I'm very interested to learn about both Tom and Paul's experiences on why restoration (while obvious to me, its not to a membership) and how that was accomplished. Unless I'm dense (quite likely), it seems that both clubs ended up in the same place through different routes.
My two most recent experiences are:
Scranton-they have a very trusted member Ward Fitzpatrick who felt that it was time to recapture some of the lost heritage at the club. The greens committee made the decision to get a great superintendent Greg Armstrong to improve the golf course. They sought an architect to work with Greg who knew Travis. They knew what they wanted, the only real decision they're facing now is "all the way" or "almost all the way" Its small details like seeing sand and fescue covering the mounds, not locations or strategic intent.
St. George'-the driving force is the superintendent John Gall who has accumulated all the historical evidence and has spent years steering them to a restoration of Thompson's work. He has been slowly restoring green sizes and some bunkers over the past dozen years. The club was well aware of what they have and wanted to improve the quality of what was current. John's push, with our assistance, helped explain why they should go back where possible. We did a historical photo/existing photo/after photo presentation for all 18 holes. The greens committee were fully on side and decided that the members needed to see this. We presented to the membership and had very few dissenters when they understood both the look the goal.
In both cases the club's had made the decision, but both were well aware of their history. Clubs in this recent 10 years are much more aware than the 80's and before.
I would say the majority of the clubs I work with are looking for a "bunker job" or a masterplan to improve the course. There is no history involved in this decision. I dig up their history because that interests me (like many others on the site), and show them what they used to have. I always thought that was step one in an older layout. It's rare that a greens committee is not enthused by the idea of capturing some or all of their lost past. When presented with evidence of the past, most are often very enthused about recapturing their history. From my end promoting a restoration or a sypathetic renovation is really quite easy because its often what they want without knowing it.
The real ugly problem comes when you are faced with the tough situation where you have something that you really like that the committee wants to go. My own personal technique on this is to find a way to delay the decision as long as possible (for a new committee obviously). I wonder how Tom or Paul dealt with someone who did not want to restore and couldn't care about Donald Ross.
Tom and Paul,
What did you two do when you were faced with that situation on a committee level?
Patrick,
How are you dealing with the obvious split to do with pond? Are you putting of the decision, continuing to debate, or are opposing committee members disappearing as we speak
?