[Bill_McBride]

Thanks Bill.

In my opinion it was just the opposite. I think Forrest thought he was restoring, but early on it was anything but that. He just used the word "Restoration" as a selling point to both the client and the media. Its what probably allowed for my participation.

That's what I was wondering.   No reliance on old plans, aerials, photos, etc, to plan the new design work?

[Tommy Naccarato]

We had a couple of aerials; the main one from Whittier was almost unreadable since it looks like it was taken in the dead of summer and the grass was dead dry. It looks like a Pizza of colors, only in Greyscale!  The other one, an oblique I posted in the thread. For the relative short amount of time we had, we didn't find much; Forrest and then associate Patrick Burton (who now works for Brian Curley & Lee Schmidt) found some stuff at ASU which were the sets of obliques and a better, but not much better vertical aerial.

[Joe_Tucholski]

I think there are a few courses where it's thought that the club has held on to the Thomas name when in fact Bell was the primary architect.

he doesn't get a lot of credit in this day and age, but when you step on one of his courses, I can tell you that its easy to miss a lot, simply because the work hasn't evolved very good.

I think the two statements above are one of the primary reasons Bell is under the radar.  Of the courses that I've played where Bell is the sole listed architect they are all municipal courses or military courses where most patrons don't care who built the greens.  There are a few courses I've played where Bell and Thomas are credited, none of them have been municipal courses.  You can guess which courses are in better condition.  As much as we like to say we appreciate the architecture conditioning is important.

The closest course to my home is Rancho Park.  The course has a pretty interesting history (check the link on the club website http://rancho.lagolfclubs.com/clubs/NewHome.cfm/ClubID/29/Section/News/messid/547) but I try to avoid playing here if possible.  The course has some interesting holes but tree encroachment, pace of play and thick rough really hurt the course.

To provide an example the third hole is a redan where I "saw" my first hole in one.  I put the saw in quotes because my friend who hit the shot pushed his tee shot into the branches of a large tree that sits short right of the green.  We lost sight of the ball in the branches but didn't hear any lumber.  After searching for 5 minutes around the backside of the green we check the cup and sure enough there it is.

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