LACC Restoration The Museum Question

[Tony Ristola]

Beautiful work, and hats off to everyone for doing an exceptional job.

Have a question after looking at the great job done:

Golf courses are not museums. They are not preserved in formaldehyde. They change with time. What happens when some of the capes-and-bays in the bunkers begin to erode, change... and the like? Is the club going to let them evolve with time? Then what?

Just curious how they see the evolution of the work done.

Does anyone have an answer?

If not, perhaps some here can voice their views as to how they would manage the course.

[Tom_Doak]

Tony:

I haven't seen LACC since the restoration, but I've done restoration work elsewhere, so I have thought about this subject a fair amount.

Firstly, you know as well as anyone that evolution is always ongoing.  If the club has left its course alone for years, it has not achieved stasis ... it's still evolving, and always will.  These new bunkers will evolve and change over time, but not necessarily the same way they did before.

Secondly, evolution does not necessarily yield a better result than what has come before.  It is only the product of natural processes.

Third, natural processes do not account for everything on a golf course.  In fact, much of the "evolution" of any course has been the result of DELIBERATE changes by architects, superintendents, and green chairmen ... none of them necessarily wiser than the original architect.  In fact, all of the greens and greenside bunkers at LACC were rebuilt and changed just a dozen years ago; they didn't look like the 1925 version in 1990, but you could make a case for the recent changes being a correction of that work, and other work performed deliberately in the past.

How does one preserve such changes?  They will only be preserved according to the skill of the superintendent and the will of the membership ... unless Geoff S. is going to go out there and do the spade work around the bunkers himself, gratis.

[Mike Nuzzo]

Tom
Could you talk about how you built the bunkers at Pasatiempo in this regard?
Do they have a hard line under the grass - fabric or harder?

I read/thought the ones at Cypress Point were built with sportcrete or similar - so aren't going to age - they have a very hard line.

Thank you

[Tom_Doak]

Mike:

I stick to working with soil and grass.

I've heard accounts of different materials used at Cypress Point; some members at SFGC wondered why we wouldn't use the same stuff there.  My response was that it sounded very expensive to me, and I had my doubts that any of it would really prevent long-term changes.

A lot of the bunkers at Pasatiempo do have liners installed.  I don't believe in liners generally, but in my own work I try to stay away from the very steep and erodible faces that MacKenzie built at Pasatiempo.  Since we were supposed to be restoring the bunkers to the way he built them, it only made sense to use the liners to try and limit the effects of erosion, which were probably the reason those original bunkers had been changed or abandoned.

[Mike Nuzzo]

Thank you Tom

Some of the bunkers that were meant to look natural, or grow naturally, stick out when so highly manicured and built with such inflexible edges.

Cheers