Pure restoration, as we have come to see over the last 20 years, is a bit of a myth and has always been highly interpretive (even if armed with aerials, maps, and photographs). It's more common in practice to undo a previous renovation, carefully remove soil like an archeologist and return a particular feature to its original grade. I believe that can be a pure restoration, but it is not necessarily possible to do across an entire golf course. The effects can ripple, things change over 80-100 years and it impacts the other parts.
I have personally shaped features on several restorations of golden age golf courses, in most cases parts/entire golf holes were restored to the best of our ability (aided by photographic evidence or archeological) to make them fit with the original architectural style, on that particular property. There was always a sensitivity and intent to get as close as possible for accuracy and authenticity. The same can not be said of every “restoration”.
From the outside looking in, its just hard to know which club's are doing historically based work (if that is what you are interested in) and which are hopping on the restoration band wagon and building new.
The desire to know about the design and construction of golf courses is exactly why I got in this line of work! As historians and enthusiasts of great old golf courses we want to know, what happened?! We would like an honest account of why certain work got done, particularly now, when so much information is available, we’d like it to be accurate and justified. The reality is that we mostly get imperfect information or none at all (particularly if a club wants to cling to a certain architectural identity).
To VKmetz, I do agree that we don't get as much in-depth analysis of why certain decisions get made, but Tom D did write a routing book recently covering just this topic. The field work is fascinating and time consuming, explaining it in words is even more daunting. But to perhaps quench your thirst for real world examples we will no doubt discuss, on this board, the work being done to ‘restore’ Walter Travis’ Great Dunes golf course on Jekyll Island.
There is a long and interesting history of golf on Jekyll Island including the likes of Willie Dunn Jr. , Donald Ross, Karl Keffer, and Walter Travis.Brian Ross and I are working together on the project. We are restoring and enhancing what was left behind by Travis, as well as re-creating Travis' style had he used the land which we are now given. In time we’ll present the facts and let everyone else decide how it should be labeled. Regardless of attribution, the Great Dunes on Jekyll Island is an authentic and historic American links with significant contributions from the Old man himself. As golfers and architectural enthusiasts I hope we can all get excited about this!