60 I cannot point to a moment in time or data point in that club’s history. The game evolves and properties age, but we want the special cathedrals of the game to be protected, embraced with the story of how they came to be, and still relevant today.” This reference to restoration highlights a complicated question: where does restoration end, and renovation, or even redesign, begin? Golfers, especially the best golfers, now hit the ball massively further than those of the Golden Age. Is it restorative to recreate a 100-year-old drive hazard that a top player can now blow past with a five-iron? Modern greenkeeping means that surfaces run many times faster than in the 1920s: is it restoration to rebuild a green which sloped at five per cent at oneand-a-half? And there is rarely, if ever, space on a property to rebuild holes in such a way that they present the same challenges to Rory McIlroy as they did to Walter Hagen. “I don’t think there is a clean line,” says Green. “Pure restoration suggests returning something to a specific moment in time. That is rarely completely possible, or even desirable, on a golf course. Trees have grown, drainage patterns have changed, equipment has changed, golfers have changed, and expectations for conditioning and playability have changed. For me, history is evidence rather than a set of handcuffs. We study photographs, plans, aerials and whatever physical evidence remains, and that gives us a vocabulary for understanding the architect and the golf course. From there, we have to make decisions about what makes sense today. “We want to be highly respectful of a club’s history and original architecture. But when you get into the details, we generally want the benefits of both restoration and renovation. We want their history back, but we also want better drainage, more tee options, improved maintenance, strategic relevance and a golf course that works for today’s membership. The trick is making those modern interventions feel as though they belong.” The restoration movement in the US really gained traction with work on Donald Ross courses, and Green too has had his greatest successes working on courses designed originally by Ross. Early Ross restorations were perhaps a little one-size-fits-all, with architects recreating ‘Ross bunkers’ and ‘Ross greens’ according to some kind of template, without reference to the variety in the architect’s oeuvre, and his responses to individual sites. Today, though, restoration architects have moved beyond those early templates. “There was a period when restoration sometimes became an exercise in recreating what people believed a Ross bunker or Ross green was supposed to look like,” he says. “But the more Ross courses you study, the more obvious it becomes that there isn’t one universal vocabulary. “Ross worked for decades, on very different sites, with different budgets, different construction crews and different levels of personal involvement. His ideas evolved. The people implementing those ideas mattered as well. So, I try to start each project without assuming I already know the answer simply because I’ve worked on other Ross courses. We collect historic photographs, plans, aerials and written material, but we also study the ground itself. Often the most useful evidence is still sitting there beneath years of change. “Then you begin comparing sources. What did Ross do at this particular course? What period was it? What was the original topography like? Which features appear repeatedly in photographs? Which things may have been interpretations by someone else? The objective isn’t to create my version of Donald Ross. It is to rediscover the particular version of Ross that existed at that particular place. I often say, ‘We don’t want to be a cover band or play the greatest hits; we want to be supremely unique and intentional in our respect for the original design’.” Green also places practical considerations at the forefront of his design work. “A golf course can be architecturally interesting, but if it cannot recover from a significant rainfall or be maintained efficiently, ANDREW GREEN “ The architecture should come from the golf course, the land, its history and the particular circumstances”
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