Tom MacWood;
Again, it's very hard to say what he did to that green. The expense record would seem to indicate he did somethng, though. It could have been as simple as just replanting it, perhaps redoing the entire seedbed or as elaborate as rebuilding the shape, green contours and orientation of the green, including raising (or lowering) the heights of shoulders and green surrounds.
There is no architect who could just look at that expense report number and tell exactly what was changed or not, basically it just doesn't work that way and that's lllogical to expect.
Probably the best way to tell what was changed is to simply find a photo of what the green looked like on the Macdonald/Raynor course and compare it to the way it is now. Last Friday I thought I might get a little lucky that way as I was talking to some fellows from the old days at NGLA (who'd caddied there) and they called up this nice older guy who immediatedly came down and I interviewed him. He began caddying at Shinnecock in 1929 (before the course was changed) and they told me he had a great memory. It appeared he did but he couldn't remember what the old green was like or if it was changed and he couldn't even remember the details of any of the other changes going on at that time. Of course he was only a ten year old kid caddying then and obviously not that interested in the details of golf course architecture.
There're other ways though, that would be more indicative than just asking an architect. One way is through Mark Michaud and soil samples! Mark has done some interesting and perhaps unique soil analysis of old greens before (at Pebble I think). He takes a clear pipe and pounds it down through a green surface or perhaps the top of a bunker surround, pulls out the pipe filled length-wise with old soil/sand layers and such, cuts it in half length-wise and then closely photographs and analyzes the entire layer structure of the layering sample. This is great stuff and compared to other greens (perhaps on NGLA) could possibly tell a lot about how a green was rebuilt or altered. I call stuff like that "golf architectural archaeology".
One of his really knowledgeable interns from Michigan State out there the other day mentioned he thought Macdonald/Raynor (I think) used some charcoal in their greens so if that didn't show up that might be indicative of something. I got the tel #s of all these people to call for follow up detail on this kind of process. I doubt Mark or the club will be interested in going to too many extremes in this way but who knows---Mark is really interesting and interested that way and very resourceful, obviously.
But there're other methods of comparison some of which Wayne just mentioned. Toomey and Flynn were remarkably detailed in all the things they drew. What I mean by that is everythng we have from them is pretty much in exact scale. They just didn't seem to draw lines on courses and greens before and then after haphazardly. Perhaps this is just the engineer in Toomey. As you might know engineers are very exact with volumes and such and generally the drawing of them.
Wayne has the before drawing of that green on the topo of Macdonald/Raynor's green and bunkering at his house and I haven't looked at it that closely in a while but obviously he just did. Those drawn lines on the topo of that previous green are probably exact. So comparing them to what he drew for the green that's there now shows something. So might the before contour lines on the topo across the basic form of that old green---so then what we'd do is measure the elevation lines across that green as it is now.
I think the green-side bunkers and their surrounds now could tell a lot too. They're different from what was there on the old redan. I'm not sure if you've ever analyzed anything like this but obviously the surrounds of a green need to tie-in to the sorrounds of green-side bunkers so analyzing the differences in the shapes and formations of green-side bunkers can tell a lot about the outside edges of a green.
The thing that really strikes me, though, is how basically similar the over-all topographics and placements (green and green-side bunekrs) of that entire green and green-end looks to a couple of other redan-style greens Flynn did no more than a year or two previous to this one. That includes, as I've mentioned before, the redans of #7 Philly C.C. and the redan of HVGC's #3. The style and playability, very much including that immediate fairway upslope are all basically the same!