RTJ Jr. on Nostalgia, Oakland Hills

[Tom_Doak]

My quick take is it might be wise to at least consider his POV.  I realize in this era of untouchable brands that makes you a contrarian. 
I really like Kye Goalby. Mostly because he’s just a good guy but also because he’s been around and isn’t afraid to tell the young know it alls that it is possible to learn from people that have been part of creating golf for many years, even if they weren’t doing with the cool brands. 


Golf architecture has never been so close minded as it is today.

Your last line is ridiculous.  There are 100x as many people interested in golf architecture today, than there were 40 years ago.  There are fan clubs for designers doing all different sorts of work. 


Now contrast that to when it was just RTJ or Dick Wilson.


Golf Club Atlas may be something of an echo chamber, but as a corollary to the Big World Theory, the world is much bigger today than it used to be.

[Don Mahaffey]

We’ll disagree on how ridiculous I am.  The restoration experts are focused on a look. Based on black and whites or computer renderings and it’s all “authentic”.
 It’s their own design ideas under the cover of revisionist history.  No different than what RTJ did.  Just looks better today

[Peter Pallotta]

You're right, Tom, that with social media there are a hundred times more 'voices' out there today than ever before. And yet: doesn't it sometimes feel to you that a Herbert Warren Wind had broader and more catholic tastes in golf course architecture than, say, Ran M and Brad K do today? Or that a Bernard Darwin could appreciate and celebrate a wider variety of design approaches and resulting challenges and tests -- for rabbits and tigers both -- than, say, a Geoff S or an Andy J can nowadays? As I noted above, it's just a feeling I have, and I certainly can't prove it, nor do I want to be unfair to anyone; but I've done a lot of reading over the years, and it does seem to me that the voices today are much more certain about their architectural judgements -- their praise and their condemnations -- than in the past, often talking not as if there is *a* way among many to build a top quality golf course but instead as if there is only *the* way to build one, ie the best way, the one way, their way. Do you remember Brad K's 'open letter to Tiger Woods' from a few years back, or DMK's mea culpa from around the same time? Would Ron Whitten have penned the former (to make sure Tiger did it 'right'), or Pete Dye ever offered the latter (so sure that he'd been doing it 'wrong')?

[Kalen Braley]

This is an interesting topic:

I think back of an Architectural Design class I took in college, (best elective class ever).  We studied building types from various eras all the way from classical Greek and Roman to modern styles, and while most were appealing the 1950's cold, sterile, concrete buildings in general were fairly off-putting to my senses.  The style, known as Brutalist Architecture, seems apropos, with many fugly structures like this:



And when i think of RTJ golf courses, which correlate to the same period, they tend to evoke the same kind of response...once again just to my eye as I've only seen his stuff primarily in pictures. But as always there are exceptions like Spyglass, as with structures, such as this, which is nothing short of amazingly beautiful.

[Tommy Naccarato]

The late Desmond Muirhead had a great line about the Jones Boys.  He had said this to me and I’m sure he said it to Forrest as well, followed by Desmond’s bellowing laugh knowing he just nailed those pompous wind bags! “Do you know what the problem is with the Jones boys?!?!  Bad breeding!!!” (Desmond did in fact like Rees very much, but detested Bobby, who is the perfect neer-do-well!)


Bobby has been and will always be nothing more then the pompous, spoiled and vastly under talented windbag who has always relied on the people he hired to do the job for him.  He’s a figure head living of the bygone name of his father who, by “a difficult par” took golf into  the dark ages of 50’s, 60’s & 70’s. If he truly did say those things about the recent work, what about the work his brother did there that changed what his father did?  If the shoe was on the other foot, and Bobby was doing the work, don’t think got one second he’d call himself out on the same bull crap!


Tom is correct.  Bobby will stick to his guns to protect his Father’s work.  He’ll try to use his political will and might to change the narrative too!  But thankfully, the Doak’s, the Hanse’s the Coore’s & the Crenshaw’s and many more changed the game for the better in this new “Golden Age.” Which is the return to strategic and whimsical golf that makes one feel giddy to go play!


