Joe,
What do you think the architect meant by "a well struck long iron"? As Mike Malone said, this is not rocket science even though some would like us to think it is.
Maybe I learned from the wrong guys but understanding design intent is a pretty important aspect of restoration for guys like Ron Forse and Gil Hanse (at least they sure talked to me about it). Maybe they don't know what they are doing or maybe they are just better then others at understanding what an architect meant when he said something like this hole should require "a well struck long iron" or ...
I was on an old course the other day and on the one green I "dropped" a ball from knee high about three quarters of the way from the back of the green and it rolled all the way off the front. The one committee member I was with asked me, "Do you think that was what was intended?" Maybe I should have just answered, "How the hell would I know, the original architect is dead!"
When someone here says, "The greens back in the day were only rolling at 5 or 6 (if they could have measured them) and the original architect never expected them to be this fast." Isn't that statement an interpretation of original design intent?
This is not rocket science and while we will definitely never know what a past architect would do today for sure, with careful study and research we can gain a pretty darn good idea of what they intended in their original designs and then go from there.
By the way, several architects wrote about building "elasticity" into their designs - what the hell did that mean
I guess we will never know!