RE - STOR- ATIONS ?

[Patrick_Mucci]

What ingredients need to be present to insure a successful restoration of a golf course that has been altered over the years ?

Can you cite a club or a few clubs that attempted and experienced a very successful restoration project ?

What made that club's restoration so successful ?

[Doug Wright]

Pat,

For starters I'd look no further than what they did at Wilmington Municipal GC (see GCA course description and my comments there). A very careful and faithful restoration of a 1925 Ross course. Looks to me like much of the quality lies in the people involved--knowledgeable people who care enough to sweat the details and do it right, and in this instance a governing body (The City of Wilmington or a group therein)supporting the efforts of those people.  

[Craig_Rokke]

Necessary ingredients? How about

A committed membership (and an architect who is persuasive
enough to get everyone that way)
Good record-keeping from the past
An architect skilled in faithful restoration
A superintendent committed to appropriate maintenance

Ross courses seem to be experiencing some good restorations:
Aronimink and Jeffersonville locally, Plainfield in Jersey, and there are many others cited in the latest LINKS, as well as Klein's book.

[Chris Kane]

Kingston Heath Golf Club in Melbourne was overgrown and out of favor twenty years ago, but through a program of careful restoration, it has returned to its former glory.

The superintendant, Graeme Grant, spent many years studying the philosophy of MacKenzie, and this contributes to the superb course presentation which is in sympathy with the design.

I can't remember who the architect was - perhaps someone can help me here.

[APBernstein]

A club can have many of the correct ingredients: a competent and accomplished architect set on preserving the original design; a superintendent who takes care with all work or with the maitenence of the course, etc.

However, I think the committed (determined, not wacky, which is unfortunatelty the case all too often) membership is the single most important quality.  Without this factor, the wheels of change (or in this case, restoration) can never start to turn.  The committed membership (and green committee) is the catalyst that has led to many successful restorations.

[TEPaul]

Definitely a complex subject and process with a zillion factors contributing. I sure think we've been through this subject before on here but.....

Get all the research material together you can, the more the better; you can never really have enough and someone in the club should probably be a point man. A booklet like Gulph Mills's that was strictly a design evolution report from the very beginning of the club to date helps in a number of ways.

You should produce hundreds of copies and get it out to the entire membership as it informs them of what the course is, what it was, how it changed, when, by whom, sometimes the whys of the changes!

Historic aerials are extremely important and should go into the booklet--members grasp the changes in aerials very quickly, much quicker than even the best organized and best written text. The majority of members apparently look at the pictures and often with great interest instead of the text!

If you have as many architects come through over the years as we had it gets a bit more complex but somehow we really lucked out as the aerials and their dates matched the dates of the architectural changes really well and I also had all the necessary committee and board minutes from the beginning to date. With all this material you can accurately reconstruct the entire evolution of your golf course.

With this you can see the changes from one architect to the other and I can't tell you how much that helps when you present the booklet to the restoration architect you select. This kind of thing takes a lot of the guess work out for him as to who did what and helps so much in his evaluation of the course. Thrown in there are generally changes done by the club or a committee on their own.

This kind of booklet stimulates understanding of the golf course, what change did to it etc; an architectural evolution  booklet builds pride amongst the membership in the golf course and the architect too, particularly if he's well known.

Then you form a committee for the entire process of putting a restoration plan together and taking it forward through the membership. I guess the Green Committee can be used for this if it's a good one.

Putting the committee together that is going to do this is a very important step and just selecting the members properly will be telling for years to come. Well after something like a booklet and just before selecting the committee you are about 5% of the way home and I have to go to bed now.

[Mike Clayton]

Chris

Dan Soutar did the origional routing with 15 as a par 4. Mackenzie built the current 15th with Morcom when he was in Australia and did a plan for the bunkering which was implemented,I assume, by Morcom.

[Chris Kane]

Mike,

I was aware of Dan Soutar being the architect of the layout with bunkering and the 15th being MacKenzie, but was there an architect who they consulted with regarding the restoration?  Or was it Grant the super alone?

Tom Paul,

Any chance of obtaining a copy of your Gulph Mills booklet, either electronically or by post?  Sounds like exactly what we need at Commonwealth.

[ed getka]

I have only seen one restoration in progress. That is at the Meadow Club which is a Mackenzie course north of San Francisco. My understanding is that the membership had Mike DeVries come in (after a selection process I'm not aware of) and restore one hole (Par 3 #5). The membership was very happy with the work and had Mike come back this past year and do 3 more holes. The club historian and the greens chairman had lots of info for Mike to work from. Most of the work is restoration, but on at least #1 Mike put in a fairway bunker which is not in the original location. Mike explained that this was due to the length players hit the ball today and he was trying to recreate Mackenzies design intent. How common is that in restoration efforts others are aware of? Mike will be doing more work there this year so hopefully Mike will invite us out again to see his handiwork.

[ChipOat]

Although not everyone agrees, I think the Merion restoration has turned out quite well.  It will be interesting to see if any "one off" amendments to the "formula 1930" template are implented over the next 20+ years as new board members come on and the drivers of the project move to the background.

Although it may have been unintentional, not every part of the course was restored precisely - the focus was clearly the bunkers.

BTW, to those of you who know it, the 12th at Garden City Golf seems like a prime target for a restoration.  With all the other fine work they've done there, any idea why this late 40's RTJ, Sr. effort that is so out-of-character hasn't been re-worked?

[GeoffreyC]

Excellent Restoration

Fenway Golf Club

Why? My guess

1, 2, and 3- They hired the right guys for the job (not that other groups were not also capable of equally good work but clearly there are other groups who would NOT have done as good a job)
4- Excellent documentation from photographs, drawings and written documents. Gil, Rodney and Bill took the time to research the project before they moved any dirt. As Ran said in his course writeup, it does not look at all like Gil was ever there. Pure Tillinghast.
5- A very powerful individual member/head of the green committee gave Gil et. al. enought room to do what he needed to do and other members probably would not question this individuals decisions.
6- a great superintendent to preserve and maintain what was done.

Now just convince them to remove some more trees!

Pat - thank you for asking for successful restorations rather then poor attempts  

[Ed_Baker]

Good stuff gentlemen.

I would add that the most overlooked element of restoration efforts is the lack of a standing committee to PRESERVE the restoration after the backhoe's go away.

The retention span for the average member is about a half an hour. Dedicated green committee members move on, superintendents move on, boards change and with it so does philosophy.

Most members view a restoration as the initial physical changes and the resulting capital expense. As soon as the contractor drives away the restoration is complete as far as they are concerned and the golf course is pronounced "fixed." Tree programs,green expansions,fairway width restoration, maintainence meld, are ongoing processes that can easily be overlooked without proper continuity and dilegence.

A "good" or "successful" restoration is only possible if the "after construction" period is managed as well as the "selling" of the project was.

Even clubs with small memberships (300 or so) lose seven to ten members per year. Five years after a restoration it is amazing how many "new" members are around that don't have a clue what came before them, nor do they care, they may be more interested in a fitness center than the golf course.

The original driving force members that launch a restoration must stay involved as a standing committee with specifically defined powers and they must educate and recruit members to preserve that vision for the future.