There are only renovations and restorations

[Peter Pallotta]

There is nothing in between.

Not that it matters to me what a man does for a living, but I'd like to see language used properly -- and I think that it the long run it would be better for everyone if we did.

If you were *restoring* a mid 19th centry Victorian row house, you might update the elements that no one would ever see, e.g. the electrical system and heating and plumbing; but in terms of what people *could* see, whether a passerby or an infrequent guest or a close friend who will visit every week, one would want that row house to be the very *epitome* of mid 19th century Victorian architecture, with all the elements and features and colours and materials and proportions that characterized that time period and design era shiningly and proudly present -- either brought back to life with loving care, or, if the plaster is too cracked and the wood trim too rotted, replaced with modern 'duplicates' that match the original specifications/qualities exactly.

*That* is a restoration. That's what it means to 'restore' something. Everything and anything else is a *renovation*. Full stop. Period. Yes, by all means, knock down two walls to 'open up' the living room and re-face all the original exterior brickwork with brushed stucco and stainless steel trim, especially if that's what the home owner wants and what you're especially good at; but please don't call it any form of restoration (even a *sympathetic* restoration), because it is not. It's a renovation.

Again, I'm not criticizing the latter approach, simply asking that it be described properly. I don't think I'm being a purist here: it is really none of my business if a club and/or an architect decides that 6500 yards is not a long enough course anymore, and/or that a contoured green no longer works with today's technology. But there is something vaguely not right/annoying with time and time again reading about work (especially work by our group of favoured architects) being described as some form of *restoration* while at the same time reading how we've denigrated as a near travesty that same kind of work (i.e. renovations) done by less favoured architects. There is also, it seems to me, some implied and subtle criticism in the use of a term like 'sympathetic renovation' -- as if we're admitting that we couldn't accept/praise such work unless we bend the language all out of shape.

The sooner everyone involved accepts that everyone involved is actually involved in *renovations* (sometimes more drastic/dramatic and sometimes less) and we all start *calling* it that, the sooner a more truthful/accurate picture of what clubs across the country are doing and why will emerge.

Peter

[MCirba]

Peter,

Aren't you forgetting about Restovations? 

[Mike_Young]

Peter,
I've argued such for years.  If you accept that grass and grass heights are the finishes of a course as you would paint on a house then these need to remain the same also.  Of course I assume they would go the way of the old style chamber pot to the modern bathroom in a house restoration...

[Peter Pallotta]

Peter,
I've argued such for years.  If you accept that grass and grass heights are the finishes of a course as you would paint on a house then these need to remain the same also.  Of course I assume they would go the way of the old style chamber pot to the modern bathroom in a house restoration...

Mike - I'm no expert, but we've had flush toilets for quite a long time now; and even if someone who owned that row-house in 1902 actually replaced the chamber pots with flush toilets, *that* is what we are working with today, and what others had been 'working with' for over 100 years. I don't think it's too much to ask -- again, *only* if one insists on using the term *restoration* -- that the craftsman at least honours that which has been around for 100 years. 

Peter

[Mike_Young]

Peter,
I'm agreeing.  I think we got flush toilets in the mid 1800's...not sure...

[Peter Pallotta]

Peter,
I'm agreeing.  I think we got flush toilets in the mid 1800's...not sure...

I had a feeling you'd agree with me, Mike. How can any sane person *not*? 

[Joe Hancock]

Peter,

I want to agree with you. I really do. But, in doing so, I feel as if I am validating the inappropriate use of asterisks where italics would do the job nicely, even if too often.

To the point, I agree with you and Mike in that a true restoration would have to include every detail, including the surfaces. The grass types and the way they were maintained dictated the architecture then, as it does today. There was no way the ODG's could foretell the advances(?) in turf types and the maintenance of them. Things are so different today from the ground up, and often below ground as well. Once we bring the club and balls into discussion, I don't see how anyone can utter the phrase "architects' original intent" with a straight face.

OK, time for me to go back to renovating.

[Mike_Young]

Sounds like you agree.  I never said there was anything wrong with a renovation.  You brought up a good point with the equipment issue of balls and club.  It's sort of like a true restoration in a house with door heights under 6 ft high etc.  It is an inconvenience but you have a true restoration.    My issue with all of the ODG stuff is that only a few and maybe not more than a handful are worthy of a restoration but if one is to do a renovation indicative of the original it should be as you say and fitted to today's equipment and agronomics while adhering to as much of the ODG's intent as possible  UNLESS one of the ODG's came to a restoration expert in a dream and told him to change things

[Tom_Doak]

Peter:

Thank you for boiling this down to its essence.

