What Does “Restoring” a Golf Course Mean These Days?

[Tim_Weiman]

No one is restoring to what was there 75 years ago. That time has passed.

Almost no one.  I've done it a few times, as close as we possibly could, anyway.  Some jerk-wad is always going to say it isn't perfect, but we've given it our best effort.

Tom, if you are calling me one of those jerk-wads at least quote my entire post - don’t just grab one line that supports your use of a shitty term like that.
The rest of my post pretty much supports your approach. But not every designer is as sympathetic to the OG work, and not every post here is about your work.

Don,


For what it’s worth, I didn’t interpret Tom’s “jerk-wad” comment as directed at you. I think he merely meant he has great respect for the OG and when working on one of their courses wants to be as faithful as possible to what the OG did. He also acknowledged that it is difficult to be perfect in such an effort and his frustration that some observers may not appreciate that.


All that aside, I enjoyed your first post, but wonder if you can clarify one thing:


by “features modernized to meet modern conditioning expectations” do you simply mean contour being taken out of greens because many people think faster greens are better?


Thanks,


Tim

[Don Mahaffey]

Tim,
I mean rebuilding greens to USGA recommendations and adding specialized systems to dry out and heat/cool root zones, and rebuilding bunkers to not catch a drop of water and adding in specialized liners etc. All of that rubs out imperfect nuance.


Even softening fwy/green surround contours to get the ball to stay on short grass with super tight mowing heights


When I think of restoration to a time past, I think of not only features, but overall character of the golf course. These monochromatic perfectly manicured modern renovations seem focused on perfection in conditioning.


I’m an outlier is that I believe there is a conditioning level above perfect mono stands and the hyper maintenance approach which has taken over.   


I don’t know how a club can say they are restoring to an earlier time when the only thing that is the same is the pieces being in the same place.   It’s becoming boring to me seeing all these courses that look the same

[Mark_Fine]

Tim,
As you and everyone else here knows we are never going to agree on a definitive definition for the restoration of a golf course. There are so many different levels of it. I like to think I’m doing restoration all the time.  Sometimes it occurs in small bits and pieces and sometimes it happens on a much larger scale. When I restore a green to the edge of its original fill pad, it’s restoration. When I find the edges of an old bunker and bring it back to its original size and shape, it’s restoration. When I bring fairway lines back to what we found on an early aerial or to what they were before irrigation was added and trees were planted, that’s restoration.  If we take down trees that weren’t originally there, that’s restoration.  It’s hard to do “pure restoration” because golf courses are living things and they do change on their own whether we like it or not. Also sometimes we just don’t think what was there is worthy of restoration so we change it and try to make improvements to make it better.  I have pointed examples of that out on some of my projects many times in the past.  I might not be working on some of the high profile projects like an Oak Hill or a Winged Foot but that’s fine. That doesn’t mean only those courses are worthy of some level of restoration as many of these others also have interesting history behind them and are part of the restoration movement.  Just because you didn’t completely restore “the entire golf course” to what it once was doesn’t mean you didn’t do any restoration.  As I said to start there are different levels of restoration even within a single project. 

[JC Urbina]

Don,




I know you are  a busy guy but if you have a chance come and see what we did at Pasatiempo, It is a Restoration of a wonderful piece of design and art that Mackenzie and Hunter created.  It is a restoration to a time past. I hope that you see something New but Old and that is not boring as compared to what you have seen recently.


Yes the grass on the greens is monochromatic as it was in 1929 when Mackenzie and Hunter seeded their cultivars of Bent.  Only time changes the grass cultivars on the greens as you know,  The New Greens at Pasatimepo in 1929 were not seeded with the modeled blend


Painstaking research at Pasatiempo and the willingness not to cave into the Modern Look or to flatten out the greens.  The same Task I faced at The Valley Club Of Montecito, Yeamans Hall,  Blind Brook, Rockville Links which is a study into Deverux Emmette like no other, San Francisco Golf Club. White Bear Yacht Club, Sankaty and many others.   Also not being hounded by outside forces to change the look of the golf course for the modern game was a blessing.


Not one hair is out of place at Pasatimepo and The Valley Club, True to every picture ( which was very important, plenty of photo documentation)  we had and Thankfully like every place I have worked, having talented shapers, golf course superintendents  and associates around me made the work even better.   








Nice Post Jeff, Your work with  others and now for yourself speaks  volumes for the passion you have in the business.


 

[Ira Fishman]

JC,


I loved Pasatiempo when we played it before your most recent work. I hope that we get back.


Where do you stand on the question of “restoring” courses to adapt to modern technology if that means adding/moving bunkers?


Thanks.


