[T_MacWood]

Scott
How have the bunkers at Holston Hills changed over the years?

Mark
I shudder when I hear an architect talking about re-establishing 'design intent'.....what redesign-in-the-name-of-restoration has not given us the story that he was re-establishing the dead architect's design intent? That idea seems to get abused often. We need to come up with a different phrase.

Would you be in favor of taking out the slope coming off the Road bunker?

[wsmorrison]

"Would you be in favor of taking out the slope coming off the Road bunker?"

That bunker has been altered many times, Tom.  To which iteration would you favor a return to?  This is a good example of there not being a right answer but rather subjective opinions.

[TEPaul]

"TE
The panel idea was related to preservation...create a panel to identify historic or landmark designs, not unlike what they do in architecture, which would hopefully bring attention to the original work and help to preserve it."

Tom MacW:

That, of course, is not a bad idea at all.

"Your ideas on how a club should proceed sounds more like renovation than restoration."

My ideas on how a club should proceed is how they want to proceed, and not how you or someone like you want some club you know very little about to proceed.

That is in no way to say that I don't think a classic course with great golf architecture should not do all their research and homework about the entire evolution of their golf course and come to understand it's design intent---certainly originally. That is not to say that they shouldn't be helped by anyone they may ask for help from.

But most every club entering into what may be called a restoration project that I've ever had anything to do with wants their golf course to play as well as it can for their membership. Now who in their right mind would really want to argue with that?

I find one of the real keys to a good restoration these days is to simply make the features look as much like the architect's style on that golf course as possible, particularly if it fits well with maintenance and playability in today's world. Whether that desciption fits in with Tom MacWood's definition of restoration or renovation is probably not much of a concern to anyone.

If I'm understanding you correctly it appears you advocate perserving some great old architecture just as it is or was even if it doesn't play very well for a club and its membership.

I just can't endorse something like that. It just makes no sense to me. I love the great classic old golf architecture but it serves the purpose of the game of golf ultimately and in most cases the game of golf involves the membership of the golf course.

I believe in what I call "the test of time". It's  funny how well it's worked over the years in preserving most of the best. And where it has evolved over the years in some unintended ways even in restoring most of the best.

[T_MacWood]

Wayne
Relating to the theme of your thread I'm in favor of preserving the sand built up slope within the green.

I suspect do to the nature of that bunker - size, steepness, sod construction, etc. - it is neccessary to rebuild it every decade or so, it is a practical measure from what I understand. The original work I would guess was lost about 100 years ago when grass-sod-bunkers were introduced to St.Andrews. From what I understand the grass-sod needs to be replaced periodically....but I'm not sure.

[T_MacWood]

My ideas on how a club should proceed is how they want to proceed, and not how you or someone like you want some club you know very little about to proceed.

I take it then that you had no problem with Fazio's work at Riviera or Inverness or Rees at Quaker Ridge or Equinox?

Your real keys to a good restoration these days: to simply make the features look as much like the architect's style on that golf course as possible, particularly if it fits well with maintenance and playability in today's world....leads to Donald Ross's numerous styles being morphed into a single style and Bethpage's greenside bunkers being Winged Footed in a style that looks more like Rees than Tilly.

[TEPaul]

"Mark
I shudder when I hear an architect talking about re-establishing 'design intent'.....what redesign-in-the-name-of-restoration has not given us the story that he was re-establishing the dead architect's design intent? That idea seems to get abused often. We need to come up with a different phrase."

Tom MacWood:

No we don't. All we or a club needs to do is understand how that phrase can be used intelligently in the project vs when some architect is just bullshitting a club about that and has no real idea how to do that.

It doesn't really matter what the hell anyone calls these projects, understandng and explaining how to restore it properly and in a relevent way today is what it's all about.

One certainly needs and can use various tools though---and photographs are incredibly handy that way.

