Fellows,
I'm hoping that we can keep the tone about the work and about the course.
I know where Tom MacWood is coming from and I fully respect that he's willing to stand up for "purity" in restoration. I know in the case of Merion for me, and Yale for Geoffrey, and Riviera for both of us, or Garden City for Patrick, or Bel_Air for Tommy Nac and many, many examples I can think of none of us would have wanted to see anything altered in a way we thought was inconsistent with the greatness of designs of those historically significant courses.
Even on courses where I feel no great sentimental affinity, such as Quaker Ridge, I recall being very dubious and flustered when I heard that Tom Fazio was being brought in to soften the tremendous first green. At the time, about five years ago, I felt very much that Fazio must be in some camp of self-promoting architects who don't give a crap about classic design and were only interested in being paid prostitutes for advancing their own careers.
Then, over time, I would see other architects who I believed had their heart in the right place also take on work where "adjustments" were going to be made to classic course greens to accommodate modern green speeds and in the interest of more hole locations.
I frankly can't think of a one of them among the MFA's of this board who haven't done this, and the list includes Prairie Dunes, Southern Hills, Pasatiempo, SFGC, Apawamis, Tavistock, and probably many more I am not fully aware of.
This tells me something, although I'm not sure I like the answer and the truth. But, if we're going to get anywhere I think we have to face some realities.
Yesterday I played a brand-new modern course that had greens running about 12 on the stimpmeter and they were literally agronomic perfection. They were among the truest greens I ever saw, and the unfortunate thing is that they had so little slope and contour that even putts of 40 feet or more had no more break than a foot or so. Yet, if I hit a putt correctly, it was going in the hole, no question about it. They were so true as to be almost synthetic.
The bottom line is that this type of green is the expectation among the majority of golfers, even among some pretty educated ones. They want the nicest new cultivars, cut short as possible, and with speeds that allow them to sink putts. They do not like to three putt, conversely, so anything with significant contour will be accused of "goofy golf".
Of course, I don't agree, but that's what we're facing.
That's what every well-intentioned member of any club is facing in trying to win this argument, and it's what every architect who signs on to do "restoration" work at a classic course is faced with.
In the case of Engineers, and some of the membership pressures they were facing I think they are fortunate that they were able to get through this with a course that still has greens that cause shock and awe. I think that they've taken a stance that while it might not give us purists everything we want, still gives us 85% of what might be perfect in an ideal world.
And, I still think there are architects who fall into the camp of wanting to leave their mark willy-nilly to advance their own careers, and those who are very reticent to alter decades of history for their own purposes, but I've also seen the former do some good work under proper restraints and oversight, and I've seen the latter make compromises under the rationale that someone else would be less sensitive.
Based on what I've seen, I certainly wouldn't lump Tripp Davis in the former camp.