Dear Ben and Peter,
Let me first start by saying that I intentionally refrained from calling my work at CCA a restoration due to the lack of information to accurately call it a restoration. My opening comments clearly stated just that. It is not being sold by me as a restoration. Peter, your comment saying "This seems exactly one of those instances" is wrong.
That is where "The spirit of Donald Ross" comes in as I am not looking to change the golf course so as to bury the Ross look, nor can we do a restoration while fixing very real percolation rate problems with the greens. That line should not be disparaged as lip service. It just so happens we have very little documentation to go on regarding Ross. Considering what he means to the club, it is important to make sure the course looks as much as possible like Ross while still addressing the needs my Client has outlined.
Let me now address the 1951 aerial photograph and Ben's concerns about it being gospel. When trying to stick as close to what little Ross information that is available, the presence of an aerial photograph from the past is much closer to 1928 Ross greens than 2016 greens with known changes to many of them through intentional design as well as over time through mowing patterns from the past ninety years. Why would anyone not use it for some guidance in this instance?
I am sure Ben would prefer I keep the current green shapes and sizes per his fondness of the layout, but the fact is that the current greens have shrunk over time (as they do everywhere). Today the greens average 4,760 square feet. In 1951, they were 5,800 square feet. We know those sizes for a fact so why wouldn't we want to recapture that square footage in an age where faster green speeds require more square footage so the putting surfaces don't get out of control?
To Joe Sponcia's point, the last thing I want is that the green slopes are too much for a site with that much elevation change (meaning a course like this plays longer than it appears and to have ridiculous green contours could make it practically unplayable). This has been discussed with the Client and it is a fine line to keep the Client happy with interesting contouring and yet keep the greens playable for the lesser-skilled.
Back to the 1951 aerial. I never once said it was to be followed exactly as is, only as a guideline. So the idea that I am utilizing its features to suit my own desires is inaccurate. There should also be no "puzzlement" as to why I am using an aerial from 1951, twenty years after the course was built and possibly altered by the site's intervening history. The fact is we were unable to find an earlier aerial. We also studied a 1964 aerial to better understand the evolution of the course but clearly saw no benefit in using that for any guidance.
In 1951, nine of the greens all had bunkers placed front left and front right (7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 18). Today, the first and second holes also have the same affliction. I don't care who originally designed this golf course, but to have nine greens complexes bunkered exactly the same is poor design (my subjective opinion that no one will ever change). To have 11 such greens complexes today is, of course, worse. My first thought with that is that I don't recall seeing any Ross courses with such repetition that had not been changed since. This red flag tells me someone may have made changes to CCA since Ross that no one alive may be aware of.
Let me go ahead and answer Ben's inevitable question following that statement, "Why, then, if you think someone may have tampered with the course since Ross, would you choose to use the 1951 aerial for guidance?" No one can say if the putting surfaces were changed at that point and so I chose to use the 1951 shapes and sizes as inspiration instead of coming up with my own subjective shapes and sizes. That design decision should not be blown out of proportion such that someone may think the golf course will be ruined.
Now, let's review the history of the greens from the 1960's to today. It is my understanding, after touring the golf course with the former golf professional, Les Stradley, that many of these greens were changed in the sixties. Les first walked the golf course when he was six years old (early fifties) and was the pro there for thirty years starting back in the late seventies.
The general manager in the early sixties decided he was going to make the golf course easier to play. To accomplish his desired goal, he changed the following greens by basically taking the highs and dragging them down into the lows: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 16, and 18. Number 15 was moved to the right prior to the fifties to accommodate a pond that has since been filled in. The eighth green was rebuilt when a 36" pipe was installed directly underneath it sometime in the past thirty years. That leaves only eight greens which have not been changed since Ross's days (that we know of).
There is nothing wrong with enjoying the greens that people have grown accustomed to over time. That is why design is so subjective (again). But to claim impending destruction of a beloved Ross green is simply not accurate. Regarding the movement of the greens at CCA as part of this work, here are the greens that I am moving and the distance of the center point movement of each:
#2 - 46 feet to the right and back 26 yards. The movement to the right is to get some breathing room from the third tee complex and the increase in length is per the desire by the Client to increase the golf course length for modern equipment.
#4 - 39 feet forward to try to fit the green into the hillside better and farther away from the back tees for the next hole.
#5 - 60 feet to the left, closer to the creek and farther away from six tee. This is in order to bring the creek into play more strategically and works in conjunction with removing the cart path down that left side.
#7 - 49 feet to the left, again closer to the creek. This time the decision is mostly to get farther away from the eighth hole tee complex (yet for strategy's sake as well).
#8 - 37 feet to the right to provide room for the new pipe to be installed to the left and NOT under the existing green location. Nine tees are moving to the right as well.
#10 - 37 feet to the left to get away from #11 tee.
#11 - 22 feet to the right to get closer to the creek on that side and also to give some extra breathing room from #12 tees.
#12 - 88 feet to the left. This green is the one that one could classify as a routing change as I am swapping the green location and the tee location for the following hole. The reason is that I feel the flow of play works better that way by not making golfers go around the green on the right and back behind to the left to the next tee. It seems convoluted and adds unnecessary cart path. Eliminating cart path here helped us minimize the amount of impervious surface on the site (a crucial element of the permit process for this particular project and jurisdiction). This also allows us to enlarge the tees for the 13th hole.
