Why are most Ross "restoriations" looking the same now?

[Ross Thomas]

Brian Silva wins "Best Restoration" for Canton CC this year and it looks like yet another club that has let all their bunkering turn into grass-faced, flat bottom, Raynor-shaped bunkers.  

Was Tom MacWood's Ross bunker quiz from a few years ago a fluke, or did all of Ross' bunkers look almost exactly the same?

Is there any chance the Ross Society will be holding an annual event at Canton, given their past love affair with Mr.Silva?

[Mike_Young]

I would hope Mr. silva has explained the Ross Society to Canton CC but then he has more class than that.
Ross courses are what they are and most bunkers do look alike but they work.  
Mike

[Chris Neff]

Hey Ross!
I know what you are talking about the same look on every Ross Reno. I feel like this is the trend of the clubs instead of the designers. I feel like the placement of bunkers has changed and this is very vitale in the Ross Designs. So the clubs are going back to more traditional style. I am Superintendent at Timuquana CC in Jax,FL and Bobby Weed did a great job bringing the bunker game back into play at a Ross Course that had been slightly tweaked through the years by othe rdesigners with the mebers help. Bobby brought the strategy back into the bunker placement and made them very manageable on the agronomic side. The bunkers are almost 10 years old from the last renovation and have never changed their character.  We are looking at a possible renovation in the coming years and the bunkers will be touched and freshened up. I think simplicity has come back a bit in most instances when the club is deciding on renewing the Ross feature.
Chris Neff

[Mike_Young]

Chris,
You have a very good golf course and I like the restoration/reno or whatever they call it.  I think you hit on the key word with simplicity.  But I do think someone like BW had more to do with that than one might think.  More complicated changes seem to come when the so called restoration experts and DRS come on board and generate work that is not needed.    Where an architect such as BW doesn't need to generate unecessary changes and pontificate on the nuances that Ross had not even considered.
The best example of "better thru less" is Holston Hills. But you place and the UF course are excellent redos.
You can tell this stuff aggravayes the hell out of me.
JMO
Mike

[BCrosby]

Concur about Bobby Weed. His Ross restorations are very good.

But aside from BW, too many other Ross restorations look like visitations from the ghost of Seth Raynor.

Bob

[John Gosselin]

Mike, it is very unfortunate that some self proclaimed Ross experts are building what they are selling as Ross bunkers on all Ross courses. The Philadelphia area has a lot of "in the field" architecture and great bunkering wiped out by this trend. IMHO we have lost some great bunkering that was random in shape, size, depth, and look for the mass produced typical so called Ross bunker. It seems that we now have a bunch of bunkers on the Philadelphia landscape that mimic Pinehurst #2 and not what Ross and Mcgovern actually built. Pinehurst #2 bunkers need to stay in Pinehurst and photographs need to be used to verify what was actually built, not drawings that were to be used as guides drawn from an office 1500 miles away.

I am no Ross expert just someone who loves great variety in bunkering and believes each site is unique and so should the bunkering. Should not be systematic.

Did Ross write somewhere that all bunkers should be generally the same shape, size, depth, and no sand flashes? If he did that surly isn't what he built.

[Mike_Young]

Bob,
I think too many "restoration specialist" become confused with which expertise they are selling that week and many do have a Raynor look.  Of course I like Raynor also but not on a Ross.  My main gripe is "less is bess".
Mike
You working today???

[Tom_Doak]

Maybe it's because we have so much good historical information now and every golf architect is so conscientious that we have all just channeled Donald Ross and can build his stuff blindfolded.

Or else, his style has been oversimplified for the benefit of members eager to bite into a restoration project.

[BCrosby]

Mike/Tom -

As you guys seem to be  saying, the thing about good Ross restorations is that they are - almost by defintion - low key. There was little "hey, look at me" stuff in Ross and there shouldn't be "hey, look at me" in restorations of his courses either.

That's why I like what I've seen of Weed. It takes a fair amount of self confidence to make your restoration work as invisible as possible.

Bob

 

[Mike_Young]

It seems that we now have a bunch of bunkers on the Philadelphia landscape that mimic Pinehurst #2 and not what Ross and Mcgovern actually built. Pinehurst #2 bunkers need to stay in Pinehurst and photographs need to be used to verify what was actually built, not drawings that were to be used as guides drawn from an office 1500 miles away.

I am no Ross expert just someone who loves great variety in bunkering and believes each site is unique and so should the bunkering. Should not be systematic.

Did Ross write somewhere that all bunkers should be generally the same shape, size, depth, and no sand flashes? If he did that surly isn't what he built.

