Fazio Speaking on Restoration of Merion

[Jim_Kennedy]

Jim Lewis,
I would surmise that the quote of Brad Klein's was in reference to the many cooks fiddling with the wonderful old courses that they play, many of which are classics and private. This fiddling does not originate from a board room in a refrigerator box.

[TEPaul]

Pat:

The program ran overtime so there was only time for a few questions and I wasn't able to ask mine which was:

"Tom, Ed Abrams introduced you as the having more courses on Golf Digest's top 100 list than any other living architect. I'm a real fan of Golf Digest's Top 100 list so I was wondering if you considered that the bunker contractor you've been working with recently on classic courses all over America, MacDonald & Co., is one of the top 100 living bunker contractors working on restoring classic courses today?"

Although I didn't get a chance to ask him on the panel I did run into him during lunch and asked him anyway. As always mentioned he is an extremely nice guy.

He thought about it a while but just gave me his card and told me to call him in a few weeks and he should probably have an answer for me.

So I thanked him and was on my way out when he said:

"Actually, yes, I would consider them one of the top 100 living bunker contractors working on classic courses today but only if they have a guy at any golf club supervising them off a comprehensive "Mission Statement" like that Pat Mucci fellow on that architectural website, Golfclubatlas, that you're on all the time."

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

His response doesn't surprise me  

[Mark_Fine]

Here was my take on the discussion.  First of all, Tom talked for 80% of it.  Would have liked to heard more from Brad but he was quite polite and struggled to get his two cents in as often as I would have liked to see.  

Regarding the definition of "restoration", Tom said the following:
1) Picking a "timeframe" is key.  How far back in time do you go when you elect to restore a golf course?  1930 was choosen as the date for Merion because it was an historic year and so much info./photos were available about the course.
2) The clubs intentions/aspirations are key.
3) The topic will always be controversial no matter what you do.
4) He doesn't believe in restoration!

Brad said:
1) To completely restore a classic course you'd have to take out the irrigation, remove all the trees, change out all the grasses,... it's just not practical.
2) The ground game is a key aspect of classic courses and design intent of the architect must be considered.  
3) The club has to think about the heritage and the identity that it wants and restoration is a great way to achieve that.  

Tom put in his plug for playability and noted that there are a lot of poor golfers out there.  He also said cart paths are his #1 problem as a designer and claimed roughly 1/3 of the 18,000 or so golf courses in the U.S. can't really be played (or wouldn't have been built) with out them.  

Brad got some good points in but I really wish he was given more time to express his views as I know people would have found what he had to say very interesting (I know that just from the discussions we had together before the session started).

The two questions I got to ask were, 1) How many modern architects develop "master plans" for their courses as Colt used to do, and 2) How would Tom feel if some of his courses were "improved" over time?  

Tom said he liked what Colt did and claimed he started doing master plans for his designs about 10 years ago.  Unfortunately no one else on the panel got to comment on this one as time was brief.  On the second question, I sensed some defensiveness on Tom's part but he claimed if someone thought they could improve on what he had designed to go do it (he didn't sound all that sincere, and there wasn't time to follow up on his response).  

Overall, a good session but I would have liked to have seen more interaction with the audience for questions and answers and more time for Brad to speak.
Mark

[Mike_Cirba]

Mark,

Tom Fazio doesn't believe in restoration?  Yet, he accepts jobs pro-bono that have "restoration" as their goal at our most wonderful, classic courses??

What kind of double-speak is that?  Is this 1984, because all of a sudden, language seems essentially meaningless.

Tom,

I'm glad to hear that the bunker surrounds at Merion will evolve over time.  That's great to hear.  Really...I can't wait.  I can almost hear it happening as we speak.  Any minute now and they'll be back.  Yep...just keep watching.  C'mon now, bunkers....you can do it...c'mon..

Sheesh...naive little me...I thought obfuscation and PR spin were the tools of those protecting national secrets in DC.  We're talking about golf course bunkers here.

If they are so GOOD, and if the work done is so wonderful and authentic, than why should the club's leadership be hoping for them to "evolve"?  Why weren't they done right in the first place?!?  

C'mon...we've all seen newly constructed bunkers at any number of course in recent years that look as though they've always been there and are perfect from the get-go.  Do the "white faces" of Merion deserve less?

It makes me wonder why they won't just admit that they didn't come off as planned, bite the bullet, and figure out some way to get it right, if that's even possible at this point. 

