Mike Sweeney:
Your last question is a very good one. I've been asking him the same question in various ways for a long time now. He mostly claims he doesn't understand the question or just disregards it. To some golf clubs the idea of access doesn't just come in one form----eg somebody trying to play the course. Demanding access of a club's private records is a form of access demand that is far worse than that by a factor of maybe a 1000. It's worse for this site and for a club's members and friends etc.
Wayne tried to explain that with little to no satisfaction on here on a thread he started before he left. I've tried to explain it on here. For some reason some don't seem to understand that at all; certainly David Moriarty doesn't.
It seems like what has happened here is a guy who admitted he didn't understand the history of Merion very well in the first place, writes some far-fetched idea about the architectural history of the club that relied on very little source material from the club, puts it on here in the "In My Opinion" section, has his essay critiqued and criticized by others who've known a lot more about the history of the club for years and then he demands access to material he was not able to get in the first place from Merion BECAUSE his essay got criticized on here by others who know more about it than he did or apparently even could.
That's a pretty novel approach to trying to gain access to material he did not have when he wrote his essay but certainly should have had if he even intended to write an accurate account of Merion's history. I guess one might call that the old back door approach!
We've given him a lot of good information he never had before but he only seems to disregard it, claim it can't be right and refuses to take our word for anything we say that disagrees with the inaccurate premises and conclusions in his essay.
It's a pretty novel approach for sure and it sure isn't lost on us or on Merion. Frankly, I think he's a pretty clever guy and he understands all this and has for a long time; and the only reason he's carried on as he has and continues to is because he just can't admit on here how he was wrong with his essay. I guess he really does think this whole thing is just about his reputation or something like that.
Then he even claims I've put Merion in a horrible position for saying what I have on here about what my opinions are on what some of the material I have from Merion says. Since he doesn't know anyone at Merion I wonder how he knows that. If I put something on here Merion or MCC is unhappy with I'm the one who will hear from them about it, not Moriarty. I've probably known a couple hundred people at those clubs for the last thirty years including those who have run them, so if I put something on here they think puts them in a horrible position, I'm the one who runs the personal and reputation risk with them, not him. He doesn't have a thing at risk here personally and that's probably been most of the problem with these kinds of threads like the Merion ones with the way he's going about them.
But if you have any additional interest or questions about this Francis land swap idea or the timeline of it, MikeS, just fire away; I don't think we need David Moriarty's participation any longer to have a productive discussion on it and its details, unless your only interest with it is defending, despite everything else to the contrary, the inaccuracies in his essay.