What If Every Architect Got to Preserve Three Courses?

[T_MacWood]

Jeff
TOC and the NGLA are the only two courses you immediately thought were worth preserving?

Do you regret redesigning any courses in the past? Dornick Hills?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

I didn't say  I wanted to redesign the whole shooting match at other courses, just that those two struck me as the kind of museum pieces we should preserve.  I was thinking of you when I noted others would have more on the list.

I argued for restoring Dornick Hills, but they didn't even have the maps of the very original design handy, so we wouldn't have gotten it anyway.  Besides, they had already had Nugent (and really it was Jim Enghs work) do the front nine, and figured I could best match that style, not the original.  And, it had turned out that the whole place had been blown up (except for routing) in the 50's.  They had no interest at that time.

You just can't look back with regrets. I just wish they had more money at the time so they didn't short change themselves with the direction they did go.

[Forrest Richardson]

Tony — The premise of your (indeed, this entire discussion) post is whether a golf course is a vase...or can even be compared to any other design artifact. While a landscape design can be preserved (to a degree), it is a changing part of the built environment.

A golf course has other, exponential, factors. These include tee options, green cup locations, mowing heights, hazards that may change naturally over time — and the "rule" of a body, committee or owner. Whether it be a democracy or a ruler, a golf course becomes what the governing body says. This was ever so true at St. Andrews where evidence has it that the earliest of changes we know about were calculated and had little to do with the ancient design. And, today, The Links Trust may pay service to the designs of days gone by, but they make and instigate change based on our modern game and what drives interest in the course today. I do not see them planting conifers, so I am inclined to agree with most of what they are doing!

I think the essence is this — A golf course is difficult to explain or to pin down. It is part treasure hunt, part landscape, part design and part happenstance. I believe it is supposed to change and embrace that ideal.

Yes, of course, it would make me very proud to see several of my designs "preserved" in musuem fashion...but in the end, lying on my death bed, I feel that it would soon come to me that there is much fun to be had if things got shaken up — so let them be renovated, redesigned and bettered.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Forrest is right - what would be a more fitting graveside tribute - someone telling my kids they always enjoyed my courses, or a movement to preserve the designs just as they were as a monument to me?  I take the former, knowing that if they change, the game, the land, the Owner or the members changed, and necessitated changes to make them fit their need better.  At least I presumably gave them "good bones" on which to strengthen.

Of course, its much more likely that there will be a move to obliterate all my courses, while for someone like Tom Doak, there will probably be a proposal by some future Golf Club Atlas participant to not only preserve his courses, but also to preserve his remains long after he is dead, sort of like Lenin was over in Russia, for public viewing.  Not sure where that museum exhibit would go, but perhaps on the first tee at Pac Dunes.......

(edited to insert smiley face just to be sure everyone knows I am joking.....or am I?)

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

Well, like my comrade Lenin, I did write a manifesto once and have become considered both a divisive figure and a revolutionary ...

But I don't think of any course as a monument to myself.  I think of them as monuments to golf.  And I think it would be great for a few to be preserved so that everyone would understand what golf has meant to various architects over time.

The fact that "things will change over time" is too convenient a vehicle for changing them willfully.

[Chris_Clouser]

To defend Jeff on Dornick Hills, it has only been rather recent that they have had anything in the form of photos or even a map of the original design.  I think the biggest problem that Dornick had was a lack of willingness to listen to some of the older members, including some of Maxwell's family, at the time they brought in Jeff and Nugent previously.  Many of the original pieces of the puzzle were not even there for Jeff to see.  

Regardless, and this is nothing personal Jeff, I would love to see the whole thing scrapped one day and some restoration effort attempted.  

Also, to be fair with Jeff, I think the nine holes he did renovate may actually be the better nine.  I don't understand why he got as much criticism as he did when the front nine feels so much more of a complete change from what Maxwell had left there.  I've commented on it before so I'll drop the point now.

[Forrest Richardson]

Tom D — Would it be better if they changed unwillfully?