A_Clay_Man:
I WILL take exception to your tone with respect to your comment that I must not be proud of my club. I started caddying at Spring Brook CC in 1959 and was lucky enough to become a member in 1969. That means that 43 of my 56 years are involved with Spring Brook.
Why would I NOT be proud of the fact that my club has hosted 4 NJ State Opens, one State Amateur (and another in 2004), a State Fourball Championship, a Senior Open Championship, a Mixed Pinehurst, the Eastern Intercollegiate Championship, and local US Open Qualifying? A club which, to the best of our knowledge,is unique because it is the only par 70 or above course in the US with three, YES 3, consecutive par 3's. I was proud enough to serve on the Board of Trustees for 4 years and won the Club Championship once, losing in the final on another occasion. I speak of Spring Brook with much more fervor than I do of my other club membership at the St Andrews Golf Club.
So I consider your comment WAY off base!!
That said, what occurred at our club began as a restoration project, which when driven by an egotistical, money laden yuppy who headed the Greens Committee, changed character to become a renovation to a course that needed no serious changes. This individual selected Dye from a meeting with him at his winter home in the west, becoming so infatuated with him that he had Dye design two holes at his house here in NJ with 6 different tees on each.
Our club, like many has experienced a severe change in demographics over the past 15 years, the money of the financial markets literally pouring into our area. At present we have over 60 people on a waiting list when the first year cost of joining the club is $58,000. These people are not golfers, they are clubbies. They believe that anything the Board of Trustees proposes or endorses MUSt be great and they vote on a boilerplate basis. That is how the plan got approved.
As for my comments regarding the two holes that were altered, Mr Dye took the best par 4 on our course, 417 yards to the smallest green on the course, and a par 5 of only 460 and tried to design them to reverse the pars on the holes. So we now have a 440 yard par 4 with a green that has already been revised twice since its redesign and remake, and is still canted at about 25 degrees which makes any ball immediately go to the left off the green. And we also have a 485 yeard par 5 with four fairway traps. because he had to create hazards to justify it as par 5, and a water hazard that he put in on the fly because it wasn't on the original plan that was approved. Playing from an elevated tee with a drop of some 40-50 feet from the tee to the landing area, the hole effectively plays about 440 yards, and that's from the back tee. From what I hear we are plowing that under this fall.
If you send my your address, I'll send you a copy of our membership book and you can call every one in it who is a golf member. If you find 10 of the more than 350 golf members who say they like the holes, I'll eat the book. And I don't think you'll find that people such as Bart Oates, Neil O'Donnell, the Presidents of a number of Fortune 500 companies, and a wealth of our other members are SCHMOES as you put it. They care about the golf course, they just trusted the wrong person.
I agree with Pat Mucci that it was the committee's fault, but the committee was effectively only one person. The rest of the Greens Committee and the Board of Trustees were too reluctant to draw in the reins on this individual despite constant complaints from the membership in general.
So there's no political posturing here, just facts. My intent on posting the note was to see what others have met when dealing with this man, who I consider to be the worst architect whose work I have seen, and I've seen it up close and personal. Hopefully people will take note and ask questions and ask for references when dealing with this man. And except for the person who hired him for Spring Brook, I hope they call anyone in our club.