Ira

[Tim_Weiman]

Don,




I know you are  a busy guy but if you have a chance come and see what we did at Pasatiempo, It is a Restoration of a wonderful piece of design and art that Mackenzie and Hunter created.  It is a restoration to a time past. I hope that you see something New but Old and that is not boring as compared to what you have seen recently.


Yes the grass on the greens is monochromatic as it was in 1929 when Mackenzie and Hunter seeded their cultivars of Bent.  Only time changes the grass cultivars on the greens as you know,  The New Greens at Pasatimepo in 1929 were not seeded with the modeled blend


Painstaking research at Pasatiempo and the willingness not to cave into the Modern Look or to flatten out the greens.  The same Task I faced at The Valley Club Of Montecito, Yeamans Hall,  Blind Brook, Rockville Links which is a study into Deverux Emmette like no other, San Francisco Golf Club. White Bear Yacht Club, Sankaty and many others.   Also not being hounded by outside forces to change the look of the golf course for the modern game was a blessing.


Not one hair is out of place at Pasatimepo and The Valley Club, True to every picture ( which was very important, plenty of photo documentation)  we had and Thankfully like every place I have worked, having talented shapers, golf course superintendents  and associates around me made the work even better.   








Nice Post Jeff, Your work with  others and now for yourself speaks  volumes for the passion you have in the business.


 

Jim,


Thanks for checking in. I have to ask: how close is the famous 16th at Pasatiempo to what was originally built?


Tim

[Kyle Harris]

Restoration starts with a wrench on either side of a reel mower.

[Chris Hughes]

 Andrew Green has added Myers Park Country Club to his roster of renovation clients -- work slated to start in 2027.  Not much in the way of details yet but looks like it will be a wall-to-wall makeover.  If there was ever a course that would/should benefit from the fully monty it is MPCC.

[Kyle Harris]

Andrew Green has added Myers Park Country Club to his roster of renovation clients -- work slated to start in 2027.  Not much in the way of details yet but looks like it will be a wall-to-wall makeover.  If there was ever a course that would/should benefit from the fully monty it is MPCC.

It’s amazing how decisions made by clubs are so subject to spin. What exactly *needs* to be done at MPCC? It was a pleasant surprise when I played it on a dreary winter day in 2016.


Mountain Lake has been subject to the same rhetorical cycle for almost 25 years now. Just look into the archives on this very site.

[JC Urbina]

Ira,




In the case of Pasatiempo, Valley Club, SFGC Yeamans Hall and a few others I did not add bunkers to reflect the modern game.  I was never asked to move bunkers nor did I suggest moving bunkers.  But remember these are clubs that are not trying to play the modern technology bunker roulette game.


Whenever a club asks me to consider moving bunkers I always say, you're just going to have to move them again later.  You can't keep up with the 1%ters.  Their game continues to evolve and just when you got the bunker right?, the next 1% comes along and blows it over, oops start again . If you really have to add strategy consider adding a tee, they are much cheaper but even that is not an option for most. 


The clubs listed above that I referenced are more than just bunkers, Routing, Greens, Tees and so much more that just the strategy of a bunker.  And if you move bunkers they are a really expensive piece of furniture that you just never get comfortable with, you just keep moving them and adjusting them especially when they are stand alone and not a part of the topography.




Tim,


Please go see and play  the 16th green, it is a pure work of Art.  That Mackenzie guy was one smart dude.  The green now has a partial  punchbowl on the back upper tier on the players right.  The punchbowl mounding was taken out sometime  before the 1980s.  They took it out  and expanded the green to the players right to add a larger putting surface which was contrary to Mackenzies  wishes.


I have been told by long time Pasatimepo players  that the green is absolutely more usable but still has that elevation change  of over 10 feet from back to front. Not being on the right tier is still diabolical. 




No designer in modern times would build that green today and Mackenzie himself would have been laughed at  by today's owners and golf course architect critiques.






The photos we had to work with were priceless.   

[Ira Fishman]

Jim,


Thanks so much for responding. Very informative on both questions and notable that such world class courses did not play the “bunker game”.


Ira

[Joe Hancock]

An often unmentioned aspect of these processes is what goes in the ground, namely irrigation. JC Urbina can confirm this, but a story I tell often (because I am impressed by this) is when we did the work at Yeaman’s, the club chose not to put any irrigation between tees and fairway….because it had always been that way and worked for them just fine. It’s difficult nowadays to find a club that isn’t irrigated wall-to-wall, with Pinehurst #2 being a the most publicized outlier. (Not so sure single row is the answer for most clubs….heck, I’m not so sure PH #2 is really single row in the truest sense


Joe

[Mark_Fine]

Can someone comment if any bunkers were added or removed or their locations changed from their original spots at the restoration work done at places like Oakmont, East Lake, Wannamoisett, Merion, Baltusrol Lower and Upper, Olympic Club Lake, Pinehurst #2, The California Club, Cherry Hills, Oakland Hills, Seminole, Winged Foot West and East, Lancaster, Olympia Fields, LACC, Oak Hill, Southern Hills, Plainfield, Medinah #3, The Kittansett Club, Milwaukee CC, Aronimink, …?

