Tom,
As you well know, every “restoration” requires decisions to be made because what to do is not always obvious. How many restorations have you done where it was very clear what changes needed to be made to restore the design? With all the changes made by Fazio at Bel-Air for example, are you saying you had a perfect blueprint of how to restore it?
If you remember, the orientation of the 8th hole at Cherry Hills had already been changed so moving it was not that radical. It was more clever than anything as it solved all kinds of other challenges on a number of holes including 5, 9 and 16. That area where the 8th sat was also claustrophobic and for a course that prides itself on holding major tournaments, that was a big problem. Moving that hole and reorienting it correctly was a key to that whole project. I still think the real contribution I made at Cherry Hills was almost four year of convincing the club to not become a Tom Fazio or Rees Jones remodel. When I first met Clayton Cole the Head Pro, that was the direction the club was heading before I got hired. They knew very little about the evolution of their golf course for a club that you would think is all about history.
This is the reason I see restoration giving way to remodeling. It takes much less time and effort for most architects to do the latter.