John,
I think we see this "restoration stuff" in the same light.
Today if you ask a "Ross" question...someone will find you where he said what he "needed" to say for the particular situation. (I always refer to Brad Klein if I need serious info plus he is Scottish(I think) combs his hair like Donald did.)
 I really don't know what all Ross wrote as to bunkers....
Myself, I think it was more a site specific issue and a contractor/farmer specific issue.  
Over the years Ole Donald has complicated a lot of wet dreams.

[Doug Braunsdorf]

Maybe it's because we have so much good historical information now and every golf architect is so conscientious that we have all just channeled Donald Ross and can build his stuff blindfolded.

Or else, his style has been oversimplified for the benefit of members eager to bite into a restoration project.

  This is interesting.  In a conversation I had with Kyle last night, we talked about this.  However, not coming from a membership background where we had undertaken a Ross restoration, I was hesitant to speak.  

  So then, that the ice is now broken, let me ask this; I have seen several Ross restorations, concentrated mainly in the Northeast.  In these examples, the majority of the courses restored featured the "flat-bottomed, grass-faced" look.  

  What Ross course, would most on here say, was the first to undergo "restoration"?  

  If in fact the course did feature the "grass-faced" appearance, and it was restored to that appearance, then that is fine; it is the decision of the membership.  

  Now, as Tom MacWood proved several months ago, Ross did not have a singular style of bunkering.  

  What my question then is, is was the "grass-faced bunker" look adopted by many of the clubs because it was proven successful on several prominent clubs early on, or did these clubs all share a common bunkering appearance?  

  As much as I don't like to deal in hypotheticals, I am going to guess "no, they had different bunker appearances".  

  However, as we all well know here, we aren't members of these clubs in many cases and our opinions are just that.  

  So let's have at it.  

[Craig Disher]

Doug,
I have copies of Ross's plans for a course around here (NLE) so I looked through them to see if he gave any instructions for bunker construction. He describes the bunkers in 2 ways - "depressing" them a certain distance (between 1 and 4') and "raising" the face between "slightly" and 3'. When the bunker is on a hill, his instructions are to "cut" the bunker into the side of the hill, not "depress" it. The distance between the floor of the bunker and the top of the face, raised or not, is nearly always between 4'6" and 5', just enough for a golfer to see over the top. Here's an example:

"No. 1 bunker - depress 2'
                     raise the face 3'"

or

"No. 6 pot bunker 4' deep face partly formed by grading of green"


There is no mention of flashing sand up on the face and I take his use of the word "depress" to imply that the floor of the bunker is sand and the surrounding slope and face are grass. These descriptions reminded me of Prichard's work at Aronomink. There is so little detail in these instructions that Ross's crew here - I don't know who did the work - must have had a clear idea of how he wanted the bunkers finished.

[Ian Andrew]

Craig,

I appreciate your post, I think some people are not familiar with what is on a construction drawing from that era.

Your opinion - would you say photos from the first year or two should take precedence over these drawings, or are these drawings important insights into what should be built?

This question looms often when the photos, aerials or other information does not match the working drawings.

Ian

[Patrick_Mucci_Jr]

Brian Silva wins "Best Restoration" for Canton CC this year and it looks like yet another club that has let all their bunkering turn into grass-faced, flat bottom, Raynor-shaped bunkers.  

Ross Thomas,

What does a Raynor-shaped bunker look like ?
What's it's general form.

Did Raynor only design grass-faced, flat bottom bunkers ?[/color]

Was Tom MacWood's Ross bunker quiz from a few years ago a fluke, or did all of Ross' bunkers look almost exactly the same?

Do you mean, did the pictures all look the same ?
Or, do you mean that all of Ross's bunkers look almost exactly the same ?[/color]

Is there any chance the Ross Society will be holding an annual event at Canton, given their past love affair with Mr.Silva?

Whom, at the Ross Society has had a love affair with Brian Silva ?

What has the Ross Society's perspective on Ron Prichard been ?[/color]

[Brent Hutto]

I have copies of Ross's plans for a course around here (NLE) so I looked through them to see if he gave any instructions for bunker construction. He describes the bunkers in 2 ways - "depressing" them a certain distance (between 1 and 4') and "raising" the face between "slightly" and 3'. When the bunker is on a hill, his instructions are to "cut" the bunker into the side of the hill, not "depress" it.

Craig,

I've come across Ross sketches for three courses recently: Holston Hills, Granville GC, Camden CC and on at least two out of the three he has cross-sections for multiple "types" of bunkers to be used on the course. I believe it was at Holston that there were four different cross-sections specified (or maybe it was Granville). Maybe John Stiles can help my recall w.r.t. the sketches on the clubhouse walls at Holston Hills.

I'm looking at my copy of Golf Has Never Failed Me which has separate chapters on "Scooped-Out Pits", "Sunken Pits with Raised Faces", "Pot Bunkers", "Mound and Pot Combinations" and "Diagonal Bunkers". The first two of these contain cross-sectional sketches of the kind I recall seeing at the courses I mentioned.

