Lynn:
With a course such as Riviera, as with Merion, I believe the bunkering (among many other things) should be of extreme importance anyway but if a club, architect, contractor or whomever is involved, is going to advertize and release to the press things like "restoration" and also very much to evoke the name of the original architect (Thomas) then they should make every effort to get things right and they can hardly do that with insufficient or shoddy research much less some kind of generic or interpretive architectural or contracting work!
I'm certain the research done on the bunkering at Riviera alone could probably have been better if true accuracy to Thomas/Bell is what the club, architect and contractor were after. Naturally anyone doing this work should contact and work with a club historian (if the club has one) and if the club has a good one then so very much the better! I've never seen Geoff's Riviera history book but I'm told it's a very good one. Certainly a book such as "The Captain" has some excellent information on Riviera and its original holes that could be used in rearching a restoration project.
Let's just take hole #7 as an example of good and accurate restoration vs something that is less than accurate for whatever reason. If a club is going to do the kind of work that Riviera has done why wouldn't the club, architect, contractor or whomever is involved NOT do it accurately?
Obviously for a whole number of reasons such as they don't really care, they don't really know how to do good research or accurate restorative work even if they were presented with good research. Obviously another reason is someone has other agendas like altering the course (bunkers, whatever) for the purposes of what they suppose is a changed game, changed strategies or some other reason to do with something like today's touring pros.
But whatever the agenda it seems worthwhile (necessary actually) to at least do accurate research and estimate if really accurate restorative work was done where that might leave the course for the necessities of all that's involved in today's game. Once you've done that then you should make up your mind what to do and what to accurately and honestly call it--restoration, rennovation or redesign!
But again, the first step in doing this is clearly the accuracy and methods of doing really good research. Without doing this first--and very much in every way and from every angle, there is hardly any way to do accurate restoration work even if you wanted to!
This certainly does include things like interpreting the look of features like bunkers both from aerials as well as on the ground. Too many architects, I fear, look at aerials and do restorative work from aerials alone. That's fine but only if looking at a golf course from the air not from the ground. The sad truth is before and after aerials can look remarkably similar but on the ground before and after work can look remarkably different.
But suppose some historic research was done from "The Captain". I'm measuring the large bunker on the left of #7 using the scale on Geoff's drawing. The bunker measures 1 1/8" and 1 1/8' on the yardage scale actually comes out to around 75yds in length on the original bunker assuming the drawing is the way the bunker was actually built by Thomas/Bell. I would then very much probe the ground around the bunker to see what subsoils might tell me. If it turned out that subsoils (sand, sandy compaction, whatever) told me that the original bunker was of something like 35yds in length than I guess I would have to assume that the bunker was actually not built to the dimensions on the drawing or some other occurence had taken place.
Actually if you really want to get into this stuff for accurate research you can simply measure an old aerial or even and old on ground photo off of some known dimension on the course that has not changed and then use that as a relative scale to measure the length of the old bunker. This kind of thing isn't really hard to do but it does take a certain amount of time and very well might be something that a club, architect, contractor or whomever never even thinks to do!! They may not think to do it because they don't care or more likely they simply don't know how--they just don't think of it even with the best intentions!
All this should be done BEFORE any design planning is done and certainly well before contractors and equipment are on site ready to go!! And again, for courses such as Riviera and Merion that truly do have significant architecture and histories this kind of thing is a must. For a course like Gulph Mills naturally there's a bit more latitude for obvious reasons but still with Gulph Mills we will do this kind of detailed research FIRST simply to see where it leaves us!! Then we can make some intelligent decisions based on all the available research!
But there is so much more to all this. What has evolution done to the course over the decades even assuming it had never been touched in redesign? Evolution of both play and maintenance practices can make golf features change immensely over time. Do you want to reverse that evolution or leave it alone? How does it play into today's game either as originally built or how it's evolved? There are so many factors here, the obvious ones on bunkers being the consistency of sand, all the dimensions of the original bunker vs how it's evolved. This is so important to some course's like Merion whose bunkering was so interesting and to a large extent famous really due to its evolution and this mostly meant the surrounds (the grass and their large and small dimensions surrounding the sand)!
Then the important thing to note is given the best intentions and even the best research all architects are simply not going to produce the same restoration product no matter how intricately you request it of them! It's just shocking to me how often that misperception applies to architecture and very much with some otherwise knowlegeable people on here. There are so many other things like time considerations and such too!
But given all this the sad fact is that most golfers or club members really don't even notice if the product is a poor restoration or sometimes not even a restoration!
But the ultimate question is would they notice if the product was a really good restoration? I tend to think that they would notice!
But the logical answer (given that they may not notice either way) is if all things are relatively equal like time and money why not just do it right? That way you have preserved some really good original architecture and if anyone did happen to notice the difference at least you haven't gotten yourself way up the creek without a paddle and done something that will have to be taken apart again and put back right and the way it's supposed to be in the first place. How many clubs have gone through this unfortunate cycle and basically cost themselves at least twice the time and money?
And probably the most overlooked and misunderstood part of all this restorative subject is the contractor--or the people who actually do the work. MacDonald & Co. are probably getting a little better as they go around to these classic courses but it even takes a very trained eye to notice the miniscule way they have gotten better. The fact is that they are making all the bunkers on these classic courses whose original architectural styles were so vastly different and unique look almost exactly the same!
There are some clear differences between the new bunkering of Merion, Rolling Green, Bethpage, Riviera, Aronomink and others but the similarities are extremely striking and noticeable. It hardly takes a trained eye to notice the similarities in their work. All of it has that puffy, upholstered look to it despite variations of dimensions like larger or longer capes here compared to there but generally the look is extremely generic! The methods are the same, the machinery is the same so there really isn't much possibility of doing it differently!
And that's sad because some very unique styles have been lost in the process which is so much the interest of these classic courses. And it's sadder still because these classic clubs are going to start to become aware of this similar generic style and they are going to realize (but unfortunately too late) that this is really not what they wanted, it's not what they hoped for and it's most definitely not what they should have--not if they wanted really good restoration anyway!