For instance, it's looking to us that the bunkers of the Cascades have pretty much been restored to just how they used to look in what everyone seems to agree was the best time for that course. With a restoration to this point I don't see how anyone could expect more than that in the way of real restoration.

"Here are the photos, now just copy them as exactly as possible on the ground."

That's the actually "architectural" construction of them. How could one ask for more than that? The next step will be to see in a year or so to see how well the grassing matches those photos when it's had the chance to grow in.

[wsmorrison]

"Wayne
I hope one the first things on your webstie would be that restoration need not be expensive and can be done largely inhouse. That the best restoration is one that includes knocking down intruding trees, expanding fairways and re-establishing lost green surfaces. "

I don't want to start a website but I would contribute to one, especially if it were presented as a way to help clubs consider the big picture, warts and all, of restoration.  What I would like to see is a list of questions they should pose and a list of resources that would enable them to construct an informed decision as to the process they wish to follow.  That would be an interesting project and could be a second discussion forum on this website.  I could understand though if Ran thought it was opening up a hornets nest.

[TEPaul]

"I take it then that you had no problem with Fazio's work at Riviera or Inverness or Rees at Quaker Ridge or Equinox?"

Tom:

That's one of your more obvious ploys in a discussion, and frankly it's not very legitimate or intelligent in a discussion---at least not the way you seem to be doing it. First of all, do you really know how the membership of Riviera, Inverness or Quaker Ridge or Equinox feels about those courses since those projects?

And if you say you do, I sure would like to know how in the hell you could possibly think you do.

The only one I've heard feedback about is Riviera, and it seems pretty clear to me, and to plenty of others the membership (or what's left of it) is not very happy with what's been done to that golf course by Fazio and Co.

[TEPaul]

"Your real keys to a good restoration these days: to simply make the features look as much like the architect's style on that golf course as possible, particularly if it fits well with maintenance and playability in today's world....leads to Donald Ross's numerous styles being morphed into a single style and Bethpage's greenside bunkers being Winged Footed in a style that looks more like Rees than Tilly."

Tom MacWood;

It does absolutely nothing of the kind on the ones I'm familiar with. If you are once again talking about Aronimink when you mention Ross's style being morphed into a single style, I can only tell you once more time you have no idea what you're talking about.

First of all you've never been there so there's no real way you could comprehensively know what you're talking about no matter how often and how long you may try and act on here like you do. Analyzing a restoration project off a single photo in 1929 of green-end bunkering from 425 yards away on one hole is about the most pathetically cursory thing I've ever heard of to form an intelligent opinion.

And furthermore, at Aronimink the bunkers morphed into Ross's own drawings and there's nothing wrong with that whatever your sentiments are for what's probably the work of his foreman.

In the case of Aronimink which is the one I know best of those you're probably referring to---yes the club got what they wanted and most everyone I've spoken with feels it was very successful.

If Tom MacWood out in Ohio who has never even been there disagrees with that then I'm pretty sure no one around here needs to give that a second thought.

So yes, I'd say as most all do that the creation of Ross's bunkers from Ross's drawings by Prichard and Aronimink is a very successful project.

[T_MacWood]

TE
Design intent implies you know what the architect was thinking. Since these architects are all dead unless the late architect wrote down precisely what he had in mind then we are only guessing. Since the man is dead there is no one to say "the guess" is right or wrong, which leads to abuse.

One of the worst cases of re-establishing design intent has to be the planting of trees at the 15th at ANGC...made even worse by the fact that the original architects actually did write down what they were thinking, and pinching the driving zone was not it.

[T_MacWood]

My ideas on how a club should proceed is how they want to proceed, and not how you or someone like you want some club you know very little about to proceed.

Riviera, Inverness, Equinox and Quaker Ridge did not proceed how the club wanted to proceed?

How about Oak Hill or Hollywood or Garden City or Gulph Mills over the years?

Your whatever-floats-your-boat philosphy has led to some unfortunate results.

[T_MacWood]

TE
If you don't think may of today's restoration specialists are guilty of restoring Ross in a single prototyplical style you are not living in reality.

