Which version to restore?

[JimB]

The thread on the Reef Hole at SFGC is an interesting one and Joel's picture added intrigue for me. Tom's segue into the discussion of the Biarritz at MO and Phil's response to my question about a bunker complex on 9 at SFGC got me wondering how does an architect go about deciding which version of a previous architect's work is most worthy of restoring? I'm sure there many variables but I would like to get some idea of the thought process. I'm guessing direction from the membership plays in. One aspect I am interested in hearing about is do those of you working on a restoration find it more challenging if a course has been altered many times like Phil describes at SFGC or if there seems to be only one major iteration of the early course, maybe using CPC as an example?

[Phil Young]

I can't speak for Tom, but the decision will almost always be determined by the Club/Board. For example, what a wonderful restoration that Keith Foster did at Philly Cricket. It has received unanimous praise and is quickly becoming an important tournament venue. Yet it wasn't restored to the original 1922 design, but to the version of the course as it sat in the mid-1930's. A great deal of research was put in to determine exactly how best to go about restoring specific holes and features and the results speak for themselves.

Then you have courses, such as one I'm currently involved with that I'd rather not name at the present, that would like to restore back to what Tilly originally designed but due to the many changes made through the years by well-meaning architects, there are many things that would simply be impossible to restore.

What it really comes down to is long-term commitment to the love of the original course/architect/both and also the same long-term commitment to researching and gaining a true understanding of what was done originally and why the specific changes that were made occurred. That last part is especially important where unique situations occur, for there are times where changes made must remain. A good example of that is Brackenridge Park.   

John Colligan did a wonderful restoration back to the course as originally designed by Tilly. He even restored the stream running through the course so that it almost exactly matched the photographs of it back in the teens/20s. Yet because the city took some of the original land on which a highway now runs, several of the original holes were lost forever and several others were changed to accommodate the new routing. Those last ones weren't changed back and John was correct in doing so because it would have effected the course for the worse.

It is easy to say that each club needs to do concerted research and set up an in-house education for the board/green committee/members, but without long-term commitment to learning, recreating/restoring and maintaining what was done long-term, future boards/green committees will do what they always have and rework the course into their own version of what they believe it should be...

[Tom_Doak]

JimB:


It's a good question and as Phil's response might hint, there is no easy answer, even for an historian.  The real truth is that all of golf course design is subjective, so the question of what was the "best" version to restore is equally subjective.


Generally, I have fallen on restoring courses based on the best information available ... usually, the earliest available aerial photograph.  I prefer to keep "speculation" to a minimum and to have something concrete to fall back on.  Pictures taken from the ground are immensely helpful, too, but there is rarely a full set; the aerial at least provides something concrete for the whole course, and we can extrapolate from there using whatever other information is available.


Tillinghast is a complicated subject because he spent so much of his later career going back and changing his earlier work and staying busy ... as Pete Dye and Jack Nicklaus and some others are doing today.  Then you've got to argue for or against the later changes and whether they were driven by theory or by necessity [on the part of the club] or even by necessity [on the part of the designer].  I suppose Old Tom Morris might fall into this same category, as he was involved in various versions of his own designs as equipment changed and more funds for construction became available [alas, all before the birth of aerial photography, or even the airplane itself].


Macdonald quit the business, and Raynor died, so you don't have the same debates on their courses, or MacKenzie's for the most part.  Donald Ross spent his later years building grass greens for a lot of his old sand-green courses in the south; I think he was too practical to want to make the rounds of his own courses again, as long as they were well played.

[Jaeger Kovich]

I'm currently working on a Tillinghast restoration project myself, at Ridgewood in NJ. While I wasn't involved in selecting which year/aerial photo to use as our base, it seems pretty obvious why the club has gone this route. We are using 1935, not because there aren't earlier pictures, but most of the information we have coincides with the 1935 Ryder Cup that was held at Ridgewood.

[Patrick_Mucci]

JimB,


Tom MacWood advocated for selecting the course's architectural high water mark.


