"Had a long talk last night with Tom Paul on this."
That's true. Frankly, there is no kind of talk anyone can have with me other than a long talk. And that's the primary reason all my posts are so short.
Good post, Brad.
"But when the practice extends to redoing classic courses the doctrine gets more troubling because then it starts rewriting and effacing history and tradition And also that there must be something in his message about improving, smoothing out and framing everything into a pretty picture that has an appeal to many folks these days. In whuch case, Fazio is a lot smarter than he's given credit for. Why blame him for running a successful business. It's a matter of the taste and judgment that people have that seems to be the real issue."
Brad's point there is of course a good one.
However, what I cannot understand is the total difference between what Tom Fazio sometimes says and what he does. This example below makes that pretty clear and ironically both Brad Klein and I were there.
About ten years ago I got the idea that GAP should put on a restoration forum around here but the board didn't want to do it. But later, maybe six or so years ago somebody else on the board picked up on it and got Fazio to agree to speak at what was called "A Restoration Forum".
At that point I convince the board to get another speak who could act as something of a counterpoint to Fazio. I tried to get Shackelford but he wouldn't do it. So I got Brad. The other participant on the agenda was long time Merion Green Chairman Wilson Greenwood. The forum even had a professional moderator and it was very well attended as the day was GAP's annual "Pro/president/golf and green chairman" meeting.
Fazio spoke first and sort of stunned the meeting by saying that he and his uncle George had agreed twenty five years ago to never do another restoration since there was no money in it. Clearly this implied that Tom Fazio apparently felt he had never done another restoration. Next he said something else pretty remarkable. He said he felt their apparent restoration of Oak Hill had been a real disaster and that he was sorry he'd done it.
Of course most of us were wondering if Tom Fazio felt he hadn't done a restoration in twenty five years why was he bothering to speak at a forum that was about restoration? And since he was working on Merion at that time what was it he was doing there, since that project was promoted as a "restoration" with the catchy label "Back to the Future"?
This was all odd enough to me that perhaps I missed the gist of what he said next which was he was trying to improve these old courses and that he felt any of those old guys, had they been alive today, would be doing the same thing.
Next, Bill Greenwood spoke about how Merion was in the final stages of an approximately twelve year restoration project.
Brad Klein, spoke last and that was the first time I heard him deliver that line which I think he's become somewhat famous for.
The moderator asked Brad when he first got interested in golf course architecture and what he remembered about his first impressions about it.
Brad said:
"My first impression was that even rich people can be real idiots too."
WELL---there were about two hundred pretty rich people in that room and for about five seconds there was total silence and I was thinking "OH SHIT" and then everyone started to roar with laughter.
It was a pretty odd forum but perhaps I have not realized until now that what Fazio said that day is exactly the way he feels about these old classic courses and the old classic architects who built them.
Two hundred people heard him too and so Brad is probably right----the responsibility for these courses and their restoration or preservation rests with those people who run and manage those golf courses and not with Tom Fazio.