Mark (and everyone),
You'll be happy to learn that, at least as of last
December 2012, Tom Hambleton was alive and feeling better than he had been for some time, even getting back into handicapping. This, from Ron Tiller of HDW, in a post at PaceAdvantage:
http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=99810
Tom's email address is given in that post, and apparently he is happy to hear from old friends and acquaintances!
Only Tom can fully elaborate on what his feelings about TPR were or are, though I know that nowadays, at least Dick Schmidt still has stated he felt they were valuable numbers, on the occasions he still goes to the track.
But if Tom was ever disappointed in them, or at least in their incompleteness, he would not be the only one - Howard Sartin stated on several occasions, in videos, in print and in at least one seminar I attended (sorry I cannot remember the specific references right now ...) that TPR was a good introduction for beginners, but that like most popular methods, it could account for reducing the mutuels it did hit and that one needed to delve deeper to find more obscure prices (hence the advanced section at the back of the book).
That's why EPR, LPR (FFR) and CPR (TPR) are only 3/7th of the Primary Factor set which, weighted, constitute BL/BL and which along with segmental deceleration measurements, feeds into
VDC.
It's possible that Doc was after a certain point, and a certain amount of 'bad blood', damning TPR with 'faint praise' - but that's not for me to speculate on further. Many RDSS users certainly use it to good effect, though I hope, not to the exclusion of all the rest of the readouts.
Which includes the Matchup tools and markups. Perhaps there are 2 main 'camps' in the Methodology: the velocity, energy/deceleration based, rankings of line scores (Sartin) and the visual, positional, early pressure and response thereto of Bradshaw's Matchup approach. It is folly (and just plain untrue) to imagine that serious, thoughtful practitioners of BOTH aspects can not
each be winners. I have seen it (both) with my own eyes.
Also, there is a convergence between the two - Sartin's approach being an attempt to numerically quantify the Early versus Late measurements which Bradshaw practiced intuitively (though don't forget who programmed Energy, and Kgen and Thoromation, and was responsible for Aodds ...)
I am thankful for the presence of BOTH aspects within RDSS, and for those who have taught me more about how to apply Bradshaw's matchup, which I do in conjunction with Sartin's numbers.
Hopefully someone can get in touch with Tom Hambleton and find out how he's doing now.
cheers,
Ted