Chris,
The seven wasn't really a gimmick hole as it was designed to be a research project for the turf program at Purdue. The entire course is actually designed that way. The idea was to essentially "close off" one fairway and then switch fairways after a certain amount of play so that it could be studied in various ways, turf impact, re-growth, trends, etc. Now if it actually was implemented in any way, I am not sure. It seemed hard to dictate which fairway to hit too when it was only 20-30yards apart (? can't remember exact width of the bunker).
I can speak more about this course later, I was on the construction crew. That was a fun course to work on, expecially when Pete came around.
...if I can find them, I have several reports on the course and the idea behind the research aspect that everyone was trying to incorporate into the course. I am sure Tim could explain some of the ideas in much more detail than I could as well.