "it was built over the bones of dead men"? It's as if Old Tom knew and lived and breathed the history of his St. Andrews and of golf at TOC so deeply that the past was as real and meaningful to him as the present.
It reminds me of my grandfather, who late in life and very ill, still managed to plant and tend a large and healthy vegetable garden. When I complimented him on it, he said: "In the spring, when I knew I wasn't feeling well, I said to God, 'if you want a good garden, you're going to have to do even more of the work than you usually do, because I can't help you very much this year'. It's God's garden, not mine. A thousand men have lived here before me, and a thousand will live here after me. I'm just taking care of His garden for a little while".
I don't think it was literally true about the thousands who'd lived there before (it might've been)...but it was True nonetheless, especially for my grandfather. The gardener (and golf course architect ?) as steward of the land.
Wonderful to imagine Old Tom saying it, and Tillinghast hearing it, the earnest disciple at the feet of the master, learning not only his craft but the ethos of his craft.
Peter