What if we let someone repaint Guernica, or Mona Lisa, or Las dos Fridas?

[Ronald Montesano]

...or if we allowed someone to rewrite great literature, or great symphonies, and the originals were lost for all time?

[Joe Hancock]

Golf course design is functional art. The tools that allow the user and the art to interact have changed. In music, literature and visual arts, the tools (eyes and ears) have remained the same.

[Tom_Doak]

Golf course design is functional art. The tools that allow the user and the art to interact have changed. In music, literature and visual arts, the tools (eyes and ears) have remained the same.

I disagree.  I could just as easily say that the tools that allow the golfer to interact with the course are the hands and the eyes, and what's between the ears.


You are imposing an "ideal golfer" for whom all courses are supposedly built, but golf courses are actually built for players of all abilities, so the change in tools only shifts which people enjoy it more or less.


For that matter, though most people's eyes and ears function relatively similarly, art is appreciated differently by each user.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Golf course design is functional art. The tools that allow the user and the art to interact have changed. In music, literature and visual arts, the tools (eyes and ears) have remained the same.

When art is functional are we less inclined to interact with it using our senses? Have the tools requited to function with the art really changed over time? They are used the same way they always have been and are relatively just as ineffective at the job at hand.

If we are to believe that the tools have dramatically changed, wouldn't it be foolish to focus so much of our efforts on recreating the art as it was 100 years ago as it could no longer be appreciated in the same way it was originally intended.



There is an interesting conundrum going on around Frank Lloyd Wright homes That we see in a similar way within the golf world. While his groundbreaking works have often been restored and preserved as museums, quite a number of his later "common" homes are in limbo. The original owners have died off leaving the home to their children, who then have had to make a choice. Features of the modern home, like more open planning and integrated kitchen/living spaces were not common in Wrights designs. Often his kitchens were small service spaces, tucked around the corner and not intended for entertaining. Faced with a 70 year old home that needs work, what do you do? Do you restore the home as it was, preserving the original design while sacrificing modern function? Do you modernize the design, sacrificing the lineage of the home and it's unique position within the architectural landscape? Or do you try to find a middle ground in which you preserve Wrights design while making the home slightly more functional?


Back in the 70's and 80's many 2nd or 3rd owners of Wrights houses didn't think twice about changing the design of the home, but today the thinking is different. As these home become older and more scarce the appreciation level higher and the departure of one lifestyle from another makes these choices difficult.

[Forrest Richardson]

If we let someone re-write or re-paint those examples, we would have "new" works, or facsimiles.

In the cast of golf courses, we have both the changing nature of the field — daily set-up, changing maintenance efforts, etc. — and also the fact that the whole of the parts is both a living-breathing thing, and also a landscape subject to changes by wind, erosion and other natural effects.

Add to the changing nature of the field — the fact that golf courses are expected to be "tinkered with" and you are on your way to defining golf course architecture. Old Tom and Alan Roberstson were just the first known "re-writers" in golf history. There were others long before them who continually changed, adapted, re-routed and devised.

Static golf courses are far and few between because we have accepted they can be made better, changed — occasionally made worse — and then changed back again. Cycles are not bad.

[Steve Lang]

   Love the form vs function debate, getting cold in many places...


IF one says the tools of interaction are hands and eyes instead of clubs and balls, what..., are we tossing the ball around or playing frisbee golf? 

[Tom_Doak]

  Love the form vs function debate, getting cold in many places...


IF one says the tools of interaction are hands and eyes instead of clubs and balls, what..., are we tossing the ball around or playing frisbee golf?

It's not the club, it's what you do with it that counts.  There is no single standard of play by which a course should be judged, much as low-handicap players would like you to believe there is.

[Terry Lavin]

[quote author=Tom_Doak link=topic=69136.msg1659111#msg1659111 date=1607283627

It's not the club, it's what you do with it that counts.  There is no single standard of play by which a course should be judged, much as low-handicap players would like you to believe there is.



Agreed. The low-handicap grounds committee members seem to be, as a group, overly opinionated while under-informed in my experience. One of my favorite anecdotes in this regard is a conversation with a friend and fellow grounds committee member who lamented the removal of “8-10 hazards” in between two parallel holes. He was referring to trees which were removed, allowing for construction of a few bunkers that affected each hole. Sigh.