[Scott Witter]

Tom Mac:

I can't personally tell you how the bunkers at Holston Hills have changed such they need to be...oh shit, here I go "restored", but I think John Stiles (a knowledgeable member there) can and perhaps even Tom Doak or Bruce Hepner could.

[TEPaul]

"TE
Design intent implies you know what the architect was thinking. Since these architects are all dead unless the late architect wrote down precisely what he had in mind then we are only guessing. Since the man is dead there is no one to say "the guess" is right or wrong, which leads to abuse."

Of course it does. Unless some architect wrote down specifically what he thought of every detail of a golf course which of course none ever did, of course you're only guessing what he may've said or thought if he were alive and there.

And isn't it interesting that no architect any of us are aware of ever did write down what his specific detailed intent was? Why do you suppose that was?

It's pretty obvious to me why. What works best for the members of a club or the golfers who play a golf course over time is always going to be nothing more than a "best guess" by any architect,or anyone else anyway.

There's no question there's a good deal one can do to understand golf architecture better as well as the various styles of golf architects and most certainly the evolution of any golf course, and all anyone can do is give anything their best guess once they've done their research and their homework on any project.

And in my opinion, there's only one way it can ever be determined if that best guess was right or not---and that's in how the golfers who play the course over time come to feel about it. It's called "the test of time" and there's never going to be any way at all that some guy 500 miles away who's never even seen a golf course can compete with the legitimacy of that.

Every decent architect and anyone who understands the subject knows that.

[Scott Cannon]

"Here are the photos, now just copy them as exactly as possible on the ground."

That's the actually "architectural" construction of them. How could one ask for more than that? The next step will be to see in a year or so to see how well the grassing matches those photos when it's had the chance to grow in.

TE,
I am sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong, but here's a question about trees, or the removal of them. Do you think the architects thought that a particular tree/trees, when it/they grew up, would be a excellent part of the design factor and when it's/they are cut down/back diminish the design?

[TEPaul]

"One of the worst cases of re-establishing design intent has to be the planting of trees at the 15th at ANGC...made even worse by the fact that the original architects actually did write down what they were thinking, and pinching the driving zone was not it."

Tom MacWood:

I sure would agree with that. I doubt it's just the 15th at ANGC either---when it comes to the subject of the strategic design intent of that golf course it appears no one who had the reigns at that course ever understood that trees really weren't part of the strategic design intent of ANGC. Either that or they just didn't care.

[TEPaul]

ScottC:

Of course most all good architects understand and understood that trees grow up and change things on a golf course and that they don't last forever, and when they're gone things change again. Most all of them who wrote articles and books and such mentioned that. But what are you going to do? That's just a reality of the cycle of life, and they certainly understood that too.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Wayne Morrison,

If sand splash affected and altered a green that much you have to ask if the architect properly positioned and constructed the bunker in the first place.

Mark Fine,

I'm not so sure about the "in house" method.
It's sort of like the lawyer who chooses to represent himself.

Again, you have to ask, how did the club allow the process to continue, unabated, resulting in the noticeable alteration.

Architectural intent can be manifested by opening day photos, although, like laws, they don't reveal the committee minutes that resulted in their formulation.

Absent photos, archeological like excavation can reveal a good deal about the original configuration of the bunker.

It's also possible the the spatial relationship between the green and bunker has changed over time as alterations were made to either or both.

The problem I have with the exercise and evaluation is, if you're embarking upon a restoration and you deviate from one aspect of it, who's to say that you can't deviate from other aspects, thus tainting the restoration process and the care of the course in the future.

I tend to favor "pure" restorations because non-pure interpretations are what altered the golf course in the first place.

The moment you accept one deviation you open the door to accept all others, thus disfiguring the golf course and its architectural integrity.

[TEPaul]

"Your whatever-floats-your-boat philosphy has led to some unfortunate results."