While I haven’t listened to the podcast, I can honestly say here, that the work of Donald Ross was highlighted at Oakland Hills.  Not this over-saturated mess of penalty golf that he claims is the “Heroic School.” FWIW, each green at Oakland Hills was Greenscanned. Reclaimed areas found and pins restored! Gil, Jim, Kye & Blake did a fantastic job!

[Don Mahaffey]

Tommy's response pretty much sums up why I wrote "golf architecture has never been so close minded as it is today" I realize that sentence really doesn't make a lot of sense and should have been more "the discussion of golf architecture has never been so close minded...or something like that.


An architect, granted someone who isn't revered here, makes some comments, that were generally respectful while trying to make a point. And because he appeared to be critical of a most revered here, he is now pompous windbag. And he relies on people to help him..oh how dare he (but be sure to the list those who helped the renovation...all extremely talented BTW and deserving of credit, but maybe I'm the only one that sees that as ironic.)


a few years ago another architect, not a member of the triumvirate mention by Tommy, mentioned building golf course with GPS equipped dozers and was roasted. Now, it's cutting edge.


We used to be critical of super high budgets that the well known architects used to require, but now that others have ascended into the big budget atmosphere, it's all good to build uber expensive engineered greens in temperate climates, and don't dare ask why as you'll be in danger of being called a pompous windbag.


Group think isn't what we have here or in the golf press. It's way beyond that. I don't know Bobby Jones JR and I've heard all the stories, but I don't see the type of tone in his words that deserve to be called out like he was by Tommy. 


I found his nostalgic comments interesting and at least worth considering, while also knowing he's got personal reasons for his words just as Tommy does.


My take on the state of golf architecture; the work itself, the shaping and construction work has never been better. The level of talent building golf is deep. But to me, I feel like a lot of shapers have graveted into designer roles, but seem to hang onto to their shaper's hat a little too much, and might be better served to put on an architect's hat. They are super talented and the tie ins are perfect. But I'm not so sure the business couldn't use a few less shapers calling the shots and a few more architects. And i think one person can perform both roles.  But design should come before methods. If we had more of that we'd have more interesting golf to play.

[Tom_Doak]

We’ll disagree on how ridiculous I am.  The restoration experts are focused on a look. Based on black and whites or computer renderings and it’s all “authentic”.
 It’s their own design ideas under the cover of revisionist history.  No different than what RTJ did.  Just looks better today

If your comments were limited to talking about restoration work, then I take it back, we can mostly agree.  I just don't consider that all of "golf architecture" or even a substantial part of it, as you made it sound.

[Tom_Doak]

You're right, Tom, that with social media there are a hundred times more 'voices' out there today than ever before. And yet: doesn't it sometimes feel to you that a Herbert Warren Wind had broader and more catholic tastes in golf course architecture than, say, Ran M and Brad K do today? Or that a Bernard Darwin could appreciate and celebrate a wider variety of design approaches and resulting challenges and tests -- for rabbits and tigers both -- than, say, a Geoff S or an Andy J can nowadays? As I noted above, it's just a feeling I have, and I certainly can't prove it, nor do I want to be unfair to anyone; but I've done a lot of reading over the years, and it does seem to me that the voices today are much more certain about their architectural judgements -- their praise and their condemnations -- than in the past, often talking not as if there is *a* way among many to build a top quality golf course but instead as if there is only *the* way to build one, ie the best way, the one way, their way. Do you remember Brad K's 'open letter to Tiger Woods' from a few years back, or DMK's mea culpa from around the same time? Would Ron Whitten have penned the former (to make sure Tiger did it 'right'), or Pete Dye ever offered the latter (so sure that he'd been doing it 'wrong')?

Oh, to start with your last one first, there is no way on earth Pete Dye would have ever apologized for any of his design work.  I was very lucky to have him as a mentor, and one of the first things I learned from him is that you've got to believe in what you are doing, and not worry about what other people say.  That's not the same as being overconfident -- I did spend two days with him watching golf at the TPC at Sawgrass in 1982 so he could verify that all the holes played as he intended, and all of the criticism was just venting by players who hadn't played well [or who wanted to register their interest in a future design career].