[Kalen Braley]

To answer the original question, this currently already happens all the time in copies, prints, recordings, etc.  We fully understand they are just that and thankfully have the wisdom to protect the originals in most cases...

This is obviously more tricky for courses, especially for ones like ANGC, the Joan Rivers of golf!

[Mike_Young]

What happens to any piece of art is determined by the owner.  It's much easier to BS an owner/board of a golf course than a fine piece of art. 

[Tom_Doak]

What happens to any piece of art is determined by the owner.  It's much easier to BS an owner/board of a golf course than a fine piece of art.

That depends on the owner:  publicly owned art is being modified now to be politically correct.  California, of course, leads the way:


https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-george-washington-san-francisco-mural-20190628-story.html

[Peter Pallotta]

To restore means one thing, to renovate means something else. We all know the difference. But most look the other way.

[Mark_Fine]

Peter,
Do we all agree that "to restore" means one thing?  To restore a static piece of art like a painting, we might all agree.  But can you define "to restore means one thing" for a golf course?

[Joe Hancock]

Golf course design is functional art. The tools that allow the user and the art to interact have changed. In music, literature and visual arts, the tools (eyes and ears) have remained the same.

I disagree.  I could just as easily say that the tools that allow the golfer to interact with the course are the hands and the eyes, and what's between the ears.


You are imposing an "ideal golfer" for whom all courses are supposedly built, but golf courses are actually built for players of all abilities, so the change in tools only shifts which people enjoy it more or less.


For that matter, though most people's eyes and ears function relatively similarly, art is appreciated differently by each user.

I don’t understand the interpretation that took place here. I didn’t intend to advocate anything. Clubs and balls have changed, for everyone. Maintenance practices have changed, for everyone. Irrigation and turf types have changed, for everyone. Maybe to your point, those things have changed how our eyes, ears and minds interact with the course, but none of us gets to play any golf course as it existed 100 years ago, for instance. Or maybe I’m missing your point altogether.

[Paul Rudovsky]

But the reality and fact is that if an old masterpiece of art is damaged it is restored and few if any complain or object.  Without some level of restoration anything exposed nature needs restoration at some point

[SL_Solow]

Setting aside the equipment issues for the moment, the difficult issue here is that golf courses change over time. Even at courses where committees leave them alone, trees grow and die.  Mowing patterns alter the size and shape of fairways, greens and tees.  Bunkers erode and expand.  The first question is whether we ignore these changes or whether we should react.  If we do, should the course be restored as near as exactly as possible or should changes be made?  Now add in the pressure by some players to "keep up" and the old "masterpieces" are endangered.  This is a different type of pressure than that which is experienced in connection with more static works of art.  The fact that golf courses are playing fields adds to the pressure.  Finally, do changes in greens keeping including introduction of irrigation, different strains of grasses that permit faster green speeds etc. qualify as the types of changes in question?


I agree with Terry that it is often the low handicapper who is concerned with maintaining the perceived difficulty of the course who are most destructive in decisions related to these questions. 

[Peter Pallotta]

Mark  -
I'm not at all against renovations, including the (preferably sympathetic) renovations of old classic courses. As Mike Y says, members get to choose, and there are many practical and legitimate and understandable reasons for clubs (and their consulting architects) to opt for renovations.
But the purist in me rebels against the misuse of language in this regard: I think we all know exactly what a "restoration" means/entails -- even if there are many reasons for members & critics & architects to want to obfuscate/blur that definition. 
Example: a 1920s course was originally 6350 yards long, with two sets of tees, and fairway bunkers some 200-225 yards off the tee, with very few trees, and large & well-contoured greens with slopes sometimes in the 3-4 degree range, and deep green-side hazards set hard against the edges.
A restoration would result in a course that is 6350 yards long, with two sets of tees and fairway bunkers some 200-225 off the tee, with very few trees and well-contoured & sloping greens with penal hazards set right up against them.
That's a restoration. Everything else is a renovation.
Now, as Joe H has just pointed out: such a true restoration doesn't mean that we today will be playing the course the same way they did 100 years ago; but it does mean that the course itself will exist in the same way it originally did.
Again, I'm not making a value judgement here: if a decision is made not to honour/realize the course as it originally existed but instead to have it look and play very much like it might have a century ago, that's fine. But then it's not a restoration.
As I say: I think we all know what that word actually means.

