I should tell you all where GMGC is right now. We've created our Master Plan (with Gil Hanse). It's been approved by the membership (that whole process took 2 1/2 years) about a year ago. We've now completed the first phase of a two phase restoration of the course (and it appears to be popular although it has not been "in play" yet).
Implimentation in the next phase and the future of the course architecturally and particularly how the future maintenance practices "meld" into our restoration is the concern now and where education will help.
Wayne et al:
I've gotten pretty good over these last few years at recognizing and countering various arguments. The tree situation is always the first at my type of course and that argument is actually quite easy to counter (with our four step analysis).
The educational value now is as much to get the committees to understand that there really are some very important and necessary distinctions between an old style course, like ours, and some of the newer styles and concepts in architecture (the Modern Age). It's important to keep making that distinction (educationally) into the future or they'll just keep bringing those new style ideas back to the club.
The argument one hears all the time is; "Golf has changed, courses evolve into the future and they (we) must stay current". That's true in many ways but that quickly blurs those necessary and important distinctions I just mentioned if you're not careful.
In some cases I have even had people say to me in whole member forums; "Who cares about Donald Ross and what he thought, that was 80 years ago, this is now?"
That's tricky but I think many of us have gotten pretty good at pointing out the commonsense of much of what Ross and that era thought, conceived of and designed and it only takes pointing that out, in some detail, and what happened to much of it in the ensuing years. Many of us are quite lucky too that so many old style courses were corrupted in almost the exact same ways! A brief description of the last century's remarkable evolution of golf architecture and maintenance concepts from Golden Age through Depression and into the Modern Age and the interesting, consistent and often corrupting effects of that evolution really does quickly get their attention and even understanding, I find!
But the hardest question to answer is; "We like it the way it is, why ask us to change it?" A lady asked me that in a forum in the beginning of it all for us and I said: "Because you'll like it so much more when we restore it!"
I thought that was a great answer! But it turned out to be a disasterous answer and for almost everyone! Why? Because that lady and apparently no one else had any idea exactly what I was talking about.
And so that's where this educational material comes into it. With that they'll understand what we're talking about in better detail and what those necessary distinctions (between other styles and eras) are aboutl.
So, Wayne, the real reason I look for books that are current, like Doak's, GeoffShac's and Brad Klein's is just because they ARE current! If I supplied them first with writing like Colt, Alison, or even Donald Ross's "Golf Has Never Failed Me" they might say to me, because they already have; "That was then this is now..." type remarks and we don't need that.
Perhaps that kind of writing could come later when they read what's current and how well it melds into what was written long ago, DESPITE (or maybe because of) all that has happened in the ensuing decades.