More to the point, the very first photograph shown in "Scooped-Out Pits" shows a (modestly) flashed-sand faced bunker captioned:

To make it visible from the tee, the sand was swept to the top of the pit on thsi fairway bunker at the eighteenth at Oakland Hills. But note the ribbon of turf on the greenside pit between the sand and the top edge.

As the caption indicates, the sand sweeps a foot or so up the greenside face of the bunker (whose bottom is not quite flat) but there is still a noticable lip of turf atop the flashed sand.

A later photo in that chapter shows something more like the now-cliched bunkering style of the Ross "restorations" being discussed here. Its caption reads:

A ribbon of turf can stabilize the steep face of a scooped-out pit, as here at the eleventh at Beverly Country Club in Chicago.

where sure enough there is a wide grass face to the bunker with the sand only slightly rising from the floor of the bunker. It might be interesting for someone from Beverly to compare that photo to that bunker as it exists on their current version of the eleventh hole.

[EDIT]Here's an old picture of the twelfth at Beverly, part of this site's My Home Course essay on the club. The bunkering here is precisely the same as the photo of the eleventh in Ross's book.


He says that the "Scooped-Out Pit" type bunker is suitable for undulating ground. One alternative type is described in "Sunken Pits with Raised Faces" and he says that is the preferred option for flat ground and/or clay soil with questionable drainage. The couple of photos given in that chapter look most like what I've come to associate with the current generic "Ross style" of bunkering. The bottom of the bunker is nearly flat, the built-up front lip is perhaps 18" or a bit more in height and the sand stays completely on the flattish bottom.

[Tom_Doak]

Doug Braunsdorf:

One of the things I noticed years ago in my travels was that, in the days before out-of-town consulting architects, the bunkering in any city tended to evolve over time toward the look of what was accepted as the "best" course in town.

In Chicago, for example, no matter whether the course was built by Ross or Alison or anyone except Seth Raynor, over time the bunkers had been edged higher and higher in imitation of Medinah No. 3.  In Philadelphia, Merion was the model; in Westchester County, Winged Foot; in Melbourne, Royal Melbourne.

Now you could make the case that in these towns a certain soil condition predominates, so all the bunkers gravitated toward a style appropriate for those conditions.  But I think it's also likely that superintendents and green chairmen were simply imitating what was considered most successful locally.

In this way, Ross's bunkers all evolved away from their original multiple personalities to a single style per course, but perhaps different from one course to the next.  But, without looking at early photos of the course in question, it's very difficult for any architect to tell which of those styles were original to the course.

Brent H.:

Don't forget that GOLF HAS NEVER FAILED ME was edited and captioned by Ron Whitten, not Donald Ross himself.

[Brad Klein]

It's not Canton CC, it's Brookside CC in Canton, Ohio, where Silva reworked the bunkers and undid some very bad RTJ-Rulevich work.

[TEPaul]

In post #7 Tom Doak makes some interesting points even if he's probably being a bit sardonic.

There have been and are a number of Ross clubs who've attempted to restore to their original "Ross" state to a large extent, perhaps the most complicated aspect being their bunkering.

The perception of "Ross" bunkering also seems to be somewhat historically misunderstood. On the one hand a Ross course such as Aroninmink has Ross's original bunker drawings and they also had a certain amount of aerials of the early course during their project. There's little question the Ross bunker drawings and the bunkers in the early aerials do not match.

What's a club to do if that happens? And why did that happen?

It probably has a lot to do with a few things.

1. For some reason the general perception of the look of Ross bunkering is the mostly grassed down face look, even if early photos show a number of differing looks on Ross bunkering, and other earth, grass and sand hazard features.

2. Ross wrote only a single book about his ideas on architecture and it explains a rather wide range of bunker and earth, grass and sand hazard features in various styles and looks and arrangements and for various purposes.  The book, however, was written by Ross before 1914 and found its way into a drawer and was not seen again or published until the mid 1990s. Consequently, although the commnentary particularly the captions under the photograrphs may appear to most who read it to be Ross, it's really the book's editor Ron Whitten's commentary.

3. Eventually Donald Ross became perhaps the most prolific golf architect of all time. This fact alone will inherently create situations where work on some of the course's attributed to him was not done by him, at least some of the "details" such as the look of the bunkering. When a Ross course in the process of restoring has both Ross's own drawings (generally transformed from field sketches by Ross to the more formal drawings by Walter Irving Johnston) and evidence that the course may not have been build that way what should they do? When they have real Ross drawings in their hand they tend to go with that.