I'm not sure that Mr. Wind had the broadest of tastes, but there certainly was a difference between him and Bernard Darwin, vs. any of the critical voices today.  It starts with the fact Mr. Wind and Mr. Darwin were on the staff of The New Yorker and The Times of London, respectively, bound by the rules of journalism and the times to remain somewhat neutral.  [Golf magazines do not have the same high standards.]  Everyone today is ADVOCATING for what they believe to be important, favoring certain styles and certain designers over others.  Not to mention that Brad and Geoff and Ron and Darius Oliver and even Tommy N make $ by selling their services as consultants or helping out certain designers.


So, yes, as Don objects above, there is a sense that certain designers can do no wrong and everything they do must be praised.  I'm not sure if that's really in deference to those designers, or to their powerful clients.  Today's developers all seem to want to control the narrative, and most writers seem unwilling to risk their access to those places by printing anything other than unstinting praise.  But on that score, there are many worse offenders than those listed above. 

[Tommy Naccarato]

Tom,
My entire Golf Life has been striving for what I believe to be the best golf course design possible, based off of Golden Age ideals, as well as those I’ve read about and learned about for years.  I don’t think you have ever been blind to my passion, certainly others haven’t been.


As far as making a living off of it, we’ll, I threw away an electrical career, literally sacrificing myself for not just this site but others and architects I believed were trying to make a difference; to help people learn and access courses..even making sure people were invited to every event I was ever part of..  I did it all for making what I believe to be the betterment of this game for everyone, via camaraderie and good will.


Yeah, I’m closed off!


I believe that the age of RTJ was not a good time for Golf Course Design during a growth period after WW II.  Don, prove it otherwise!


Let’s look at the list of great designs from that period.  How do they compare to 1909 to 1937 (the actual end of the Golden Age despite being in the depression)  Peachtree?(mostly because of Bobby Jones involvement). What else?  Golf lost its whimsical fun during that period, instead going for brutish heroic shots and bunkers placed outside of doglegs. Etc. much of it was because of housing developments or just simply, building something that was hard and get noticed.  The school of strategic fun was lost to grip it and rip it.  Clubs went from names to numbers.  The golf ball just keeps on getting longer and longer.


 Tom, I always thought you felt much the same architecturally, but as Captain Geo. C. Thomas Jr. said, “We all have our preferences and biases!”😉 And that’s the way it should be!

[Don Mahaffey]

Tommy, my only point is why can’t Jones Jr have an opinion that is at least worthy of consideration?
How you start tying that into some design era is a total deflection. His family worked on that golf course and he has an opinion about it. Parts of which I found moderately interesting.  But because he’s not in your architectural camp, you don’t think anything he says should ever be considered. 
While I think there are better design eras than the “Jones era” I’m not so sure it’s not part of the evolution, and thus at least, to me, worthy of some study.


BTW, you mention that the greens were scanned? Why? I mean there not originals are they? If you were putting them back, and finding “reclaimed areas” and new pins, were you doing that using scans of greens that have been rebuilt multiple times?  Not a rhetorical question.  I’m seriously trying to understand what you are saying about the greens.

[Peter Pallotta]

Is it safe to say that, whatever has been done to the them, they are now a set of greens that GH would be proud to call his own?

[Tom_Doak]

Is it safe to say that, whatever has been done to the them, they are now a set of greens that GH would be proud to call his own?

If there was anyone who wouldn't have been proud to call the greens at Oakland Hills their own, before the work to them, I would seriously question their sanity.

[Kalen Braley]

Is it safe to say that, whatever has been done to the them, they are now a set of greens that GH would be proud to call his own?

If there was anyone who wouldn't have been proud to call the greens at Oakland Hills their own, before the work to them, I would seriously question their sanity.

Tom,

I may be reading it wrong, but are you implying what is there now is inferior to what Rees Jones or RTJ did?  Or is the "before the work to them" refer to the original work RTJ Senior did.  There was at least 3 major renovations if i'm tracking it right, and perhaps more...

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Tommy, my only point is why can’t Jones Jr have an opinion that is at least worthy of consideration?

This whole topic is to consider and discuss his opinions.

[Tom_Doak]

If there was anyone who wouldn't have been proud to call the greens at Oakland Hills their own, before the work to them, I would seriously question their sanity.

