37 JIM NAGLE INSIGHT More than 40 years ago at Texarkana CC in Arkansas, Ron Prichard kickstarted the movement to restore golf courses to something like what their original architects intended. In the years since, many hundreds of courses have gone through a restoration, or at least projects billed as such. Now, and it seems faintly odd to say so, quite a few courses have been through multiple restoration projects. Is ‘re-restoration’ just a question of architects and clubs creating work, or do such projects have real value? Both explanations can be true. The restoration movement has evolved a great deal since its early years. Although it is easy to say that going for a second project must mean either that the original restoration architect got it wrong, or that the club has more money than sense, that isn’t always the case. Circumstances, the availability of historical evidence, and members’ willingness to undertake significant work can all change. I have experience of working with clubs that restored in the early 21st century and then did so again in the last few years. At Kirtland in Cleveland, Ohio, we were not able properly to restore Hugh Alison’s bunkers in 2007 because the liners available at the time did not allow us to do what we wanted to. By 2023 the liners made it possible for us to do what we had wanted to do first time round, and I think the results more than justified the work. At Philadelphia Country Club in the early 2000s, the club embarked on a regrassing programme for greens and fairways that also came to include the building of new tees and a thoughtful restoration of the bunkers. That was implemented by Forse Design; it was a job I did jointly with Ron Forse. The club had installed new irrigation in the 1990s and didn’t want to replace it less than a decade later, so our ability to expand fairways and greens to the fullest was limited. It isn’t that Ron and I didn’t have the vision to do it, but the infrastructure at that time – principally irrigation – didn’t allow us to do so. And that is why so many Many golf courses have gone through multiple restoration projects. Is this a sensible response to changing circumstances, a sign that the original project was not all it should have been, or evidence of club committees being out of control? Is re-restoration crazy?
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQ1NTk=