I am not offended by your posts at all, I choose to play my golf at Rustic, but I have no affiliation with the course. Also I think RC presents a powerful refutation of modern mainstream golf architecture.
David,
If you read my posts, a cost benefit analysis is EXACTLY what I suggested.
I don't see it. You extensively discuss the potential benefit, but you avoid any reasonable assessment of the cost. Instead you present vague and infinitely expansive costs. Therein lies the problem; if one looks unrealistically at the potential costs, then one can justify almost any expenditure; even an unnecessary million dollar expenditure at a sand based, low profile course, with a significant natural slope.
For example, you count the
unquantifiable damage to [the owners] reputation as a cost. You also treat cancellation of a few events and a potential loss of business.
Frankly, your "cost" analysis appears to be a hobgoblin that might scare timid owners into spending more than they should, sometimes a million dollars more!
Take the comments of your experienced architects who tell you that this supposed drainage problem could have been solved by spending a million dollars on pipes, moving dirt, raising fairways, whatever. I would be very surprised if fixing the flood damage cost the course more than $100,000 including lost revenues. So the Risk (cost) in not spending the money is the potential loss ($100,000) multiplied by the probability of this happening again in the forseeable future: 1/50, 1/70, 1/25? These all seem conservative to me, but they ought to prove the point: It is unreasonable to spend a million dollars trying to make RC flood proof. It just doesnt cost that much to fix the course, even in extraordinary circumstances.
As for the course's reputation and the loss of customers, RC has demonstrated that a good design at a fair price can bounce back from just about anything.
Plus, if you or the unnamed architects made the changes you suggested, RC will very likely worse for the changes. This might dramatically diminish the benefit-- you know, less golfers, damage to reputation, etc.
I dont buy that you are doing the owner a favor placing the costs up front. A million dollars is quite a lot of money to owners with little budgetary wiggle room. It would be much more efficient if you told them to buy applicable insurance, or to set aside a lump sum at start-up to help with these potential costs.
I agree with Geoff that raising the seventh fairway as much four feet is a laughable proposition. The hole would stick out like a sore thumb. Plus, the strategy and playability of the hole would be changed dramaticly. Also, you are drastically underestimating the magnitude of the flood at Rustic. If seven was raised enough to stay above water, then all that water would have been deflected to other parts of the course, most likely doing similar damage.
More importantly, such changes are entirely antithetical to the style of the course.
The classic definition of insanity is to do something over and over, expecting a different result.
Who said anything about expecting a different result? If the course floods again, fix it, clean it up, then and move on.
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With all due respect to you and your extensive experience, your methods as described above have absolutely no place at a course like rustic canyon. You and most modern architects seem to think that messing with nature will often make a course better. In contrast, building a course like Rustic might require the opposite belief-- nature will almost always do a better job creating a compelling golf course, no matter what engineering you can throw at it.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. --Ralph Waldo Emerson