Chocolate Drop: Our Video on Seminole's Ongoing Historical Renovation

Apologies for the logrolling, but this video by our team on Gil Hanse's work at Seminole Golf Club rocks. I had nothing to do with it, so I like to think my opinion is not wholly worthless here.

I'm presenting it for discussion because I think this project at Seminole is notable in a couple of ways:

1. According to Seminole, a major purpose of the renovation is to combat incursions from the club's moody neighbor, the Atlantic Ocean. Many seaside golf courses will confront this reality in the coming years, and unfortunately most of them won't have the financial wherewithal to simply raise playing surfaces by multiple feet. Whenever we discuss the future of golf architecture, we need to talk about how golf course owners, superintendents, and designers will confront the effects of global warming.
2. Seminole is now acknowledging that it didn't have — perhaps never had — Donald Ross-designed greens. As golf architecture nerds have long known, the course's famously exacting green complexes were chiefly the work of Dick Wilson, a talented mid-20th-century architect who served as Robert Trent Jones's main rival. The club has now chosen to restore the greens that Ross planned in great detail but perhaps never built to spec. This raises a fascinating question: should a golf course restoration (or "historical renovation," to use Hanse's preferred, ass-covering term) bring back what was built or what was designed/planned?

Over on Golf Club Atlas, an occasionally contentious discussion of Seminole's decision-making has unfolded over the past several months. A key contributor has been Hal Hicks, a former Seminole superintendent who strongly opposes the recent work. Hicks knows his stuff and makes a lot of strong points, but he's obviously — understandably — advocating for the version of the course he knows best and spent much of his career nurturing. His work is now literally being buried. That can't be easy.

For me, the critical question is whether Ross's greens are better, more artful, more interesting, and more playable than Wilson's. To my own eye, they appear to be, yes.

Anyway, the Golf Club Atlas thread seems to have reached maturity, because a few members are now implying that we're doing PR for Seminole, and that's the only possible reason that the club deigned to let our crew on the grounds. Couldn't possibly be that Andy, Cameron, and Matt earned the opportunity by helping us establish a reputation for doing good, fair work.