First - Old White is being worked over by an Virginia based architect - hopefully it will be a true restoration for here is an opportunity to really do one without consideration for modern play since it is resort oriented ..............
There should be no reason for ANYONE TO PUT THEIR FOOTPRINT ON THIS COURSE - (those capitals were not a typo)
Let me see if I can clear this up - it is confusing.
1. My book(s) only deals with early architecture or the original intent of Macdonald/Raynor/Banks and hardly will ever go into revisions unless it is really important.
example: Sleepy Hollow has been altered so many times it would not make sense for my purpose to go into all the renovations ....... unless you were doing a club or some other specific documentation of their course.
I'll be dealing with nearly 100 courses so imagine if I were to drag all these modifications into each story - where would you stop? so I decided "original intent" was where I would go.
2. Old White: 4th course built by the Macdonald/Raynor team after NGLA.
My impression when I first saw it was yikes, what happened here?" OK, a resort course, but it looked like it was flattened by a huge steamroller. Macdonald talked about this course a lot and played here a lot - I doubt it was too mundane if he did that - so I can only surmise it was made easier over the years. He was proud of this place.
Bob Conte, their historian and a wonderful guy, does a great job and we've compared and shared info over the years. They have a lot of material, as do I, but there seems to be an area of lost information. This was probably during the war when the gov't took the entire resort over to house "aliens" (gee, imagine that!
).
I would assume that would have been the time when something happened to the undualtions, the greens, the bunkering - it's bad now. They (prisoners) wrecked the buildings during their "vacation!"
The course is sad!
2. The Greenbrier course: The resort had Macdnald/Raynor come back on the pretext of making some improvments on Old White. They did want that but they also wanted them to build another course. They felt that CB and SR would not come back just to do a modification on Old White.
They did both - improved on Old White an built the second course, The Greenbrier (the present JN course) (the JN course was built basically for the upcoming Ryder Cup
3. I found out thru some old articles that they (CB & SR) also expanded the short course to an 18-hole short course - did it over but I think they left one or two holes intact (I have to look at my notes about that).
Bob Conte did not know about this and thought it was the Finlay until it was done over much later.
Ron and Geoffrey did a marvelous job on their books - but it is near impossible to always to have every detail and date correct. Their book(s) should be a general guide - and a damn good one - about what has taken place on the courses they document.
This resort is in a class of its own - fabulous.
I wanted to get involved in the present project but .........
- anyhow, let's hope this new "change" to the course will be authentic. (I'd better stop here)
I'll take questions if you like - this is all based on what I turned up - does not mean it is all correct but certainly is more what was documented before.
By the way their club history by Mr. Conte is terrific and should be included in your library - if they have any still available