Tom,
I am sorry for getting testy. Do you, or did you, travel for a living? If you did or do, you know that spending five days a week on the road for five weeks straight will drive you a little crazy.
My interest in this web site is to learn. I do not feel obligated to "defend" my work, but discussion about what we are doing, or have done, can help me learn. My point to you is that you should not go on the attack. Ask questions instead of making statements without complete knowledge. Develop an ideology that is consistent, and executable (how - not just what). Question statements a golf architect makes, but comments such as "would you suggest Tripp rebuild the greens at Melbourne" might be taken wrong. I have learned a great deal about Engineers from this web site and it is showing in the work we are doing.
Here is what we know about Strong (relative to his architecture): 1. He was a player; 2. He tended to design courses with championship golf in mind (at least at Engineers, Inwood, Canterbury); 3. He used bold countours in his greens (often with the emphasis on countours that allowed a crafty player to "lead" his ball towards pin locations) and often bunkered his greens heavily; 4. His bunkering style was not definitive to the point one could identify a "Strong" style - he built bunkers with grass faces, bunkers with sand faces, he built bunkers with little shape (bascially rectangles) and built irregular shaped bunkers (sometimes with what we call "noses" today), he used what appears to be "turf" type grasses to surround his bunkers and he often set his bunkers in more native looking grasses or instructed that they be unkept. He even used bunch grasses in his bunkers. The one thing we do notice is that there was not pattern as to where he used a certain style - although you could suggest that turf faces were more prevelant facing greens, the fairway bunkers tended to be more unkept and he tended to use more regular shapes than not. He did seem to use a prominent feature (wildly unkept mound) in the middle of bunkers on #1 and #2.
Relative to what we know about Strong, here is what we are doing at Engineers: 1. He was a player - we are taking from this that Strong would want any work done to still present strategic interest; 2. He tended to design championship golf courses - we are taking from this that the course should be a challenge (with what we are doing this is mostly accomplished with the addition of some length (#2, #5, #15 this year and reintroducing fairway bunkers where they were lost and adding a few (on #4 we are adding fairway bunkering for the "new" 4th hole that is mostly played now over the old 3rd)) - although current membership issues suggest that we also provide options for the average player (we are doing this mostly be expanding fairway, enlarging greens #1 will be a good bit more playable after we expand the green to the front and left), and doing things such as taking out the front bunker on #1 that was not originally there - which makes it impossible for the average player to get to a back left pin) especially in light of the fact that Engineers could never again be long enough to host a modern major (although it could very well serve as a companion course for a US Am - it is every bit as good, much more of a challenge in my mind, as the Pittsburgh Field Club where we played as the second course to Oakmont at the US Am last year). 3. He used bold countours in his greens (often with the emphasis on countours that allowed a crafty player to "lead" his ball towards pin locations) and often bunkered his greens heavily - The only thing we are doing this year is to rebuild the left side of #2 green, back to the way it was before a redesign in 1999. This work will allow players to again use slopes to feed a ball to the right side pins with more control and it recaptures three pins that 1999 work eliminated, pins that were very interesting. It also opens up more shot making when playing to left side pins. We understand from talking to members that our 4-5% slopes in what we are making pinnable are probably a little softer than what was there pre 1999, but the greens are also a good foot faster today than just five years ago. As far as green side bunkers, we are mostly restoring ones that were filled in, with the exception of taking out a "new" bunker on the front left of #1. 4. His bunkering style was not definitive to the point one could identify a "Strong" style - he built bunkers with grass faces, bunkers with sand faces, he built bunkers with little shape (bascially rectangles) and built irregular shaped bunkers (sometimes with what we call "noses" today), he used what appears to be "turf" type grasses to surround his bunkers and he often set his bunkers in more native looking grasses or instructed that they be unkept. He even used bunch grasses in his bunkers. The one thing we do notice is that there was not pattern as to where he used a certain style - although you could suggest that turf faces were more prevelant facing greens, the fairway bunkers tended to be more unkept and he tended to use more regular shapes than not. He did seem to use a prominent feature (wildly unkept mound) in the middle of bunkers on #1 and #2. - Relative to style, we are implementing large fairway bunker complexes on #1 and #2 with native grasses on the faces and in the interior areas of the complex. We are using a combination of regular shaped bunkers and irregular shapes and on both #1 and #2 a prominent, irregular, mound will be a focus in the middle of a large bunker. While Strong would have bunch grasses growing in the bunker, we are doing this more by way of creating very small "islands" in the bunkers that will not be irrigatted or maintained - more sustainable under the soil conditions and expected maintenance standards. Around the greens the style will be predominantly regular in shape with exception of the far left bunker on #1.
Is this restoration? Of the orginal intent, yes. Of what exactly was there, no. How often does it make sense to restore exactly what was there? Tom Doak has had the good fortune to work with a few clubs that would apply where there was a membership that wanted the course to be taken back and wanted it to look like it was 100 years old.
If the definition of restoration is taken to the extreme, than introducing a new strain of grass, irrigation, new mowers, modern fertilizers, and even letting players play with modern equipment is something different having a restored golf course. I personally don't care what the work we are doing is called. I refer to it often as the restoration of the original design intent. That is different from what some have done to our older courses where style and original strategy were not even taken into consideration. We have done three projects in New York this fall - Whippoorwill where we built bunkers in the style of Charles Banks - we are doing work at Fresh Meadow where we are building bunkers in the style that Colt and Allison - and the work at Engineers. Three totally different styles that we are paying respect to in each project.