I was emailed by someone very knowledgable and intimately familiar about Pinehurst and Ross (who shall remain nameless unless that person asks to be identified).
"First, I visited Pinehurst in the 1970,s with the purpose of viewing these
putting surfaces. They should not be considered "typical of Ross", for they were, and to
a signifigant degree still are, quite probably the zenith of his work. I can name several other
Ross courses where as a result of his particular attention, the putting surfaces are except-
ional. That's for another time. No other Ross course received as much attention from the
great man as this second course at Pinehurst, and that also is another topic. My point is
however, to the best of my early memories, and of course I,ve visited many times since;
the surfaces I saw as a young man are quite similar to the present surfaces. [I have not
seen them since the Open won by Payne Stewart - and do not know what the effects of Rees
Jones efforts are. However knowing Rees, I believe he respected Ross' surfaces.] I know
of two situations which may have had some impact:
a. In the late 70's, the Diamondhead Corporation owned
Pinehurst. From my recollection, they converted the Bermuda turf, to bentgrass. I was at
the course a few years later, and although I heard they had altered the surface character; I
did not really see any dramatic changes.
b. I heard that prior to the last Open, during his prepara-
tion of the golf course, Ree removed some of the accumulated topdressing. This if very
carefully done should not have / would not have any consequence on the turf quality since
the late 70's work involved carefully coring of the soils which supported putting surface turf
, and replacing this material with blended sand.
So then' my sense of things is that the surfaces which were built by
Ross prior to his leaving us in 1948, are the present surfaces. Someone may have closer knowledge.
The second response I have to the Ron Whitten article, and I only
raced through it at the aiport yesterday, is that I,ve never yet run across an accumulation
of 12" of topdressing. I watch this with extreme care, for I have frequently heard "stories"
such as this on in Golf Digest. What I normally run into, and this is after several decades
of top dressing on some very fine old courses, is an accumulation of in the vicinity of
three and a half inches [3 1/2"]. I,m not sure why this is all I repeatedly find, but that's
the extent of it."
Personally, I'd be interested to know if the application of half an inch of sand by Maples was grossly different than other's practices at the same time?