Tom,

I may be reading it wrong, but are you implying what is there now is inferior to what Rees Jones or RTJ did?  Or is the "before the work to them" refer to the original work RTJ Senior did.  There was at least 3 major renovations if i'm tracking it right, and perhaps more...



Kalen:


I haven't seen the course since the last PGA Championship there, so I wasn't opining on the new work.  But the greens as they were from 1981 when I first saw them, until 2008, were one of the great sets of greens in the world.  That was mostly the work of Ross with some refinements by RTJ.


From what I understand, the intent of the current restoration was to preserve most of the contours as they were, albeit with a bunch of voodoo stuff underneath them.

[Michael Chadwick]

Just to say, in the name of trying to be fair minded, that asking RTJ in 1951 to have our kind of reverence/nostalgia for Oakland Hills is a bit like asking a top modern day architect to have reverence /nostalgia for a course built in the mid 1980s, by one of their contemporaries or immediate predecessors. With a course like Peachtree to his name, is it really so surprising -- especially given his USGA remit in this case -- that RTJ didn't honour a recent predecessor's work as much as we do nowadays? Note: I'm not saying RTJ was 'right' (or 'wrong') to alter Ross' original design, only that such judgements are well above my station, and that I think we can make them too easily and automatically. Had history even become 'History' at that point, and had Ross already become the towering figure of the (yet to be named) Golden Age, or are we instead projecting backwards a latterly developed value system and significance? And I mean, re: the question of 'erasing history', will GH's current work on Oakland Hills itself be considered 'historical' and sacrosanct when the course hosts the 2051 US Open and protected against erasure? At any rate, I guess I'm just uncomfortable whenever we fall into our shooting fish in a barrel mode, eg with Nicklaus, or Fazio's renovations, or RTJ Jr's dissing of Gil Hanse on a Fried Egg podcast etc. I start feeling a little sorry for the fish.

But for a few comments, I don't think RTJ Sr. or Jr. is being mistreated in this thread, and there's some decent argument occurring here about different styles of architecture, different eras, and a few recognizable architects in each respective time. The OP was impartial and highlighted notable quotes for opinion.


More importantly, the podcast--in the first two episodes especially--did a wonderful job contextualizing RTJ Sr.'s design philosophy across multiple (possible) factors. 1. Market forces of the golf industry, and the country in general, coming out of Great Depression and WWII, and the need for RTJ Sr. to find a pathway for his career, which, with the abetting of then USGA leadership, took the form of telling clubs their courses needed to be redesigned to accommodate the skill and technology of the professional game. 2. Club and ball technology. 3. Post WWII enthusiasm for newness, modernity, growth, and an understandable repudiation of the past 20-30 years.

If something has changed over time, i.e. a course being asked to hold a tourney or more common, a private course being turned into a public golf course, why should original design intent be so important?  And, I really doubt it is to this group, i.e., if we think we might know what Ross did in 1921, redo it.  If we know what RTJ did, forget it, we don't care about his original intent because we have decided we don't like it.  That isn't supporting original design intent, that is pushing your own vision, which is exactly what many here trash those in the 1950-90's for, no?

Jeff, has a notable RTJ Sr. original design ever been completely redone by anyone not in his family? Nothing comes to mind for me, but I could be mistaken.

My quick take is it might be wise to at least consider his POV.  I realize in this era of untouchable brands that makes you a contrarian. 

Golf architecture has never been so close minded as it is today.

I've tried considering RTJ Jr.'s POV in light of the quotes Erik selected, and from the podcast overall, and what I interpret (as I mention in an earlier comment) is that he and his father held/hold very different regard for Golden Age architects compared to Gil. RTJ Sr.'s brand was robust enough that the Open Doctor moniker followed him. His professional work, excluding his original designs, were meant to transform courses into a challenging layout that would be identifiable to the tour, media, and members as his work, not the original architect. In stark contrast, at the end of the podcast series, Gil's quoted that after his projects are complete, he wants members and guests to become more enthusiastic about who Tillinghast was and the work he did, or Ross, or Raynor, etc. I'm not sure I can emphasize that difference enough. It's not about humility here, it's about the regard for the design ideals and philosophies of who we now refer to as Golden Age architects. You can entertain plenty of reasons for why RTJ Sr. may have distanced himself from those architects and their work--for the sake of earning a living, or because maybe he really thought they were weak courses, etc.--but time has proven that RTJ Sr. and his ilk are the contrarians of commonly held design values shared across Ross, Hanse, Doak, MacKenzie, Thomas, Tillinghast, so on and so forth. I'm not passing judgement on RTJ Sr.'s divergence, but it's not "close minded" to recognize RTJ Jr.'s words and still find them to be critically unsubstantiated. 

