...the Next Sand Hills?

[Garland Bayley]

"...Kidd also knowingly pushed the extreme on some of his greens at the Castle Course during construction as the book about its construction points out. Out of necessity he had to come back and tone down some of them."

Okay, lets play Devil's Advocate.  If DMK wanted to push the greens to an extreme, I would think that this was not approved in a vaccum. If it worked, great, if not, well they can always be toned down (just hope they weren't USGA). But, I doubt one ever would go into it thinking, let's start with "Toned Down" and we can always push it from there. That will never happen. (see "if it ain't broke, don't fix it").

There have been times when I've had discussions with owners where I was unsure if something would pan out and was told "go for it".  Conversely, I've also "gone for it" - because that's what they said they wanted and after the fact, even though I and some other enlightened members liked the finished product (and it was what they asked for) some then decided they really didn't like it and wanted it changed. (see "be careful what you ask for, you just might get it".)

I don't recall the "owners" ever really examining his work as it was told in the book. Does anyone remember, or have the book to check against?
I think the "owners" were happy they weren't getting a potato field with a sewage complex standing in the middle for all to see.

[Tim Nugent]

Garland, even if the owners weren't examining his work, I would hope they at least talked about the vision and concept for the course.  Even on projects where I've been lucky enough to have a free hand, I still made sure that the owners were onboard for the overall concept of the course. If they owners (I don't know anything about them so I won't speculate) didn't know enough about what they were getting, they should have either got educated or got some help (I would have forwarded Don Mahaffey's #).

Is too much being made of this? All to often, we push projects at light speed to get them open and the cash register ringing and are never allowed the time to step back and assess what we have done.  God forbid you have to tell the constractor "just wait a week".  As Dad was fond of saying,"there's never enough time or money to do it right the first time but they always seem to come up with it on the next go 'round?"

Ross is appaulded for "tinkering with #2 his whole life.  Boy he musta really sucked as an architect