As a working journalist I see this in a couple of ways:
1) I'm not sure of the premise for Tom writing and posting this in the first place. I initially thought this was an April Fools joke, but then Sean mentioned it was posted in May 2003. I'm confused at the point of writing the piece in the first place. Was it to demonstrate a bunch of people on a posting board could be taken by a deception? I understand there's research in making the piece plausible -- and clearly that was well done because some who should have known better took it to be a real story from 1939. But what was the motivation? And why let it linger so long -- and I don't buy this "some courses were being restored because of it," line that's being used to rationalize this. That seems over the top to me.
2) I don't understand, frankly, how Tom can be bothered by people "taking" his work without attribution, since he didn't say it was his work in the first place. If I were reading this today without knowledge of this debate, I'd assume by the byline that he'd written the intro and the article was, as he suggests, a replication of the magazine's work from 1939. So when Jeff Newman and Lorne Rubenstein reprint the list, they aren't taking some supposed analysis from Macwood and plagiarizing it; instead they are simply taking what they thought was a historical document and referencing it without saying who "found" it. I don't frankly see anything wrong with the approach -- for me the bigger concern was they didn't apparently try to verify the original article. I assume they had some sense of who Tom Macwood was, and that he had an outstanding reputation as a researcher and left it at that.
Interestingly, I'm in the midst of doing some historical work for a golf organization. In my research I used Jim Barclay's history of golf in Canada. Jim is an excellent historian, and in his book he references an autobiography of George Cumming, a central figure to the development of golf in Canada. The problem is I can't locate the autobiography in question, and Jim, now in his mid-80s and now 20 years past writing the work in question, can't recall where he saw the Cumming book either. Since I can't locate it I'm not referencing it. Better safe than sorry.
With all due respect to Ran, who I've very much enjoyed meeting over dinner a few years back, those referencing this 1939 article without mentioning Macwood is not the same as stealing Ran’s commentary and pictures on County Down. I actually don’t understand this sort of theft – they could simply quote from Ran’s writing, link back to his piece and not steal the photos – or ask to have access to them. Either way, this is plagiarism, pure and simple. In the case of Macwood, those who referenced the article in question weren’t stealing from Tom – they were simply referencing the original article. If they were stealing it by reprinting the list, than Macwood would have been the first such thief.
Does this discredit Ran or GCA? I’m not sure. I never trusted most of what is written on the discussion board, and have only occasionally waded into the “in my opinion” section because it is just that – opinion. I think MacWood’s research is always going to be questioned and held to a tougher standard now – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, he’ll probably never be a trusted golf historian from this point on, which is unfortunate, because my understanding is that he’s tenacious and smart and he’s discovered plenty in his research.
His folly, to reference his fictional 1939 work, is to not have owned up to this a day or two after he published it. If he had, it would still have had value as a research work and many would have still treated it seriously as a discussion piece. Now it is entirely discredited, regardless of the work that went into it, and MacWood's reputation has taken a significant hit as well.