It's just fascinating to me how many of the old classic courses were planned and designed either without a practice range or with a very ineffective one by today's standards.
It was a tragic reality on many of the classic courses how they eventually managed to overcome the problem since almost every course today needs some kind of practice range or warm-up area. I guess it was almost a matter of luck in how the problem was overcome well at all, but mostly the clubs had to get into rearranging a hole or a number of holes to accomodate a range.
That often effected the routing negatively and the holes that were created or altered to accomodate ranges. Frankly I can't think of a classic course whose routing or the holes effected were positively effected---almost always negatively.
My own club was certainly negatively effected in both the routing and hole quality by the inclusion of a convenient range in the 1960s into a 1916 Ross design. Plainfield was negatively effected, Pasatiempo seems to have been, and certainly many of the others that the contributors here will think of.
Some that seemed to luck out somehow that had no original ranges are NGLA that had one of the most unusual original practice procedures I've ever heard of but managed a range later without disrupting any of the golf course. Maidstone seemed quite lucky but others like Philly Country, Overbrook, St. David's, Manufacturers never were able to manage an effective range.
Actually, the only course I can think of at the moment that may have added a range later by changing a hole (or more) and actually came away with a range and a better hole because of it may be Seminole with their reconfigured and redesigned (Dick Wilson) 18th hole green site!
The course that is the most amusing in this way, in my opinion, is probably Somerset Hills. They obviously never had a range originally planned and still haven't done anything about it. The first half of #10 still seems to be about half the rather ineffective range and it appears to be a little hard to find your tee ball amongst all the practice balls on #10 fairway! I hope they never change it though as I can't imagine how they would do it!
But back to Gulph Mills. I thought there was a way of altering our range and actually restoring our original #10 hole to make it better and also to probably make the other two holes that were effected better too, but the problem now is the membership can't stand the thought of the loss of convenience of our still rather ineffective range (that took the original #10 fairway) that's right next to the clubhouse.
The thought of walking 100yds down the hill to an area that would have solved the problems was just too much for them I guess. We could have restored an original hole, and even enhanced the design of the two other holes that were effected and had a really effective range to boot! But the idea of walking 100yds down a hill and back up to tee off was just too much bother I guess!
Actually, there is another course which may have eventually dodged this bullet in an unusual way. That would be Piping Rock which has an enormous practice range which once was the double polo fields that C.B MacDonald got pissed about not being able to originally use for golf holes. Had C.B managed to prevail originally, where would the range be today and how would that have screwed up his original routing and original holes? C.B lost his original battle with the polo interests but eventually thing probably worked out better for the golf course because he lost that battle originally!