In an interview with Dick Harmon and Dave Marr when I was writing the history of the River Oaks Country Club, the subject of changing a golf hole to create a par 5 out of a par 4 came up. The head of the club's greens committee apparently believed you couldn't have a first class "championship" course unless it was rated a par 72. River Oaks is a Donald Ross design, one of only two in Texas. Dave Marr's question about the advisability of the change still resonates in my head, even more so since I've committed myself to the art of painting. "Who's going to correct the Mona Lisa?" In fact, Joe Finger got the job.
To his credit, Finger attempted to talk the club out of what he considered a very imprudent move, pointing out to them that other Ross courses, such as Wannamoisett and Waterbury Country Club had pars of 69. But the club insisted and, in the view of Jackie Burke, who grew up on the course where his father was the club's first pro, they "turned the best par 4 in the city of Houston into the worst par 5 in the state of Texas." Or something as elegantly disdainful as that.
Many on this board are familiar with the change of the par 4 fifth hole at Pinehurst #2. To many who've played it, the hole is one of the planet's very greatest par 4s. For Coore and Crenshaw, whose reverence for Donald Ross and his work, the USGA's plan to make the fifth hole into a par 5 must have brought up some enormous gulps. I can only imagine … no, I really can't imagine what the conversations were like.
What are your thoughts about revising this masterpiece? And, are there other examples of truly great holes being changed in so essential a way, for any reason at all?