Here's Tom Doak on what he's doing at North Shore,one of Raynor's early courses:
It is not a restoration. On some of the holes, we are choosing to do things that ARE restorative, because we think the original hole was really good; but we are also completely changing holes 1, 2, 7, 17 and 18, primarily because we thought the starting and finishing holes were pretty dull and could be improved.
The interesting thing about North Shore (and the problem) is that it was designed in the mid-1910's, when Raynor assumed that good players were hitting the ball 180-220 yards ... so, many of the holes have the coolest topography in the fairways in places where the better players today don't even notice it. This is one reason that the course has been more popular among seniors and good female golfers than among the 5-handicaps who determine what's great ... it's not really about the total length, as much as it is about where the interesting features come into play.
There was no room to lengthen (most tees are up against a fence or another fairway or severe topo), but by rerouting 1-2-17-18, we were able to bring some of the better features more into play for the better golfer. On #7, we just quit fighting a short par-4 that was too short, and have turned it into a driveable par-4, based loosely on the sixth hole at Pacific Dunes. I would never have done that at Old Macdonald, because it wasn't a Macdonald concept, but the marching orders here were NOT to preserve everything Macdonald did even if it wasn't working well today.
I have very seldom considered doing redesign work like this, for two reasons:
1. It's difficult to make significant changes on a course where for 90 years, every decision has reinforced the original plan, and
2. The politics of redesign are impossible to deal with; most clubs have 300 members who joined because they like what's already there, and no suggested change will be even close to unanimous.
So, I generally have preferred to stick to restorative work, where there is no argument the membership can make. At North Shore, though, the political argument went away because many of the previous members are now gone, and I only have one owner to answer to. In fact, 15-20 years ago I looked at the same course, but declined to become involved precisely because the committees were so fractured and because they were not open to considering more radical changes.
I suspect this sort of work will be much more common over the next 10-20 years. The permitting process is much more streamlined (although tree ordinances can be a problem), and the work can happen quite quickly if there are some holes worth keeping and you are really only making major changes on a few. I do still believe there are many old courses which ought to be restored instead of redesigned, but I don't think North Shore was one of them.
I don't know what you mean by research. I certainly didn't do an exhaustive historical study, thanks partly to this thread, which has parallelled our involvement. I did gather information from George Bahto on what he had done to the course in a renovation a few years back, and I've looked at whatever old photos they had.
Mr. Zucker hired me to make recommendations first. If that recommendation had been to make a complete restoration, I think he would have accepted that; but he has certain goals to restore the course to prominence and to attract new members, and I don't know that he believed he could accomplish those goals by leaving the basic design unchanged. I didn't think he could, either. The north shore of Long Island is an extremely competitive market for good golf courses; Engineers is just down the street, and The Creek, Piping Rock, Garden City, and Sands Point are all less than 15 minutes away. North Shore wasn't considered in that league with its original layout, whomever you prefer to ascribe it to. And the club was never going to be really successful if it was considered a weak sister to all of those others. I'm not saying what we are doing will make the course BETTER than those, but it will put it in the discussion.
We only made the decision to start on the work we have recommended less than a month ago, and I am still changing the details of the design on the fly, so we have always been open to incorporating whatever anyone discovered about the history of the courseom Doak on what he's doing at North Shore:
I don't want to go into a long hole-by-hole description, but the main idea of reversing the first two and last two holes was to trade out four short/medium par-4 holes for a more diverse group.
The major changes are as follows:
New 1st hole, 380 yards, from old 18th green up to old 2nd tee. Improves visibility over present first hole.
New 2nd hole, 305 yards. Sahara type, from between 2nd & 18th tees down the old 17th fairway, with green set to the left backing up close to the ravine on #16.
New 17th hole, 135 yards. From old 17th tee just across the ravine, to the wildest green I've built in a while, based on the Short hole at National. Added a fourth par-3 hole when previous course had only three.
New 18th hole, 615 yards. From old 2nd green up and over the hill and down to old 1st tee. Deep bunker front left of green and a nasty fall-off to the left. Adds variety of a long par-5 hole when all the rest were 475-500 yards; also more dramatic view down toward the clubhouse than on the present 18th.
New 7th hole, 315 yards. Tee moved up the hill to the right of the 6th green; approach opened up so that you can try to drive the green, but any pulled drive will result in big trouble. Based loosely on the 6th at Pacific Dunes, but styled to look like Raynor.
We have also rebuilt the sixth green (more of a punchbowl) and will do major grading in the sixth fairway; and today we are starting to rebuild the 15th green, which was just too steep.