[TEPaul]

MikeC:

I realize this Merion bunker subject has been going on for a long, long time, not only on here.

But a very important clarification should be made, particularly after today when Bill Greenwood spoke at length about Merion's long and ongoing restoration and particularly the bunkers and even the "surrounds".

What he said was not obfuscation or PR spin at all! The fact is that a lot of different people have a lot of different opinions about the bunkers, I'm sure, but by no means a majority of people think mistakes were made with them and by no means even near a majority of people feel about them like some of us on here do that they should have been preserved or possibly even that the surrounds, if they were done at all, should have been handworked more than they were.

If there are any issues with the Merion bunker project today it's far more that they are very hard to get in and out of than what they actually look like!

The question of what they look like and some adverse reaction to that was not avoided today either. Ed Abrams, the moderator, asked that very question of some reaction to what they looked like more than once, actually.

Both Tom Fazio and Bill Greenwood acknowledged that they are aware of some negative reaction of some to what they look like but that criticism is always going to be part of architecture and restoration architecture.

The fact is that a majority of Merion's member probably do not feel that mistakes were made. Some might but I really doubt anything remotely close to a majority does.

That doesn't mean you should feel any better than you do about them because of it, but nevertheless, the way the subject was dealt with today is obviously the truth of it.

Of course we could all get into speculating about how the Green committee or Merion's membership would feel today about their bunkers if Coore and Crenshaw had come in there and done them maybe with a lot more handworking.

That's something nobody will be able to know now, because that's not the way it went but even that does not mean that most people think mistakes were made.

So when you say you wonder when they will admit that they didn't come off as planned, I don't think that would be an accurate assessment from Merion's perspective.

[Ran Morrissett]

Was the tree removal on the 16th mentioned? From the one pic I've seen, that was a wonderful occurence and worthy of praise from all corners.

[Mike_Cirba]

Ran,

The tree removal on 16 is wonderful, as well as the tree removal between 11-12, behind 14, and along the 15th green.  

Those are all very positive changes, and I cited those changes here when they happened.

My remark about Merion's bunkering is based largely on aesthetic factors, yes, but also based on a comment on here by a knowledgeable source that the new bunkers were having structural problems.  

Tom,  thanks for sharing the report from the session, as well as letting us know that most of the members of Merion like the new bunkers.  I just have a difficult time accepting them as a "restoration" to anything I've ever seen in historical photos.  That's the spin I'm most concerned about, because it essentially argues that clearly modern, machine-stylized, and constructed bunkers are indicative and representative of some kind of return to the classic age of design.

    

[A_Clay_Man]

TePaul- How did he know that your on this site "all the time"?

[TEPaul]

Mike Cirba:

On your last sentence in your last post, I do hear you. I think that's exactly what's being argued and was yesterday too. It's not really right to say that the club should realize that they made a mistake though! That's just not the way it is--that's just not the way they see it and are failing to admit!

Don't you see what's going on here not just with your impression of Merion, but Riviera and maybe some of the other courses that are undergoing restorations with Fazio? None of these people are attempting to cover up what they secretly think are mistakes or a poor product.

Fazio does not even attempt to act as sympathetic towards classic architecture and what you might think that means, as say Brad Klein does or did yesterday. Fazio is not dissembling or saying one thing when he means another. Fazio appears to mean exactly what he's saying--there is no spin!

Think about what Fazio claims he bases most of his business on, even his restoration projects. Fazio claims and always has that his first priority is to his client and what the client might want! He's never denied that--ever!

Just think about that a minute. Tom Fazio is dedicated to doing what a client might want him to do even in famous classic course restorations. Some of his clients might know a lot, might have done tons of research too, but do they know as much about architecture as Tom Fazio does? How could they possibly?

Tom Fazio has to realize that but he does what they want anyway. That's probably part of why he says that he can't make much of a distinction between "restoration" and "redesign".

Other architects like Hanse, Doak, Prichard, Forse, or Coore and Crenshaw, particularly on restoration projects, have got to figure the client is obviously hiring them to tell them what they know and think which has got to be more about architecture than the client knows!

If the client asks a company like Coore and Crenshaw to do something that they don't think is the correct thing to do architecturally in almost all cases they won't work with that client! It's as simple as that!

But Tom Fazio appears to be able to work with any client--because to him it appears the client comes before even the architecture--that's what he says and that's what he's written anyway.

Tom Fazio said yesterday that the reason he took on restoration architecture way back when was because that's the only business they could get back then. He explained in good length that in 1974 the golf architectural market completely tanked and restoration was the only work they could get!

