First of all, I really enjoy reading everything on this web site because it stimulates valuable discussion about an art that is largely misunderstood.
I have been told there was a discussion about Engineers going on, but I have been very busy. I hope my reply gets picked up by those that have been so passionately discussing the topic.
My name is Tripp Davis and I am the golf architect who has been working with Engineers since 2000. I read that some of who are discussing this do not know who I am. For your sake I will give you a relatively quick bio.
I am originally from Atlanta and grew up playing the old East Lake (when a poor kid like me could) and Fairington (Rees Jones first solo). As a junior golfer, I was fortunate to be ranked as one of the top players in the country and I went to the University of Oklahoma on a golf scholarship. At Oklahoma I was fortunate to make the All-Big Eight Academic Golf Team, the All-Big Eight Golf Team, the NCAA All-America Golf Team, and play on the first OU golf team to win the National Championship (1989). After OU I played for a year and a half on what is now the Nationwide Tour and other mini-tours, before tearing my shoulder up in the middle of my second year. My shoulder is better now and I still play some competitive amateur golf, mostly at tournaments played on the older courses (CC of Charleston - Azalea Am; Inverness - Iverness Mid Am; Sunnehanna - Sunnehanna CC (tillie); Northeast Am - Wannamoisett; The Anderson - Winged Foot; and the USGA events). I was the medalist at the US Mid Am last year and play well enough otherwise that I am usually ranked in the top 50 amateurs in the country (currently 23rd I think).
After my attempt at professional golf, I went back to the Master Program for Landscape Architecture at OU, concluded with my thesis on "The Environmental Impact of Golf Course Construction". I live in Oklahoma and have been practicing golf architecture since 1993. Up until 2000, most of my new course and restoration work was in the middle of the country. I did a course in Dallas called The Tribute, where I took my favorite principals from my favorite holes in Scotland and created a course that would give players in this country a look at that style of golf architecture (it has been mislabled a replica course). I have also done work on Maxwell courses (Muskogee, Lawton, and the old Indian Hills). In 2000 I was playing in The Anderson at Winged Foot when a member at Engineers asked me to take a look at the course. They had just decided to end their relationship with another golf architect and they were interviewing others to go forward.
Engineers is a very interesting golf course that is driven by the interest in the greens, but it uses the terrain to create a great deal of interest from tee to green as well. The greens are severe - no question - but if anyone has ever played many Pete Dye courses or Wannamoisett or experienced the sharpness of Winged Foot West, (many others could be mentioned) the greens at Engineers are among a group of greens that represent more of what we should be doing today, in so long as you use the constant movement to create strategic variety. Severe green design to just stand out is worthless, but if the greens require a player to think and hit a variety of shots into and around the greens, they have value. Herbert Strong originall designed Engineers with greens that used strong strategic variety to establish the character of the course. It was a course designed for championship play and in its infancy held the PGA Championship (1919) and the US Amateur (1920). It is hard to say exactly what the green speeds were back then (rollers and lack of water could get greens pretty fast), but it is safe to say they were not as smooth and as fast as the greens can get today.
Should we ignore the advances in maintenance equipment and technique that have been driven by the desire to have greens that roll faster and smoother (which in many cases have given greens the ability have their character stand out)? I have to believe that Ross, Tillinghast, Maxwell and Strong knew (which a couple wrote about) there would be advances in the ability to improve the smoothness and speed of the greens, which coupled with the knowledge that in time the ball would go further and the players would get better, would leave the greens as an increasinly important part of the defense, and the strategy, of the golf course.
When the design of a green (or any part of the golf course for that matter) is to the point that it loses its intended strategic variety, I believe that there is value in restoring that original intent. Both in its original form and how it has evolved within the play of the game. The greens at Engineers were designed to be on the brink. On the brink of introducing an element of luck over skill and on the brink of leaving the player with what may seem to be ridiculous options the player does not like to be confronted with. How many of our older courses does that characterize today (even some of our newer courses)? But, on the side of that brink that presents strong strategic variety, design such as this can be considered brilliant, which, as a player, I see in much of what is, or could be, at Engineers. Restoring greens at a course such as Engineers is a very complex matter as it is important to stay near the brink, but you want to return the course to where it is on the side of strategic variety, barely. In doing so you take a chance that future evolution in greens maintenance will push the restored green back over the brink, but it is a chance you have to take. Different from our predecesors in golf architecture, I cannot see how the golf industry and golf world would want greens any faster or smoother than they are today. We do need to express this constantly to our governing bodies, but it is both the perception of golfers and manufacturers that drive technology.
With every thing we have done at Engineers to date, we have upheld this ideology. When we started on the 8th green, there was one pin location they could use. When we were done, there are a minimum of 5, but I assure you we did not make the green easier, we just introduced greater variety. It was not a redesign, but reconditioning of what was there. We did the same thing with #6 and #9. The members still bitch, but now they have more to bitch about. All in all, realizing their games are now being tested, not tortured.
We are going to rebuild the 16th. Today, only one-third of the green is being mown at green height because the other two-thirds is not capable of supporting a pin location (or keeping a ball from rolling off what would be green). We are not going to redesign it and flatten it, we are going to restore the original design intent in the original form. It is a great green, that has lost its variety. We are also going to perform similar work on the 1st, 2nd, 7th, 10th, 17th and 18th. In some cases, such as on the 1st and 17th, we are not going to really change slopes in the green as much as we are going to enlarge the green slightly and slightly change slopes and patterns around the green to allow the variety to come back. At that point, the greens at Engineers will be restored to thier original intent or what has evolved will be sound. The membership and governing body at Engineers are very knowledgable and passionate about their golf course and they do not want wholesale change, they want their golf course to be the best reflection of its original design and the character that has evolved.
I agree with Tom Doak that with some of these older courses it is hard to start and then stop before destroying what was there. If you draw the line at diminishing the original intent and the character that has evolved, you can see a light at the end of the tunnel.