 It’s their own design ideas under the cover of revisionist history.  No different than what RTJ did.  Just looks better today

Who are you referring to here? Because this, too, sounds unsubstantiated. If it's Hanse, that'd be tantamount to calling his historically based, thoroughly researched thesis he presents to memberships of the various notable clubs he's worked with an empty, duplicitous marketing ploy. Which would also imply that leadership among the USGA and a dozen or so of the country's finest clubs have all been hoodwinked. I find that difficult to believe.     

[Kyle Harris]

There's a bunker in Delco that can't comment on this thread.

[MCirba]

I wonder how RTJ Jr. feels about Andrew Green's total redo of his Dad's and brother's work at Congressional.

[Sven Nilsen]

Does anyone actually know what Gil was using as a reference point for his restoration?


There were multiple iterations of the course prior to RTJ showing up.


1.  The original 1918 Ross design.
2.  The reworked course (by Ross) for the 1937 US Open.  (This is the version of the course that Tillie commented on.)
3.  The never implemented Ross design from 1947 for the 1951 US Open (The plans Jeff discussed and noted by Ron Whitten in this article - https://www.golfdigest.com/story/gw20070914whitten).


From what I understand Gil was using a 1929 Women's Amateur Program as his primary source of historical information. 

Why were the 1937 changes not contemplated, nor the 1947 proposed evolution?


Here's a previous discussion of the 1937 changes - https://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,62242.msg1479508.html#msg1479508.


Sven

[Don Mahaffey]

Michael,
You're last paragraph is nothing more than a hyperbolic leap from what you quoted. Do you think in RTJ's time there wasn't members who had to approved planned work, and that there wasn't input from the USGA? You think he just came in and said hire me and I'm doing what I want how I want and with as much of your $$$ as I need? I promise you he had to get sign off by the club and the USGA if the work was about prepping for a US Open. That is my opinion, if you know better, please set me straight. He and the club thought at the time that they were improving the golf course.
Regarding modern day "restorations". If I want to restore a 100 year old golf course, the first thing I have to decide is what will I restore. As Sven notes, the club and GH probably had some decisions to make. Then they had to decide exactly what to restore from that period, and where to add "new" design. Please set me straight again but I think the club has visions of hosting major tournaments. Do you think the 1929 version could hold up to the modern equipment if it was actually "restored"? You think the greens from 1929 would perform with US Open speeds? I honestly don't know the difference between what was there in '29 to what is there now, but I'm guessing the '29 greens were not "restored". If they weren't, someone had to design new surfaces.
I believe the work GH performed and much of what we call "restoration" would be better termed, "influenced by". I believe the reason you hire GH is because you know important design decisions will need to be made every day.

If I'm restoring a classic car like a 1929 Rolls-Royce Phantom, I don't need a designer, I need a craftsman. If I'm restoring a famous old house or building, I might need an architect because the systems will be modernized, but I will upgrade systems while trying to maintain the look. If I'm restoring I'm not making the rooms bigger or raising the roof 10 feet. But If I'm restoring a 100-yr-old classic golf course AND I want it capable of hosting a major championship in an era where the average drive is well over 100 years longer than the period I'm using as a template, then I'm not restoring, I'm doing work that is influenced by an architect's work from 95 years ago. I don't have green scans from 1929 and I can't pull up LIADR.  And no matter how talented anyone is in creating renderings or any other digital medium, it's all educated guesses made by talented professionals, but it is their interpretation. The REASON I hire GH or any other highly qualified architect is because there will be design decisions made every day. If he can educate members' about the architect, great. If he teaches them about their own history, great. But somebody has to make the design decisions, and it ain't Donald Ross. My issue is with the "restoration" marketing. It is not with the work. There is a difference, and there are many, many levels of these so called restorations. And I don't get why we don't just call it what it is. Architects have design options and they pick what they think is the best one. That's design, their design. I call it revisionist history because for some reason we in the industry feel like we have to hide that and claim we are restoring something when what we are doing is taking design work from 100 years ago and using it as an influence as we modernize golf courses. [/size][/font]

