Mike,
My post was addressed to you, and your comments on you old History class. My purpose was to comment on what you wrote, and perhaps to challenge it a bit. We try to talk about the history all the time, but rarely do we talk about the methodology we ought to be using, so I am glad you brought it up.
And if we are serious about actually figuring this stuff out, then above we have a perfect example of just how NOT to conduct and present historical research.
The post in question offers "feeling" and "opinion" rather than analysis, and that "feeling" is based on nothing but a self-proclaimed familiarity with the writings of the time, yet that claim is unsupported. No writings were offered. No examples. No nothing. Come to think of it, no real analysis was offered either. We are simply told what to believe based on his opinion of his expertise.
Worse, the source material that is supposed to be so important is distorted to the point of absurdity. "Difficult" doesn't mean "difficult." "Difficult" means "strategic." And we get baseless conjecture about how Emmet would not consider himself a penal designer but rather strategic. Again no support is offered. But it is not as if Emmet's words are hidden in a vault somewhere. Much of the same article posted by TomM is in Garden City's history book.
Bottom line, Mike, is that it shouldn't be enough to claim a supposed expertise and then expect our "feelings" to be accept as fact, or even taken seriously in a discussion. It has nothing to do with "feelings." It is about figuring out what happened and that takes verifiable facts, and an honest reading of the source material. And the results here bear this out. The notion that "difficulty" equates to "strategy" is not only absurd on its face, Emmet's own words completely contradict it.
To Emmet, difficult meant difficult. Penal. Harder. Golf holes should be made narrower, more hazards should be added, the rough should be deeper and thicker.. According to Emmet, many attributed Garden City's reputation for difficulty to narrow fairways and high rough, but it wasn't narrow enough for Emmet, and the rough wasn't tough enough. He wanted to make the fairways narrower, and the rough deeper, and the hazards more imposing.
"I think it generally conceded among people who have given the subject much thought, both here and abroad, that the subject of all changes and improvements should be to compel greater accuracy and straightness of play."
Are we to believe that compelling "accuracy and straightness of play" is just another way to say that courses should be made wider, more strategic, with more choices? When he wrote that "most courses are far to wide" was he advocating strategic golf?
He advocated straigher and narrower, more side hazards and deeper and wider ones as well. He advocated deeper, thicker rough, so that the golfer could get out of it with a niblick "but only a short distance."
"It seems to me that it would be better to lose a few balls, or even a great many balls, than to utterly spoil one of the natural features that make a good golf course what it is. In my opinion, the Garden City course is fairly ruined every year by the mowing of the rough side hazard, to say nothing of the burning, which is worse."
Would Emmet have described his approach as what we think of as penal? Maybe not, but if not it is because the supposed Penal School were a bunch of wusses compared to Emmet!
Trying to twist his words into any sort of statement on "strategic architecture" would be a complete farce at best, and entirely disingenuous at worst.