Jesus Christ Tom, of course it has. Everyone who's been on this website for over five minutes understands that. And a pretty wide array of golf clubs I'm aware of and personally familiar with are well aware of that too. Are you laboring under some delusion that we have or should have lived in some perfect world. I can't imagine why you'd call my philosophy "whatever floats your boat". I'm pretty sure the restoration projects I've been involved in are every bit as "research" based as anything you've been actively involved in which apparently isn't that much---at least acitively.

I'm not sure mailing some old articles or whatever to some clubs you're not very familiar with could be categorized as being all that actively involved in restoration projects, anyway.

I think most all of us who've been actively involved in these projects understand not just that there have been unfortunate results primarily up until about 15-20 years ago but both how and also why.

That's probably the primary reasons we do restorations of so many of the old classic style golf courses today.

The "whatever floats your boat policy", as you say, is also why we do "Master Plans" which are not only restorative to architecture but also preservative in the future of what's been restored.

[TEPaul]

"TE
If you don't think may of today's restoration specialists are guilty of restoring Ross in a single prototyplical style you are not living in reality."

Tom:

Somehow a guy like you telling me I'm not living in reality is just funny.

I've certainly never said that every Ross restoration was done with bunkering that may've been the way the course was built by Ross. What I have said over and over again is very few seem to agree with you that Aronimink's bunkers should've been done differently in the Prichard project. It wasn't that Ron and the club were oblivious to those mulit-set bunkers in the aerial, it's just that they wanted to be as sure as they could be that the bunkers they were going to do really were Ross and it couldn't have gotten much more certain at the time than his own drawings. Obviously if they had that aerial from 1927 I just happened to find at the Hagley and Wayne went and got about a year ago it may've been different but they didn't have that when they began.  

[TEPaul]

"I tend to favor "pure" restorations because non-pure interpretations are what altered the golf course in the first place."

Patrick:

Would you call adding a tee on #7 NGLA 30-40 yards behind the present tip tee where there never has been a tee, a "pure" restoration? Would you call moving Macdonald's gates and the driveway to put in a tip tee on #18 where one has never been, a "pure" restoration?

"The moment you accept one deviation you open the door to accept all others, thus disfiguring the golf course and its architectural integrity."

I guess by that you mean all deviations but yours, huh?  

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

Not to speak for Tom MacWood, but what I gleened he was trying to say was that all too often, that philosophy of whatever's popular at the time, or whatever a committee had preconceived would determine the outcome of a  purported "restoration"

On this issue I think Tom MacWood and I tend to be in harmony.

Yes, I realize it's far from a perfect world, and I also realize that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but, my point is, that the moment you accept internal interpretations, deviations from the original, you topple the first domino, and in so doing, the golf course becomes open season for interpretation and disfigurement by whomever's in power at the moment, as opposed to having a consistent, monogenetic policy or philosophy when it comes to understanding, restoring and preserving the golf course.

There are too many moving parts in the interpretive process which almost guarantees that things will go wrong when it comes to deviating from the original design integrity.

[Patrick_Mucci]

"I tend to favor "pure" restorations because non-pure interpretations are what altered the golf course in the first place."

Patrick:

Would you call adding a tee on #7 NGLA 30-40 yards behind the present tip tee where there never has been a tee, a "pure" restoration?


That's called architectural elasticity.  Something that architects build "INTO" their designs.[/color]


Would you call moving Macdonald's gates and the driveway to put in a tip tee on #18 where one has never been, a "pure" restoration?

ABSOLUTELY.

Because as you and I both know, niether the gate nor the road were there originally,  they were added subsequently, after the holes had been built and played upon.

Hence, moving the gates slightly north, and moving a small portion of the road slightly north DOESN"T conflict with CBM's original intent., nor does it challenge or alter the integrity of the design.  It's in perfect harmony with CBM's intent.[/color]

"The moment you accept one deviation you open the door to accept all others, thus disfiguring the golf course and its architectural integrity."

