It's interesting to read of this renovation.
When I got involved with Yeamans twenty years ago, it was the result of the last line of my 1995 review of the course in The Confidential Guide: "Too bad about the greens; fixed up, Yeamans Hall would be terrific." I rated the course a 5 on the Doak scale; that's how far gone it was. The greens had shrunk to less than half their original size, and any original contours had been buried under years of heavy topdressing.
The green chairman, Dr. Henry Terrie, called me and asked what I meant about fixing up the greens. He was the head of the English department at Dartmouth, and had enjoyed my book generally, but didn't really understand what the course had been like originally. Eventually, he arranged for me to come down to the club and make a presentation on Raynor's work and what Yeamans Hall might have been like ... I showed them a bunch of slides of other Raynor / Macdonald courses and how the same green ideas looked on those. They had a group within the club called the "Friends of Seth Raynor," and determined that they should try to raise enough money to restore the greens.
Meanwhile, in the back of the room was their landscape consultant, Rick Webel, whom I'd worked with before, and one of the homeowners, William Milliken. Rick had designed his corporate headquarters. When I got finished, Mr. Milliken said he'd enjoyed my presentation, and volunteered to fund half the project, if the members would kick in the other half!
So that's how JC Urbina got the green light to rebuild all of Yeamans' greens [except #1 which they'd just spent money on] the first time around. We had an old blueprint drawing that showed little caterpillar-like marks where the contours had been, and he just spread out the topdressing sand over the whole original green area, and put contours back in those places. Then they added a bit more good sand, and rotavated it into the profile of the green, and Jim came back with a sand pro to smooth them out. He did all the work in 35 days, for $3000 per green, with a little bit of editing help from me.
I was surprised to hear that the greens all failed a couple of years ago and I've still never heard how and why it happened ... they were great surfaces for 15 years. [A non-resident member named Ran Morrissett once told me he thought they were the best set of greens I'd ever built!] But I know if I'd brought up the idea of building 18 USGA greens back in the late 90's, the project would never have happened at all, and Yeamans would not be thought of as it is today. It was a stretch at the time for them to do what we did!
I love that place and look forward to getting back to see the finished product sometime.