While I'd agree in principle, it's the determination of the course's architectural high water mark that's the challenge.


And, in the real world, club politics often override prudent evaluations

[Mark Bourgeois]

This was the big question for Merion West's East's restoration, yes? With particular controversy around the bunker style selected.

[Peter Pallotta]

Not to sidetrack this, but I find it interesting: Tom D and other architects and many of us here have often said that golf architecture is "subjective". And yet, over the decades architects have continually gone back to their designs to tinker/revise: as Tom mentions, in different ways and for different reasons, Tillighast did and Ross did and you could say that so did Old Tom; and today, of course, you have Mr Nicklaus going back and re-working some holes, and you have Pete Dye doing the same, and (famously) you have C&C tinkering with the 14th at Bandon Trails. Now, yes, there are many reasons for architects re-visiting their work, and yet one reason at least (and at least some of the time) is that they go back to make a hole/course better. And, when Tom is doing renovations or restorations on classic courses, again, the client and the golfing public is expecting only one thing, i.e. that the course, when Tom's work is done, will be better, and widely recognized as better. Yes, the collective or consensus opinion doesn't mean it is an objective fact; but, do we really believe that what all these architects are doing to these courses in trying to improve them is merely a subjective exercise?
Peter

[Tom_Doak]

Not to sidetrack this, but I find it interesting: Tom D and other architects and many of us here have often said that golf architecture is "subjective". And yet, over the decades architects have continually gone back to their designs to tinker/revise: as Tom mentions, in different ways and for different reasons, Tillighast did and Ross did and you could say that so did Old Tom; and today, of course, you have Mr Nicklaus going back and re-working some holes, and you have Pete Dye doing the same, and (famously) you have C&C tinkering with the 14th at Bandon Trails. Now, yes, there are many reasons for architects re-visiting their work, and yet one reason at least (and at least some of the time) is that they go back to make a hole/course better. And, when Tom is doing renovations or restorations on classic courses, again, the client and the golfing public is expecting only one thing, i.e. that the course, when Tom's work is done, will be better, and widely recognized as better. Yes, the collective or consensus opinion doesn't mean it is an objective fact; but, do we really believe that what all these architects are doing to these courses in trying to improve them is merely a subjective exercise?

Peter:


Yes, it is merely subjective.


For example, Mr. Dye thinks he is improving his old courses; I think he is wrecking them.  It's a matter of opinion.  In Pete's case, one's opinion probably hinges on whether one thinks it's important to keep courses up to date for the +6 handicap Tour pros who almost never come to play, at the expense of consistency in the aesthetics and construction detailing of the course.  Most of the other examples you mention above are, in my opinion, not that significant to the overall quality of those courses, but they cost a lot of money to disrupt play and to reconstruct.  I have only rebuilt things on my courses where they have proven to be a problem for everyday play -- and even that is subjective, but I will generally defer to my clients on that subject.


When I am restoring a course, I generally confine myself to rebuilding things the way they were, because that's what "restoring" means.  Sometimes I have other ideas that I think would make those courses better, but I seldom even broach the subject unless I can somehow defend it as restoration ... because I know that it's all subjective and my thinking it's better doesn't make it so.  If the club has hired me to make the course "as good as it can be," that's a different assignment, perhaps with a different result; but I am more reluctant to take on such jobs because I've seen so many courses just keep changing stuff around haphazardly based on different people's opinions.


As Mr. Dye once told me, everything in golf is a matter of opinion.  There's no right way to grow grass; there's no right way to swing a club; and there's no right way to design or build a course.  Each of us has personal conviction about what we do, but in architecture and agronomy, the end result is not as clear-cut as in a golf tournament.

[archie_struthers]

 




Tom , that is well said!   couldn't agree with your sentiments more .

[Joe_Tucholski]

The restoration of Pinehurst is well documented and the selection of 1943 as the date the course was restored to is largely contributed to the efforts of Craig Disher (a member of this site) because he provided Coore and Crenshaw with detailed photos of the entire course from Christmas Day 1943.