[Peter Pallotta]

Very good series of posts here.
As an industry insider, Don ends his post with: "What we are doing is taking design work from 100 years ago and using it as an influence as we modernize golf courses."
As a complete outsider, reading about these renovations and looking at the results from afar, I'd say: "What we are doing is building modern golf courses in exactly the ways we nowadays think best, but if/when we can find and utilize enough historical elements that align with own current sensibilities we can then call that work a restoration."
I think salty RTJ Jr was nonetheless quite insightful with his use of the terms 'programatic elements' and 'nostalgia'. It's not that modern-day architects are falsifying or misremembering the past, but that they are selectively picking out from that past only those elements that serve their design needs and narratives today. The nostalgia lies in not being fully open to or acknowledging the entire picture from the past.
And, to Don's point: I don't think there is anything wrong or unprofessional or unethical about that; but it does seems neater and cleaner to just "call it what it is".

[Adam Lawrence]

Jeff, has a notable RTJ Sr. original design ever been completely redone by anyone not in his family? Nothing comes to mind for me, but I could be mistaken.

Royal Golf Daressaalaam's Red course in Rabat, Morocco. Built in the early 70s by Jones and Cabell Robinson, but the greens were not built to Jones’s original design because he left town in a hurry as a result of an attempted coup against King Hassan and never went back. A few years ago, the Moroccan golf federation, which is basically run by Prince Moulay Rachid, hired longtime Coore and Crenshaw associate James Duncan to renovate the course. James visited the Cornell archive, where Jones's files are stored, and stumbled across the original green plans -- so rebuilt the greens to those plans, while also rebunkering, removing some trees, etc.

The course was always pretty much the most difficult on the European Tour when the Trophee Hassan II went there, but after James had redone the greens, it became seriously, seriously tough. I was there for the first Trophee, and James, who is a friend, was seriously on edge to see how the scoring went -- if nobody had broken 75 I think he thought he'd be for the high jump. However there were several rounds under par, though nothing below about 68, and he relaxed. Fine course.

[MCirba]

Hayzeus Chreestay!


The course is so much more playable and interesting for the average member/golfer with width and reasonable options.  The greens are still exacting and ferocious and really make you think from the tee.


To suggest anyone but Hogan enjoyed the wasp-waisted fairways lined with rows of bunkers is a stretch.

[Michael Chadwick]

Royal Golf Daressaalaam's Red course in Rabat, Morocco.

Adam, thanks for this info. Fascinating context too.

Michael, You're last paragraph is nothing more than a hyperbolic leap from what you quoted. Do you think in RTJ's time there wasn't members who had to approved planned work, and that there wasn't input from the USGA? You think he just came in and said hire me and I'm doing what I want how I want and with as much of your $$$ as I need? I promise you he had to get sign off by the club and the USGA if the work was about prepping for a US Open. That is my opinion, if you know better, please set me straight. He and the club thought at the time that they were improving the golf course.

Don, thank you for taking the time to reply to me. I don't follow your rebuttal here, because I didn't make any point about RTJ Sr.'s hiring process. I agree, it's safe to assume RTJ Sr. and the club were focused on improving the course. The broader argument has been more about whether their working definition at the time is still valid (or was ever valid). RTJ Jr. certainly thinks so. But their thesis then was to move beyond Ross. Gil, decades later, presents to the membership that he's going to improve the course by bringing Ross back. That's the simple contrast that's fascinating me most here. 