The two things that have always bothered me are:

1)  People selling "restorations" who are changing stuff right and left based on what Donald Ross might have done today, and

2)  People who insist there is no such thing as a restoration, because even the restorations use new grasses or new irrigation.


Your synopsis has handled both arguments correctly.  There is, in fact, such a thing as restoration.  The truth is that most clubs don't really want to do it, but many pretend they do, because it's a much easier sell to the members.

[David_Tepper]

How about a "re-creation?"

[Carl Rogers]

To put in context of a course that is familiar:
Is C & C's work at P#2 a restoration?
Aren't most restorations have/require a high level or interpretation by the restoreres?

[Joe Hancock]

Carl,

That's interesting in that I would feel the more interpretation is required, the less likely it will be a restoration. From what I know, restoration is highly dependent on historical records....plans, photos, written word, etc.

[Andrew Buck]

Seems like a renovation with many restorative elements.

[Jud_T]

So if 17 holes are restored to exacting specifications and one hole has minor changes to address a long standing issue then it's a renovation?

[Peter Pallotta]

Joe - I've gotten carried away, yes, but note: I learned that asterisk technique from Dan Kelly!

Carl: see, for me, that's part the issue here. Why is it so important to us, as when it comes to C&C at Pinehurst, to make sure we smuggle in the word "restoration"?  What is wrong with a honest and open and transparent "renovation"?

To use my analogy again: if the row-house had some walls taken out and the bricks plastered over, finishing it all with paint from Farrow and Ball's "Classic Victorian" collection isn't going to make it a restoration. (If I was grumpy and loved victorian row-houses more than anything in the world, I might say it was akin to "putting lipstick on a pig").

Maybe the work at #2 differs in degree and quality from the work done at, say, Desert Forest (and maybe it doesn't, I simply don't know), but splitting hairs and using language badly in some misguided effort to label one a "restoration" and the other a "renovation" somehow rubs me the wrong way.

Peter

[Jeff_Brauer]

Peter,

Sort of agree with you.  I see architects touting a restoration of a classic, when in fact, they change everything, and to the general public, restoration means bringing it from some dreadful condition to a new, better condition.  That should be a "re-conditioning" perhaps.

However, Jud makes a good case - most courses have had road widening, or other problems that simply require a change in the 100 years a course may have been open, I just don't know where you draw the line on not calling something a restoration.  So, we will probably never have an agreed upon definition.

So, maybe someone will come up with some complicated point system with routing, features, etc. a the restoration police will declare some course or another 62% restored.......it won't really solve anything, but it will keep some folks busy, and this website will have something else to nitpick over!

[Mike_Young]

To put in context of a course that is familiar:
Is C & C's work at P#2 a restoration?
Aren't most restorations have/require a high level or interpretation by the restoreres?

No....
Another way to look at it IMHO...
Can you restore a tree?  or a child?  I say no because they both are living growing things.  They will have the same DNA and they can made better or worse but you cannot restore them.  A golf course can be looked at the same way....

[Benjamin Litman]

I'm with you in spirit, Peter, but the lawyer in me always turns to the dictionary before responding to such queries. And the dictionary, in this instance, reflects the interchangeable usage that you are rightfully trying to clarify.

The first definition of "renovate" in the Fourth Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, my preferred dictionary, is "[t]o restore to an earlier condition, as by repairing or remodeling." And the second definition of "restoration" in the same dictionary is "omething, such as a renovated building, that has been restored." Likewise, Dictionary.com, which cites as its source the Third Edition of the American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, includes as the fifth definition of "restoration" "something that is restored, as by renovating."

I am in no way trying to be a wise-ass. I'm simply noting that the interchangeable usage of the terms is so ingrained in our culture that dictionaries formalize it. That alone makes the clarity you are trying to achieve almost impossible.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Peter,

I agree with you.

Then there is the third element: Re-design. In essence, all work on an existing course should be a re-design, a renovation or a restoration.

I'm pretty clear on the differences.

[Peter Pallotta]

Ben - that's why people hate lawyers  

That first dictionary definition is a real disappointment: if I'm reading it right, it suggests that a renovation *is* a restoration -- which leaves me wondering why we actually have two different words in the first place.

Maybe if we looked up "nighttime" in that dictionary, it would define it as "characterized by the absence of a naturally evident and occurring light source, as in daytime-without-the-sun". Why bother with two words for the same thing, huh?  

