Tom,
Congratulations on a great book, for what its worth I have no problem declaring it my favorite golf book of all time. Thank you.
My favorite feature in the book was the pre-construction photos but I did note that they were not ubiquitous throughout. Was this for balance or did they just not exist for every hole?
How often do you take photos of a site before a course is constructed? And what have you used these photos for?
David:
Thanks for your comments on the book
We rarely take systematic photos of a course before and during construction, because our minds are on the finished product. Often the holes may look like a wall of trees “before”, and it’s difficult to pick up the contours when the vegetation isn’t tightly mowed.
Pacific Dunes was a particularly beautiful site so several of my associates would take pictures when they came out, even though that was pre-cell phone camera! Several of the pics in the book are prints from a panoramic camera that Don Placek had back then, but the cover photo is a slide I took while we were out looking for golf holes (and found one!). In addition, a photographer named Wood Sabold who lives in Bandon would come out on occasion.