Patrick: That's a perfect description of The Old Course. You can just keep hitting it to the fat side of the green, but do it enough times and you will three-putt a couple of them.
Michael: I have heard several player/architects talk about rewarding a shot in proportion to its quality. It only makes sense from their narrow perspective. By the standards of my game, or of most people's, a pro almost never hits a mediocre shot, and so he believes he should seldom be punished. If they hit a good iron shot, they always want a makeable 15 footer for birdie; but even more so, if their opponent hits a really loose shot, they want to see that shot punished with a bogey. [95% of pros just hated it when Tom Watson or Ben Crenshaw scrambled after a bad approach shot to tie them, or God forbid, chipped in to beat them after an "inferior" approach.] They seem not to understand that would mean a steady stream of double bogeys for you or me.
I think there should be shots on a course that are so difficult they separate Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus or Seve Ballesteros from other golfers -- a place around a green somewhere that if you're not Seve, you can't get up and down, or a fairway bunker where if you're not Tiger, you'd better lay up. The average pro would call these situations "unfair" if he got into them just off the edge of the green, but the truth is that if he's in those places after a marginal shot, it's his tactics that were at fault ... he should have been aiming further away from them.
But, the other side of the coin is that if you don't leave a large number of places on the course where the 10-handicap has a chance to make par [and get a half with Nicklaus if he misses his 15-footer], the course won't be any fun for the average guy.
So, Michael, proportionality IS a scratch golfer's idea of fairness. I don't know where that leaves the analysis of Kiawah. Some guys think it's so penal around the greens that it will punish anything short of a great shot ... I'll defend that, but not for 18 holes, and not for even one hole like the 17th at Kiawah. I haven't seen the Ocean Course in many years, but the one thing I remember about it is the variety of stuff around the greens. You may have a difficult shot when you miss a green there, but at least it isn't always the SAME shot.