So you can see where this can go. C&C have got to know that they know more about architecture than probably any client and if they can't get that client to accept their advice and work with their ideas they just aren't going to sign a contract! This is so obvious, because it happens all the time.

But I don't think that's true of Tom Fazio and he doesn't appear to deny it at all. He does deal with some very rich clients sometimes and he prides himself on producing better than anyone that client's vision, whatever that might be architecturally.

But does that allow any of us to understand what Tom Fazio's true values are architecturally? Yes, it does--and that's to give a client what he wants! If that happens to be what some of us think is great architecture than apparently he can do that, and if it's what some of us think is NOT great architecture he can do that too--and he apparently does not mind admitting that at all!

Architects that don't mind giving a client what the client thinks he wants although they know full well that the client can't possibly know what they know is an inherently dangerous combination on classic courses.

Clients that think they know exactly what to do and how to do it and that if they just tell any architect what they want him to do that it's going to automaticlly happen is also dangerous!

But when that happens does it mean that the client or an architect like Tom Fazio thinks a mistake was made in the product? I don't believe it does.

If C&C did Merion's bunkers would it have looked better to you Mike Cirba? Probably. Would it have looked better to the members of Merion and the committee? Probably. Did any of them understand that before the bunkers project began? Probably not. Do they understand that now? Probably not since they can't visualize what C&C's bunkers would look like.

So do they think a mistake was made? I'd doubt it! We should let this subject go completely. Golfclubatlas has said about all they can and now the club and the architect have too--there's just nothing else new or unknown left to say.

[brad_miller]

Tom, thank you very much for the fitting conclusion!!

[Merion Lover]

Mr. Paul
I think you make a great point when you say "Did any of them understand that before the bunkers project began? Probably not. Do they understand that now? Probably not since they can't visualize what C&C's bunkers would look like."
But when they see the bunker work that Jeff Bradley has done at Friar's Head, I'm pretty certain that they will get it!

[SPDB]

I think comparing Merion to Friar's Head is a fairly uninstructive exercise. it is a largely apples to oranges comp.
Friar's Head's bunkers, as I understand it, were scraped from the existing dunes/sandy soil.

[TEPaul]

Merion Lover, if you truly love Merion and its membership than I would strongly urge you to encourage any and all Merion members not to go to Friar's Head!

[Mike_Cirba]

Tom,

Thank you for clearly delineating the differering approaches of Fazio to others as related to restoration work and serving the needs of the clients.  Your description of some architects turning down restoration jobs when the client's dictates conflict with the architect's values and knowledge, versus those who "serve the client's wishes" to a tee, despite possibly knowing better, is the VERY heart of the matter, I believe.

Fine job, pointing out those very real differences.

I think everyone has a much better understanding of the entire process, and I for one am willing to let it go, and wish the club nothing but the greatest success.

[Merion Lover]

Mr. Paul
Good point.  I hadn't thought of it in that light!  So I'll just tell my friends at Merion to stay away altogether!

SPDB
You may think I made an apples to oranges type comparison that's not instructive, but I will respectively have to disagree and just leave it at that!  And since Mr. Paul and I are both going to make sure that nobody from Merion ever sees Friar's Head, we will never know what they might have thought!  

[Patrick_Mucci]

Merion Lover,

Don't listen to Tom Paul !  

Go to Friar's Head, Go to Winged Foot, Go to Pine Valley, Go to Applebrook,, Go to Garden City, Go to NGLA.

There is no set "bunker look" or configuration, that is one of the beauties of golf courses, each is unique from the others.

If Coore & Crenshaw did Merion's bunkers, it would not change the strategy of playing the course one IOTA.
It's still the same course strategically.

TEPaul,

Did Coore & Crenshaw turn down the opportunity to do Merion's bunkers ?

[Eric Pevoto]

Yesterday's panel discussion was very entertaining and enlightening and really kind of a thrill, but there were so many questions left unasked that we could have been there for hours.  

As Tom Paul said, I agree Fazio's values were laid out pretty clearly.  His strengths and it seemed his interests lie in the business side rather than say the artistic (I don't mean just aesthetic) or historic side of things.  Interesting considering some of his earliest jobs with his Uncle George were apparently financially unsuccessful.  He mentioned an early restoration, I don't remember where, that they lost money on.  Downingtown Country Club, where I was the pro until this year (now working at Hanse's new project, French Creek) was another example.  

