Tillinghast Restoration Experts

[Gerry B]

I was a member of scarboro (as a second club) until 2 years ago. Great track but the membership does not get it. Could be top 10 in Canada with proper restoration work but they will not make the financial commitment. They have many elderly members who simply don't care and like the place the way it is.They did a beautiful clubhouse restoration but the membership will not commit the $$$ to make the necessary improvements to the course. The adjacent building that is an indoor curling club should  be blown up -what an eyesore.They sent out a letter a few years ago recommending that the tree to the right of the par 3 - 2nd be removed to allow for more sunlight. A few of us sent letters stating that if the tree was  removed it would ruin one of the great one shotters in Canada. They should go visit St. Thomas to see the restoration job that Ian Andrew recently completed - maybe then they would realize what they could have with some TLC.

[michael_j_fay]

If a Club is considering a "Restoration Plan" the first thing they should do is appoint a Committee to look at work that has been done by the Architects they are considering. If the work they are seeing is not a restoration then the Architect can point out what he would do in restoring the course.

If the Architect has not done serious restoration work on a particular designer course, he should do his homework. I am confident that that is way in which most Architects would proceed.

Any Golf Architect can help restore a course. His experience from study and observation can well put him in the proper perspective. He also needs the conviction that the course he is restoring should keep the look and feel of the original Architect.

If a search were done in this manner rather than hiring the great-nephew of Good Old Ollie, things would work out better.

[Richard_Mandell]

Wayne:

I think all the Architects here are quite accurate about being a Tillinghast expert, etc.  Personally, I would never say I am an expert on Tillinghast, Ross, or anyone else.  Experience in that realm does help as well as a passion for their work.  But, as Kelly says, one should get that first opportunity and then see how that person fared.  If no one gets a chance to do a certain type of job, then experience will never come.

That said, someone gave me the chance to work on a Tillinghast course and now I have that experience.  The City of Erie, Pa. is restoring their Tillinghast, Erie Golf Club and we have worked on an extremely limited budget to create Tillinghast characteristics and restore what we could with little money and less records.

I can't say that I am an expert, but Erie Golf Club is some Tillinghast experience and I would love to visit Toronto one day soon.

(How about that roundabout way of introducing myself to a job, huh?)

[RT]

I once attended an architecture talk about Louis Kahn at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, given by one of Kahn's associates.

This speaker didn't like to be refered to as an 'expert' when he was introduced as he said he'd like to pose more questions than he had answers for.

[Mike_Young]

I have seen so very good redos and restorations by the socalled "restoration experts".  BUT.....Well here we go with everyone tip toeing around this "restoration expertise" stuff.  
Restoration expertise is nothing but a marketing ploy.
Most full service architects started by doing renovations/restorations and then lost their"expertise" I guess when they got 18 hole projects.
IMO if one was a Tillinghast expert he would starve.
Most of the so called Restoration experts are really historians.
Expertise is gained by putting 18 holes in the ground not by visiting a 100 old dead guy courses and giving the club a report on a bunker or two so you can place them on a resume.
Architects doing new complete projects can only take restoration if they have the time and most don't...and they would have to charge much more than the "experts".
And in the free enterprise system, the experts should be charging the most...what does that say?

[Scott Witter]

Michael F,

Something tells me you have addressed this very subject before.  Very well said!

Mike Y,

Great perspective and quite accurate.

[Joe Hancock]

If a Club is considering a "Restoration Plan" the first thing they should do is appoint a Committee to look at work that has been done by the Architects they are considering. If the work they are seeing is not a restoration then the Architect can point out what he would do in restoring the course.

Back to square one. How does the "Committee" know which architects they are considering? I think that question was really the intent of the original post. Names don't fall out of the sky and land face up on the boardroom table in a nice, alphabetized stack.....or do they? If so, that would explain a lot...."D' comes before "M", after all....

Joe