Chip:
You said:
"As to defending my position, how does one do more than argue an opinion based on BIAS (which I certainly have)? There are no FACTS here as to whether Tillinghast or Oat is right or wrong. Only strong preferences on both our parts."
You shouldn't be using those words (BIAS and FACTS) here like that and you sure shouldn't capitalize them like that or somebody might think you're a Pat Mucci clone!
Although this is opinion, of course, you chose to use both words so let's use them. Let's use them to see how they apply to what Tillinghast said about trees and doglegs.
Tillinghast clearly recommended trees used this way for doglegs for a variety of interesting reasons;
1. They provided an effective way of "twisting" holes to separate them from one another and to also get away (in an effective way) from the dreaded "parallelism" that every one of the best architects hated and tried to avoid. Trees were part of many inland sites and using them somehow instead of going to the time and expense of cutting them down and removing the stumps they used them cleverly in architecture.
2. Tillinghast obviously saw the effects of trees in a dogleg concept as a good way of creating additional "variety" in architecture, generally considered a good thing. The fact that they may have created an obstruction that a golfer was unable to play over was another part of additional variety of the inland site--certainly not something open or linksland courses were able to avail themselves of.
3. The actual options and strategies of the treed dogleg hole was a reasonable one to him offering the golfer interesting choices of lines and angles combined with future line and angle considerations. Obviously, the basic options are to try to play a longer more direct shot for a shorter next one ("exceeding the dogleg") or a more conservative shot for a longer next one by playing wide so as not to challenge the most direct route on the dogleg! This kind of thing works very well into the basic principles of architecture to create more variety, more options which create more interesting strategies.
I don't know that this concept or the explanation of it in writing by Tillinghast indicated a "bias" by him towards the concept, just another way in his mind of creating interest in golf and architecture in a functional way.
So the positives to golf and the effects of how to accomplish that seem quite clear and undeniable. So I would say accomplishing all the forgoing is nigh on to fact.
Again, architects like Tillinghast and Flynn and even Ross in his later work were not afraid to depart from earlier thinking (clearly from linksland golf) of never using trees.
Flynn probably said it best when he mentioning that the passe thinking of the linksmen architects was ironic because they never had trees in the first place but if they had they were far too cheap to cut them down!
These architects were working on different types of properties than the linksmen ever did and they were consequently doing things more creative than the linksman did with their architectural features and what to use and how to use it with what they found on sites!
Tillinghast did more than just say he liked the treed dogleg--he explained quite comprehensively how the concept had numerous benefits to architects in design and construction and to golfers in strategies and play.
Since you're on the other side of the issue maybe you could explain the reasons why the treed dogleg is a poor concept to design and construction (treed sites) and bad for golfers in strategy and play.
And, by the way, I've never seen any architect ever state that just because a golfer is in fairway there must be no obstruction that he cannot carry over.
But if you can provide such a statement I'd love to see it.
If Tillinghast were to recommend something like that for the dogleg concept (no obstruction whatsoever if in fairway) then clearly his fairway on the direct line that "exceeded" the obstruction would not begin until after the obstruction had been "exceeded". And I don't believe I've ever seen a fairway configuration on a dogleg hole like that.