Regarding modern day "restorations". If I want to restore a 100 year old golf course, the first thing I have to decide is what will I restore. As Sven notes, the club and GH probably had some decisions to make. Then they had to decide exactly what to restore from that period, and where to add "new" design. Please set me straight again but I think the club has visions of hosting major tournaments. Do you think the 1929 version could hold up to the modern equipment if it was actually "restored"? You think the greens from 1929 would perform with US Open speeds?

No, I don't think a 100% faithful restoration to 1929 yardages would hold up. In my initial comment on this thread I mentioned that Gil's work reflects the necessity to move back teeing areas and occasional bunkers to accommodate for the modern game. He himself uses the term historic renovation. I can accept your disagreement with using the term restoration, and I'm not belaboring on this for the sake of semantics, that doesn't interest me.     

If I'm restoring a 100-yr-old classic golf course AND I want it capable of hosting a major championship in an era where the average drive is well over 100 years longer than the period I'm using as a template, then I'm not restoring, I'm doing work that is influenced by an architect's work from 95 years ago. I don't have green scans from 1929 and I can't pull up LIADR.  And no matter how talented anyone is in creating renderings or any other digital medium, it's all educated guesses made by talented professionals, but it is their interpretation. The REASON I hire GH or any other highly qualified architect is because there will be design decisions made every day. If he can educate members' about the architect, great. If he teaches them about their own history, great. But somebody has to make the design decisions, and it ain't Donald Ross. My issue is with the "restoration" marketing. It is not with the work. There is a difference, and there are many, many levels of these so called restorations. And I don't get why we don't just call it what it is. Architects have design options and they pick what they think is the best one. That's design, their design. I call it revisionist history because for some reason we in the industry feel like we have to hide that and claim we are restoring something when what we are doing is taking design work from 100 years ago and using it as an influence as we modernize golf courses.

Here I agree with you on the perceived amount of decision making and new work/shaping that goes into restorative design. But I don't think "influenced by" encompasses the amount of effort, nor the amount of ego that gets set aside, that goes into restoring Ross's OH South, Thomas's LACC North or Bel Air (for Doak), etc. Because in my POV Doak, Coore & Crenshaw, and Hanse become chameleon-like in their restorative projects. Of their courses I've seen, both original and restored, the restored examples don't possess any trademark or signature elements oftentimes found in their originals. They intentionally take a backseat. All creative, modern-day decision making is still funneled through the lens of the original architect.

I personally think the best compliment that can be given to architects working in restorations today is the belief that, if the original architect were able to return to the site, they'd still recognize the course they saw. That couldn't be said for Ross five years ago. That couldn't be said for Maxwell at Southern Hills or Old Town until the last decade or so. That still can't be said for Behr at Lakeside.

My primary disagreement with you is that your usage of revisionist history, and suggestion that RTJ Sr. and Hanse operate similarly, discredits (in my view) the reverence an architect like Gil has for the original architects of the courses he's hired to renovate. Revisionist history implies (to me) that you're criticizing Gil for using his historically based approach as a tactic for gaining personal fame in the industry. However, I appreciate you expanding on your thoughts and demonstrating your affection for the quality of the work that is being done. 

RTJ Jr.'s use of the word nostalgia strikes me as deliberate, delivered with a clear tone of condescension, intended to demean Gil and all other architects working today who carry out renovation work with a respect for the past rather than turning a blind eye to the original architect the way he and his father did. The question I posed to Jeff, which Adam helpfully answered, came in part because I myself had to search online to figure out just which courses were RTJ Sr. originals and which were the ones where he erased the first architect, because their differences are hard to discern. Chameleon he was not.

[Don Mahaffey]

Michael,
RTJ and GH worked in different eras and their styles are not similar. If they traded places in time do you think they'd be doing the same work?


When you tell me you know what a long dead architect would recognize should he return, then you've had a little too much kool aid in my opinion.


The  thread is yours and I leave with this question. If an architect "restores" a golf course to an earlier time, say 1929,  but keeps some elements from a 1950's"renovation" performed by a different architect, what do you call that? How does all that fit into your narrative.  I'll give you my answer, if the architect thinks it makes it better and the client agrees, then I believe its a good decision. Makes it difficult to slap a label on it, and it probably won't be a talking point, but in the end no matter what you describe the work as, it's the architect's job to improve the golf course. I am interested in hearing your answer.