To me one of the more interesting aspects of Aronomink's restoration is the way Ron Prichard and the club looked at the apparent difference of some of the bunkering schemes between Ross's (Walter Erving Johnson's) very detailed hole drawings and the early aerials of the course apparently "as built".
Why there was a descrepency such a short time after opening was a mystery, so Ron and the club decided to go with Ross's very detailed hole drawings although that might have meant the course was being restored to something it may actually never have been bunker-wise! I thought that was very interesting and if I was part of that restoration effort I certainly would have concurred! But that may have been a first in a restoration project!
I suppose the conclusion on that mystery was that someone like J.B. McGovern may have taken some "in the field" liberties with the construction of some of the bunkering schemes without Ross knowing about it!
Could that have had something to do with Ross's odd statement on opening; "I intended to make this course my masterpiece, but not until today did I realize I built better than I knew"?
Or are people like us making too much of that statement today?
Nevertheless, the restored Ross schemes by Prichard are really good and much more strategic than the way Aronomink played in the past "modern age" decades! Off the tees holes like #2!!, #3, #6!, #10, #12!, #13!, #14, #15 are much more "tee shot" strategic than they were. But like almost all of Ross's courses Aronomink is really a second shot golf course because of the greens and their design interest with approach shots and recovery!
It's true Aronomink has always had the reputation of being a little light on variety, obviously because it was a course designed with far more original length throughout than most of Ross's other courses!
Aronomink also does not really have the "quirk" that many other Ross courses do, particularly his earlier courses and frankly that very well may be because it was one of Ross's latest courses and like many other architects he'd probably evolved in the things he did!
Aronomink was obviously designed as a "championship" course, something that Ross didn't do all that much of, as far as I can see. Certainly there is Pinehurst #2 and a couple of others but that kind of "championship" offering was not that common in Ross's career inventory, it seems.
But many of those "golden age championship" courses are interesting today because they do seem to have the capacity to hold tournaments for the highest caliber players today without being stretched or redesigned much at all.
Basically Aronomink has always been a course that was designed to be a 7,000yd par 70 if need be and that is very interesting when you compare the way golf was played in the late 1920s and the way it's played in 2002!
Frankly, I think an interesting subject would be to list and really analyze all the true "championship designs" from the "Golden Age" and to discuss how those early designers envisioned them being played (strategically) by the top flight players of the 1920s and 1930s and how they might view the way they are played by the top flight players of the 21st century!
Ron Prichard has some very interesting things to say on that subject, I believe! Things like how enduring some of those championship designs really are, on the one hand, but also how many of the advances in agronomy etc (and other things) throughout modern times have actually made many of these courses more challenging (and enduring!?) than they were in the beginning! Things like the multi-optional chipping areas that did not exist back then like they do today and also obviously the increased intensity in the playability of the greens due to increased speeds!
It would make for an interesting discussion indeed! This type of early "championship course" IS enduring but as to all the "whys" is what makes the subject so interesting to discuss!