Tom was a young (21 or so) project manager for his uncle in 1966 when Downingtown was built and was responsible for much of the original design (story for another post).  Apparently the original developer refused to honor the final payment (around $20,000 or so) on the contract.  To this day it burns Fazio that this happened.  Maybe its ridiculous to get into any analysis like this, and I certainly don't mean to start another bash, but doesn't this shed some light into his philosophy today?

A lot of what he said yesterday made me squirm, but I guess one of the more interesting points was Fazio's admission that they made mistakes at Inverness in 1974 in that the renovated holes didn't tie in with the existing design.  He attributed this to being more forward looking and thinking of the future of golf.  He mentioned designing for lower maintenance costs and spectators.  Considering his statements ie. respect for golden age design, I immediately thought of the old cliche about understanding and respecting history in order to avoid future mistakes.  

All in all, it was a great morning with some really funny statements from Brad Klein who graciously allowed Fazio to hawk his new book on Ross  

[TEPaul]

Pat:

You're 100% correct that there're all kinds of bunkers and styles of bunkers and one doesn't necessarily have to be better or worse than another. Bunkering is however a very unique architectural expression, always has been, in many cases even to be considered a bit of an architect's signature in both placement and use and also very much in style and "look"!

No one is talking about using Friar's Head or GCGC or NGLA bunkers at Merion. Merion's bunkers were uniquely Merion's--they were famous and identifiable to Merion although in my opinion there are a number of bunkers and bunkering at other older courses that look remarkably like Merion's used to!

But the fact is to preserve that particular look or to restore it to what it once was at its best was a tough job particularly with the condition that some of them had evolved to. In my opinion, it took a particular technique and a particular understanding to do really well. Merion, just didn't have a lot of latitude in doing that right, in my opinion. GMGC, when we do our bunker restoration does have a certain amount of latitude in how we do it and what they end up looking like!

But Merion's were just so famous that the latitude in a consensus of opinion was much smaller, a far harder project to do both the bunkers and the process with the membership and others.

Did Coore and Crenshaw turn down the opportunity of doing the Merion bunker project? I don't know that. I do know that Merion talked to both of them separately about the bunker project but if they talked about consultation or doing the job I have no idea--it may not have gotten that far. Merion was right to approach them and if they'd offered them the job I feel today as I did then that they should have taken it!

Coore and Crenshaw agreed not to do restorations well before that time though and it might have had to do with anything else; schedules, timing, personalities--who knows?

At that particular time MacDonald and company was on site apparently working with no architect on the project.

Merion has been at this overall restoration/improvement project for a very long time--Bill Greenwood spelled that out very clearly yesterday--it involved many things--first the greens then eventually the bunkers.

Timing factors are apt to change in anything of that duration (this all goes back a long time now) and it may have been the case that when timing issues changed that MacDonald & Co was brought in to work with Hanse/Kittleman. That's not a combination that I can see working together on bunkers well, or at all, simply because they go about it very differently and probably have quite different ideas about the way it should turn out. If Merion realized that I have zero idea.

I can't see Coore and Crenshaw working in combination with MacDonald & Co either because like Hanse/Kittleman they have very different ways of going about bunker making and restoration. So I don't know and you can draw your own conclusions.

But if you still think that everything would have turned out the same regardless, I do realize that's your opinion, but that this time you are wrong.

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

In all seriousness, didn't I say that about Fazio and others before, accepting the King's shilling and doing the King's bidding !

We can go back to PV as an example of the client knowing what they wanted, and getting it.  We could look at other courses, who gave the marching orders, and got what they wanted, who didn't get it.

In the ultimate, It is the club's responsibility !

[~` (artist fka Puffy W.)]

Heretofore, I will be known by the symbol ~`

If there is a proper English pronounciation to the symbol, I do not know it and will therefore not respond if called by that moniker.  I have cast off my former name, as a protest to the evolutionary degrading of the puffiness of the bunkers at Bethpage Black in preparation for the US Open.  

What's more, I am saddened after a recent trip to the west coast to visit my old friend Gorge "Puffy" Thomas, at Riviera.  Here, I travel 3,000 miles under his assurances that there is some FINE work going on out there, only to find that only two bunkers on the whole golf course were truly puffy-inspired.  I have to admit that the ramp on 8 was pretty cool though, especially skateboarding it beneath the late day shadows of that wonderfully puffy bunker up the right side.  Still, it was a HUGE disappointment, all in all.

