Certainly in general, we are far more cognizant today to the architectural pedigree of a golf course than in past decades.
We also have far more detailed photographs and construction records than in the drag-pan era.
Gazing into the theoretical future, I believe Superintendents will be far more sensitive to deviations from the original architecture.
Therefore it will not be necessary (as often) to try and reconstruct the past because golf courses will remain as faithful as possible to their original bunker placement, putting surface dimensions and overall visual appearance.
Years ago, when I was a pedantic asshole (I'm less pedantic, yet the asshole remains), I used to lecture endlessly that the Superintendent, Club Historian and Green Committee must view their positions as *CURATORS* first and foremost.
Nobody listened - except those who did - but the people in authority continued to give monkey after monkey a loaded pistol and wonder why cranial entrails always seemed to be dripping from the clubhouse walls.
If a GREAT painting is in need of restoration, then steps must be carefully taken not to deface the line, composition and brush strokes to be faithful to the original artist.
My friend John Harbottle told me once that people like me forget that golf courses are made of grass, dirt and sand - ever evolving, both for good and ill.
Yet, I am certain he is proud of his body of work; if anyone changed his thoughts on the ground after-the-fact, how that grass, dirt and sand was arranged will hold as great a meaning to him as it would to Renoir of his art.
The truth is, golf courses are only as ephemeral as we let them be. We have the tools now to recreate or restore almost exactly as originally built, even years later.
In the coming decades, change on great courses will be more deliberate - and less at the whim of the average dullard who performs years of political fellacio to eventually hold the magic sceptre of power.
Actually, it is kind of amusing if you break it down. A member is willing to endure an endless series of circle-jerk club committees in order to (eventually) rise to a position of authority, for the sole purpose to dictate how the dirt, grass and sand is going to be piled.
Wow, it just occurred to me that I have spent years studying a subject that is completely irrelevant to anybody except a bunch of dorks like me hitting a ball with a stick.
This golf architecture stuff is a form of insanity. I go to New York at least three times a year and will fight traffic on the L I Expwy for three hours to go look (not even play!) at a bunch of grassy dunes, but won't get off my bar stool at Del Fresco's and go 10 blocks to see the United Nations.
My gawd, we actually attach importance to this stuff while tyrants are building nuclear weapons and people are getting their limbs blown off in Iraq!
And then, when we are done discussing grass and dirt, we argue about which group of testosterone-crazed post-adolescents will be more successful pushing a pointy, oddly shaped object over a chalk line on the grass.
OHMYGAWD, I have just hit upon a new concept!
How about if every football field, instead of being two-dimensional, had a Green Chairman who could build mounds and bunkers here and there? Three-dimensional football fields.
Then, "home field advantage" would mean more than having 80 thousand partisan drunks cheering and booing.
Sounds a bit like the Ryder Cup actually . . . . . .
I think I need to go to bed.