4. Some of the restoration architects I know have joked that most all Ross bunkers were basically drawn in very similar and consistent ways----eg most all his bunkers were texted on the hole drawings to be about 3’ 6” deep. Another reason for the grassed down look is on most all his bunker drawings if they have the detail, and in the sort of lexicon of the architect that drew, the “hash lines” almost always indicate the extent of grassing down and “dots” always indicate sand. Occasionally, the “hash lines” and the “dots” are separated by vertical lines that indicate where the grass and sand meet.

I agree with Tom Doak above that maintenance practices almost always are responsible for bunkering being increasingly edged up higher and higher in the faces. On the other end of the spectrum most all bunkers lose sand space on the incoming side as it slowly grows in, sometimes big-time.

[T_MacWood]

The way I look at Ross: of all the golf architects of that era, did any golf architect have a more experienced, loyal, long-standing group of assistants? I don't think so.

If a contemporary golf architect/restoration specialist/golf architectural historian tells you he can study a Ross plan and better understand what Ross wanted (in those drawings) than what his associates produced, I believe you ought to look elsewhere.

Try to find as many old photos as you can if you are interested in learning what Ross (and his associates) were trying to do.

[Brad Klein]

Mike Young, I was going to try to contribute to this thread, but got so distracted by your comments about my heritage that I need to clarify.

In fact, both Ross and I are indeed Scottish. The fact that he headed west to lose it and I headed east to claim it is secondary. However, I need to point out that he did get Bar Mitvahed long before I did. Maybe that accounts for the differences in hair styling.

[Mike Hendren]

Try to find as many old photos as you can if you are interested in learning what Ross (and his associates) were trying to do.

Like these, which appear to show variation in style at Memphis CC?

[T_MacWood]

I might try to find photos a little closer to the date Ross was involved...what year were those polaroids taken?

What year did Ross redesign Memphis?

[TEPaul]

I like Ross a lot, I belong to a Ross course, but this bunker discussion and bunker restoration discussion regarding Ross courses can sometimes get a bit hard to take.

Ross, apparently had a number of differing approaches to how various of his courses went through construction particularly regarding bunkering. My own is an interesting and probably representative case.

First of all Ross let on as soon aa he got the contract that my course would be undoubtedly the best in Philadelphia and probably one of the best "inland" courses in the country.

Then he recommended we steal who he considered the best superintendent in this town then and hire him obviously to oversee construction and grow-in. I don't believe we did that and the foreman or just general overseer of the construction process appeared to be one of our founding members who spent about 3-4 years on the project.

Then about ten years later we have a relatively comprehensive hole by hole master plan from Ross himself where he made some pretty interesting comments about the bunkers, particularly the grassing of them and in them and he even added a few.

From the early photos I've see which aren't very clear what we had in the way of a bunker look, nevertheless the bunkers looked pretty generic and frankly bland.

A few years ago Gil Hanse came in did a restoration plan and the committee and Gil decided to redo the bunkers to be grassed down quite a bit which was a real departure from our old fairly bland flashed up style (the flashed up style we had may've been as much the result of maintenance practices over the years (constantly edging up the faces) as anything else.

There have been some complaints from our members that the new bunkers have grass surrounds (grass faces) that won't release the ball back down the face to the sand floor the way our old ones did, but other than that most everyone thinks our new bunkers look a whole lot more natural than what we used to have. Of course it seems some will complain that what Gil and GMGC did with its bunkers is just another example of this new generic grassed down Ross look that all restorations seem to be doing. Some of that of course comes from people who've never even been there.  

I guess what I'm trying to get around to saying here is see those greenside bunkers in that last photo of Memphis above? I wouldn't care if Hatch or McGovern or even Donald Ross himself did those greenside bunkers personally---in my opinion those bunkers are bland, they're not attractive, there about as far from interesting as bunkering can get and they should be made better either architecturally or grassing-wise.

I don't care if Ross himself did them they are not good, and if someone on here is claiming they are just because Ross did them or one of his regional foremen did them in what's being advertised on here by a guy like Tom MacWood above as a well-knit and sophisticated company I'd say that someone or Tom MacWood is nuts and their comments should be disregarded.

When it comes to architecture, to bunkers or whatever, you gotta call a spade a spade. They are what they are no matter who was responsible for them, Donald Ross or some laborer.

[Mike Hendren]

Tom,

I've been told those photographs were taken in 1940.  Brad Klein and the club date Ross' design at 1910, surprisingly early.  With the exception of Knoxville's Cherokee CC, most of his work in the state was in the 1920's as one might suspect.  

Mike

[T_MacWood]

Mike
I agree, 1910 sounds early for Ross. A while back I did some digging on Memphis, and I recall Ross's work being 1917 and Bendelow in 1910. From all acounts the golf course was very good.

How does it stack up today in Memphis or Tennessee?