So, if my west coast compadre insists on using the Puffy moniker, I can no longer support his efforts and a change of name is in order.  First I played around with P-Diddy, Puffster, Puffmeister General, and a whole lotta other possible stuff, but in the end, given these latest setbacks, I've opted for the vow of silence, which my new name symbolizes.  

[Brad Klein]

Tom Paul, who graciously hosted my visit to Philadelphia for this little woudl-be debate, has accurately captured the basics of the GAP meeting.

Fazio spoke at great length, and I blame the moderator for allowing him to go on. I tried to interject, but I also was wary of looking too eager. In any case, I was able to provide an alternative model to restoration other than Fazio's rather vague one of improvement, and I did so, as TEP and Mark Fine suggest, by emphasizing the ground game, agronmics, playability and tree removal. But I have to tell you I worked hard just to find a little time to say anything, as there was very little room allowed thanks to a certain volubility on the part of one participant.

On two points I need to clarify. What I said was that pure retsoration was impossible, but that restoration was still worthy as a form of heritage, of homage to the past, of respect and veneration for visionaries whose understanding of the game has never been suprassed. I think this is true on grounds of aesthetics, playability and business - i.e. heritage is a good marketing niche for clubs today. Given Fazio's causal attitude, even stated indifference to restoration, I thought this was important to emphasize.

Tom Pual slightly screwed up my comment about rich people being idiots. The context was a closing commentary about the value of caddie programs, and as a caddie scholarship recipient myself on Long Island in 1971, I said that as a club caddie I learned a very valuable lesson, that rich people could be real idiots, too, and so I learned never to be afraid of them." I then related that to the fact that there were lots of fool running around clubs pretending to know what they were talking about, and that there's a strange assumption in our world that merely being a member entitles someone to have a say, even when they don't know what they are talking about. In my experience, 10-15 percent of all people are miserable wretches who should be ignored and who will never be made happy by anything that's done. In restoration, you cannot ever win these people over. My advice is to ignore them;  isolate them and focus on the rest.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Brad Klein,

On every club project I've been involved with, I advised the club to ignore the naysayers because you're never going to win them over, and to focus on clubmembers who are open to suggestions or reasoning.

Unfortunately, the naysayers are usually the most vociferous, and therefore get unneccessary attention.

Moderators, like referees can control the game.

[TEPaul]

BradK:

Come on now, you're messing with and qualifying a good thing! So what if I screwed up your remark and said you said that rich people ARE idiots instead of what you actually did say was that they COULD BE idiots?

I gaurantee that most of those people in that room thought you said they are idiots, they roared with laughter and it got their attention to take seriously the things you had and did tell them. That's the point--you got their attention and what you told them made the necessary distinctions in their minds between some of the other things they heard.

The fact that the net worth in that room could blow anybody's socks off is beside the point that you got their attention with that remark!

We all know that this restoration/redesign business is taken very seriously by lots of people (probably rich people) who assume they know everything there is to know for some reason. Lancing their egos with humor is the most successful tactic of all, in my opinion, particularly if you can get them to laugh at themselves and see the reality of it all! It sort of proves Mark Twain's remark to be true; "Nothing, no force on earth can withstand the onslaught of humor".

A better example is another humorous one from Brain Silva at a club in Florida that the membership is still talking about fondly that got their attention immediately and held it these years as they go through his good restoration process!

He stood up in front of that membership and said: "You people are playing on a dogtrack, but hiding underneath this dogtrack is a wonderful golf course! You can play on a dogtrack for the rest of time or you can play on a wonderful golf course. The choice is yours!"

[Brad Klein]

Tom, we're on the same track here, I didn't mean to be critical, merely to point out the context and segue(sp?) Yes, of course the best way to deal with people is to make them laugh, and then to move on. And they clearly caught what I was saying, even if I didn't have enough air time.

The real issue I have with all of this is that people feel the need to deal with members' sensibilities. It's often the case that club leadership goes out of its way to anticipate and placate and to solicit member input, when we all know that's also inviting trouble. So what if a membership objects to a tree you just cut down? The fact is, it's down.

But the politics are crucial, as you need their support next time, or for a dues assessment or to find a golf game the next time you show up with your golf clubs. I think the design aspects of restoration are very easy. I think the politics are inscrutable. And I would happily nominate Tom Paul as note-taker/secretary for all of our Master Plan committee hearings, as his transcript is accurate and thorough.

So there, Tom.