#13 - 74 feet forward but on the same line (although, yes, the orientation will change as a result but we will rotate the green to replicate the same orientation as it exists today). The hole will be lengthened by a net 11 yards from the back tee.
#16 - 39 feet closer to the fairway to better fit the green into the hillside as we plan to implement the only Ross drawing we have of CCA, a layout of this hole he drew for George Thomas's book.
The center points of greens 14, 15 and 18 are being moved no more than fifteen feet or so in each case. Every green move considers safety, as there are many greens that are very close to adjacent tees. Personally, I have no problem with the locations but in this day and age there are very real liability concerns out there that we deal with every day. Insurance companies will walk a golf course and lower rates based on these issues, among others. I have been asked by many clients over the years if I could assist them in lowering their liability premiums. If they help lower the bottom line for my Client and don't compromise the overall design of the golf course, then so be it.
So five "original" Ross greens are being moved (4, 7, 11, 12, and 13), with only 12 and 13 that could really be deemed as routing changes. If this was a restoration, then you could question my motives, but this was always a renovation. Nonetheless, none of these moves should be considered drastic (again, my opinion).
My plan is, where I have previous knowledge (and it makes sense), to try to restore what was previously there (and please don't over-analyze my use of the word restore right here) on as many putting greens as possible. For instance, as number four is pretty accurate, I plan to keep the two highs in the back and the one to the right so there is that same potato-chip effect when we are done. On number six, I will bring back three ridges at 11:30, 1:00, and 3:00 (if you look at the green as a clock) that originally emanated from high points on the outer edges of the green. Where I have no previous information, I will create the most interesting greens as I can taking other Ross green trends as cues.
Ben, I would love to hear some of the design decisions I have made that you question my time spent on site. Also, what non-Ross elements did you see that question that aspect as well? I am removing the mounds to the left of four fairway and converting the two fairway bunkers to the right of seven into mounds because none of those items are original and look terribly manufactured.
As Tom Doak so well expressed, I do want to improve CCA, primarily from a functional standpoint as it relates to maintenance and playability. One of the things I will be doing is expanding the fairways. Budgetary constraints limit the number of tees we would like to add. I especially want to eliminate the repetitiveness of the greens complexes as it relates to bunker placement. But none of it will be a Richard Mandell statement, even if the Client alluded to it in the beginning of my presentation. You must review my response and respect that.
Dear Kris,
I never claimed any work at Myers Park Country Club with the Bacon Park clients nor did I ever show them pictures of MPCC. So please quit fomenting that mis-information. Don't say anything more. It is wrong.
Regarding Forsyth Country Club, I simply have it listed on my course list and it does fall among the Ross courses I did (under Dan Maples). Never did I claim a restoration. It clearly states "Donald Ross Projects". That was one of my first projects with Dan Maples Design and it clearly states so. Anyone can clearly note the time line, see your involvement, and be done with it. Please do the same. That said, I did consider not listing it in my list of works, but the fact is that I did do work on it back in 1991. Its Donald Ross authenticity can be questioned all day long, but no one ever called that project a restoration and it wasn't my decision to make. Dan Maples Design did what the membership wanted at the time. So please drop that inference as well.
Regarding Raleigh Country Club, I restored the bunkers as best as I could based on the Ross 1948 Master Plan and a 1954 aerial photo. This was done without the freedom to re-do the greens themselves (Which were all completely redesigned and built by David Postlethwait sometime in the nineties).
Hopefully I covered everyone's questions and I am glad to have a spirited debate about golf course architecture, which is why this website exists. But I am tired of defending myself about so many things. To discuss properly takes a good few hours out of my time because I refuse to just spout off on items like so many other do on GCA.
Ben, wouldn't it have been more constructive to just come out and say, "Richard Mandell is planning on some work out at CCA and I am interested in his perspective because I am concerned about the golf course's heritage. Maybe he would be willing to shed some light on things." Just an idea. Ben, you will indeed have to just wait and see what happens. I invite you to come along on a walk-through one day this summer and I will be glad to share with you my thoughts.
If anyone here wonders why golf architects don't participate fully here, it is threads like these that are accusatory and libelous and just plainly ridiculous for professionals to have to take time out of their day to respond to. Coupled with the accusation on GCA that I was looking to hire an unpaid intern a few months ago, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone if I never posted again.
But I will and I will be glad to engage in constructive discussions. The rest of them should be deleted and many of you really need to think about how you want to approach discussions. Many industry people despise this website because of the behavior and finger-pointing, and more importantly the mis-information.
One great example of this is when someone beat up on Kipp Schulties because an article referred to him as one of the leaders in his field (or along those lines). After reading the thread, I was compelled to see this article and lo and behold, whoever started the thread missed a comma which clearly attributes the comment to the next company in that list of companies (not even a golf course designer). In other words, that particular thread was based on not reading something else correctly. Yet none of the participants in that thread ever got to that discovery.
So please quit beating up on people who are trying to do the right thing and just discuss architecture in a nice way.