Let me TRY to explain it to you again.

The gate and the road were the deviation, not my suggestion to move them slightly north,  which would enhance the hole and allow for elasticity which is currently prevented by the location of those gates.[/color]

P.S.    Wasn't Flynn a huge proponent of elasticity ?[/color]

[TEPaul]

"TEPaul,
Not to speak for Tom MacWood, but what I gleened he was trying to say was that all too often, that philosophy of whatever's popular at the time, or whatever a committee had preconceived would determine the outcome of a  purported "restoration"

On this issue I think Tom MacWood and I tend to be in harmony."

Patrick:

I am not an advocate of a 'whatever is popular at the time' philosophy. Maybe Tom MacWood thinks I am but I know you don't. I'm an advocate of really good research based restoration projects as you know, although he might not.

I have seen some courses in the last few years do projects I wouldn't call restoration and either do they. I'm no advocate of those unless a golf course is just clearly really bad to start with and needs improvement.

I have never actually seen any golf course do what some of you seem to refer to as a "pure" restoration. I have seen numerous courses do restorations or what they call restorations which may not be the absolute best restorations possible in every aspect but in my opinion those projects are almost invariably so much better than the way the golf courses were if they were taking out past redesigning, as basically my golf course was, as well as a lot of negative evolution.

Tom MacWood may think Aronimink made some real mistake in their restoration project but he's never seen that golf course, and their restoration project that was far more than just bunkering, has made that golf course so much better than it had been before the project began. Basically they removed years of ill-conceived "redesign' projects to a good old Ross course. Thank God no one ever redesigned those greens.

I've told Tom MacWood this many times on here before so I don't mind saying it again. I feel he is excellent at just finding really good research material that can be used intelligently in restoration projects. That in and of itself is a talent and it's of value.

But I don't think he's much good at understanding the realities of what has to go on out in the field. He says he's seen some of that but I doubt it. I think in that area he's naive as hell---something of a dreamer/dilletante regarding what really goes on out there or should. He says he doesn't have the time to get into that side of things but for anyone who apparently spends the time he does researching raw research material that's kind of ringing hollow to me at this point.

I don't think he wants to get out there into the "in the field" side of things or really involved with some of these clubs and into the real decision making side of things because if he did he probably feels someone would accuse him for making a mistake and I just don't think he wants to put himself in that position. He probably feels if that happened it would destroy his "purist" reputation or image.  

Anybody who gets involved in these things will inevitably make some mistakes but the point is so much more good comes of these restorations than bad comes of them or even if nothing at all was done to these courses that in so many ways, and in so many of the same ways, have been screwed up over time. And most of the time it isn't even architectural redesign, just sort of negative evolution----over-treeing, shrinking greens, over-irrigation, vegetating-in bunkering, maintenance practices that take out an architect's style and "look" etc.

Restoring golf courses from some of the over-arching redesign of the past, restoring courses from decades of negative evolution, is a good think in my book, and if a mistake or two is made along the way in the opinion of some "purist" like Tom MacWood, the entire restoration phenomenon is still very much worth it in may opinion.

[TEPaul]

"That's called architectural elasticity.  Something that architects build "INTO" their designs."

Patrick:

Sometimes they do but when they don't, the trick is to just not try to force it. If Macdonald had built elasticity into #18 the way you seem to want to apply it then why in the hell do you think the driveway, the wall and the gates are where they are? Don't forget, Macdonald was very much alive and all that had been done for years. If you are going to get into some of the advocacy you seem to want to get into, it really is best not to be hypocritical. No matter how much you may try to tip-toe out of it there is no "planned" elasticity on NGLA's #18 if it requires moving the Macdonald's Gate, the wall and the driveway.

Again, if "elasticity" is just not naturally and easily there the very worst thing anyone can do is to try to force it. The Creek is a good example---it's a relatively short course for many of its members but the natural elasticity basically just isn't there on that golf course and thankfully it seems like they won't try to force it.

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