As Ally suggests, most of us would be pretty clear on the actual difference.

Peter

I'm joking of course about people hating lawyers. I have no idea about the reasons why....

[Benjamin Litman]

Peter: There are many things I hate about lawyers, trust me. I raised the dictionary definitions because I recently had the occasion in one of my cases to look up definitions for words that I, too, thought had distinct meanings, only to find that the interchangeability I kept encountering in everyday usage was, in fact, formalized in the dictionary. From the golf-course architect's standpoint, as long as the dictionaries define a restoration as a renovation, the architect has every reason--and justification--for using the former term in lieu of the latter. We might not like it and might, in fact, find it disingenuous, but we shouldn't expect the architect--who knows full well that a "restoration" sells far better than a "renovation" in this age of technology-driven nostalgia--to market it according to our feelings.

[Peter Pallotta]

Ben - I can't really argue with your very reasoned and logical conclusion,  except to say that while an architect might have his/her own *reasons* (marketing, career-building) for conflating those two terms, I'm not sure those are *justifications*. (Another distinction perhaps that the dictionary will contradict/obliterate.) At the very least, I feel free to point out that, in my mind at least, the two terms are clearly distinct. Also, I have a sinking feeling (re popular culture in general) that each time this tendency to use personal reasons as the equivalent of objective justifications (often in the form of, well, *lies*) is made manifest, the society at large loses a little something, and it is very difficult to get back.

Peter

[Phil Young]

There is a Tillinghast course that is currently having a master plan developed to restore it to Tilly's "original design intent." Sounds simple enough except there is a par-4 that has a nearly 90 degree right turn to the fairway in which the inner side is about 225 yards from the tee and the outer side some 280+. When it was first built there were trees planted at the corner and all the way back along the right side of the fairway to prevent players from cutting it (these plantings can be seen on his original design drawing).

Now these many years later even fairly good players can carry the now quite tall trees so that what was once a challenging par-4 has become a big drive and a pitch shot to the green.

How would one "restore" this to Tilly's "original design intent?" The tee can't be pushed further back to thwart the big hitters nor can the trees grow any taller.

The solution being offered is to plant a few more trees at this same corner to move the fairway further left and at the same time move the tee box about 10 yards to the right while aiming it at the new left corner of the fairway which will also be shifted out some 15-20 yards on the left side. This will change the angle of the hole so that it will now be closer to an 85 degree turn

The end result is that unless one is a very big hitter able to skillfully hit a carefully controlled fade with a driver he won't be able to navigate the corner to gain the advantage of a wedge shot to the green. The majority of players will now hit tee shots that will end up requiring a solid mid-iron into a wonderful green complex.

In many ways this does "restore" Tilly's original design intent yet it also is a redesign of the hole...

It is because of situations such as these that I believe having a rigid definition of restoration and renovation may be as misleading as anything else and that neither term fits the proposed work...

Now how does the architect sell this to the client? The Club wants "Tilly" brought back yet the "Tilly" they've always known wasn't what he designed. Do you say "This restores the intent" which may be true but is renovative in nature or do you say "This renovation makes it play like Tilly wanted it to..." yet the work being done isn't anything more than a bit of tweaking to the original hole design?  

I know what is being said and I agree with it... My question, based on the comments above is how would you approach the club with this idea knowing both what they want to hear and what the reality of what is being proposed MAY be considered as two very different things?

[Bill Brightly]

Peter, even in your Victorian home example you are giving the architect wiggle room to restore the home with features such as modern mechanical systems. What does a shower stall do to the restoration, change the entire project to a renovation?

What does a modern architect do when he sees that an original golf hole had a carry bunker 150-160 yards off the tee that was removed along the way? I certainly do not want to ask my club for the money needed to restore a bunker that is irrelevant to the vast majority of the membership. If he "puts the bunker back" but pushes it out I believe he has restored the architect's intent (and this can also be done by adding a tee.) I'm sorry, but I'm calling either option a restoration. Especially if the remaining work on the green complex restores the original architect's work exactly as the hole was built.

Much of the discussion on this thread has centered on what an architect promises the club, but I think there is a much more important question: how does club leadership obtain the required funding from its membership? If you belong to a course with an architect of note, it is far easier to sell the work I describe above as a restoration versus a renovation.

[Brett Hochstein]

What about when some elements of a course are being restored as per the definition cited, but some other parts of the course are really just renovations, even if done in sprit or style sympathetic to a restoration?

In general, I agree with the premise and think "restoration" gets thrown around way too loosely to promote sales.