Emmet added an extension to the current 8th green, put French Drains in at the 16th and 18th greens, and raised the rear bunker at the 14th which used to be at the bottom of the hill….nothing earth shattering.
I don’t know the reason why Strong did not do the work… he’d left the club right before that - moving over to Mountain Ridge – that may have had something to do with it.
Tom MacWood: I'm confused... why would Engineers call Emmet's work a "remodel" if that is all he did? Does that little bit of work qualify as a "remodel?" Surely, there was more to it than that. Tripp Davis seemed to indicate that Emmit had worked on up to 6 of Strong's greens.
So that I can better understand your position on this subject, please clarify something for me... is it your opinion that these old architects, like Strong, never made a mistake or error when they designed a course? Is every mark, hump and hollow they made on the ground sacred... never to be touched? Engineers was controversial when it opened, even called a "bag of tricks" by some. I can completely understand why the club wanted to tweak their course, even only three years after it opened.
Let's use a modern day course (with which I am intimately familiar) as an example of what might have happened at Engineers... True Blue Plantation. Now don't get me wrong, I am not claiming TB is on par with Engineers, just using this as a similar case study.
At the request of the owners, Mike Strantz built a powerful course with severe greens and lots of visual intimidation. As with Engineers when it first opened, some felt True Blue contained a "bag of tricks." The complaints were such that after about three or four years the owners decided, like Engineers, to "remodel" the course. They brought in an outside consultant who talked with Mike about some proposed changes, but ultimately went ahead and did what he thought was best for the course, not necessarily with Mike's blessing. Some of the changes were minor in nature, but a few were rather significant. Personally, I think most of the changes were well thought out and benefited the majority of the golfing public, but there were a couple that really bothered me because they effectively changed the overall look of a hole. The bottom line, however, is that the changes improved the bottom-line for the course and it became much more acceptable to the general public and critics. A win-win for everyone except few hard core Mike Strantz nuts like me.
Now, my question is... if 50 years from now Mike Strantz is considered on a par with Herbert Strong, would you be in favor of reversing all the changes and putting True Blue back to it's original state?
Finally, why do you continue to question the amount of planning and research that Tripp Davis did before his work at Engineers? As Tripp said before, you obviously have no respect for him or his work. Tripp gave a fairly clear and detailed explanation of his research and thinking on the changes he had planned for Engineers. Just because you
believe his decisions were not in the spirit of Herbert Strong does not make you correct and Tripp incorrect. Your criticizing his decisions from afar without ever having seen his work, his research materials, or his marching orders from the club was rude and embarrassing. So much so, that you obviously pissed him off. Then, after he came back and
apologized to you for getting “testy” you
still didn’t apologize for getting him so upset. To quote Tripp:
“…you should not go on the attack. Ask questions instead of making statements without complete knowledge. Develop an ideology that is consistent, and executable (how - not just what). Question statements a golf architect makes, but comments such as "would you suggest Tripp rebuild the greens at Melbourne" might be taken wrong. Maybe that doesn’t embarrass you, but it embarrassed me.