What is "Rossification"?

[Aaron Katz]

Sorry for the dumb question, but I just want to make sure I fully understand the meaning of this term.  Is it a pejorative?

[Dan Boerger]

Hey Aaron - Not a dumb question ... I was afaid I'm the only one who didn't know! Also, as long as we're prying open that proverbial can o' worms, how was Aronimink "Rossified"? -Dan

[Wayne Wiggins, Jr.]

Hey Aaron - Not a dumb question ... I was afaid I'm the only one who didn't know! Also, as long as we're prying open that proverbial can o' worms, how was Aronimink "Rossified"? -Dan

I think re-Rossified would be the correct term.

[T_MacWood]

You are no doubt familiar with the prototypical Ross style with its grass-faced-down-to-the-sand bunker. It was a common style that he used often, but not always. Over his very long career and hundreds of projects and hundreds of sites he used a number of different styles for a number of different reasons.

Rossificiation is when restoration architects use that prototypical style on most of Ross restorations...some say they do for maintenance reasons, some say they do it because that it is what the client wants and expects, some do it I suspect because they haven't been able to dig up the historic documentation or research.

The unfortunate result (IMO) is that some of Ross's most interesting and most bold designs have been dulled down (and are not the course Ross built). If this trend continues there may be a day when all Ross courses will have the same homogenous look (Rossification)...even though Ross didn't build them that way.

[Aaron Katz]

Okay, that makes sense.  Still, it seems that if a course designed by Donald Ross seeks out restoration, but cannot find the original plans or site photos, a "Rossification" is the best guess at what the original would have looked like.

[T_MacWood]

Aaron
Thats true, which begs the question why would you consider restoring a golf course that you have no historic knowledge of.

Most high-profile Ross courses or a fairly high-profile Ross courses (and most of his courses are or were fairly high-profile) you should be able to find some old photos or aerials. And photographic evidence is actually the best documentation IMO because the plans can be misleading. There were times when the plans were changed (so if you follow the wrong set of plans you're screwed) or the course was not built according to the plan...not uncommon with architects then and not uncommon with architects today.

[wsmorrison]

Most Ross courses were high profile or fairly high profile?  Is that true?  I wouldn't think so considering how many courses are attributed to him.  If more than half his courses were high or fairly high profile, you're talking about 200+ courses.  

[T_MacWood]

Wayne
I would say that most of Ross's original designs or major redesigns were fairly high-profile. The courses in his advertising pamphlet.

[TEPaul]

Aaron:

The Aronomink bunker project was highly unusual in that they actually built the bunkers that were drawn in the field (and very detailed field drawings) in Ross' own hand but not originally built on the course. No one really knows why app 80 of Ross' Aronomink bunkers were divided up into sets of two and three bunkers in basically the same places as Ross' single bunkers.

Some suspect it was the work of his foreman, J.B. McGovern who was an Aronomink member and green chairman. A nearby nominal Ross course (Jeffersonville) that it is believed McGovern did and Ross had little to do with also had those multi-set bunkers that apparently had some local notoriety (judging from an ad for Jeffersonville in an Aronomink tournament program).

There is no proof at all that Ross designed those multi-set bunkers or had anything to do with them. Tom MacWood might conjecture otherwise but he has no proof at all.

So the club was left with a dilemma---eg to built bunkers that Ross drew or take a chance on a bunkering scheme they could not be sure really was Ross. (Much of the original Aronomink bunkering had been removed by the likes of RTJ, so it was not on the ground during the recent bunker project)

They chose to go with Ross' own drawings.

Furthermore, Tom MacWood seems to conclude that sets of 2-3 bunkers in the places where Ross drew singles constitutues a "bold" design while the single bunkers that Ross drew constitutes something that is "dulled down".

Perhaps Tom MacWood believes that the a large quantity of bunkers on a golf course constitutes "bold" and less bunkers constitutes "dulled down". That's a pretty shaky architectural theory to go on, in any case.

I'm really not sure how or why Tom MacWood comes up with these kinds of characterizations about Aronomink because the fact is he has never been near Aronomink in his life.

The term "Rossification" is his term, no one else's. If Rossification at Aronomink means building bunkers that Ross drew for Aronomink then I say, so be it----and so did Prichard and the club.

The bunker project at Aronomink has been extremely well received but that makes no difference at all to Tom MacWood, because he thinks of himself as the lone defender of the dead guys and their work.

In the case of Aronomink he's probably defending the work of dead guy J.B. McGovern, not dead guy Donald Ross. He may try to argue otherwise and that the multi-sets had to be Ross but the fact remains he just doesn't know that and has no proof of it at all.

[T_MacWood]

This is a perfect example of what I was talking about on the other thread. Rossification is not isolated to one project or one restoration architectect and there is really no need to single out anyone. But what does TE do...once again he interjects Ron Prichard's name into a discussion on Rossification. With friends like TE who needs enemies?

[TEPaul]

My God, you are such an idiot you actually repeated in a single day perhaps the stupidest rationalization you've ever come up with on this website and you have definitely come up with some doozies. You've put your right foot in your mouth twice today. Do you want to see how the left one fits in there too?  

Rossification?!?

About the dumbest label we've heard on here to date, especially on a golf course that used Ross' own drawings.  

[Patrick_Mucci]

Aaron

Thats true, which begs the question why would you consider restoring a golf course that you have no historic knowledge of.

Tom MacWood,

I think that's a very valid point.

Absent hard evidence to the contrary, how would the club know what was original and what was modified, and how would they know which features to restore to what configuration ?

[TEPaul]

Patrick:

That is a good point. if a course wanted to restore and had no historic information on the course, then of course they wouldn't know what to restore to.

But historic information generally doesn't just fall into a club's lap or their restoration architect. They may have to go out and look for something and that alone takes some resource knowledge.

For instance if you have an old Golden Age golf course did you know that Craig Disher may be able to find a 1930s aerial of it? How many people know that but it's basically true. A good aerial is most certainly great historic architectural material to be able to work from, and that's a start.

An aerial of my golf course in the 1920s is how I got into this whole area in the first place about a decade ago. I took one look at that aerial and said to my self---OH MY GOD!!!

This is one of the things this USGA Architectural Archive initiative wants to do something about. They want to create a USGA website section that will become a clearinghouse for architectural information and resource. They want to be the "Library of Congress" for golf architectural information over the Internet, at least.

[BCrosby]

Pat -

To follow up on archive project, one of the motivations for it was to help clubs that want to do restorations but have no historical data and don't know how to find it. In the last ten years the number of clubs interested in their architectural histories has exploded. But many (maybe most) don't know what it is they should restore.

The truth is that those histories are out there and in most cases not very hard to find. It just requires a little expertise. One of the things I hope the USGA will do for its club members is to have a help desk that can direct clubs to that info, whether it be aerials, drawings, periodicals, etc.

The hope is that there will then be no excuse for a course to take on a restoration of a historic course without the available historical record.

Some may choose not to follow the historical record. That will be up to them. But they can't just make stuff up and say they did so because there was no historical record. In almost all cases there is a historical record of some sort.

Bob