David,
I don't see it that way, and I don't believe you have really made the case that I am not taking him at his word.
There is no case to make. It is right there in black and white.
Findlay credits CBM with laying out many or all the holes at Merion. There is no other reasonable way to read it. The Merionettes' can't change this by pretending it might have referred to a bunch of non-existent Alps holes. [And by the way, I hadn't ever thought of you as a "Merionette."]
Besides, the last thrust of my posts was to simply go to the one document that says who did do the routing, rather than try to interpret many that don't really mention who did what (i.e. Findlay)
Except the one document doesn't say that. Except for one sentence, the one document describes CBM's and HJW's extensive involvement in the planning process. Merion left NGLA with more definite ideas on what they needed to do, but even then they still needed CBM's help. After two days working with CBM on the layout plan, they came back home and rearranged the course and laid out five different plans, then CBM came back and sorted through it all and decided on the final layout plan. How you guys could interpret this as cutting CBM out of the planning is beyond me. Isn't it extremely likely that they were trying to implement what they had gone over at NGLA? If CBM had nothing to do with how they "rearranged the course" upon their return, then why did CBM have to travel back to Merion to reinspect the land and sort through it all again and decide on the final plan? Given that
Merion wanted his opinion about how to fit the holes on the land, is it reasonable to believe that they discussed everything but this at NGLA? This wasn't some sort of academic exercise or test.
They went to CBM for help planning the course.The Merion record is the most direct contemporaneous source, by those most closely involved. For reasons that I cannot recall now, you and TMac delcared a long time ago that taking those members of Merion at their words just couldn't be done, and that there was some magical interpretation that only you caught, and that all involved missed badly.
I would be a lot less negative about your posts if you would stick to your position and kindly refrain from falsely representing my position. I never declared that "taking those members of Merion at their words just couldn't be done" and while I cannot speak for TomM, I doubt he did either. I've been striving to take those who were there at their word this entire time, which is how I figured out what I have figured out. And while it was far from "magical," there have been a number of important interpretations that only I "caught" and most everyone involved had "missed badly."
Also, while you may have total faith in the Merionettes, others don't and for good reason. Their past behavior raises legitimate issues about the reliability, veracity, and completeness of their selective transcription of the parts of the historical record.
I really don't think those involved should have their official record parsed out to way beyond its logical conclusion, nor do I think that not taking Findlay at his exact words is a big misstep. Certainly not as big as your five year witch hunt to not take Merion at its word. And after all, what has this last five years been about? Deciding whose word to take, so why call me out for reasonably believing there are other documents that bear more directly on the subject?
Again you are mistaken for the reasons I described above. This has never been about whose word to take. For me this is about understanding what happened. As I have explained to you, this entails trying to find an explanation which reasonably accounts for all the facts. That is how I figured many things out where others did not. --by taking them at their word, and looking for an explanations fitting
all the facts.
Your solution doesn't fit all the facts, and for that reason you do not "take their word for it." You hold up a single sentence, out of context, and ignore everything else including the rest of the report from which the sentence came! The bulk of the Lesley report (or what we have of it) discussed the important role CBM and HJW played in the planning. Yet you seem to be ignoring all of that and interpreting that one sentence as if it were free of that context.
Hey, they said they did many plans, they went to NGLA to learn, they came back, they did five more plans, and they asked CBM and HJW to come over and make sure they were still on the right track (or best track) by having them approve the plan. The report was in April 1911 and I certainly did not misinterpret what happened afterwards. As I mentioned, the report is just vague enough and without details that you could go and make the argument that it must be reporting on stuff that happened way earlier, but in reality, most committees meet monthly and report on what happened in the last month.
It doesn't say "they did" plans before or after NGLA. It says "after laying out many different courses" they went to NGLA to work with CBM. "On our return we rearranged the course and laid out five different plans." They/We tried many different courses before, and after they/we rearranged
the course, singular. So it seems the five plans must have been variations/options on the course, a course which that had been planning at NGLA.