[Mark_Fine]

And further complicating things is which courses are/were true masterpieces or are worth “restoring” in the first place? Someone I know once said maybe only 10% of courses are worth restoring. If that percentage is true, which 10% and who decides?  Sometimes the “owners” don’t know what they actually have.  This by the way happens with paintings as well - people find an old painting in their attic and don’t know what it is.  If they take it to the wrong expert they might just discard it or paint over it 

[Mark_Fine]

Peter,
Just saw you posted when I did.  I will read what you said.  Thanks.

[Mark_Fine]

Peter,
On your true “restoration” example what grass do we plant on the course?  What speed do we keep the greens at?  What if we have greens that pitch back to front with 6-8% slopes?  What do we do about the trees?  What about courses that have been encroached by development and holes have been changed or rerouted?  What about the course that desperately needs a practice area?  What do we do about courses like many of William Flynn’s where he didn’t add many of his bunkers until years later after he saw how the course played.  I could go on and on. By the way would you “restore” Augusta National?  I don’t think Gene Sarazen would think that is a good idea     Restoration of a golf course is not black and white. 

[Peter Pallotta]

Again, Mark, I'm not saying we *should* restore golf courses, whether 10% of them or 50% or any of them at all.

What I'm saying is that we should use that word only when actually *do* restore a golf course.

While there are (as you note) a multitude of decisions & choices to be made, those to me are all made post-facto, i.e. after one has decided to *renovate* (not restore) a golf course.  And yes, I sure can see how renovating a golf course is not a black & white process.

To use your examples: maybe members don't want greens sloped 6-8% and running at 7 on the Stimpmeter; and maybe they can't ever have back the old holes that got rolled over by development; and maybe they desperately do want a new practice area, the creation of which will involve re-routing and changing several original golf holes.

If so, great: that's what a *renovation* is for -- and more power to them and their consulting architects.

But then they don't really get to call it a restoration (though of course many of them do call it exactly that, for financial and marketing and prestige reasons).

[Tom_Doak]

Mark, have you ever actually restored a course by Peter's definition?  Or do you ask all these questions to obfuscate the fact that you haven't?

[Mark_Fine]

Tom,
No I haven’t.  Have you?


The point I was making is that restoration is very challenging and very subjective when it comes to a golf course.  When I am doing restoration, I am usually trying to restore what I call design intent using all the historical insight and information I can find but even that is very subjective.  To use two course examples that you and I both were involved with, you saw what we proposed to do at Cherry Hills and at Oyster Harbors.  I don’t know if you would call that restoration or renovation? 

[Mike_Young]

"Reworking the features of a golf course can be called many things."  When it comes to "restoration" and courses evolving overtime, there are elements of the design that can be restored to what the original intent called for and that is shot values and strategy of the original archie.  A course that I am very familiar with was "restored/renovated a few years ago and many, many of the shot values and strategies went away.  As an example if a back right placement fell back to front but had a convex movement to it and when reworked it had a concave bowl, then the shot became much easier as has been proven out.  Average member has no clue it happened but it ruins some very good golf courses.  True restoration is not open for interpretation like renovation.
IMHO, and it's just mine, a restoration of a painting is to allow us today to see the same thing that was seen when it was first done.  The most critical part of the restored golf hole to me is to allow the player to understand what the original architect wanted him to execute when he finished it.  JMO

[Peter Pallotta]

To put it simply, what I don’t understand is: when did renovation became such a dirty word?

I mean: it’s a necessary & useful process, and one with the potential to add great value to a course and a club and to ensure that golfers more fully enjoy the game for years to come. And it’s been a process (and part of the profession for gcas) for so many decades.

So when and why did folks start dodging the word renovation and start talking almost exclusively about ‘restorations’ instead?