Did the restoring architects for these courses avoid the bunker roulette game?

Jim,
As you know most of us always try to start with moving or adding tees as that is a much simpler option.  Sometimes there is elasticity to do that and sometimes not.  I rarely worry much or cater to the 1% but try to look after the majority.  Sometimes nothing (we are mostly talking about fairway bunkers here) needs to be moved or doesn’t make sense to move for a variety of reasons but that isn’t always the case.  Even at my home 100 year old Flynn course, more and more high handicappers are complaining that the fairway bunkers only impact them and even the average golfers aren’t impacted by them any more. We have recently added more forward tees which has helped but it is not a panacea. 

One way to think about it is this, if a 100 year old course was designed to be most interesting for the majority of players at that time, should we expect it to offer that same level of interest and enjoyment 100 years later when the game and technology has changed so much since then?  The answer isn’t always an easy one. 

The courses I listed above that have had extensive work done to them are some of the best older designs out there.  How many of them were left alone and nothing but tees were added or moved because they play just as well now for the majority as they did 100 years ago? 

[David Kelly]

Can someone comment if any bunkers were added or removed or their locations changed from their original spots at the restoration work done at places like Oakmont, East Lake, Wannamoisett, Merion, Baltusrol Lower and Upper, Olympic Club Lake, Pinehurst #2, The California Club, Cherry Hills, Oakland Hills, Seminole, Winged Foot West and East, Lancaster, Olympia Fields, LACC, Oak Hill, Southern Hills, Plainfield, Medinah #3, The Kittansett Club, Milwaukee CC, Aronimink, …?

The courses I listed above that have had extensive work done to them are some of the best older designs out there.  How many of them were left alone and nothing but tees were added or moved because they play just as well now for the majority as they did 100 years ago? 

Most if not all of those courses required previous work to be corrected or removed so it stands to reason that bunkers were changed, moved or removed.

[Mark_Fine]

David,
Totally agree but couldn’t they have all been “restored” to original locations, etc?

[Kalen Braley]

I'm not sure if we decided on what "Restoration" is in 2025.  If this thread from a few years back is accurate, the greens were rebuilt to be softened, which is not one of the descriptions I would include in that definition.

https://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,70925.0.html

[Mark_Fine]

Kalen,
Yes that was an interesting old thread.  Doubt we will all ever agree. 

[jeffwarne]

 Uniform light green bent grass is the white bunker sand of the 2020's....

This....


 and most of the time negates the effect of nearly every dollar of the 20m spent

[Jeffrey Stein]

Pure restoration, as we have come to see over the last 20 years, is a bit of a myth and has always been highly interpretive (even if armed with aerials, maps, and photographs).

It's not a myth.  It's a story that most architects don't want to follow, because then they won't get any credit for their own ideas.

Tom -I should have known better than to touch the third rail...self promotion, ha!  But I could not resist the chance to talk about our work on the Great Dunes at Jekyll Island because it fits so nicely into this conversation of restoration.  Brian Ross and I have made many decisions about what to restore and how to do it, especially considering the history and evolution of golf on the island.


Just to play off the quote I clipped- My hope is not necessarily to get credit for our own ideas, in a situation like this, but to be recognized as thoughtful architects who will care for special properties, whether that be in an architectural or ecological sense.  The Great Dunes happens to have both! 


Yourself, Jim Urbina, and Gil Hanse have all had the chance to restore whole cloth and have done it admirably well (first hand knowledge)... I simply strive to live up to your standard and hope one day to earn that opportunity.  The Great Dunes is not the Valley Club or Pasatiempo, those are masterworks, well preserved and polished with exceptional conditioning. However, there are these intriguing golf courses like the Great Dunes which have been neglected and architecturally vandalized.  Do they deserve to be restored to greatness (as Travis conceived it)? I believe YES.  Is it 100% original restoration? NO, but still not much is these days. IMHO


Now I'm up way too late and need some rest for the AM...we are in the middle of restoring one of Travis' only remaining oceanside Par 3's 


Ps. Mark- I would love to show you around Brookside I will be there in the Spring & Jim thanks for the kind words as always!

[Tim_Weiman]

Jim Urbina,


Thanks for your response re #16 at Pasatiempo. I have only played the course a couple times but would love to get out there again. Pretty special place, especially #16.


Tim

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