Sorry for chipping in late to this discussion, but I've been very busy with restoration work on several courses and even more with my 3 months old son...
My involvement with renovation work at Cruden started with a letter to the greens committee expressing my great worry at some of the things I had read in their latest greens letter. I literally wrote:
"Does your club deep down really want to have a historic Tom Simpson course with all its quirkiness and unfairness? Or does your club want to change the course to something else; for it to become a longer, tougher and fairer championship course such as Carnoustie. That will definitely be possible through a number of dramatic changes, but by doing so you will at the same time destroy the uniqueness of Cruden Bay. Sadly the club, and most of the rest of the golfing world, will probably only come to realise and regret this many years after the fact."
From reading this I think it is quite clear that, unless there are compelling reasons to do so, I am against changing a historic course, and esspecially historic greens.
At Royal Hague (a Dutch Colt links), where I am involved in rebuilding 18 greens, we made painstaking efforts to rebuild the original greens as precisely as possible. The greens that had been modified were built more in a similar style to the existing original greens. Furthermore the greens were only rebuilt because it was agronomically impossible to get the quality of the existing greens up to acceptable quality levels due to the fact that their buildup was wrong (clay).
But back to Cruden. The main issue with 14 en 16 in my view lies in the fact that the turf of the foregreen/approach is not good enough. Both holes need a foregreen/approach that has a high turf quality. Simpson (and also Colt and MacKenzie) were adament that a foregreen should be as good as the green and react similarly.
The problem with the approach before 14 is that the ground is full of thatch and therefore can't be mowed well enough anymore. Therefore the idea is to make the area around the directional post of better turf and more receptive to a bump and run shot. The other issue is that the green bunker on the right is way out, and therefore probably should be moved more inward.
On 16, funny enough according to the members this hole appears to be playing harder than it used to... a very interesting fact given that the game should be easier due to better equipment etc. The hole is no beauty from the tee (it is also rather blind) but requires a very subtle shot to get the ball on the green and keep it on the green (the area to land it is probably 4 m2). The problem here probably is that people are playing the wrong shot (you need to land the ball at least 10 yards short of the green), and also that the soil/turf under the foregreen is too firm and uneven which causes the ball to behave erratic.
Hole 15 was the biggest surprise for me, namely according to old pictures hanging in the clubhouse the hole in the past was NOT BLIND, but rather very visible from the tee. The historic tee was located against the dunes on the right side behind green 14, and was only later relocated to its current position to gain length....
Another surprise was that green 8 is not original anymore, the original green was washed away many years ago in a flash flood.
Focus of my work will be to take a close look at foregreens (see above), tee locations (a lot are built up more than necessary, and there are some interesting new tee postions possible at holes such as 7, 9, 10 and 13), bunker locations (many of the current fairway bunkers have bcome completely out of play, and therefore have no strategic role anymore; goal is to bring fairway bunkers into play for ALL players) and restore green side bunkers.
I am meeting the members this upcoming weekend to discuss matters, so do not want to go in to much into details of proposals, but rest assured I am very concerned in maintaining the history and the character of Cruden Bay (it is no coincedence I am an overseas meber).
I will keep you updated on any progress we make....