Jason
I did not know you were a member of Engineers. Engineers and Seawane...you are becoming the Typhoon Annie of restorations.
ATTENTION: Any club in the greater NY AREA with a classic golf course - in need of restoration - may want to stay clear of Blasbe.
I believe it's Typhoid Mary, gez if you're going to insult me at least get it right.
I have always considered Seawane to be a sympathic renovation and stated so many time on this Board. If I were the one making the ultimate decisions there it would have been different and I would have rather seen more of a Restoration Attempt. That being said, however, SW is a far better golf course today than it was 5 years ago.
One interesting thing about Seawane (and what an old aerial that I have from 1940 illustrates) is that what made it unique aesthetically were the bordering sand dunes throughout the course, dunes that were not on club property. So one would have open vistas on most of the course of sweeping dunes and Reynolds Channel (the Bay).
In the 50s 60s and 70s, however, the housing in Hewlett Harbor devoured the bordering property and alas the dunes and Bay were gone. It was after the '65 World's Fair that 3000 trees were planted in runway fashion down most fairways.
The renovation project removed all of those trees and restored the dunes look of the course with internal mounding. Mounding was a prominant original feature that Emmet used both greenside and inbetween fairways.
While the current mounding is far more pronounced it also gives Seawane a dramatic look like it once had, a look that it could never recapture through a Pure Restoration because the bordering landscape changed so drastically.
One thing that Seawane did that was more restoration than renovation was the bunker work. While the look of the bunkers changed a bit and currently have more tounges and it a couple of places what were a series of 5 to 10 bunkers became large waste bunker areas, the bunker locations and severity appear to have remained very much the same.
The most dramatic addition of bunkering is the large and sprawling pot bunkering complex short and right of the par 5 9th green.
While it is clear that significant artistic license was taken at Seawane it was "restored" to a meandering links golf course. And while a couple of prominent bunkers that were removed over time were not restored (most noticably the bunker short of 2 green) those were mostly maintanence driven decisions due to the high water table and the fact that the property only drains at low tide. Thus, those bunkers that were always holding water were removed and/or not restored.
Tom, I very much doubt that Dr. Bill Quirin would have done a piece in the Met Golfer entitled "A Links Once More" if he was taken by the renovation work and the current golf course.
While it was never a Restoration Attempt the work done has yielded a far better golf course (notably the routing and green surfaces were never touched except to reclaim green size in several places) and a prime example of how modern day considerations and artistic license can still yield a solid product even if it's not a museum piece for Emmetphiles to come and worship.