A Great Topic, and if I agree, it means I have to agree with Fazio..........Yikes!:)
Anyway.
I do think we are in some sort of "important'" time for golf architecture, and it could teter both ways.
On one side you have the commericial guys who are mass producing golf courses so fast that their signature professionals don't even know where the first tee is at. In this, you have a very "popular" course designer that spends excessive amounts of money to "create" what he feels is the perfect, most picturesque environment which to play the game. You have others that seem to only want to design stuff that looks, well, "phoney" and out of place, and anything but classic. They do this stuff because they say they are fulfilling client needs, yet, for some reason can't put a single ounce of strategy in their designs, in the fairways, and utilize it for framing, containment and buffer zones. They also specify to course construction contractors what and how they want these features done-ultimately it all starts ending up to be the same as when everyone was trying to copy Robert Trent Jones during his heydays. Impressive.
But then on the other hand, you have the astute and perservering modern-day classicist/architect. They are the ones that are trying to build the stuff with influence from these GREAT old courses that the former MASTERS built, but they are doing it with modern day equimpment, and doing it in less then 1/8 of the time. Yet, they still are getting the same results of these former Masters. Why then is Sand Hills, Pacific Dunes, Rustic Canyon, Kingsley Club and so many others, getting this recognition from people like us? We aren't trying to honor these guys for the back-breaking work they are doing daily, are we?
I could only hope so!
If not, then how come they are willing to leave their homes in America, some of them uprooting their families to go with them, to prove their point?
I think the answer is simply, they have all the desire in the world to work the best sites, and produce the best golf. They don't do it from the confines of an office or workstation, drawing-up plans so that the contractor can understand them. They know that the course has to be designed out in the field, because there are going to be things there that are going to work on paper that don't, and things that don't work on paper that do. It's all about fine-tuning and refinement, and they are building these courses in the low single-digit millions and not couple of ten millions.
But they are paying a price.
There is very little commercial success in the mainstream public. Because there are names that aren't recognizable. ASk the average golfer who Bill Coore is, or Tom Doak, or even Ron Forse. They simply DON'T know and have little desire to learn.
This above all things is what makes Fazio, Nicklaus, Rees and others so successful. They are maximizing their viability, but ultimately it is taken from the coffers of true artistic endeavor and ability.
-Lets see Jack get on a sand pro and get that green complex exactly as he is pointing and telling everyone how he wants it to be.
-Lets see Rees stop shaking some hands and get out there and use the talent he has as a player with the experience he learned from his Father, and create natural-looking hazards, without contrived and mass produced orb-like mounds.
-Lets see Tom Fazio build a course totally MINIMAL and STRATEGIC, and affordable.
If they could accoomplish this, then we as players and critics could celebrate a new Golden Age.