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[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.

[TEPaul]

BradK;

Of course you're not being critical--humor is humor whether it happens here in Philly or comes down the Internet.

[Tom MacWood (Guest)]

I think that it is encouraging that the discussion took place. I tip my hat to Fazio for being involved in this type of public forum (especially when, ironically, I don't think the topic is one he is completely comfortable with) and to Brad for being on the panel and offering an alternative view to one of the more prominant men in the industry.
 
And thanks to Brad for using the word 'volubility' and making me break out my dictionary.

[A_Clay_Man]

After all the facts are in, I find it interesting that the guy who had the least to say did all the talking.

Perhaps he's running for office?