By this I mean the mechanisms both procedural and personal that sometimes generate but particularly move a thing like a golf course Master Plan or restoration plan through a club's membership to approval and implimentation.

Master Plans, particularly on the older courses are a popular and coming thing these days, and generally they tend to be both restorative and preservationist for the future. They're probably basically a cyclical result and reaction to decades of piece-meal mess making to any course's architecture from revolving committees who never previously thought of continuity in an architectural or maintenance vein (because they basically never before worked within the two-sided context of a course Master Plan).

I love the details of golf course architecture, particularly classic course architecture and I've learned a lot from a lot of sources but my club's restoration project (Master Plan) with Gil Hanse has taught me a ton about the other side of the coin from the actual architectural side---that side of the coin where you need to persuade, convince and sell your membership on the things you believe are restorative and can preserve the best architectural framework and maintenance practices that best highlight all your course can be. The actual architectural plan is one thing but how you present and sell it is the "Process".

The primary reason I'm posting this thread today is I keep seeing these threads and posts on here---particularly from the active mind of my counter-part Pat Mucci---basically trying to lay blame and find fault with someone--generally club members or whole memberships for what's happened to various courses in the past.

So, my message here with this "Process" thread is to advise all out there interested in course restoration and preservation----don't bother to try to find fault and lay blame on someone or anyone even if it's obvious they deserve it. The reason I'm saying that is in almost all cases it doesn't work--it's not positive and it ultimately hinders those very things you're trying to accomplish.

We had a very good architectural Master Plan that it took a committee with the constant inclusion of Gil Hanse about two years to prepare to present to our membership but when we finally got into that distinct part I call the "Process"----presenting it to the membership for approval, we really blew it at first. Luckily, we learned our lesson early, stopped and reevaluated our "Process", the second time around it worked because we essentially removed as much adverserialness from the "Process" as humanly possible. It worked great, they approved, the restoration is basically done, it's a good enough one, and the membership appears to basically love it!

I'd like to add some of the lessons I learned and some of the little tricks that work on later posts but basically the over-riding thing here is even if you don't respect the opinions, often oddball ones, of members, for Christ's sake act like you do or basically you're never going anywhere with them. If you're not going to ultimately accept their opinion (which of course 99% of the time you're not and can't) there's a great response I can almost guarantee works almost everytime!

Probably the most central trick I learned (and was told early on by a few architect friends but apparently didn't pay attention to enough) is whenever you're talking to a golfer about architectural and maintenance matters try your damnedest to see the issue through the eyes of his or her  games, not your own! If you get good at that you won't believe the immediate positive results you can get (you cannot believe how generally suspicious higher handicappers are of the architectural opinions of better players and probably for good reasons!). Ironically, a golfer who could be about as good at this as anyone I've ever seen is Nick Faldo!!

The other thing I learned is just how completely common-sensical restoration architecture is--basically focusing on the design intent both architecturally and maintenance-wise of a golf course. It has a unique way of working for everyone if done correctly and that's the avenue you need to come to both know and know how to sell to ALL LEVELS of players! Frankly this part is pretty stunning and ultimately says so much about architecture, particularly good golf architecture! And when you learn how to explain this well to all levels you'll not believe how quickly they pick up on it----obviously, again because it can be so logical and common-sensical!

And last but certainly not least, again, respect them all or act like you do. Laying blame, finding fault, is negative, it's couterproductive with others and also to yourself and the very thing you're trying to accomplish---making the "Process" work to get them to accept a good restoration and preservation Master Plan and it's implimentation!

I think I've done a thread like this before but it's time to do it again with all these fault-finding threads around recently!  

Tom:

    Thanks for your insight.

Over the course of this next year we will be presenting these same ideas of preservation and restoration to our membership.

We hope to end this cycle of the "decades long piece-meal mess making" done to our Raynor design with a Master Plan of our own.

The head of the architecture committee and myself are the only accomplished players at the club , (much like Faldo himself ), but we've always made an effort to see the architecture from the less skilled players point of view.

We will take heed from your other experiences when proceeding with our "Process."

I think Mr. Mucci has a point there. I would think that the most important aspect of any master plan or renovation would be retaining the right architect or consultant - someone who does not have an agenda of his own.

Tom

I also am interested like Pat in the process from the beginning.  Obviously, somebody made an enlightened choice in getting Gil involved.  Other clubs start the process under the assumption that all the restoration/renovation guys are equal.

Thanks Peter.  What happens when you have an uneducated membership and the "core goals for the project" are faulty?  

For example:"improve sightlines". Seems like this can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

Good point.  Improve sight lines at our course meant primarily two things.  The course was about 50 years old and was overgrown with trees, thus tree management with emphasis on sight line and flight line was a key objective.  Second, over the years  ill advised bunkers had been added on an ad hoc basis, many of which could not be seen when you stood over ball. Thus, almost all of these bunkers were removed eliminating the blind hazards.

Telling Mr. and Mrs. Grumpymuffin you are going to cut down a bunch of trees will get you no where in a hurry.  Telling them you are going to improve sight lines to make the course more fun will at least confuse them long enough to get the project started.  After that, they're off to Palm Springs for the winter and by the time they return the project is 90% complete.  

As for the uninformed members I can tell you there were a lot of meetings between a disbelieving member and the club president or club pro.  You just have to get them to hang in long enough to see the finished project. At our club once the sand was in the bunkers and sod was laid the course looked so good and there was so much buzz about the project it wasn't a problem.  

Tom, this is a really good topic.  Perhaps you could expand on it and make it an "In My Opinion" piece so that it doesn't have to be reposted on a regular basis.

JohnV:

Perhaps you're right--I should consider doing an "In My Opinion" piece on this. If I did that, though, I'd only do it as an account of exactly how it all happened from start to finish at my own golf club, again, recognizing that my club may not be that representative of all. However, I do so strongly believe in one thing and that's COLLABORATION (with other golf clubs)!!!

Any club interested in doing anything in this vein should as their VERY FIRST STEP make the effort to get out there and see what others have done before them and who did things for them. This is the absolute best way to avoid incorrect ASSUMPTIONS GOING IN (always a potentially dangerous first misstep, in my opinion) and also to avoid the plethora of little mistakes along the way.

For some odd reason, most all clubs going into these projects sort of assume they're the first ones to do it and they sort of go into it in a bit of a vacuum. This is just not necessary and good collaboration can put them on the road to success right out of the box, in my opinion!