I am not sure the exact schedule of their meetings, but I am pretty sure we will see an email from Wayne or TePaul telling us what period that meeting most likely covered.
I think you must have misunderstood me. I am not talking about before or after the board meeting. I think you guys are ignoring what happened
before and
after the single sentence upon which your hole argument relies: "On our return, we re-arranged the course and laid out five different plans." You are taking it out of its context.
You cannot just unlink what happened at NGLA from what they did upon their return, and you cannot ignore that CBM and HJW would be returning to Merion in a few weeks to again see again how a course could fit on the land and to sort out the options and decide upon the final plan.
Put yourself into the equation in the following hypothetical.
- You are brought in and "carefully study" land on which a rough routing had already been done. You determine that while it would be a tight fit, and while you couldn't know for sure without a contour map, you you could fit a first class course on the property, provided that you could use an additional piece of land you noticed adjacent to the property. You have at least some ideas of the holes and on how you would use the terrain and its specific features.
- You spend two days with the most novice of design associates and a contour map, explaining to them and showing them the holes you think would work on the property how they should be laid out on the property.
- While you plan to return to the course to make the final determinations later, you send the associates ahead of you to physically mark off the course you had been discussing. They mark off the course as well as five variations to account for unforeseen difficulties, and/or for what had not yet been decided, and/or for when they had their own ideas.[/u].
- You return to the site to look it over and see how fits on the land, and you sort out the various options and alternatives approve a final routing plan.
- This plan was presented to the board as the plan you approved, and the board voted to build the course according to this plan.
At this point, would it be fair to say that you had no input designing the course? How would you describe the extent of your involvement in the design up to this point?- For whatever reason you dropped out of the project, but with no hard feelings, and
your top novice associate went ahead and built the course according to the plan you had chosed and approved.
- The aesthetic stylings (bunker style for example) of the final product were not what you would have done, and not all of the bunkering you had recommended was yet in place (while you had a bunkering scheme for these holes, it was your practice to wait and exactly place fairway bunkers only after seeing play, and this was apparently what they were doing.)
- But otherwise they had tried to build the course depicted on the plan you had chosen and approved, and were planning on adding the rest of the appropriate bunkering later, after witnessing play.
At this point, would it be fair to say that you had no input designing the course? How would you describe the extent of your involvement up to this point?In 99% of cases, the simplest, most direct interpretation of the closest documentation is going to be what happened over some vast coincidences of many people over many years happening to make the same kind of coincidental miswritings about a subject.
I agree that the simplest explanation is usually the best answer. But yours is not the simplest anser. It may seem like it because the story has become so distorted over the years, but it far from the simplest answer. To get your "simple" answer you focus on a single, out of context sentence yet dismiss vast amounts of the historical record as "some vast coincidences of many people over many years happening to make the same kind of coincidental miswritings." This is proof positive that yours in not that simple after all.
Your earlier routing theory depends on far too much of those coincidences to be convincing, at least in my mind, and I am pretty sure, in most minds.
We've talked my early routing theory to death and discussing it further won't get us anywhere. Besides, I may be mistaken but seem to recall you having written that CBM/HJW would have most likely seen the Barker plan, and (whether they saw the Barker plan or not) would have most likely had some ideas on how and where things would fit after that first trip, so I don't think you and I are all that far apart on that issue. Whether we are or not, lets set that aside and focus on the Spring.
It made me think of the Findlay article. As you probably most correctly mention, he was slipping a nice little plug for a business associate in the articles, disguised as news. On other threads, we wonder why gossip columnists are reporting on golf, etc. Not sure it has any correlation, but the fact that he mentioned that there were some questions about how accurately news reports of the day were struck my eye in the context of these discussions.
One thing I find compelling about the Findlay article is that
his source of information on Merion's golf course was Hugh Wilson himself.