Mike Cirba,
As you have been for years, you keep making these laughable claims of complete victory and parting speeches and grand exits, but you never seem to make it out the door. No one is keeping you here. If you think you are the victor than by all means go, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Thanks for your response. You made a few good points in there that I hadn't considered. All the same, I think its highly implausible that any earlier routings wouldn't have been noted somehow. A lot would have had to happen to make all those things tie together.
I don't get responses like these. It seems like you are saying,
you make some good points but I am going to ignore them and believe what I want to believe anyway. A lot did happen. Barker routed the course, then CBM, then they couldn't make it fit and swapped for more land, then they bought 117 acres but needed three more. (There are your different courses before NGLA.)
But set that all aside. We know that CBM did not approve the final routing his spring trip, and we know that the board didn't vote to acquire the additional three acres until shortly after. No speculation required. Until then, they didn't have a final layout plan, and it is unreasonable to expect them to have presented anything but to the membership. In fact it doesn't even look like Lesley's committee presented anything to the board before then. Shall we conclude that there really weren't "many different layouts" because none of them were presented to the membership and none of the show up in the minutes?
You are exercising a real double standard here, and it is the same double standard you guys have been working with from the beginning. You just assume everything on one side of the argument and require absolute proof on the other. Were there routings by others but not CBM in the minutes, then you'd have point, but there aren't.
And, as to why Hugh wasn't specifically mentioned in any minutes as the designer, I believe its a result mentioning the committee, which in theory all had responsibility, and more to the point (which I think you mentioned once) that in this era, many folks really didn't think of design as we do now. Specifically, so many mentions seem to think of construction as primary, and design as almost just a necessary aspect of getting your course built.
In other words, while we celebrate all the early guys (mostly CBM) who studied architecture and brought some ideas back, at the time of Merion, only a few understood the signifigance of that as we do now, and we don't know that they were writing the minutes and records, or even all the newspaper articles.
There is little doubt in my mind that the other members of Merion were more interested in getting the course built and open so they could play, rather than some architectural nuance like an Alps hole. (not much changes, eh?) And I don't think its unreasonable to conclude that the lesser concern with architecture is reflected in their minutes and recollections.
Will you do me a favor and read back over this, and then ask yourself the questions you asked me. Because I agree with almost all of what you said, and I believe that they answer all your own questions about why CBM was never specifically singled out as the "designer" or "architect."
It cannot be that all you said above only applies to Merion and Hugh Wilson, but does not apply to CBM. It has to apply to both. If it is reasonable to think that they would have never mentioned Hugh Wilson as having routed and planned the course, then it is at least as reasonable to think they never would have mentioned CBM/HJW as having designed it, for all of the reasons you state above.
But, ironically, they do mention CBM and HJW at every stage of the process. He and Whigham are the only ones actually mentioned by name. They are the only ones credited with approving the course. The plan went to the Board as the plan they had chosen and approved. It was obviously important to Lesley and to the Board that Merion had done everything they could to get CBM's input into the design and approval of the design.
Mike asks, why did CBM have to come back down if he had been designing the course for them at NGLA? The question answers itself! He had to come down because he had designed the course for them at NGLA. There is no other reason he would need him to come down. He had to go over it again on the land and sort out all the loose ends and make sure they had done what he suggested! He was approving it just as would an architect check and approve the field work of his crew.
And you are probably correct about these guys. Except for eventually Wilson, these guys on the committee don't seem to have been deep thinkers about design. Hell if you are going to dismiss H.J. Whigham, then you can't possibly believe this committee, except for may Wilson, had anything to do with the design! Francis tells us he only made one contribution and it had little to do with hole concepts but was rather just making things fit. And frankly he seems a bit confused about how thing came about, doesn't he? [If anything casts doubt on the Francis' statement about the swap, it is his apparent confusion about what else was ongoing. But then he doesn't really seem to have been involved in what else was ongoing, whereas he was involved in the swap, so would likely have a better recollection of that.]
That said, Alan Wilson spends some time on it, more than I would have thought, actually, in his letter. But, by this time, they already had a different mind set for the course, having hosted the AM, etc. and finding out that so many thought so highly of their course. I believe the mindset from 1910 may have changed a bit over time.
No doubt it changed. And the course changed. And Hugh Wilson's role changed. And Merion's, especially Alan Wilson's, relationship with CBM changed. And when Alan Wilson was writing about this, he was writing about what Merion had become, not what it was initially.
And I wish you would specifically answer the rest of my questions.