I think the following video is pretty well done and explains how/why Pinehurst leadership and Coore and Crenshaw went about their restoration of #2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxgFX2jyihk

[MCirba]

This was the big question for Merion West's East's restoration, yes? With particular controversy around the bunker style selected.

Mark,

The controversy regarding Merion wasn't about "which" version to restore; everyone there seemingly agreed that the 1930 period was a pinnacle worthy of preservation, or recapturing.

The controversy instead concerned the particular methodologies employed to do the bunker "restoration", which prior had been being restored through meticulous hand labor to ensure the original surrounds were preserved.

In the end, the machine-driven bunker work was expediently accomplished but ended up with essentially all brand new bunkers; consistent in 2 dimensional shaping but very different in terms of depth, internal contouring, surrounds, steepness, and grassing from anything that heretofore existed at Merion in any version from any year.   They truly were Tom Fazio bunkers dropped onto Merion.

Since that time, the Superintendent has done an extraordinary job in trying to recapture some of their original rugged look.   My understanding is that more is being done now that Gil Hanse is back working with the club but I haven't been there in some time and haven't seen any of that for myself.

[JimB]

When I am restoring a course, I generally confine myself to rebuilding things the way they were, because that's what "restoring" means.  Sometimes I have other ideas that I think would make those courses better, but I seldom even broach the subject unless I can somehow defend it as restoration ... because I know that it's all subjective and my thinking it's better doesn't make it so.  If the club has hired me to make the course "as good as it can be," that's a different assignment, perhaps with a different result; but I am more reluctant to take on such jobs because I've seen so many courses just keep changing stuff around haphazardly based on different people's opinions.

I understand the dilemma and was wondering if it was perhaps easier to work in this manner if there is photographic evidence of mutiple versions like is described on a number of Tillinghast courses versus one version on a MacKenzie course where he never returned to make changes. Does one scenario feel more liberating, restraining?
 

[Joel_Stewart]

You have to have photographic evidence and that has problems in itself.  As Tom said, there seems to be ample aerials but few on the ground photos for many clubs.


The one project I was involved in (Olympic Club) is lucky to have hundreds and hundreds of photos through out the years.  At Olympic the course was built in 1924 and then rebuilt in 1927 due to storm damage.  The superintendent also served as co-architect and tinkered with the course for another 25-30 years.  Picking a high water mark was impossible for the entire course but would be possible on a hole by hole basis.


To complicate things, prior to the 1955 US Open RTJ was brought in and the course began a 65 year dark period which continues today. 

[Tom_Doak]

I understand the dilemma and was wondering if it was perhaps easier to work in this manner if there is photographic evidence of mutiple versions like is described on a number of Tillinghast courses versus one version on a MacKenzie course where he never returned to make changes. Does one scenario feel more liberating, restraining?

I don't think of restoration as restraining; I would always prefer to have as much photo evidence as possible for that sort of work.  When you have several different versions, though, it is hard to establish closure, because there is always someone who prefers a different version, and that person may eventually wind up as president or green chairman.


As I've written in the next volume of The Confidential Guide, though, with respect to the greens at LACC (North), I think the results can be better when the club gives the architect some freedom to change details in order to get the intent correct.  Those greens are better than they were before, because the club let Gil Hanse fix some problems, instead of trying to preserve them exactly.  Likewise, some of the easiest greens we've ever rebuilt were the ones at Yeamans Hall, which were so destroyed before we started that we could just wing it from the drawings to recreate the contours as we imagined them, without anyone hovering over them too closely.

[Patrick_Mucci]

I think Tom Doak has touched on the critical element that determines the architectural outcome.


Club politics.


Club politics are the genesis of most projects and club politics usually determines the architectural outcome.


Some clubs get it, thus, over the years very little of the architecture has been altered, hence the need for restoration is minimal.


Other clubs seem committed to constantly altering their course.


At what point do clubs put a value on their pedigree ?