I never personally found the 13th to be much of a redan, with the large false front and the fact that you play down to the hole. It is a good hole with the green contours as they are. Does it need to fit the criteria of the template to be a fine hole? I personally don't think so. As to any comments by "Dr." Childs, I would dismiss them as I have read at least one of his quotes claiming Roger Rulewich as the "devil", really? Any idiot who says that need say no more for me as I would no longer listen to the fool. Roger deserves more respect than that and I am ashamed that no one else on this board ever said so as I know more than one of your have been given his respect.
I played Yale last fall with Roger and the shaper who did the work and he reiterated that the front bunker on the 5th was raised only to allow for drainage as they were on bedrock. He never touched the putting surface, so anything that has changed there has happened as a result of other's work. I trust ANYTHING Roger says over anyone on this site, he has never and would never lie. Anyone who knows him knows exactly what I'm saying. I agree a pronounced horseshoe in the interior of the green would be more inline with the greens I've seen of theirs and make for a more interesting hole.
Joey- Since I don't know you but I know Dr. Childs, I can say this, he's not an IDIOT. Maybe a hairy short apelike appearance creature, but surely he is not an idiot. I like to use Larry Winget’s definition of an idiot, perhaps you can google that or read his book because I can prove to you that when it comes to Yale, Geoffrey knows far more about it and has historically researched it as much as anyone alive architecturally (that goes for the writers of the Yale Club history-I repeat Geoffrey knows ARCHITECTUALLY) and George Bahto. So your taking of the devil context not knowing what this site was like 10 years ago and what the club politics at Yale were then is not applicable. Furthermore, idiots usually do not hold PHDs but I'm into duality and experts take the fun out of everything sometimes and sometimes don't know better that could hold for Geoffrey, Geoff Cornish or Roger Rulewich etc. Just a comment.
If you have seen what George Bahto and Gil Hanse have done at Sleepy Hollow then I think George has a high degree of credibility of Raynor/Macdonald restorations. Yale had a white paper from George documenting what needed to be restored but clearly Roger had a different interpretation from what the results were.
That said, I can speak for Geoffrey in that he has no ill will toward Roger because he is a fan of Metedeconk (save the par 3s which are vapid) and he has also said the work RR did on #12 at Yale is good—although 17th was not done well with the Principal’s nose.
The club wants a Yalie to restore their course, for my money Scott Ramsey has really earned his keep and done a great job making Yale more playable. In my opinion, I would like to see Yale hire Gil Hanse or former nutmegger Tom Doak to restore it fully with a master plan but I don’t think they will hire Cornell guys. Maybe split the difference and hire Brian Silva would be a great alternative .
But let us move shall we to where the rubber meets the road? Roger’s a great architect no? With a grand resume, no? So here is Roger’s front bunker on #5 with journalist Tony Pioppi standing in it. Is that just a shallower representation of the bunker in the 1st picture below? I think not. Could he have not made the slope of the bunker going into the bunker steeper? I agree with you that Roger did not touch the green.
Moving on, nothing to see here right, let us go to #13. The third and fourth pictures are of a hideous mound removed hereafter by order of the restoration committee that was put in by RR to allow maintenance machines to get into the green thereby separating the front bunker into two. That removed the “fortress” strategy of the hole.
Hey, anyone can disagree with me, the world works via a learning process and fixing mistakes, I just don’t like flippant comments about people who did a tremendous amount of archival study on a course and get critiqued when there is visual evidence that the job could have been better.
Where exactly is this devil comment, I could not find it (not saying it is not there)?
No one is calling Roger a liar, it is just that the work is not up to Raynor/MacDonald restorations at Sleepy Hollow, inhouse at Fishers, Piping Rock, and Mountain Lake or Ran's favorite Yeaman's Hall. Yale deserves to be historically retrofitted to former spledor.